SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 22, 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:

• Can Search Marketing Generate Emails To Local Businesses?
  

  Local businesses typically use search marketing to achieve two main objectives: getting customer calls and walk-ins. They do this by publishing their address and phone number in search engines and local directories so that an interested customer can take action one way or another – by walking into a restaurant or calling a plumber for [...]

• Flickr Adds People Tagging
  

  Flickr, the popular photo sharing site, has added Facebook-like people tagging. The purpose behind people tagging is to easily tell people when you upload a picture that includes them. In short, it is a fun way to make your pictures more social and have discussions around your photos. Let me show you [...]

• Pew: Almost 20 Percent of Internet Users Update Status With Twitter (Or Other Social Net)
  

  Already widely reported from yesterday the Pew Internet & American Life almost 20 percent of US Internet users are on Twitter or updating their status with another social network: LinkedIn, MySpace or Facebook. According to the report: Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or [...]

• Google Social Search Is Coming & More On Google-Twitter
  

  Google’s Marissa Mayer has announced at the Web 2.0 Summit that Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks. I’ve seen an early release of it. It’s way cool. Below, what details we have now about this plus some follow up on today’s Google-Twitter search deal that was announced. I’m in a bind because [...]

• Google’s Matt Cutts, Cuts His Hair
  

  Matt Cutts, known as Google’s search spam tsar, recently had a hair cut. Many people from the search industry noticed Matt’s new hair cut at recent search conferences. In short, Matt lost a bet about a release date of one of Google’s products and as a consequence, had to shave the hair off [...]

• Live Blog: Marissa Mayer Speaking At Web 2.0
  

  Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, is speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The following is a live blog of her appearance, which is scheduled less than an hour after she announced a Google/Twitter partnership to include real-time tweets in Google’s search results. This is a four-person panel [...]

• Google & Twitter Have A Deal, Too
  

  Following hot on the heels of the Bing / Twitter partnership announced earlier today, Google has now also announced that it, too, has struck a deal with Twitter to include real-time tweets in Google’s search results. “We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• An In-Depth Look at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users – Part 1: Age and Gender, Rapleaf
• Yahoo!’s Metrics System, Forbes
• Advice from Google on large distributed systems, Geeking with Greg

Business Issues

• Chango Gets $750,000 For Search Targeted Ads, paidContent.org
• Google suspends firm in hedge fund insider case, MSN
• Obama & Google (a love story), CNN Money

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Facebook shows off new homepage for touchscreen phones, VentureBeat

Link Building

• SEO Tools: Using Xenu and Excel – Blindfolded SEO Audit Part 2, Natural Search Blog
• Survey: Most SEOs Won’t Link To Competitors, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense Clicks & Earnings Drop Since Google Added "Certified Ad Networks"?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Google, please clean up Google News, BlogStorm
• Revisiting the Abacus, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Wolfram|Alpha for Astronomy, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Chemistry 101 Review, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• SEO Services: Blindfolded SEO Audit Part 1, Natural Search Blog
• Best Practices for Verifying and Cleaning up a Compromised Site, Google Online Security Blog
• Explaining (Some of) Google’s Algorithm with Pretty Charts & Math Stuff, SEOmoz
• How Search Engines Might Expand Abbreviations in Queries, SEO By The Sea
• The risks and rewards of data scraping for SEO – A Presentation, Site Visibility

Social Media

• A New Tune for Facebook Gifts, Facebook
• Facebook Not Liable for Private User Groups Per 230–Finkel v. Facebook, Eric Goldman
• Facebook public updates go live on Bing ‘within two months’, Telegraph
• Social Media Affiliate Marketing Guide 101 – With Amazon, Search Engine Journal

Video, Music & Image Search

• French fund invests in YouTube rival Dailymotion, Reuters