SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 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: Hot At Sphinn: Google Favoritism In Search Results, Eric Schmidt Steps Down & More The idea that Google might be favoring its own properties and content in search results was a […]

on January 24, 2011 at 5:14 pm | Reading time: 12 minutes
Chat with SearchBot

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

From Search Engine Land:

  • Hot At Sphinn: Google Favoritism In Search Results, Eric Schmidt Steps Down & More

    The idea that Google might be favoring its own properties and content in search results was a big topic of conversation last week on a lot of blogs, forums, and social networking sites — and it was also the big discussion topic on our sister site, Sphinn. News that Eric Schmidt will step down as […]

  • What Do Eric Schmidt And Oprah Have In Common?

    Perhaps we should start calling him “Dr. Eric.” The New York Post is reporting that Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is shopping the idea of his own talk show to various outlets: A source told us, “Eric wants to be a talk-show host. He’s been working with [“Parker Spitzer” executive producer Liza McGuirk] to develop […]

  • Bing Promotes Top Image Searches With New Landing Page

    Bing has announced a new image search landing page that contains the top image searches on Bing. The group of images highlights those top image searches with the use of images, how novel. When you click on an image from that page, you are taken to a Bing image search result. From that page you […]

  • Last Chance To Speak At SMX West

    Interested in speaking at SMX West, in San Jose on March 8-10? We’re finalizing the speaking roster this week, and have a few sessions where we’re still considering speaking pitches: Building Buzz On Facebook: Getting Liked & Shared Do Bad Merchant Reviews Now Count Against You In Google? Do Not Track & Search Marketing In-House […]

  • 5 Bad Google Ads: What Were They Thinking?!

    Ad copy is a significant factor in Quality Score which can impact the cost of PPC clicks. Why and how? It’s mostly about “relevance,” and that is measured primarily by clickthrough rate (CTR). While CTR isn’t the only factor you should focus on (since ROI is paramount), it’s way up there. Be wary of anyone […]

  • New Report Shows AdWords Interactions Pre-Clickthrough

    Ever wonder if anyone is interacting with your AdWords ads without clicking through? Google has rolled out a report to allow advertisers to view what it refers to as “free clicks” — clicks and interactions that occur with the ads that don’t result in a click-through. The new report will show interactions that take place […]

  • 10 Reasons You Can’t Miss SMX West – March 8-10 in San Jose, CA

    Are you responsible for building site traffic? Growing sales? Boosting ROI? Acquiring customers? All of the above? A well executed search engine marketing program can help you exceed your goals. And Search Marketing Expo – SMX West is where you’ll learn the cutting edge tactics to make it happen. Here are 10 reasons you should […]

  • Survey: 6-10 Local Business Reviews Required For Trust

    UK based SEO firm BrightLocal has released a second wave of findings from a consumer survey conducted in September 2010 (n=2,012 US & UK residents), which asked about local search behavior and online reviews. The first round of findings was released in December. This second release includes numerous findings. However I’ll focus on several that […]

  • Google Maps Adds Fuel Calculator In UK Directions

    Google Maps has added a fuel calculator widget to the bottom of your driving directions, at least in the UK. For example, if you are driving from Manchester to Edinburgh and scroll down to the bottom of the driving directions you will find a link to the fuel cost estimates. If you click on the […]

  • Does Your Local Mobile Search Strategy Suck?

    If you are a small or local business, I bet it does. If you are a big business I bet it does too, but let’s stick with the small guys today. Mobile usage is growing and because location is often at the heart of mobile search queries, mobile is important to businesses that rely on […]

  • Google’s $100 Million Gift To Outgoing CEO: Unusual

    On Friday Bloomberg reported that outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt (now “executive chairman”) was receiving a “$100 million equity award” from Google. According to executive compensation experts quoted by the Wall Street Journal it’s “unusual” for a sitting CEO to receive such a big award. However is a larger version of equity awards given to other […]

  • Bing Hopes For Touchdown With New ESPN Partnership

    Football fans have probably already seen plenty of Bing advertising across various sports. And as the Super Bowl approaches, you’re going to see more: Bing and ESPN have just announced a new partnership that involves two pre-Super Bowl promotions: A new feature called “I Am A Champion” that begins airing this week on SportsCenter and […]

  • Searching For Old Versions of Web Sites? The Wayback Machine Is New and Improved

    The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to “build an internet library” and offers a searchable collection of digital collections. Internet Achive’s Wayback Machine (launched in 2001) has archived web pages going back to 1996, enabling historical snapshots of the web. As ReadWriteWeb notes, the Wayback Machine has just been redesigned and relaunched with a […]

  • Google May Let You Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam

    Ready for do-it-yourself spam fighting? Google has discussed giving searchers the ability to remove domains from its search results. That’s according to Matt Cutts, Google’s top spam fighter, who’s been posting frequently in a Hacker News discussion about Google’s search quality/spam blog post from Friday morning. In the discussion, Hacker News user “bradly” asks if […]

  • Are You Minivan Racing?

    When is the last time you flipped over to ESPN on race day and saw a Honda Odyssey taking corners at high speed? It doesn’t happen because minivan racing is stupid. But in our web businesses, we do it every day. We pile 9 or so whining people [who act like 8 year olds] into […]

  • Search Marketing 2011: Special Q&A Webcast with Search Engine Land Editors on Jan. 25

    Search Marketing Now kicks off the New Year with answers to your questions about search marketing and advertising in 2011. Search Engine Land editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will take questions from the audience — both before the webcast and during this one-hour special webcast taking place Tuesday, January 25th at 1pm ET. Topics […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

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

  • 10 Tips for Optimizing Your Website’s Speed – Web page speed and performance is very important to the user experience. If your site is too slow, you’ll not only be losing visitors, but also potential customers. Search engines like Google factor a website’s speed into account in search rankings, so when optimizing your site’s speed, you should take everything into consideration.
  • Facebook: Where Have All The Fans Gone? – I started looking at the stats of other pages, where seasonal drop was certainly not involved, I saw similar increases. What’s more interesting, all the fans in unrelated fields started to unsubscribe on the same day.
  • The Endless Hassles Of Reporting A Closed Business To Google Places – A humorous exercise in futility over at the SEO Igloo Blog leads to what looks like serious design flaws –or oversights at least– in Google's local search machine: "What system and safeguards have Google put in Places to make sure that they know when a business closes so that a) they aren’t misdirecting the public and b) they are reducing the incidence of merging closed businesses with new tenants?"
  • Fight Spam harder with the help from Google: You might be able to Blacklist Domains soon! – Google is considering to give users the rights to fight own battle aganist spam. Answering the question on Hacker News Discussion Matt confirmed Google is also thinking that way.
  • Discussion of Google's New Focus On Fixing the Low Quality Content Problem – The folks at WebmasterWorld dissect Matt Cutt's latest Google Blog post regarding webspam.
  • Data & Collection Methodology For Page Level Search Engine Indexation Research – An excellent step by step tutorial from Richard Baxter on checking indexation depth of a Web site through Google cache queries (a procedure not exactly adhering Google's TOS) in comparision to data compiled from other sources.
  • Are "False Positives" Proof Directory Submissions Still Work? – Shaun Anderson shares a finding that seems to prove that even submissions to Web directories that went awfully wrong have enough impact to outrank the Wikipedia on "keyword stuffing". Bottom line is, even if directory submissions aren't exactly the holy grail of link building, they don't hurt your SEO efforts much, provided you don't generate an overdose of directory links, and may still be worth your time.
  • Search Optimization is Critical for Marketing to College Students – Yes, college students are extremely comfortable with web technology. They know the online world very well. So, when they want information about any organization, they turn to search rather than a company-built fan page.
  • How journalists are using Facebook, Twitter to write mini serial narratives – While newspapers have moved away, to some extent, from multi-part serial narratives, there are signs of mini-serialization everywhere: in the cartoon strips and panels that let us visit our favorite characters each morning; in the racehorse coverage of local and national elections; in recurring news stories about Chilean miners trapped in a mine, or a British Petroleum well polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Is Your PayPal Button Hurting Conversions? – Linda Bustos shows screenshots of both good and bad examples of how to integrate a Paypal button into your shopping cart.
  • How we got our rankings back with mainly technical changes – Jeroen van Eck presents a case study that drastically shows why for ranking purposes it is important to analyse the markup's structure before the fancy CSS kicks in.
  • Should I Bid Using PPC on my Brand Terms? – Really great discussion on when you should and should not bid on your brand terms.
  • Why a Link Analysis is Anything But a Waste of Time – In response to a recent SEO Theory post stating that competitive link research is utterly useless, link building expert Wiep Knol discusses many benefits of a professional link analysis, which go far beyond goals like acquiring links from sites that link to the competition.
Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.    Google News

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is 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.

Related topics

AppleGoogle NewsLink buildingSEOWordPress

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.

Topics

Our events

About

Follow us

© 2024 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Third Door Media, Inc. is a publisher and marketing solutions provider incorporated in Delaware, USA, with an address 88 Schoolhouse Road, PO Box 3103, Edgartown, MA 02539. Third Door Media operates business-to-business media properties and produces events. It is the publisher of Search Engine Land the leading Search Engine Optimization digital publication.