SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 2, 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:

• Google, Yahoo, Bing Bury GeoCities.com, But Some Zombie Sites Are Still Alive
  

  Although some GeoCities web sites are still online, all three major search engines have removed the domain from their search indices. As of this morning, a site:geocities.com search on Google, Yahoo, and Bing shows that geocities.com is dead and buried.

  Yahoo announced earlier this year that GeoCities — a free web hosting service that it bought [...]

• Google Releases Voice Search In China For Nokia S60s
  

  Google announced that it had released voice search for Mandarin Chinese for Nokia S60 phones. This is potentially huge — if Google gets it right — because of the massive population in China. It could also drive more search usage and frequency. Google trails Baidu on the PC but mobile represents an opportunity for Google [...]

• Multilingual Marketing, SEO And The Global Village
  

  Marshall McLuhan was the Canadian educator, scholar and philosopher who popularized the term “global village” way back in the hippie sixties. He coined the phrase in reference to the effects of mass media on the world, in that it enabled people to instantly experience the effects of their actions on a global scale. At the time, [...]

• Got a PPC Question? Bring it to tomorrow’s SMN Webcast -Nov. 3, 1 PM EST
  

  Search Marketing Now will host an interactive webcast tomorrow that’s all Q+A: “Ask iProspect – PPC Strategy & Tactics from the Experts.” Senior management from iProspect will take questions from the audience — both live and those submitted in advance. Based on questions already submitted by registrants, we’ll be talking about everything from how many keywords [...]

• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Keynote SMX West – March 2-4, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA
  

  The dates are set and registration is live! Search Marketing Expo – SMX West happens March 2-4, 2010 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Get exceptional content, invaluable connections and essential conveniences that make SMX conferences famous. SMX West will begin with a fireside chat between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com [...]

• Google’s Fading Home Page Tests Continue
  

  On October 6th, we reported on Google’s fading home page, which just showed the user a Google logo and a search box. Then after a gradual amount of time, the search boxes and other various links and navigational elements faded in. Since then, Google has seemed to test two alternatives to this new home page [...]

• Are You Ready For Google Local Social Search?
  

  Google’s new social search experiment is kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it will open up lots of opportunity for smart local search marketers. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen social-local search plays like Yelp gather steam while at the same time Google Maps [...]

• Small & Nimble Trumps Big & Slow In SEO
  

  In my experience, the best search engine optimization (SEO) in the world comes from small shops and freelance consultants. That statement (and the following article) is only my opinion, of course, but it’s an opinion based on about 14 years working in this industry. Let’s get real: any agency (large or small) is primarily in business [...]

• Halloween ‘09 From Google, Yahoo, Bing & Others
  

  Today is Halloween and the search engines have logos up for the special day. Before I post the logos, here are some posts from others in the community on Halloween. Matt Cutts of Google had a holy costume. Google Blogoscoped noticed Google added trick or treat to their robots.txt file. Bing has [...]

• I Vant To Suck Your Bing
  

  Here’s a post for a relatively slow Friday afternoon: two ads for Bing that vaguely tie in with Halloween. Halloween is generally speaking a children’s holiday. So first comes a “Bing Goes the Internet” video featuring elementary school children. Years from now this may qualify as a pop-culture nostalgia moment: And then a more sophisticated and [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Chrome: The fast browser with slow adoption, Computerworld.com
• Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal Blogger Will Not Be Yodeling Anymore, AllThingsD
• Google Trader, now on the Web!, Official Google Africa Blog

Business Issues

• Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns, TechCrunch
• Google talent search: error 502?, San Francisco Chronicle
• Microsoft to indirectly fund L.A.’s switch to Google Apps, blog.seattlepi.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Navigator for Android Review: Good For Free But Far From Perfect, Gizmodo
• Google: We’re not making Android hardware, CNET News
• National Geographic Digitizes 120 Years of Magazines; Geobrowse with Bing Maps, Bing Maps Blog
• Australia’s Google Maps Easter Egg, Search Engine Roundtable
• Local news now available in France, Google News Blog
• Weather.com Adds “Futures” on Bing Maps, Bing Maps Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• At CRS: a Q&A with Jeff Arena of Yahoo! Content Match, ContextWeb

Searching

• Google News Drops "Text Version" Option, Search Engine Roundtable
• The F Bomb Makes Front Page of Google News, Thanks to Arrington, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• CRS-OpenX After Party – You’re ALL Invited, CRS

SEO & SEM

• 10 Simple (but Important) Things to Check Before Optimizing an Existing Site, 10e20
• How a Search Engine might Adjust Rankings based upon Patterns in Query and Click Logs, SEO By The Sea
• 3 Tools to Preview Search Results without Leaving Google SERPs, Search Engine Journal
• Can a a few non-safe words prevent my site from appearing in SafeSearch results?, YouTube
• Outsourcing SEO – Yes or No?, Search Engine Journal
• The ‘Vince’ update unravelled: does Google recognise brand equity? (pt 3), econsultancy.com
• Using Blogger for SEO, Best SEO Blog

Social Media

• Using Twitter Lists to Judge Influence, www.bivingsreport.com
• 30 predictions for the future of Twitter, Loic Le Meur Blog
• Spam Arrives In Twitter Lists, thenextweb.com
• How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Down For Maintenance. Right., TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Web Analytics and Segmentation for Better Conversion Optimization, SEOmoz