SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 12, 2007

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• 
  Mobile Search Forecasts: Apples And Oranges
  The Kelsey Group added its mobile forecast to the range of other forecasts out in the market. The problem with all of these is that, like local search forecasts, there are fundamental definitional issues about how the marketplace is framed and conceptualized. Kelsey says “U.S. mobile search advertising revenues to…
• 
  Will Google GDrive Come To GoogleDrive.com?
  Garett Rogers reports that Google has updated the name servers for GoogleDrive.com to point to NSx.GOOGLE.COM. Garett explains that this is typically a sign that a new product is coming to life at that domain. Although we don’t know for sure, it may imply that GDrive is about to launch…
• 
  Superpages Acquires ‘LocalSearch.com’ Domain
  Local destination site AmericanTowns.com owned the URL LocalSearch.com but has now sold it to Idearc (publisher of Superpages) for roughly $3.3 million. That figure includes a strategic investment in AmericanTowns, which Superpages will help further develop. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search Engine Land,…
• 
  Eleven Tips For Optimizing PDFs For Search Engines
  The SEO purist may argue why anyone would ever want to use PDF content on a website for search purposes. The reality, however, is that many businesses have a lot of PDF assets. These may include sell sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc. The purist simply says why…
• 
  Google Street View Might Violate Canadian Privacy Law
  Although it’s not yet available in Canada, Canada’s privacy commissioner has raised concerns preemptively that Google’s Street View photography could violate the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act of 2004. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search Engine Land, a special look at…
• 
  Yahoo Nabs Bebo Display Ad Deal
  Google has MySpace, Microsoft has Facebook and now Yahoo has become the exclusive display ad provider for popular social networking site Bebo. Bebo reportedly has 38 million users globally, with its most popular sites in the UK and Ireland, although the company is based in San Francisco. Bebo search has…
• 
  Surveying The People Search Landscape
  Can you imagine trying to sort through billions of web pages without a search engine? Inconceivable! They make it easy and fast to find information. Now how about finding one of the six billion people on the planet. Where’s the Google of people search? As it turns out, an entire…
• 
  Marchex Issues Local Search Report, Starts Local Blog
  Marchex, which recently acquired VoiceStar, launched 100,000 local search domains and is about to relaunch OpenList as a new, comprehensive local destination site, has issued a local report entitled “Unlocking the Potential of the Local Internet.” The document is a very good overview of the state of the market…
• 
  Propeller.com: New Home For The Netscape Social News Site
  Last week, it was announced that the social news site Netscape had been transformed into a year ago was going way, with Netscape becoming a more classic news portal and "social Netscape" to be moved elsewhere. Now we know where elsewhere is: Propeller.com (not currently live). Social News Update…
• 
  Activity Streams & Other Social Nuggets From Leaked Google Video
  A new video, apparently leaked and intended to orient new Googlers about the Google Reader application, has shed some new light on Google’s plans in the feed and social space, as well as providing some stats on Google Reader itself. Leaked Google Video Discusses Google Reader, Social Efforts from Google…
• 
  Launching Organic Analytics & Buzz Monitoring In-House
  In previous articles, we covered Structuring an In-House Team and Creating the Search Engine Marketing Needs Assessment Report. So now your in-house search team is in place and the search department has gained insight into the key performance indicators (KPIs) they are responsible for influencing, as well as the…
• 
  User-Driven News More Diverse Than Mainstream Coverage
  In this era of fragmented audiences, with newspaper journalism feeling the pressure of blogs and the Internet more generally, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) undertook a study comparing mainstream media coverage of news with user-driven news and content sites Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit. The authors of the study…
• 
  Dissecting An SEO Quiz — Are There Right Answers?
  SEOmoz released its latest SEO quiz today, which is now getting some buzz as folks poke at the accuracy of the questions. Below, my own spin through the test, which constantly had me disagreeing with many of the "answers," plus some links to more of the chatter about it….
• 
  Don’t Miss SMX Local & Mobile! 3 Weeks Until Showtime
  SMX Local & Mobile is the only event 100% focused on getting marketers up to speed on this emerging search marketing opportunity. Register for SMX Local & Mobile in Denver October 1-2! Search Engine Land executive editor Chris Sherman and Locals Only columnist Greg Sterling have crafted a comprehensive, 4-track…

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Google Sued For Patent Infringement By Illinois Firm, InformationWeek
• Regulating Website Access for Automated Means Such as Search Bots and Agents: Property or Contract?, Docuticker

Local, Maps & Mobile

• ExtMapTypeControl 1.2: Now Supporting Custom Map Types, Google Maps API Blog
• The Local Search Landscape, Search Engine Watch

Paid Search & Contextual

• Just three more shopping months, Inside AdWords
• Google Account Wide Quality Score Stopping AdWords Pros from Advertising More?, Search Engine Roundtable
• Online Display Ads Grew 17.7% to $5.52B For First Half, MediaPost
• Revenue Science Finds BT Ads 22% More Effective, MediaPost

SEM Industry

• Off to Get Married, SEO Book
• Search Marketing’s Long Tail to Get Longer, Says Study, MediaPost
• What Can Black Hat SEOs Do if Google Actually Gobbles up GoDaddy?, Fantomaster
• The Search Marketing Human Capital Problem, Search Engine Watch

SEO & SEM

• SEO Empire – Part 1, Blue Hat SEO
• Surfers, Crawlers Find Bloated Pages Hard to Digest, Search Engine Watch
• Google, duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and you, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Social Media

• Social Graph: Concepts and Issues, Read/Write Web
• Yahoo’s Open Invitation, BusinessWeek

Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News

• Seven easy steps to speed up your site
• The Biggest Loss from Netscape Social News Becoming Propeller.com
• 23 Year Old Polish Man Arrested for Google Bombing
• 6 Reasons Why Link Building Is So Hard
• Clicking Multiple Times to Make a Sphinn
• What Can Black Hat SEOs Do if Google Actually Gobbles up GoDaddy? ::
• Hitchhikers Guide to Linkless SEO
• 3 Ways to Get Screwed by Social Media Marketing
• 10 Things I’ve Learned About Domaining Since I Jumped Into The Pool
• Quick and Easy Way to Get Thousands of Extra Visitors a Month
• Ensuring your Link Investment is a Good One
• The Google Butterfly Effect – A Search Engine Chaos Theory
• Netscape Social News Rebranding to Propeller.com
• Why the SEOmoz SEO Quiz Is Completely Wrong
• A Social Network for the Affluent
• More on the Compare People Premium Service – Sugarrae
• An Untapped SEO Opportunity: Image Link Love From Wikipedia