SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 14, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• How To Make Paid Social Media Ads Effective And Engaging

  While advertising on social media makes sense for advertisers, the owners of ‘free’ sites like Twitter and Facebook still need to make money. Ad banners have been the answer for many social media sites for a long time. However, banner blindness has created a large problem for advertisers since they are paying for impressions, but […]
• How To Generate Links Through Media Relations

  One of the tactics I use to generate new links is to review a site’s stats and create a media promotion based on the trends I find. This strategy is not an easy, turn-key linking program but if you’re serious about growing your business as well as your links, it’s one of the best ways to attract […]

• Live Blogging BIA/Kelsey’s DMS ’10 Conference – Day 1

  I’m live blogging portions of the Directional Media Strategies 2010 conference beginning today shortly after noon at 12:30pm, CST. So, check back here as I provide ongoing updates — I’m going to see how well I may be able to keep up with the stream, so long as my hands hold up! Keep refreshing the […]

• Nielsen: Bing Passes Yahoo To Become #2 Search Engine

  According to Nielsen data out this morning Microsoft’s Bing has passed Yahoo to become the number two search engine in the US. Nielsen says that Google’s August share is 65% (and growth is flat) but that Bing and Yahoo have now switched places:
  Although Google saw little change in its month-over-month search volume, it still dominates […]

• Alternatives To Google In Europe

  Google is the dominant force in Europe—there is no other search engine which even comes close to Google’s market share. As I wrote in my last article, Europe could use some competition for Google. Bing should be the designated search engine to become that big competitor, but for now that is not the case.
  Despite its […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Get paid for your opinions about Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo Answers Blog
• Google Chrome’s Deadly Skull & Crossbones Security Warning, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Announcing a new white spaces trial in Logan, Ohio, Google Public Policy Blog
• Google Instant could boost Google stock by 5 pct, International Business Times
• Google wants the FCC to compel more ISP data, The Hill’s Hillicon Valley
• How to get a job at Google, interview questions, hiring process, Don Dodge
• Meet a Few of Our Newest Yahoo!’s, Yodel Anecdotal
• Zillow Replaces C.E.O. and Hints at a Public Offering, New York Times

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Yelp Wins 47 USC 230 Dismissal of Dentist’s Lawsuit–Reit v. Yelp, Eric Goldman
• App of the Day Brings Instant Search To The App Store, Teens in Tech
• Map Kibera, MapQuest Blog
• New imagery of the San Bruno fire, Google LatLong

Link Building

• Link Building through Social Media Monitoring, Search Engine Journal
• Tangential Relevance and Link Building, Search Engine Journal
• Anchor Text Loses Influence and Building a Brand Becomes Even More Important, www.seowizz.net
• How To Generate Media Links, The Link Spiel
• Link Building 101 – The Almost Complete Link Guide, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Introducing ‘Improving Online Conversions for Dummies’, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Google Cleans Up Its Act — and Erases My Identity, Ad Age
• Google Instant Instantly Makes Waves Around the Web, AIM Clear Blog
• Google Wants You To Tell Them Which Books Are Public Domain, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Jessie Lunderby & Google Instant Can’t "Get You Fired", Search Engine Roundtable
• Keystroke Optimization For Google Instant, andybeard.eu
• Techmeme Turns 5: Interview With Founder Gabe Rivera, Read/Write Web
• The Advent of Religious Search Engines, Slashdot

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

• Pay-Per-Click Account Structure Set Up and Best Practices, PPC Hero
• How is Google finding pages which don’t have any links to them?, YouTube
• Poll: Google Instant Sending Less Traffic To Your Site?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Some Reports of September 2010 Google PageRank Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Anatomy and Evolution of Google Search Results Listing, blueglass.com
• The MEGA List of Free and Paid SEO Tools the Professionals Use, Search Engine Watch
• What is Mobile Search Engine Transcoding?, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Gap Taps Foursquare Cofounders for Holiday Ad Campaign, Ad Age
• How Social Media Sites Are Fighting Spam, Search Engine Journal
• A new page for your promotions, Orkut Blog
• Evan Williams Coughed Up $7,500 For Twitter.com Back In The Day, TechCrunch
• Expert Social Media Advice From a Fortune Cookie, outspokenmedia.com
• Five signs your business is not ready for social media, econsultancy.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Staging Server Now Defaults to YouTube API Version 2, YouTube API Blog
• Google Research Carves Space-Time to Optimize Video for Any Size Screen, Read/Write Web
• Google TV officially launching October 17th?, Engadget

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

• The robots.txt, META-robots & rel=nofollow and their impact on SEO – One the most common mistakes that many Webmasters and SEOs make is that they misuse the robots.txt, the META-robots and the rel=nofollow. All the above affect the indexing, the crawling and the PageRank distribution and as a result they can heavily affect the SEO status of a website and its rankings. In this article we will see what is their impact on SEO and how you should use them to improve the rankings of your website.
• How Websites Are Ranking in The Most Profitable Niches – Would you believe there’s a top ranking site in a niche with over 300,000 searches per month which only has 4 pages and spams forums for links?
• Anchor Text Loses Influence and Building a Brand Becomes Even More Important – An interesting analysis by Tim Grice of some recent Google ranking changes and what might be causing them.
• Google's Biggest Ever Mistake? – Love the controversy. Miles has picked up on a Video showing that Instant Search is five years old and didn't work then, so has Google made a critical error?