SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 3, 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: Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according […]

on March 3, 2011 at 5:00 pm | Reading time: 10 minutes
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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App

    Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according to Ask’s Jason Rupp. Much of that chat activity was focused on particular locations. But Ask’s Q&A app wasn’t intended to support full-blown conversations. Cut to several months later and, […]

  • Kayak Welcomes Google As Travel Search Competitor, With ITA Acquisition Still Under DOJ Review

    In a bit of a surprising interview on Bloomberg News, Kayak.com’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Paul English boldly stated that the travel search engine doesn’t fear Google’s entrance into the travel search market via the proposed acquisition of ITA Software. Kayak is officially listed as a member of the FairSearch Organization, but Google claims […]

  • Google Intros AdSense Mobile Interface

    In a nod to the legions of smartphone users running AdSense on their sites or apps, Google has announced a mobile-friendly web interface to AdSense accounts. The site represents Google’s response to apps such as DuoSense for iPhone, which third-parties have developed to serve mobile users of AdSense. Folks who go to the usual AdSense […]

  • Where, Why, When & How To Benefit From Google’s Farmer Update

    I’m sure everyone has read about Google’s recent algorithm change to penalize content farms by now. There’s been lots of reports on who the biggest losers have been in terms of traffic loss, but for everyone who’s lost – someone else has won! So looking at this from the alternative point of view, how can […]

  • Bing Brings Local Deals To Mobile, PC

    Bing is introducing deals for mobile (m.bing.com) and the PC. Mobile deals are available for the HTML5 sites for the iPhone and Android. They aren’t yet in Bing’s mobile apps but will be integrated soon according to Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz. The source of deals here is The Dealmap, which is also the principal source of […]

  • 5 Legal Tips For Video Search Marketing

    Video search marketing has exploded in the past few years. The problem is that most marketers today, especially those in small-to-medium businesses, have no idea what the legal issues with online video are. As a video search marketing professional and legal analyst of new media, I’ve put together this introductory guide for marketers on understanding […]

  • Microsoft & Facebook No Longer Friends After Employee Poaching Accusations

    Kara Swisher reports Microsoft is considering taking legal action against Facebook for allegedly poaching their employees. Facebook recently hired Microsoft’s global ad sales head Carolyn Everson. That sparked a deeper look at how Facebook may be going after Microsoft’s talent. And Microsoft may potentially use legal action to prevent Everson from working at Facebook. It […]

  • Google Redesigns Google Profiles

    Google announced they have revamped the design for Google Profiles. Google said the new profile design is “even easier for you to control and enrich your public profile.” Here are before and after pictures of my profile: Before: After: As you can see, the profiles do look slicker and more “social,” as you would expect […]

  • Last Chance! SMX West Starts Next Tuesday: Register Now

    Time is running out! Search Engine Land’s Search Marketing Expo – SMX West begins next Tuesday at the San Jose Convention Center. Register now to reserve your place. Your investment in coming to SMX West will pay off many times. We guarantee it. Register for your All Access pass and get 3 days of exception […]

  • Google Japan Logo For Japanese Doll Festival

    Google has a special logo for the Japanese Doll Festival on Google Japan. The day is known as Hinamatsuri, also known as Girl’s Day or the Japanese Doll Festival. It happens every year on March 3rd and is celebrated by covering a platform in a red carpet and placing oriental dolls on the carpet. The […]

  • Simple Tips For Writing An SEO Style Guide

    You want to rank, you have to write stuff. Lots of stuff. If you’re a big company, you’re likely going to have 5+ copywriters going like gangbusters producing articles for your site, guest blog posts and link bait. Even if you don’t, you still have the content that currently exists on your site: Product descriptions, […]

  • How I Got A 300% Retail Sales Explosion With 30 Minutes Of SEO

    I’ve lived by this rule since 1997: If you name your products using the keywords customers search for to find and buy what you sell, you’ll do better selling online than if you use the manufacturer’s name or industry jargon for your product names. I’ve been working on product pages on online stores for a […]

  • February 2011: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

    Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from February 2011: Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results New York Times Exposes J.C. Penney Link Scheme That Causes Plummeting Rankings in Google Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update Google Logo Honors Constantin Brancusi’s 135th Birthday Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In […]

  • More Farmer Update Winners, Losers: Wikihow, Blippr & Yahoo Answers

    As search industry analysts continue to review the fallout from last week’s Google Farmer update, we’re getting new snapshots of what sites were hurt and which ones have survived the crosshairs of Google’s latest algorithm change. One such analysis from SearchMetrics confirms much of what’s already been reported, but also adds several new names to […]

  • Google: We’ve Made No “Significant” Changes To The Farmer Update

    Earlier, we wrote about a Wired article that looked at how the Cult Of Mac web site had regained traffic lost after Google’s recent Farmer Update algorithm change. A fix just for Cult Of Mac? A fix to the algorithm? Neither, Google has told Search Engine Land. No Manual Changes Google has told us that […]

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Searching

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

  • Google Bounce Rates: The Untold Story – Good piece by Kate Morris on bounce rates — including when they don't really matter as a measurement of success, especially for some bloggers and affiliate marketers.
  • The Ultimate Social Media Profile Chart – A list of the most popular social media sites, all arranged by category. Besides the obvious factor that these sites allow you to get involved in their communities, they also allow you to create a unique profile which includes your own custom URL, a link(s) back to your site and information about you and/or your company.
  • Can Competitors Hurt Your Rankings With Bad Links? – Actually, this post doesn't answer its title's question, but offers valuable advice on how a webmaster can deal with links launched by a competitor to harm rankings.
  • 10 Steps To Writing Better Web Content – Your Web content is in a constant battle against a number of variables competing for your readers’ attention: A link to another website, the back button, their task at hand, the size of their monitor, the number hours in the day. For those reasons and many others, it’s crucial to give your readers easy access to the information they want, without making them think, and without getting in their way with marketese and fluff.
    Here are some of the most useful guidelines I’ve come to appreciate in my quest to continually improve my content writing.
  • The Canonical Tag Can Save You from the Duplicate Content Monster – The canonical tag (rel="canonical") is an essential tool in the search engine optimization (SEO) toolbox. It is often a better solution that a 301 redirect in cleaning up duplicate content issues.
    So let's explore what those issues are and what the tag does.
  • How To Define, Measure & Test Conversion Events – You've got the rankings, you've got the traffic, now you just need the conversions. Excellent tips on how to better your conversion rate.
  • How to Unnaturally Naturally Vary Your Anchor Text – Ross Hudgens offers up a very detailed tutorial on how to "naturally" vary your anchor text. Good stuff.
  • Yelp: Google Told Us “Our Way Or The Highway” – If you wanted to see Yelp reviews for a particular restaurant you could either go to Yelp.com or you could go to Google’s Place Page for that same location — and that’s what Yelp is worried about. For the past year or so Yelp and Google have been a little like the two Koreas, not at war but not at peace either.
  • How To Trick People Into Reading Your Blog – A few ways that Lisa Barone regularly trick people into reading the posts that she writes across the Web. They are all of course based on providing unique value.
  • The Race to Build a PageRank for the Social Web Continues – It's not just Klout. Mathew Ingram looks at how Peer Index is also trying to be the default standard for measuring social infliuence online. Not sure either company will get it right, but it's an interesting topic to think about with search engines also trying to account for social influence in ranking algorithms now.
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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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