SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 3, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Search Biz: Google Going Down Under?; Times Selling About.com?; Latest Ad Outlook; Yahoo Offering ‘Deceptive’ Ads Australian media are reporting that Google recently sent a five-person crew to Australia to investigate the idea of building a data center there. According to Australian IT, some Google services cost more in Australia due to the need to route data to and from the U.S. and other countries. Says Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin: “While we’re investing in our Australian operations, we haven’t made any decisions about whether we’ll locate a data centre here.”
• Where Can I Vote? Google Maps Lists Voting Locations! According to Google Trends, lots of people are currently trying to figure out where their local polling place is. So it’s time for a good reminder of what we covered earlier. Google Maps has a special area and search shortcut to help you find where you’re registered to vote, voting location hours and more. Searches like where can i vote or polling places make a special “shortcut” box appear at the top of Google’s results. Enter your address into the box:
• Getting To Know International PPC Markets We’re all pretty familiar with the well reported search landscape of the US/UK. But, in other parts of the world, the search engine landscape is very different. In this article, I’ll focus on China, Japan and Russia. The goal of this article is to present PPC opportunities in counties that are not Google-centric and provide numbers associated with larger players. At the end of the article, I’ll highlight several general international PPC considerations. For this article, where information is not cited, I’ve pulled information from the Global Search Report 2007.
• AOL Launches Local Events Search: When.com AOL is unveiling When.com this morning. It’s a local events site powered by Zvents. When.com deemphasizes the AOL brand but will become part of the “AOL Local Network,” which includes MapQuest, AOL Cityguide, AOL Travel, etc. There will also be an When.com widget soon.
• Monetizing ‘Copyright Violations’: MTV, MySpace & Auditude Announce Ad Deal We all know the history of the Viacom and YouTube litigation: users relentlessly uploaded clips of The Daily Show and other premium content to YouTube. Viacom didn’t like the “settlement” deal Google offered after it acquired the site and so Viacom sued for a billion dollars in copyright violations. That suit may partly succeed or may fail spectacularly for Viacom.
• Interviews With Ruth Kedar, The Woman Who Designed The Google Logo The Israeli woman behind the Google logo from Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, has an interview like story about Ruth Kedar. Ruth was contracted by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to design the Google Logo. Unfortunately, she did not accept payment in shares of Google stock. Besides for the Haaretz interview, Google Blogoscoped has a brief interview from earlier this year with Ruth as did Wired with this write up. Ruth even has her own Wikipedia entry, as one might expect. The big question is, how much did the Google logo cost?
• The Pre-Cyber Monday Shakedown: Is Your Ecommerce Strategy Optimized For The Holiday Rush? Across the globe, retailers are bracing for a challenging holiday shopping season. If you run an ecommerce site, what can you do to be sure to get the most out of “Cyber Monday” (the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States which falls on Dec. 1 this year) and beyond? At Agency.com we have the opportunity to work with some of the world’s strongest online retail brands, all of which are as concerned as mom-and-pop retailers about how they will fare during this holiday shopping season. In anticipation of Cyber Monday and in preparation for the few weeks of consumer frenzy that follow, here are some of the global brand marketers strategies for making sure that ecommerce environments are ready to make the most out of the smaller opportunities that this season will inevitably afford.

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Waiting for Google’s Kindle Killer, Medialoper
• Almost new in Labs: SMS Text Messaging for chat, Official Gmail Blog
• How Google Promotes Chrome, Google Operating System
• Google China’s Net Cafe Homepages, Google Blogoscoped
• Plug in to the latest release of Google Chrome, Official Google Blog
• Visualizing data in the cloud, Official Google Blog
• Yuuguu Adds Support For Major IM Services, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• AOL CEO: It’s Our Fault You’re So Confused About Digital, Ad Age
• An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween! We love your costume!, AOL Mail Blog
• Baidu.com plans to buy back $200 million of its ADSs, MarketWatch
• In Google Book Search Settlement, Readers Lose, Xconomy
• Rumormonger: If Scott Moore leaves Yahoo, does that mean it’s buying AOL?, Valleywag
• Yahoo Media’s Scott Moore and Al Warms to Depart This Week, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Microsoft launches live map search in India, livemint.com
• Scripps Tries to Steer Local Ads to Papers’ Sites, New York Times
• Submarining Local Business Listings in Google Maps with User Content, Search Marketing Communications

Link Building

• Backlink Research : Essential Checklist, Search Engine Journal
• Greedy BBC Blocks External Links, BlogStorm
• Meta Tags Enhance Your Link Building Efforts, Link Building Best Practices

Paid Search & Contextual

• PPC Hero Landing Page Critique Podcast – Yo! Naturals, PPC Hero
• Exact Match vs. Broad Match: Who Wins in the Google AdWords Auction?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Measuring Search and Display for Success, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Online Retail Sales Stats: Consumers Buying But Spending Less, Rimm Kaufman
• Optimisation Essentials (Part I), Inside AdSense
• v13’s New Keyword Search Volume Info, AdWords API Blog

Searching

• ChaCha And Aardvark: Putting Humans To Work To Get You The Answers You Need, TechCrunch
• Is Ask.com’s Web Search Technology Falling Apart?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Meet the Mozzies, DMOZ Blog
• My Halloween 2008 Costume, Matt Cutts
• ShopLocal Starts a Blog, Screenwerk
• Dramatically Increase Website Traffic With Cutting Edge SEO Training, SEO Book
• Halloween 2008 wrap-up, Matt Cutts

SEO & SEM

• Get customized suggestions for improving your product listings, Google Base Blog
• Google Universal Search on Steroids?, SEO Book
• Alexa Ignores ‘noarchive’ Tag, Upsets Webmasters, Search Engine Roundtable
• An Addiction to Search Rankings, Election Polls and NFL Scores, SEOmoz
• Comprehensive Guide to Keyword Research, Selection & Organization, Part XI, Search Engine Guide
• CSF (ConfigServer Security and Firewall) May Be Blocking GoogleBot, Search Engine Roundtable
• Good SEO During A Bad Economy, Search Marketing Standard
• Google Search Update Blows Up, Google Reverting Back Now, Search Engine Roundtable
• The SEO Flow Chart, SEO Book

Social Media

• Big Changes to The StumbleUpon Algorithm, devbasu.com
• Why Fake Social Media Avatars Suck – My Experiment, The SEO Scoop

Video, Music & Image Search

• Auto Translate Now Available For Videos With Captions, YouTube Blog
• Google Image Search Exposes Content Filters, Google Operating System
• Three Billion Photos At Flickr, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Highlighting the New Google Analytics Release, Stone Temple

Other Items

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: November 2, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• The Viral Preferences of Twitter Users
• 10 Questions With Ann Smarty
• SEO Blogs Make You Teh Dumb
• The SEO Flow Chart
• Why Fake Social Media Avatars Suck – My Experiment
• Big Changes to The StumbleUpon Algorithm and Toolbar
• Future of SEO
• Greedy BBC Blocks External Links
• Remove The Category Base From Wordpress
• The Search Engine Buying Cycle
• Trick or Tweet: Top 10 Ways Twitter is Like Halloween
• The Secret Influence of Search Behavior
• Is SEO Blogging Worth It?
• Google’s Digg-Like Social Search = SearchWiki
• Google, The Unbiased Company, Has CEO Backing Obama