SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 7, 2010

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

From Search Engine Land:

• The Only Constant Is Change

  Lately, I’ve heard a lot of folks chattering about the hot topics of the day. Google traffic is down after their update, mobile SEO is the future and now the flutter is about the apparent changes we’re seeing in the sitemap protocol.
  I suspect in house folks have a split view on these topics. On one […]

• Google Considering Display Ads Across Network, Including In Maps, Gmail

  Google is already a major player in display advertising and is poised to become even more formidable in the next few years. Not so quietly the company has amassed or built a huge array of assets that could see it best many if not most other display competitors and networks, including market leader Yahoo. Google […]

• EU Regulators Taking “Very Careful” Look At Google

  Just after Google announced the widely anticipated acquisition of travel data and software company ITA I was told by Google PR that European authorities weren’t going to get a chance to approve or disapprove the deal because ITA’s EU revenues were “too small” to qualify for scrutiny.
  Yet there are a range of actions and claims […]

• Twitter Search Queries Up 33%, 24 Billion Searches Per Month

  VentureBeat reports Twitter’s co-founder, Biz Stone saying that Twitter’s search volume is up 33%. That is 800 million queries a day or 24 billion search queries per month, up from 19 billion as reported in April.
  24 billion is a huge number, it is larger than Yahoo and Bing, almost as large as them together. […]

• Report: Click Fraud Rate For Q2 2010 28.9%

  Anchor Intelligence released their latest click fraud report claiming the click fraud rate for the second quarter of 2010 was 28.9%. That is actually slightly down from the first quarter of this year, which was 29.2%. But yet significantly up from the prior year, the second quarter of 2009, which was 26%.
  Anchor Intelligence […]

• Case Study: Who Has The Best Conversion Process For Buying An iPhone?

  Now that you can get the iPhone 4 on various networks in the UK, I decided to compare the process of buying one from the leading retailers to see which website performed best from a conversion standpoint. As you will see, the results are quite interesting!
  Just to give you a bit of a […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Rekindles Browser War, Wall Street Journal
• Wikipedia to Add Meaning to Its Pages, Technology Review India

Business Issues

• 1,257 Users Switch To Bing Due To Google News Change, Search Engine Roundtable
• China Is Still Reviewing Google’s License, Wall Street Journal
• Chris Zaharias Joins Dapper as SVP, Sales, Enhanced Online News
• Google investors aren’t feeling lucky anymore, CNN Money
• Skype names Yahoo exec as development officer, The Associated Press
• Surprise! Newest AOL Executive is Not a Google Vet, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Foursquare Is Five Times Larger Than Gowalla And Growing 75 Percent Faster Every Day, TechCrunch
• Google Maps Labels Oceans, Seas, Lakes & Other Bodies Of Water, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Maps: Melbourne Web Designers – A Mosh pit of Decay, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• Find the best blogs for your link-building campaign, econsultancy.com
• Link Building with the Experts Interview, outspokenmedia.com
• Mapping Anchor Text To Landing Pages, Search Engine People
• Reports of the Death of Guest Blogging for Link Building are an Exaggeration, Search Engine Watch
• Site Finder & Backlink Explorer, Raven

Paid Search & Contextual

• An Optimization Guide for Onsite Behavioral Targeting, Search Engine Journal

Searching

• Bing improves Weather, LiveSide

SEM Industry

• Local Search Optimization Interview with Chuck Reynolds, Vertical Measures

SEO & SEM

• 7 Types of SEO Evidence, SEOmoz
• 3 Techniques to Avoid the High Cost of Free Search Marketing Tools, Search Engine Watch
• 4 Tools You Should Be Using, Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• 6 things that Google’s getting wrong. And 1 thing it’s totally nailed, David Naylor
• Average SEO Prices: How Much Does SEO Cost?, ChoiceVendor Blog
• BP Reputation Management FAIL, Search Engine Journal
• Data Blindness, blueglass.com
• How can a website compete using only white hat techniques?, YouTube
• How can I tell if my competitor is doing SEO?, Vertical Leap Blog
• Reddit User Hits Reputation Management Lottery, Marketing Pilgrim
• The dark art of blackhat SEO, SmartCompany

Social Media

• Almost 65 Million Facebook Users “Like” Things Daily, All Facebook
• Facebook Dominates Third-Party Logins For All But News, Read/Write Web
• Facebook’s June 2010 US Traffic by Age and Sex: Users Aged 18-44 Take a Break, Inside Facebook
• Germany takes legal steps against Facebook, The Associated Press
• No, You Can’t Automate Social Media!, Techipedia

Video, Music & Image Search

• Bookings Low? Google Ad Takes Over YouTube Homepage, paidcontent.co.uk
• Life in a Day, Official Google Blog
• YouTube Mobile gets a kick start, YouTube Blog

Web Analytics

• v.4 Tracking Code Migration Deadline is Approaching, Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog

Other Items

• Google’s Favicon a Google Toilet?, Search Engine Roundtable

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

• Link Building with the Experts – 2010 Edition – The link building interview is back. In prior years, I’ve gotten together some of the best minds in link building and asked them to answer some questions about link development.  It’s been more than two years since the most recent one, so I decided to bring it back – this time on Outspoken Media.