SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 6, 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:

• Impacted By Google’s Panda Update? Google Asks You To Consider This…

  Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on building high-quality sites. Amit’s goal with this post is to have those webmasters impacted by this Panda Update, which rolled out internationally about a month ago, with some direction and guidance to help explain what […]

• Google Releases AdWords Editor Version 9

  Google is rolling out version 9 of its AdWords Editor software, a free desktop client for managing AdWords campaigns. The new release is said to enable users to manage campaigns over multiple accounts more efficiently. It also adds handling of new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and the targeting of mobile devices. AdWords Editor […]

• Don’t Expect A Big Social Announcement At Google I/O 2011

  The Google I/O developers conference has turned into an event where people anticipate big announcements about forthcoming Google products. But at Google I/O 2011 next week, don’t expect Google to rollout a shiny new social network. Expect little to do with social at all. That’s the word from a source close to Google. There will […]

• Bing Previews Plans For Local, Mobile Ad Options

  At a time when competitor Google is focusing intensely on mobile and local, Microsoft’s Bing is sharing plans for ad products that would go toward evening the score between the two biggest search players in the U.S. The company will introduce radius targeting for search ads, allowing advertisers to choose a specific five to 100 […]

• Flash Support For Google Instant Previews

  Google announced they are now adding Flash support to their instant previews. Google Instant Previews launched in November, giving Google searchers a way to preview the landing page of the search results prior to visiting the page. When it first launched it did not support Flash web sites and the previews were not fully visible […]

• Search In Pics: YouTube Bus, Yahoo Door & Noodler Cup

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. YouTube London Bus: Metromint At GooglePlex: Yahoo Logo Embedded In Door: 3D Google Maps Sidewalk: Have […]

• Amid Talent War Apple, Google, Adobe Sued For Conspiring To “Fix” Employee Salaries

  Last year, after an investigation, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded that a number of tech companies, including Apple and Google, violated antitrust laws when they agreed not to poach and cold call each others’ employees. The DOJ obtained a settlement that “prevents [the companies] from entering into no solicitation agreements for employees” for […]

• Why 50% of SEO/PPC Engagements Fail

  A few months ago, I tripped across a staggering (but believable) statistic: 50% of major B2B engagements fail to produce a positive ROI. The book cited three (I like it broken up into four, though) primary reasons for this: The service offered wasn’t capable of producing value. The client/customer/receiver of the service was unprepared or […]

• Keyword Insights: How Office Furniture Vendors Can Target Start-Ups

  It’s a great time to start a company. Incubator labs are springing up all over the place, sponsored by venture capitalists and universities. Universities are teaching entrepreneurial skill, and have programs to sponsor student startups. Massive layoffs over the past two years have forced new college graduates, and experienced former employees to strike out on […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Your TV Just Got Smarter: Yahoo! Introduces Dozens of New Connected TV Apps, Yodel Anecdotal
• Google News and the Coverage of Bin Laden, Google News Blog

Business Issues

• AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Apple and Google all Scheduled to Appear Before Congress Next Week, AllThingsD
• Google is so much more than just Mountain View, Royal Pingdom
• Google Seeks Antitrust Lawyer as It Faces Regulatory Scrutiny, Bloomberg

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Bing New Bing Maps iOS SDK, Bing Maps Blog
• comScore Reports March 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share, comScore
• Google takes a view on the hippest and most romantic streets in Yorkshire, Yorkshire Post

Paid Search & Contextual

• Comparing Quality Score Across AdWords & AdCenter, PPC Hero
• FREE adExcellence accreditation is now available!, adCenter Blog
• Google AdSense Enables Alt/Title Tooltip To Display Advertiser URL, Search Engine Roundtable
• Preparing for the Adwords Fundamentals Exam, Searching Beyond the Paid

Searching

• "National Archives and Partners Launch New International Nazi-Era Records Internet Portal", INFOdocket
• Answer: How common are animal-adjectives?, SearchReSearch
• Computing Facts from the World Bank’s Labor Data, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
• Weekly Yahoo! Search Trends – May 6, 2011, Yodel Anecdotal

SEM Industry

• Video: Google SEO Recap, AdWords & Bing Security & Bing on Blackberry, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Cross-Domain Canonical The New 301? – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Demand Media Deletes eHow Articles, Edits Others in Quality Clean-up Initiative, WebProNews
• Fat Pandas and Thin Content, SEOmoz
• Google Penny Bank, Search Engine People

Social Media

• Facebook Allows @ Mention Tags of Friends to be Shortened, Inside Facebook
• Facebook tests video ads inside social games, VentureBeat
• Breaking Bin Laden: visualizing the power of a single tweet, SocialFlow Company Blog
• Facebook Rolling Out Major Update to Ad Analytics with Audience Funnels and Reach Data, Inside Facebook
• Pull people into your conversation with @mentions, Disqus Blog
• So Unsocial: Don’t Expect Any Big Google Social Announcements At I/O Next Week, TechCrunch

Video, Music & Image Search

• Scammers Swap Google Images for Malware, Krebs on Security
• You old romantics you…72 million live streams in 188 countries for the Royal Wedding on YouTube, YouTube Blog

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

• Small Business Guide to Online Couponing – Nice guide to the 4 major players in group buying: LivingSocial, Facebook Deals, Groupon, and Google Deals.
• Canonical Tag or 301 Redirect: Which one updates SERPs faster? – Interesting test by Tony Adam comparing a 301-redirect to the canonical link element (aka rel=canonical).
• So You Wanna Throw A Twitter Party? Here’s How – Lisa Barone does it again.  This blog post is fantastic for not only learning what a "Twitter Party" is, but how to successfully pull one off!
• Neil Patel’s Guide To Closing BIG Deals – Nice article based on Neil's real world experiences. He says, "If I was able to close 6 figure deals while I was in high school, there is no reason why you can’t do it as well."
• SEO Lessons Learned Through Pictures of Matt Cutts – Matt & his team produce a ton of helpful videos on a weekly basis at Google Webmaster Help on Youtube. I’ve watched several during my downtime and found there are some serious lessons to be learned.