SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 24, 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:

• Google & Apple Extend Search Deal, Emerge As “Frenemies” Not “Froes”

  WPP Group’s CEO Sir Martin Sorrell was the one who coined the term “froe” to describe Google. He said in 2008 that Google had gone from being a “frenemy” to a “froe” of the agency holding company. Presumably “froe” is a more direct competitor than a “frenemy”– at least that’s the implication. Google and Apple started […]
• Social Voting Sites Dying & Struggling

  It’s been a rough week for two of the bigger players in the social voting space. Propeller, an AOL-owned property that grew out of the old Netscape website, has announced on its home page that the site is shutting down on October 1st. The change was spotted by Search Engine Watch. Propeller was pitched as a […]

• 23 Ways To Slam-Dunk Your Mobile Conversions For The Holidays

  The 2010 retail holiday season kicks off in just 60 days. If you’re like me, you already sense the Christmas shopping budget is sunk, having to decide not which mobile device to purchase, but how many. Kindles for the kids? New iPhone for the wife? iPad for the family? What about the grandparents? And what […]

• And The Winner Is: Search’s Rich List + Most Valuable “Startups”

  People love lists. Publishers love lists too because they sell copies of traditional print newspapers and magazines and, online, they generate lots of clicks and page views. For example, the HuffingtonPost has become a veritable archive of slideshows: “the 10 best places to live,” the “hottest beach bods of the summer” and so on. US […]

• Louisville, Kentucky: The City Without A Name (In Google Maps)

  Here’s another Google Maps oddity, tipped to us by “emallaich” earlier this week: Louisville doesn’t appear in Google Maps. The city is there — Louisville, Kentucky — but you won’t see the name “Louisville” used anywhere to identify the city.
  Start with a search on Google.com for louisville kentucky: […]

• Mobile Searcher Behavior Should Drive Design & SEO

  Mobile searchers have different goals, motivations, and limitations than desktop searchers. What are things you should consider before building and optimizing a website for mobile searchers?

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• More Hotmail updates on the way, windowsteamblog.com
• One on One: Scott McMullan of Google Apps, smallbiztrends.com

Business Issues

• Blog Post from Mark Zuckerberg, www.facebook.com
• Eric Schmidt: Forget Apple, Facebook, Bing’s Our Biggest Problem, www.businessinsider.com
• For Facebook, Movie Damage Control, Wall Street Journal
• If Yahoo Goes Private And Bartz Is Fired, Quora Wins, TechCrunch
• Justice Department Requires Six High Tech Companies to Stop Entering into Anticompetitive Employee Solicitation Agreements, www.justice.gov

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Facebook Places Debuts in Canada, Mashable
• Google Maps – Report A Problem Process “In the Weeds”, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Maps Experiencing Difficulties – Do not change the channel, I repeat do not change the channel, Mike Blumenthal
• Street View Trike Spotted in Denmark, googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
• The State of YouTube Mobile: Viewing up 160%, Operator Partnerships Sought, Read/Write Web

Other Items

• $10 million for Project 10^100 winners, Official Google Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• 9 Tips for Paid Search Newbies, Search Engine Watch
• Clearing the Air: Google Does Not Turn on Auto Bidding, www.bgtheory.com
• PPC In-House or Agency: Decisions, Decisions – Part I, beyondthepaid.blogspot.com
• PPCBlog Review – An Inside Look at PPC Blog, www.sugarrae.com

Searching

• Beta release from Hunch labs: The Hunch ‘Bookmarklet’, blog.hunch.com
• Google Instant: Energy Saver or Sucker?, TechCrunch

SEM Industry

• 70% Say Sphinn Is Dead Or Simply Don’t Care, Search Engine Roundtable
• Introducing Certified Knowledge: PPC Tools, Training, & Community, www.bgtheory.com
• Local Search Toolkit Interview with Mike Belasco and Mary Bowling from SEOverflow, www.expand2web.com

SEO & SEM

• 10 Almost Instant Responses to Your Google Instant Questions, blog.hubspot.com
• 3 Tips for a Faster Website, www.getelastic.com
• How Competitive Intelligence Can Help Your Online Marketing Strategies, seoaware.com
• How Google Instant impacts big brands, BigMouthMedia
• Small Biz Marketing: More Bad News for Yellow Pages, Small Business SEM
• The Future Shopper, ClickZ
• Video SEO Basics – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Why Journalists Need To Stop Resenting SEO, Outspoken Media

Social Media

• Facebook apologizes for worst outage in 4 years, news.idg.no
• More Details on Today’s Outage, www.facebook.com
• 22 Social Media Marketing Management Software, Online Marketing Blog
• Content management strategy – 9 places to find social content within your organization, www.arikhanson.com
• Discover Facebook Pages, blog.facebook.com
• Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets, zachholman.com
• Strategy as Tires: The Story Behind A Twitter Phenomenon, Search Engine People
• TheLikestream, Digg For Facebook “Likes”, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• How To Become Famous on YouTube, www.blueglass.com

Web Analytics

• New! Status Dashboard, Google Analytics Blog

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

• Social Voting Sites Dying & Struggling – It’s been a rough week for Propeller and Digg.  Propeller announced the site is shutting down on October 1st while a report from Hitwise annouced Digg is showingg dramatic losses in traffic from U.S. and U.K. Internet users. So where is everyone going??  Reddit?  Maybe not….
• Why Journalists Need To Stop Resenting SEO – Lisa Barone: "The Web and SEO have changed journalism. It’s made it increasingly important that your content is findable by the people who want to find it. You can drag your feet and try to ignore that OR you can embrace it. Because being a journalist who is fluent in SEO is only going to make you better. It’s only going to bring you more traffic, more attention, and further connect you with the people you’re writing about. As a journalist, isn’t that what you’re after anyway?"
• Making the Most Out of Google Places – Are you taking full advantage of your local business listing?  This guide gives you tips on how you can maximize your listings visibility in the Google local business results.
• Best Practices for Designing Usable Websites for Kids – If you’re designing a website for young children, it’s important to note the differences between the way kids use the Internet and the way teens and adults do. Kids are much less forgiving in a lot of ways than adults, and will more quickly abandon a site that doesn’t meet their needs and expectations.
• SEO In The Newsroom – From the Journalists Perspective – Even if an organization has a good SEO strategy, it still needs to be communicated effectively to the newsroom, so journalists don’t feel like they’ve been turned from trained professionals into slaves to Google Trends.A look at how some journalists at newspapers like the Washington Post feel SEO has taken driving seat in the newsroom.
• Word-of-mouth still largely an offline phenomenon: study – Ask a brand marketer about word-of-mouth marketing and chances are he or she will talk to you about the internet. After all, with the advent of social media, consumers are most likely going to talk to their friends, family members and associates about your brand online, right?
• Could Yahoo Launch a Smarter Instant Search? – Bill Slawski unpacks the Yahoo search patent that was granted earlier this year that's very similar to Google's Instant Search feature. Yahoo's version is a bit more restrained, as shown on the screenshots Bill includes, and he wonders if it's smarter than Google's, too. Interesting read.