SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 27, 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 Search Testing New “Clean” Design: For Tablets Only?

  Google is testing yet another design, this one is the same gray and black bar look but places the search filters and navigation at the top of the page, instead of on the left. Amit Agarwal posted screen shots of the new design, here are two of the many screen shots he has posted: Agarwal […]
• Facebook Launches In-Depth Guide For Businesses

  Late yesterday Facebook announced “Facebook for Businesses” providing users clear and concise directions for properly marketing on Facebook. This is very similar to last month’s “Twitter for Newsrooms” as both are official resources for entry level participants. The variety of marketing options on Facebook can be daunting for new marketers, but this guide does a great job explaining […]

• 4 Tips To Launch Your B2B Marketing In Social Media

  Savvy business to business marketers realize that social media involves much more than opening corporate accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Today, social media offers B2B marketers significant, quantifiable and predictable results. This column explores the top four reasons B2B marketers should engage in a proactive, social media program, and offers specific tips on getting started. […]

• Landing Page Battles Of The Flat Foreheaded

  If you run into a marketer with a flat forehead, odds are that they have been working on landing pages. Landing pages are are a fantastic conversion tool. Because they are so often tested, we know a great deal about what is likely to work on a landing page. Unfortunately, managers and designers prefer their […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Design Refresh for Google Web History, Google Operating System
• Review your mail forwarding and delegation settings, Official Gmail Blog
• Gray Google News Badges Are Placeholders, Not Real, Search Engine Roundtable

Business Issues

• One Small Antitrust Victory for Google, Wall Street Journal
• Facebook Building 2nd Data Center in Oregon, Data Center Knowledge
• IAC/Interactive hits record on strong earnings, MarketWatch
• Why Microsoft Won’t Dump Bing, Redmondmag.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Updates to Street View in Australia, Official Google Australia Blog
• Google Maps 5.8 for Android adds photo uploads, My Places, and more, Official Google Mobile Blog

Searching

• 14 Facts (& more) about Blekko – Infographic, cognitiveseo.com

SEM Industry

• Interview With Chris Boggs of Sempo, Michael Gray

SEO & SEM

• 8 Ways To Ensure Search Engines Can Crawl Your Website, American Express OPEN Forum
• Dethroning the King: Why Great Content Won’t Beat Your Competition, BruceClay.com
• Leveraging your SEO for Search Retargeting, SEOmoz
• Mobile SEO 101: 5 Quick Tips, Search Marketing Standard
• New Clarity on Reconsideration Requests from Tiffany Oberoi, Stone Temple
• SEO Techniques for Large Sites: How to Maximize Product Visibility in Organic Search, Search Engine Watch

Social Media

• Making it easier to create and manage Test Users, Facebook Developers
• The GOOGLE+ Punch List (21 Items Google Must Add to Plus), launch.is

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics reporting update, SEO Home

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

• Discussion: What do you think Google's U.S. market share really is? – When the online measurement services send out their monthly market share numbers, Google's U.S. market share is usually pegged at around 65% to 70%. But some say it's probably higher than that, perhaps even as high as 80-90% (which is the case in many other countries). In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know what you think Google's U.S. market share is and why. The floor is open!
• Leveraging your SEO for Search Retargeting – A way to use retargeting to target previous visitors from your SEO efforts.
• SEO Shop Puts 50 Google +1s on Sale for Just $9.99 – So let me get this right: buy +1 spam votes to not make your spam look spammy?
• Mind the Bid-to-CPC Gap in Paid Search – An sophisticated look at advanced PPC bidding techniques.
• Exactly How Valuable Are People With High Klout Scores? – My question is: Does a person’s Klout actually determine the impact they have on their audience? Can we predict that those with high online influence can directly persuade others into action? I scoured the Twitterverse for some of Ad.ly’s sponsored messages and used our Compete.com data to determine each celeb’s actual impact on website traffic for the days surrounding their endorsement.
• Google+, Identity and SEO (Oh My!) – A solid piece on Google+ and how it could impact search, advertising, etc. If you read it carefully, it could help inform your SEO strategy circa 2012 and beyond.
• Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why – So, where does this leave email? Has the @ symbol lost its meaning as an address, and instead become the signifier of a Twitter name? I think that we need to radically reconsider our approach to email in this changing landscape and understand that it can be a powerful tool when leveraged correctly.
• Google Places: Integrating some of the great information that’s been buried – Mike covers the updates recently rolled out  for local search.