SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 14, 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:

• Google Voice Search & Search By Image Comes To Desktops

  Mobile innovation is fueling Google’s search offerings for the desktop, as the company today announced two new search interfaces — Voice and Image — inspired by mobile Voice Search and Google Goggles, respectively. With Voice Search for the desktop, which is a feature of the Chrome browser, users click a microphone icon in the search […]
• New Google Mobile Features: Shortcut Local Icons, Query Builder

  At today’s Google Inside Search event in San Francisco, a number of new features were unveiled for both mobile and desktop search, which we’ll cover in detail across Search Engine Land. For mobile search, these changes are launching immediately for Android (version 2.2+) and iOS (version 4.0+) in 40 languages worldwide, including: Local icons on mobile […]

• Google Instant Pages: An Impressive & Speedy Addition To Google Search

  Google’s company-wide focus on speed has manifested itself today with another feature that makes the search experience faster. It’s called Instant Pages, and from watching the demo today, it’s an impressive addition to the Google search experience. Instant Pages is one of the many announcements that came from Google’s “Inside Search” event. How Google Instant […]

• SearchWeek: June 13, 2011

  Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and […]

• SearchWeek: June 6, 2011

  Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and […]

• 15 Tips For A Successful Facebook Ads Program

  If you’re a marketing or advertising professional, then lately you’ve probably been running ads on Facebook or have heard the phrase ‘paid social’ or ‘Facebook ads’. That’s because according to eMarketer, social media is the fastest growing digital media channel. As impressive as that is, it doesn’t tell the whole story. First, let’s consider some […]

• Wanted: Session Ideas For SMX East

  Do you have a topic you’d like to see covered in a session at SMX East on September 13-15, 2011? Something you’d like to see covered in depth, or a discussion of advanced strategies and tactics for getting the most out your search marketing campaigns? If so, we’d like to hear from you. Anyone can […]

• Live Blog: Google Unveils Voice Search & Search By Image For Desktop, “Google Instant Pages”

  Everyone ready? Because the big day has arrived! Google’s “Inside Search” event begins today at 9:30am Pacific Time. OK, reset your expectations. It might not be that big. But I’ll be live blogging it, so stay tuned. The event was only announced a few days ago, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what’s happening. I’m […]

• Irish Hotel Sues Google For Defamation Over Autocomplete Suggestion

  A popular Irish hotel has sued Google for defamation because Google’s autocomplete feature suggests to searchers that the hotel is in receivership. Searchers looking for the Ballymascanlon Hotel — a four-star property that’s reportedly one of the most popular wedding venues in northeast Ireland and is not in financial trouble — see “ballymascanlon hotel receivership” […]

• Google City Sites May Compete With Yelp, Online Yellow Pages

  Yesterday David Mihm was pointing out on Twitter that Google had created a number of new city sites or portals. They appear to be the phoenix rising out of the ashes of Hotpot. As I wrote yesterday on my own blog, this is Google’s effort to bring a number of initiatives together in a single […]

• Google Adds Business Characteristics To Maps Listings

  Searchers looking for local businesses on Google Maps can now see brief, descriptive characteristics as part of the primary business listing. And they’ll be seeing the same things soon on Google.com, Places search and Google Maps for mobile, too. Google’s announcement explains that the terms come from “sources all across the web, such as reviews, […]

• 10 Language Barrier Busting Strategies For International Search Marketers

  How do you get around the fact that you don’t speak the language but are still responsible for achieving your goals in a particular target market? Are there strategies you can adopt to help — or pitfalls to watch out for?

• How To Find The Websites Likely To Link To You

  In my column two months ago for Link Week, I described ways we can use what we know about pages that rarely link to us to our advantage when link building. Certain page-level characteristics are immediately identifiable as being a standard characteristic of sites that won’t link to us. This is most frequently big businesses, and sometimes […]

• Google “Offer Ads” — Not Google Offers — In The Wild

  I innocently searched on “webhosting” this afternoon and saw this result, with an ad unit I’d never seen before: a coupon embedded in the ad copy. I knew that Google was testing “Offer Ads,” not to be confused with Google Offers, but I’d never seen one myself. If you click “view offer” you get the […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• AMA: A Peek Into The Future Of Google Docs, TechCrunch
• Prerendering in Chrome, blog.chromium.org
• Tips & Tricks: Using the description field in your documents list, googledocs.blogspot.com

Business Issues

• Google chief’s fund set for fifth Israeli investment, www.globes.co.il
• Helping homeowners harness the sun, Official Google Blog

Link Building

• 4 Reasons Your Link Request Might be Rejected, Search Engine Watch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google has applied for Google Maps license in China: report, Reuters

Paid Search & Contextual

• Clean Up Your Google Display Network Strategy, www.roirevolution.com
• Gain More Relevant Traffic with Plurals Matching Change Coming Soon (U.S. and Canada Only), community.microsoftadvertising.com
• Google Display Network introduces new performance bundle, Inside AdWords
• How to Write a Killer AdWords Ad by Treating It a Mini Landing Page, Search Engine Journal

Searching

• Using Google Searches to Track Housing Prices, New York Times

SEM Industry

• #SMX Advanced Key Takeaways & Conference Coverage Roundup, AIM Clear Blog
• How Social Marketers Can Survive the Boss’ Paranoid Micromanagement, AIM Clear Blog
• SES Toronto 2011: Keyword Forensics – Online Marketing Blog, Online Marketing Blog
• SES Toronto: SEO is Dead. No it’s Not. – Online Marketing Blog, Online Marketing Blog

SEO & SEM

• Why Clients Have the Same Issues/Questions – It’s Not About SEO… But About the People!, SEOmoz
• 2 Little Known Ways To Increasing CTR And Quality Score, Certified Knowledge
• Google’s Quality Score Patent: The Birth of Panda?, SEO By The Sea
• Harvest These 5 Types of SEO Fruit, BruceClay.com
• It’s Time to Find a New SEO When…., Daily SEO Tip
• Keyword Research: Did You Dive Deep Enough?, Small Business SEM
• Top 20 SEO Twitter People to Follow, webmarketinggroup.co.uk

Social Media

• Twitter Users Want Businesses to Answer Them, www.emarketer.com
• What Makes a Good Corporate Blog, www.wolf-howl.com
• YouTube and Twitter erode Facebook’s dominance of social, weblogs.hitwise.com

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

• Google Maps Hates Small Businesses By Launching Local Folksonomy Descriptive Terms – Good post from Chris Silver Smith on the potential downside of Google's new “Descriptive Terms” that appear with Places business listings in map search results.
• SEO Best Practices For Restaurants & Eateries – Good SEO insights for hospitality businesses.
• The One Metric You Need To Optimize Across Paid & Organic Search – A lot of people talk about the overlap between SEO & paid search, but this piece actually has some actionable techniques and insights.
• Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – This is a very well-done, 101-level introduction to SEO tactics and strategies for bloggers.
• The Photo Strip: Facebook’s Most Underused Free Ad – Great examples of the number of ways that businesses can take advantage of Facebook's new photo strip feature.
• Interview with a Business Owner on the Effect of Groupon – This is a video interview of Rocky Agrawal and the owner of a cafe in Portland, OR –  Jessie Burke. She talks about the experience she had with Groupon and the result a special offer brought for her business.
• The Future of SEO (as of 2011) – Sam Crocker gives us a nice roundup of information shared by the State of Search bloggers at the recent A4U Expo in Munich. As we well know, it's these non-session gems that give us a real SEO education.