SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 3, 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 News Dropping Sites, Reviewing Inclusion Standards

  Google News has recently dropped “a number” of websites that it says were not meeting the company’s quality guidelines. At the same time, the company says it’s also reviewing its policies governing what sites are included as sources in Google News. While not revealing exactly how many sites have been dropped, a Google News spokesperson […]
• RIP Jaamit Durrani

  Jaamit Durrani, a UK-based marketer who was well known in SEO circles, has died. He was the SEO director for OMD UK. Durrani was killed in a London Underground accident last week, struck by a train, apparently knocked in front of it. That’s not hard to happen on the Tube. Platforms are often crowded, and […]

• ComScore: One In Four Have Smartphones In US

  Online metrics firm comScore released some new (October) data about the US mobile market. One of the headlines is: 60.7 million people in the US own smartphones. That, according to comScore, is 25 percent of the total mobile subscriber base. Android continues to be the largest gainer on a percentage basis among the major smartphone […]

• Google Renames “Updates” To “Realtime” On Left Bar

  Google has renamed one of the items on the left hand bar of the search results. The left bar was launched in May 2010 when Google completely revamped their search interface. The bar contains relevant search filters for your query. Some times it had a filter named “Updates,” when used, it would show you search […]

• Google Me: Is It Really Named Emerald Sea Or Google +1?

  The subject of “Google Me” has been discussed and debated and picked apart at length already. It’s already tired and the “product” hasn’t even launched. A new round of rumor and speculation has emerged from Quora (and TechCrunch). The supposed internal-testing name for Google Me was reported to be “Emerald City” but is now actually, […]

• SEM Trends For 2011: What To Expect & What To Do

  As this is my last column for 2010, I thought it would be a good time to share some macro trends with you and make some predictions for 2011. While some of my analysis corroborates generally held conceptions in the marketplace, I hope you find my other findings new and insightful. Trend #1: CPCs Will […]

• Google Buys New York City Office Building For $1.9 Billion

  Google to Buy New York Office Building from the Wall Street Journal reports Google has signed the deal to buy the NYC office building they currently lease for close to $1.9 billion. This was an expected move by Google, who currently leases about 2 or 3 of the floors of the massive building. The building […]

• How To Avoid Clunky Web Design With Holistic SEO & Usability

  There has been a dramatic increase this year in exploring the close relationship between website usability, web page search engine optimization and internet marketing. While some of you still meet resistance from site owners, far more of you report that clients now insist on a site designed for the best user experience that should also […]

• Viacom To Appeal YouTube Lawsuit Loss

  As expected, Viacom is planning to appeal its loss in a long-running copyright case against YouTube/Google. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Viacom may file its appeal as soon as tomorrow (Friday). Viacom sued YouTube in early 2007, claiming copyright infringement because YouTube users had posted thousands of clips from Viacom-owned programs. The case […]

• Senator Calls On DOJ To Limit Google’s ITA Purchase

  Citing a litany of concerns over competition, airfare, and technology, a US Senator is calling on the Justice Department to put conditions on Google’s purchase of travel software company ITA. In a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday, Senator Herb Kohl outlined a number of concerns over Google’s purchase of ITA — the independent software […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google upgrades its cloud platform, Computerworld
• Google Begins Emailing Extension Developers To Get Ready For Chrome Web Store, TechCrunch
• Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th, Engadget

Business Issues

• In depth: Google’s Simon Morrison on its new anti-piracy steps, Music Ally
• Daniel Tunkelang Leaving Google Maps to Join LinkedIn, Mike Blumenthal
• Undo, Steve Lacey
• Why Barry Diller stepped down as CEO of IAC, CNN Money

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Maps & Label Readability, 41Latitude
• Droid 2 Allegedly Explodes in Man’s Ear, switched.com
• Google Micro SERPS: Only 4 (Places) Results Showing, Mike Blumenthal
• How Local Search Ranking Works, Google LatLong

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense for domains makes it easier to setup your domains, Inside AdSense

SEM Industry

• Google Hurries to Congratulate Russia on World Cup Results… and Offends Russians, Profy
• Video: Google Nails Bad Merchants, Drops Publishers & Our 7th Birthday With Redesign, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Get the Google cop outta my shopping cart!, sebastians-pamphlets.com
• PPC vs. SEO: Sibling Rivalry at Its Best – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Top 10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog, Search Engine People
• What’s Going to Be Big for SEO in 2011?, Web Optimist

Social Media

• 7 Ways To Incorporate Crowdsourcing Into Your Business, outspokenmedia.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• Can we talk? Better speech technology with Phonetic Arts, Official Google Blog
• On demand is in demand: we’ve agreed to acquire Widevine, Official Google Blog
• YouTube Account Suspended With No Reason?, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• 9 Step SEO Checkup Using Google Webmaster Tools – Seemingly simple things but definitely worth doing
• Don't Forget The Importance Of Deep Linking – Deep linking is one of the most important aspects of any SEO strategy. Deep links can greatly increase your SEO effort, so don’t skip deep linking.
• How Do You Socialize an Already Social Brand? – Tamar demonstrates that even big brands need to work the tried and true social media processes in order to achieve optimum results.
• 25 reasons why I'll leave your website in 10 seconds – What makes people press the back button, shortly after visiting your website? Why do they bail out so quickly? And what can you do about it? For starters, evaluate your site with this checklist.
• An Inside Look at How Microsoft Handles SEO Across its Massive Site – Where Derrick Wheeler talks about how his position as lead SEO at Microsoft.
• The TSA has become God’s gift to YouTube – As the tools to capture the videos of people behaving badly are on the smart phones of more people citizen journalism is on the rise. Are there ways you can aggregate and use these videos on your site to drive traffic and links?
• Get the Google cop outta my shopping cart! – Now Google censors commercial search results, applying "quality of customer service" filters. Google cannot and never will be able to create anything more reliable than a human's bullshit-detector. “FAIL” is printed in big bold letters all over Google’s (or any search engine for that matter) approach to rank search results by the quality of customer service based on signals scraped from unstructured data crawled on the Interwebs.