SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 1, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live Blekko, the long anticipated search engine founded by Rich Skrenta, has finally opened to the public. The service offers an interesting way to “slash” […]

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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:

  • Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live

    Blekko, the long anticipated search engine founded by Rich Skrenta, has finally opened to the public. The service offers an interesting way to “slash” or create specialty search engines for any topic, along with new features the company hopes will improve relevancy.
    My previous article, Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You “Spin” The Web, goes into […]

  • Google And Blekko Head-To-Head: Blekko Lives To Fight Another Day

    What’s immediately clear from conducting a lot of searches on both Blekko and Google in a concentrated period of time is that the upstart has built a credible search engine that people can use today with a good success. (For a general overview see Blekko, The “Slashtag” Search Engine, Goes Live.) However in a head-to-head […]

  • Google Showing “Total Links” & Yahoo Fixes Site Explorer, Plus More SEO Topics

    In the past week, several SEO related topics are in need of summarizing. Here is a list of quick SEO takes in bullet format, for you busy SEOs and SEMs:

    Google Webmaster Tools has added “total links” to the revamped link reports.
    Yahoo seems to have fixed the broken site explorer linkage data.
    Google has fixed […]

  • Google Adds Stores and Types To Brand Refinements

    In April, Google began recommending brands for select queries. The queries tend to be generic shopping queries. Now, Google seems to have added “stores” and “types” to the brand recommendations.
    Here is a search query for [cameras] showing the new brands, stores and types refinements:

    This also works for [diamonds], gps], [basketball], [netbooks and many […]

  • Avvo Expands Into Doctor Search & Ratings

    Avvo, the popular lawyers’ directory, is expanding into the medical industry today with a new directory of US-based doctors. The company says its new services launches with profiles of more than 800,000 doctors, as well as a forum where consumers can trade questions and answers with participating doctors.
    The most noteworthy — and possibly controversial — […]

  • Blekko’s SEO Tools: What Information Do They Provide?

    The new search engine Blekko just launched, and it’s making SEO-related data that it has found during its crawling and indexing of the web available for all sites. Just what does it include and how useful is it?
    Accessing SEO Data
    You can access SEO data for any domain or URL by clicking the SEO link below […]

  • Viral Video Marketing And YouTube Advertising: A One-Two Punch

    In my opinion YouTube doesn’t get the attention is deserves from advertisers. Yet YouTube is the #2 search engine by query volume. More Americans watch YouTube than the Super Bowl and, for many viewers, YouTube is replacing time spent in front of the television. If you don’t have a strong marketing and advertising presence on […]

  • Search Engine Metrics Are Horrible (And Why That’s Okay)

    The condition of standard SEO metrics search engines provide the web community (if the term “metric” can even be used here) is pretty deplorable right now. Back in February, I wrote:
    “…the convention of using indexed page counts and backlinks to benchmark and report on site performance is facing a similar demise [to ranking reports].”

    Looks like […]

  • Hot At Sphinn: Google’s Eric Schmidt Problem, SEO Mistakes, Social Media Writing & More

    It’s interesting to see what kind of content gets picked up on different channels. Over on Sphinn.com, some published stories generate a lot of comments but not a lot of social network sharing; other stories are the opposite — lots of sharing on Twitter and Facebook, but fewer comments on Sphinn itself.
    This past week, […]

  • Turnabout Is Fair Play: Google Sues The Feds For Not Considering Its Office Alternative

    Google has been on the receiving end of several investigations and complaints from US government agencies. Now Google is taking the offensive and is suing one of them, the Department of Interior in this case, for reportedly not considering Google Apps and only considering Microsoft software in a recent agency procurement round for its 88,000 […]

  • OTA Coalition Forms, Calls Google+ITA Deal A Threat To Consumers And Competition

    Last week, it was announced that FairSearch.org was formed by a group of travel and technology businesses, including Expedia Inc. ( Expedia.com, Hotwire , TripAdvisor), Farelogix, KAYAK.com and SideStep; and Sabre Holdings, owners of Travelocity to lobby against Google’s acquisition of ITA software (for $700 million) which provides data to a number of top […]

  • On Google Growing Up, Losing Employees & Being The New “California”

    Google’s lost yet another high profile employee, apparently to Facebook. Another sign that Google’s slipping, to some. Perhaps. For me, Google has become the new “California,” stealing that role away from Yahoo. Come along a tale of equity refugees and companies growing up.
    California: The Former Golden State
    I’m a California native. I grew up in […]

  • Scooby-Doo Google Logo For Halloween

    Google has a very special Halloween logo for this year’s holiday. The logo is five different designs based around the classic Scooby-Doo cartoon. You can flip between the five different logos by clicking on the right arrow, clicking on the logo or clicking on the palm imprint under the logo.
    Here is a short […]

  • Google Place Search Winners, Losers & WhoKnowsers

    It’s been a few days since the launch of Google’s new Place Search results, and while there is plenty more prognostication to come on the subject, I thought it would be helpful to sum up the collective wisdom of SEO pundits from around the globe on what it all means for getting traffic to your […]

  • Google Spends $1.6 Billion (So Far) On 40 Acqusitions In 2010, Loses Key Personnel

    Google just filed its quarterly 10Q statement. Among the things in the filing is detail about Google’s acquisitions in 2010. There were 40 costing Google a total of $1.6 billion and change.
    There were three substantial acquisitions (mostly bought with stock) and a whole bunch of smaller acquisitions that Google lumps together in the filing: “During […]

  • 2010 Halloween Costumes: Avatar, Iron Man, Lady Gaga & Snooki Are Hot!

    What are you going as for Halloween? If you’re dressing as Lady Gaga or Jersey Shore’s Snooki, perhaps think again. According to both Google and Hitwise, those are among the most popular Halloween costumes out there. And for dog owners, Yahoo has a take on dog costumes.
    “Rising” Costume Stars, From Google
    Google’s annual blog post on […]

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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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