SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 12, 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:

• SMN Webcast Tomorrow: Chris Sherman on Paid Search for Big Site, Big Brands
  Are you managing PPC for a large organization or large brand – and want to make sure you’re on track for this coming year? This Tuesday, Jan. 13 at 1 PM EST, Search Engine Land’s Chris Sherman is speaking on a Search Marketing Now webcast, “Paid Search for Big Sites, Big Brands.” He’ll discuss the unique challenges, the skills you’ll need – and the various factors to consider. (Hint: It’s more than just managing keywords, bids and budgets.) Thanks to iProspect for sponsoring this webcast. Register here (it’s free) or find out more at Search Marketing Now.
• SEMPO’s Second Annual In-House Salary Survey Opens
  Are you an in-house search marketer? If so, SEMPO would like your participation in its second annual in-house salary survey. This survey is for in-house providers only but is not limited to SEMPO members. The 21-question survey takes 10 minutes to complete, and will be open until February 20th.
• My New Year’s Search Marketing Resolutions
  I was in a meeting this week and someone was talking about her New Year’s resolution to eat healthy this year, and how it was already making her miserable. I think her exact words were “I’m ready to eat my desk.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Never have. Always seemed to me that New Year’s resolutions just represent things that people know they should do, but don’t want to do, so on New Year’s they say they’ll do them and they try for a while, knowing deep down that by February or March …
• Wacky Idea: A Yahoo-Nokia Combination
  As the MicroHoo dance continues, here’s a wacky idea that just occurred to me: why doesn’t Nokia invest in or acquire Yahoo? It’s partly suggested by this Fortune article that discusses the challenges that the world’s leading handset maker faces in penetrating North America. Nokia has added a bunch of online services that try and bridge the internet and mobile. Indeed, Nokia is trying to position itself as an internet company of sorts. And mobile search will be a big ad-revenue driver in the medium term. It’s already a critical element of an overall mobile offering. Yahoo, obviously, is …
• Yelp Case Settled, But Bigger Issues Remain For Search & Reviews
  A lawsuit over a Yelp.com review has been settled, but the larger issue of how business owners, customers, and review sites will co-exist online remains wide open. CNET is reporting that a San Francisco chiropractor and his disgruntled patient have settled their differences over a negative review that the patient posted on Yelp. Dr. Steven Biegel sued Christopher Norberg for defamation when Norberg questioned the chiropractor’s billing practices in his Yelp review. Neither side is discussing the terms of their settlement, but Norberg has updated his review on Biegel’s Yelp business listing: A misunderstanding between both parties led us …
• How To Appear In Multiple City Searches With One Website
  A common issue plaguing a great many local businesses is the fact that they provide services to many cities within a major metropolitan area, but they only have a single website and a single yellow pages listing. These businesses rank well for a local search where their office is physically located, but there’s no clear answer for how to also rank for the sometimes dozens of other cities in the immediate area where they also provide services. If this is an issue you’ve faced, read on to learn how to make a site appear in multiple local searches for an area, even if it doesn’t have a physical brick-and-mortar office in all of them.
• Bid Management Automation: Fraught with Questionable Assumptions
  Today, there’s no viable “con” position in the “paid search bid management” debate. Either you sing the praises of automated bid management, or you’ll be asked to sit in a dark corner (or cave) and contemplate what possessed you to enter the digital marketing arena. Unfortunately, there are few real debates on the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to bid management automation. This is mainly because most of the dialogue — be it on a panel, in online content, or in casual conversation — is driven by bid management software vendors. So, in this article, I’ll try to open a dialogue to address this often one-sided debate. I’ll begin by highlighting some of the (often incorrect) fundamental assumptions underlying current bid management tools. In future columns I’ll address additional aspects of the debate.
• The Search Gap Between Consumers And Small Business Advertisers
  For the several years Nielsen and local SEM platform provider WebVisible have done research tracking online consumer behavior related to local search. Here is our write up of the previous round of findings from the last survey (October, 2007). Over the weekend I got a preview of some of the data from the most recent survey findings. This latest Nielsen-WebVisible survey captured responses from just under 4,000 U.S. internet users. The questions sought to determine which tools and media they were using to find local business and related information. In the sample were also 261 small business …
• Report: Yahoo’s Search Ad Share Drops 36%
  Silicon Alley Insider reports Yahoo’s search ad share have dropped 36% in the fourth quarter of 2008. The numbers come from AdGooroo that claims Yahoo’s search ad share was 30.4% in September, then dropped in 23.7% in October, then to 20.4% in November and then to 19.4% in December. Meanwhile, Microsoft grew from 12% in October to 16.4% in December. They then add that it appears based on watching Yahoo’s top advertisers, that Yahoo ads are paying a lot less then Google ads. In short, search ad arbitrageurs are buying traffic from Yahoo and cashing …
• Firefox Drops Google For Yandex In Russia, But Big Loser May Be Rambler
  Mozilla’s General Counsel, Harvey Anderson, announced the Russian builds of Firefox 3.1 will drop Google for Yandex. He explained that after months of research and surveys, Mozilla learned that their “Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search.” So in the next build of Firefox, the default search provider will be Yandex for Russian users. The big loser in all of this might not be Google. paidContent.org reports Rambler, one of the big Russian portals, will be letting their CEO go after seeing their market share drop from 14.9 percent last year to just 6.4 percent. The CEO’s departure might signal that Google’s may not follow through the the Begun purchase, where Google would buy Rambler’s contextual ad service for $140 million.
• Calculating The Carbon Footprint Of A Google Search
  That’s exactly what several scientists and researchers tried to do: figure out how much CO2 is emitted from performing a search on Google. Here’s what the Times Online said over the weekend in summarizing these estimates Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume …
• More Ads = Better Ads = Better User Experience: Microsoft’s Success Formula?
  In new numbers just coming out from AdGooroo, it looks like Microsoft is closing the gap on Yahoo in terms of advertiser share for the last quarter of the year, moving to a narrow three point difference (19.4% vs 16.4%) from a 17.6% gap in the third quarter. Also, in the report, it seems that Google was fairly aggressive in cranking up ad coverage while Yahoo stayed flat and Microsoft actually backed off on ad coverage, focusing on ad quality control and a more holistic search experience.  Finally, AdGooroo is forecasting the strongest quarter ever for Google and Microsoft, …

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• McAfee: Google developer site being used to distribute malware, News.com
• Google Blog Converters 1.0 Released, Google Open Source Blog
• AOL Realigns as an Overseer of Niche Sites, New York Times
• AOL Continues To Splinter Content Into Anti-Portals, TechCrunch

Business Issues

• They left the corporate cocoon to blossom, CNN.com
• Search: What Search Needs Is Healthy Competition, E-Commerce News
• China shuts down 50 more porn Web sites in sweep, The Associated Press
• Steve Ballmer’s Rally Cry, Forbes
• Yahoo Korea CEO jumps ship to Microsoft Korea, Web 2.0 Asia
• Collins Stewart Cuts Estimates, Price Target on Google (GOOG), Maintains Buy, StreetInsider.com
• Gaga for Google, MiamiHerald.com
• Google to Announce Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Results, Google
• Local Lead Gen Provider Yodle Closes $10M Third Round To Expand National Effort, paidContent.org
• Yahoo Falls as Analyst Says Online Ad Growth to Slow, Bloomberg

Local, Maps & Mobile

• In a Nutshell: Palm Pre vs. iPhone vs. G1, Gizmodo
• Live Maps Finland Hits the Web, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
• Wii Integrate with Virtual Earth. Do you?, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist’s Blog
• AdMob Launches Tracking Tool for App Store Sellers, www.appcraver.com
• Your first look at Palm’s webOS SDK, Mojo, Boy Genius Report

Link Building

• What are Reciprocal Links and What do Search Engines Think of Them?, SEO By The Sea
• 5 link building techniques, Econsultancy
• Do Not Buy Links From Mass Emails : PR4 @ 39 euros / Sitewide 59 euros, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• Behind the scenes of scheduled maintenance, Inside AdSense
• Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2, Search Engine Watch
• 9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy, Search Engine Journal
• Google Grants: Much More Than Free Clicks for NonProfits – Part I, Search Marketing Gurus
• New Custom Date Range & Filter Options For adCenter Performance Data, adCenter Blog
• New to Microsoft adCenter: Custom Dates on Campaigns, Search Engine Roundtable
• Quality Score Video with Andrew Goodman, Brad Geddes
• Seminars for Success in 2009, Inside AdWords
• Yahoo Search Marketing Now Turning On Content Network? Yahoo Says No, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Searching for UFO sightings, AltSearchEngines
• Federated Search Finds Content that Google Can’t Reach Part I of III, AltSearchEngines
• Did Someone Just Expose Semantic Data?, Hakia Blog
• A Federated Search Primer – Part II of III, AltSearchEngines
• Malformed Google Result URLs, Google Blogoscoped
• Semantic Search Engine Helps Scientists Do Productive Searches, ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Dave Shaw: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
• Google Earth Community Forums Unavailable, Google Earth Blog

SEO & SEM

• Really easy organic SEO, Pandia
• 8 Lessons From 2008 To Help In 2009 (Part 1 of 2), Search Marketing Standard
• Does Google Penalize Site Wide Webmaster Tools Accounts?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Make the Most of You Search Engin Optimization (SEO), Online Marketing Blog
• When Rankings Equal Ratings, Local Search News
• Why Trust Matters & How To Earn It, Small Business SEM

Social Media

• 5 Good Ways To Discover Twitter Applications, TechCrunch
• Britney Spears Is Hiring An Online Media Manager, TechCrunch
• Don’t Blame the Geeks!, Twitter Blog
• Google Warns of Privacy Issues on the Social Web, Read/Write Web
• Twitter proposals: Good or bad?, News.com
• A Comic Reminder to Avoid a Social Media Reputation Blunder, Marketing Pilgrim
• Facebook Prepares To Launch FriendFeed "Like" Feature, All Facebook
• 7 Social Media Predictions for 2009, Search Engine Watch
• How Do You Decide If Social Media is Right For Your Business?, Search Engine Guide
• Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Lesson Five: The Conversion is the Goal, Search Engine Guide
• Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope, ResourceShelf

Video, Music & Image Search

• YouTube Upload Booth, Official Google Mac Blog
• CBS Tries to Out-Hulu Hulu with TV.com, NewTeeVee
• 8 Spelling & Grammar Rules You Can Break on Twitter, We Build Pages
• YouTube Not As Lucrative For Some Well-Known Video Producers, MediaPost

Other Items

• Congratulations To the Crunchies Winners; Facebook Takes Top Prize For Second Year, TechCrunch
• Meet AOL’s DMOZ Staff Team, DMOZ Blog
• Using The Google, TIME

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

• Why Trust Matters & How To Earn It
• 9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy
• ‘Overheard on Twitter’ – Friday 9th January 2009
• Blog Advertising is BROKEN, Here's a Guide To Fix It.
• CompareTheMeerkat.com shows brands how social media should be done
• Google Testing Increasing Description Length on Search Snippet
• An Update On Javascript Menus And SEO
• Widgets on TV and Why Widgets are Important
• Who Wants to Hire Top Twitter Users?
• SEO Trends From 2008 & A Look Into 2009
• 12 Things Internet Marketers Should Do Everyday
• Top Search Marketers Dominate Twitter: Numbers Prove It
• Tweetbacks for WordPress – Yoast – Tweaking Websites

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 can be followed on Twitter here.