SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 30, 2008

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Tools of the SEO Trade In SEO, success is as much about your toolkit as it is about your skillset. Without great tools at your disposal, your ability to get the […]

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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:

  • Tools of the SEO Trade
    In SEO, success is as much about your toolkit as it is about your skillset. Without great tools at your disposal, your ability to get the job done is really hampered. At SMX East this month I presented some of my favorite tools on the “Tools, Glorious Tools” panel. (Download my Powerpoint.) What I came to realize from gauging the audience’s reaction to my presentation was that many of the tools I presented were new to much of the audience. That surprised me. This stuff isn’t exactly a government secret. There are blog posts about them, and many are free or inexpensive.
  • What Does Search Activity Say About The Election?
    With less than a week to go until U.S. voters choose a new president, Yahoo is sharing what it knows about White House-related search activity. Here are some highlights from Yahoo’s blog post today, which taps into data from Yahoo Buzz:
  • Google Local Business Hijacking: Microsoft Acquires Yahoo, Becomes Escort Service
    Mike Blumenthal has been diligently covering how local listings can be hijacked by other businesses in Google Maps. He’s also been frustrated that Google doesn’t seem to be fixing the local hijacking problem. So to illustrate the problem, he’s posted how he took over Microsoft’s business listing — turning it into Microsoft Escort Service — and how those from Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola, GM among others were also vulnerable.
  • What’s Ahead For Search Marketing In 2009
    It’s an understatement to say that we live in uncertain times, and that any data that can help us strategize, plan or even to some extent predict what’s ahead is worth its weight in… well, let’s just say this kind of information is invaluable. That makes the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide very timely for just about everyone involved in our industry. The Guide is packed with data, analysis, charts, graphs and all manner of other useful info. This is the fifth annual Search Marketing Benchmark Guide that Marketing Sherpa has produced, but its unlike any of the others I’ve seen. It’s far more comprehensive and detailed, pulling together stats compiled by Marketing Sherpa as well as “best of” research from more than 50 respected research partners. The result is nearly 300 pages of no-fluff data, with 215 charts, tables and eyetracking heatmaps covering just about all aspects of search marketing. The Guide has five major coverage areas:
  • Google’s New Metric For YouTube Ads: Brain Waves
    The news came across the wire recently that Google has ventured into new territory to sell the value of their ad space and ad targeting on YouTube. Rather than the standard metrics of clicks and conversions Google is selling a new kind of metric—brain waves. YouTube has recently been pushing overlay ads which appear in the lower portion of the window while the video is playing. Since these ads are often used for branding purpose looking at click thru measurements would not give a true picture of their impact upon the advertisers brand messaging.
  • Local Search Marketing Tips for B2B Marketers
    B2B marketers establish conversions – or desired actions – throughout their customers’ buying process. These actions may take place online, on the phone, or live at a specific location. Regardless, many occur at the local level. Local search enables marketers to capitalize on these interactions and differentiate your firm based upon one very important factor – geographic proximity. Below are four tips to help B2B marketers reach prospects at the local level.
  • New iPhone Report From comScore: Everything You Wanted To Know And Then Some
    To use a variation on a familar phrase, the iPhone changes everything. Indeed it has; and everything you ever wanted to know about iPhone adoption and usage is contained in a new report from comScore (“All about the iPhone”). The headline on the press release is about lower-income groups adopting the device for a broad range of activities (music, games, video and internet). Based on behavioral data from a sample of roughly 100,000 iPhone users in the US and Western Europe, the report goes into a great deal more than that. Below I do a quick “dive” into a couple of the search-related findings.
  • Presentations & Q&A Sessions From Google’s Third Chat Session
    Google hosted their third webmaster chat event last Wednesday. The event had three presentations from Googlers and plenty of question and answer time between webmasters and Google employees. The Google Webmaster Central blog has announced they have posted a recap of the live chat session. Below you will find the presentations from John, Jonathan and Maile of Google. You can also read the comprehensive Q&A session over here.

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

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


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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