SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 19, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Screen Shots Of Google Health
  Greg Sterling is now at Google, for the Google Factory tour and the news is already buzzing about the US launch of Google Health. Greg may swing by and postscript with some of the details he learned from Google’s presentation, until then, let me share with you screen captures of…
• 
  How to Solve Communication and Differentiation Problems
  Last week, Page Zero Media held a seminar in Toronto called Winning the Paid Search Game. In the intensive half day seminar, we focused on tactical PPC issues like ad copy generation, landing page optimization and the differences between the search engines. But strategy is possibly even more important than…
• 
  The “Google Factory Tour”: Display Ads Coming In Image Search, Google Health Live
  I’m at the “Google Factory Tour,” which is presenting bloggers and the press with an update on the state of search and search-related product development at Google. Apparently there are going to be some updates on Google Health later. The first announcement today, however, is about the integration of image…
• 
  Bienvenido To Search Engine Land En Español!
  We’re very happy to announce Search Engine Land en Español, which is being produced by our SMX Madrid partners OME. It has launched to coincide with the opening of the first SMX Madrid show tomorrow. On the site, you’ll find selected articles from Search Engine Land which have been translated…
• 
  Display Stumbles As Search Remains Strong
  The NY Times has a wide ranging article that discusses online ad trends and the apparent weakening of the display segment, which is roughly 21 percent of online ad spending. The article discusses how marketers are looking for measurable results and concrete audiences and in that context niche networks/sites are…
• 
  MicroHoo Act III: Microsoft Looks For A Piece Of Yahoo, Yahoo Offers A Bland Response, Facebook Wants Its Independence
  Yahoo responded late last night to Microsoft’s statement that it had proposed a new deal but something less than a full acquisition. The Yahoo response was boilerplate and bland and betrayed nothing about Yahoo’s potential receptiveness to a scaled-back deal. The speculation and rumor is that Microsoft wants to buy…
• 
  Google Aids Indian Government In Arrest Of Political Defamer
  TechCrunch reports that Google has aided in the arrest of an Indian man who wrote in an Orkut community, “I hate Sonia Gandhi.” Sonia Gandhi is a politician in India. Google reportedly handed over IP information to the Indian government, to help the government track down and arrest this individual….
• 
  NearbyNow About To Make Local (Product) Search Widely Available
  There are a handful of companies that have been building local product inventory databases, many of them under the radar. They include Krillion, NearbyNow, Shopatron, Where2GetIt, Channel Intelligence and ShopLocal. Krillion was the first to start syndicating that data. But NearbyNow is now going to take its billion product database…
• 
  Google Enables Third Party Tracking For Content Network
  Google has announced that they will now support the ability for advertisers to track their ads using third party advertising tags. This new feature is only available within Google’s content network (aka AdSense) and only available for North America based advertisers. In the past, the only way to track your…
• 
  YouTube Adds Search Suggestions, Demographic Stats, Google Contacts Import & More
  Over the past week, YouTube has announced the addition of several features. In a recent YouTube blog post, YouTube announced the addition of search suggestions on YouTube.com, the import of your Google contacts and a new and improved notification system for video comments. Plus, the Google Blog announced the addition…
• 
  10 Fundamental Tips To Improve Your SEO
  In my colleague Matt Lester’s recent Search Engine Land column he discussed ten tips for a more effective paid search campaign. For this article, I’ll follow up Matt’s advice with ten tips to help you develop a more effective Search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. But before we dive into…
• 
  Microsoft And Yahoo Apparently Back At The Bargaining Table
  What would Sunday afternoon/evening be lately without more intrigue in the MicroHoo drama? Today was no exception as Redmond issued a cryptic statement that says it’s offering to join forces with or acquire some of Yahoo — potentially the search business — in a deal short of the total acquisition…
• 
  Google Celebrates Bauhaus B’Day With “Broken” Logo
  I love Google’s special holiday logos, which typically honor unique individuals or special holidays. Today Google has a special logo recognizing the birthday of Bauhaus (“house of building”) founder Walter Gropius. But it’s a weird tribute: In some respects, the logo can be seen as a rendition of the Googleplex…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Set Basic HTML as Default Gmail View, Google Operating System
• Hooray! Yahoo Mail ditches tagline ads, News.com
• New Gmail Loading Screen for Slow Internet Connections, Digital Inspiration
• Will Gmail Get Themes?, Google Blogoscoped

Business Issues

• Shareholders accuse Yahoo of concealing parts of lawsuit, MarketWatch
• As Long As We Are Rethinking Yahoo’s Board, A VC
• How To Structure a Yahoo-Google Search Deal: Itss All About The Tail and the Torso, TechCrunch
• Google and Ormat discussing geothermal energy projects, Haaretz
• AOL-Bebo: $850M Deal Closes; AOL Combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ Into People Networks Headed By Shields, paidContent.org
• Auction-Rate Losses Cost Google, UPS Shareholders $1.8 Billion, Bloomberg
• Former AOL Executives Sued in Ad-Revenue Case, New York Times
• Microsoft’s Fast Search Deal: Did It Do Enough Diligence on It?, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Love My Maps? Use its Line and Shape Editing in your API Apps!, Google Maps API Blog
• Google Maps: Multilingual Mapspam in LA, Mike Blumenthal
• In India, Location Based Search Kicks Off, GigaOM
• Video: Yahoo Tells All About Mobile Development, InformationWeek
• Climate change in our world, Google LatLong
• Google Maps: What can be learned from the Mapspammers?, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

• Linking In Earnest, The Link Spiel
• Should You Place Your Site Wide Network Links in an iFrame?, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search & Contextual

• Manual Pause vs. Budget Pause – adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• When Do I Get Paid?, Yahoo Publisher Network Blog
• Getting PPC Advice from Yahoo!? Take the Good with the Bad, PPC Hero
• Google AdWords "Automatic Matching" Beta To Expand Tomorrow, Search Engine Roundtable
• Navigation links in adCenter – adCenter Advertiser, adcentercommunity.com
• Panoramio gathering in London, Google LatLong
• Placement-Targeted Campaigns: Taming the Beast, Search Engine Watch
• Why Does Google Limit You To Three Ad Units Per Page?, Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• The Party May Be Over, But the Monkeying Has Just Begun, Yahoo Search Blog
• Yandex Search improves its search algorithm, altsearchengines.com
• Free business news search engine from Northern Light, Pandia
• How Search Engines May Substitute Other Search Terms for Yours, SEO By The Sea

SEM Industry

• Interview of Kevin Lee From Didit, SEO Book
• A Letter of Apology to my Wrists, Search Engine People Blog
• Don Scales Appointed CEO of iCrossing, PR Newswire
• Guy Kawasaki Interview on Alltop, Blogging and SEO, Online Marketing Blog
• Interview with Gab Goldenberg, 21 Year Old SEO Consultant of SEO ROI, Winning The Web
• SEM Recruiters – Rise Above the Noise, All Things SEM

SEO & SEM

• Community Tagging and Ranking in Images of Landmarks, SEO By The Sea
• Online Reputation Management for Direct Marketers, Online Marketing Blog
• What’s the ROI on SEO? (Hint: SEO Experts Are Underpaid, Opportunity Abounds !), seoroi.com
• 7 Tips for Keeping Your SEM Consulting Clients Happy, Search Marketing Standard
• A funny reciprocal links image, Matt Cutts
• Anatomy of a Google Filter/Penalty (or how not to do nofollow PR sculpting), SEO Scientist
• Benefits of Capitalized Letters in URLs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Effective Internal Linking Strategies That Prevent Duplicate Content Nonsense, Search Engine Guide
• Google Crawling Speed and Search Query Popularity, Irishwonder
• Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title : What’s the Difference?, Search Engine Journal
• Save Your Rankings with a 301 Redirect, Serengeti Communications
• What’s Most Effective for Geo Targeting?, Search Engine Journal
• You Don’t Own Your Brand Online…But You Can Own the Search Results, SEOmoz

Social Media

• Mike Arrington is Right, Facebook is Wrong, Scobleizer
• Publishing for Profit and Influence: It’s All About the Passion, DoshDosh
• Don’t Be So Naive: Friendfeed Adds to the Noise, Read/Write Web
• How Google Friend Connect Works, Google Code Blog
• Observations on Twitterdom, News.com
• Tweet 2 Tweet Brings Wall-To-Wall To Twitter, SheGeeks
• Why FriendFeed won’t go mainstream (Part I), Scobleizer
• Why Google News has no noise, Scobleizer
• 12 Traits of Successful Bloggers, ProBlogger
• Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User, Inquisitr
• Facebook CEO wants to talk with Google on Friend Connect, InfoWorld
• Fifteen Years of Online Social Interactions, Techipedia
• How to Go from Nothing to 550,000 Social Media Visitors in One Month, ViperChill
• Social Media Marketing Basics, Social Media 101, 10e20 Blog
• Twitter Come Back, CenterNetworks
• Twitter Hack: Find People Who Share Your Web Pages on Twitter, Digital Inspiration
• Using Social Media to Research Customer Service Experiences, Search Marketing Gurus
• What Are The Unspoken Rules of Social Networks?, ProBlogger

Video, Music & Image Search

• Meet the new YouTube News Manager, YouTube Blog
• Enhanced Image Search – What Should It Be?, SEO Smarty
• PS3 Adds YouTube Upload Functionality News, TVG

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics – 20 Ways to Fix Analytics. Please Hurry?, RyanSpoon

Other Items

• Europe Insight Israel’s Garage Geeks Gather to Hear Google’s Brin, BusinessWeek
• Chess Games at hakia, Hakia Blog
• Google Treasure Hunt update, Official Google Blog
• Gordon Brown seeks some of that Google magic, Times Online
• Google Health: Birth of a Giant, redOrbit
• Google’s Brin: Anti-Semitism forced my family out of Russia, News.com
• Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 18, 2008, Search Engine Roundtable
• A peek into our search factory, Official Google Blog
• Google’s New Taipei Office, Google Blogoscoped
• Live Notes from Google Factory Tour of Search, TechCrunch
• Responding to the earthquake in China, Official Google Blog
• Something Google Doesnt Want You to See, New York Times

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

• Matt Cutts: Google Detects Reciprocal Links Images!
• Top 10 Ways NOT to Spend $12 Million on Marketing
• One Week of Sphinn SEO Lessons
• Interview with Gab Goldenberg, 21 Year Old SEO Consultant of SEO ROI
• Dan Thies Releases 2008 Edition of SEO Fast Start
• Tips for Building Communities, Online and Offline
• Anatomy of a Google Filter/Penalty (or how not to do nofollow PR sculpting)
• 9 Tips To Gain Exposure
• Baby Girl Born on Twitter!
• The 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook
• Search Marketing Trends – What’s up for Marketers & Investors?
• Forget The Video CameraTwitter Child’s Birth
• How You Can Use WordPress Functions to Run a Smarter Blog
• Publishing for Profit and Influence: It’s All About the Passion
• YouTube is Cloaking, So why Can’t I?
• Have Search Marketers Sunk to a New Low?
• Search Engine Optimization Pre-flight – Analytics
• Why www.arsecommerce Is A Bad URL