SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 17, 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 & Bing (Still) Handle Underscores & Dashes Differently

  It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and so forth: Should we use dashes or underscores in our URLs? Google re-opened the discussion recently with a new YouTube video that highlights how Google currently handles dashes and underscores, and also reminds […]
• A B2B Community Manager’s Guide To Identifying True Twitter Friends, Part II

  Community managers aim to establish authority and offer value to a relevant community by way of sharing awesome, complimentary content, solve problems as they arise, and monitor and moderate topical conversations. Deep community managers know these forms of engagement must be tethered to actionable marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), making them community marketers, as well as managers. […]

• Yes, Google Is Testing Infinite Scroll Web Results

  Google has confirmed that they are indeed testing a form of infinite scroll web search results. I covered the news this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable sharing a screen shot from WebmasterWorld and a video from Waebo of this in action. Here is the video: As you can see, Google replaced the pagination feature […]

• Rimm-Kaufman Group Acquires AudetteMedia

  Two well-known online marketing agencies are joining forces. RKG (Rimm-Kaufman Group), based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced its acquisition of Bend, Oregon-based AudetteMedia. The acquisition allows RKG to continue expanding its service lineup. Long established as a leader in paid search marketing, RKG has recently added services such as shopping engine management, social media advertising […]

• 3 Simple Alternatives To Attribution Modeling For Search Marketers

  In the recent articles Why Search Marketers Are The Future Media Planners and How to Maximize SEM Efforts with Search Retargeting, we discussed how search marketers are ideally positioned to own a larger portion of the total media budget because the skills needed to buy display media are becoming more and more quantitative, just like SEM. Techniques […]

• The Ultimate Guide To “LinkedIn Today” & How To Optimize Your Presence On It

  In March, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Today, which was dubbed as a news source from your connections and peers in the industry. It has quickly grown to drive massive amounts of traffic to popular content. This service works by aggregating news from industries, connections and sources that you follow, then displaying stories in a visually appealing […]

• Google’s Pierre de Fermat Math Logo

  Google is celebrating the life of Pierre de Fermat, born 410 years ago today in 1601 Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France. He lived for 63 years, dying on January 12, 1665 in France. He was a lawyer but most well-known for his breakthroughs in math. Pierre is most well known for the Fermat’s Last Theorem, which states that […]

• With Its New Explore Box, StumbleUpon Adds Search To Content Discovery

  After about a month of testing with a select group of users, StumbleUpon today has rolled out its Explore Box — a new tool that adds a search layer to the site’s popular, but sometimes quite random, content discovery. It can be accessed at www.stumbleupon.com/explore or, if you’re logged in, at the StumbleUpon home page. […]

• Google & Facebook Bicker Over Invitation Sharing & Number Of Users

  Google and Facebook are at it yet again. Ever since Google+ launched, the two social networks have been trying to out maneuver each other any chance they get. Whether it be Facebook announcing video chat just weeks after Google+ launched with ‘Hangouts,’ Google+ offering Facebook-like games, or Facebook responding to Google+ games the same day… […]

• DuckDuckGo Honored As One TIME’s Top Websites Of 2011; Google+ & Quora, Too

  DuckDuckGo, the one-full-time-employee search engine that has somewhat aggressively challenged Google on privacy issues, picked up a nice pat-on-the-back this week: It made a TIME magazine list of the 50 Best Websites of 2011. In its short profile, the magazine calls DuckDuckGo “one of the most appealing Google alternatives to date” and has high praise […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Building a healthier, greener Google, Official Google Blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Foursquare Adds Inline Photos And Even More Polish To Their iPhone App, TechCrunch
• The journey to bring Iraq’s National Museum to Street View, Google LatLong
• Google Updates iOS Search App with Instant Pages, Quicker Filters, Read/Write Web
• Street View goes to the Amazon, Official Google Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Latest Display benchmarks now available, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Google partners with Amazon to show “Amazon Results”, BlogStorm
• Watch out for botnet-driven Google Dorks, the next automated cyber attacks, VentureBeat
• 10 Tricks for Finding ANYTHING on Bing, Dial Up

SEM Industry

• RKG Acquires AudetteMedia!, Rimm Kaufman

SEO & SEM

• 5 Steps to Improve your AdWords Account in 5 Minutes, Search Engine People
• Adjust Google Sitelinks Results in Google Webmaster Tools, Vertical Leap Blog
• Beating Google’s Panda Update – 5 Deadly Content Sins, SEOmoz
• Google Redefines Penalty in Webmaster Guidelines, websimple.com
• How To Implement rel="canonical" HTTP Headers Using The .htaccess File, Search Engine People

Video, Music & Image Search

• Creating new opportunities for publishers and songwriters, YouTube Blog

Web Analytics

• Why You Should Use Multiple Web Analytics Tools, SEO Book

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

• Discussion: The Impact of Google's 12-Pack of Sitelinks? – After a couple months of testing, Google has just formally rolled out a new sitelink display. It shows 12 sitelinks under the main listing and pretty much dominates the above-the-fold screen real estate. In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to hear your opinions on the potential impacts of this dramatic change to certain search results. Is this good for users? Does it impact online reputation management? Does it favor recognizable brands without giving the same exposure opportunity to smaller companies/sites? The floor is open.
• How to Choose a CMS Provider for SEO – Useful information to help you decide on which CMS platform suits you best from an SEO perspective.
• Using Data to Drive SEO Results – One of the cornerstones of any successful SEO campaign is the ability to use data to drive SEO results. I like to divide the data analytics process into three main phases:
• Some Nifty SEO Bookmarklets To Make You More Efficient – Good post with a couple of dozen handy bookmarklets for use in search engine optimization and SEO analysis.
• Inside Google’s User Experience Lab: An Interview With Google’s Marcin Wichary – Marcin is Senior User Experience Designer at Google, but his numerous roles and broad influence at the company are not conveniently definable. His fingerprints are on the code of Google products ranging from Search to Chrome. He gained publicity for his work on the Google Pac-Man Doodle, which he co-created with a fellow Googler.