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SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 15, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Enhances Open Strategy: Mail, My Yahoo, Toolbar & MoreYahoo has announced several enhancements to their continued open strategy. Some of the updates revolve around Yahoo products including Yahoo Mail, My […]

Barry Schwartz on December 15, 2008 at 5:25 pm | Reading time: 7 minutes

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

From Search Engine Land:

Yahoo Enhances Open Strategy: Mail, My Yahoo, Toolbar & More
Yahoo has announced several enhancements to their continued open strategy. Some of the updates revolve around Yahoo products including Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, the Yahoo Toolbar and Yahoo Updates.
Newsknife Announces Top News Sites Of 2008
Newsknife, a site that every month rates the world’s top news sites for quality to help news sites improve their performance at Google News, has released its annual list of the most important news sites on Google news for the year. Rankings are compiled by the frequency of stories being included in Google news by a particular source. Newsknife’s top news sites of 2008 include:
Mahalo Answers Launches, Offers Cash For Q&A
Mahalo Answers is the newest entry into the crowded Q&A reference site space, but it offers a twist that its biggest competitors don’t: the chance to earn money by contributing to the service. Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis says the new service is the third and final piece of his original vision for Mahalo, making it a site that combines search, content, and knowledge exchanges. Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla in this field, with some astonishing numbers reported earlier this year: 135 million users and 500 million answers worldwide, and growing at a rate of 11 million new answers per month just in the U.S.
Announcing Our Newest Conference: SMX Search Analytics
Search marketing isn’t just about website optimization and paid search campaigns. To really know if your efforts are paying off, you need to test, measure and refine on an ongoing basis. Analytics tools are key to these processes, providing you with invaluable information about your visitors, customers and even those that “got away.” Our newest show, SMX Search Analytics, focuses on the processes and tools that help you maximize the effectiveness of your search marketing campaign, and give you a leg up on your increasingly sophisticated competitors. Some search marketers have reported achieving conversion boosts of 25% or more after …
Getting The Most From Paid Search In A Difficult Economy, Part 2: Valuation Models
How much revenue does a new customer drive to your business? How long, on average, does a customer last, and how much do they spend as a customer? Do customers acquired through one marketing channel generate more revenue than those from another channel? The answers to these questions collectively make up the foundation of any direct marketing effort, and are especially important in paid search, where every click costs you money. These days you need to know the answers or you may quickly find yourself without a marketing budget.
SearchBiz: Google “Less Trusted,” Eric Schmidt On Meet The Press, Yahooligans “Vote” For New CEO, Microsoft Releases First iPhone App, Mobile To Be Primary Internet By 2020
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Google is negotiating with ISPs for “a fast lane for its own content” and is backing away from net neutrality. However, Google vigorously disputes this characterization and explains that instead it is seeking to “‘colocate” caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities,” which has the practical effect of speeding up content delivery. Google argues that these relationships are non-exclusive and that the company “remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality.”
Google AdWords Gets Ready For Holidays With Special Dividers
Every year, Google dresses up the dividers between the organic search results and the paid search results with special holiday icons. This year is no different. David notified me that the special holiday dividers are now up. Every year, they do change up the icons they use, to give it an updated feel. Below, I will post screen captures for searches on Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, snowman, dreidel, and Chrismas tree. I am sure I am missing some. For the past years, see 2007, and 2006, 2005.
Google Search Suggest Get Ads, Links & Answers
Earlier this year, Google Suggest finally made it to the Google home page. The feature suggests queries as you begin typing in the search box. Now Google is testing providing links to web sites, direct answers and even ads that appear within the Google Suggest list.
Google Testing Enhanced Listings, “Pagelinks” & Auto-Spelling Correction
Google is testing a number of changes to its search results, including a way for select publishers to enhance their page descriptions, a way for searchers to jump to sub-sections of a web page and automatically correcting misspelled queries, to some degree.