SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 10, 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:

• Foursquare’s Crowley Can Feel Foursquare Fatique, Has Plans To Fix It

  Feeling Foursquare fatigue and perhaps wondering what’s the point of checking in at times? Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley sometimes feels it too — but he’s got plans to keep you interested. More on that as well as turning Foursquare into a “product building machine,” from my interview with him last week. Why Check In? I’ve […]

• Watchdog Group Asks Congress To Examine Google’s WiFi Data Collection, Ties To Obama Administration

  In a six-page letter to House Oversight Committee leaders, a watchdog group has called on the government to do a “thorough investigation” of both Google’s WiFi data collection and the FTC’s recent decision to end its investigation without penalizing Google. In a blog post announcing the letter (PDF download), Ken Boehm, chairman of the National […]

• Google/Facebook Saga Continues: Google Warns Not To “Trap” Your Data

  Continuing on from Danny’s Facebook: You’ve No Right To Export Email Addresses , it appears Google has upped the ante. ReadWriteWeb noticed that when you try to export your contacts to Facebook, Google gives you a big warning. This warning stems from Google recently changing their terms of service of their contacts API to prevent […]

• Google Releasing Beta AdSense Interface To All Publishers

  Google has finally released the beta AdSense management interface they have been testing for over a year now to all publishers. AdSense publishers will now or soon be able to see the new interface via a link at the top of the old interface or by visiting google.com/ads/newadsense. Afraid to try out the new beta […]

• Google Updates Maps In 10 Countries, TeleAtlas Going Away?

  At some point during the course of the past couple of years, perhaps catalyzed by the shock of Nokia’s roughly $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, Google decided it needed to “own” maps top to bottom. Since that time the company has been making a systematic effort to collect and improve the base data for this […]

• Save with Super Early Bird Rates – Register for SMX West Today!

  Join us for Search Marketing Expo – SMX West 2011 and immerse yourself in three days of exceptional tactical content and invaluable networking opportunities with like-minded peers. Don’t miss the event 100% devoted to the search marketing community, March 8-10, 2011 in San Jose, CA. Register for SMX West now and you’ll get at the […]

• 3 Essential Traits Of Conversion-Optimized Design

  We regularly perform expert CRO reviews of web designs for our clients. What informs these reviews? Is it just our aesthetic opinion? Must a design look a certain way to be effective at conversions? No. But whatever their appearance, conversion-optimized designs do share some common traits, and in this article I’ll discuss three I consider […]

• Is The “Last Click Wins” Model Best For Your Affiliates?

  The “last click wins” method of awarding affiliate commissions means that whichever affiliate is responsible for placing the most recent cookie on a user’s machine is awarded 100% commission for the sale. In this model, affiliates responsible for earlier cookies or impressions do not prevail financially—they get nothing. The question is does the “last click […]

• Bonuses, Raises: Early Christmas For Google Employees?

  Has Christmas come six weeks early for Google employees? Business Insider is reporting that the company has given all of its employees a $1,000 holiday cash bonus, 10% salary hikes starting in 2011, and the opportunity to earn additional salary next year, too. All of this is detailed in what Business Insider says is a […]

• Facebook: You’ve No Right To Export Email Addresses (Unless It’s To Yahoo & Microsoft)

  The Google-Facebook wars have heated up this past week over the ability for people to swap contacts between the services. In the latest round, a Facebook engineer says people have no right to export the email addresses of their contacts. Unless, of course, you’re exporting to Yahoo and Microsoft. I’ve been watching the events unfold […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Exporting your waves, Google Wave Blog

Business Issues

• Yahoo’s Informal Offer To Buy Groupon: $3 Billion To $4 Billion, businessinsider.com
• Exclusive: Yahoo to Name Time Inc. Exec Powers as head of U.S. Sales, AllThingsD
• Online Privacy Is Poised for Regulatory Showdown, New York Times
• Twitter Clarifies Usage Rules, but AFP Still Claims Unbridled Right to Use Content Uploaded to Twitter, Eric Goldman

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Bing The Bing Maps Facebook Tab Gets a Face-lift, Bing Maps Blog
• Android Now Owns 25% Of The World’s Smartphone Market, businessinsider.com
• Follow that cab! Racing Google Maps on city street, New Scientist
• Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 35 Percent in Third Quarter 2010; Smartphone Sales Increased 96 Percent, gartner.com
• Here Comes Another Android Phone With Bing Pre-Installed… And This One’s Only $50, businessinsider.com
• Refining the Google Maps tiles for Japan, Google LatLong
• Yahoo! Mail & Messenger Now Optimized for Android, ymobileblog.com

Link Building

• Don’t be Another Link in the Chain: Quality Content and PR is Key to International SEO, Search Engine Journal
• Link Building for Novices – Why Build Links?, dailyseotip.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords Downtime: November 13, 10am-2pm PST, AdWords API Blog
• Adwords Is Dying and Google Knows It (and they are doing something about it), Fast Company

Searching

• New Google Competitor Blekko Is Handling 1 Million Search Queries Per Day, businessinsider.com
• Newly Supported Math Linguistics, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• When Local SEO is not Local – The Regional Factor, Search Engine Journal
• Why Toolbar PageRank is Worthless, Conversation Marketing
• adCenter Impression Bug Mistaken As Quality Ban By Some Advertisers, Search Engine Roundtable
• How General Keywords Can Influence Brand-Related PPC Purchases, Search Engine Watch
• SEO Success Checklist, Marketers Annex Blog

Social Media

• A little nip and tuck, Foursquare Blog
• #1 Mistake Marketers Make with Tracking Social Media, blueglass.com
• Jimmy Wales makes Wikia stickier with a social revamp, The Guardian

Video, Music & Image Search

• Google Images Removes "Report Offensive Images" Again!, Search Engine Roundtable
• YouTube to Launch New Discovery Tool Tonight; Here Comes Extreme Ironing, Read/Write Web

Web Analytics

• Calculating and Improving Your Twitter Click-through-Rate, SEOmoz

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

• 18 Things A New Site Should Do To Measure Success – This was a really nice, detailed list of things any new site owner may wish to consider about how to track visits, mentions and other metrics to help in their marketing.
• DOTW: When, if ever, will another search engine beat Google? – A new search engine, Blekko, launched last week. Others have come and gone (Cuil, Ask.com, etc.). Yahoo and Microsoft have combined their search efforts. But Google's market share in most of the world is still at least double anyone else's, depending on which stats you use. Our "Discussion of the Week" asks this: When, if ever, will another search engine beat Google? Some related questions: What will have to happen for Google to lose its spot as the world's dominant search engine? Do you expect that to happen in your lifetime? The floor is open!
• When Local SEO is not Local – The Regional Factor – An in-depth article from Alan Bleiweiss highlighting some of the weirdness being seen in Google's new local search results. For instance, why are they showing radically different results for "Dentist in San Francisco" and "Dentists in San Francisco"?
• AFP: Argues Tweeted Pics Are Its To Take – I always was annoyed at the wire services and mainstream media that take pictures that have been tweeted and just use them without permission. Unlike web publications, there's no way to link credit or easily pull down if there's a complaint. The wire services even redistribute the pics. Here, the AFP is arguing in a court case that the act of uploading an image is telling the world you give them a license to use it.
• Tips to Help Local Businesses Succeed on Yelp – A Yelp Community Manager dishes out a detailed list of actionable items that can help a small business succeed at Yelp.
• Removing Pages From Google: A Comprehensive Guide For Content Owners – What if sensible stuff slipped through your crawler/indexer steering and became visible on SERPs by accident? Vanessa Fox explains how you can react.