SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 27, 2012

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

From Search Engine Land:

• StarCraft Themed Google Easter Egg “Zerg Rush” Calls An Attack On Your Search Results

  Google’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders to save your search results. This Easter egg is themed after the popular strategy game StarCraft, and may just be the geekiest Easter egg to date. In Starcraft a variety of races exist, one of which are “Zergs.” These insect-like creatures […]

• Private: Google Denies “Wi-Spy” Non-cooperation With FCC As FTC Hires Outside Counsel For Possible Antitrust Case

  Google has denied that it obstructed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigation into the so-called “Wi-Spy” (StreetView WiFi eavesdropping) privacy case. The FCC officially cleared Google of legal liability but fined the company $25,000 for “willfully and repeatedly” not cooperating with the investigation. According to Politico, yesterday Google filed a response to the FCC’s claims of non-cooperation […]

• Private: Google Street View Investigation Closed With $25,000 Penalty

  Bloomberg reports that the Google Street View wifi eavesdropping investigation has now been officially closed after Google has agreed to pay $25,000. Google filed with the Federal Communications Commission saying the U.S. Justice Department “would not pursue a case for violation of the Wiretap Act.” On April 13, the commission proposed a $25,000 fine for […]

• Understanding Your Analytics Versus Campaign Management Tools

  More and more, I have been interacting with executives using campaign management tools as their internal reporting systems. In most cases, these companies have an analytics package but prefer to use ad server data rather than analytics for internal tracking. Campaign management tools and analytics provide fundamentally different information, and while directionally similar in many […]

• Almost 1 Of Every 5 Google Searches Shows Rel=Author In Top 100 Results, Study Shows

  What began as an experiment 10 months ago is now showing up in nearly one of every five Google search results. I’m talking about authorship — Google’s use of the rel=author markup to identify content creators next to their content. A new SearchMetrics study published this week says that about 17 percent of queries included […]

• Penguin Update Peck Your Site By Mistake? Google’s Got A Form For That

  Was your site hit by Google’s new Penguin Update that targets spam? Are you not guilty as charged? Google’s got a new feedback form for that, as well as a method to report spam that should have been caught. I’m Innocent! The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the information on Twitter […]

• Google Webmaster Tools Expands Query Data to 90 Days

  Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else and […]

• Big Data Management: Forensics – SMN webcast next Wednesday, May 2

  Search Marketing Now will host a webcast next Wednesday, May 2 at 1 PM EDT. “Big Data Management – Forensics” will feature Brad Geddes, founder of Certified Knowledge.org — and also recently crowned the most influential SEM by his peers — and Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Marketing Biz: Google Penguin Update, Microsoft Patent Trade & Automattic Grows Up
• Big Data Management: Forensics – SMN webcast next Wednesday, May 2
• US FTC Hires Formidable Outside Litigator For Possible Antitrust Case Against Google
• Google’s Mobile Playbook Aims To Educate, Simplify Mobile For “Busy Executives”
• Google Street View “Wi-Spy” Investigation Closed With $25,000 Penalty
• Differentiating Your Affiliate Program

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• FTC Hires Lawyer To Help Lead Google Probe, Wall Street Journal
• Google investing $300M to build Iowa data center, The Associated Press
• A new home for SketchUp, Official Google SketchUp Blog
• Bing’s Path to Profits, thenextweb.com
• Google Says It’s Being Investigated in Argentina, Korea, Bloomberg
• Yahoo hits Facebook with two more patent claims, CNET News

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Apple kills Chomp for Android, gigaom.com
• Google Maps/Places Requiring Business Licenses For Verification?, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• Identifying Link Patterns with SEO Tools, John Doherty
• Linkbait Ideas For Small Business Owners, Search Engine People
• WordPress Theme Links Is Google’s Next Target, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Google Desktop Users Stuck In Tablet Search Interface, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• April Release Announcement: What’s New in Microsoft Advertising adCenter, adCenter Blog
• Big Improvements to Quality Score Diagnostics, PPC Hero
• Example email to a hacked site, Matt Cutts
• Getting Started with Structured Markup for SEO, seoskeptic.com
• How to Do SEO Web Design and Development, BruceClay.com
• Keyword Clustering for Maximum Search Profitability, Search Engine Watch
• More Affiliate Dirty Tricks: Device Targeting Brand PPC, RKG Blog
• Negative SEO: Myths, Realities, and Precautions – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• On Page Factors Correlation Data, The Open Algorithm
• Penguins and Pandas: A Black and White Issue, BruceClay.com
• The Google Penguin Update: Over-Optimization, Webspam, & High Quality Empty Content Pages, SEO Book
• Two PPC Wins and a Fail, Searching Beyond the Paid
• Video: Google Penguin Update, Panda 3.5 & Zipper & Other Google Logos, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Are You a Klouchebag?, The Atlantic Wire
• The Value of Opinion On Social Media, Performancing