SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 29, 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:

• Shashi Seth, Another Ex-Googler, Lands At AOL
  

  AOL announced today that it’s hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was head of monetization for YouTube. Most recently he was the Chief Revenue Officer for Cooliris. AOL’s addition of Seth is the latest in a series of hirings from the search industry — [...]

• Google Broadening Wave Access With GMail-Like Rollout
  

  As we previously reported, starting tomorrow Google will widen access to its innovative communications platform Wave, offering 100,000 new invitations to use the service. Many of these people in turn will be allowed to invite others to join as well, reminiscent of how GMail propagated. (It’s wise for Google to allow these new users to [...]

• Google Launches Merchant Center For Google Base Users
  

  The Google Base blog announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. This is the location for you to “upload your feeds, check on the status of your items, and get information on the performance of your listings.” The Merchant Center is replacing Google Base for those who submit products to Google. [...]

• Shopping Engine Wize Relaunches To Align Product Research With Word Of Mouth
  

  What amazes me is that in more than a decade no “brand” has really emerged in shopping search. What do I mean by “brand”? I mean a site that’s top-of-mind for consumers, trusted and that they navigate to directly for products and product information. One could say that the exceptions to this are Amazon, eBay [...]

• 6 Discovery Methods For Finding Ideal Linking Partners
  

  One of my link builders recently had the brilliant idea of putting together and sending out a questionnaire designed to gather information how the other link builders in our agency perform their daily link building tasks. We’ve always worked on the assumption that each link builder will naturally be drawn to using certain specific tools [...]

• Cadbury Campaign Blends Earned And Paid Media
  

  One of the greatest marketing success stories of the last couple of years has been Cadbury, the British chocolate maker – which, at nearly 200 years old, could be forgiven for failing to grasp modern technologies to promote its brands. However, helped by some great creative work by London shop Fallon, they’ve had huge success by [...]

• How To Get Into Baidu, The World’s 2nd Largest Search Engine
  

  ComScore’s announcement in early July that Baidu had become the second largest global search engine caused a fair bit of chatter in the industry as well as getting the attention of global marketers. ComScore further reported that Baidu had more than 8 billion searches and 145 million unique visitors in June meaning Baidu’s market [...]

• Take That, Twitter: Google Hot Trends Integrated Into Google Search
  

  Twitter and real time search continues to attract buzz, and Google’s reacting by positioning its “Hot Trends” information in a place where more people will see it, within Google’s regular search results. Starting around 3:45 Pacific Time today, those searching on topics that are spiking or “hot” in popularity should see a new [...]

• Meet The Google OneBox, Plus Box, Direct Answers & The 10-Pack
  

  Google’s “normal” listings show the title of a web page, a description of it (also called a “snippet”) and the web page’s URL. However, Google also has other listings that appear within search results that are designed to give access to some of its specialized search tools (such as news search), to [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Add page break and go to page in forms, Official Google Docs Blog
• Google Wave Faces Tougher Test in Rollout to 100K Users, eWeek
• Secret feature of Google Reader, YouTube

Business Issues

• Google adjusts to life with trustbusters, CNET News
• Google, bank resolve issue over misfired e-mail, CNET News
• Is Barry Diller delusional?, ZDNet
• Yahoo! Shares Undervalued: Analyst, TheStreet.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Big Boobs Bounce Back to Top of Google Maps, Mike Blumenthal
• Hasbro, makers of ‘Monopoly’ game, launches the Design your own Building Competition, Official Google SketchUp Blog

Link Building

• Practical Guide to Finding Link Bait Inspiration, SEO Smarty

Paid Search & Contextual

• Welcome to our Think2010 Series, Inside AdWords
• Public Service Ads Alert Bing Users to Online Scams, Microsoft On The Issues
• Why you need relevant PPC landing pages, Econsultancy

Searching

• National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection, ResourceShelf
• Online Database: U.S. Politics: Find Your Congressmember’s Leadership PAC, ResourceShelf
• The More Affluent and More Urban are More Likely to use Social Networks in U.S., ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• New Google Support Forums Turns One & Adds Profile Answers, Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Optimization Horror Story Contest Launched, Bill Hartzer
• World of SEOCraft | Warcraft Meets SEO, Make it Rank

SEO & SEM

• How are duplicate shopping pages with different currencies handled in Google?, YouTube
• 7 Steps to Improving Conversion Rates, Search Engine Guide
• Fake Yahoo Employee, Not Fake: Side Money?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Also Ignores Geo-Meta Tags, But Bing Lives By Them, Search Engine Roundtable
• Quick & Painless Content Ideas For Your Site, outspokenmedia.com
• Search Engines Applying Different Anchor Text Relevance from the Same Site and Related Site Links, SEO By The Sea

Social Media

• Secret Service Investigating Facebook Poll Asking Whether Obama Should Be Killed, The Plum Line
• Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey invested in Foursquare, CNET News
• International Olympic Committe Making Use of Social Media to Spread the Word and Other Resources, ResourceShelf

Video, Music & Image Search

• Flickr Now Supports OpenStreetMap Tags, Read/Write Web
• Google September 2009 Image Search Update Turns Out Bad?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Yahoo may expand its video lineup, CNET News

Web Analytics

• Advanced: Structure Your Account With Roll Up Reporting And More, Google Analytics Blog