SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 12, 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:

• Update Made To Definition Of A Google Analytics Session

  Google Analytics announced a change on the way a sessions are calculated on the tool. While this change will not affect the majority of the accounts significantly (according to the official blog post “most users will see less than a 1% change”), it is an important change. Below, I will describe why it is important […]
• Facebook Adds Targeting By Zip Codes To Advertisements

  Up til now, Facebook Ads could be targeted by Country, State/Province and by City. Yesterday Facebook added an additional targeting type, by zip code: This is a big deal for Facebook marketing, as it is now much more attractive for local businesses. Local business owners can now target the exact zip codes where they draw from, […]

• QR Code Scanners (Searchers) Are Affluent, 18-34 Males: comScore

  A question that has not yet been answered is whether 2-D barcodes, also known as “QR codes,” are here to stay or whether they’re an interesting experiment on the way to something else, such as NFC-based marketing. In Japan and elsewhere around the world QR codes are more well established and have been in use […]

• A Guide To Creating A Massive Impact With Basic Reporting

  Google Analytics provides the opportunity to create sophisticated advanced segments and fancy custom reports in such a way it all perfectly fits your needs. Although I really love all these self-made reports, Google Analytics also contains around 80 or more standard reports. Not every report is evenly interesting, but I would like to point out […]

• Exploring A New Search Landscape, With Microsoft’s Jacquelyn Krones

  In my last Just Behave column, I shared the first half of my conversation with Jacquelyn Krones, a senior product manager from Microsoft that spearheaded a large scale user study that explored how we use search. In that column, we laid the foundation for what should be a significant shift in user behaviors. Krones said […]

• Google’s Panda Update Launches Internationally in Most Languages

  Google has just announced that their “Panda” rankings changes, first launched in the United States in late February and rolled out to English language indices internationally in April, have now launched internationally in all languages other than Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Their post notes that for non-English indices, this change impacts 6-9% of queries (vs. […]

• Yahoo Gains In Latest Hitwise Market Share Report; Google, Bing Down

  Google and Bing both saw slight declines in search market share last month, while Yahoo gained a bit to rise back above 15%. That’s according to the Experian Hitwise report for July, 2011. These numbers are somewhat similar to what comScore shared yesterday, with Yahoo also on the rise last month.

Search News From Around The Web:

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Privacy Impact Assessment for Street View in New Zealand, google-newzealand.blogspot.com

Other Items

• Google’s Experimental Sign-in Pages, Google Operating System

Paid Search & Contextual

• Facebook’s New Zip Code Ad Targeting Could Boost Local Advertising Revenue, Inside Facebook
• 10 PPC Experts to Follow on Twitter, beyondthepaid.blogspot.com
• Facebook Ads Unveils “#Topics” Targeting & Keyword Input, AIM Clear Blog
• Scheduled Maintenance to Microsoft Advertising adCenter on Saturday, August 20th from 11am–7pm PDT, community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Tips on How to Maximize Lead Quality from PPC Marketing, SEM Geek

Searching

• Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Page Numbers: Google & Infinite Scrolling, BruceClay.com

SEO & SEM

• Fear the Panda! Google Adds Extra Kung Fu to Non-English Search Results, Marketing Pilgrim
• Google Plus One Button Does Not Follow Robots.txt Directive, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to handle desktop and mobile users, Pedro Dias
• The SEO’s Guide To Getting Customers Back On Side, dailyseotip.com
• What is Google’s PageRank Good For? – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Eye-Tracking Study Shows Huge Similarities Between Google+ & Facebook, AllThingsD
• Making Games Better, Facebook
• NewNewTwitter Continues: Twitter Profile Mentions Rolling Out To All, TechCrunch
• 6 Tools To Help Measure Social Influence, outspokenmedia.com
• Facebook Quietly Updates Platform Policies – Developers, No Linking To Its Competitors!, TechCrunch
• Google’s Google+ Adds Games, But Wants Data in Return, PC Magazine
• Social Media and SEO, www.internetmarketingninjas.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• New contact photo views + a keyboard shortcut guide!, Flickr Blog

Web Analytics

• Update to Sessions in Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog

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

• 28 SEO Experts Share the Most Compelling Content that Influenced Their Works – The Internet still stands as the greatest invention of mankind, thus far, in my opinion. Since its creation, the Internet has made almost everything in reach, whether it’s through trading, communication, entertainment and most extensively with information, wherein any sort of information were made very accessible to people, worldwide, over the web.
• What to Look For When Hiring A Link Builder – Lisa Barone goes over what qualities you should look for in a link builder.
• Converting Your Website Visitors One Small Step at a Time – Adding value to your website through free articles, blog posts, videos, and any other type of content that may be helpful to those at the not-ready-to-buy-yet stage, is a great way to gain extra traffic. The problem (if you want to call it that) with all this "value-added" content is that it brings those very people who will rarely convert into a lead or a sale.
• High Risk SEO: 33 Ways to Get Penalised by Google – A few points here that may surprise even advanced SEOs..
• Email Case Study: Analyzing J.C. Penney's Frequency, Subject Lines – Case study from email marketer Carolyn Nye on J. C. Penney's use of email marketing.
• 7 Tips on Avoiding Bad Reviews – Bad reviews happen. That's just life. But there are ways to avoid getting too many of them. Here are 7 tips to help you dodge the stinkers.
• The Good, Bad, & Ugly Of Content Promotion On Google+ – Ryan Sammy writes a really good overview of the current state of sharing/marketing content on Google+.