SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 28, 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:

• Google Vows To Look At Deceptive Cloaking Techniques

  Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted that Google will be looking more at Cloaking in the first quarter of 2011. Cloaking, as defined by Google, “Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as […]

• Gender And Tech Companies: Where Are The Women?

  Google’s Marissa Mayer is profiled in a Q&A interview in Newsweek. It’s both about her past and about women in technology — why there are so few of them in Silicon Valley engineering roles. Mayer says she never really encountered any obstacles as a female computer science/math student at Stanford. She also discusses Google’s early […]

• Report: Logitech Revue Paused, More Trouble In Google TV Land?

  Last Friday a report appeared, citing the usual “anonymous sources,” that asserted Logitech asked one of its suppliers to “temporarily suspend shipments of [its Google TV] Revue set-top boxes for the period from December 2010 to January 2011 waiting for Google to complete updates or to launch a new version of its software for Google […]

• Do You Know What Your SEO Consultant Is Doing To Your Online Reputation?

  About a year and a half ago, I had an unfortunate run-in with a San Jose auto repair shop that resulted in a post about my experience that I thought would be a good case study for local businesses about how poor offline behavior can result in a disastrous online reputation. Fast forward to a […]

• Search In Pictures: Android Cake, Yahoo Christmas Tree & Boy On Chrome OS

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Android Birthday Cake: Yahoo Christmas Tree: Kid Using Chrome OS: Yahoo Van: Google Turkey Mehmet Akif […]

• Where Is Santa Claus? The 2010 Santa Tracker List, From NORAD To Google Earth

  It’s Christmas Eve, and you know what that means. Santa Claus is busy delivering toys to boys and girls around the world. Where is Santa Claus right now? Below, our annual round up of ways to find Father Christmas, from tracking Santa on Google Earth to monitoring him from your iPhone. NORAD’s Santa Tracking Monopoly […]

• How To Grind Out Q&A Content For SEO Success

  Every content-driven SEO strategy targets a tiny sliver of a giant Venn Diagram, with content that is either a) valuable enough that someone out there will search for it, and b) unique enough that it can rank. There’s one company that has turned that from a guideline to a credo: Demand Media. Demand Media’s financials may be […]

• Google Adds 100 Reps To Sell Google Local Ads

  Google Woos Local Advertisers from the Wall Street Journal reports Google has added about a hundred sales representatives to focus solely on selling Google Local ads. The products these sales representatives are selling are primarily Google Place Tags and Google Boost. Tags are a $25 per month label or tag appended to your maps listing […]

• Where Is Search Going: More With Yahoo’s Shashi Seth

  In part one of my interview with Shashi Seth, the Senior VP of Search Products at Yahoo, we looked at what Yahoo’s current thinking is about search since the Yahoo/Bing integration. But the point of this series of columns is not where search is, but where search is going. And that’s where we’ll jump off […]

• For 2011, Resolve To Stop Being Average & Get Real!

  Isn’t this the time of year we always get a little introspective? What worked this year and what didn’t? I suppose New Year’s is really the time for that, but go with me here. Let’s get introspective about one of the things that drives us crazy all year: reporting. Today, reporting is largely considered a […]

• Time Is Short for Automatic Yahoo To Microsoft Migration

  As you cross things off your holiday to-do lists and make your New Year’s resolutions, don’t forget to migrate your Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns to Microsoft adCenter. The deadline for U.S. and Canadian advertisers to use the companies’ transition tool is January 5. After that, you’re stuck with exporting and importing, though some search experts […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Tests a New Layout for iGoogle, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Brief of Amici Curiae Chilling Effects Clearinghouse Leaders In Support Of Appellee | Perfect 10, Inc. v. Google, Inc, JDSupra
• Google as Big Brother in the Forums, Mike Blumenthal
• O’Brien: 11 Predictions for 2011, including Google buys Twitter, Yahoo axes Bartz and Facebook hits the billion mark, Mercury News
• Twitter has a lot to prove in 2011, San Francisco Chronicle
• Carol Bartz Has Sold, Killed, Or Plans To Kill Over $4.6 Billion Worth Of Yahoo Acquisitions (YHOO), San Francisco Chronicle
• Google Donates $20 Million To Charities For 2010 Holidays, Search Engine Roundtable

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Pushes Education Software Through App Store, BusinessWeek

Link Building

• Linkscape is Faster, Link Analysis is Improved & Other Goodies, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Testing Borders Around AdSense Ads Again, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Sends Malware & Low Earnings To Publishers On Christmas, Search Engine Roundtable
• Microsoft adCenter Goes Down During Northeast Storm, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Five golden rings–5 tips for teachers and librarians, SearchReSearch
• Google News Targeted By Porn Site, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Video: Bing Update, Paid Links Regulation & Christmas Logos From Google, Yahoo & Others, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Key items to ensure a successful SEO project in a large complex business, Bruce Clay Australia
• Sending Video Sitemaps Q&A holiday cheer, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• 4 Easy and Effective Marketing Ideas You Should Be Doing … NOW, Search Engine People
• Google AdWords MCC Accounts Not Showing Spends, Search Engine Roundtable
• How Long Does It Take To Get Your Google Rankings Back After A Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
• Need More SEO Tools? Google Has Some!, SEOmoz
• What Are Mobile Sites According To Google?, Search Engine Roundtable
• You Can Now Cancel Your Google AdWords Account, Search Engine Roundtable
• "It’s on Google! YAY!" – Getting webmaster help in our forum, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• 5 Creative Solutions to Tough SEO Challenges, SEOmoz
• Developing Websites, Posts and Niches From the News, Michael Gray
• Why Landing Page Optimization is Crucial and How to Start, BruceClay.com

Social Media

• What’s on your mind?, Facebook
• Facebook Halts Social Data Append Opportunities: Direct Marketers Lose, Search Engine People
• Facebook tops Google in the UK for first time on Christmas Day, thenextweb.com
• Is Facebook one of the Largest Referrers to Porn?, Kevin Ohashi

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Image Search Text Focus Issue, Search Engine Roundtable

Web Analytics

• First Holiday Gift: iGoogle Gadget, Google Analytics Blog

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

• What Is Unobtrusive JavaScript? – An awesome usability tip that I've yet to see written about before…great job Ruud!
• Why Landing Page Optimization is Crucial and How to Start – Jessica Lee of Bruce Clay, Inc. explains why landing page optimization is so important to an Internet marketing strategy, and gives the basics on how to begin.
• Newspaper Launches Hyper-Local Location-Based Service – TRhe addition of a hyper-local, custom, location-based application to a traditional media effort is more than interesting. It shows a traditional media outlet again thinking beyond the boundaries of the print edition and even of their website.
• 11 online brand-building strategies for 2011 – A basic online marketing article…but it's both comprehensive and very actionable.
• Social Media Coupon Apps Become More Local and "Push" Offers To You – Being able to see the coupons saved on your smartphone, or, even better, to have saved coupons show up automatically on the phone’s grocery-list app, would make digital coupons much easier to use. This has come to pass, with apps like GroceryiQ (a Coupons.com product),Grocery Gadget and Grocery Pal, to name just a few.
• Social Media The Double Edged Sword of Secrets and Flash Mobs – Social media is great for spreading a message and organizing people, except when you are planing a surprise. How one local news source nearly killed a Christmas Flash Mob Chorus by publishing the details online before the event happened.
• Homeland Security Presents 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures; Proves It Knows Little About The Internet – Link out to news sites and blog posts, or deliver search results, to get your domain sized?  Mike Masnick sheds some light on the  Homeland Security's ridiculous grasp of law:  "It's become clear that this is a colossal screwup on the part of Homeland Security, ICE and the US government, based on a freshly minted ICE agent who doesn't seem to understand the technology, being lead around by the nose by MPAA staff with an agenda."
• A step by step guide for setting up a kick ass re-marketing campaign in Google AdWords – Re-marketing is ideal for advertisers with smaller budgets because you are preaching to the almost converted.  From our own experiences, cliick through rates are more than double that of a standard banner campaign, cost per click is much lower, and conversions are higher, which then leads to a lower CPA.This article will take you through each stage of setting up your own re-marketing campaign.
• Microblogging & the Growth of Crowdsourced SEO – Loren Baker: With Twitter, I became less interested in the traffic and ad impressions, but more engaged in the conversation. In many ways with the same passion or fury that I had been with iSearch in email discussions 10 years ago or ThreadWatch.org commenting 5 years ago. […] The Evolution of the Link has progressed over the past decade, and ultimately search along with it. We’ve gone from hand coded HTML to blogging to tagging and now Tweeting, Reblogging & Recommending. Push button publishing and voting is now a part of the normal online lifestyle and whether Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr users know it or not, they are part of a publishing migration that the search engines are slowly adapting to. Make sure your business adapts too!