SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 2, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Bing Advertising To Increase Transparency With “Quality Impact”

  How valuable would it be to work on improving your paid search keywords’ Quality Score? And which keywords should you focus on first? Bing Ads is introducing a new feature called “Quality Impact” that will tell advertisers how many new impressions they could gain by improving their Quality Score on each keyword. The feature looks […]

• Google Starts Shutting Down Its City Pages, Shifts To Google+ Local

  Google is in the process of shutting down its collection of city pages — a change that follows the shift from Google Places to Google+ Local, and a change that may be reflective of a larger shift in direction for Google’s local efforts. Mike Blumenthal noticed yesterday that the Portland city page had gone missing. […]

• The Top SEO Platforms: Forrester Wave Report

  Forrester, the large marketing technology analysis organization, has released two of three of its Forrester Wave reports related to search marketing. I wrote about the first one yesterday in Forrester Rates The Top Large Search Marketing Agencies, which offered an assessment of large, full service (meaning agencies that offer both organic SEO and PPC) and […]

• How To Use Macros You Find Online In 6 Easy Steps

  Have you ever done a search to find out how to do something in Excel, just to find the search results littered with macro options? I used to avoid those results like the plague because I found macros (at least those beyond what I could create with the Macros Recorder) really intimidating. And I’m writing […]

• How To Make Your Online Checkout More User Friendly

  Have you ever gone shopping for a couple items, only to find the checkout lines too long or slow, so you drop your items and leave the store? I have, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It may not happen all that frequently at a brick and mortar, but it does online. A […]

• 94 Percent Of Teachers Say Students Equate “Research” With Using Google

  It’s almost unanimous: 94 percent of U.S. teachers say their students equate “research” with using Google or other search engines — more so than Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias. But teachers are less sure that their students are effective searchers, and they’re more skeptical than most adults about the accuracy and trustworthiness of information that’s […]

• Forrester Rates The Top Large Search Marketing Agencies

  Forrester, the large marketing technology analysis organization, has released two of three of its Forrester Wave reports related to search marketing. The first, The Forrester Wave: Search Marketing Agencies, Q4 2012 rates seven of the largest full-service search marketing agencies. While the ranking results are interesting in themselves, some of the other insights offered in […]

• Google Posts New Images Of Hurricane Sandy Superstorm Devastation

  Both Google Maps Mania and the Google Earth Blog are reporting that Google has started to post-Sandysatellite imagery showing the destruction in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Specifically, via the Google Crisis Map, you can select these areas for post-Sandy Imagery: Beach Haven to Cape May, NJ Spring Lake to Harvey Cedars, NJ Little Assawoman […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Marketing Biz: Marissa Gives Microsoft The Finger
• September Smartphone Market: Once Again The Apple-Android Show
• Nexus 4 Is Google’s Best Smartphone — Except For Missing LTE
• Seven Best Practices For Black Friday & Cyber Monday
• The Nexus 10 Hands-On: Solid Tablet, But Not Cheap Enough Against iPad?
• Brands Rejoice! Page Notifications Will Help Increase Facebook Reach
• Classified Information: Is Facebook Planning To Revive Marketplace?
• Flocking To The Filter: 54% Of Top Brands Are Now On Instagram
• Yelp: 45 Percent Of Searches Come From Our Mobile Apps
• LinkedIn’s Big Q3: $252M Revenue (Up 81 Percent YoY) With 187 Million Members Total
• Marchex Becomes “A Pure-Play Mobile Advertising Company”

Search News From Around The Web:

Link Building

• SEO: 3 Ways to Grow Links to Your Ecommerce Site, www.practicalecommerce.com
• Using Twitter for Link Relationships – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Find the best places on-the-go, no signup required. Take Explore for a spin on your BlackBerry today!, blog.foursquare.com
• Yelp not worried about Google’s “struggling” local content play, Pando Daily
• Yelp’s flaws become Apple Maps flaws in iOS 6, GigaOM

Other Items

• USGS and Google Partner on Emergency Alerts, www.usgs.gov

Paid Search & Contextual

• Impression share changes are coming next week. Download any desired historic reports now., Inside AdWords
• Search Engine Marketing Remains a Key and Growing Part of Digital Ad Budgets, Yahoo Advertising Blog

Searching

• What we search about when we search about politics: An interactive exploration, news.yahoo.com
• Yahoo! Searches This Week Show Extreme Concern Over Hurricane Sandy, That The Holidays Are Right Around The Corner, and That People Are Turning To The Web To Get Ideas., ycorpblog.com

SEM Industry

• Search Awards 2012 – The Winners, www.stateofsearch.com
• SearchLove London 2012 | Day Two at The Congress Centre, www.distilled.net
• Soft Launching SEOTools.net, SEO Book
• US 2012 Roadshow – Interview with Gemma Birch, www.stateofsearch.com

SEO & SEM

• Consolidating Content to Futureproof Your SEO, www.internetmarketingninjas.com
• Is rel=author Really a Good Way to Judge Sources of Good Content?, Search Engine Watch
• Site Design for SEO – Page Layout, Rankings, and “Above the Fold” Content, www.thelinkbuilders.com
• What comes after the basics of SEO – with Danny Dover, www.businessframe.com
• What Steve Jobs Taught Me about SEO, Search Engine Journal

Social Media

• Friday 4-Step: Quick Twitter Exercise for Brands, BruceClay.com
• What Are the Benefits of Scheduling Your Social Media?, Performancing.com

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics Summit Recap: 2012, Analytics Talk