SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 9, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• New York Times Continues Paid Link Outing Stories, Looks At Online Flowers Industry

  Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story called Trying to Game Google on “Mother’s Day Flowers”. Yet more big companies got outed for buying links, but this time, Google didn’t say the links had helped. The story covers how top web sites that rank for search terms related to online flowers sales […]
• Google Images Adds Subject Sorting Option

  Google announced you can now sort Google Images by subject. To see this in action, go to Google Images, conduct a search and look on the left hand side for the search option. Directly under the “More” link, you will find the default sort option set to “by relevance,” click on the “Sort by subject.” […]

• 3 Sure Signs Your PPC Campaigns Need Spring Cleaning

  There is no mistaking the official arrival of spring in northern climes. I am not talking about the beautiful blossoms of the dogwood, apple and cherry trees, or the distinctive powerful fragrance of purple lilacs, our official state wildflower up here in New Hampshire. For me, the true sign of spring here in New England […]

• Apple Ousts Google As Most Valuable Global Brand

  Google’s four-year streak as the world’s most powerful brand has come to an end — not through any fault of its own, by instead due to the tremendous growth of Apple’s brand value. That’s according to Millward Brown Optimor’s top 100 BrandZ annual rankings. The research company found Google’s brand value to have slipped just […]

• Your Mobile Site May Be A Lot Less Mobile Than You Think

  Any smartphone shopper who’s tried to take advantage of the mobile Web will nod incredulously with Google’s recent survey that found 79% of marketers still do not offer mobile-ready content. For consumers, that’s a real letdown. But marketer antipathy towards mobile shoppers isn’t the only reason the mobile Web sucks. The fact is, most of […]

• Skyhook-Google Litigation Playing Out In Public

  There’s growing interest in and visibility for the case of Skyhook v. Google. Part of the interest is in the public record and the revelation of some of Google’s internal communications. However, so far there are no “smoking guns.” Last week I wrote that Skyhook had survived a procedural motion to dismiss and/or for summary […]

• 3 Ways To Connect The Dots With Search Marketing

  At a conference last month, I had the privilege of speaking on a really fun panel with some of the brightest minds in Search, where we told some stories about integrating search into larger marketing efforts. We called it ‘Connecting The Dots’. I love these kinds of tales because they nod to the promise of […]

• Google’s Human Text File: google.com/human.txt

  Go to google.com/human.txt and you will find a text file recruiting new Google engineers to the company. The file reads: Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others in many different sites across the globe. It is updated continuously, and built with more tools and technologies than we can […]

• Google To Build New Googleplex From Scratch

  Mercury News reports Google is planning on building their own office building, which can fit up to 600,000 square feet of office space. Google’s current space is pretty much as capacity now and Google is looking to pay the city of Mountain View $30 million to lease 9.4 acres near Shoreline Boulevard, according to Mercury […]

• Google Appeal Fails: Belgian Newspaper Copyright Case Upheld

  The five-year saga of Copiepresse v. Google continues. The case has been in litigation in Belgium since roughly 2006. The short version of the backstory is is that regional French- and German-language newspapers (represented by Copiepresse) sued Google for copyright infringement. Not all Belgian newspapers are involved in the suit. Copiepresse claimed that links to […]

• All The “Mr Men & Little Miss” Google Logos For Roger Hargreaves Birthday

  Well, there was a surprise. A Mr Men logo on Google, and another, and another! Little Miss logos, too. All for the May 9 birthday of author / illustrator Roger Hargreaves, who would be 76, if he were alive today. I know the Mr Men and Little Miss series well, from my years living in […]

• Where Are They Now? Products Announced During Past Google I/O Keynotes

  The keynotes at Google I/O — Google’s developer conference — are always filled with such promise. Google TV, Google Wave, music in the cloud! But the products themselves haven’t always gone on to meet expectations. With Google I/O 2011 beginning on Tuesday, here’s a look back at what’s happened with past keynote product graduates. Google […]

• Google Testing New Search Results Page Look. Does Anyone Actually Like It?

  Over the weekend, I received a dozen or so emails, tweets and other notifications of a new Google search results page interface and layout. I personally do not see it, but from the screen shots shared with me, it doesn’t look pretty. There is a lot of white space, dotted lines to separate one search […]

• Google’s 2011 Mother’s Day Logo & More Logos

  Today is Mother’s Day in the United States and many many other countries and for the special day, Google and the other search engines have special logos and themes up. The logos and themes are to honor our Mothers for all they have done for us. Below is a listing of the logos from Google, […]

• Apple Moving To Close Gap With Android On Speech, Navigation

  As a long-time Android user I can tell you two specific areas where Android beats the iPhone’s otherwise superior user experience hands down: speech and navigation. All text fields on Android devices are speech-enabled, including email, SMS and the search box on any site. The iPhone offers “voice control commands” that allow users to initiate […]

• The Google News “Osama Death” Sample Highlights Some News Coverage Woes

  Today, Google News did a post about the death of Osama bin Laden. Disappointingly, it offered no statistics on what was most read, shared, topics most covered. The post did share a “sample” of 100 links to coverage about Osama bin Laden from representative sources. So, I decided to go where Google didn’t — to […]

• Hot At Sphinn: How To Explain Twitter, Small Biz SEO Checklist & More

  Ever been frustrated trying to explain Twitter to a client, friend or relative? You’re not alone. Twitter can be different things to different people, and a lot of people use it differently. Heck, if Twitter itself has struggled over the years to explain it simply and concisely to non-users, you know it’s not easy to […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Quora Opens Doors to Self Promoters, Bias and Marketeers, louisgray.com
• Google Products You Probably Don’t Know, 1stwebdesigner.com
• Color code your Google Calendar events, Official Gmail Blog
• Google APIs Discovery Service: one API to find them all, Google Code blog

Business Issues

• LinkedIn Sets IPO Price Range, Wall Street Journal
• Russian Search Giant Yandex Prices $1.2B IPO At $20 To $22 Per Share, TechCrunch
• Twitter User Reveals Alleged Details Of Secret Injunctions, paidContent.org
• US billionaire wins high court order over Wikipedia ‘defamation’, The Guardian
• Yahoo Hires Rob Barrett As News and Finance Head, AllThingsD
• YouTube Founders Acquire Tap11!, AVOS

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Steps Up Its Crowdsourcing of Local Business Data, Mihmorandum
• The value of Google Maps directions logs, Geeking with Greg

Link Building

• 6 Traits of a Lazy Link Builder, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Got 2 minutes? Learn how to allow and block ads, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Sneak Peek at a New Google News?, PBS
• A New Era Of Search Is About The Answers, Not Just The Links, TechCrunch
• Blekko Tries to Best Google’s Search Engine, New York Times

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

• Google Panda Algorithm Exploit Uncovered, SEO Book
• Google Brand Bias in Search Results, SEO Book
• Scammers, Spammers & Industry Standards, SEO Book
• 3 ways to save money on SEO copywriting, SEO Copywriting
• Google Not Following Own Best Practices for Own Web Site, Bill Hartzer
• Google Panda Undergoing Another Update? 3.0, Search Engine Roundtable
• Shop.org Video Tip: Google Sitelinks, Rimm Kaufman

Social Media

• Facebook Quietly Fixes its Original Privacy Problem, 5 Years Later, Read/Write Web
• Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS, Completely, Stay N Alive
• Twitter outings undermine super injunctions, Reuters

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics Advanced Segments are badly broken, Jamie’s Digital Blog
• Issue affecting Analytics data for April, Google Analytics Blog

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• 15 Must See Interactive Youtube Ads –
  Many businesses are already experimenting with interactive video and some have got considerable success. That inspired me to pick out the best 15 “must-see” interactive Youtube ads. Some of them are produced with a huge budget, some of them for nothing at all.
• Optimizing Page Speed – Actionable Tips For SEOs and Web Developers – A very smart, detailed & super-geeky article offering excellent advice on increasing page speed.
• 8 ways to deal with negative comments in online communities – How do you respond to a negative comment in an online community,  on Facebook? Shut the Page down, ban the commenter, suck up to them? How about a bitchy tweet on Twitter? Fight with them? Ignore them? Promise to do better? Many social media guidelines have a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to addressing negative criticism in social networks, but assessing the situation and the potential positive vs negative outcomes of responses is a skill that comes from experience. PS:  Your marketing intern may not have that skill!
• Paid Link Outing – Trying to Game Google on ‘Mother’s Day Flowers’ – Internet marketing experts say Teleflora, FTD, 1800Flowers.com and ProFlowers are trying to elevate their Web sites in search results with a strategy that violates Google’s guidelines. The flower companies deny it. But all four have links on Web sites that are riddled with paid links, many of which include phrases like “mothers day flowers,” “mothers day arrangements” and “cheap mothers day flowers.”
• The 4 Layers of Online Brand Marketing – Your brand, website, content development and on-page SEO, and social/reputation management…the marketing pyramid. The author writes "At each point of the marketing pyramid, you should be there."
• How Businesses Should React to Negative Social Media & Reviews – Social Media still scares many businesses both large and small. But hiding from social media isn’t the answer. The real answer lies in embracing it … in all of its brutal, raw honesty.