SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 24, 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:

• The Yahoo Search Direct Alphabet: Where Every Letter Starts With Yahoo

  And you thought Google favored its own properties? Check this out: In Yahoo’s new Search Direct feature, 21 of the 26 one-letter alphabet queries show a Yahoo property as the first “answer.” If you type the letter “A,” for example, Yahoo Answers is the featured result; type “B,” and Yahoo Bookmarks is the first answer, […]

• European Advocate General Finds Against Trademark Bidding in Interflora Case

  The European Advocate General is recommending that the Court of Justice of the European Union rule against retailer Marks & Spencer for bidding on the trademarked terms of Interflora, the flower delivery network company. If the Court of Justice acts on the findings, it could effectively spell the end of bidding on competitors’ trademarks in […]

• Everyone Wants A Piece Of Google: More Antitrust Saber-Rattling By States Attorneys General

  Bloomberg is reporting that Ohio Attorney General (AG) Mike DeWine is the latest figure considering an antitrust investigation against Google. So is Wisconsin’s AG, but specifically around the proposed ITA acquisition. Texas is already conducting its own broad antitrust investigation against Google. Google is formally under antitrust investigation by the European Commission. In addition, Wisconsin Senator […]

• Searching For Answers To Phone Leads: What Channel Drove Calls?

  When a business receives a call from a potential new customer, a slew of questions immediately pop up: How did they find us? Which search engine or ad drove the call? Did they visit our website first? Did they make a purchase as a result of the call? A business that can quickly answer […]

• 10 Tips To Check The SEO Soundness Of Product Listings

  Optimizing for search engines and shopping engines is all about accessibility, relevance and authority. In the process of continuously optimizing for search and searchers, sometimes basic areas get ignored, overwritten or overdone leading to entire sections of the site being blocked, duplicated or rendered useless for search engines. Here are ten quick checks to ensure […]

• “Anti-Search Engine” FindTheBest Adds Buying Guides, Top 10 Slideshows

  There are a number of ways to describe FindTheBest, the site launched last year by DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor. One is “decision engine” another might be “comparison engine,” a third could be “anti-search engine.” It might be called an “anti-search engine” because, like Blekko’s Rich Skrenta, FindTheBest’s O’Conner believes that search results have become cluttered […]

• New Reports Aim To Add Value To AdWords Campaign Experiments

  Google is now providing new reporting for its AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE), which allow advertisers to test keyword, bids, placements and other variables. The new report allows advertisers to see ACE metrics side-by-side with their regular campaigns. Previously, one had to download reports and do analysis in a spreadsheet. The results also show whether differences […]

• The Harry Houdini Google Logo

  Today on Google you will find a special logo for Harry Houdini’s 137th Birthday. Houdini is a legendary magician, actor and escape artist. He was born today in 1874 in Budapest and made his claim to fame in the United States living to the age of 52, dying in Detroit, Michigan on October 31, 1926. […]

• Italians Issue Another Dubious Anti-Search Decision

  Earlier this year the Italian Communications Authority decided that YouTube was effectively a TV broadcaster and imposed the same rules and restrictions that apply to TV in Italy — and potential penalties for their violation — on Google. It said that Google is now legally responsible for any content appearing on YouTube. Now an Italian […]

• Wait… Google Banned BeatThatQuote Again!

  On March 7th, Google acquired BeatThatQuote.com. The attention of the acquisition got SEOs to call out that BeatThatQuote was violating Google’s webmaster guidelines and led to the site being penalized by Google. Then yesterday, I reported BeatThatQuote was no longer penalized, at least that was until they were found to still be violating Google’s guidelines. […]

• Report: Google Most Valuable Brand Of 2011

  Brand Finance published their annual report on the most valuable brands and this year Google reached the top spot, ranking as the most valuable brand in the world. Brand Finance said, “the world’s increasing dependence on the internet is reflected by Google’s position at no. 1.” According to the full list, Google was the number […]

• Google’s Think Quarterly: An Online Magazine Done The Google Way

  Google has published its first edition of Think Quarterly, a 64-page online magazine/book that comes from the company’s UK & Ireland offices. The first issue is dedicated to “data” as a topic and features a series of articles written by guest authors and Google employees. Hal Varian, the company’s chief economist, writes about “data obesity” […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Google TV PM Brittany Bohnet Leaves Google For A Startup, TechCrunch
• Inside Judge Chin’s Opinion, The Laboratorium
• Twitter In Negotiations To Bring Jack Dorsey Back As Chief Product Officer, Business Insider
• Twitter tax break moves forward : City Insider, San Francisco Chronicle
• Google’s former ad man joins Twitter, Fortune’s deals blog

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Holds Honeycomb Tight, BusinessWeek

Paid Search & Contextual

• Groupon accused of ‘bait and switch’ advertising on Google.com in lawsuit, Los Angeles Times
• Discover v201101: Generic selectors, AdWords API Blog
• adCenter UI Experiencing Latency and Intermittent Errors, adCenter Blog
• How redirectors solve the third-party cookie problem, Rimm Kaufman
• Microsoft adCenter Search Advertising Campaigns Go Missing, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• 12 Highly Useful Google Cheatsheets For Free Download, technologytosoftware.com
• Baidu to introduce anti-piracy technology for books product, Reuters

SEM Industry

• Watch Lady Gaga’s exclusive Q&A with Google, Official Google Blog

SEO & SEM

• Google News de-indexing Berkleyside: Bug, not snub!, Nieman Journalism Lab
• The Hidden Motives for Denouncing SEO, SEOptimise
• Can eHow Get More Respect with Push for Quality Content?, PBS
• Does Google AdWords normalise your Quality Score to your CTR?, Vertical Leap Blog

Social Media

• Color, A Twitter For Photo And Video, Launches With $41 Million, Forbes
• Amazingly, MySpace’s Decline Is Accelerating, TechCrunch
• How Do You Find The Time For Social Media Marketing?, Search Engine People
• How Facebook Deals Could Show Facebook’s Game Plan in Payments, AllThingsD
• How friend clusters could make Facebook intimate again, VentureBeat
• Marketers Aren’t Sure About ROI but Will Spend More on Social Media, WFA Says, Ad Age
• The Implicit Social Graph, A VC
• The Wisdom of Friends (and Others Too), Facebook

Video, Music & Image Search

• That Was Fast: The Speak-To-Search Extension For Chrome, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• A fond farewell to Connection Speed, Google Analytics Blog

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

• When Social Bites Back: Dealing With Missteps – Love this from Amber Naslund — thoughts on managing social screw-ups whether you're the offender or the boss of the offender.
• Google Adwords Slap & Ban Recovery – An in-depth look at how Google is banning some Adwords accounts and penalizing others, with information on how you might recover if this happens to your site or account.
• How to Find Twitter People that Don’t Suck – Really comprehensive article with ideas, tips, and tools for finding quality people/accounts to follow on Twitter. There are lots of articles on this topic — this is one of the best.
• Defining Your True Competitors – While clients can tell you who their business competitors are, it's still good to find out who's beating them (or keeping up with them) in the rankings in order to fully identify who their true online marketing competitors are.
• Is Facebook Killing Off The Company Website? – There are many consumer brands andmusical superstars that measure their fan numbers on Facebook in the tens of millions. This rapid increase has only happened in the last 2 years and for some Facebook pages that phenomenal growth can be measured in months.  Here are some headline numbers.