SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 30, 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:

• Bing Adds NFL, Flight Information To Mobile Browser
  

  Bing has announced a couple additions to its mobile browser today: expanded NFL information and airline flight status reports.

  The NFL feature works by typing in a team or player’s name, and provides stats, scores, and schedule details. Bing also says you’ll get “eal-time updates on the plays” while a game is being played. The flight status [...]

• Despite PageRank Dropping In Webmaster Tools, Google Pushes Toolbar PageRank Update
  

  Fifteen-days ago, Google dropped PageRank values from Webmaster Tools and the search community took that as a bold statement. The statement was clear, webmasters “shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much,” said Google. Last night, Google pushed out a Google Toolbar PageRank update, despite making that bold statement just a couple weeks ago. [...]

• Outside.in Expands Its Hyperlocal Search Capabilities
  

  While real-time search gets all the attention these days, there’s also increased interest in hyperlocal search. Where real-time search answers What’s happening right now?, hyperlocal search answers the question, What’s happening right here? It’s like local search on steroids, you could say. Outside.in has, for several years, been somewhat like a clearinghouse of hyperlocal information and [...]

• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Mascot, Google Sleep Ball, Google Kirkland Office
  

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Yahoo Hong Kong’s Mascot: Google Sleeping Ball: Tough Google Security: Google Russian Ad: A Tour of Google Kirkland:

• Facebook Wins Big Anti-Spam Judgment
  

  Facebook has been in an ongoing fight against spam and yesterday announced a significant victory in court. The company said it had obtained an eye-popping $711 million judgment against Spam King Sanford Wallace who had had posted unwanted messages on Facebook users’ Walls. Wallace, who is reportedly bankrupt may also face time in the big [...]

• Twitter Lists Goes Live
  

  A month ago, Twitter said they would be rolling out Twitter lists. That day has finally come and almost all users can create their own lists. Lists are basically a way for Twitter users to create groups of Twitter users into categories. For example, you can find the Search Engine Land [...]

• Researcher Jim Jansen On The “Sex” Of Search Queries & Personalization
  

  In this column, I’ll follow up on my conversation with Dr. Jim Jansen from Penn State and his recent investigation into behavior patterns that lie within a large data set of visitor and search advertising campaign data from a high traffic ecommerce site. In part one, Jim and I explored whether a search funnel actually [...]

• Is Web Analytics Easy Or Difficult?
  

  Two rockstars have emerged in the web analytics field to date. We all know who they are: Eric Peterson has demystified analytics for us, while Avinash Kaushik has helped us take it one day, or dare I say, “an hour a day,” at a time. And one of them says web analytics is easy [...]

• Google’s Additional Discovery Method: RSS and Atom Feeds
  

  For years, Google’s discovery of web pages was solely based on links. If a page had no links to it, Googlebot had no way of knowing about it and therefore, would never index it. Along the way, Google provided an option for submitting individual pages, but that wasn’t really a viable option for site owners [...]

• Google Maps Makes Real Estate Search More Visible
  

  Google continues to make real estate listings more prominent inside Google Maps, and in doing so, it continues to inch closer to being a full-fledged real estate search engine. The company announced today that a new “real estate” option has been added across Google Maps. It appears under the “More” tab, along with Photos, Videos, [...]

• Google Launches Comparison Ads, Starting With Mortgages
  

  Google’s now officially announced “Comparison Ads,” starting with a way for mortgage advertisers to have their products compared against each other but which may expand to other products in the future. “If you’re looking for a mortgage, you really care about a specific offer. You want to know the APR and based on [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Pushes Fading Home Page Test To More, Adds Instructions, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Wave to be opened for federation today! Yes, for you to host., thenextweb.com
• How Google Voice Is Growing, BusinessWeek
• Opening eyes to accessibility, Yodel Anecdotal

Business Issues

• Should Diller Sell Ask.com? No, Donate it to Rutgers University, Search Engine Roundtable

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Maps Israel Back to English: Was a Bug, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense for feeds now available directly in Blogger, AdSense for Feeds
• Challenges and Solutions for a Tight Holiday Season, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Is Google’s Behavioral Targeting A Bust? Only 25 Percent Of AdSense Publishers Use It, TechCrunch
• New Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta Coming November 6th?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Google Removes Time Line Search Option Temporarily, Search Engine Roundtable
• Same URL Listed 10 Times in Google Result, Google Blogoscoped

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: October 30, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Is Microsoft Bing Finally Figuring Out 301 Redirects?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Whiteboard Friday – Future-Proofing Your SEO, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Integrating Social Media into Your Presentation Process, 10e20
• Reading, Sending, and Searching Tweets Using Cable Television; Facebook Also Available, ResourceShelf
• Facebook Platform Live Status Now Up And Running, All Facebook