SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 7, 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:

• Should You Ban A Country From Visiting Your Website?

  Website owners often put a website online and let the entire world access its contents. Essentially, they are claiming to service the world. But how often is this really the case? We found that on average, 10% of our clients’ website traffic was coming from outside of their geographic target market. This average is from […]

• Yahoo BOSS Version 2 Launches With Pricing and Branding Requirements And Microsoft’s Search Index

  Yahoo has just launched version 2 of BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service). When they announced this version in February, I wrote about the history of BOSS and detailed the changes. The big changes are: The web and image search results are now sourced from Microsoft’s search index Yahoo branding attribution is now required (the […]

• Bing Launches A Killer iPad App

  Not an “iPad killer” . . . a killer app for the iPad. Bing’s iPhone app was impressive, but with its new iPad app Microsoft has created an even more impressive app for a rival platform. It’s a great and very useful tool for the tablet. And yes, it’s a lot more fun and interesting […]

• YouTube Is The Real “Google TV”

  Google TV, the company’s much-hyped “Connected TV” effort that brought together Sony, Logitech and Dish Networks, has failed to deliver on its promise — at least so far. While sales figures haven’t been released the public isn’t biting, it would appear. Google TV (the product) may ultimately join the ranks of Google Wave as an […]

• HP’s TouchPad To Use Bing Maps As Default

  The Pre Central blog offered up some screens from the forthcoming webOS tablet, the HP-Palm TouchPad, which show Bing as the default maps provider on the device. The screens are reportedly authentic because they were obtained from the webOS 3.0 emulator. What this also suggests is that on HP-Palm devices beyond its TouchPad Bing could […]

• Google To Open Office In Beverly Hills

  The Hollywood Reported reports Google is opening an office in Beverly Hills, California. Google is opening a 13,465-square-foot office, which will be the space used by Google’s entertainment division. That includes some of the YouTube staff and others involved in that area. The location is at 331 Foothill Rd, Beverly Hills and the move is […]

• YouTube Plans Push Into Original Content: WSJ

  It may have sounded a bit silly a few months ago when Italy announced it would regulate YouTube like a TV station, but now there’s this: According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to spend upwards of $100 million on professionally-produced, original videos. The WSJ cites “people familiar with the matter,” who say […]

• If Google Was New York City & Online Piracy Was Knock-Off Handbags…

  Imagine my shock when I used Bing to search for “Where to buy knockoff products in New York” and found a treasure trove of information on the web leading me to an apparently little-known area of New York City where such products are available around Canal Street: Imagine my further shock to discover that major […]

• How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work

  It’s a well known feature of Google. Start typing in a search, and Google offers suggestions before you’ve even finished typing. But how does Google come up with those suggestions? When does Google remove some suggestions? When does Google decide not to interfere? Come along for some answers. Google & Search Suggestions Google was not […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Fixing the little things, Official Gmail Blog
• Change is in the air!, ymailblog.com

Business Issues

• Google at White House as Washington Mulls Spectrum Sales, Bloomberg
• Google Said To Have High Level Mole At Twitter, Makes Massive Counteroffers To Retain Employees, TechCrunch
• AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s 2010 Compensation Drops 40% to $15.3 Million, The Hollywood Reporter
• Exclusive: Yahoo Loses M&A Head to Zynga, AllThingsD
• Google-ITA decision may be just days away: source, Reuters
• Google: Larry Page Ties ALL Employee Bonuses To Social Strategy’s Success (Or Failure!), Business Insider
• So you want to work at Google, Fortune
• Yahoo’s Local Strategy Takes Shape, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Bing Do You Know How to Save a Location or Business to Bing Favorites On Your BlackBerry Smartphone?, Bing for Mobile Blog
• Gartner Says Android to Command Nearly Half of Worldwide Smartphone Operating System Market by Year-End 2012, gartner.com
• Google begins tablet version of Chrome OS, CNET News
• Google’s Rubin Hits Android Critics: ‘Our Approach Remains Unchanged’, paidContent.org
• Putting Android to work for your business, Official Google Enterprise Blog
• Tablets are changing the way consumers engage with content, Google Mobile Ads Blog

Link Building

• Fresh Site Explorer – The story develops, Majestic SEO Blog
• Seasonal Link Building, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google AdWords MCC Accounts Bug With "Home" Tab, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Crawler Face-off: Xenu vs. Screaming Frog, SEOmoz
• Love & Farming vs Exploitation: Who’s Winning?, SEO Book
• SSL Information To Be Used By Google For Ranking Purposes?, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Unexpected Perks of Ranking 1st on Yahoo!, Distilled blog

Social Media

• Facebook Promotes Social E-Commerce, New York Times
• How the Real Estate Industry Is Using Social Media, Mashable
• Twitter’s new search favors Groupon’s many accounts over local media organization accounts, Poynter Online
• Facebook Open Sources its Servers and Data Centers, gigaom.com
• How To Track Your Social Media Strategy, SEOmoz
• LinkedIn for Android: Ready for Business, The LinkedIn Blog
• US to use Facebook, Twitter to issue terror alerts, Yahoo! News

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

• How To Use Events as Goals in Google Analytics (V5) – Nice guide to enhanced goal and conversion tracking for the new GA. – Google Analytics (Version 5 Only) now allows you to use events as goals. Events as a goal type…why does this matter? Well, because you can now track more types of site interactions as goals.
• Proven Tips for Reducing Your Abandoned Carts – Before you begin an abandoned cart program, you need to know where your abandons are happening.  On the view cart page?  In the checkout?  On the product page?
• What Does Local Product Availability on Google Place Pages Look Like – Yesterday, Google announced that merchants could now include local products directly on their Places Page. This is part of a long term trend to provide significantly more granular and time based information about local businesses on-line. This has long been part of Google’s local vision that has finally materialized in a way that local merchants can now take advantage of.
• How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work – Comprehensive information from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land: "It’s a well known feature of Google. Start typing in a search, and Google offers suggestions before you’ve even finished typing. But how does Google come up with those suggestions? When does Google remove some suggestions? When does Google decide not to interfere? Come along for some answers."