SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 8, 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:

• Bing’s Streetside Already Facing Objections In Germany

  Well, that didn’t take long. Just days after announcing plans to operate its Streetside map/photo service in Germany, Microsoft is already dealing with its first governmental objection. Thomas Kranig, head of the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection, has issued a statement (in German; here’s a Google translation to English) giving objections to Bing’s plans […]
• Stop Treating Your Website Like A Broken Old Boat

  There are two prevailing mentalities when it comes to the investments we make in business. First, there are the investments we make in our future: things we build on, knowing our initial investment is just the beginning. We see our children this way, to draw a personal example. The second mentality sees investments as expenses: […]

• Gov’t To Okay Google-ITA Deal After Google Agrees To Burdensome Conditions

  The Justice Department (DOJ) has signed off on the Google acquisition of travel software company ITA, but says Google must meet certain conditions. The Justice Department said that as originally proposed the acquisition would have “substantially lessened competition among providers of comparative flight search websites in the United States.” The DOJ is requiring Google to […]

• Feds Ready To Approve Google-ITA Deal — With Ongoing Government Oversight

  After months of lobbying and speculation the US appears ready to approve Google’s $700 million acquisition of travel software company ITA, with some interesting “safeguards” or provisions. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Justice Department approval of the deal would come with ongoing monitoring of the deal by regulators: Google Inc. and the Justice […]

• 3 White Hat Ideas To Optimize Google Suggest Results

  One of the funniest moments at SMX West last month was the exchange between Avi Wilenksi (owner of Promediacorp, an SEO company) and Othar Hansson (Google Engineer). Avi had just discussed a case study of how he was able to alter Google Suggest results by “crowdsourcing” people to manually input queries—i.e. by somehow convincing them […]

• Spring Search Fever: How Users Look Up Garden Center Products & Services

  It’s spring, and garden centers everywhere are getting ready to service the needs of home gardeners and small landscaping services. Garden center search traffic is similar to Christmas retail search traffic in that the majority of the searches occur during three or four months of the year, peaking in June and falling off dramatically for […]

• Reports: Google CEO Page Ties Bonuses To Social Success, Reorganizes Google Mgmt. Team

  2011 bonuses for Google employees are reportedly being tied to how well the company fares in its efforts to integrate social elements across Google products. That’s according to two reports from Silicon Alley Insider — reports that say the news first spread in a company-wide memo last Friday from co-founder (and now new CEO) Larry […]

• Optimize For Conversions Using The AdWords Rotation Option

  AdWords recently introduced a new feature to their Ad Rotation Settings called “Optimize for Conversions” (February, 2011). To find this go to: Campaign Tab | Settings | Advanced Settings | Ad Rotation (expand by clicking the “edit” link) While many advertisers may find this to be a marked improvement over the old “Optimize for Clicks” […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Microsoft: Libyan government holding employee, seattlepi.com
• Google Is Likely to Face More Online-Ad Antitrust Complaints, Almunia Says, Bloomberg
• Google: Marissa Mayer Bypassed As Google Appoints New Head Of Local And Commerce, Business Insider

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Latitude Check-In Offers Go Nationwide, NewsGrange
• Richard Branson’s Virgin Oceanic sub to feed deep-sea data to Google Earth, Los Angeles Times
• Get a better view of mountains in Google Earth, Google LatLong
• Hotpot is going Places, Google LatLong

Link Building

• SEO Link Analysis Pitfalls – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords Sitelinks – Understanding, Planning, Coding, Implementing, Tracking and Evaluating, AdWords Help Experts
• Google Ordered To Disclose ‘Parked Domain’ Metrics, MediaPost
• Western Union now in Mexico, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Bing turns on HTML5 UI, LiveSide

SEM Industry

• Video: Google SEO Panda Update, Bing Update, Porn Targets Kids & Angry Birds SEO, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Google Update Brewing? Panda Coming Down On More Sites, Search Engine Roundtable
• If Users Treat Local Search Results Differently, Why Wont Google?, SEOmoz
• Why Expectations Factor Into SEO Success, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• Spam, spam, spam: Twitter’s arms race, The Guardian
• From The Rumor Mill: Facebook Plans To Enter China Through Major Partnership(s), TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• Aurasma Enhances Search With Images and Videos, New York Times
• Google speech recognition software for your cellphone actually works., Slate Magazine
• I Won’t Use Flickr Until They Release My Photo Hostages, TechCrunch
• YouTube is going LIVE, YouTube Blog

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

• Please Exit The Link Building – An excerpt: "Bad “link builders”, managed and supported by the terrible SEO Managers that love them – go to Google and mindlessly search. “KEYWORD links”. “KEYWORD resources”. Find a contact e-mail. Change keywords, find another e-mail. Random input in the Google toolbar. Check a PageRank or two. Brag about how high the PageRank of their link was. Repeat, repeat, repeat."
• Indexing the Real World: The Enormous Potential of Hyperlocal Data – As we build layers of information on top of location-based data, we're seeing an increased importance in helping people connect offline after first connecting online. As the author says "Foursquare is the tip of the iceberg."
• Newspapers and Social Media: Still Not Really Getting It – Another good read by Matthew Ingram on how newspapers in particular seem to have a difficult time with journalists interacting on blogs and social sites like Facebook and Twitter. They get publishing and curation, but they still just don't get social.