SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 18, 2013

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Yandex Does What Google Can’t: Provides Bitcoin Exchange Rates
  How much is one US dollar in UK pounds? Google will give you a direct answer to that and many other currencies with the conversion tool that’s built into its search results. But when it comes to Bitcoin, Russian-based Yandex seems to have won the honor of being first to support conversion of that currency. […]
• Google Launches Improved URL Removal Tool For Third-Party Content
  Google has released an improved URL removal tool that the company says was specifically designed to improve the ability to remove third-party content from its search engine. John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced the change on the Google Webmaster Central blog. Google’s long had this tool, and how exactly it has been improved wasn’t made clear. […]
• Google’s Matt Cutts On Search Spammers: “We Want To Break Their Spirits”
  In episode number 227 of This Week in Google on the TWiT network, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts answered some questions from the hosts Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis. In one question, Matt explained that Google aims to “break the spirits” of spammers in order to encourage them to change their course of […]
• Report: Google PLAs Deliver 4X Revenue Lift For Retailers In Early Holiday Season
  It’s probably not too surprising to hear that retailers have doubled their year-over-year spend on Google product listing ads this holiday season thus far. After all, the paid format of Google Shopping had just rolled out in the fall of 2012. What is stunning, however, is the four-fold increase in revenue that retailers have realized […]
• A Look Back On One Crazy Year Of Link Building
  If 2012 was the year of Google Algorithm updates — Moz counted 37 big ones compared to the 15 in 2013 and 21 in 2011 — 2013 was the year that link building suffered from a serious identity crisis. It was sidelined, stretched, swindled and spit back out again more times than your average SEO […]
• 4 Trends Paid Search Marketers Must Address In 2014: Audience, Relevance, Social & Mobile
  Upon revisiting last year’s post on this topic, a couple of our bold predictions flopped and a couple turned out to be more reality than fantasy. Though we didn’t see Apple monetize the search results served up by Siri, we did see ad formats evolve to increase relevance and user engagement. The inclusion of ad […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Pantene “Labels Against Women” Ad Gets Global Launch After Winning Sandberg’s Recognition
• 4 Top Facebook Advertising Trends And The Stats Behind Them
• Twitter Launches Conversion Tracking, Now Available Globally
• Facebook’s Flawed News Feed Bumping & The Rebirth Of Bad Content
• Analytics: A Beginner’s Guide To Data Visualization
• Buffer & Mention Partner Up To Combine Their Social Media Monitoring & Publishing Powers
• Getting An Organization To Dip Its Toes Into Social (& Eventually To Dive In)
• Google Reorgs To Grab Brand Spend, YouTube The Anchor
• Top Apps Vary From Apple To Google To Amazon’s App Store

Search News From Around The Web:

Local & Maps

• Google Local Results Are Taking Over The World, Local SEO Guide

Link Building

• Analysis: Yandex Moves Away From Links as a Ranking Factor, PerformanceIN
• Link Building Services Australia 27 Experts Share Their Top Link Building Strategies for 2014, backlinks.com.au

Searching

• Bing in 2013: Entities, Apps and Maps, Bing Search Blog
• Bing tests “See all” drop down, allgoogletesting.blogspot.com
• Google Says They Don’t Control Content On The Web, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Zeitgeist Quiz, Google Operating System
• Wolfram|Alpha’s Best Blog Posts of 2013, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO

• 5 tips for getting your content on Google’s In-Depth Articles search result, Wamda.com
• Are Google’s changes improving the search experience?, Econsultancy
• Clarifying Cutts: What He REALLY Meant, Avalaunch Media
• Google Wants To Break The Spirits Of Black Hat SEOs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Hit By Panda and Confused About Low-Quality Content? Run This Google Analytics Report Now, Search Engine Watch
• Is your mobile website hurting your search rankings?, Branded3
• Should I use a separate IP address for each country-specific site?, YouTube
• The Biggest SERP Flux Since Penguin 2.0, dejanseo.com.au

SEM / Paid Search

• For Auld Lang Syne: A Look Back at 2013 from the Bing Ads Agency Management Team, Bing Ads
• Learn Paid Search Marketing and Become a More Effective Online Marketer with These 44 Resources, KISS Metrics
• The Campaign Analytics Checklist, Bing Ads

Search Marketing

• Easing the Pain of Keyword Not Provided: 5 Tactics for Reclaiming Your Data, Moz
• How to Build an SEO Company: @kaiserthesage asks @SEO_Hacker, kaiserthesage.com
• The Integrated Marketing Imperative: Transition from Optimizing Keywords to Optimize for Customers, Online Marketing Blog
• The New Look of Brand Search in Google, Covario
• The SEO Elf on the Shelf [VIDEO], Vertical Measures