SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 1, 2012

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

From Search Engine Land:

• French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free

  Google faces a $660,000 fine after a French court ruling that the company is abusing its dominant position in mapping by making Google Maps free. According to The Economic Times, the French commercial court “upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free […]
• StumbleUpon Kills Direct Links, iFrames Everything

  StumbleUpon, who happens to be one of the more popular and successful social media sites with over 20 million users (doubling from 10 million in about a year and a half), recently launched one of the biggest redesigns I can remember… basically changing everything about the site as a whole. Having recently removed blogs, themes, […]

• Working The Funnel: Finding Value In Non-Converting Events

  As performance marketers, it’s our job to find the valuable clicks and filter out the crap. By tracking specific events through cookies and pixels, we attribute revenue to clicks and keywords. Newer tools like conversion funnels allow us to further identify which clicks lead to subsequent clicks which in turn lead to conversions. Generally speaking, […]

• How to Spice Up B2B Ad Creative Brainstorms In 90 Minutes Or Less

  Fact or Fiction? Writing search PPC ad copy promoting B2B brands, products or services isn’t as fun as promoting some sexy, fabulous, coveted line of B2C goods because B2B, by nature, is boring. Fiction! Fiction, I say! Clever marketers embrace the opportunity to market B2B because they recognize and respect the challenge it embodies: To make […]

• Justifying Conference Attendance For In-House Search Marketers

  While search engine marketing conference attendance for agency staff is almost a given of the job, in-house search engine marketers may find themselves more challenged to justify the expense, both in time and money of conference attendance. Conferences like Search Marketing Expo (SMX) provide a host of benefits that more than justify the cost; the […]

• Google & Bing: We’re Not Involved In “Local Paid Inclusion”

  It sounds great. A program that guarantees top listings for local searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing. An “officially approved” one in “cooperation” with those search engines. But it’s not so, say Google and Bing. The “Local Paid Inclusion” service launched officially today. The site’s home page pitches: Local Paid Inclusion is a Google, Yahoo […]

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

• Google “Myth Busts” Microsoft’s Privacy Claims
• Efficiency Of Facebook & Google Lead To 1,600 Layoffs At P&G
• LinkedIn & Twitter Ad Revenue Continue To Climb
• Study: Only 1% Of Facebook Fans Engage With Brands On Facebook
• Google+ Wins A Crunchie But Gets Razzed By The Daily Show
• Microsoft Slams Google Privacy Changes With “Putting People First” Ad Campaign
• Yahoo Lays Off Flickr Customer Service Team, Reportedly 12% Of Entire Staff

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• More real time quotes from around the world, Google Finance Blog
• Browser market share, netmarketshare.com
• Google’s punishment of Chrome drops browser’s share, says metrics firm, Computerworld
• Retrieving large result sets – Google Ads Developer Blog, AdWords API

Business Issues

• Search Engine Market Share Report, January 2012 Update, Chitika Insights
• AOL: Ads Up By 10%; Not Enough To Make Up For Subscription, Other Declines, paidContent.org
• Apple Loses Patent Bid to Ban Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Munich Court, Bloomberg
• Facebook execs gear up political influence arm, Reuters
• Facebook Picks Morgan Stanley to Lead IPO, Bloomberg
• Google in Talks to Maintain Google Maps in China, thenextweb.com

Link Building

• AHREFS Review: An In-Depth Look at a New Link Research Tool, SEO Book
• iframe Test: Do Search Engines Follow Links in iframes?, Rimm Kaufman
• Utilizing Second Tier Link Building For Massive ROI, Ross Hudgens
• Buy Links Now, Because You Can’t Buy Google +1′s Later, Keith Brown
• Link for People, Not Search Engines, Search Engine Watch
• There Are Only 2 Ways to Build Backlinks, Vertical Measures

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdSense now speaks Indonesian, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Google To Release New All Blue Favorite Icon, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• 10 Most Important SEO Patents: Part 8 – Assigning Geographic Relevance to Web Pages, SEO By The Sea
• Are PPC Ads Following You?, Small Business Trends
• Case Study: A Mysterious Google Search For Fave, distilled
• Essentials to Keep in Mind When Building a Website – The SEO Point of View (part 2/4), Search Engine People
• Get Your adCenter Search Marketing Campaign in Shape for 2012, Search Engine Watch
• Google Untitled Titles In Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Radial Information Conveyance Methods and Limitations, SEO Theory
• The 1% Client, PPC Associates

Social Media

• Brazil becomes 2nd country on Twitter, Japan 3rd — Netherlands most active country, Semiocast

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube could introduce a subscription service of its own, gigaom.com

Web Analytics

• 4 Key Analytics Metrics That You’re Probably Underestimating, blueglass.com