SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 11, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: Google’s BBB Grade, Google’s Keyword Research Tool, Social Media Professionalism & More Google dominated the discussion on Sphinn this past week. Stories about Google’s “C-” rating from the […]

on October 11, 2010 at 5:05 pm | Reading time: 10 minutes
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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Hot At Sphinn: Google’s BBB Grade, Google’s Keyword Research Tool, Social Media Professionalism & More

    Google dominated the discussion on Sphinn this past week. Stories about Google’s “C-” rating from the Better Business Bureau, changes to its keyword research tool, and an open discussion about Google being too big and scary generated the most comments from Sphinn readers over the past seven days.
    Meanwhile, an article about boorish behavior on […]

  • A King Kong Lawsuit Filed Against Google Over Giant, Inflatable Blue Gorillas

    Ever seen one of those giant blue gorillas at a car dealership? It looks like someone at Google may have, as using a similar image in an ad for Google AdWords has now gotten Google sued.
    Eric Goldman has the legal rundown of the case here, but as they say, a picture’s worth a 1,000 words.
    Here’s […]

  • Windows Phones Finally Arrive With Dedicated Search Button

    Get in, get out. That’s the idea behind the new Windows Phones: get access to content quickly and “get back to your life.” Personalization and simplicity are also key themes of the new Microsoft mobile experience, which officially launched this morning with speeches from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la […]

  • Bed Bugs! Use This Bed Bug Search Tool

    Did you know the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designed a bed bug search tool at https://cfpub.epa.gov/oppref/bedbug/?
    With the recent scare of bed bugs in Manhattan, bed bug prevention and detection has become a large concern for many NYC residents. The search tool lets you choose an EPA-registered bed bug product that meets your […]

  • Google Translate Adds Latin, Google Renews Flu Search, & Adds Languages To Video Alerts

    Google announced a few new small features added recently.
    (1) Google Translate added Latin as a new language. Google said, “although considered a “dead language” by many, Latin is still studied by hundreds of thousands of students worldwide and is the predecessor to many modern tongues.” I am sure those who study in this […]

  • Blast Open The Doors Via Facebook’s Open Graph For Local SEO

    This year, Facebook launched a new semantic protocol called the Open Graph, including provisions for local businesses and places. Meanwhile, Google has expanded support for other standards, including RDFa, Microformats and Microdata. As a local SEO, the question is: focus on Google or expand your efforts to embrace Facebook’s Open Graph? The answer—unequivocally—is expand your […]

  • How To Navigate Google’s New AdWords Reports And Avoid Losing Valuable Data

    Google has made dramatic changes to their AdWords reporting infrastructure. The old reporting system is being retired, and users are being forced to pull reports from the interface. This change has left many unable to find their reports, or know how to extract data from AdWords.
    In this post, I’ll walk through how to pull the […]

  • Are We Getting Mixed SEO Ranking Signals?

    Speculation time! In this week’s post I review scenarios where I believe that Google’s alleged ranking signals might not be what we accept or even conform to guidelines published in Webmaster Central help files. Here are some of the factors that I find ambiguous or unclear, along with some thoughts on why conventional wisdom […]

  • Google Improves From ‘Unsatisfactory’ To ‘C-’ Rating At BBB

    Is Google getting better at customer service? To the degree that you rely on Better Business Bureau ratings as an indicator of customer service, the answer might be “yes.” Over the past 27 months, Google’s BBB rating has gone from “unsatisfactory” — when the BBB used a pass/fail grading system — to a “C-” in […]

  • Google Working On Auto Driving Cars

    Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Their next step into that realm is making auto driving cars. The Google Blog announced Google has “developed technology for cars that can drive themselves.” Yes, auto-driving cars, like from the movies and high tech TV shows.
    Google’s […]

  • GOOG-411 Winds Down, Bing-411 Parties On

    Yesterday Google announced that it was shutting down 800-GOOG-411, the free directory assistance (or voice search) service it launched in April, 2007. Back in those days the mobile landscape looked very different than it does today. It was challenging to conduct searches on most mobile phones and the iPhone was in its infancy. The first […]

  • How Google Killed “Phone A Friend” From “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

    Google gets blamed for everything these days. Even game show format changes.
    This past Wednesday, with our SMX East conference winding down in New York City, I walked up to ABC studios to watch a couple tapings of Who Wants To Be A Millionare. I also stayed after the tapings to take the audition test, hoping […]

  • Google Webmaster Tools Launches Improved Options for Handling URL Parameters

    At SMX East earlier this week, Maile Ohye of Google showed new parameter handling features in Google Webmaster Tools. Today, those features are available to everyone. Google first introduced parameter handling about a year ago. When I wrote about the launch, I described how optional parameters in URLs could cause canonicalization problems and gave a […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics

Other Items

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

  • How To Impersonate Eric Schmidt On Facebook (and get away with it) – Here's how Michael Arrington of TechCrunch impersonated Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Facebook. Anyone else wondering why he'd want to? 
  • Consequences Of Going Rogue On Twitter – What happens when an employee goes rogue on a social networking site?  Great case study by David Meerman Scott of what happened and how H&R Block handled a touchy situation on Twitter.
  • Daily Kos Launches Googlebomb Against GOP Candidates – Daily Kos has launched a grassroots-based search engine optimization campaign called "Grassroots SEO" for short.
    "The goal of Grassroots SEO is to get as many undecided voters as possible to read the most damaging news article about the Republican candidate for Congress in their district."
  • Internet Marketers, Tear Down That Wall! – Frank Reed talks about how insular the search marketing and social media industries are and provides some suggestions for reaching more than just the same old same old.
  • (Almost) Automatically Reveal A Site’s Directory Structure Using Excel – Ruud shows how to use Excel to visualize how a large site is structured, based on extracting the sitemap.xml file.
  • 10 Ways to Rock Your Facebook Campaign – This is a basic but well written outline of how to use Facebook to promote your business. When it comes to the social networks, it’s all about engagement, interaction and promotion. If all you have is a Like button on your content you're not taking advantage .With the right combination, your Facebook campaign can become a major success.
  • Google Webmaster Tools Launches Improved Options for Handling URL Parameters – Important information provided by Vanessa Fox regarding some new features in Google Webmaster Tools. A must read for anyone with a dynamically generated site (which is pretty much everyone these days).
  • Is Social Media Causing Us to Lose Our Professionalism? – Deborah Ng writes: When did things like excessive swearing or innuendo become acceptable conversation and business practice simply because it suits a blogger’s personality? And, what’s with showing up at professional conferences wearing the type of clothes we work out in? One bloggers point of view.
  • Time To Think Carefully About Which Country Hosts Your URL Shortener – From the article at Search Engine Land: "In my “how to choose a URL shortener” article last year, I warned that the country domain that a shortener used might be an issue to consider. A year later, that’s even more so, as a Libyan .ly domain used for an adult content shortener has been closed. Libyan Registrar Takes Back DomainEarlier this week, Nic.ly — a domain registrar in Libya that handles Libyans domains — took back the vb.ly domain from its American owners, after it was in use for a year."
  • A List Of Twitter Stats & Analytics Tools – A variety of Twitter tools you can use to help measure your Twitter followers and engagement.
  • Losing Trust In Google's Keyword Research Tool – At SMX East, there was a session entirely devoted to talking with Google about its keyword research tool. Over the course of the session, several reasons emerged about why you might not trust the data so much, at least for now.
  • SMX East 2010: The Full Recap – Missed SMX East? Attended but couldn't get to all the sessions? Here's a recap of all the live blogging out of the show.
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    About the author

    Barry Schwartz
    Staff
    Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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