SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 19, 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 Faces Spanish Lawsuit Over Street View Data Collection

  Data protection officials in Spain have filed a lawsuit over Google’s collection of Wi-Fi data earlier this year as part of its Street View product.
  The Spanish Agency for Data Protection says it has evidence of five violations of Spanish law involving Google’s collection of SSID and MAC addresses from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers. Two of […]

• You Can Report Offensive Images In Google Again

  A few months ago, Google revamped their Google Image search and with that, the report offensive images feature dropped out. This morning, I noticed the feature is now back in the search results.
  It works a lot like the old method, you click on the “SafeSearch” link on the right of the Google Image search […]

• Google Affirms Commitment To China As It Ends Relationship With Local Ad Resellers

  At a technology conference in Bejing Google representatives restated that the company has a long-term commitment to the Chinese market and would continue to operate there. According to an AFPs report, Google vice president John Liu said China was a “very important market for Google.”
  Google has displayed tremendous ambivalence about China over the past year, […]

• The Five Elements Of Social Media Alchemy

  Before the opus of social content (linkbait), an Internet marketer must convince a client of the validity of social media-driven linkbait campaigns and their ability to aid SEO efforts. An effective persuasion tactic is to show them samples of competitors’ successful social media marketing campaigns and results from the social content promotion. A successful promotion […]

• Apple, Google And Steve Jobs’ Earnings Call Trash Talk

  Yesterday afternoon during the Apple earnings call we heard a lot of what might be called, on the basketball court (and elsewhere), “trash talk” from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs was “on fire” and took on various Apple competitors but especially Android and why he thought that Apple’s “integrated” approach was better and ultimately would […]

• Google News Showing “Shared By” & “Recent Updates”

  A couple weeks ago, Google News began testing Twitter integration within Google News. Now, Google News seems to be testing “shared by” links, along with “recent update” links within Google News.
  Malcolm Coles is part of this test, and posted screen captures of the new Google News experiments. The first image shows a “shared […]

• Google Instant: Could It Be Instantly Successful Globally?

  Google Instant certainly got people talking — where it was rolled out that is because it didn’t make it to rest of the globe instantly. Comscore has released figures showing its impact on search shares in the US — but what are the predictions for the rest of the world. Will Google Instant be a runaway global success — instantly?

• At Google Images, “G” Is For “Girls In Bathrooms”

  The launch of Google Instant last month drew new attention to what Google suggests that people search for — and what it purposely omits to keep things family friendly. But over on Google Images, some of the suggestions that appear as you type are more of the soft-porn variety.
  Girls Gone Wild On Google
  Here’s what I […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Drag and drop images in documents, Official Google Docs Blog

Business Issues

• Spanish agency sues Google over Street View, AFP
• How Google dominates the Web, Royal Pingdom
• Yahoo’s Board Not Giving Up On Carol Bartz Yet, Business Insider

Local, Maps & Mobile

• AdMob Serves Its 300 Billionth Mobile Ad Since 2007, TechCrunch
• MapQuest Open – Now in India!, MapQuest Blog
• New Google Earth Imagery – October 19, Google Earth Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Is Lead Fraud, Click Fraud 2.0? A New AdSense Scam Targeting Google AdWords Display Network Advertisers, webranking.com

Searching

• AP: "New Online Resource Debuts for Nazi-Era Looted Art", ResourceShelf
• Israel to put Dead Sea scrolls online, AFP

SEO & SEM

• 5 Website Changes That Will Hurt Your SEO, Search Engine Watch
• Are SEOs Responsible For Rankings Or Money?, outspokenmedia.com
• Catastrophic Canonicalization, SEOmoz
• Change Your Content Based on Traffic Intent, Michael Gray
• Enterprise SEO is Different, dotcult.com
• Google Sitemaps URLs Can’t Handle Diacritical Marks, Search Engine Roundtable
• How can I explain to clients that rankings can’t be guaranteed?, YouTube
• How Google Is Screwing Its Own Advertisers with Comparison Ads, Search Engine Journal
• Improved Web Page Classification from Google for Rankings and Personalized Search, SEO By The Sea
• Search Advertiser Pulls adCenter Campaign Until CPC Prices Stabilize, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Business Of Burying Internet Search Results, NPR
• Tracking your ad clicks with dynamic destination URLs, Inside AdWords
• You WANT Rankings, But What Do You Really NEED?, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• HUGE: Facebook Releases Admin Interface To Contact Likers, All Facebook
• Real Estate Marketing on Facebook: How Not To Do It, Small Business SEM

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

• Are SEOs Responsible For Rankings Or Money? – Inspired by the "SEO Myths, Mistakes & Madness of Crowds" session at SMX East a couple of weeks ago, Lisa addresses the role of an SEO and how it's evolved – with excellent input and comments on the post from many in SEO. From the article – "The group covered all the basics like PageRank sculpting, Flash, duplicate content and everything else you’d expect. The last myth Matt offered up for debunking was, “SEO is about rankings”. The consensus was no, SEO isn’t about ranking. SEO is about money. And when it was declared, I smiled. Finally, truth. But how accepted is that truth really? Even by the practitioners of SEO themselves?"
• At Google Images, “G” Is For “Girls In Bathrooms” – Danny Sullivan explains, again, why applying Google's search settings (safe search) to Suggest and Instant is a must-do.
• 5 Extreme Tactics for Removing a Reputation Attack from Google’s Index – Andy Beal recaps 5 ultimate counter attacks that possibly could be applied if all plain vanilla ORM tactics have failed miserably.
• How Google tested Google Instant, and failed to test Google Buzz – How does Google make sure its new ideas are ready for the real world, avoiding backslashes like with Buzz? CNET's Tom Krazit got a tour of the company's usability labs to find out.
• Why Brands Cannot Ignore Social Media Mavens – With marketer control diminishing, social media mavens have taken on the coveted role of online opinion leaders & influencers.  This infographic describes the profile of social media mavens & how brands can collaborate with them.
• 10 Biggest Factors For Success In Facebook's News Feed – The Daily Beast set out to do some reverse engineering of what Facebook's news feed algorithm (EdgeRank, I guess) likes. They followed what happened to a 60 year old newcomer on the service. Findings? If you're new, your content can be invisible to others. Interaction helps. Stalking people doesn't. But if people stalk you, good news! And of things you can share, links are more likely to be seen, as will shared photos and videos.