SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 11, 2009

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 Maps Nearly Catches MapQuest: Hitwise ReportGoogle Maps and MapQuest are neck-and-neck in the fight to be the most popular US mapping site. A new report issued today from Hitwise shows […]

Chat with SearchBot

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 Maps Nearly Catches MapQuest: Hitwise Report
    Google Maps and MapQuest are neck-and-neck in the fight to be the most popular US mapping site. A new report issued today from Hitwise shows the continuing ascent of Google Maps and the simultaneous decline of MapQuest traffic during 2008, with MapQuest pulling away again in the last few weeks: In November, we wrote how MapQuest was coming “out of hibernation” with a concerted effort to hold on to its leads among mapping sites. As Heather Hopkins suggests in the Hitwise post, those new features may be responsible for MapQuest’s recent upswing …
  • Innovative Search And Its Impact On Brand
    Can an innovative search campaign actually benefit your brand?  In a word: Yes.  In fact, research shows that 39% of search users feel that the brands that appear in the top of the search results are the leaders in their field.  Moreover, brands that aren’t innovative online also don’t move up the rankings.  For example, who do you think is ranking in the top spot for “car insurance” in Google and Yahoo!?  If you guessed Geico, you are correct. Marketers need to realize that an innovative search campaign has the potential to do more than drive …
  • Yahoo! BOSS Expands Feature Set; Adds Usage Fees
    Today, Yahoo! has announced several new features to their Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) platform as well as usage fees. When BOSS launched in July 2008, the stated goal was to spur innovation and disrupt the search market. Will the additional of usage fees hinder that goal and become a barrier to entry for the cost-limited startups Yahoo! was originally trying to help? Yahoo says no, that they “believe that introducing the proposed pricing structure will improve the ecosystem by optimizing capacity for our serious developers.” Fee structure The BOSS charges kick in only once queries exceed 10,000 a …
  • Microsoft Beefs Up Enterprise Search
    Microsoft bought FAST Search & Transfer almost exactly a year ago. Now Microsoft is starting to integrate FAST’s capabilities into its other products and to market FAST more aggressively: FAST Search for SharePoint, a new search server that will add the high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, will be available as a part of the next release of the Microsoft Office system. For customers who are interested in the product, Microsoft also announced ESP for SharePoint, a special offering that allows customers to purchase high-end search capabilities today, with a defined licensing path to …
  • New Ask Datacenter Expands Search Capacity
    In the on again off again debate about whether Ask remains serious about search, a new blog post suggests that Ask is making a bid to improve its search index and efficiency, having completed a move to a new datacenter: Our engineers were going to have to spend more time on improving efficiency, and less time on new feature development. So we’ve been in the planning stages for moving to new datacenter spaces since 2006, and we’ve executed the move of thousands of systems over the past several months . . . We’re excited about our …
  • How To Track Keyword-Based Tweets Within Your Twitter Stream
    With our SMX West search marketing conference happening this week, I wanted to keep track of the real-time buzz for SMX on Twitter. I knew how to do this manually by checking Twitter Search, but was there a way to have this flow into my regular Twitter stream, along with posts from people that I normally follow? Thanks to suggestions from people on Twitter, there was! Ideally, I wanted Twitter itself to let me create a “person” that was really a search term, so that I could follow that person and have …
  • Gmail Labs Adds Location To Signatures
    The Gmail Blog announced that you can now activate a new labs feature that will append your current location to your email signature, when you use Gmail or Google Apps email within the Gmail interface. To activate it, go to “Settings” and click on “Labs.” Scroll down to the location feature and enable it. Then go back to “Settings” and scroll down to your “Signature” and check off the box to “Append your location to the signature”. Google will then activate the Google Gears location module, which will tell Google where you are, when you compose your …
  • Where Professional Service Firms Fall Short
    It seems like professional services firms really struggle with search engine optimization. Few do it well. In the audits we do for clients, perhaps the most common issue is inadequate site architecture. That is, not having enough pages in the site to respond to the diverse range of potential search terms. But there are other common problems, too. Here are some of the issues and what you can do about them. Types of staff Prospects and referral sources may be searching for a particular type of staff member. With law firms, there is typically only one class of professional staff member-attorneys. …
  • SMX West 2009 – Day Two Coverage
    Day two of SMX West 2009 is just about over. Here is live blogging and other coverage from the day, here in Santa Clara: Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results, outspokenmedia.com Improving Google Maps Search Rankings SMX West 2009, WebProNews Just Behave, A Look at Searcher Behavior, outspokenmedia.co Keynote Conversation with Vint Cerf, outspokenmedia.com Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing, BruceClay.com Live Coverage of 301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways at SMX West, Search Engine Roundtable Live Coverage of Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results at SMX West, Search Engine Roundtable Live Coverage of Just …

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

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


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is 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 can be followed on Twitter here.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.