SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 23, 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:

• Googleopoly: The Definitive Guide To Antitrust Investigations Against Google

  We’re another step closer to the US Federal Trade Commission launching an expected antitrust investigation of Google. If it does, the FTC will join the EU and Texas in doing broad investigations. But Google’s been examined for antitrust issues many times before this and mostly come through OK. Here’s our comprehensive guide to Google and […]

• FTC’s Google Probe Moving Ahead, WSJ Reports

  The seemingly inevitable antitrust investigation of Google appears to be taking another step forward, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the US Federal Trade Commission is “poised” to serve the company with subpoenas as part of a probe. Google may receive the FTC demands within days, and other companies may get similar requests asking […]

• MapQuest Launches Local Business Listings Center

  Local SEOs have another tool to add to the “citation belt,” as it were: MapQuest has announced its own Local Business Center, a place where local businesses can add and/or manage their listing(s) on MapQuest. As the video below shows, the MapQuest LBC functions very much like Google’s and Bing’s and offers many of the […]

• So Your Sales Just Dropped By 60%, Now What?

  I’ve been an evangelist for the Yahoo Store platform since 1997, and I’ve gotten a reputation for being a troubleshooter when a store is on fire. I love the idea of being the online Red Adair parachuting in to cap that oil well fire and save the day! This time of year, I get one […]

• The Prettiest Person In The Room: The Impact Of Data Sources On Attribution

  Imagine a room filled with 20 men or 20 women. Setting aside for a moment that attraction is subjective, if we were asked to identify the most attractive person in the room, most of us could easily narrow it down to the one to two we thought were most attractive. Now, imagine a room with […]

• comScore: the iPad Owns 97 Percent of US Tablet Traffic

  As part of its new “device essentials” data product release comScore put out some interesting comparative findings about web traffic patterns from a broad array of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. But among tablets we’re really only talking about the iPad. According to comScore, the iPad represents “89 percent of tablet traffic across all […]

• Dilbert Cartoon Says “No” To Black Hat SEO

  This morning’s Dilbert comic is on the topic of black hat SEO. Dilbert wisely decides to avoid those tactics: The comic reads: “I want you to use “black hat” methods to raise our website’s ranking on search engines.” “What do you like best about that ideas – the fact that it’s unethical or the near […]

• Foursquare & American Express Specials Rolled Out Nationwide

  Today Foursquare announced that their Austin-based SXSW test with American Express is going national. The initial Austin-based partnership between Foursquare and American Express gave significant discounts to users who made purchases at local merchants using their Foursquare account tied to an AMEX card. Many of the initial tests were very lucrative for the user checking in; […]

• Changes To AdWords Geo-Targeting Coming Soon

  If you’re accustomed to geo-targeting your AdWords campaign by drawing multi-point shapes around your targeted area, you’re out of luck after July 8, when Google is rolling out some changes to its geographical targeting capabilities. After that point, you’ll still be able to edit and delete existing shapes through 2011, but you won’t be able […]

• Google Testing New “Branded” Places Onebox

  Google continues to tweak and adjust the presentation of local search results on Google.com. I’ve stopped trying to monitor and track all the subtle changes and experiments. However yesterday Mike Blumenthal caught two different presentations of the Places “Onebox,” which appear when you do a business name search (e.g., “Toast Wine Bar”). The first example […]

• Confirmed: Google Showing Google +1 Counts To Logged Out Users

  Google is now showing the Google +1 counts for logged out users. When the Google +1 feature launched in March, searchers were only able to see who in their Google network +1′ed a search result. Now, if you search while logged out, Google will show you the total +1 count for some search results. This […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Mobile Gmail Adds "Pull Down to Refresh", Google Operating System
• Automatic mobile rendering for Google Sites, Google Docs Blog

Business Issues

• Winklevoss twins abandon appeal of Facebook ruling, Reuters
• At Google, groups are key to the company’s culture, Mercury News
• Facebook Names Reed Hastings to Its Board of Directors, Facebook
• Machine Learning opportunities at Google, Machine Learning, etc
• Not So Fast Google – Rambler And Yandex Sign Ad Network Deal To Freeze Out Russian Competitors, TechCrunch
• Yahoo Board Backs CEO Bartz Amid Questions From Testy Shareholders, paidContent.org
• Yahoo Chairman Shows Support for CEO Bartz, Wall Street Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Evidence of Apple mapping solution found in iOS 5, iLounge News
• Mapping in the Midwest, Google LatLong

Link Building

• B = Backlinking, Site Visibility

SEO & SEM

• Enhanced documentation for selectors and reports, AdWords API Blog
• #pr20chat SEO for Public Relations – 7 Key Questions & Answers, Online Marketing Blog
• Do searchers like your content?, Search Engine Guide
• How User Data May Reorder Search Rankings, distilled
• The Top 10 Features Of A Great SEO Landing Page, Search Engine People

Social Media

• Ads enhanced by the power of your network, The LinkedIn Blog
• Twitter plans bolder advertisements, FT.com

Video, Music & Image Search

• A Chrome Extension for Google Music, Google Operating System
• Crossed Out YouTube Search Result Words, Search Engine Roundtable

Web Analytics

• New Google Analytics: Improvements in Mobile Reporting, Google Analytics Blog

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

• 5 Common PPC Optimization Mistakes – Article exploring 5 common pitfalls of PPC data analysis when optimizing PPC campaigns, and suggests 12 practical tips to avoid them.
• 6 Essential PPC Landing Page Optimizations – Excellent checklist for PPC Landing Pages, including some I would have never thought about.
• The Panda Spillover: Losing Links through Article Marketing – Karon Thackston writes about how most sites have been doing article marketing all wrong, which is why they've lost links due to Panda.
• 17 Tips for Tip-Based Content – How to Research, Scale & Promote – Good considerations for creating "how to" and "tip" content. – Tips are the smallest documentable unit of "how-to" do something. Their presence – or absence – within a target market's SERPs provide phenomenal opportunities for link strategists and other content marketers…