SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 18, 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:

• Study: Insurance, Loan-Related Keywords Are Google’s Cash Cows

  Insurance-related keywords are the source of 24% of Google’s AdWords revenue, with the highest CPC coming in at a whopping $54.91, according to a study by search marketing company WordStream. The company used its own keyword database and the Google Keyword Tool to come up with the top 10,000 most expensive English-language keywords over a […]

• Google’s New Official Google Only Short URL: g.co

  Google announced they have launched a new URL shortener just for official Google use. The new URL is g.co. Google said this URL will only be used to link to official Google properties, explaining it is reserved “just for Google websites.” Google explained that “you can trust that it will always take you to a […]

• Today On Google+: Will Circles Work, Google+ And Search & Top Google+ Posts!

  Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The Future Of Google+ Is Social In Google’s DNA? is an article written by MySpace’s former co-founder Tom Anderson and takes a look at the filtering of messages by both Facebook and Google+. Are […]

• Weighing In-House vs Agency SEO For Enterprise Search Strategies

  Working on the agency side of search for many years has taught me some valuable lessons. I’ve been privileged to work with the best and brightest, and by turns, saddled to work with the worst and dullest. I’ve seen a little bit of everything: those that get it, those that don’t, and those that don’t […]

• Hot At Sphinn: Summer Book Recommendations, Remarketing Campaign Tips & More

  With summer now in full gear, we asked readers of our sister site, Sphinn, to help create a summer reading list last week. That was the topic of our “Discussion of the Week,” which asked for Recommended SEO/PPC/Social Media/Internet Marketing Books. There were a variety of suggested books covering SEO, web analytics, Google AdWords and […]

• Are QR Codes Good For Local Marketing? A Contrarian View

  Quite a few marketers have raved about QR codes as the best thing since sliced bread. Small-to-medium local businesses wonder if they should jump on the bandwagon as well, but is there enough substance to justify the buzz? Consider this contrarian view before deciding if you should. With new and emerging technologies, it can be […]

• IAB: Display Trumps Search For Mobile Marketers

  A new IAB-sponsored survey of 300 US-based corporations shows that branded apps and display advertising trump search marketing in mobile. According to the just-released survey almost twice as many marketers used mobile display advertising as used mobile search. Percent Using for Mobile Advertising I’m somewhat surprised by these findings. However the survey sample consisted of […]

• Should You Bid On A Keyword If You Rank Organically For That Term?

  Over the past several years, I have done numerous case studies with companies looking at the differences in their paid traffic when they also rank organically for a term. In this column, I’m going to share some of that data and walk you through some simple calculations you can do to see if you should […]

• Google Testing Fixed Top Search Bar

  Amit Banerjee has spotted a new Google test with the new top bar that places the top bar in a fixed position at the top of the screen and stays there even as you scroll down. Amit captured a screen demo of this in action: As you can see, the top bar stays with you […]

• Belgian Newspapers Claim Retaliation By Google After Copyright Victory

  Perhaps the lesson is: be careful what you sue for. The French and German-language Belgian newspaper consortium that successfully sued Google for copyright infringement got more than it bargained for this week. The newspapers’ content has been removed not only from Google News (as desired) but the entire Google index. Now the newspapers are crying […]

• Today On Google+: A Handful Of Helpful Tools, Google+ Officially Over 10 Million Users & Friday Fun!

  Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Official: Google+ Hits 10,000,000 Users Over 10M Google+ Users was shared late yesterday by Larry Page, Google’s CEO, in the midst of the quarterly Google earnings call. This number is still far-removed from Facebook’s […]

• Forecast: Expanded Weather Coverage On Bing

  Bing has expanded its weather-related coverage with more information and resources, and also updated the display of that information at the same time. The new features are available only in English-language markets. Bing’s blog post explains the new set of weather search features, which are available under the “Weather” tab after your initial search. In […]

• Exploring The Shift In Search Behaviors With Microsoft’s Jacquelyn Krones

  I first met Jacquelyn Krones, a Senior Product Manager from Microsoft, at a search show. A mutual friend on the Bing team, Product Manager Stefan Weitz, introduced her to me and said, “You have to meet Jacquelyn. You speak the same language.” Stefan was right. Jacquelyn started talking about the research project she was then […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Something new on the Google Takeout menu: 1’s, Google Data Liberation
• "Rate this Page" is Coming to the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia blog
• A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar, Official Google Enterprise Blog
• ZIP and RAR support now available in the Google Docs Viewer, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Google’s Eric Schmidt explains why he decided to testify, POLITICO.com
• CHART OF THE DAY: Google’s Headcount Continues To Soar, Business Insider
• Google Agrees to Let Publisher Opt Out of News But Stay in Search, AllThingsD
• Google’s Innovation -And Everyone’s?, Forbes
• Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Plays Not My Job, NPR
• Women with Vision, Martha Stewart Television
• Yandex Holds 65% of Russian Contextual Ads Market Valued at $430M in H1 2011, Quintura blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Search Showing More Local Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Street View a security threat, BJP
• Imagery Update: Week of July 18th, Google LatLong
• Mobile Now 12% of All Paid Search Impressions; Tablets 2% of All Impressions, Performance Blog

Searching

• Google’s Mysterious Yellow Dot, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Interview With SEO Jill Whalen: Google , SERP Spam & Much More!, NickLeRoy.com

SEO & SEM

• 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Blogging and SEO, Search Engine People
• Another Google Toolbar Pagerank Update? (18 July 2011), hobo
• Coming Soon: More Improvements to Microsoft Advertising adCenter API Campaign Budgeting, adCenter API Blog for Developers
• Expand Your PPC Advertising Networks To Improve ROI, PPC Hero
• Google Ad Extensions with Mona Elesseily, Stone Temple
• More huge problems with citations on Google Places!, jamesnorquay.com
• Multiple XML Sitemaps: Increased Indexation and Traffic, SEOmoz
• Non-ASCII characters now supported in display and destination URLs, Inside AdWords
• RSS SEO Course: Get Traffic and Index Your Backlinks with RSS Feeds, Daily SEO Tip
• SEO Tips, Alt Img Tags, Minify, SEO Optimization, Vertical Measures
• Taking action on very spammy free hosts, seozen.com
• Top 5 “Duh” PPC Techniques, Search Engine Journal
• Webmasters Finally Trusted Google PageRank Less, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• Breaking News: 33% of Google Users Are Female, Paul Allen
• Google Ad On Facebook Is Banned, TechCrunch
• Google wields data openness against Facebook, CNET News
• Early Google Circles and the Google Social Site You Might Not Know About, SEO By The Sea
• Google has made Twitter boring, here’s what Twitter should do about that, Scobleizer
• Illogical? William Shatner Gets Booted From Google, TechCrunch
• Make the Most of Product Reviews on Your Facebook Page, ProBlogger
• Twitter and App Makers Feel Growing Pains, New York Times
• Twitter spam and motivation to report it, Marco.org

Web Analytics

• 7 Things You Can Do When Your Conversion Funnel Sucks, Search Engine Journal

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

• How to build your own thumbdrive SEO browser – Jesse discusses a portable SEO Browser designed to run from a thumbdrive, complete with all his favorite tools and SEO gizmos.
• Interview With SEO Jill Whalen: Google +, SERP Spam & Much More! – Lots of good nuggets about SEO & Social Media here.
• Scalable Link Building Plan for Corporate Websites/a> – A guide on how to efficiently develop a corporate site's brand through scalable link building strategies.
• Exposing Black Hat PPC Techniques: Stealing Competitor’s Trademark Traffic in Google Adwords – Want to learn how to steal your competitor's high-quality brand traffic and redirect it to your site using Google Adwords? "Against their terms," you say? Rubbish! I'll show you how a black hatter did just that to a client of mine costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost traffic!
• Time Based Penalties in Google – With the very public outing and penalizations of some large high profile sites in the last few months, the issue of time based penalties was given prominent exposure. These penalties lasted 30 days and 60 days.