SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 22, 2008

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

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Catchy Linkbait Is Worthless Without Really Good Content
  Getting your linkbait post, widget or other content featured on the front page of Digg is one thing—a good thing, as this can drive a spike in traffic. Getting a whole bunch of links to that contant, however, is entirely another matter. After all, the purpose of linkbait should…
• 
  Search Illustrated: The Power Of Anchor Text
  Having relevant keywords as the anchor text of a link is extremely beneficial to an SEO campaign. Because search engines depend on links as a sort of pathway around the Internet, anchor text helps categorize what a destination page will be about as well as what it may be…
• 
  RKG Duck: A Handy Open Source Tool For Search Marketers
  In this post, I’d like to introduce handy little tool for paid and natural search called RKG Duck. I wrote the app a few years back, and we find it useful in our agency’s work in paid search and site conversion optimization. We’re releasing RKG Duck under the GNU…
• 
  Yahoo Search Update: First Update Of 2008
  Yahoo has announced the first Yahoo Search update of 2008. Sharad Verma said Yahoo has been rolling out updates to their “crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms” over the past couple days. Yahoo tells us the update will be done soon, but you may notice “some ranking changes and page shuffling…
• 
  After A Month, Google Fails The One Hour Guaranteed Press Response Test
  Last December, Vint Cerf — Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist — said Google CEO Eric Schmidt provide official statements to the press, if needed, within an hour. Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped decided to test that claim. He generated a list of questions from readers and sent them in. A month…
• 
  Google Walks Down Fashion Avenue: The Oogle Sari
  Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury wrote about a design in Satya Paul’s latest collection named "Oogle sari." As you can see above, it looks like a sari made up of the Google web search results….
• 
  Chinese Kissing Couple Sues Subway Operator For Uploading Video to YouTube
  China couple to sue subway over leaked kiss video from Reuters reports a Chinese couple is suing a Chinese subway operator for uploading a video of the two kissing while on a subway platform to YouTube. The video reportedly drew over 15,000 hits in just two days and has apparently…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• IBM, Google quietly supporting OOXML?, All about Microsoft
• How To Make Google Gadgets – Intro, SEOish
• Netvibes gets unnecessary social features, Webware

Business Issues

• Continuing the privacy discussion at the European Parliament, Google Public Policy Blog
• WPP’S Chief To Net More For His Web, www.nypost.com
• eBay’s Whitman To Retire; Donahoe As Leading Candidate| paidContent.org, paidContent.org
• N.C. sold itself to Google for warehouses – Opinion, The Daily Tarheel
• Yahoo Patents ‘Smart’ Drag and Drop, Slashdot

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Maps indexing and mapping geoRSS & KML files, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• SEO & Linkbait: When Is It Unethical?, BruceClay.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• Redirects in AdWords Ads Bypass Banned Sites Filter in Google AdSense, Search Engine Journal
• How to Predict When Your Traffic Will Drop and Ways to Prevent It, PPC Hero

Searching

• Humans Interupting Algorithms: Wales v. Calacanis on Human Powered Search, Read/Write Web
• Mahalo v. Wikia Search At DLD; Google’s Marissa Mayer Weighs In, TechCrunch
• Google Experimental Search Featured in SERPs, Search Engine Journal
• Shopzilla taxonomy and categorization work, ComparisonEngines.com
• Travel Organizer Tripit Goes Social, TechCrunch
• Will Trust Kill the Algorithm | How social site networking is stealing searchers from Google, www.weboptimist.com
• Give Me My Classic Google Back! Turn Off Google Universal Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Recession-Ho! (The Search Ecosystem Enters its First Economic Downturn), MediaPost
• Advice for Startup CEOs, SEOmoz
• Valuing SEO-Conscious Web Design, Cshel

SEO & SEM

• Another Update to SEO for Firefox, SEO Book
• Search and Reputation: Your Brand Standing Is Your Shelf Landing, ClickZ
• Getting More Conversions from Organic Search Traffic, Search Marketing Sage
• How SEO is Like Guitar Hero (or Rock Band, if That’s Your Thing), ShoeMoney
• Stuffing Six Million Pages Down Google’s Throat, O’Reilly Radar
• How to go from $0 to $7000 per month and back to $0 again, BlogStorm
• WordPress Installation Now Blocking Search Engines?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Can You Hide Text , Search Engine Roundtable
• Feeling lucky at PubCon, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Find out who’s scraping you!, Joost de Valk
• HTML Title Tag Defines Your SEO Strategy – Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Watch
• SEO Millionaire: Who Wants to Be One?, Search Engine Watch
• Someone is Probably Blogging About Your Business RIGHT NOW!, Search Engine Guide
• The SEO Fool’s Errand for the SEO Fool, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• You Too Can Prevent Reputation Management Nightmares, BruceClay.com
• New Google Gadget for Digg as part of update, Googling Google
• Pownce Opens To Public Tonight At Midnight; Early Screen Shots Of New Features, TechCrunch
• 9 Reasons Why The Digg Story Sells, TechCrunch
• The Digg Story Doesn’t Sell Anymore, Jeffro2pt0.com
• FORE! A Golfer’s Guide to Social Media Marketing, Online Marketing Blog
• orkut trends: Who sends scraps?, Orkut Blog
• The Three C’s of Strong Social News Profiles, 10e20 Blog
• Wikipedia Revisited: the Wikipedia Community’s Xenophobia, blog.ericgoldman.org

Web Analytics

• Say Goodbye To WebSideStory: Omniture Shareholders Approve Visual Science Purchase, Search Engine Watch Blog

Other Items

• Early Yahoo and Google (and Brian Lent), Google Blogoscoped
• Google to honour women IT students, www.ibnlive.com
• Google-funded firm launches DNA test in Europe, Reuters
• Gallery Of New Google Zurich Office, Google Blogoscoped
• Life after Google, with millions, News.com
• Podcast: You Got Delicious In My Yahoo, Americans Trust Search Less , Daily SearchCast

Last 20 Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Teach New SEM Employees to Use AdWords RIGHT.
• Reply to Where’s that desphinn button when you need it
• 9 Reasons Why The Digg Story Sells
• Benchmarking Your Blog Post Quality … So You Can Improve
• Facebook Ads Deconstructed: 11 Tips for Marketers
• Why You Should Not Place All Your Eggs in One Basket
• Tracking RSS Subscribers w/ Meta Refresh in Google Analytics
• How to create a blogstorm
• Didn’t look at the post, but I hooked you up anyway.
• Building Links using Content & RSS Feeds
• Leverage Authority To Promote Your Brand to The Influencers
• Google, Give Us a Way to Turn Off Google Universal Search Results
• Jeff Quipp Hits the 100 Hot Submissions Mark
• The Anatomy of a RipOff Report Lawsuit
• Top 5 Search Engine Marketing Trends 2008
• Yes Dear, There is Porn SEO, and We Can Learn a Lot From It
• Veronica Domb Becomes Google Bomb
• Member John Andrews Wonders: How Should We Handle Paid/Bartered/Promised Linking
• Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s
• Dosh Dosh Reaches 10,000 Subscribers (and the Reason Why Readers Subscribe to a Blog)
• Playing with the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header
• 11 Must Read New Social Media Blogs
• The Oilman Moves On
• The Secret of Getting a New Site to Beat an Old One or Content is King is Just a Cliche
• Hey Match.com Trying to Hide Some Text Below the Fold