SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 2, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Hot On Sphinn: PPC Bid Management, Link Building Via Twitter, Clueless SEOs, & More

  Every day, your peers in the search industry are reading and voting on articles that are shared on our sister site, Sphinn. The most popular content goes “hot” — i.e., it reaches the Sphinn home page — when it acquires enough community votes or when a Sphinn editor promotes it as an “Editor’s Choice.”
  This is […]

• Realizing Greater ROI From Onsite Behavioral Targeting

  If you had the time and resources to personalize every sales pitch, every piece of marketing collateral, every special offer, how would that affect your bottom line? If your customers told you, “I don’t want that, but if you offer me this in a different color, I’ll buy three,” you would listen, right? […]

• Bing Shopping Now Free To Merchants

  Brian Smith reports that Bing Shopping is now free for merchants to submit their product feeds and obtain traffic from Bing. I tried to find information from Bing on this, but I guess it is not published yet.
  We know Microsoft officially dropped the Cashback as of July 30, 2010. Brian said dropping Cashback […]

• DoubleClick Founder Launches Structured “Decision Engine” FindTheBest.com

  At first blush it wasn’t impressive to me. I assumed from a quick look that FindTheBest was just a collection of links and “best of” lists. It thus seemed strange that DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor would come out of quasi-retirement to launch a basic directory site. But as we got into it a bit more […]

• When More Is Actually Less In Paid Search

  6 Common Business Fallacies can lead to costly mismanagement of a paid search program.

• What Google’s Preferred AdWords API Pricing Change Means For Enterprise Search Marketers

  Back in late April, Google announced that it was changing the way AdWords would work for agencies and application providers managing paid search via the AdWords API. This seemingly simple change from Google levels the playing field between in-house and externally developed search engine marketing tool providers.

• Google And Yelp Express “Complicated” Relationship In Conference Interview

  There’s nothing that jaded and weary conference goers love more than to see some “red meat” conflict between panelists during a session. And that’s what TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld repeatedly tried to elicit in an on-stage interview of Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Google’s John Hanke during the Social Currency CrunchUp event yesterday in Palo […]

• Twitter Helps You Find New People To Follow

  Twitter is launching a new tool called “Suggestions for You” in the hopes of making it easier for users to find the right accounts to follow. The tool is rolling out today; I don’t have it on my main @mattmcgee account, but it does appear on the home page of my @atu2 account. (atu2.com is […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• 8 future Gmail features/changes revealed with a single image, Geek.com

Business Issues

• Bing and Google in an Arms Race for Features, New York Times
• Facebook Boasting They Have Google’s Social Strategy Product Documents, TechCrunch
• Google’s Quarterly Acquisition Tab: $148 Million For 11 Startups, paidContent.org
• Yahoo Decides Not To Replace Sales Chief Bradford, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S., gigaom.com
• Google Earth used to find unpermitted pools in NY, BostonHerald.com
• King Of Bing Maps: Who Shall Be King?, Bing Community

Link Building

• Longer Anchor Text As a Link Building Strategy, Search Engine Roundtable
• What to Look For in a Link Builder, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Signing Off, Yahoo Publisher Network Blog

Searching

• The Future of (Offline) Shopping Search Engines, Search Engine Watch

SEM Industry

• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: July 30, 2010, Search Engine Roundtable
• What Does Carmen Electra, Cyber-Terrorism and Meg Whitman Have In Common? eBay!, Digital Point Forums

SEO & SEM

• Are Chrome’s ‘usage statistics’ used in evaluating site speed?, YouTube
• Does Google Send Higher Converting Buyers To Higher Quality Score Ads?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Interesting Comment From Google On Most Comment Keywords Report, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO Final Steps: Content Promotion for Local Blogs, Hyperlocal Blogger
• The Top 11 SEO Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them) …AKA STOP THE MADNESS!, Search Engine Journal
• Three Ways to Create a Better Performing Website (Using One Sneaky Tactic), SEOmoz

Social Media

• Does Facebook Want You To Leave Facebook?, AIM Clear Blog
• Google, Twitter and Facebook build the semantic web, New Scientist
• How Social Media is Turning Us Into Responsible Voters, blueglass.com
• Tumblr, a New Spin in the Flurry of Social Media, New York Times
• What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity, Nielsen Wire

Video, Music & Image Search

• Yahoo Image Search Now Sending More Traffic Than Google?, Search Engine Roundtable

Web Analytics

• Ad Tracking Is Getting More Detailed – But Is That A Problem For Consumers?, paidContent.org

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

• Blog on Trending Topics to Get Noticed and Get Ranked! – Your blogging style is up to you. I for one usually shy away from newly hot and trending topics for various reasons: firstly, I am not based in the USA and thus I am slow in learning what everyone says, secondly, seeing great coverage, I usually have hard time finding what to add.
• What is Truly Automated, Adaptive PPC Bid Management Technology? – Most PPC bid management really isn't as automated as they make it out to be.  Truly automating it would mean that the tools understand all the little nuances without any manual intervention by a human.
• Site Speed: Reducing Page Load Times and Increasing Pages Crawled – Since Google announced that they were using Site Speed as a part of the ranking algorithm, it has proven to increase the pages crawled and rankings. Here is some case studies and tips on site speed.