SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 4, 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:

• Mobile Traffic To Retail Sites To Hit 15% During Holiday ’11

  More evidence of the growing importance of mobile comes this time from IBM, which predicts that “an unprecedented 15 percent of people in the U.S. logging onto a retailer’s Web site are expected to do so through a mobile device.” This is based on data analyzed by IBM and collected from the 500 leading US […]
• Search In Pics: Chrome Beer, Bing Energy Drink & Yahoo’s Halloween

  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Yahoo Halloween Costumes: Meditating With Android Robots: Chrome Beer: Bing Energy Drinks:

• Photo Tour: Grand Opening Of Google LA

  Google’s new Los Angeles office had its grand opening yesterday, consolidating operations that were previously spread-out among three different offices in Santa Monica into the funky Frank Gehry-designed “Binoculars” building in Venice Beach. The new operation is home to 500 employees, who begin work tomorrow. The were welcomed by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Susan Wojcicki, […]

• PPC Shop Tools: The Permutator

  We use a number of PPC shop tools we use in our everyday work as PPC campaign managers; today, I’d like to focus on the PPC Permutator We use the PPC permutator to help us rapidly expand keyword lists from simple ideas. Let’s work with an example. Consider the following keyword ideas related to a […]

• Data Shows Retailers Need To Pace Spend To Maximize Black Friday Performance

  Traffic volatility can make spend pacing during Black Friday very challenging. Spend too much too soon and you might suffer a lower ROI and not have money left for Cyber Monday. Spend less and you might be missing out on consumer volume. Performance data from the past three years reveals that search marketers are indeed […]

• Euclid Offers “Google Analytics For The Real World”

  Yesterday Euclid Elements, a relatively new firm founded by some of the people behind the product that became Google Analytics, announced a $5.8 million first round of funding. The company is seeking to enable retailers and business owners with physical locations to measure things like foot traffic by time of day, average customer time in […]

• Social Tracking Integrations for Google Analytics

  Back in June, Google Analytics unveiled a new set of Social Engagement Reports, which can be used to get content interaction metrics from social sharing icons such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other. Google+ is tracked by default (no codes needed), but other networks must implement the _trackSocial method in order to collect […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• September 2011 – Top US Web Brands, Nielsen Wire

Business Issues

• Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the Web, CNN Money
• Google Ponders Pay-TV Business, Wall Street Journal
• Verb wall: The $40 billion Mark Zuckerberg is leaving on the table, Scobleizer
• Chicago Doctors Sue Google Over Negative Online Reviews, paidContent.org
• Google Wins Defamation Lawsuit Over User’s Review, MediaPost
• Groupon’s IPO biggest by U.S. Web company since Google, Reuters
• Stebbins’ Lawsuit Against Google Dismissed as "Frivolous"–Stebbins v. Google, Eric Goldman
• Wait a Minute. Does Google Really Want to Be a Cable Guy?, AllThingsD
• Yahoo sale process heats up as PE firms sign on, Reuters
• Yahoo’s Activist Shareholder Loeb Now Targeting Jerry Yang, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Update: Google Local Mixed Results Hit the Blender, dreamsystemsmedia.com

Searching

• Ancestry.com and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Release First Searchable Online Records Collections from World Memory Project, infodocket.com
• Google’s ‘Do a Barrel Roll’ Is More Gimmick Than Genius, The Stir
• Google’s Location-Based Social Annotations, Google Operating System

SEO & SEM

• Don’t Blame Google – Get Known for Doing Something Great!, Search Engine People
• Key SEO Questions For Better Content Marketing, Online Marketing Blog
• SEO butthead detection in 5 easy steps, Conversation Marketing
• SEO for B2B: Old School Flavor With a New School Twist, Outspoken Media
• Will Google Update Affect Paid Search?, PPC Hero

Social Media

• Groupon Prices IPO at $20 a Share, Wall Street Journal
• 10 Great Twitter Tools To Transform Your Tweeting Experience, blog.kissmetrics.com
• Making Blog Content More Shareable, Search Engine People

Web Analytics

• Tracked Google Users Result In 10% Of Keyword Data Lost, davidnaylor.co.uk

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

• SEO butthead detection in 5 easy steps – Great rant from Ian Lurie about the … ummm … underside? lame side? … of the SEO industry.
• An Open Letter To College Students: How to Study SEO in School – There is no such thing as an SEO degree. You can Google it and see some mostly shady results, but — as far as I know — nobody is walking around with a B.A. in SEO. That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to college and study SEO, though. You just have to get a little creative.
• Intelligent Agents for Analytics – Excellent framework ("borrowed from the field of Artificial Intelligence"). A must-read for everyone in digital marketing, web analytics, and conversion rate optimization.
• Your Geo Reports are Lying to You – A case study of how inaccurate geographical targeting can be in AdWords.