SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 8, 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 Adds New Filtering & Refinement Options To Keyword Tool

  The Google AdWords Blog announced a few new features recently added to the new keyword tool released in September 2009. The new features come from feedback from the AdWords community and include: Search for keywords in your list by inclusion or exclusion search boxes Expand your keyword list with a new “more like this” button […]
• Top 5 Reasons Why Affiliates Are Our “Dumb” Marketing Channel

  Did I just say that affiliates are “dumb?” You bet I did. I am referring to the definition of “dumb” which means “lacking some usual attribute or accompaniment; especially having no means of self-propulsion like a dumb barge.” What I mean is that affiliate marketers do not have the same advantages that your other marketing […]

• Easy Ways To Keep Up With The Search News

  We publish a huge amount of search marketing and search engine-related news here on Search Engine Land. I thought it was worth a reminder on the best ways to keep up with it all. You could, of course, come back to Search Engine Land throughout the day to see the latest news articles, briefs, columns […]

• Google’s New Social Project Is … A Toolbar? Yawn.

  Google Me. Google Emerald Sea. Google +1. Those are some of the names thought to be in play for Google’s much hyped, discussed, and anticipated social project. Maybe “overhyped” is the right word because, if TechCrunch got its hands on a real screenshot (and it appears they did), it’s just a toolbar with a “share” […]

• Google’s Mayer On “Contextual Discovery” Search

  TechCrunch has live blog coverage of the interview by Michael Arrington and Google’s Marissa Mayer at the LeWeb ’10 in Paris, France. Mayer talked about Google’s next big thing, she coined it “contextual discover.” Contextual discovery, Mayer explained, encompasses “local Search, Maps, Earth, Latitude, and all the local products.” By “taking a users location as […]

• Roy’s Restaurants Sees Massive ROI From Local-Mobile Search Campaign

  Google has released a provocative case study with Roy’s Restaurants, a high-end national restaurant chain with 31 locations around the country. The company reported a massive 800 percent ROI by using Google’s location extensions and Click to Call ads in mobile. It must be said that part of the reason for the huge ROI is […]

• 6 Things On An SEO’s Holiday Wish List

  Dear Santa, I’ve been a very good SEO this year focusing on nice and skipping most of the naughty. I know the elves have been very busy building iPads and Kinects for the other SEOs, but please carefully consider my more selfless wish list below. 1. Widely Accepted Cost Accounting Metrics For SEO Now I’m […]

• Google: Local Is Job One

  In case you hadn’t noticed Google is focusing more and more of its energy and resources on local. Let me count the ways: Marissa Mayer’s move to local, Google Place Search, Google Places upgrades, Google Maps for Mobile and Navigation, Google local product search, Google expandable map ads, Click2Call ads, Call Tracking, Google AdWords location […]

• Google AdWords Adds Automated Rules

  The Google AdWords Blog announced a new and very useful feature for AdWords advertisers on how to manage their accounts without them actually having to login and make changes on a daily basis. The new feature is named AdWords Automated Rules and is currently available to some advertisers, specifically within the US. The feature lets […]

• Submit Your SEO Questions To Google’s Matt Cutts

  Matt Cutts, the popular Google engineer who answers your questions on Google’s YouTube Webmaster Help Channel has announced you can now submit your questions again. The way you submit your questions is via this Google Moderator page. Matt will review the questions, likely give preference to the questions with the most votes from others and […]

• Could Google’s ChromeBooks Succeed In The Enterprise?

  A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Google may have missed its “window” for Chrome OS netbooks (pun intended). That was based on my prior understanding of ChomeBooks as an affordable “second computer” aimed chiefly at consumers. This is generally how Google had positioned the devices a year ago. My thesis going in was […]

• Should You Blame Your Designer For Poor Conversion Rates?

  Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the conversation rate optimization (CRO) community—blaming low conversion rates on web designers. Designers are being caricatured as either “clueless” or unable to restrain their conversion-killing creative impulses. How valid is this view? In my experience, there’s plenty of blame to go around for poor CRO performance. Let’s name […]

• Bing Maps Goes To The Mall

  It looks like the Bing Maps team has been spending a lot of time at the mall lately, because they’ve gone and mapped out about two dozen US malls — 19 of which are in Bing’s home state of Washington! It’s part of a new feature called, obviously, mall maps. It basically takes one of […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Four Googlers elected ACM Fellows this year, Official Google Blog
• Rosetta Stone v. Google Amicus Briefs in Support of Google, Eric Goldman
• Apple Asked to Pay Up for Network Improvement as Operators Face Data Flood, Bloomberg
• Google Executive: No Time to Build, So We Buy, New York Times
• How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition, Codus Operandi
• It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood: growing in Pittsburgh, Official Google Blog
• Twitter VP Of Product Jason Goldman Steps Down (At Le Web), TechCrunch
• Yahoo CEO: Don’t Judge Me Until 2012, Forbes
• Yahoo’s Bartz Says Facebook Is Larger Competitor Than Google, Bloomberg

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Just Launched An Official Latitude iPhone App — In Japan At Least, TechCrunch
• Google on Missing TripAdvisor Reviews: “Our team is working to resolve the matter”, Mike Blumenthal
• Street View in Romania, Google LatLong
• Tracked Down: Google Just Quietly Launched An Official Latitude iPhone App, TechCrunch
• TripAdvisor Blocking Google From Reviews?, Mike Blumenthal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Display Spending Begins to Catch Up with Search, eMarketer

Searching

• Exploring Trends in Holiday Retail Sales, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEM Industry

• Expert Interview on Local Search with Chris Silver Smith, Vertical Measures

SEO & SEM

• 6 Tips to Increase Search Engine Click Through Rates for SEO, Bruce Clay Australia
• 3 Misconceptions About Google Places & SEO, Small Business SEM
• 5 Online Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2011, SEO Aware
• Differences between Google and its Local Competitors, Search Engine Journal
• Google AdWords vs MSN adCenter – Comparison Chart, SageRock
• Google Places SEO: Lessons Learned from Rank Correlation Data, SEOmoz
• Google: Canonical Tag Slower Than 301 Redirect, Search Engine Roundtable
• SEO for Bing: Don’t Ignore It, Search Engine Watch
• SEO Strategy & Content Marketing, Online Marketing Blog
• The Effect of Activating Google AdWords Sitelinks, SEOmoz
• Why Hire A Professional SEO Consultant?, outspokenmedia.com
• Why not to have one PPC Campaign targeting all English speaking countries., Vertical Leap Blog
• Why The SEO and Internet Marketing Industry Is So Fatiguing, SEO Aware

Social Media

• Facebook Community Council quietly closes, Boing Boing
• More Control on Mobile, blog.facebook.com

Web Analytics

• Google: 3rd Party Ad Tracking Not Accurate & Can Hurt AdSense Income, Search Engine Roundtable
• Track Who’s Tracking You by Tracking Outbound Links in Google Analytics, blueglass.com

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

• Track Who’s Tracking You – An advanced analytics hack that allows you to track outbound clicks on your website (with the express purpose of finding out how successful your Twitter Follows and Facebook Likes are performing).
• 3 Misconceptions About Google Places & SEO – Matt McGee writes, "I’ve come across a few of what I’d call misconceptions about Google’s changes and how they impact both the search results and how small/local businesses should adjust their approach to the new search results."
• Twitter & Facebook links affect SEO on Google and Bing – Few days ago Google and Bing have confirmed that Social Media links affect the search engine results. Both of the search engines answered that not only they do take the Facebook and Twitter shares into account but also that they evaluate the authority of the author and the quality of the post. In this article we focus on the differences between Google and Bing algorithms and we suggest the most important factors that affect the rankings.
• Is Google Changing Quality Score Rules Again? – What is Google up to with the quality score rules? Check it out …
• Link Building Strategies Without Linkable Assets – Hugo Guzman discusses link building tactics for sites without link friendly (=compelling) content.
• Google Places SEO: Lessons Learned from Rank Correlation Data – In November, we gathered data for 220 search queries – 20 US cities and 11 business "types" (different kinds of queries). This dataset is smaller than our web results, and was intended to be an initial data gathering project before we dove deeper, but our findings proved surprising significant (from a statistical standpoint) and thus, we're making the results and report publicly available.
• Google Map Spam creeping into the hinterlands – In his funny but also somewhat disillusioning piece "Illusory Laptop Repair – A Most Elegant Google Places Hack", Mike Blumenthal explains a way to create virtual Places pages for shady purposes on Google.