SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 24, 2011

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

From Search Engine Land:

• AdWords Advertisers Can Now Optimize By Conversions

  Optimizing based on click-through data? That’s so 2010. Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates. “We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often,” the company wrote in […]

• Google’s Action Against Link Schemes Continues: Overstock.com and Forbes.com Latest Casualties; Conductor Exits Business

  Last week, J.C. Penney made the news for plummeting in Google rankings for everything from “area rugs” to “grommet top curtains”. Turns out the retail site had a number of suspicious links pointing at it that could be traced back to a link network intended to manipulate Google’s ranking algorithms. Google, in order to protect […]

• Bing Tiles: Interactive Images In Search Results

  Like Google’s rich snippets and Yahoo’s Search Monkey, Bing is introducing a new flavor of richer search results named “Tiles.” Tiles are interatice logos or images displayed next to a search result. The tiles can share data in a more graphical way, such as a call to actions for downloading files, watching movies, movie ratings, […]

• Bing Integrates Facebook Likes Further Into Its Search Results

  Bing announced that it has integrated Facebook Likes within its regular search results, similar to a move that Google made with social “shares” from Twitter and other services last week. Facebook Likes Previously Separated In October, Bing added Facebook Likes to the bottom of its search results page. If you searched for something that one […]

• Every Online Retailer’s Dream: Knowing Where The Money Lies

  Data has always been at the center of marketing decisions, but today it enjoys a constant, glaring spotlight! Results based marketing is here to stay, so it’s time to get the tracking machinery in place and get in front of the dashboard for some action. At a very basic level, you need to know which […]

• 8 Necessary SEO Steps During A Website Redesign

  Following these simple steps could help improve the immediate impact on search results for a new website, and help avoid the often significant reduction in search traffic after a website is re-launched. Website owners often wait until after their site is redesigned and launched before getting a SEO expert involved. Unfortunately, this can lead to […]

• A New Search Engine for Hotel Rooms: Room 77 Launches

  Like “seat guru for hotel rooms,” was my immediate thought; Room 77 is a search engine for hotel rooms. The site is creating and indexing data on hotels in the US and UK (and eventually around the world) that qualify with three stars and above. There’s also an iPhone app launching simultaneously today. There are […]

• Google Takes First Big Bite Into Rich Snippet Search With Recipes

  Food content webmasters who’ve dutifully been coding their pages with recipe rich snippets since Google announced them in April get a big reward today. Google is rolling out recipe search, taking advantage of the structured data to launch a whole category with the same prominence as image and video search. It’s playing catch-up in the […]

• How To Remove Ripoff Reports From Google – Not Just Bury Them

  If you’ve been listed on Ripoff Report, you know how frustrating it is and how helpless you feel. You’ve read the fine print and have probably thrown in the towel. There’s just no way to get off of Ripoff Report once you’re on it. Well, I’m here to tell you there’s a proven (and up […]

• Google At Loggerheads With Swiss Over Street View Images

  Swiss privacy officials want Google to blur every face in Street View, even it’s by hand. Google typically does facial blurring with automation and says that process works in 99 percent of cases. However there’s that pesky 1 percent of cases where that doesn’t fully obscure people in the photographs. Now the Swiss are telling […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• R.I.P MyBlogLog – Yahoo Announces Shutdown of Service, Marketing Pilgrim

Business Issues

• Facebook Courts Its Future Neighbors in Menlo Park, Wall Street Journal
• AOL Exec David Eun Out – Here’s His Email To Staff, TechCrunch
• Yet Another Person Sues Google Because They Don’t Like Pornographic Results When People Search On Their Name, TechDirt

Link Building

• How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow?, YouTube
• Into The Minds of Link Builders, Marketing Pilgrim

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Says "Real Time" Display Sales Increasing, AllThingsD
• My PPC Campaign Isn’t Driving any Traffic: What Next?, Search Engine Journal
• Paid Search Success Metrics by Length of Keyword, Rimm Kaufman
• Register for the UK and French Search Alliance Webinars on the 3rd and the 8th of March, adCenter Blog

Searching

• Amazing Numbers: Species Data, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Join us on the bridge for International Women’s Day 2011, Official Google Blog

SEO & SEM

• I’m Ranking, So Where’s My Traffic?!, SEOmoz
• 30 Ways to Optimise Your Site for Speed, SEOptimise
• Do Your Very Own Site Structure Audit, Distilled blog
• Does your Web SEO copy need a makeover?, SEO Copywriting
• Why Google Categorically Cannot Penalise You for Duplicate Content, Daily SEO Tip
• Would you report a competitor to Google?, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• The Mark Zuckerberg Comic Book Has Arrived, mashable.com
• After Twitter, LinkedIn Now Also Blocked In China, TechCrunch
• Facebook Announces More Ways to Publish to Users Who Click Like Buttons, Inside Facebook
• Preparing for The Death of RSS, Michael Gray

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Making Copyright Infringement Too Easy On Google Mobile Image Search?, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• Click Distribution & Percentages by SERP Ranking Position – Ever wonder what an organic click might really be worth? For that matter, ever wonder what is the number of clicks you might gain by moving from position #5 to position #1 in the search results?
• How To Design A Web Registration Process for Kids – "When designing a registration flow for adults, the key is to make it quick and easy, allowing fast access to content and information. For kids, the journey is the destination. It’s important to make that journey as fun, engaging, and rewarding as possible." — Even if you don't create sites for children, you will gather a few interesting UX tidbits from this tutorial.
• SEO Strategies for Google News – If you’re already creating great news content, it’s relatively easy to get it indexed in Google News and the traffic can be substantial.  Here are some strategies for getting the most out of your content in Google News.
• The Power of Dashboards in Google Analytics – And any technology…can be more than a little intimidating at first. Even a platform that prides itself in being as intuitive as Google Analytics does. Additionally, with any analytics platform, you have to adopt a measurement mentality to know where to get the data most useful to you and what to do with that data once you have it in hand.
• 10 Years of Link Building Advice – Great link building advice through the years from folks ranging from Jill Whalen to Darren Rowse to Wil Reynolds.