SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 23, 2012

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Projecting 2012 Google Mobile Revenues: $4 or $6 Billion?

  On Google’s Q3 2011 earnings call CEO Larry Page casually mentioned that Google had a mobile revenue “run rate” of more than $2.5 billion. On the Q4 earnings call, just last week, Google announced a $5 billion annualized “run rate” for display advertising (including mobile). These two pronouncements have led to several financial analysts to […]
• 10 Form Optimization Tips For Landing Pages

  Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work with form optimization. In this article, I’ll cover some tried and true form optimization tips. I’ve done most of my testing on the PPC side, but obviously, the information can also be used effectively to improve overall form conversions on websites. 1. Include A Privacy Line […]

• How To Achieve Mobile Search Ranking Clarity

  Mobile search results not only produce different rankings from desktop search but can also vary based on the mobile device type that the query was performed on, as has been written about here at Search Engine from myself and Bryson Meunier among others. You can see mobile results directly from your desktop for feature phones at https://www.google.com/xhtml and […]

• Google Plus Connections Are The New Link

  A couple of weeks ago, Google caused a big hub-bub when it launched Search Plus Your World (“SPEW” for short), the catchy-titled deep integration of Google Plus and Google’s organic Web results. Naturally as soon as that happened, many of my clients, big and small, called to get some perspective on what this might mean […]

• Google Search Showing Results For Punctuation Marks

  Alex Chitu reports Google is now showing search results for punctuation marks and other types of symbols. In the past, Google ignored most punctuation marks and didn’t show any results for them that were useful. Now Google is. For example, a search for , returns pages on the topic of usage of comma in your writing. […]

• “Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Gets Them Into Google’s “Search Plus Your World”

  I’ve written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its new Search Plus Your World feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new “Don’t Be Evil” tool that lets anyone leverage Google’s own results to see this. The tool […]

• Google’s “Find Hotels By Travel Time” Offers Some Of That “Innovation” Google Was Talking About

  Before Google was formally approved to buy travel software company ITA, the company argued that the acquisition would result in “innovation” for travelers and travel search users. Beyond the appearance of flight times/routes in search results we haven’t seen much “innovation” yet. Google’s new “find hotels by travel time” experiment is, however, an example of […]

• “Ask On Google+” Links Appearing In Google’s Search Results

  The invasion of Google+ into Google’s search results continue. The latest Google+ification? Now Google’s encouraging people at the end of its search listings if they “Want to ask your friends about” what they were Googling. Want To Ask Your Friends? Tom Critchlow tipped me off to spotting this in his search results. I checked, and I found […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Google Outspends Microsoft In DC Lobbying In 2011
• Google Gives OK To Pseudonyms, Nicknames On Google+
• Google Really Wants You To Complete Your Google+ Profile
• YouTube’s Stunning Stats: 4 Billion Daily Views, An Hour Of Video Uploaded Every Second
• Infographic: How Social Media Links Help Email Marketing
• EU Ready To Impose Tough Privacy Rules On Google, Facebook
• Pew: 19 Percent Of Americans Now Own Tablets, eReaders
• Is The Next Frontier In Social Media Your TV?
• The YouTube Community Interviews The President: Obama To Answer Questions Via Google+ Hangout
• Google’s Urchin Is Closing – Why & What To Do Next
• An Inside Look At What Google’s Search Quality Raters Do

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• A New iGoogle Interface, Google Operating System

Business Issues

• Renewing old resolutions for the new year, Official Google Blog
• Google Searches for Role in European Economy, Wall Street Journal
• What Industries Contributed to Google’s $37.9 Billion in 2011 Revenues?, WordStream

Link Building

• Link Building Tips and Strategies | Learn To Build Great Links, Search Engine People
• Build Links with Tynt Publisher Tools, www.seerinteractive.com
• Buy Links for SEO or not, Performancing
• Majestic SEO Partnership With SEOlytics, Majestic SEO Blog

Searching

• Google’s Not Focusing On the User! Waah Waah Waah, Cry Me a River!, Marketing Pilgrim
• Wolfram|Alpha Makes Easy Work of Any Integer Sequence, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• 14 Steps To Successful SEO For Startups, TechCrunch
• 32 Totally Free “Search Plus Your World” #SEO Resources, AIM Clear Blog
• How To Get The Equivalent Of $100K in PPC Ads For Free, SEOmoz
• Can Reputation Load Faster Than SEO?, Marketing Pilgrim
• Google’s Query Based Analysis and Reranking of Search Results, SEO By The Sea
• Hands On Online Reputation Management In 2012, seopositiveltd.com
• How Bounce Rate Optimization Can Improve Your Search Rankings, Get Elastic
• How to Organize & Structure Your Website Content for SEO and People, Search Engine People
• SEO Monitoring Tools and Tips, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Choosing The Perfect Reporting Suite For Social Media, seopositiveltd.com
• Toward a more inclusive naming policy for Google+ With…, Bradley Horowitz – Google+

Video, Music & Image Search

• Exclusive: YouTube hits 4 billion daily video views, Reuters

Other Items

• Stanford AI Class Professor Thrun Now Wants to Teach 500k Students How to Build a Search Engine, siliconfilter.com
• The Yahoo! Logo Gets a Chinese New Year Makeover, Yodel Anecdotal