SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 27, 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:

• Baidu Squeezing Google Out On Chinese Android Phones

  Open source is a double-edged thing. Whereas the free and “open” Android platform has been a boon to Google in most places around the globe, in China the story is apparently different. The Next Web reports (based on third party information) that the general manager of Baidu’s wireless unit claimed 80 percent of Android-based handsets […]
• Multinational SEO & Traffic Estimation: Converting from the SERPs

  It’s now well understood that maximising your conversion rate is critical to compete in the most competitive markets, but what’s often missed is how extending your conversion optimisation to the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) can influence your site conversion and increase the total available traffic from each search term.

• YouTube Founders Buy Delicious; First Step To Taking On Google?

  Delicious, the popular social bookmarking site that Yahoo wanted to get rid of, has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Could it be a first step for the duo to jump into the search space? From the press release put out by AVOS, the company run by the duo […]

• How PPC Can Improve Organic Search Conversions

  When formulating strategies and tactics for organic search, some of the most difficult questions that arise are related to conversion of organic search traffic. Are you targeting keywords that will bring not only traffic, but converting traffic, to your site? Is your page meta data optimized not only for high rankings, but for high clickthrough […]

• Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal: A Failure Or Success For In-House Marketers?

  After Yahoo’s 1st Quarter 2011 earnings call, quite a bit is being written about whether the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is a failure or success for Yahoo. In my opinion, the more compelling question to ask is: has the deal been a success for search engine marketers — especially those in-house? The Results Nothing screams marketing success […]

• Amazing Early Google Video Shows Boyish Larry & Sergey, Bored Employees Who Would Become Millionaires

  With management changes and numerous other efforts Google is trying to “get back to its startup roots.” So how about a video from when Google was really a startup. On the Xooglers blog (and below) is a video of a “TGIF meeting.” Taken in 1999 by Doug Edwards, who was then the director of consumer […]

• Learn Advanced Tactics at Facebook Marketing Intensive – June 9th in Seattle

  The 600-million strong Facebook community presents unprecedented opportunities for marketers. Attend aimClear Facebook Marketing Intensive June 9 in Seattle for cutting-edge free optimization techniques and paid Facebook advertising best practices. At Facebook Marketing Intensive, you’ll learn to: Effectively target your ideal market segments Establish realistic marketing KPIs and boost your campaign results Create killer Facebook […]

• Google Real Time Search Adds More Sources: Quora, Gowalla & More

  A Quora thread noticed that Google Real Time Search is now including more sources beyond Twitter, Google News, Buzz and other sources. The new additions appear to be from Quora.com, Gowolla, Plixi, Me2day, Twitgoo and some others. Public Facebook profiles and fan pages have been included for a while. So to update our Google Real […]

• Why Is The Yahoo/Microsoft Ad Deal Going Wrong? Advertisers Share Their Views

  Last week’s Yahoo earnings report showed another decline in search revenues for the once-strong search player, and it’s blaming the latest figures on the Microsoft relationship. Is this right? What could they do better to attract marketers, and more of their dollars, to the search alliance? I reached out to a few folks who live […]

• Search Engine Land’s Gadget Release Calendar

  Wondering when that next tablet or smartphone will be coming out? We do, too! To keep track, here’s a rundown of what we know about particular devices. Devices below are listed roughly in order of release date. I’ll add more items over time. This isn’t a complete list of all coming gadgets out there. Far […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android, Official Google Mobile Blog

Business Issues

• Google Buzz settlement called a ‘killer’ for e-commerce, www.computerworld.com
• Bids for Myspace Expected This Week, Wall Street Journal
• Google replants its garage roots in tech workshops, The Associated Press
• Tina Fey Visits Google, NBC Bay Area
• Yahoo Mulls Spinoff for Hadoop Software Unit, Wall Street Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Imagery Update – Week of April 25th, Google LatLong
• A royal view of the wedding procession, right in your browser, Google LatLong
• Beyond Claiming Your Place Page, Google Places Blog
• Google Pushes Hotel Booking Feature to the Front Page of SERPs, Mike Blumenthal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Discover v201101 – Advanced geo-targeting using Location of Presence or Area of Interest, AdWords API Blog
• New Interface Wednesdays: Search in Ad Review Center, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Bing announces significant improvements to instant answer and news searches, Bing UK blog
• Automatic expiration for Google Person Finder records, Official google.org Blog
• Everybody’s talking (and translating) with Chrome, Google Translate Blog
• How do we report a problem with our search results listings?, YouTube
• Must-Have Genealogy Tools from Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• Google Crawl Rate Impacting Sitemap URL Downloads, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Places Citations: 5 More Tactics to Earn Links for Your Local Business, SEOmoz
• Google Sitemaps Reporting Had Minor Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Testing Huge Sitelinks In Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• PR & Online Marketing: Teaching the Old PR Dog New SEO Tricks, AIM Clear Blog
• The 4 Basic Areas Of SEO, Search Engine People
• What Google Panda Has Taught the SEO Industry, SEO Theory

Social Media

• Meet ChoozOn, a Social Network for Shopping Deals, GigaOM
• Facebook Acq-hires Data Organization Startup Daytum, TechCrunch
• Facebook Launches Three New Sponsored Stories Types for Pages, Apps, and Websites, Inside Facebook

Web Analytics

• Email Marketing: 4 Great Things Google Analytics Can Tell You, Search Engine People

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

• Discussion: How do you explain being an SEO/PPC/Social Media marketer to the non-tech savvy? – Let's get a little more lighthearted this week, shall we? I bet you've been in this situation before: You're with a long-lost friend, relative, or someone you don't know very well. Or it could be your mom or dad, for that matter. They want to know what you do for a living. In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know what you say in that situation? How do you explain what you do to someone you know is not tech savvy?
• Why All SEO's Should Learn Programming – Ian Lurie believes that it's better for SEO's to suck at programming than not to know how to do it at all.
• The Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know About QR Codes – Here's a crash course on tools, tactics, and best practices to confidently help you jumpstart a mobile QR marketing campaign.
• Automatic Algorithms Are Fundamentally Changing The Shape of SEO – Interesting article by Andy Atkins-Krüger who discussed the search engine algorithms of the Yandex search engine with its founders, with some speculation on whether Google uses similar ranking and relevancy formulas.
• Google Defends Way It Gathers Phone Data – Research by a security analyst this week found that an Android phone collected location data every few seconds and sent it to Google several times an hour. Apple disclosed in a letter to Congress last year that its phones "intermittently" collect location data, and the company receives it twice a day.
• Decoding the Quality Score – An interesting analysis and study on ad position, quality score and click though rate for Google AdWords.
• Seven Ways for Small Biz To Generate Revenue With Social Media RIGHT NOW – The biggest problem with Social Media is that too many people talk about it and not enough people ACTUALLY USE IT TO GENERATE REVENUE.
• Great Content for SEO: Simpler than You Ever Imagined – Today I want to share an incredibly simple yet massively powerful process for building search-optimized, "great content." There's no fancy tricks and nothing propetiary about the approach, but it is rare indeed to find an organization that follows these steps and hence, it's a way to potentially differentiate and build a competitive advantage.