SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 12, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Optimize For Conversion In Organic Search Results In the past, SEO success was measured by rankings of target keywords; then the focus moved to traffic; today we have moved […]

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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:

  • How To Optimize For Conversion In Organic Search Results

    In the past, SEO success was measured by rankings of target keywords; then the focus moved to traffic; today we have moved into the bottom-line era: organic traffic should be measured by its impact on revenue. This post is based on a presentation delivered at eMetrics San Jose 2009. It is about ways to integrate […]

  • Greece Bans Google Street View, Google Says ‘No, You Didn’t’

    There are several reports today that Greece has banned Google’s Street View … but Google disagrees.
    Privacy is Greece’s main concern, just as it’s been with the other villages, towns, cities, national governments, and other organizations that have lined up against Google Street View. Greece’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) announced on Monday that it’s banned Google […]

  • Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds “Rich Snippets” to Search Results

    Today at Searchology, Google has launched a search results enhancement called “rich snippets” that uses meta data from web pages (from microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and RDF) to display additional details (both content and meaning) about pages in the results. This initial launch supports reviews (with sites such as Yelp) and people (with sites […]

  • Google Is A Scraper Site, Says National Association Of Realtors

    With support from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), the Indianapolis Metropolitan Board of REALTORS® (MIBOR) has forced some of its members to stop allowing certain MLS listings to be crawled and indexed by Google because Google (and other search engines) is considered a “scraper” site.
    This is the latest episode in a long-running battle over […]

  • How To Pitch A Performance Search Engine Marketing Agency

    You have probably heard multiple pitches from advertising agencies and SEM firms looking to take over the search engine marketing campaign for your company. When was the last time one of these firms offered to pay for all of the ads up-front and be paid only for the sales and leads generated? Not […]

  • An Insider’s Look At SMX Advanced: Jeffrey Rohrs

    Move over, Denny Crane: SMX has its own legal star programming and moderating panels in Seattle next month. In our fourth installment of our behind the scenes look at how SMX gets put together, Jeff Rohrs talks about paid search, law, fraud and what he’s looking forward to most at SMX Advanced.
    You are a self-proclaimed […]

  • Live Blogging Google Searchology 2009

    Almost an annual event, Google Searchology is a time when Google struts its search stuff in front of assorted reporters. Today’s event gets going at 10am Pacific time. I’ll be live blogging from this page, and you can also watch the event yourself via this webcast. You can also follow @google on Twitter, which will […]

  • How A Twitter Reputation Algorithm Needs To Work

    Big news last week: Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results. Twitter’s @Santosh Jayaram has indicated Twitter Search, which currently searches only Twitter post text, will begin crawling links and indexing the content of pages posted in tweets. To help with search result ranking, Twitter is creating a “reputation” ranking system that among other […]

  • Why Google Radio Ads Failed

    Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan from the Wall Street Journal has some excellent history on why Google Radio ultimately failed earlier this year.
    I’ll quote the story early on, but the Wall Street Journal piece is excellent, on its own.
    A look at what went wrong shows that Google misjudged […]

  • Microsoft Shutting Down QnA, Questions & Answers Site

    LiveSide reports Microsoft has decided to close down the Question and Answer portal, MSN QnA as of May 21st. Microsoft said:
    At this time, we are closing the QnA site, but the experience of running QnA and gathering all of the great feedback you’ve shared with us will certainly influence future product direction.
    QnA initially […]

  • Google Sued For Infringing On All Texas Trademark Owners

    Eric Goldman reports that Google was sued yesterday by FBX for infringing on the trademarks of all of the Texas trademark owners. Yes, this is a massive class action suit, not just against Google but also against YouTube, AOL, Tuner, MySpace and IAC.
    We have had many suits filed against Google over trademark infringement in […]

  • Vote For Second Annual Google 4 Doodle Competition

    In February Google announced the second Google 4 Doodle competition and now, Google is ready for people to start voting on the finalists.
    You can vote by clicking here and selecting your favorite Google Doodles from each grade group. There were about 400 state finalists with 40 regional winners. You vote for the regional […]

  • Did Google Really Consider Buying a Piece of the NY Times?

    According to a Fortune story that appeared yesterday, Google seriously considered and then decided against buying some or all of a hedge fund’s 19 percent stake in the New York Times. According to the article:
    Last month, sources tell me, former Hollywood mogul David Geffen made an offer to buy the 19% stake in the Times […]

  • Will Marketing Kill Social Media?

    Anyone reading this post is likely to be someone who spends some, if not all, of his or her time at work trying to make use of social media to market products & brands. We spend hours trying to maximize the benefit for our employers or clients from sites such as Facebook, YouTube & Twitter […]

  • Google’s Anti-Trust Problem Appears Very Real

    At Google’s recent press event last week, in advance of its annual shareholder meeting, CEO Eric Schmidt seemed to brush off the notion that he might be compelled to resign from Apple’s board because of a potential problem with an “interlocking directorate” (common directors on competing firms). This reaction is consistent with Google’s public calm, […]

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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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