SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 30, 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:

• GOOG’s Mystery Stock Plunge The stock market is bad, but Google trading for as low as 1 cent today and closing initially at $320 (after opening at $488) has the NASDAQ checking out some odd trades and resetting the closing price to $400. Reuters reports that “erroneous orders” may have caused the drop and that these orders might [...]
• SearchBiz: Mehdi Moves Up At Microsoft; Should MSFT learn from Ask?; Top 25 People On The Web; Google & The NSA With Microsoft’s current advertising campaign still leaving many people shaking their heads in wonder, TechCrunch has an idea: follow the lead of Ask.com. Jason Kincaid confesses that Ask’s ad — the one that shows a young woman “exercising” (ahem) on a stripper pole in her house — actually made him curious enough to click through [...]
• Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker Debate continues about Google’s war on paid links. But regardless of where you stand, I think most people would agree buying and selling is risky behavior. You don’t really want the world to know you’re doing it. And if you’re [...]
• Linked, Tagged, Tweeted, and Feeded - Three Real Time Link Trackers One challenge we all have is showing our clients evidence that our work is having the effect we said it would. What would make this part of the process easier is if there was one single universal tool that could identify every single instance when a site is mentioned, linked, tagged, tweeted, or feeded. That perfect tool doesn’t exist, but a few weeks ago Delicious unveiled a relaunch, and what was once really a pain is now a breeze.
• Search Illustrated: Website Conversion Paradigms Getting your site ranked and persuading customers to click on your search result are just the first two steps towards achieving the end goal: getting the sale. This week’s infographic details some quick tips for turning that click into a conversion:
• To Block Google StreetView, German Town To Require, Then Deny Permit Just a couple months after launching in Europe, Google StreetView is running into a roadblock in Germany. Via WebProNews, Spiegel Online reports that the small town of Molfsee in northwestern Germany plans to require Google to request a permit before being allowed to record video while driving through the town’s streets.
• Travel Search Goes Green With a couple of Stanford graduates as founders, a new entrant to the online travel space officially launched its beta site today, WholeTravel.com. Following a small but growing trend in the travel search space, Whole Travel uses what they call “Blue Sky Search”, or the ability for searchers to use open-ended experiential queries, rather than inputting [...]
• Three Rules For Search Marketing With Franchise Organizations I always think of an armada of ships when I look at a franchised company. You’ve got a large battleship, directing the path of the smaller craft—yet the smaller craft must navigate on their own, especially when the instructions from the battleship don’t make sense. And oftentimes, because the franchisees are busy navigating their [...]
• California Congressional Reps Urge Yes on Google-Yahoo Deal The Google-Yahoo ad deal gained support in the form of a letter (PDF) from several of California’s congressional representatives asking that the Department Of Justice not to block the proposed arrangement. Led by Google and Yahoo’s “hometown” representative, Democrat Anna Eshoo from Palo Alto, the short letter signed by 11 US House Of Representative legislators so far reads much like [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Microsoft Updates Hotmail: Faster Interface and More Storage, Read/Write Web
• Hotmail spotted in the wild, LiveSide
• Yahoo’s Zimbra e-mail program exposes passwords, CNET News
• Zoho Launches Its Application Marketplace, TechCrunch
• Bloglines Scheduled Maintenance, Bloglines

Business Issues

• Google to celebrate SC data center opening, CNN Money
• Microsoft: Internet Search Battle Far From Over, InformationWeek

Link Building

• Avatar Theory #3: The DoFollow Link Builder, AIM Clear Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• New Logo, New Look & More!, MapQuest Blog
• MetaCarta Unchained and Unbundled , All Points Blog
• Local Search Engine Zvents Raises, SEO’Brien
• T-Mobile stops taking Android phone orders, news.cnet.com
• The Swiss Army Knife of Google Maps, Google Maps Mania
• Challenging Pictometry in New Jersey - All Points Blog, apb.directionsmag.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Will Local PPC ads Destroy the National ads?, Rimm Kaufman
• Blog post categories on adcentercommunity.com , adCenter Blog for Advertisers
• 10 Days to Zen-like Landing Page Design and Optimization , 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs
• adCenter Learning Center, Mel Carson
• Banner Ads Influence Search Conversions; Eyeblaster Tries to Prove It , MarketingVOX
• What Not to Do When Managing PPC Campaigns, PPC Hero

Searching

• Ten Things You Should Know About An Online Superpower, SEOmoz
• The Google Story, Updated for Google’s 10th Birthday, Google Blogoscoped
• US: House Price Searches Soar as Prices Plummet, Hitwise Intelligence

SEM Industry

• 1st SEOktoberfest Photos and Reactions Are In, seoblackhat.com
• Cuz I Know Y’all Been Wondering, Oilman
• Network Before And During SMX East, SMX Blog
• SEOktoberfest Wrap Up, Greg Boser
• October 2008 Hot Seat - Back To Basics Search Engine Optimization, SEMpdx Blog
• Michael VanDeMar: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
• The Screw Google Mentality, ShoeMoney
• Women of Internet Marketing: Stephanie Weingart, Search Marketing Gurus
• Cover Story: Seattle’s Top 25 Innovators, Seattle Business Monthly

SEO & SEM

• Firefox Rank Checker Extension Now With Pretty Graphs, SEO Book
• Search Engine Marketing Inc. (Second Edition) Is Hot Off The Press, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Obama Finally Does Search Engine Marketing Right , SearchViews
• Dear Google: Either Drop PageRank, or Give It More….Granularity, John Battelle’s Searchblog
• Search Engine Optimization Improves with Site Size — Or Does It?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Number of Websites with Google PageRank 10 May Have Reduced, www.labnol.org
• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Site Maps, Search Engine Guide
• Will Using Google Analytics Hurt My Search Engine Rankings?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Moderator Beta: Ask a Google Engineer, Vanessa Fox

Social Media

• Swurl - your internet timeline, Phil Bradley

Web Analytics

• WebTrends Releases New Online Analytics Tool, Search Engine Watch Blog
• Tip For Comparing Web KPI Trends Over Time, Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

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

• Google Changes Universal Search
• Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker
• SEO Marketing In An Uncertain Economy
• 5 Simple, Effective Tactics to Promote a New Website
• How to Get on the Sphinn Front Page
• SEO Is Not For Rankings, Traffic Or Conversions
• Has Your Wordpress Blog Been Hacked?
• Is Martha Stewart Engaging in a Shady Link Exchange?
• The Paid Link Farce is 3 Years Old - Get Your Act Together Google