SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 1, 2013

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 Settles With France: No ‘Link Tax,’ But €60 Million Media Fund
  Google has avoided getting hit with a “link tax” in France by agreeing to create a €60 million “Digital Publishing Innovation Fund” to essentially help French media adapt to the online age. The settlement, announced today in France by President Francois Hollande and Google’s Eric Schmidt — and announced on Google’s blog — ends several […]
• Search In Pics: The Google Business Card Collection, Silver Android Statue & Golden Gate Bridge Pin
  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. Golden Gate Bridge Google Maps Pin: Source: Google+ Ingress Badges & Patches: Source: Google+ Google Singapore’s […]
• Google Submits Formal European Antitrust Settlement Proposal
  Yesterday, right under the deadline, Google delivered its proposal to the European Commission (EC) in an effort to settle potential antitrust claims against the company and head off a formal enforcement action. The proposal was required to concretely address four “areas of concern” identified by the EC. Briefly, those involve “search bias” and “diversion of […]
• Search Engine Land’s SMX West Rates Increase Today – Register Now!
  Early Bird rates for Search Engine Land’s SMX West end today, February 1. Register now and save! Join us March 11-13 in San Jose for: New sessions on the topics internet marketers want to know about! Attend Meet Facebook Graph Search, Converting the Mobile Customer and The Search Police with Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s […]
• Microsoft Sued By Company That Won Patent Lawsuit Against Google In 2012
  New York-based Vringo has sued Microsoft over two patents that pertain to the ranking and placement of ads in search results. The patents were originally issued in the early ’90s and owned for a long time by Lycos, which later sold them. The patents in question are 6,314,420 and 6,775,664, referred to in the complaint (below) as the […]
• A Foolproof Approach To Writing Complex Excel Formulas
  There comes a time in a marketer’s life when making pretty charts with a predefined dataset just doesn’t cut it. And finding the sum and average of a column of data just doesn’t satisfy you anymore. Eventually — and it’s really inevitable — you will actually have to dive deep into the data and cull […]
• SEO Smackdown Round 2: Old Vs. New Search Engine Optimization
  Has SEO really changed? Search engine algoholics might say “Yes!” Experienced practitioners might say, “Not really.” Instead of keywords, site architecture, and link development, maybe we should understand aboutness, information scent, and validation.

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

• Marketing Biz: Industry Education, Revenue Analytics & Private Ad Exchanges
• FTC Issues Mobile Privacy Guidelines, Encourages Development Of Platform-Level “Do Not Track” Capability
• Search Engine Land’s SMX West Rates Increase Today – Register Now!
• Report: Apple Edges Samsung To Become Largest Smartphone Maker In US
• Choosing An Affiliate Network For Your Business
• Page Barometer Tool Lets Page Admins Leverage Private Facebook Data To Benchmark EdgeRank

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Google Shares Hit Another All-Time High, AllThingsD
• Mark Zuckerberg awarded CEO of the Year Crunchie, Larry Page is runner-up, SlashGear

Local Search & Maps

• Google+ Local on Suspensions – The Algo Did It!, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Maps Updates Review Spam Guidelines & Spam Algorithms, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• 9,786,010 Reasons to Do Broken Link Building, The Google Cache

Searching

• Yahoo! Top Searches This Week Show Wild Enthusiasm for the Super Bowl, ycorpblog.com
• Get ready for Game Day with Google, Inside Search
• Google Would Like To Use Your Location Repetitive On Apple iPad & iPhone, Search Engine Roundtable
• How “What Time Is the Super Bowl?” Explains the Future of Internet Search, Slate
• How Facebook’s Graph Search Will Dethrone Google Search, Ad Age
• The Google Jackie Robinson Logo Sent The Wrong Site Traffic, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• How to Hire & Retain SEO Talent in 2013, Search Engine Watch
• Video: Bing Crawling Badly, Google Maps Spam Update, Animated AdSense Ads & Jackie Robinson Logo, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• 11 Keyword Targeting Mistakes, Luna Metrics
• 3 Steps To Improving Your Google Author Rank, Pubcon
• Adwords Search Query Reports: US vs. The World, Follow Up, beyondthepaid.com
• Google Rankings via Hacking & Google Bombing, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
• Is a non-AdWords PPC account right for you?, PPC Associates Blog
• Learning to optimize Images and Wikipedia from the Radio, digitalhighrise.com
• Measure Title Tag Length in Pixels, Not Characters, for Search Engine Optimization, Standing Dog Blog
• PPC Bid Management: Are You Managing Bids Efficiently?, Search Engine Watch
• SEO: Optimal Ecommerce URLs, Practical eCommerce
• The Best Way to Handle 404 Pages for SEO and Users, RKG Blog
• Three Tips to Help Search Engine Marketers Promote their Education Campaigns to the Head of the Class, Yahoo Advertising Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• NPD: Apple’s iTunes takes biggest piece of online video on demand pie, appleinsider.com

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.