SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 18, 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:

• How To Group Your Keywords; Plus: Q&A With WordStream’s Larry Kim

  Organizing your paid search keywords into the right ad groups can be a difficult task for even the best search engine marketers. Many times, a keyword may seem to naturally fall into multiple ad groups. The engines tell us the best practice is to not have the same keyword in different groups, because […]

• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Duck, Google Band & Chrome Ads

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. […]

• Google Battles French, Italians In Court, Loses Copyright Case

  Google will probably be fighting legal battles in European courts and appearing before EU regulators for some time to come. For the time being Google has lost (at least for now) a copyright case in France arising from book scanning. According to Reuters: […]

• SEO Expert Swears In Court That Google Uses Meta Keywords Tag

  I was pointed to a filed affidavit (PDF) between Jenzabar & Robert Maginn as the plaintiffs versus Long Bow Group as the defendants. In short, it seems like the plaintiff is suing the defendants over trademark infringement within a site’s keyword meta tags. […]

• Google Relaunching Google Answers As Google Guru?

  Google Blogoscoped reports that one of his readers noticed a “Google Guru” link in his Google Account page. Google Guru was launched in January 2007 in Russia as a social question and answer site. You can access it at guru.google.co.th/guru/ and here is a picture:[…]

• The Ultimate Reason Your SEO Is Underperforming

  In the first installment of this series I asserted that your SEO performance is suffering in proportion to how powerfully you are able to communicate the opportunity to executives. Winning the resources required to grow the channel requires a basic set of metrics. In the subsequent installments, I showed you how to use “Jedi” performance […]

• Is Social Media Ruining Search Results?

  I preferred search engine results pages (SERPs) before other forms of social media became the rage. I think the commercial web search engines are giving social media items far more attention and validation than they deserve. Do you?

• QuickMark Says Fix Coming Soon For Google Favorite Place Decals Bug

  Google is suffering through a somewhat embarrassing turn of events regarding its Favorite Place decals, but the company that’s actually responsible for the problem says a fix is on the way. QuickMark, makers of an iPhone app that has led users to the wrong URL when a Favorite Places decal is scanned, says it has submitted […]

• Google To Buy Yelp For $500 Million?

  TechCrunch is reporting that Google is “advanced acquisition negotiations” to buy Yelp for $500 million or more. TechCrunch has been generally correct about many of the rumors it has reported recently (i.e., Google Phone) so we should take this seriously. Yelp has raised a little over $30 million over several funding rounds. Revenues are heading toward […]

• Bing Still Working On Canonical Tag Support, Suggests Other Ways To Manage Duplicate Content

  While Google has recently announced its support of the canonical tag across different domains, Bing says it’s still working on supporting the canonical tag on a single domain, and suggests webmasters should rely on other means to manage duplicate content. The rel=”canonical” link element was introduced earlier this year as a way for webmasters to define […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Translate Google Sites with one click, Official Google Blog
• On Google’s Unofficial Dictionary API, Google Operating System
• Tips and tricks for deploying Google Apps, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• Former Microsoft evangelist Don Dodge on Google vs. Microsoft (Q&A), VentureBeat
• Is Take-Two In For The Yahoo Treatment? Icahn Takes An 11 Percent Stakez, paidContent.org
• Yahoo! Labs Showcases Scientific Excellence in 2009, Yodel Anecdotal

Link Building

• Build Links By Purchasing Websites & 301 Redirecting To Your Main Domain, SEO.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Bing iPhone app – upcoming fixes, Bing Search Blog
• Loopt Ventures Into Yelp’s Territory With New Local Reviews Site, TechCrunch
• Verizon Wireless pushing Bing as the only search option?, Boy Genius Report

Other Items

• Google Chrome Advent Calendar Projection, Google Operating System

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords API v2009 Hack Days, AdWords API Blog
• Google Mixed Up Link Units Earnings With Ad Units, Search Engine Roundtable
• How PPC Marketing Has Been Influenced By Traditional TV Advertising, SEM Geek

Searching

• Cosmology with Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Sex, Porn, Team Jacob, and Michael Jackson Make Norton’s 100 Top Kids’ Online Searches of 2009, Symantec.com

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 18, 2009, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Google to Add PDF Support to Fetch As Googlebot?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Let’s Try to Find All 200 Parameters in Google Algorithm, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• 5 Low Cost or Free Social Media Monitoring Tools, Online Marketing Blog
• Mom updates Twitter as 2-year-old son is dying, CNET News

Web Analytics

• API Python Client Library Updated, Google Analytics Blog