SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 21, 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:

• Want Better Google Analytics Data? Learn To Tag Your Campaigns!

  One of the most important hurdles to tackle before analyzing data is collecting clean and correct data. There are many ways to make your data more accurate; tagging is one of them. Although the correct tagging of your campaigns seems something basic, I still see a lot of companies and websites that aren’t tagging at […]

• Seasonal SEO: Recipes for Success – SMN Webcast next Thursday, Oct. 27

  Next Thursday, Oct. 27 at 1 PM EDT, Search Marketing Now hosts the webcast “Seasonal SEO: Recipes for Success,” featuring Anthony Joseph of Optify. Whether its peak selling season is the holidays or the dog days of summer, if a business is seasonal, its marketing team needs to how that translates to SEO strategy. Anthony […]

• The Holidays: Time For Joy, Laughter & Analytics

  Ah the holiday season. Time to welcome back apple-picking trips, pumpkin spice lattes and the smell of pine needles. In the retail search space, time to welcome back gruelingly long work days, insane volume spikes, working on days normal people have off (e.g. every weekend from November through Christmas) and enough last-second surprises to make […]

• StumbleUpon Adds ‘Interest Optimization’ To Paid Discovery

  Paid Discovery campaigns on StumbleUpon will be getting smarter as of today. StumbleUpon has announced the addition of something called “interest optimization” that will help advertisers reach relevant audiences. Previously advertisers had the option to choose categories manually, or set up automatic campaigns (where StumbleUpon would choose set categories for you.) With ‘interest optimization’ campaigns won’t […]

• Google Logo Honors Mary Blair, Disney Artist

  Mary Blair, an Oklahoma-born artist who worked on many iconic Walt Disney films and attractions, is the subject of a special Google logo today. Blair was born on October 21, 1911 — today would’ve been her 100th birthday. The Google logo is reminiscent of her Disney work, which included the films Cinderella, Peter Pan and […]

• “Grand Theft” Android: Jobs Bio Reveals Intense Anger At Google, But Didn’t Block Search Deals

  We already knew that Steve Jobs felt betrayed by Google’s launch of Android but wow, was he really mad. But oddly, despite vowing nuclear war against Google, as his forthcoming bio reveals, he kept Google as the search default in Apple products. The AP obtained a copy of the authorized Jobs bio that comes out […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Keep me posted about new books with Google Alerts, booksearch.blogspot.com
• A Google TV 2.0 Sneak Peak, www.zatznotfunny.com
• Free In-Depth Web Browser Market Share Data, www.stepforth.com
• Google drops business and education ‘subscription only’ policy for Chromebooks, thenextweb.com

Business Issues

• Microsoft Reports Record First-Quarter Results: $17.37 billion of revenue driven by solid business and consumer demand., www.microsoft.com
• Exclusive: Yahoo Overhauls Marketing Unit — The Internal Memo, allthingsd.com
• Facebook And Google Spent Record Amounts On D.C. Lobbying In Q3 2011, TechCrunch
• Former Yahoo Online Privacy Guru Heads to Google+, allthingsd.com
• Germany warns Facebook over face-recognition app, Google
• Google, Facebook go retro in push to update 1986 privacy law, news.cnet.com
• Groupon Sets Nov. 4 IPO, Wall Street Journal
• Murdoch says Myspace was “mismanaged in every possible way”, could have sold for $6 billion, thenextweb.com
• The Inside Scoop on Facebook’s $1.6 Billion Ad Machine, Ad Age
• Will Facebook Ever Make More Money Than Google?, www.clickz.asia

Link Building

• Building Quality Links as a Guest Author, www.singlegrain.com

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Android shipments set to increase three fold in Asia in 2011, thenextweb.com
• Google Places Reputation Management: From G to X Rated in No Time Flat, Mike Blumenthal
• Google Soon To Release Source Code For Ice Cream Sandwich, TechCrunch
• New 45° imagery available for 16 cities, Google LatLong

Paid Search & Contextual

• Auto Tagging and 3rd Party Tracking, PPC Hero
• Google AdWords Express now in the UK, Germany and France, www.optilocal.org

Searching

• Google Tests One-Click “Add To Circles” Button In Search Results, TechCrunch
• The Major Implications of SSL Encryption No One’s Talking About: Enhanced Search Personalization, BruceClay.com
• Weekly Yahoo! Search Trends – October 21, ycorpblog.com

SEM Industry

• 80% Of SEOs Say Google Panda 2.5.2 Update Was Significant, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to Build a Great SEM Team, Search Engine Watch
• Tips on How to Hire the Right Search Marketing Company, Search Engine People

SEO & SEM

• Pump Up The Bing – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Revisiting Google’s Information Retrieval Based Upon Historical Data, SEO By The Sea
• SEO Copywriting Cheatsheet, www.conversationmarketing.com
• SEO Research: Why opportunity is knocking for marketers doing SEO, www.marketingexperiments.com
• SEO’s Three Stages of Keyword Success, Small Business SEM
• Want Conversions? Give a Little to Get a Little, Search Engine Guide

Social Media

• 4 Tips for Terrific Twitter Offers, blog.hubspot.com
• Facebook security updates – how to update your account, blog.eset.com
• Frequent Twitter Users Are More Likely to Click on Ads, www.emarketer.com
• Optimizing Your Google Plus Profile, dailyseotip.com

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

• Facebook security updates – how to update your account – Maybe the most comprehensive article I've seen about all of the changes Facebook has made to its security options.
• The Day We Closed Google Headquarters: An Illustration Of The Problem With Crowd Sourced Edits – Google's recent testing of crowd-sourced location verification interfaces for business Place pages is problematic. Attempting to show why, a few local marketers flagged Google's own headquarters as closed.
• How Technical SEO Procrastination Hurts Your Redesign Effort – Jeff Louella's article discusses some common mistakes when implementing technical SEO and why it's important to incorporate SEO from the beginning of a site redesign as opposed to a "quick fix of titles and metas" before a site launches.
• 7 Lessons Learned Running an SEO Agency – Excellent advice from Neil Patel.
• 10 Truths about Social Media & Social Business you need to know – “Social” is something you are, not something you do. If your company culture doesn’t focus on building relationships with your customers, then chances are that you won’t use social media to do it either. The “media” doesn’t dictate how social a company is or isn’t. It simply enhances its ability to be a social business – if in fact it is – or illustrates the extent to which it isn’t.