SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 8, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 1

  Most search advertisers have no question that testing ads is a good thing, and can lead to much higher performing campaigns. But is it possible to over-test and over-optimize, actually leading to worse results? The answer may surprise you.

• Why Most Attribution Analysis Is Fatally Flawed

  At SMX West last week the halls were echoing with passionate cries about attribution analysis. It seemed as if all topics (other than the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal) had taken a back seat for a moment, and suddenly the most important thing to consider was attribution analysis, specifically whether or not you are giving too much credit to SEM and not enough to other media.

• New Online Destinations Create Local Marketing Opportunities For Small Businesses

  These days, local marketing can seem a lot more complicated to the average small business owner than it used to be—and for very good reason. With advances in digital offerings, small businesses are now confronted with a growing range of possibilities for their ad dollars. Moreover, owners are faced with the harder task of […]

• SEMPO Elects 2010 Board Members

  SEMPO — the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization — has announced its 2010-2012 Board Of Directors. Officers will be elected from the board later this month. The board takes office as of March 18 and includes: […]

• Google Testing TV Search Service With Dish Network

  According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new TV programming search service with Dish Network:
  The service—which runs on TV set-top boxes using elements of Google’s Android operating system—allows users to search content from Dish as well as other Web video, like YouTube, and to personalize a lineup of shows, according to these […]

• Google Adds Public Data Search Tool To Labs

  Google has announced a new tool called Google Public Data Explorer that’s now available in Google Labs. The tool is a follow-up of sorts to last year’s announcement that a limited amount of public data would be used in response to certain Google.com search results.
  The Data Explorer tool includes data from the original three sources […]

• A Guide To SXSW For Those Interested In Search Engines & Search Marketing

  I’m attending South By Southwest for the first time, later this week. I have to say, already I find SXSW to be overwhelming — and I’m not even there yet! To get myself organized as to how to attack this monster, I starting making a list of search-related sessions. I thought it would be useful […]

• Search Engine Land Representing In Israel at SphinnCon

  Yesterday two of your Search Engine Land writers were in Jerusalem, Israel. Vanessa and I were holding a SphinnCon event, basically a small Search Marketing Expo event, for the Israeli SEM community. The event was given a home by the Jerusalem College of Technology for 6 hours while 30+ speakers from both in Israel and […]

• Media News Junkies Meet Mediagazer

  Techmeme is one of my favorite sites. It’s my morning “newspaper” that covers technology headlines from across the web. And now it’s joined by a new site just for media news, Mediagazer. I’m thrilled to see the new site arrive, even if it means more reading for me. Much of the “tech” news on Techmeme actually […]

• EU Privacy Push May Drive Google To Stop Updating Street View In Europe

  For a non-European traveling to Europe Google Street View is a great resource. This weekend, for example, the NY Times ran a piece on the Italian region of Tuscany. I then went to Google Maps to investigate how much of the region was available via Street View — a fair amount. That enabled me to […]

• Microsoft To Launch Bing Ads In UK vs. “Goliath”

  Microsoft is about to roll out a “a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign” for Bing in the UK market, where it has less than a 5 percent share of searches. Google by contrast has roughly 90 percent. According to the Guardian: The ads feature ordinary people asking for information and receiving nonsensical, “speaking-in-tongues” answers; one early spot […]

• Yahoo Gains AT&T, Loses T-Mobile Search Deal

  Earlier this week, we discovered that Yahoo would be the default search engine on AT&T’s first Android handset, the Motorola Backflip. That’s a first as far as I know, an Android device that doesn’t present Google as the featured search engine. However, in the bad-news column for Yahoo, according to PaidContent, T-Mobile has now swapped it […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• PDFMeNot PDF Viewer Redirects to Google Docs, Digital Inspiration
• Google Help Forums To Change Member Ranking System, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• Google Hands Out Salary Hikes, Bigger Bonuses To Top Execs, paidContent.org
• News is a lousy business for Google too, cdixon.org
• An update on Google.org and philanthropy @ Google, Official Google Blog
• High-Speed Network Poses Hurdles for Google, Wall Street Journal

Link Building

• How to Make Natural Links a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Site Visibility

Local, Maps & Mobile

• DANGER! Your Google Business Listing Is at Risk, www.searchinfluence.com
• Facebook’s iPhone Usage Jumps 20 Percent In Under A Week, All Facebook
• Another imagery update, Google LatLong
• Foursquare Just Made Your Location History A Lot More Interesting, TechCrunch

Other Items

• Bing’s Earth Day Photo Contest for Students, www.bing.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• New Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop Keyword Research Tool, timothycohn.com
• Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love, Ars Technica
• AdWords: First Page Bid Estimates, www.adwordshelpexperts.com
• Facebook Ads: “Keywords” Will Change to “Likes and Interests” This Week, All Facebook
• Right on Target, www.ysmblog.com

Searching

• Exploring Google Suggest, Google Operating System
• Web Searches Preview Hiring Trends, Wall Street Journal
• Bing shies away from gay-as-day search results in Arab countries, The Register

SEM Industry

• Yahoo! at SMX West and Real-Time Search, Yahoo Search Blog
• Best of SphinnCon 2010, Managing Greatness
• SMX West 2010 Photos, Small Business SEM
• SEO blogger victim of malicious SEO attack, www.sophos.com
• SMX’s SphinnCon Israel 2010 Recap, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Illuminating the path to SEO for Silverlight, www.bing.com
• Does the PageRank of Twitter profiles matter?, YouTube Blog
• Fetch as Googlebot Mobile and Claim your Sidewiki comment – added to Webmaster Tools Labs!, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Five common SEO mistakes made by e-commerce sites, econsultancy.com
• Search Marketing Success Stories, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Data Shows: Articles Published on the Weekend are Shared on Facebook More, danzarrella.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Is YouTube Buggin’? Check Out Our Current Site Issues Page, youtube-global.blogspot.com
• Bing: We Know About Your Images & Choose Not To Show Them, Search Engine Roundtable
• comScore Releases January 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings, comScore
• Upcoming Change to YouTube Video Page URLs, YouTube Blog

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

• Why Single Keywords are For Losers
• Liveblog Coverage from SMX West 2010
• The Expert's Guide to Keyword Research for Social Media
• 6 Ways to Optimize Your SEO for Misspellings – And Why It Pays to be a Bad Speller

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.