SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 5, 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: Google Does Away With “Sponsored Links” Label, Now Ads Are Labeled “Ads” A month ago, Google began testing labeling the AdWords ads as “ads”. Prior, Google labeled those AdWords ads as […]

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

From Search Engine Land:

  • Google Does Away With “Sponsored Links” Label, Now Ads Are Labeled “Ads”

    A month ago, Google began testing labeling the AdWords ads as “ads”. Prior, Google labeled those AdWords ads as “sponsored links,” which is how they have been named for as long as I can remember. Today, it seems like everyone should now be able to see the AdWords listings labeled as “ads” as opposed to […]

  • Will Facebook Lose Google’s Contacts Integration?

    TechCrunch reports Google has made a small but significant change to their Google Contacts API terms of service that technically prevents Facebook from using it to improve their friends database. When users sign up to Facebook, they are prompted to add friends. They can do so manually or by uploading their contacts or email lists. […]

  • Facebook Tweaks Its SERP Interface

    Facebook does many things well but search still isn’t one of them. Over the past year Facebook has taken steps to improve its search usability; and Microsoft has been working with Facebook to do a better job with web search on Facebook. Search remains a major opportunity for both Facebook and Bing, which hasn’t yet […]

  • Yahoo Loses (Or Ousts) CIO But Levinsohn Mitigates

    AllThingsD, which has been reporting nearly every executive-level departure at Yahoo for the past two years, now says that CIO Michael Kirwan is leaving. Was he forced out or did he voluntarily leave? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know. […]

  • Google Releases New AdWords Editor : Version 8.5

    The Google AdWords Blog announced the new version of the AdWords Editor, a desktop based editing tool to manage your AdWords campaigns. Version 8.5 is available for both Mac and PC and adds several features, they include: WAP image ads: Create and manage WAP (mobile) image ads in AdWords Editor. You can: Download and upload […]

  • Is Your Digital Marketing Team Poised For Success?

    In the last year or so, heads of marketing of several large companies have told me that they are interested in cross channel optimization and want the right media mix recommendation across all their channels, both online and offline. However, as I spoke to many digital marketing teams, I realized that they were not set […]

  • Web Site Usability For Improving Online Forms

    You’ve heard it said a hundred times. Search engine marketing leads to a dead end if the web site isn’t designed to deliver what it promises. Many an anchor text, meta description and advertisement text have sent users into a house of horror because the landing page is a complete disconnect from what was marketed. […]

  • Ask.com Sends Dying Bloglines To Its Friends At MerchantCircle

    Die-hard Bloglines users are surely happy to learn today that the IAC-owned RSS reader isn’t being shutdown, after all. Bloglines accounts are still active with all subscription-related data intact. Less than two months ago, Ask.com — currently in charge of Bloglines — said the service would be shuttered in a matter of weeks. Today, Ask […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEO & SEM

Social Media

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

  • Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com top 2010 USA IYP Rankings – I just published an update to the IYP rankings. Many of these sites have done better in the few days since Google released Place Search.Here is my Top 10, although the article ranks the top 26: 1. Superpages.com 2. Yellowpages.com 3. Yahoo.com 4. Yelp.com 5. Citysearch.com 6. Areaconnect.com 7. Insiderpages.com 8. Magicyellow.com 9. Yellowbook.com 10. Yellowbot.com
  • Search Behavior Has Not Changed With Google Instant – A study by Conductor compares 880,000 visits from 10 high traffic sites by search term length over two weeks and shows virtually no change in search traffic distribution.
  • 5 Custom Google Analytics Reports: Track Changes in Traffic, Page Views, Bounce Rates, etc – We all know that tracking and analyzing our traffic is critical. And we sure know the major metrics to watch. But what's even more important is how they change over time. Here's an easy way to create custom Google Analytics reports that let you do just that: keep track of the change.
  • The final nail in coffin for Net neutrality – Before Tuesday's midterm elections, there were 95 House and Senate candidates who pledged support for Net neutrality, a bill that would force Internet providers to not charge users more for certain kinds of Web content.
    All of them lost — and that could mean the contentious proposal may now be all but dead.
  • Basics Of SEO Infographic – Inspired by a tweet from @Avinash, this is a very simple infographic that explains exactly what SEO is all about.
  • It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy! – Lauren Weinstein writes: "It's time to end the TLD madness. It will take both time and some heavy lifting. But there are alternative methodologies — more efficient, extensible, and far more economical, much better suited to the Internet of the 21st century, and we need to start working on them now."

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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