SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 6, 2007

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO, Testifies In Front Of Congress
  News.com has live blogging of the Yahoo! Inc.’s Provision of False Information to Congress held in front of The U.S. House of Representatives today. Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO and Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s General Counsel stood before congress to give answers on the false information presented to congress over journalist Shi…
• Search Illustrated: Keyword Research (Part 3)
  Keyword research involves so much more than just looking up search frequencies. Critical factors such as budget restrictions, competition levels, and business strategy must be considered in order to develop a results-driven search marketing plan. Rounding out our 3-part series on keyword research, this week’s infographic illustrates what goes…
• Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (IE, When It’s Convenient)
  In two weeks, we’ve had two "open" initiatives from Google: OpenSocial, to free social networking data from behind the Facebook walled garden and the Open Handset Alliance, to free cell phones from a myriad of complicated mobile OS platforms and carriers who want to restrict features. I’ve seen some people…
• Google’s Android Day Two: Here Come The Bears
  Yesterday I wrote (with myriad contributions from Danny) a largely bullish overview of Android and the Open Handset Alliance (which sounds like a JK Rowling title I admit). Now, on day two, the bears are coming out. The Wall Street Journal blogs that the “Google Phone” is “A Business-Tech Nightmare…
• Report: AOL To Acquire Quigo For $300 Million
  There are rumors and reports circulating that AOL is about to add Quigo to its now pretty full roster of online ad networks and technologies, which includes Tacoda, Advertising.com, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, and AdTech. These entities are the backbone of AOL’s “Platform A” integrated online (and mobile) advertising, er,…
• Website SEO Health Check Tool
  Aaron Wall has released a new tool named the Website Health Check Tool. The tool reviews a site’s title tags, descriptions, URLs, and page status codes. It then returns problems the site may have with missing title tags and descriptions, any duplicate title tags or descriptions, www versus non-www issues,…
• Alibaba IPO Reportedly As Big As Google’s
  The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both report on the IPO and first day of trading for Alibaba.com. The offering was the biggest IPO by any Chinese company and raised an estimated $2 billion. The market capitalization of the company is now nearly $26 billion. Yahoo owns…
• Survey Says: No Sites Gained & Many Lost PageRank
  SEOmoz reports that after reviewing the PageRank scores of over 30,000 web sites, none of them showed any PR gains and about 4 percent registered a drop after Google’s first big wave of PR changes. In a second wave, there were finally some gains….
• The Google Drive Domains Find New Home: GDrive Coming Soon?
  Gary Price reports that Google has recently moved MyGoogleDrive.com and MyGoogleStorage.com from third party domain name servers to Google domain name servers. Is this a sign that the GDrive (Google Drive) is coming soon? Back in September, we reported that GoogleDrive.com was moved to Google’s name servers and anticipated that…
• iGoogle Gets New Themes; Google China Gets New Home Page
  Google has added five new themes to iGoogle. Google Blogoscoped and Google Operating System both have posts on the new themes, which include a Solar System theme, an Autumn theme, a Hong Kong theme, a JR The Monster theme, and an Aja Tiger theme. Google China is also testing out…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Yahoo FireEagle – A Platform Service For Geo Information, TechCrunch
• Joost Partners With Meebo, Read/Write Web

Business Issues

• Google and the wrongly jailed Indian Net surfer, News.com
• Why Is Google Afraid of Facebook?, GigaOM
• Yahoo China takes jibe at Baidu with latest banner ad, Shanghaiist
• Google says Brazil’s SEAE recommends clearance of DoubleClick buy, CNN Money
• Republicans seek privacy hearing on Google deal, Reuters

Conferences

• Join The Microsoft adCenter & Live Search Teams at SMX London, adCenter Blog
• My Personal Experience at SMX Buenos Aires, SEOmoz
• 20,000 Reasons to Attend SES Chicago, Search Engine Watch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• HotPads Launches For Sale Real Estate Search Engine, Bill Hartzer

Link Building

• Google Webmaster Link Tool November 2007 Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• Tailoring your Link Velocity to coincide with seasonal peaks in demand, Site Visibility
• Finding Topically Related Blogs Passing Link Juice With Each Comment, Fantomaster

Paid Search & Contextual

• 5 Things to Consider When Inheriting a Google AdWords Account, PPC Hero
• Over Complicating Paid Search is a Bad Thing, SEM Geek
• 5 newspaper giants in talks about online ad network, chicagotribune.com
• Google AdSense Payment History Reports Broken?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Begins Roll Out of New AdSense Management Features, Search Engine Roundtable
• Simplified ad management is rolling out now, Inside AdSense

Searching

• hakia Survey Results, Hakia Blog
• Microsoft Expands Enterprise Search Offering, Introduces Search Server 2008 Express: Free enterprise search product is quick, easy, powerful., www.microsoft.com
• Technorati Drops Content Older Than 6 Months Old, TechCrunch

SEM Industry

• Dick Masterson On Dr Phil, ShoeMoney
• Getting Out of Search, ClickZ

SEO & SEM

• Got Several Domains? 301 Redirect them to Your Main Domain, Search Engine Roundtable
• Live Search URL Submission Form Fixed After One Month, Search Engine Roundtable
• Organic SEO vs. PPC?, WebProNews
• SEO for Brand Reputation Management, Search Engine Watch
• SEO for Start-ups and VCs, Search Engine Watch
• [Video] Planning & Preparing for Success Online, SEO Book
• Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling, SEO Speedwagon

Social Media

• Getting a kickstart in life, Yodel Anecdotal
• In New York, anticipating an afternoon with Zuckerberg and pals, News.com
• OpenSocial Hacked Again, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• Meet the Inaugural Community Council, YouTube
• Top 10 sites for researching music, Pandia
• YouTube launches Canadian portal, Canada.com

Web Analytics

• Only 2435 Subscibers Short Of Andy Beard And Closing Fast: 3 RSS Power Tips, www.convertoffline.com
• StumbleUpon sending fake traffic to fake pages, BlogStorm
• Use Google Analytics with your Google Enterprise site search engine, Official Google Enterprise Blog

Other Items

• Add Google News to Your Site, Google News Blog
• Doodle: Melbourne Cup, Googlified
• Google & Yahoo File for New Trademarks: Android, APNT, Bravonation, and Others, ResourceShelf
• More Readers Trading Newspapers for Web Sites, New York Times
• MySpace News Coming Out Of Beta?, TechCrunch
• Nov. 5, 2007: The Gphone Arrives (Well, The Operating System Does); Google Breaks $700 Mark , Daily SearchCast
• 5 Reasons Why I Will Be Live Blogging BlogWorld, BruceClay.com

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• A Quick Jaunt Into Data Mining on Twitter
• Social Media By the Numbers: LinkedIn
• What You Can Learn from My First Social Media Success Story
• Facebook: More Popular Than Porn?
• Ok Who Broke Feedburner?!
• New Research: Search Increases Effectiveness of All Media
• Top 50 Marketing Blogs To Watch In 2008
• Does Social Media Convert or is the Bounce rate GIGANTIC?
• No paid links, nofollow, whatever – Google Can Kiss My Ass!
• Color Me (Socially) Green
• IndexRank – A New SEO Metric of Indexing Rate
• Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly
• 14 Ways to Disclose Sponsored Links and Fool a Search Engine
• How to become a Digg Power user in just 48 Hours
• No Budget for Social Media
• Five Ways Link Builders Hurt Themselves
• 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers