SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 28, 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:

• Microsoft Q3 2011 Earnings: Search & Online Up 14% In Revenue But Still Losing Profits

  Microsoft announced their 3rd quarter earnings, beating Wall Street expectations. They reported $16.43 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, which was a 13% increase from the same period of the prior year. The Online Services Division, which is made up of Bing and MSN, had a 14% revenue growth year over year. Microsoft […]

• Performics: Mobile Impressions Cross 10 Percent Threshold

  Earlier this year Performics predicted that mobile search would soon reach 10 percent of all the search impressions its clients were seeing. Today the firm said that “mobile impressions accounted for 10.2 percent of all paid search impressions (desktop + mobile).” The company also said that mobile now represents 9.8 percent of paid clicks. It […]

• How To Collar Top Rankings: Barking Up The Unique Content Tree

  For my last round, I was supposed to share the results from that 300% sales explosion on the leather dog collar with nameplate page, but the folks at Google decided otherwise with the Panda update targeting content farms. Panda bit a few ecommerce sites pretty hard, so I’ve been helping out some new client-folk sort […]

• From Garbage To Gourmet: Fixing SEO Content Strategies

  Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Site Owner: I want to rank higher in the search engines! SEO: OK, you’ll need to fix a few things… produces a list SEO: And you’ll need to start a content strategy. That means 10-20 pages of new content per month, minimum, plus work to promote it. […]

• Confirmed: Google To Begin Charging For Some Calls From PC Ads

  After getting many advertisers hooked on reports on phone calls originating from their AdWords ads, Google will begin charging $1.00 for calls completed using the unique number it provisions, but solely when the call originates from someone using a computer who dials the number themselves from a phone. When the call is from a mobile […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Sprint, Google Voice tight integration is live (hands on), Engadget
• Yahoo! Mail is down for many [Updated], TNW Industry

Business Issues

• Exclusive: Facebook investors look for exits, Reuters
• MapQuest’s New, Eco-friendly Office, MapQuest Blog
• Tina Fey Bosses Googlers around, Inside Google Books

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Chopper crews saved by Google Maps during Queensland floods, Herald Sun
• Video Chat on Your Android Phone, Official Google Mobile Blog

Searching

• Google Tests Removing Underlined Titles In Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Toolbar Font Size Gets Huge: Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Tools In Development: Futureful, INFOdocket
• Six problems with social search, Econsultancy

SEO & SEM

• Bing Shopping Inactive FTP Account : Report It Here, Search Engine Roundtable
• Changes of Domain, Distilled blog
• Improving Reporting Efficiency and Relevance, SEOmoz
• Increasing SEO Complexity Lowers Result Diversity, SEO Book
• Keyword Specificity in SEO Keyword Research, KoMarketing Associates
• The Top Ten Comparison Shopping Engines Compared – Q1 2011, CPC Strategy

Social Media

• 9 Out of 10 Moms Prefer Facebook, Marketing Pilgrim
• A Hint of What Google’s Social Network Might Look Like?, SEO By The Sea
• Facebook shoots first, ignores questions later; account lock-out attack works, Ars Technica
• Facebook Stalking: The Latest Internet Trend, Hudson Horizons Blogs

Web Analytics

• Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics, Google Analytics Blog

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

• Simple and Exciting Website Usability Testing – Chris Butler provides actionable usability advice while detailing his company's journey with usability testing for their own web developer company website.
• Harnessing the Power of Flickr – This is a really, really great article that's ostensibly written for photographers, but contains all kinds of advice and explanation for any person or business that hopes to successfully use Flickr as part of a marketing strategy.
• Yelp Review Filter – Will Scott offers a (somewhat sarcastic) overview of the Yelp review filter and how a (spammer) might get around it.
• Coca-Cola's Marketing Shifts from Impressions to Expressions – I'm usually not a fan of articles written by CMOs of mega brands, but this piece by the CMO of Coca Cola is pretty insightful. Plenty of actionable tips and insights, so it's definitely worth a quick read.
• Facebook Launches ‘Send’ Button For More Selective Sharing, Announces 50 Million ‘Groups’ – Yet another social button has been created for your sites use.  This new Facebook button will share your content with a users groups.