SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 1, 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:

• Video: Google Speaks About Search Quality Raters

  Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has published a video talking about a topic that Google has never really talked about publicly before – Google Quality Raters. The video goes through the process used by Google with these Quality Raters. Matt Cutts specifically says these quality raters have no direct impact on the Google […]

• Why Link Builders Need To Do More Than Just Build Links

  In the past few months, link building as we’ve known it has been totally shaken up by three major events: Google anounced that they were changing how they view links (nicely recapped here:) Pandamonium! Certain large blog networks were devalued and webmasters started to receive warnings about unnatural links. Link building can still work well […]

• 5 Tips For Maintaining International SEO Knowledge With Training

  Talking to the Global SEO manager of a large organization with offices around the world, he was bemoaning the high turnover of staff and the difficulty of keeping people in SEO posts around the world with the right level of SEO knowledge and expertise to achieve their goals. It’s a challenge many organizations face. That’s […]

• Easy SEO Wins For Big Sites

  If you’re optimizing a site of 10,000+ pages, one-by-one title tag edits isn’t really your best bet. Enterprise SEO is all about scale. So, when I’m working on a behemoth of a site, I look for lazy site-wide wins first. I define a lazy site-wide win as one that: Won’t require intra-office diplomacy worth of […]

• How Device Specific SEM Can Lead To More Valuable Traffic

  Segmentation is the key to success in most marketing activities. Simply recognizing that how traffic gets to the site tells us a great deal about its value should prompt analysts to dive into data. Doing so often reveals big opportunities in device segmentation. Golden Tablets I’m not talking about Joseph Smith’s discovery, I’m talking about […]

• DataPop CEO: Mobile Paid Search Traffic Is 50 Percent Or More In Some Categories

  I had a chance recently to speak to DataPop CEO Jason Lehmbeck. Before DataPop Lehmbeck was at Overture/Yahoo. DataPop is an agency/platform that specializes in “offer driven” search campaigns. I was talking to Lehmbeck about mobile search trends and what kinds of consumer response he was seeing to various campaigns. Lehmbeck gave me some unpublished, […]

• SEOmoz Raises New Round Of Funding: $18 Million

  SEOmoz, the SEO toolset company, has announced they have successfully raised another $18 million in venture capital from Foundry Group and Ignition Partners. Foundry Group put in $15 million and Ignition Partners put in $3 million. Co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin detailed the financials, growth, future plans and management changes of SEOmoz. One […]

• Google “Comparison” Units Get New Look; Change Highlights Paid Inclusion In Some Vertical Search Areas

  Google has had what it has called “comparison ads” for some time, but these comparison units are getting a new look in Google’s search results beginning today. Google hopes the change will better explain to searchers that comparison listings come from companies it has a commercial relationship with. It also highlights how three Google search […]

• Mobile App Marketers Get New Tools From AdWords

  Those marketing mobile applications via Google AdWords are getting some new weapons in their arsenal this week. Google has announced four new tools: a new Mobile App extension for AdWords, additional information to the click-to-download format, the ability to see Google Play stats in AdWords, and Custom Search Ads for mobile apps. The Mobile App […]

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

• Email Marketers Better Prepare For Mobile Opens, New Study Finds
• Flickr Teams With Pinterest For Easy Sharing & Proper Attribution
• Comprehensively Track, Segment Site Performance With New Google Analytics Feature
• Penguin’s Reminder: Google Doesn’t Owe You A Living, So Don’t Depend On It
• Only Android, iPhone Growing, Windows In Decline — comScore
• Identity Of “Wi-Spy” Google Engineer Revealed In Scandal That Won’t Go Away
• Organ Donor Status Added To Facebook Timeline
• Dilbert: Google Glasses Helps People Decide Who To Be Friends With
• And the Winner of the Marketing Land Reader Survey Is…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Google Wave is officially dead starting today, The Verge
• Say hello (or olá or halo or salam) to automatic message translation in Gmail, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Google defends fair use of Java on Android in closing statements, ZDNet
• Google Sued Over ‘Jewish’ Search Suggestions, PC Magazine
• Rumor: Digg to be Acquired by The Washington Post, thenextweb.com
• Google Executive Arora Takes Cash In Lieu Of Stock, Wall Street Journal

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Mobile data is growing, but voice & sms slowing, gigaom.com
• A faster way for businesses to start connecting with customers on foursquare, Foursquare Blog
• Bringing Business Photos to more users and business owners, Google LatLong

Link Building

• Build Natural Links Through Existing Marketing Strategies – Part 1, SEO.com
• Link Building on the Highway to Hell, State of Search

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google AdSense UPS Club – $10,000 Per Month?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• Feds Launch Registry for All U.S. Government Social Media Accounts, www.infodocket.com
• Introducing DuckDuckHack, Gabriel Weinberg’s Blog
• Law Firm Makes All of Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy Documents, Including Internal E-Mail, Available Online, LJ INFOdocket

SEO & SEM

• George Zimmerman: A Rep Management Case Study, BruceClay.com
• Responsive design – harnessing the power of media queries, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• The Real Impact of the Google SmartPhone Crawler (Part 2): Generating Mobile Redirects Properly | SEOmoz, SEOmoz
• Debating the Right Way to Change a Domain Name — and Brand a Nut Retailer, New York Times
• Google Over-Optimization Penalty: Tips to Avoid it, Daily SEO Tip
• Google Places Reconsiders Reconsideration Requests – What To Do If You Are Suspended, Mike Blumenthal
• Kitchen Table SEO: How To Begin SEO On A Shoestring Budget, Search Engine People
• Penguin Pain and Forward Planning, distilled
• SEO Metrics for Publishers: How are You Tracking and Measuring Success?, Adam Sherk
• The Ultimate Guide to XML Sitemaps, internetmarketingninjas.com
• What a multichannel retailer should include in a search marketing brief, Leapfrogg
• Why I Occasionally Hate Google, koozai.com
• Worst Change in Adwords History?, SEER Interactive

Social Media

• Discover better stories, Twitter Blog
• How to Build Social Media Embassies, Search Engine People