SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 2, 2009

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Bing Maps Steals The Cool Crown From Google

  Microsoft has had a collection of mapping tools and assets that haven’t been fully utilized or received the play (or usage) of Google Maps. But in an announcement today Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google.
  First, Bing Maps is introducing “Street Side” in […]

• Google Adds Googlebot-News User Agent To Allow Blocking Google News

  Google announced they have added a new supported user agent that can be used to block Google from indexing stories specifically on Google News. You can now specific the user agent Googlebot-News in your robots.txt file to exclude documents from being crawled and displayed in Google News.
  Google has several user agents for controlling how […]

• Q4 Search Engine Marketing: The Highs, The Lows & Giving Back

  The most wonderful time of the year is upon us, the fourth quarter. For search engine marketers focused on retail this is their time to shine, but for others (like travel), Q4 is the low season. Whether Q4 is a good time for you to do some SEM house cleaning, or to fire it up […]

• 3 Tips to Ensure B2B Content Gets SEO-friendly Citations

  Increasing the external links to your website is one of the most important elements of a successful optimization strategy. They can boost your rankings in the search results, drive traffic, and increase your presence across the Web. But securing external links can be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to explore every opportunity to acquire […]

• Yahoo To Integrate Properties With Facebook Connect

  Yahoo announced on their blog and press area that Yahoo will integrate their properties with Facebook Connect at a pretty massive level. The Yahoo announcement reads:
  Yahoo! Inc. today announced further integration with Facebook that unites social experiences from across the Web to provide a place for consumers to enjoy meaningful content and stay in […]

• Build Your Brand With Powerful Blogger Outreach Tactics

  These days it’s rare to find a brand, blogger or CEO that does not monitor his or her reputation by Google Alert or other hair trigger mechanism. Training your feed’s content-creation team to exploit this new reality for systematic blogger outreach can yield terrific results over time with very little added cost. Read […]

• Geo Data Added To Google Search Results

  It was just a couple weeks ago that Google confirmed the addition of breadcrumb information in place of URLs for some search results. Today, Google has announced another change to the green URL line: In some cases, “region tags” — geographic information about the web site — will appear next to the URL.
  Google shares […]

• Google Supersizes Images In Universal Search

  In a brief blog post this afternoon, Google has introduced a new layout for displaying images in universal search results on Google.com. Rather than a single row of equal-sized images, some searches may produce a single, supersized image next to two rows of regularly-sized images.
  Here’s what the image results look like currently on a search […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Now even easier: Use Google Docs & Checkout to sell online, Official Google Checkout Blog
• New in Labs: Default text styling, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Microsoft Claims Bing Is Doing Well Among 18-To-24-Year-Olds, paidContent.org
• Microsoft exec: Quitting Google as tough as stopping smoking, techflash.com
• Microsoft’s Mehdi on financial impact of Yahoo deal, CNet
• Black is Back!, Efficient Frontier Insights
• Don’t be evil, Craigslist, Startup diaries
• Fair Syndication Consortium: Google Responsible For Over Half Of Unlicensed Newspaper Articles, paidContent.org
• Google Patent Reveals Data Center Innovations, Data Center Knowledge
• Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook confront UK Government, Pocket-lint
• Microsoft Sells Part Of Fast Search To Rocket Software, paidContent.org
• Murdoch vs Google – biting the hand that feeds him?, Entanet Opinion

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Space, the final frontier, Bing Search Blog
• Google Employee Justin Baird Develops Show Your Vote Platform For Environment Campaigns, www.smh.com.au
• Keep your starred items in sync with Google Maps, Google LatLong
• More Street View updates: See the sea, see the world, Google LatLong
• New Web based KML & Geo Sitemap Tool Released, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• Mashing up links and traffic, BlogStorm

Paid Search & Contextual

• Category filtering for French, German, and Spanish ads, Inside AdSense
• Discover v2009: New Ad Types, AdWords API Blog
• Geo-Targeted Display Ads Set for Growth, ClickZ
• Google: Account temporarily disabled, davecolorado.com
• SEMs Claiming PPC Spend Has Little Impact on Revenue, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Step-by-Step Math, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things, Bing Search Blog
• Google: Little Kids Having Sex, Dancing Dirty & Grinding, Search Engine Roundtable
• What do you predict will be the big changes to search in the next few years?, YouTube

SEM Industry

• If You See This Ad, It’s Not Us, Search Engine Guide
• Introducing Sphinn’s New Editor, Matt McGee, Sphinn
• Rob Kerry Stepping Down As Sphinn Editor, Sphinn
• SES Chicago: 5 Ways Multiply Conference ROI, Online Marketing Blog
• Six Years Covering the Search Marketing Community, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Hard facts about URI spam, sebastians-pamphlets.com
• Diagrams for Solving Crawl Priority & Indexation Issues, SEOmoz
• Google Confirms Bug With Sitelinks Where You Can Link To Competitors, Search Engine Roundtable
• Natural search vs paid search spend & traffic share for big brand retailers, BlogStorm
• Page speed load times in Google, David Naylor
• When Impressions Count: the Efficient Frontier of Display Advertising, Efficient Frontier Insights
• Yahoo Search Unbanning Web Sites After Years?, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
• How to Create Rich HTML Tabs on Your Facebook Page, 10e20
• Digg Bets Big On A New API, Forbes
• Really?, TechCrunch
• The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket – Part Three, Search Engine Guide

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics Launches Asynchronous Tracking, Google Code Blog

Other Items

• Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time, Official Google Blog

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.