SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 16, 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:

• Organic, Paid & Owned Social Media Tactics – Master Them at SMX Social Media Marketing

  Learn tactics you need to be successful on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. Attend SMX Social Media Marketing for two jam-packed days of cutting-edge content and intimate networking, Dec 5-6 in Scottsdale, AZ. At SMX Social Media Marketing, you’ll learn free and paid marketing tactics, as well as best practices for maximizing your company pages […]
• Hitwise: Bing-powered Search Share Inches Up; One-Word Queries Also Rising

  Bing-powered search made small gains in U.S. market share during October, according to the latest Hitwise numbers. Bing gained 3% between September and October, going from 12.8% market share to 13.23%, while Yahoo also rose slightly from 15.27% to 15.39%. Combined, that boosted Bing-powered share among major search engines to 28.62% … still a far […]

• Google+ Badge Tool Now Makes Facepile-Style Badges, +1 Counts To Be Consolidated

  Want to show off the people who follow your shiny new Google+ Page, right on your own website? Now you can, with a Google+ badge that shows the faces of those subscribed. Badge Maker Now, Uh, Makes Badges When Google+ Pages launched last week, the badge making tool also went live — but it only […]

• 5 Tips To Improve Conversions For B2B Sites

  As many B2B marketers have learned the hard way, the traditional methods of marketing to consumers are simply not effective in the business arena. The following 5 tips are proven, easy to implement landing page tactics that will help you generate more leads and improve lead quality. 1. Implement Clean, Clear Landing Pages The design […]

• Search Retargeting: 4 Tips To Use Recency To Drive Performance

  In life, timing can be everything. But in marketing, it can make the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity. That’s why the topic of recency is so important to marketers. Fortunately, search retargeting can help marketers capitalize on recency to drive performance. Understanding Recency & The Window Of Opportunity The concept of recency […]

• How To Terrify Executives Into Linkbuilding

  Much has been written about the poor in-house SEO, fighting the good fight to inculcate SEO awareness and best practices throughout the organization. This is an unenviable task and more than one in-house has shared a narrative with me that sounds something like this: SEO: “So, I’m concerned that we’re not proactively link-building and that […]

• Foursquare Redesign Creates Expanded Opportunities For Users, Advertisers

  Once upon a time Foursquare was a mobile app that allowed you to “check in” places and tell your friends you were there. That seems like a long time ago now. Foursquare has evolved into a local discovery tool and loyalty platform for businesses. It has effectively won in its “check-in” segment and has moved […]

• Microsoft’s Socl.com Is Alive & Well & Turning Search Results Into Social Content

  Microsoft’s search/social hybrid project is alive and well and, if current reports are to be believed, may be headed toward some kind of private beta test in the near future. If you were with us back in July, you might recall the small firestorm that burned for a couple days after news spread about Socl.com. […]

• With Holidays Near, Yahoo Upgrades Its Shopping & Recipe Search Results

  Yahoo is rolling out a couple new search experiences that are aimed squarely at holiday searchers: recipes and shopping. Prior to tonight’s new display, a search for “apple recipes” would include the standard algorithmic results (i.e., 10 blue links) along with a small shortcut at the top of the search results pointing searchers to recipes […]

• How To Search Anywhere From The Firefox Search Bar

  Last week Mozilla released version 8.0 of Firefox and a nifty new feature allows you to search Twitter directly from the Firefox search box. Although I’m a Firefox user, last week’s update was not a big deal for me. Why? I’ve had access to Twitter’s search engine and Twitter’s “who to follow” database from my […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Offline Voicemail Comes to Google VoiceThe Next Web, thenextweb.com
• Product Pulse Relaunch, Yodel Anecdotal
• Gmail app for iOS available in the App Store (again), Official Gmail Blog

Business Issues

• Facebook, Twitter, eBay & Other Big Internet Companies Come Out Against SOPA, TechDirt
• Google’s Schmidt blasts Internet copyright bills, Reuters
• Google registers 1HourPerSecond.com, fusible.com
• Old School Search Engines: Where Are They Now?, WebProNews

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Make your map interactive with shape editing and drawing tools, Google Geo Developers Blog
• Facebook Partners with Orange to Bring Smartphones to Emerging Markets, Read/Write Web

Paid Search & Contextual

• Discover v201109: Filtering on Criterion type, AdWords API Blog
• Google Adds Thumbnail Images To AdSense Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• More ways to reach your audience with YouTube mobile ads, Inside AdWords
• New Layout for the Help Center, Inside AdSense
• Upgrade to AdWords Editor 9.7.1 for more efficient campaign management, Inside AdWords

Searching

• Make Google Your Homepage Internet Explorer Bug, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Meet the Wolfram Math Club, Wolfram|Alpha Blog

SEO & SEM

• How To Brand Your SEO Agency, SEOmoz
• Microsoft Updates BingBot IP Ranges, Search Engine Roundtable
• Mobile App SEO and Opportunities, Search Engine Journal
• On The Road to Recovery – A Panda Success Story in Two Parts, Search Engine People
• Scoring SEO Against Social Media Marketing, SEO Theory
• Strange Encounters of the SEO Kind, Search Engine Watch
• The Challenge of SEO Impression Data, Rimm Kaufman

Social Media

• Launch Of Google+ Photo & Video APIs Imminent (But They’ll Be Read-Only, For Now), TechCrunch
• Oh My Klout has Dropped! Who cares, Klout is for the Lazy People, State of Search
• Some Charts Are Wrong aka An Update on Digg Traffic, Digg About

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

• 8 Tips for Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts – Great article from Linda Bustos with ideas for getting back those shoppers that abandoned their cart for one reason or another.
• Google Analytics Event Tracking in a Template File – Nice Google Analytics hack from tracking multiple events by implementing a code within the head of a website template.
• Google holds back Organic keyword data in Analytics – lobotomising the marketer! – Some interesting theories on the reason for Google's encryption of organic search referral keywords.
• Pinterest Gaining Traction For External SEO – Stats show that Pinterest is gaining traction quite rapidly in 2011, and the site has some really good characteristics as a source for links for SEO.
• An Extensive Guide To Web Form Usability – Good post on optimizing web forms for better usability which will lead to increased conversions and interactions.
• 154 Awesome Pubcon 2011 Takeaways, Tips & Tweets – For those who couldn't make Pubcon this year, here's a recap with 154 takeaways and tips.
• Google: Ten recent algorithm changes – Today we’re continuing our long-standing series of blog posts to share the methodology and process behind our search ranking, evaluation and algorithmic changes. This summer we published a video that gives a glimpse into our overall process, and today we want to give you a flavor of specific algorithm changes by publishing a highlight list of many of the improvements we’ve made over the past couple weeks.
• Should I Work In-House or at an Agency? – An excellent overview of the pros and cons about working in house and for a search marketing agency.
• How to Train a Link Builder – Some solid step-by-step advice on how to train a link builder.