SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 1, 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 Maps “Sponsored Map Icons” Test Comes To U.S.

  Google Maps is now testing “sponsored map icons” in the United States. This was first tested back in March in the Australian version of Google Maps. The sponsored map icons are basically company logo enhanced points of interest icons.
  For example, instead of seeing a generic ATM machine icon on Google Maps, […]

• Case Study: Which Online Grocer Has The Best Conversion Process

  Some of you may remember my debut Search Engine Land post which looked at the process for buying an iPhone 4 on various UK retailers. The article went down quite well so I’d like to repeat this process for another set of websites to see how they convert visitors into buyers.
  This time I’ve chosen […]

• How To Identify Industry Specific & Mainstream Media On Twitter

  Need authority links? Twitter is one of the best ways I’ve found to get your site (or yourself as the case may be) on the radar of the journalists who decide what topics and websites are discussed (and linked to) in mainstream media.
  Interacting with the folks who report on your chosen industry on Twitter – […]

• Google Search Now Indexes & Crawls SVG Files

  The Google Webmaster Help blog announced they are now indexing SVG files and documents. SVG is a royalty-free graphics format typically used on the web for fancy font usage.
  Google said:
  We index SVG content whether it is in a standalone file or embedded directly in HTML. The web is big, so it may take some […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Make Calls From Gmail But Not Google Voice?, Search Marketing Communications

Business Issues

• Local.com Enters Search Pact With Yahoo; Shares Jump, Wall Street Journal
• Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook, TechCrunch
• Google Pays UK Ad Regulator To Extend Web Auspices, paidContent.org

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social, thenextweb.com
• Acquisition Aims to Change History for Mobile Apps & Data, Read/Write Web
• Taking Over a Business With Bad Google Maps Reviews?, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• Why are links used in ranking when they all have the nofollow attribute?, YouTube

Paid Search & Contextual

• Upcoming Free Webinar: Increase ROI with Enhanced CPC, Inside AdWords
• Microsoft launches advertising platform in China, AFP

Searching

• Live Now: Yahoo! US Open Shortcut, Yahoo Search Blog
• Adioso, Flight Search For People Keeping Their Options Open, TechCrunch

SEM Industry

• Sphinn Says Goodbye To Voting, Sphinn

SEO & SEM

• Who Are You Up Against? Sizing Up the Competition, BruceClay.com
• 5 SEO Mistakes Anybody Can Avoid, dailyseotip.com
• Day 1 at the SEOmoz Training Raceway, SEOmoz
• Google Cache Broken For Home Pages, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Map In Web Search Can Drop Your CTR Up to 65%, Search Engine Roundtable

Social Media

• 6 Ways to Know He’s “The One”: Client Edition, outspokenmedia.com
• Sharetivity Launches Social Search, sharetivity.com
• Twitter Lists (part 1) – Twitter Wants Your Brand, andybeard.eu

Video, Music & Image Search

• Logitech excited about Google TV, Revue set-top box, USATODAY.com

Web Analytics

• Social Bookmarking with Delicious and YWA, Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog

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

• Sphinn Says Goodbye To Voting – Within a week or two, the voting model will end at Sphinn. Stories can still be submitted, but editors will consider those in addition to others they find. Why? Rather than build community, voting — an activity which is also in decline — seems to foster an anti-community "who's winning" atmosphere.
• Case Study: Google Webmaster Tools for Diagnostics – Google Webmaster Tools gets a bit of slack because you are “giving Google too much information” I say take off your tinfoil hats, there is method behind the madness and GWT can be an invaluable tool for crawling diagnostics – as this post proves.
• The Definitive Guide to Image Search Optimisation – Picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Bill Slawski, here's my guide to optimising your images for ranking in Google Image Search. From filenames to picture dimensions, it's all relevant.
• How Buying Links Cost A Flower Vendor $4 Million In Google Traffic – Debate whether Google should penalize over paid links all you want. The bottom line remains that Google DOES penalize, when it finds them, and when it wants. And in this case, an online flower shop's SEO firm bought links for them. Penality ensued, and it figures it lost $4 million in sales from 2008-2009. Good news is the lesson taught them to build up other marketing channels. Better news would have been to keep the Google traffic and diversify, as well.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz 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's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.