SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 14, 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:

• Google Translate Adds New Meta Tags, Widget

  Google has announced several new ways to use and control its Google Translate service, including the support of new HTML tags and attributes that will prevent Google from translating your content. The “notranslate” meta tag will block an entire page from being translated. It looks like this: [...]

• Google Negotiates With DOJ To Avoid Suit, Yahoo Continues M&A Dance With AOL

  Silicon Alley Insider was reporting that a Yahoo-AOL deal was imminent. Now the site says that a source within Time Warner contradicted the imminent claim but says the parties are still talking. Meanwhile just a hop, skip and a jump from AOL’s Virgina headquarters, Google and Yahoo are seeking to head off a US Justice [...]

• Yahoo Issues Search ‘Weather Report’

  Yahoo has announced another search index update this morning: “We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.” Yahoo seems to be [...]

• YouTube Now Featuring ‘Promoted Videos’

  Perhaps the “third leg” of the new YouTube monetization tool, the site has introduced “promoted videos.” These ads are to YouTube video search results as Google paid search is to organic listings. AdAdge wrote about the new ads yesterday. This new ad unit joins “click to buy” and ads on full-length shows, which were also [...]

• Google Launches New Blog Search In China

  When Google announced its new, clustered results on the Google Blog Search home page, they promised support for more languages “in the coming months.” Well, less than two weeks later, the clustered home page has launched on Google China Blog Search. This is the first non-English launch of the new blogsearch interface. Google China Blog Search [...]

• Problems Continue With Google Local Business Listings

  What do the Google searches; Orlando Hotels, Miami Discount Car Rental & Dallas Discount Car Rental have in common? The obvious answer is that they are all local searches on popular phrases in major metro areas. A less obvious answer is that like the infamous Denver Florist search last December, they all return seemingly authoritative OneBox [...]

• How Does Google Really Handle Flash Content?

  Much was made earlier this year of Google’s announcement that they’ve improved the indexing of Flash content. For years, search marketers have warned against building sites in Flash because they weren’t able to be indexed by major search engines; an all-Flash site was a kiss of death where SEO is concerned. More than three months after [...]

• Tip’d: Social Community For Economic News Launches

  Hoping to cash in on the increased awareness and interest in financial and economic news, a group of search and social media marketers have launched Tip’d, a social community for the financial industry. If you’re familiar with digg, mixx, or sphinn, you’ll understand how Tip’d works: Users submit and vote (”Tip It” or “Topple”) on stories, [...]

• New Online, Radio Campaign Promotes ‘New Yahoo Search’

  Yahoo is launching an “integrated, nationwide, on and offline marketing campaign” to promote the “new Yahoo Search.” It emphasizes online display and radio advertising. Animated banners link to actual Yahoo Search results. The online display campaign is promoting Search Assist and Shortcuts (vs. Google: “don’t get lost in the links”). The sample radio spot uses [...]

• Trademark Protection Using AdGooroo

  In my last Industrial Strength post, Using Competitive Intelligence To Protect Your Brand I wrote about how to use tools like Hitwise to protect your brand. I am going to explore this topic a bit more, but this time show some of the unique features of AdGooroo. Since I did not show an example [...]

• The Great Link Race Has Begun, But To Where?

  What happens when everyone knows everything about linking? What happens when everyone uses the same 15,400 linking tools, and everyone has created the perfect back link profile, and everyone has properly tricked out anchor text, everyone has perfectly sculpted this, awesomely funneled that, cleverly silo’d this, no-followed that, etc., etc., etc? Who wins then?

• Los Angeles & Southern California Fire Maps: October 2008 Edition

  Southern California is ablaze with wildfires once again, including one I can see out my window in the Newport Beach foothills. Trying to keep track of where they are. Here’s a guide to maps of current fires and place you can expect future ones to be posted. [...]

• Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links

  Ever since Google Webmaster Tools started reporting on broken links to a site, webmasters have been asking for the sources of those links. Today, Google has delivered. From Webmaster Tools you can now see the page that each broken link is coming from. This information should be of great help for webmasters in ensuring the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• No Google Chrome in Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Other Countries, Google Blogoscoped

Business Issues

• Settlement Near in Google Book Search Lawsuit?, ResourceShelf
• Google Ad Deal Rankles, www.rollcall.com
• Google, Yahoo Seek to Avoid Antitrust Suit Over Ad Deal, Wall Street Journal
• Omniture Acquires Site Search and Merchandising Business from Mercado, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Yahoo! Search Hits the Airwaves, Yahoo Search Blog

Conferences

• Microsoft To Open SMX London 2008 With Its Vision of The Future of Search Marketing, searchmarketingexpo.com
• Stressed Out At SMX, MediaPost

Link Building

• Free links to your site, Matt Cutts
• How Much is a Link Worth (to YOUR Business)?, SEO Book
• Link Building Best Practices – A Weekly Q, www.ericward.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Transliteration for Japan, Google LatLong
• Google Maps: relative value of a OneBox vs top organic results, Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search
• Government Spending on Google Maps, googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
• Regular Google Street View Live for France, Google Blogoscoped
• Using Google Earth at 90 MPH on a Boat, Google Earth Blog
• Where in the world is …, Google LatLong

Other Items

• An Elephant Backs Up Google’s Library, New York Times
• Firefox 3.1 to Include Smarter Session Restore, lifehacker.com
• Find the Cheapest Gas with AOL, searchblog.blogsmith.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Q&A – Should I use both Google Analytics and AdWords Conversion Tracker?, www.bgtheory.com
• U.S. paid search rises 26.9 percent during third quarter, news.cnet.com

SEM Industry

• Lisa Barone Joins We Build Pages, www.webuildpages.com

SEO & SEM

• Increasing Search Indexing Coverage With an XML Sitemap, Vanessa Fox
• Authority Versus Pure SEO, www.chrisg.com
• Comprehensive Guide to Keyword Research, Selection & Organization, Part IV, Search Engine Guide
• Google Reinclusion Request Approval Times, Search Engine Roundtable
• The 5 Goals Of A Search Optimized Page – SEO 101, The SEO Scoop
• URL Canonicalization: The Missing Manual, SEO Book

Social Media

• Still Trying to Understand Twitter? Think of Post-it Notes…, Search Engine Guide

Web Analytics

• How do I actually use Analytics to optimize AdWords?, Google Analytics Blog

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

• The 5 Goals Of A Search Optimized Page – SEO 101
• Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links
• Brace Yourself: 5 Tips to Help your Server Withstand a Load Spike (Digg Homepage)
• Lisa Barone Joins We Build Pages
• Using Web Metrics to Analyze the ‘Palin Effect’
• The Reason Behind Changes to Google Base Display
• Why Social Network Metrics Don't Work
• 2009 Google Flash SEO Update