SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 21, 2010

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 Beats Estimates With Very Strong Q4: $6.67 Billion

  Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67 billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus estimates. Here are some top-level highlights from the earnings release:
  Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion.
  Google […]
• Google’s Sergey Brin Writes About His Relief Mission Visit To Haiti

  Google co-founder Sergey Brin is back from a relief mission to Haiti and has written his impressions of the situation there. He writes about the relief effort (and even shares some suggestions for things that could be done differently) and the scene in Port-au-Prince, but says the people of Haiti are “the real heroes.”
  Despite tremendous […]

• PageRank Sculpting Leaves NoFollowed Tags Behind

  Six months ago, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that NoFollowed tags no longer work as a tool for sculpting PageRank and that he would not recommend PageRank sculpting in general. Despite the passage of time and much discussion in forums and on blogs, many website owners are still confused about the importance of optimizing how PageRank […]

• Things To Consider Before Starting Your Next Conversion Rate Optimization Project

  Five years ago, few people paid any attention to conversion rate optimization. Today, everyone is jumping on the conversion optimization bandwagon. I believe that there were two main factors that changed search marketers perceived value of conversion optimization:
  Google Website Optimizer. In October 2006 Google announced the release of its website testing tool, Google Website Optimizer. […]

• Another Person No One’s Heard Of Tries To Trademark SEO

  HuoMah Blog discovered that yet another person is trying to claim a trademark on the term SEO, search engine optimization. Clinton Cimring of a company called “Search Engine Partner” filed a trademark application with United States Patent and Trademark Office on January 5, 2009. The filing claims first use SEO as a trademark was […]

• Why Facebook PPC Is Crucial For Branding & How To Sell Your Boss

  On Christmas Eve, December 24th, Facebook garnered 7.56% of United States internet traffic market share, whereas Google had 7.54%. Subsequently on Christmas Day, December 25th, Facebook’s piece of pie ballooned to a whopping 7.81% while Google dropped a bit to 7.51%. The day after Christmas, December 26, Google regained its stature as most visited site […]

• In The SEO Game, It’s All About Strategies And Systems

  When it comes to SEO, folks tend to think of me as super-tactical (perhaps because, when presenting at conferences, I cram so many tips and tricks into my infamous 80 slide PowerPoints when I have only 10 minutes to present!) But in actuality, I’m really very strategic. My new title at Covario (now that Covario […]

• What’s For Dinner? Bing Mixes Recipes Into Search Results

  Bing is now giving special placement to recipes in response to some food-related searches:
  Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) […]

• How To Get Customers And Keep Them Coming Back

  Brand advocacy, reputation management, loyalty and reward programs are all the rage now, as consumers have unprecedented opportunity to broadcast their complaints as well as their satisfaction with businesses, specific purchases and customer service. What customers say is vitally important to the public perception of a business. While advocates and reputation managers may work to […]

• The YouTube Music Discovery Project

  YouTube has launched the YouTube Music Discovery Project. It is a new tool they are testing, which helps you search for music and create YouTube playlists based on that query. You basically enter an artist’s name into the search box, hit “Disco” and it then returns results which you can add to your […]

• Facebook To Cut Some Microsoft Ads

  paidContent.org is reporting Facebook and Microsoft are scaling back their ad relationship. Microsoft powered much of Facebook’s display ad network. Facebook is no longer using Microsoft for their international display ads but might also drop them in the U.S. as well.
  Back in 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, and made […]

• 44% Of Google News Readers Only Scan Headlines? Maybe Not!

  A new report saying that 44% of Google users fail to click from Google News to newspaper web sites got some buzz this week. However, after a closer look at the report, I don’t see it providing the damning evidence that Google really is a content vampire, as some news publishers have […]

• Bing As iPhone Default Search Engine Part Deux

  I expressed skepticism yesterday that Bing would become the default search engine on the iPhone. Rather, I speculated, it would be added as an option (as it should be) on the device. But CNBC has some additional information that asserts default search status on the iPhone is a real possibility for Bing. But take the […]

• A Brief History Of Paid Search Advertising

  If you’re just getting started with paid search, it’s helpful to know a bit of history of how pay-per-click advertising got started and why it has become such a major factor in the success of online marketers.

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Facebook to Build Its Own Data Centers, Data Center Knowledge
• Help – I think my Yahoo! Account may have been Phished, ymailblog.com
• Preserving the Web: National Library of New Zealand Begins Planning for 2010 Web Harvest, ResourceShelf
• Wikimedia Releases Five-Year Plan (Draft), Not Going to Invest in China, Africa, Paid Editors, ResourceShelf
• New features: Read-only and Restore, Google Wave Blog

Business Issues

• Google Gets E-Commerce Lift, Wall Street Journal
• Largo Cargo Co v. Google, Inc. – 5:2010cv00241, Justia Federal Dockets
• Another AOL Veteran Jumps Ship, Lands At KickApps, TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• iPhone And Android Now Account For 81 Percent Of Smartphone Web Ads In the U.S., TechCrunch
• New countries, new countrysides in Street View, Google LatLong
• Panoramio co-founder Eduardo Manchón leaving Google, Google Earth Blog
• With New Ovi Maps, Nokia Seeks Location Heaven, gigaom.com

Link Building

• 6 Super Tips for Creating a Natural Backlink Profile, Search Engine Journal

Paid Search & Contextual

• And the Winner is…Google, techPresident
• Serving better ads in Gmail, Official Gmail Blog

Searching

• CNN Releases Missing Persons Database for Haiti; Includes Links to Google and Red Cross Databases, ResourceShelf
• New Free Resource from the UK: JISC TechDis Launches Tool to Improve Internet Accessibility, ResourceShelf
• Health Sites: Some Are More Equal Than Others, e-Patients.net
• Quintura Nets Interface Patent : Beyond Search, arnoldit.com

SEM Industry

• State of the Index 2009, YouTube

SEO & SEM

• Google AdWords Ad Copywriting Tips: Get a High CTR, ppcblog.com
• A Real Yahoo Search Update for January 2010?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Big SEO Needs to Get BIGGER: Multi-Channel Optimisation, Search Engine Journal
• Digg.com’s SEO Mistake And The 1 Second Fix, The Secret Swede
• Disabling Right Clicking Should Not Hurt Your Google Ranking & SEO, Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense, Online Marketing Blog
• SEO 101 Common Mistakes, David Naylor

Social Media

• 2009: Another Strong Year for Facebook, comScore
• New Software Aims to Keep Facebook Safer, Wall Street Journal

Video, Music & Image Search

• Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos, YouTube Blog
• YouTube to charge $5 for some videos, USATODAY.com
• At Hulu, ‘free’ may soon turn into ‘fee’, latimes.com
• The Video Page Gets a Makeover, YouTube Blog

Web Analytics

• Clicks vs. Visits Revisited, Google Analytics Blog