SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 10, 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:

• Leveraging Third-Party Sites to Raise Your Company’s Profile in Search
  Many larger companies are able to virtually dominate the organic search results through the sheer number of unique domains that they have to work with. For example, in addition to its corporate websites, Honda ranks in organic search with domains that are unique to its vehicle, watersports, engine, and…
• AOL Unveils MapQuest Local, Video Search For Mobile (WAP)
  MapQuest has recently stepped up development efforts, rolling out a new and improved “beta” site just a couple of weeks ago. MapQuest product VP Mark Law told me at the time that was the first of many changes and improvements to come. Accordingly, yesterday, the company debuted MapQuest Local a…
• Google’s Logo Makes A Big Bang For Large Hadron Collider
  Today the first beam was circulated through the Large Hadron Collider, world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, to test the “big bang” theory or the Standard Model. So Google is sporting a logo of the collider on their homepage:…
• VideoSurf: New, Genuinely Radical Video Search
  I’m generally not given to hyperbole or breathless enthusiasm when writing about a new search service. Quite the opposite, in fact—over the decade I’ve covered search I’ve seen so many so-called “radically new” approaches that are simply updates or spins on existing technologies that I’ve grown a bit jaded. But…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• At the Republican Convention: Politics in the cloud and on the ground, Official Google Blog
• Delivering Custom Search to your applications, Google Custom Search
• AOL Pulls The Trigger: Direct Access To Competing Services On AOL.com, TechCrunch
• AOL rolls out one-stop email service, News.com
• AOL’s Edgy Women’s Lifestyle Site Lemondrop.com Emerges From Stealth; Revamped PopEater, Tool, paidContent.org
• Appy trails, Official Google Blog
• More eye candy for iGoogle, Official Google Blog
• New in Labs: 3 experiments with labels, Official Gmail Blog
• Presentations turns 1, Official Google Docs Blog

Business Issues

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt offers energy plan, Mercury News
• In D.C. antitrust circles, how Google became the hunted, News.com
• Bloomberg: Bloomberg’s Latest Error Nukes United Airlines, gawker.com
• Careful With That Publish Button, InformationWeek
• Google Completes Sale of Performics Search Marketing Business, Google
• Sensis, Yahoo!7 to start up oneSearch, The Sydney Morning Herald
• State looks at antitrust in Google-Yahoo deal, San Francisco Chronicle
• U.S. May Be Preparing Antitrust Suit in Google-Yahoo Partnership – NYTimes.com, New York Times

Local, Maps & Mobile

• T-Mobile to offer Android smartphone soon -sources, Reuters
• Web-based Google Earth Driving Simulator, Google Blogoscoped
• Yahoo!(R) Expands Capabilities of Blueprint, the Mobile Development Platform, Yahoo Press Releases
• Yahoo!(R) oneConnect(TM) Preview Available for iPhone(TM), Yahoo Press Releases

Link Building

• 6 Unique Content Ideas to Boost Your Website’s Value & Link-Worthiness, SEOmoz
• Going Green: The Power of Ecofriendly Link Building, Search Engine Journal
• The History of Paid Directories, Search Engine People Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Didit Study: Campaign Finance Loophole Could Decide Presidential Election, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Search Advertising Un-reported, MarketWatch
• Don’t You Dare, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Google AdWords Advertisers Anxiously Wait For New Quality Score To Hit, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google AdWords API Image Ad Creation Bug in Sandbox, Search Engine Roundtable
• Western Union launched in Panama, Inside AdSense

SEO & SEM

• How To Figure Out What Parts of Your Website Aren’t Being Crawled, Michael Gray
• Is SEO Possible In 30 Mins A Day?, Search Marketing Standard
• Keep Your Ideas Simple and Increase Conversions, Search Engine Watch
• McCain Wins Landslide Over Obama in Search Engine Marketing Election, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Measuring SEO: why rankings are worthless, yoast.com
• SEO 101: Grabbing the Longtail, We Optimist
• SEO and SEM Tips for Political Campaigning, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shorteners, SEOmoz
• The Collection of SEO and Web Accessibility Tools, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Will Google Play Games?, Forbes

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Answers: Why Are My Images Missing From Google?, Search Engine Roundtable
• There’s No Place Like Home, Flickr Blog

Web Analytics

• Decoding Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog

Other Items

• Our 1st QnA Wedding, Live QnA

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

• Empathy & Social Media – A Business Secret Weapon
• The Power of Ecofriendly Link Building
• SEO Tip: Seeing nofollow links in Google Chrome
• The History of Paid Directories
• SEO Mastermind Aaron Wall Brings Bad News
• James Duthie Interview
• How to Optimize for Google Chrome
• The Go Viral Hook