SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 29, 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:

• Bing’s New Airport Maps Aim To Make Air Travel Easier

  Finally, some good news for air travelers: Flying gets a little bit easier with Bing’s launch of detailed U.S. airport maps. Much like the previously announced shopping mall maps, Bing’s airport maps take searchers inside the airport to see things like gate locations, stores and restaurants on each concourse, restroom locations and more. Searchers will […]
• Google Analytics Premium: Better Support & Goodbye Data Sampling

  Today Google launched a paid version of Google Analytics that processes higher volumes of page views and provides additional support. The general feature set and user experience remain the fundamentally the same as the standard product. This comes as an important addition to the enterprise set of tools that Google offers. The new version audience […]

• Google Analytics Real Time Reports: Web Traffic Right Now

  Google Analytics just announced a new set of reports called “Real Time.” They will be seen in the new interface of Google Analytics (available to all users), under the Dashboard tab; according to another recent announcement, this tab will soon be renamed the Home tab. This new feature does not require extra tagging. According to Google, full […]

• Flickr (Finally) Has An Android App

  It sure took a long time, but Flickr has finally launched its first Android app. Flickr has had an iPhone app for more than two years. The new Android app appears to offer several features not available on the iPhone version — including filters to help edit photos before publishing, and additional sharing options. The […]

• Holiday Season Countdown Kickoffs For Online Marketers

  Driving back from work today, my lovely wife mentioned that she can’t wait to have a pumpkin spiced latte and then proceeded with the list of holiday gifts that she would like to receive. This can only mean one thing: holiday season is around the corner. For most people, holiday musings bring to mind family, […]

• Compete.com: Google Slowly Losing Market Share, Bing Slowly Gaining

  Compete.com has weighed in with its US search engine market share statistics, and the results mirror what others have been reporting in recent months: small, slow losses in Google’s market share, and correspondingly slow gains for Bing. According to Compete’s research, Google-powered search (which includes both Google and AOL) had 68.3% of the US market […]

• Warren Buffett’s Business Wire Awarded Patent For Press Release SEO

  Submitting press releases in hopes of gaining search traffic has long been an SEO tactic. But now Business Wire — one of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway companies — has been granted a patent over it. That’s pretty nuts. SEOing Press Releases, Patented! Yousaf Sekander over at ElevateLocal spotted the news and has his own write-up […]

• IAB And PWC: Search Doubled Previous Year’s Growth Rate In First Half Of 2011

  In their regular analysis of revenues generated by the online advertising industry, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers say search unsurprisingly accounted for the most spending of any category (49%) in the first half of the year. Display was next with 37 percent of interactive spend in 1H 2011. Total spending on Search came […]

• Employing Microformats & Structured Data For Enhanced Search Engine Visibility

  With the introduction of the schema.org vocabulary, much attention has been focused on the benefits of employing structured data for improved visibility in the search engines. The mostly widely cited and easily verifiable of these benefits is the generation of rich snippets: a specially formatted search result block that includes information specific to the type […]

• Russian Search Engine Yandex Leads $30 Million Investment In Blekko

  Blekko is the either the fourth US search engine or the third if you no longer consider Yahoo a search engine. And the company has been able to maintain visibility and stir the pot with its persistent criticism of Google search results being spam-filled. Now Blekko has secured $30 million in new funding from a […]

• 18 Considerations To Determine Which Call Tracking Metrics Matter For Your Business

  One challenge for online marketers is data overload. There’s often so much data that sometimes it’s hard to know which key performance indicators matter. Revenue, leads, clicks, calls, conversions, or revenue . . . what should you pay attention to? If you’re considering adding call tracking data to the mix, here are three sets of questions to ask yourself: A. […]

• The Art Of Seductive Landing Pages

  People don’t just want to be educated about what you offer. They want to be seduced. Yes, seduced. Being seduced is an exhilarating experience. (If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.) Yes, we want to be educated and make rational decisions that optimize our goals. But we also yearn to be romanced, […]

• B2B Benchmark Report Sheds Light On Lead Generation Through Use Of Search & Online Media Mix

  The online B2B landscape is a challenging environment for lead generation. The champs are those who can prove themselves to be the right solution at all the stages when a customer is in the market. Oh, and these days, champions must do it all with minimal resources. To be ‘The Greatest’ B2B lead generator, you […]

• Google Intros AdWords For Video, Folding In YouTube Features

  In a bid to unify its advertising interfaces and improve reporting for YouTube video ads, Google is launching a limited public beta of “AdWords for Video” — which includes four “TrueView” video ad formats, for which advertisers pay when the video is viewed or started by a user. The release integrates video advertising, previously housed […]

• Sen. Franken Criticizes Google In Hearings, Praises Google In Promotional Video

  Politics are messy and often riddled with ethical potholes and challenges. One illustration of this is Senator Al Franken’s apparent “conflict of interest” where Google is concerned. Discovered by Mike Blumenthal Franken did a “commercial” on behalf of Google’s “Get Your Business Online” initiative in Minnesota. Blumethal characterizes Franken as “shilling for Google.” It’s not […]

• Want To Speak @ SMX Social Media Marketing? Here’s How

  The agenda is live, and we’re now accepting submissions to speak at SMX Social Media Marketing 2011, Scottsdale, AZ, on December 5-6, 2011. To increase the odds of being selected, be sure to read the agenda. Understand what the sessions are about. Ensure that your pitch is on target to the show’s audience and the […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• New: Page-Level 301 Redirects for Your Store, www.ystoreblog.com
• Should Google Tweak the News We Consume?, New York Times
• Yahoo! Has All the Top 10 Original Shows on the Web, www.yadvertisingblog.com

Business Issues

• An update on our Motorola acquisition, Google Public Policy Blog
• The New York Times Lays Off 15 From About.com’s Editorial Staff*, www.businessinsider.com
• Google invests $28 million in affordable housing, news.cnet.com
• US congressmen ask FTC to investigate Facebook cookies, www.zdnet.com

Link Building

• The 30 Minute Link Partner, Search Engine People

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Grüezi auf Yelp, officialblog.yelp.com
• Groupon gets into direct e-commerce with Groupon Goods, news.cnet.com
• Making your house into a home, blog.foursquare.com
• Mapping streets with a Navteq field team, reviews.cnet.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Do You Click Ads? I Do and Here’s Why, righteousmarketing.com
• Microsoft Advertising adCenter Desktop Upgrade: Introducing Notification Icons and Improved Account Search, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Preferred Google Vendors?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Quality Scores are Underrated, www.dreamsystemsmedia.com

Searching

• Twitter / @bill_slawski: Example of Google showing a circle count in search results, twitter.com

SEM Industry

• The Future of Your SEO Career, SEO Book

SEO & SEM

• Checklist to Integrate SEO into the Organization (A few of the Things We do With Our Clients), www.seminhouse.com
• Results: Which Type Of Sites Hurt Most By Google Panda Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO KPI-K.I.S.S Chart: 646 Classic & Emergent Metrics, AIM Clear Blog
• Should going Whitehat be an ethical decision or a Business decision, www.cornwallseo.com
• You Get What You Pay For With SEO, Just Like With Everything Else, www.davidnaylor.co.uk

Social Media

• Inside Google Plus, Wired
• A Guest Posting Process, www.distilled.net
• Announcing Quora for iPhone and iPod, www.quora.com
• Facebook F8 Conference Helped Spotify, Others Music Services; We Got Numbers!, www.billboard.biz
• How to Communicate in Twitterbites For Re/Tweet-Friendly Blog Posts, Search Engine Guide
• Ragu Pasta Sauce Leaves Bad Taste With Social Media Users, thefuturebuzz.com
• Social Media 101 For Business – Insights from Generall Mills, Rasmussen College, OptumHealth, Hello Viking, Del Monte Agency, Online Marketing Blog
• Social media jobs getting more plentiful, Los Angeles Times
• Social Media Success is About the Wizard Not the Wand, www.convinceandconvert.com
• Three Things Wrong With Quora’s Potentially Awesome New iPhone App, Read/Write Web
• Twitvid raises $6.5 million to boost video on Twitter, GigaOM
• Using Social Media to Get Ahead of Search Demand, SEOmoz
• Whoops, I Didn’t Mean for You to Read This, socialmediatoday.com

Web Analytics

• Design updates to the new interface coming next week, Google Analytics Blog

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

• Whoops, I Didn’t Mean for You to Read This – Great thought piece from Brian Solis about Facebook Timeline: "Indeed, privacy as we knew it is dead. It is now something that we have to learn and teach. Your privacy settings in Facebook are yours to manage. But, to do so takes initiative and an understanding that like your credit score, what you share online requires definition and reinforcement."
• “How much does a website cost?” and other pricing questions – 40 designers weight in on their pricing on design work for logos, homepages, websites, and mobile & web apps,
• You Get What You Pay For With SEO, Just Like With Everything Else – Perhaps the best explanation about "Cheap SEO" that I've seen.
• Web Form A/B Testing: How I Increased Form Fills by 37 Percent – Last month, I launched an A/B test of our Request a Quote form page to see if a new design would impact the percentage of form fills. I planned the design of a new version of the page to see if the some of the basic “best practices” really had an impact. The result was a 37% increase in form fills.
• Dutch Treat: My Interview With Dennis Goedegebuure – Where I chat with Dennis about his career & many issues concerning Enterprise-level SEO.