SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 17, 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: Search Biz: Google Gets NYC Directions Wrong; Google’s Privacy Headaches; Wal-Mart Doesn’t Want Your LinksFrom the “How Not To Promote Yourself” file: Google is advertising its Google Maps service on the […]
Barry Schwartz on November 17, 2008 at 5:30 pm | Reading time: 9 minutes
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
- Search Biz: Google Gets NYC Directions Wrong; Google’s Privacy Headaches; Wal-Mart Doesn’t Want Your Links
From the “How Not To Promote Yourself” file: Google is advertising its Google Maps service on the New York subway system with a few well-placed ads that give directions between points of interest in the city. Only the directions they’re giving aren’t always right. As AdAge points out, one ad tries to help people find their way from Grand Central Station to Madison Square Garden … but the directions actually send you to Times Square. D’oh! Not exactly how you inspire confidence in the accuracy of your maps service there, G. - Wall Street Meltdown and the 2009 Digital Marketing Outlook (Part 2)
As promised in Wall Street Meltdown: 11 Ways It Affects Digital Marketers, I’m wrapping up with a continuation of the 60,000 foot view of our industry in light of current economic turmoil. No doubt I’ll get back to the close-up view next time, but for now, to get all the bad news talk behind us, let’s do this thing. There are actually some silver linings in here. And unless Google cancels it, even a dance scheduled for Q3. - Google To Change Product Development Steps; Means Major Changes To “20% Time”
Google looks to users’ needs from the Australian IT reports that Google’s, Stuart Smith, their new “strategic planning director” of Google’s Creative Lab in New York is seeking to change how Google develops their products. Instead of Googler’s developing things they personally find useful, Google seems like they may change that process to see what audiences really want. Stuart Smith said, “what typically happens is it is just a load of engineers producing a load of things and then refining until it finds an audience.” What Smith wants to see is for Google “to look at audiences and understand audiences and say ‘perhaps there is a need over here — let’s meet that need.” In short, it seems to me that Google wants to change their product development philosophy, which is famous for coming up with ideas like Google Reader, Gmail, AdSense and tons of their popular products. Yes, these mostly came from Google’s “twenty-percent time.” - See Google’s iPhone-Made Sites On Your Browser
Alex Chitu has compiled a list of Google’s iPhone-made and optimized web sites. So if you want to view them on your own browser, you can, but understand, they look a lot better on your iPhone’s browser. Here is the list of URLs Alex came up with for Google’s iPhone specific web software: - Yahoo Layoffs On Dec. 10 & At $11 Yahoo Now Significantly Undervalued?
AllThingsD reports that Yahoo’s previously announced 10 percent reduction in force (layoffs) is set to begin on December 10. However, the post also says that chief Yahoo, CEO Jerry Yang is not considering leaving his post for now. Yahoo stock is hovering between $10 and $11, off $23 from its previously high during the height of the MicroHoo drama earlier this year. But this price is probably a statement about investor anxiety about Yahoo’s future rather that any kind of rational assessment of the company’s actual value. - Getting The Most From Paid Search In A Difficult Economy
Cost consciousness. Budget cuts. Workforce reductions. Hiring freezes. We’re beginning to see signs of the economic Armageddon everywhere. What a great time to be a search marketer! No, really. I’m serious. Because whatever the economic climate or business objective, search marketing is flexible enough to support it. Don’t get me wrong, I feel your pain. For search marketers, this can be a very frustrating time. We are programmed to build and grow programs rapidly and repeatedly. We get up in the morning and immediately start thinking about ways to increase our spend and revenue. For the past five years, the ascent of paid search as a legitimate direct marketing channel has been nothing short of meteoric. The fact that budgets across the industry are now seeing slower growth, and in some cases a plateau, has many search marketers squirming in their seats. When we’re not allowed to grow programs at an alarming clip, we feel like caged animals. So what’s a search marketer to do? Relax, people. Paid search tactics can support any business strategy you (or your manager) can dream up. Let’s take a look at some different paid search management tactics and what kind of business strategies they support. - Maps Of Fires In Southern California: November 2008 Edition
Fires are burning in Southern California once again. Here’s an update on how to find maps of where the blazes are at: - Eagerly Awaiting Google’s Voice Search For The iPhone
Yesterday arguably the top tech story of the day was Google’s introduction of voice search for its iPhone app. As of this morning the updated app still isn’t available in the iTunes store (that’s not Google’s fault). I spoke yesterday afternoon with Google’s Mike Cohen and Gummi Hafsteinsson about the app and how it would work. What they described was something that sounded qualitatively different in terms of accuracy and usability vs. competitive offerings now in the market.
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- Happy 2nd Anniversary, Google Docs , Compete
- It’s Jam time, Official Google Blog
- Study Finds Google Docs Struggles to Gain Foothold in Productivity Suite Market Dominated by Microsoft, Business Wire
- A word about metrics, part III: market share of Google Docs?, Matt Cutts
- Google Gadget International Usage Numbers, SEOish
- Google: Russia and France are ahead in IPv6, heise online
- Same shit, different decade/century/millenium, Sorting it all Out
- Free Google Apps, More Difficult to Find, Google Operating System
- Fighting spam just got a little easier, Official Google Enterprise Blog
Business Issues
- How Google Can Fix Company And Stock, Alley Insider
- Google Smart Grid, Google Blogoscoped
- SEC Charges Mark Cuban With Insider Trading, Wall Street Journal
- Telemundo Drops Yahoo For Relaunch In 2009; Taps MSN Latino Instead, paidContent.org
- The Google economy, BuzzMachine
- Update: Baidu Search Results Now Excludes Unlicensed Pharmaceutical Companies; Stock Now Down 20%, Barron’s Online
Local, Maps & Mobile
- 8 Ways to Buy Links Without "Buying Links", SEOmoz
- Adobe To Demo Flash On Mobile (But Only Windows). Still "Working" On The iPhone, Mobile Crunch
- Localeze Offers "White Label" Local Search, Screenwerk
Link Building
- Detecting Link Spam, Stone Temple
- Wal-Mart Tells Search Engines No Links to Black Friday Ads, Search Engine Journal
- Guilty (in a good way) By Link Association, The Link Spiel
- 4 Tools Visualizing Domain Backlinks, Search Engine Journal
- Properly Structuring a Link Campaign, Shimon Sandler
Paid Search & Contextual
- Online Ad Growth Grinds To A Halt, TechCrunch
- 7 Signs Your PPC Campaigns Needs Optimization, GrokDotCom
- Keeping Up With Changes to AdWords Quality Score Guidelines, Search Marketing Standard
Searching
- Announcing the new Live Search API, version 2.0 beta, adCenter API Blog for Developers
- Uh oh, Google voice app video pulled from Youtube..Apple not letting it into store? (Quincy Pince-Nez/9 to 5 Mac), Techmeme
- Why Wikipedia Accuracy Won’t Cut It For Google Local, Search Engine Guide
- A New Face-Finding Search Engine, AltSearchEngines
SEM Industry
- Cre8asiteforums New Jobs and Site Announcements Board, Cre8tive Flow
- Latest Interviews: Bill Tancer, Debra Mastaler, David Szetela, Stone Temple
SEO & SEM
- Google’s Relevancy Algorithms Change by Keyword: Longtail vs Core Category Words, SEO Book
- Word of Mouth Marketing vs Search: When Top Google Rankings Are Worthless, SEO Book
- The Art Of The SEO Proposal, SEO Book
- Google Now Showing Sitelinks for Some Sub-Directories, Search Engine Roundtable
- How Google Wants You To Use Alt Tags & Title Tags on Images, Search Engine Roundtable
- My Pages Are Dropping Out of Google: What Do I Do?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Stalking Lee Odden’s Title Tags, AIM Clear Blog
- 14 Competitive Intelligence Tools (aka How to Spy on Matt Cutts), Marketing Pilgrim
- Facebook Steps Up SEO for Brand Pages with Millions of New Indexable Links, Inside Facebook
- How to find out what Search engine users are really asking., SEOmoz
- On Site Search SEO Tip , SEO.com
Social Media
- Google Profiles Adds Photos, Inching Closer to Lifestreaming (Steve Rubel/Micro Persuasion), Techmeme
- MySpace and Facebook In 2009: Battle Of The Books, TechCrunch
- Search, Social and Direct Traffic – [TRAFFIC ANALYSIS], ProBlogger
- HOW NOT TO: Build Your Twitter Community, mashable.com
- Social Networks, Your Way, Search Engine Guide
Video, Music & Image Search
- AOL Gets Out Of User Generated Video Business, TechCrunch
- Hulu To Be Bigger Than YouTube Next Year?, Alley Insider
- Using Video Annotations to Raise Awareness and Website Traffic, 10e20 Blog
Web Analytics
- A deeper look at Advanced Segmentation: filtering on the fly, Google Analytics Blog
- Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can!, Google Analytics Blog
Other Items
- Anne Wojcicki: Sergey Brin’s very pregnant wife on Oprah, Valleywag
- BOSS Hack World Tour Heads to Europe, Yahoo Search Blog
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- PubCon 2008 Wrap Up: The topics, community, and moving forward
- Social Media “Rockstars” vs. “Narcissists”
- UGC:You Can Be Lazy and Win (Kind Of. Well Not Really)
- Manly Man's SEO in a Box
- 4 Tools Visualizing Domain Backlinks
- 8 Ways to Buy Links Without "Buying Links"
- How to pretend you’re at #Pubcon
- State of Washington sues Web/SEO firm
- Five Steps to Build Blogger Relationship Through Social Media
- Google Launches Voice Recognition Search for Apple iPhone
- Blog Carnivals and Group Writing Projects for Link Building and Networking
- SEO Wars Episode II – Planet Link Space
- I'm Insulted But Should We Give Up Live Blogging?
- 30 Techniques To Avoid (According to Best Practice SEO by Google)
- ¡Yo quiero SEO! Taco Bell’s Simple SEO Failures
- Live Blogging: Inaccurate, Unedited Reporting
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land