SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 21, 2012

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

From Search Engine Land:

• New Ad Status Info Added To AdWords

  Google is providing AdWords users with a new way to figure out whether their ads are approved, or not, and why. The new feature is expected to be especially helpful for folks placing ads in categories restricted by the company’s advertising policies. To view an ad’s status, hover over the speech bubble in the Status […]

• The Hidden Lever In Paid Search Optimization

  There have been many articles written about paid search optimization, but there is one piece of the optimization puzzle that continually gets left out. The hidden lever in paid search optimization is prioritization. Prioritizing optimization opportunities is equally as important as doing the optimization itself. I have seen double digit increases in performance and significant […]

• 4 Examples Of B2B Content Marketing Executed With SEO Best Practices In Mind

  According to the 2012 MarketingSherpa Search Engine Marketing Report, of all SEO tactics available, “content creation works the best, but takes the most work,” says Kaci Bower, Research Analyst, MECLABS. B2B Internet marketers need new content to enforce and build upon keyword strategies, acquire links, and attract attention in social media. In my experience, effective […]

• Why Search Marketers Are Losing Out With Search Retargeting

  Search retargeting finds those individuals who have searched on Google, Yahoo! or Bing for a keyword that matters to your campaign, but who have not visited your site before. Unlike site retargeting that talks only to those people who have abandoned the site without competing an action, search retargeting is for new customer generation. Arguably […]

• How A Google Change May Mistakenly Turn Search Traffic Into Referral Traffic

  Google’s about to make a change to how it reports referrer information for those using its Chrome browser. As a result, some analytics programs may begin listing search visitors as if they instead came directly from Google without doing a search, though major packages will probably adjust OK. The change was posted on the Google […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Pinterest Userbase Up 237 Percent Since Start Of 2012, ComScore Says
• Facebook Study: Building Brands With Social Media & Organizing Teams For Social Success
• Twitter’s 6th Birthday: 140 Million Active Users, 340 Million Tweets A Day
• Study: Email Deliverability Dropped Precipitously In Second Half of 2011 For First Time

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Ask Jeeves’ UK marketing director departs as marketing shifts to US, Marketing magazine
• Google Customers Sue Over Changes to Privacy Policy Rules, Bloomberg
• Google Play to launch in France, The Bookseller
• Google Said to Rethink Wallet Strategy Amid Slow Adoption, Bloomberg
• Microsoft nabs former Yahoo chief scientist to work on big data integration, ZDNet
• Recipe search engine Yummly grabs $6M to find mouth-watering recipes, VentureBeat
• Ten things Oracle v. Google tells us about the judge presiding over Yahoo v. Facebook — UPDATE: 10 hours later, the case was reassigned to a different judge, FOSS Patents

Local, Maps & Mobile

• New ‘Via’ Waypoints feature added to the REST Services Routes API, Bing Maps Blog
• Apple Siri Can’t Get Directions For Places Outside United States Of America, Search Engine Roundtable
• Imagery Update: Week of March 19th, Google LatLong

Link Building

• 8 Ways to Get Links from Events and Conferences (Without Being a Sponsor or a Speaker), Daily SEO Tip
• Review of Jim Boykin’s Free Broken Link Tool, SEO Book
• Will Google provide more link data for all sites?, YouTube

Searching

• Wolfram|Alpha Gets a Green Thumb with Plant Data, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Yandex Understands Users’ Search Intentions, Yandex.Company

SEM Industry

• Search Marketing and Social Media in Regulated Industries, Search Engine Watch
• SES New York 2012 – Day 1 Coverage #SESNY, Search Engine Watch

SEO & SEM

• 4 Steps to Use Organic Keyword Data to Build & Improve Converting PPC Campaigns, Search Engine People
• 5 Ways to Optimise Your PPC Keyword Research, SEOptimise
• Advanced SEO Practices for 2012, SEO Theory
• How Google’s Algorithm Update is Changing SEO, blog.dacgroup.com
• Is duplicate content really bad for SEO?, Vertical Leap Blog
• Is Google Now Counting Text Within The Meta Description Tag?, hobo
• More On Google Support For hreflang, Sitemaps & Geo Topics, Search Engine Roundtable
• On-Page SEO Factors: Which Ones Have the Most Impact on Rankings?, Search Engine Journal
• SEO & Google: The Ugly Truth, Search Engine Watch
• SEO Secrets, Tips & Tricks – Why it’s Not Worth Your Your Time, Michael Gray
• Write for People AND for Robots: How to Craft Content that Works for Your Customers and for Google, SEO.com

Social Media

• Demystifying Schemas for Food Bloggers, outspokenmedia.com
• Social Media Disconnect: It Matters, But We Have No Strategy, Small Business SEM
• Twitter turns six, Twitter Blog

Video, Music & Image Search

• Improving video awesomeness with one click, YouTube Blog
• Siri Gets A Slight Update, Expanded Yelp Functionality., Gadgetsteria

Web Analytics

• Firefox making the switch to default HTTPS Google search, ZDNet