SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 16, 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:

• Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links

  Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for “entities” or concepts that […]

• With Fix In Place, Wolfram Alpha Explains How Siri “Recommended” The Lumia By Mistake

  It wasn’t Siri that was recommending the Lumia as the best smartphone to some last week; it was Wolfram Alpha. That won’t happen again, now that Wolfram Alpha has made changes to to fix problems it had dealing with customer reviews. Reviews Weren’t Weighted To Account For Number When I looked into the Siri-Lumia issue last […]

• 3 Guidelines To Scale Your SEM Team

  There is a phenomenon within organizations that causes productivity to decline as teams grow larger. This phenomenon is described in economics as a diseconomy of scale and is caused by at least three factors including increased communication costs, duplication of effort, and top-heavy management. These three components can cripple an SEM team that grows larger than four […]

• Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories

  Yesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ […]

• Do Search & Display Really Belong Together?

  The premise is simple – PPC and display are both media buys trying to achieve similar outcomes; both are forms of ‘bought media’ and now with display moving to a biddable environment both now require quantitative skill sets to manage them. It’s not a tough sell to convince a budget holder that a single agency […]

• Early Stage Landing Pages At The Top Of The Funnel

  For many B2B and considered purchases, buyers go through several stages of evaluating the market and choosing a seller. Different stages naturally benefit from different kinds of landing pages and conversion strategies. Here, we’ll take a look at the very top of the funnel, to see how three different companies are handling early-stage interest on […]

• Bing’s New Social-Friendly Search Interface Now Live

  The new Bing interface, with a healthy dose of social connections and discovery, is now live for all users. Bing’s announcement today says that anyone can access the new interface at www.bing.com/new, but you should also see a new message atop the Bing home page that invites you to try “the best search, now with […]

• How To Use The Keyword Funnel To Understand Searcher Intent

  Keyword research can give you great insight into customer problems, needs, desires, and intent.I like to categorize keyword categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages. After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I’ve developed, which are organized around a “problem/solution” mental model.

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

• Is Mother Nature Causing Stormy Sales? Weather Underground Shows How Weather Impacts Your Bottom Line
• “Optimizing” Pre-Image Optimization
• Report: Google+ Engagement Down, 30% of Users Publicly Post Won’t Post Again
• Ahead Of IPO, GM Drops Facebook Ads; Forrester Warns Other Companies May Follow

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Find facts and do research inside Google Documents, Docs Blog
• Google’s Chrome Browser Is Coming For iOS, Says Macquarie, Business Insider
• Continuing to bring people front and center in Gmail, Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Yahoo Chairman Wants Interim CEO to Be Permanent CEO, Wall Street Journal
• Facebook Offers 50.6 Million Extra Shares, Price Range $34 – $38, thenextweb.com
• Google Can Survive Too Much Innovation. You Can’t, Forbes
• Google Glasses Design Patents and Other Wearables, SEO By The Sea
• Google’s Marissa Mayer Talks Tech With Newsweek/The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown, The Daily Beast
• Loeb Makes $122 Million on Yahoo as Thompson Steps Down, Bloomberg
• What hardware and software powers Googlebot?, YouTube
• Facebook’s New R&D Machine, Wall Street Journal
• Google to meet French regulator on privacy policy, Reuters

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Launches Street View in Estonia, ERR
• Google Places API search refinements, as requested by you, Google Geo Developers Blog
• Google to Expand Android Mobile-Device Partnerships, Wall Street Journal
• Microsoft Starts Ad Placements In WP7 Local Scouts Results, techie-buzz.com
• Quickly access your home and work locations in Google Maps, Google LatLong
• XAd Report Shows Growth In Local Mobile Search, blog.kelseygroup.com
• Are Local Organic Results Getting Lesser?, ngsmarketing.com
• Imagery Update: Week of May 14th, Google LatLong
• New figures by category — how many downloads does it take to reach the top of the free and paid iOS charts?, insidemobileapps.com

Link Building

• Can I Use Pinterest To Build Links?, Search Engine People
• Visualizing Link Data With Screaming Frog and Excel Part 1, Search Engine Journal
• 11 Unwritten Rules of Link Building, Single Grain
• 17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid, SEOmoz
• 3 Effective Local Link Building Strategies, Daily SEO Tip
• EDU Links That Don’t Require Heavy Resources, Link Fish Media
• Link Building Using Product Reviews, Daily SEO Tip

Paid Search & Contextual

• Reminder: Upgrade to Adintelligence v.8 Before the End of May, adCenter API Blog for Developers
• Thanks GM, That Leaves More Facebook Ads Impressions For Me, AIM Clear Blog

Searching

• A Facebook Search Engine to Rival Google? Users Dislike That Idea [Survey], Search Engine Watch
• Bitly readies real-time viral search engine, raises $20 million in new funding, The Verge

SEM Industry

• How to Seduce Seven Types of Searchers with Great #PPC Ad Copy #SMX, adCenter Blog
• Overlooked, Underloved & Unknown Analytics – SMX London, koozai.com
• Overlooked, Underloved and Unknown Analytics, stateofsearch.com
• SMX London top tips and takeaways, Wordtracker
• Local SEO Tactics, State of Search
• Mobile Trends: Search, Apps & Landing Pages – #SMX, State of Search
• SMX London 2012 – Advanced Track Highlights, SEOptimise
• What If The Google Penguin Update Inadvertently Killed The Web As We Know It?, WebProNews

SEO & SEM

• Is Google really going to rely more on social media signals in the future?, econsultancy.com
• Bing Indexing Fewer Pages Or Was There A Bing Update?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Essential Excel Tools for Writing PPC Ads, The SEM Blog
• Five SEO tips for product pages on Ecommerce websites, Smart Insights
• Google Penguin Recovery Information & Penguin Checklist, beu blog
• Google Removing Free Directory Web Sites From Index?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google: Stuffing Title Attributes Is Sneaky, Search Engine Roundtable
• Malware, SEO and you, internetmarketingninjas.com
• Mastering Google Product Feeds and Product Listing Ads – Part 4, blueglass.com
• Protecting Your Site and Brand From Negative SEO, David Naylor
• Response Codes Explained with Pictures, SEOmoz
• The Five Biggest Mistakes of Onsite SEO, revenews.com
• The Tools of PPC Ignorance, PPC Associates Blog
• 4 Steps to Doing Keyword Research For Existing Content, Search Engine People
• Beware! Google is Changing Title Tags at Will, Marketing Words
• Bing’s Other Ideas: A Head Scratcher, RKG Blog
• Ecommerce SEO and Beyond – The Complete Guide, koozai.com
• Google AdWords Interactive Infographic On Travel Season Buying Stages, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Bot now crawls arbitrary Javascript sites, swapped.tumblr.com
• Is There A Google Update? Penguin, Panda, Penalties Possible?, Search Engine Roundtable
• MichelleMSEM’s Q&A with an AdWords Rep About the New Ad Rotation Settings, PPC Hero
• Those Who Don’t Learn SEO are Doomed to Repeat It, Search Engine Guide
• Use AdWords Search Funnels to Gain Deeper Insights, Certified Knowledge

Social Media

• New Google Plus Data Shows Weak User Engagement, info.rjmetrics.com
• The New Model: How Google+ “Gets” Content, Techipedia
• Twitter now has 10m users in UK, The Guardian