SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 12, 2009

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Why I’m NOT Drinking The “Real-time Local Search” Kool-Aid
  

  I’m hearing more and more about “Real-Time Local Search” – that phrase is popping up everywhere; but I’m just not buying the hype that positions it as some amazing new essence that businesses and consumers must embrace… sorry. I acknowledge that it’s useful to have a label to refer to this concept, but is it revolutionary? [...]

• Would Someone Please Explain To News Corp How Google Works?
  

  Yet another News Corporation executive is talking about Google, and yet again, I feel like they have no concept about how Google interacts with their web pages. Which is frightening, since they’re being very vocal about how they’re supposedly wronged by Google. Please, someone, give them a search marketing 101 course. In the latest volley, News [...]

• “TV Guide For The Internet” Clicker Comes Out Of Beta
  

  The label, “TV Guide for the internet,” doesn’t fully capture the intent or the extent of Clicker. We first wrote about the site when it appeared at the TechCrunch50 event. It was then in a closed beta. However today, a mere 58 days later, the site launches to the public with a number of new [...]

• Yahoo Launches Mobile Site En Español
  

  Yahoo has smartly launched a Spanish Language version of its mobile homepage. The company cites Census data that reflect a population of 46 million Hispanic people in the US. Yahoo also cited comScore data that show tremendous mobile internet growth among Hispanics, which is “outpacing that of all other groups, with 88% of Hispanics consuming [...]

• Google Buying Back Shares To Offset “Dilution” Effect Of AdMob Purchase
  

  During Google’s third quarter earnings call CEO Eric Schmidt expressed a kind of philosophical objection to corporate stock repurchase programs. But now in the wake of the $750 million acquisition of AdMob Google is going to do its first stock buy back to prevent investor dilution from the event. During the Q3 earnings call the following [...]

• Google Upgrades Movie Search
  

  Google announced they have made enhancements to their movie search feature. The enhancements include:

  Detailed movie pages Genre filters New map view Enhanced movie portal page

  Here are some screen shots of the new movie results from Google:

• Enterprise SEO: A “Plumbing” Problem
  

  A few years ago, I was attending a training session on brand guidelines for a large technology company. The products and services they provided were described by the presenter as the “plumbing” in the wall – something you don’t see, but it allows things to work properly, which makes your life easier. It’s tough to [...]

• Day Two: PubCon Vegas 2009
  

  Day two is just about complete of PubCon Vegas 2009, at least the conference sessions. I thought I share many of the session coverage I found written on the various blogs throughout the day. Here is PubCon Vegas day two coverage:

  Keynote: Vegas Strip Hotel Marketing Departments, outspokenmedia.com Live from Pubcon Vegas: How do Social [...]

• Google Upgrades Keywords Report In Webmaster Tools
  

  Google has announced an upgrade to the Keywords report that’s available in Webmaster Tools. The report now features a daily update of the most common keywords that Google found while crawling a web site.

  And each keyword is linked to another report that details up to “10 top pages” where the keyword was found.

  It’s a [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Announcing The Launch of 301 Works, bit.ly blog
• Google plans Chrome Mac beta for December, CNET News
• A 2x Faster Web, Chromium Blog
• Follow your waves, Google Wave Blog
• Movilízate con Yahoo!, Yodel Anecdotal

Business Issues

• Yahoo Japan Shares Open 4.1% Higher After Goldman ‘Buy’ Rating, Bloomberg
• AOL’s Coming Layoffs & Restructuring Costs: $200 Million, paidContent.org
• Author says Google lacks ‘emotional intelligence’, CNET News
• Popular Science Names Wolfram|Alpha the “Best of What’s New” in Computing for 2009, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• The World’s Most Powerful People, Forbes

Link Building

• Promotional Links or Spam?, Bruceclay.com.au

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords system maintenance on November 14th, Inside AdWords
• Google Ad Planner: Now even easier to find the right audience for your campaigns, Inside AdWords
• Google, Yahoo call for expanded online drug ads, The Associated Press

Searching

• URL shorteners working with Internet Archive for long-term preservation, 301Works

SEO & SEM

• Being Banned from Bing Cashback as a Merchant, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Rich Snippets Coming To Smaller Sites?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• FDA Grapples With Regulating Social Media Ads, Wall Street Journal
• Is Social Media ROI Unmeasurable?, SEOmoz
• Reddit Opens Its Homepage To Anyone Willing To Pay (Invites), TechCrunch
• Twitter Data Dump: InfoChimps Puts 1B Connections Up For Sale, Read/Write Web
• YouTube and 18 more new partners make it easy to share with friends on Windows Live, Windows Live

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google China Music Player Gets Makeover, Google Blogoscoped

Web Analytics

• New Feature Spotlight: Advanced Filters, Google Analytics Blog