SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 18, 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 Making Location More Obvious, Prominent

  I’m not seeing it exactly but Google has said the company is making location more “transparent” or more obvious to users so that they can control it and, presumably, offer better location information to Google for an improved overall experience.
  From the Google Public Policy Blog:
  Today we’re moving your location setting to the left-hand panel […]
• Hot On Sphinn: Will Twitter Die First, Daily Kos Googlebombs, Search URL Parameters & More

  We had an interesting variety of stories that were hot last week on our sister site, Sphinn. A discussion that was started by Sphinn member marketingmyinternet asked if Twitter will be the first of the major social networks to die. That question was our most-discussed story over the past week, and included our Comment Of […]

• Surviving The Impending Yahoo-Bing Ad Transition

  After a year of planning, engineering and collaboration by teams at Yahoo and Microsoft, it’s go time for the search alliance. Within two weeks we’re told, all paid search ads appearing on Yahoo will be powered by Bing through Microsoft’s AdCenter servers.
  For members of the search alliance […]

• New Google Search Appliance Goes “From Cloud To Ground”

  Google is introducing what it calls “Cloud Connect” for its enterprise Google Search Appliance. The new functionality “lets workers search across both on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box, delivering more comprehensive results and improving productivity.”
  Accordingly the new “Cloud Connect” brings together Google Docs/Apps with web content and other […]

• Report: The Top Two iPhone Search Engines — Are Both Google

  According to ad network Chitika the top two search engines on the iPhone . . . are both Google. Coming out of the mobile search panel at SMX East earlier this month Chitika’s research director Dan Ruby presented data showing that Google is responsible for about 97 percent (96.9 percent) of mobile search traffic that […]

• Yahoo To Offer Y Connect; While Facebook Undergoes Privacy Scrutiny

  Yahoo to Offer Media Links from the Wall Street Journal reports Yahoo will create a similar tool to Facebook connect for their media publishers, web developers and other websites to integrate with.
  Yahoo would not comment on the new system, but the purpose behind it is to help Yahoo better track users around the web, so […]

• From Mobile To iPad: Latest Opportunities For Growth In Local Advertising

  At the end of last year, I predicted that mobile would drive local search growth in 2010. With smartphone use on the rise—specifically among iPhone, BlackBerry and Android-powered devices. I was confident that local search providers and advertisers would increasingly embrace opportunities in the space.
  Already, various players in the local search industry, including SuperMedia’s SuperPages, […]

• Hard News Pays Publishers More Than Chasing Search Trends, Report Says

  While many news organizations chase traffic by matching their news coverage to what’s listed as “hot” on Google Trends, Twitter, and elsewhere, a new report says hard news coverage actually makes the most money for major news publishers.
  Perfect Market, a company that works with publishers to help them make more money from search engine visitors, […]

• A Google Logo For Your Birthday

  Google is frequently showing special logos for notable and famous people’s birthdays. Starting yesterday, Google announced they will begin showing a special logo for your birthday – yes, even if you are not rich and famous.
  How so? Well, if you have added your birthday to your Google Profile, and it is your birthday […]

• Playing With YouTube Leanback On Google TV: Nice!

  Today at YouTube, I had a chance to play briefly with YouTube Leanback, best described as a way to channel surf YouTube on your regular TV. It was pretty cool. Here’s my quick impressions and a short video of it in action.
  I tested out Leanback on one of the new Sony televisions that are equipped […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Happy 20th Anniversary to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)!, ResourceShelf
• Top U.S. Newspapers By Google PageRank, blog.journalistics.com
• What If Google Stored All Our Medical Records?, Monday Note

Business Issues

• And Now a Folksy Update From Carol Bartz, Massive Outage Relegated to “PS”, TechCrunch
• FourMillionSquare: Foursquare processes 4 millionth user registration, aboutfoursquare.com
• Exclusive: Former Yahoo and Microsoft Exec Dossett to Demand Media, AllThingsD
• How Google tested Google Instant, CNET News

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Places And Their New Rejection Algo – It like 7th Grade All Over Again!, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Places Embarks on TeleSales Campaign for Tags | Google, Mihmorandum

Link Building

• October’s Linkscape Update, SEOmoz
• Shake Up Your Link Building Efforts, Search Engine Journal
• Why LinkBait Doesn’t Translate To Dollars, outspokenmedia.com

Searching

• The 15 Greatest Google Autocomplete Fails, Search Engine People

SEM Industry

• SERPd Review – The New Search Marketing Social News Community, SEOptimise
• Interview with Tamar Weinberg, SEO Book

SEO & SEM

• Crafting an SEO Budget to Maximise ROI, SEOmoz
• Find information faster with mobile Ad Sitelinks, Inside AdWords
• How To Help Search Engines Understand Your Content, Van SEO Design
• Buying a Used Domain? Submit a Reconsideration Request to Google, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google PageRank Updating This Morning? October 2010, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google’s View of HTML5 In Terms Of SEO & Crawling, Search Engine Roundtable
• The 5 Google Reputation Management Tactics I Don’t Normally Reveal, Marketing Pilgrim

Social Media

• Evan Williams Takes Questions On Twitter And Reveals Some Of What Could Be Next, TechCrunch
• Mark Zuckerberg On Facebook’s Strategy For China (And His Wardrobe), TechCrunch
• Why Twitter Is Massively Undervalued Compared To Facebook, TechCrunch
• Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information, Wall Street Journal
• Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Featured in Stoli Ads, Wall Street Journal
• Referrer URLs and Privacy Risks, Rapleaf
• The Facebook Money Machine, Monday Note
• Using Facebook UIDs, Facebook Developers
• Now even more ways to customize your LinkedIn profile «, The LinkedIn Blog
• Social Media Optimization for Public Relations, Online Marketing Blog

Web Analytics

• 5 Quick Google Analytics Hacks, SEOmoz

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

• Direct Navigation 101 – The Complete Guide to Type-In Traffic – What is direct navigation in laymens terms? Basically it’s whenever you (or someone) visits a website by typing the URL address directly into a browsers address bar. This happens way more often than you might think. Even more specifically is something called Type-In Traffic which takes this direct navigation method one step further. It’s when someone types in a keyword followed by a TLD (such as .com) in their address bar rather than searching that keyword in a search engine.
• Why LinkBait Doesn’t Translate To Dollars – From Lisa Barone's latest post: "As both an advertiser and a publisher, your job isn’t to attract wandering, gossip-loving eyes. Your job is to create something of value and match up the right content with the right call to action. You must have something in mind for users to do, as well as a way to compel them to do that. Whether it’s to click on an ad, to call you, to get off their computer and visit you in store, it doesn’t matter. You have a decision to make: Are you going to do that through flashy, mindless, distracting content or are you going to do it with content that educates, connects and causes people to engage with you?"
• Event tracking, bounce rate and affiliate marketing – Many affiliate marketers and others don't realize that they can track their outbound clicks via Googel Anlaytics. In this post, Joost de Valk explains how to track outbound affiliate links so that they won't mistakenly count as a bounce by using a proper event-tracking set-up.
• Why Twitter Is Massively Undervalued Compared To Facebook – In-depth comparison and analysis at TechCrunch on the differences in how people interact with both Twitter and Facebook and how their interaction relates to each medium's commercial viability.
• Crafting an SEO Budget to Maximise ROI – Excellent post from Rishil – looking at how to establish a budget for SEO.
• Could Facebook Be Bluffing On Search Engine Plans? – Pete Cashmore speculates on comments made by Mark Zuckerberg who claims Facebook has no interest in building a "truly personalized search engine"  Really?
• Thoughts on Business Titles (for Local Search) – David Mihm cautions against submitting "spammy" business titles for local search, but also argues that sometimes adding geographical modifiers to the titles would actually help searchers even though Google doesn't allow it.
• How To Help Clients Through Link Building Confusion – There’s no doubt people are confused about link building. They are confused about what to believe. They are confused about which advice to follow, about which tools to use, how much money to spend. They are confused about what tactic will work, and what tactic will get them in trouble. And, as much as I wanted to speak in a deep Linkmoses baritone and calm all their fears with a brilliant link building sermon, the truth, from my perspective, is that there is no right or wrong way to build links.
• 7 Difficult Client Expectations You WILL Encounter in SEO (And How to Fix Them) – Scott Cowley details the most common issues affecting the successful outcome of an SEO campaign and recommends SEO's and their clients agree on goals and expectations before a campaign is launched.