SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 4, 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:

• Is Display Catching Up To Search?

  Historically, paid search has had a major leg over the other online channels in terms of positive ROI performance. But why is that so? Mainly because of two reasons: high relevancy of ads to the user and a major technological efficiency in the actual media buying. Remember, ROI is not just how […]

• Search In Pictures: Yahoo Purple People, Google Goggles & Rock Paper Scissors

  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.[…]

• Will Mobile Drive Growth For Yahoo?

  Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider told the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York that Yahoo was seeing “incredible . . . extraordinary” growth in mobile (she means usage primarily). The company, by several metrics, is one of the largest in mobile. It operates one of the top three mobile ad networks in the US and […]

• Answers.com Loses “Pole Position” To Google Dictionary

  Answers.com has a strong URL (if not a brand) and lots of traffic, more than 25 million monthly unique users. It was the source of definitions in the “definitions” link in the upper right of Google SERPs. The key word in that last sentence is “was.”[…]

• Dayparting: Profitable Tactic Or Waste Of Time?

  Hour of day bidding, or dayparting, has been the topic of much discussion of late. Advertisers want to leverage every possible trend to maximize their profits, and one way to do this is to take advantage of search engines providing advertisers with the flexibility to run their campaigns with bidding by hour of day. With […]

• Information Architecture: The Backbone Of SEO & Usability

  The goal of web page content is to accommodate our users. This means taking a hard look at site requirements and where they might conflict with users and search engines.

• Bing Is Down (Now Back After 30 Minutes)

  If you try to go to Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, you may be out of luck. It seems to be currently down and out.[…]

• New Google Option Translates Search Results

  Language is no barrier for a new search option that Google announced today. It’s called “translated search” and has been available already in Google Translate; now it’s also available as one of the choices on Google’s Search Options panel.[…]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• We Will Never Send This Email, www.ymailblog.com
• Now on Google Finance: streaming news, Official Google Blog

Business Issues

• 15 Google Users Tried Bing for a Week and 10 of them Switched, Digital Inspiration
• FBI serves search warrants at Yahoo, Google in Erin Andrews tape case, LA Times
• Carol Bartz: Liberating Yahoo from its ‘rocks’, MarketWatch
• Geez, Google Wants to Take Over DNS, Too, Wired
• Google Acquires AppJet, EtherPad Blog
• Google to Become Default Search Engine on Mail.ru, Quintura blog
• Still Waiting for An Evil Google? It’s Not Going to Happen., louisgray.com
• Too much cash a problem for IAC’s Barry Diller, Reuters
• Yahoo! and Technology for Learning Partnership Host Annual Online Safety Summit for Educational Leaders, Yahoo Press Releases

Link Building

• How To Get More Links From Back Linking Competitors, Link Spiel
• Whiteboard Friday – Link Diversity, SEOmoz

Local, Maps & Mobile

• More new imagery added to Google Earth and Google Maps, Google LatLong
• 6 Common Google Maps Problems & the Solutions, Search Engine Guide

Paid Search & Contextual

• December webinar schedule, AdWords Agency Blog
• Google Begins Banning AdWords Advertisers Again: December ’09 Big Ban, Search Engine Roundtable
• Right Media is Open for Premium Business, rightmediablog.com Blog

Searching

• When Real Time Is *Not* Fast Enough: The Intention Web, www.web-strategist.com

SEM Industry

• The Job Landscape in Search, Design and Social Media, SEOmoz
• Where the Google Holiday Gifts for 2009?, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• 3 Tools to Monitor Any Page or Site Changes, Search Engine Journal
• B2B Search Marketing: 5 Must-Read Tips, Online Marketing Blog
• Recrawling and keeping search results fresh, Geeking with Greg
• SEO Explained in a Picture, David Naylor

Social Media

• Google and Twitter Hook Up On 9 Million Sites, mashable.com
• Takeout dogfood, Twitter Blog
• Five Years of Digg and counting, Digg the Blog
• How to Use Facebook Ads Reporting Without Going Insane, AIM Clear Blog
• Sources: Facebook Connect Will Be “Everywhere” on MySpace Next Year, Inside Facebook
• Star That Tweet! Favit Launches in iTunes App Store, Read/Write Web

Video, Music & Image Search

• Hit the mark with Video Targeting, ytbizblog.blogspot.com