SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 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 Q1 2011 Revenues $8.58 Billion, Some Investors Unhappy

  Google had a strong Q1 with $8.58 billion in gross revenue. Net revenue was $6.54 billion. Both figures were somewhat better than expected. Growth was 27 percent year over year. Some investors are expressing disappointment and Google shares are down almost 5 percent in after-hours trading. Here are some highlights from from the release: Revenues […]

• Search Sends More & Better Traffic To Content Sites Than Social Media, Study Says

  Search is the number one source of external traffic for content sites, handily beating social media by more than 300%. That’s according to the Content Discovery and Engagement Report, Q1 2011 from Outbrain, makers of a popular widget platform that’s used on dozens of major publisher sites such as USA Today, Slate, Newsweek and others. […]

• How To Build Business By Focusing On Click-Throughs & Conversions, Not Just Rankings

  Many website owners obsess over organic keyword rankings. Our clients often tell us, “We have to improve our rankings for “keyword X!”. However, focusing on rankings as the primarily goal of SEO will not likely deliver the results most site owners want which is to increase business from their websites. In this example, we will […]

• 6 Simple SEO Tips For Small Businesses

  In Marchex’s field research and surveys with small businesses, SEO consistently surfaces as a growing priority for small businesses. When we asked small businesses how important SEO was for their business, 53% said “very important.” Further, considering the ongoing changes to search engine algorithms (e.g., Google’s recent “Panda Update”) and the big impact these changes […]

• SEMPO: Google Dominates But Social Now Widely Used For PPC

  Yesterday SEMPO and Econsultancy released the 2011 “State of Search Marketing Report” featuring attitudes and spending behaviors of 920 survey respondents (agencies, advertisers) from more than 60 countries. The full report is over 130 pages. The report came out on the same day that the IAB released its full-year 2010 online ad revenue figures. Interestingly, […]

• Winners & Losers As Panda Goes Global? eHow, Bing’s Ciao.co.uk & More

  It’s only been 48 hours since Google expanded the Panda/Farmer update to all English language searches outside the US, and we’re already seeing reports about who the early winners and losers are. In some cases, the names are familiar if you followed the original reports when the algorithm change first hit in the US in […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• “Don’t forget Bob” and “Got the wrong Bob?” graduate from Labs, Official Gmail Blog
• Beefing up goo.gl with new features, Official Google Blog
• Custom background image themes, Official Gmail Blog
• Google Translate, Now With Voice Input, Google Operating System
• New Google News for Opera Mini, Google News Blog

Business Issues

• Facebook Steals Creative Director From Google, Business Insider
• Sergey Brin Wanted To Build An Ultimate Frisbee Field Atop Google’s NYC Building, Business Insider
• The truth about Google Apps and FISMA, Official Google Enterprise Blog
• Answers.com Announces Successful Completion of Acquisition by AFCV Holdings, LLC, ir.answers.com
• AOL Realigns Ad Sales Along Specific Categories; Five New ‘Practice Heads’, paidContent.org
• Google: The 10 Biggest Blunders Of Eric Schmidt, Business Insider
• Trouble @Twitter, Fortune Tech

Local, Maps & Mobile

• The Android Explosion: How Google’s Freewheeling Ecosytem Threatens the iPhone, Wired

Paid Search & Contextual

• More Google AdWords Phishing Attempts: "We stopped running your Google ads this morning", Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Can an Algorithm Spot the Next Google?, Technology Review

SEM Industry

• The Story of SEOmoz, SEOmoz

SEO & SEM

• 4 Ways to Optimize the SEO Funnel for your Long Tail Keywords, Search Engine Journal
• 99 Comparison Points Between Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, blueglass.com
• Analysing the UK Panda / Farmer update, BlogStorm
• Google Panda: They’re Right, You’re Wrong–Now Get Writing [opinion], Search Engine People
• How Pander/Farmer may be finding spun and plagiarised content., scott-herbert.com
• HTML5 Elements For SEO Benefit, dailyseotip.com
• Reports Of Improvements After Google Panda/Farmer Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Fresh Content Myth: Illustrated with Cats, www.blindfiveyearold.com
• Why Google 1 (probably) won’t work, Search Engine People
• Yahoo Stores Blocking Google: Impacting Google Product Search, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• April 16 Declared @Foursquare Day in NYC, mikebloomberg.com
• New Quora Product Feature — Answer Improvements, www.quora.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• How Google is teaching computers to see, CNN.com

Web Analytics

• In-Page Analytics and Internet Explorer 7, Google Analytics Blog

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

• Discussion: Does Every Business Need a Website? – A few recent studies have suggested that many small businesses are skipping websites and just using Facebook for their online presence. There are also many local businesses that don't have websites, but still have online visibility through Google Places, Bing/Yahoo Local, or even Yelp. For our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know … does every business really need a website? Or is it okay for some to use social/local business pages and nothing else? The floor is open!
• How Social Media Affects Paid Search – An in-depth post on social influences and pay per click advertising.
• The internet marketer's guide to the apocalypse – Ian Lurie's humorous (yet true) take on how some marketers are specializing themselves to death, and that those who know how to sell stories and products, not catch phrases and recycled concepts will survive in the end.