SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 2, 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:

• PPC Campaign Management Tools in the Facebook Era

  Trying to select a PPC Campaign Management Solution? This new Market Intelligence Report from Search Marketing Now will help you navigate through the many choices. Download a copy now – it’s free!
• Discovering Consumer Insights Through Search: SMN Webcast Thursday

  This Thursday at Search Marketing Now, Heather Dougherty of Hitwise and Jessica H. Simon of HealthCentral will present a webcast that shows how marketers can discern more about their consumer behavior and sentiment through search. They’ll show how consumer search queries can provide a blueprint for marketers to understand how consumer sentiment evolves over time […]

• Why Interaction Is Not The Same As Engagement

  If there’s one thing that the social media sector has in spades, it’s statistics. We’ve all seen the videos, most, it seems, with a Fatboy Slim soundtrack, that list the mind-bending figures about the continued growth of social platforms and devices. Facebook has over 750 million active monthly users Those users share over 4 billion pieces of […]

• 5 Metrics To Quickly Assess Site Quality When Link Building

  As site quality becomes more of a factor in how Google values sites, it’s going to become critical for link builders to be able to figure out what identifies a quality site. However, link builders aren’t miracle workers. Two years ago, we could make sites rank for just about anything by grabbing up links like […]

• Bing’s Battle With Google: How Long Is “Long Term”?

  On Sunday the New York Times ran a lengthy article about Microsoft, the search underdog. Directed at a very mainstream audience there was nothing new in the piece for readers of Search Engine Land. However it did raise some interesting questions, directly and by implication. For example: How many years does Bing (and Online Services) […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Calling from Gmail now in 38 languages, with lower rates to over 150 destinations, Official Google Blog
• Rate Google Translations, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Google Denied Bid To Have Internal Android Memo Sealed, Wall Street Journal
• Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook, pushpoppress.com
• Some 13 Percent of Twitter Employees Used to Work at Google, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Do Bugs Precede Places Updates?, Mike Blumenthal
• Foursquare: Service Gets 3 Million Check-Ins Per Day, Signed Up 500,000 Merchants, Business Insider
• Google Places Releasing Multiple Account Business Management Soon?, Search Engine Roundtable
• LivingSocial expands global reach with TicketMonster acquisition, ZDNet
• Navigation coming to Google Maps in SA, TechCentral
• New 45° imagery available for 35 cities, Google LatLong

Searching

• Get to your answer quicker with Instant Pages, Inside Search
• How to Search Google Plus for Content Not Just People, Michael D. Jensen

SEM Industry

• Interview with John Mueller, Senior Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, StepForth

SEO & SEM

• Local Adwords Ads Dominate the Hotel SERPS – The new normal? Or a Test?, Mike Blumenthal
• Proving PR & SEO Seriously Lift Advertising ROI, AIM Clear Blog
• 4 SEO Archetypes, managinggreatness.com
• 8 Places To Use Your Keywords, American Express OPEN Forum
• A Theory About Google: Authenticity and Passion as Ranking Signals, SEOmoz
• Bing Webmaster Tools Not Authorized Bug?, Search Engine Roundtable
• High Risk SEO: 33 Ways to Get Penalised by Google, SEOptimise
• How Google May Fight Malware Using Document Classification, SEO By The Sea
• How Mturk Protects My Site from Panda, Michael Gray
• Metricless PPC Management, Search Engine People
• More Web Pages Means More Search Traffic?, Search Engine Roundtable
• On-site SEO: optimizing for user intent, SEO Copywriting
• Why Has Our Traffic Dropped? Answering SEO Questions with Issue Trees, distilled.net

Social Media

• Facebook Officially Launches Ads API, Opening Efficient Ad Management Tool Development, Inside Facebook
• Facebook’s mobile users, Benedict Evans

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

• Bing Webmaster Tools Review – The most comprehensive overiew of Bing's Webmaster Tools that I've seen.
• Google Chrome becomes UK's second most popular web browser – Google Chrome is moving on up in the UK, becoming the 2nd most used browser, now ahead of Firefox.
• Better Understanding Link-based Spam Analysis Techniques – Some very advanced ways a search engine might detect link spam.
• Blogging, social media use skyrocketing at universities – Get this: "100 percent of colleges and universities studied are using some form of social media…" Some interesting stats on how colleges are using social media for marketing purposes, including Foursquare and many sites not called Facebook. :-)