SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 26, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Cats & Dogs Living Together: Bing Promotes Firefox If you ever wanted proof that Microsoft has learned that for Bing to succeed, it needs to spread its wings beyond Microsoft, look […]

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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:

  • Cats & Dogs Living Together: Bing Promotes Firefox

    If you ever wanted proof that Microsoft has learned that for Bing to succeed, it needs to spread its wings beyond Microsoft, look no further than today’s news that Bing is offering “Firefox With Bing.” That’s right, Microsoft is pushing a rival browser to its own Internet Explorer. Firefox With Bing In a blog post […]

  • Google Tweaks Competition Rank In AdWords Keyword Tool To “Low,” “Medium” or “High”

    Many users are now seeing a change in the way that Google’s Keyword Ranking tool is providing competition data. Instead of the traditional bars to display competitiveness, Google is now using text as the description. Up until now,this tool used small green bars to display the competitiveness of keywords. The more green in the bar, the more competitive the term […]

  • Google Launches “AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program”

    Google is introducing what it calls its “AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program.” It’s essentially a vendor referral program for small business (SMB) advertisers interested in working with AdWords. Google has developed a list of companies, many of whom were part of its “authorized reseller” program, to which it will refer SMBs. The involved vendors get […]

  • Infographic: Half-Life Of Social Media Shares

    Social discovery service StumbleUpon has released a new infographic looking at the “half-life” of content shared via its service versus Twitter and Facebook. Rather than being visible for only a few hours, StumbleUpon’s chart argues that content shared on its network gets attention for days. While the infographic comes from StumbleUpon, and so you’d expect […]

  • 5 Quick Tips To Increase Your Online Sales During This Holiday Season

    The holiday spirit has kickstarted already. Agreed that there are still two months to go until Christmas, but the winter chill and the endless discussions about oncoming holidays are starting to grow. The holiday season also means you need to perform a job loved (or hated, depending on which side of fence you reside) by […]

  • Ask.com Returns To TV With Spot Emphasizing Q&A

    Ask.com has a long history in TV advertising; some of it has been entertaining and some of it controversial. But the IAC-owned search engine was on a TV hiatus of sorts during the past couple of years. Now, according to AdWeek, the company is running new TV ads in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The […]

  • Ixquick Now Encrypts All Searches

    Likely sensing an opportunity after Google’s recent encrypted search announcement, Ixquick — a tiny and widely unknown search engine — has announced that it will make SSL encryption the default on all searches. Ixquick says it became the first search engine to offer encrypted search back in 2009. In its announcement, Ixquick notes that the […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

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

  • Discussion: Should SEOs Accept Clients That Compete With One Another? – Whether you're a solo consultant or part of a bigger agency, chances are good that you'll eventually be faced with this situation: the opportunity to provide consulting for two companies that are in competition with one another. In our "Discussion of the Week," we'd like to hear your advice for handling that situation. Should SEOs accept clients that compete against one another? If so, what are the best ways to deal with potential risks of doing so? The floor is open!
  • Why Most Social Media Departments Fail – Where Tamar argues that many companies need to get a clue before their social media efforts can succeed.
  • Authority vs. Popularity in Search Engine Rankings – When search engines return web pages in search results in response to a query, most people assume that the pages being show are the ones that a search engine has decided are the “best” pages in response to their search terms. But what does the word “best” mean in that context?
  • How Google is pushing Google+ in your face – See how Google is pushing Google +…in the SERPs, on websites, in the app store, in your mailbox, etc.
  • 4 Steps to Understanding the ROI of Your Newsletter – …what many businesses may not be doing on a regular basis is tracking and measuring their newsletter efforts, to ensure they get the most out of what they put into it. A newsletter should have a clearly defined purpose, goals and metrics, to ensure that all those efforts work for your business…
  • New Twitter Data: Optimal Link Placement for Clicks – Good data on where to place a link within a tweet to get a higher CTR.

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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