SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 5, 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 Must Censor Google Instant In Italy For Derogatory Suggestions

  ZDNet UK reports the Court of Milan has ruled that Google has to filter the auto-completions that Google Instant provides in Italy. The issue is that someone was searching for a particular name and Google offered search completions for the name with con man or fraud. The individual sued forcing Google to filter out those […]
• NEW: Free Phone Support For Google AdWords Advertisers

  Smaller search marketers tired of navigating AdWords’ online FAQs are getting a key new tool today: Google’s phone number. The company says it’s responding to advertiser demand by supplementing online and e-mail support with phone support for U.S. and Canadian advertisers at 1-866-2Google. While larger advertisers and agencies have long had the ability to contact […]

• Can Likes, Pluses & Tweets Cleanse The Link Graph?

  Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license. It’s an extremely challenging time to be a link builder. Whether you see yourself as white hat, black hat, or as most are, gray, there has never been a time in my nearly two decades of being a content publicist / link builder when it was more challenging […]

• The Strategy And Success Behind Viral Marketing

  Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license. Who doesn’t love Betty White? The supremely funny octogenarian has delighted audiences for most of her adult life. Her successes date back to the days when radio was king and men wore fedoras without irony. Yet White’s popularity – at the twilight of her working career — is […]

• Google Likely To Face US Antitrust Case Later This Year

  Bloomberg provides more evidence of a coming antitrust investigation of Google by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or Justice Department. We’ve now been hearing these kinds of statements and suggestions — from various “unnamed sources” and “people with knowledge of the matter” — for months. The Bloomberg article says that the ITA-acquisition decision could […]

• Yandex: Not Copying But Searching For Google’s Underbelly

  How does Yandex compare to Google? Can a regional search engine success really survive in the longer term? Ilya Segalovich thinks Yandex can and reveals that Yandex has greater international aspirations. But to expand, Yandex really has to win the Russian market — compare the statistics coming out of Russia and decide what the future might hold! There are lessons here for search marketers everywhere!

• Confirmed: Google Product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg Stepping Down

  Google product chief Jonathan Rosenberg is not the first high-profile victim of the Larry Page era. While Google has officially confirmed to us that Rosenberg is leaving effective this summer, he is apparently leaving voluntarily. He is choosing family over making a new multi-year commitment to Mountain View. More Time with Family Google told us […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Google to Get $25 Million Breakup Fee If Rival Wins Bid for Nortel Patents, Bloomberg
• Nasdaq Plans Changes to its Nasdaq- 100 Stock Index, Wall Street Journal
• President Obama To Hold Town Hall Meeting At Facebook HQ, TechCrunch
• Real-time traffic graphs for the Transparency Report, Official Google Blog
• Whose shot? J.R.’s., Xooglers
• Will the Center Hold in Larry Page’s Google?, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Yelp Now Drawing 50 Million Users A Month To Its 17 Million Reviews, TechCrunch

Paid Search & Contextual

• Making Facebook Ads More Buyer-Friendly, Wall Street Journal

Searching

• Does PWS=0 Still Turn Off Google Personalized Results?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Explore Economic News with Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• Understanding the Average Position metric, Inside AdWords
• Do You Have A Google Penalty? Check Using Google’s Custom Search Engine, Search Engine Roundtable
• Early Ranking Factors Data an April Linkscape Update, SEOmoz
• Google Trademark Suppression Penalty, Search Engine Roundtable
• Image Optimization – How to Optimize Your Images For Search Engine Traffic, Michael Gray
• Ten things we can learn about Google SEO – from Angry Birds, WebmasterWorld
• The Keys to the SEO Sales Pitch: Preparation and Clarity, Search Engine People
• Use Local Google AdWords Ad Campaigns to Build Your Local SEO Strategy, SEO Book
• What if my competitor is cheating at SEO?, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• How To Manage Twitter: Do It Your Way, SEOmoz
• Twitter to offer brands Facebook-style pages, Marketing magazine

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

• Discussion: White Hat? Black Hat? Who cares! – I am tired of the labels- black hat and white hat. Sure there are good and bad ways to do SEO but these labels have been rendered useless as pejoratives.Rather than speak in terms of the color of an SEO's headgear, we should instead talk about "risk" – how much risk they are willing to take. But it's not really about how risky an SEO is- what is more important is the riskiness of their specific techniques.What do you think? will you join me in dropping the headgear pejoratives and start describing specific techniques as risky or not?
• Enterprise Social Media Blogging Strategy – A Corporate Blog that isn’t Corporate – Really excellent advice on how to make a corporate blog engaging and desirable to read.
• The Difference Between Web Reporting And Web Analysis – "I know it when I see it" says Avinash Kaushik, and of course he has more on the topic: "If you see a data puke then you know you are looking at the result of web reporting, even if it is called a dashboard. If you see words in English outlining actions that need to be taken, and below the fold you see relevant supporting data, then you are looking at the result of web data analysis."
• How Did You Get Started in SEO? – Chris Winfield of Blue Glass interviews several SEOs from all aspects (in house, international etc.) and asks the question… "How did you get started in SEO?"