SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 15, 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:

• Google, Twitter Flaunt Social Stats … It’s Like 2003 All Over Again

  Whether on purpose or not, Google and Twitter are having a little back-and-forth this week about the size of their social networks — or, maybe more accurately, about the activity levels on their social networks. Google+ has X amount of users and the +1 button gets served Y times per day. Twitter delivers N tweets […]

• How To Build Multi-Purpose Landing Pages For Small Budget Advertising

  For a long time, I thought utilizing a strong Landing Page Optimization program was only available to large companies with large budgets. The software to create landing pages on the fly by keyword is pricey, and the learning curve is significant. If you have the time, budget and manpower to utilize a design team and […]

• How To Use ACE For Landing Page Testing With Minimal Risk

  A common way of testing landing pages is to do a split A/B test. The test setup typically goes like this: (a) Identify the keyword/adgroup sets for which the new landing page will be tested. (b) Set up identical ad copies in the ad group but with destination URLs pointing to the original as well […]

• Search In Pics: Chrome Cut, Google + T-Shirt & History Of Search

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Via Geek & Poke, The History of Search: Fake Google + T-Shirt? Microsoft Office 365 Car: […]

• Google News Plays The Badge Achievement Game

  Google News announced you can now earn badges for reading news on Google News. The badges are awarded by topic, such as stock market, Apple, Harry Potter, U.S. Politics and so on. The more you read about a specific topic through Google News, the higher the badge reaches. It starts at Bronze and goes to […]

• Google Maps Removes In-Traffic Travel Estimates

  Barry discovered that Google had dropped its in-traffic travel estimates from Google Maps on the PC. This is apparently due to some inaccuracy or dissatisfaction with the methodology Google was using to determine travel time. “We have decided that our information systems behind this feature were not as good as they could be. Therefore, we […]

• Microsoft Tulalip: Is A New Social/Search Hybrid On The Way?

  It appears that Microsoft is planning a new project called Tulalip and could be positioning it as a hybrid search/social networking service. First reported by Fusible, Tulalip currently sits on the SOCL.com domain, which is owned by Microsoft. You can see the socl.com WHOIS record on DomainTools to confirm. Tulalip currently only offers a “welcome” […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Transitioning to a Google Apps account, filiwiese.com

Business Issues

• UPDATE: Google To Hire More Specialists To Handle Sales, Wall Street Journal
• The Massive Mystery In Google’s Finances And Why This Is Bad For Publishers, SVW
• MYSTERY SOLVED: Here’s Why Google Sites Revenue Is Growing Faster Than Google Network Revenue, Business Insider
• Twitter Renegotiating Firehose Data Deal With Microsoft, AllThingsD
• Zillow Ups IPO Pricing To $16 To $18 Per Share With Nearly $500 Million Valuation, TechCrunch

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Local Query Grade Map, Chitika Insights
• Canada Post Codes Work On Mapquest But Not Google Maps, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• 5 Link Building Best Practices (Ignore At Your Own Peril), Search Engine People

Searching

• Is Google replacing our memory?, ZDNet

SEM Industry

• When Good Enough Isn’t – Why I’m Leaving SEO, Outspoken Media

SEO & SEM

• Exposing Black Hat PPC Techniques: Stealing Competitor’s Trademark Traffic in Google Adwords, Search Engine Journal
• Google Shopping: God is in the Details, Search Engine Journal
• External Linking Good For SEO? – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Introducing phone support for AdWords advertisers in Europe, Inside AdWords
• Time Based Penalties in Google, distilled
• Tips To Break Free From Google’s Panda Update, Search Engine Roundtable
• Willful SEO Aversion and Truly Reprehensible Journalism, Ad Age

Social Media

• Google Gaga = Tweet Deal, Wall Street Journal
• 5 years ago today Twitter launched to the public – Twitter, thenextweb.com
• Facebook Working with Top News Brands on ‘Facebook Editions’, Forbes
• Twitter: 1 Billion Items Delivered A Day Is Nice, Google . We Do 350 Billion., TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• Say Hello to the New Playlist Player, YouTube Blog
• Google launches Photovine app for Apple’s iPhone, not Android, latimes.com
• comScore Releases June 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings, comScore

Web Analytics

• New Ecommerce Tracking and Validation in the Analytics SDK for iOS, Google Analytics Blog
• Announcing Yahoo! Web Analytics 10.1.1, Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog

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

• Content Based Outreach for Link Building – In-depth link prospecting and acquisition processes from Justin Briggs of Distilled.
• Twitter drives 4 times as much traffic as you think it does – Jonathan from awe.som explains why "referrers are a poor way to attribute traffic from social sharing."
• 25 Must Follow Trunk.ly Users Who Get You the Latest SEO Nuggets – Tad Chef explains: "Trunk.ly is the killer app nobody really talks about. It deserves the hype of Friendfeed or Quora, but barely anybody notices the huge impact it may have in future and it’s only rarely that someone explains how useful it already is."
• We Live In The Age Of Conversation Overload – Tom Foremski posits that it's not information overload but conversation overload that will drag us into the abyss.
• 8 Lessons from Pickup Artists for Link Builders – I've always likened link building to sales (or picking up artristry) so this post spoke to me. Some actionable tips too, so it's definitely worth a read.
• Using Subdomains to Defeat the Google Panda Algorithm? – Google has maintained that there were no exceptions to Panda & they couldn't provide personalized advice on it, but it turns out that if you can publically position their "algorithm" as an abuse of power by a monopoly  you will soon find 1:1 support coming to you.