SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 16, 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:

• Twitter Announces Analytics For Tweets, Traffic & Buttons

  This week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Twitter announced Web Analytics to webmasters (and Tweeters) see how their content is being shared and how their buttons are being used. This new platform integrates fully with the new t.co shortener to help see content distribution. During the presentation it was announced that the t.co ‘link wrapper’ is now […]
• Timing Is Everything: How Google Staged A Benevolent “Smear” Campaign

  Google operates one of the largest cloud-based computing systems in the world, and takes great pride in its reliability, investing significant amounts of both money and human resources to make sure that all of its services are always-on and accurate. Here’s the story of how, to eliminate what many would consider an almost insignificant issue, […]

• Is Google’s Doubleclick Trying To Squash Search Technology Providers?

  Since no analytics provider seems to have invented the perfect system to meet every need, we’re seeing an increasing number of advertisers using multiple systems together in order capture a wider set of data for reporting and optimization purposes. This is generally some combination of a search/display/Facebook technology provider and one or more analytics systems […]

• EU Signaling It May Tolerate Google’s “Dominance” Of Search

  For quite some time European regulators seemed eager to crack down on Google simply because it was too big, too powerful. But now they may be signaling that bigness by itself may be legally acceptable, so long as regulators don’t find Google has “abused” that position. Yet abuse of Google’s search dominance is precisely what […]

• Google Logo For Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: Oranges & Vitamin C

  Today, Google is honoring the 118th birthday of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the man who is credited with discovering vitamin C. He was born today on September 16, 1893 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary and in won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937 for discovering vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid […]

• 4 Point Twitter Audit: Becoming A More Beloved B2B Brand

  Welcome back to the third and final installment of the B2B Community Manager’s Guide To Identifying True Twitter Friends. In our first two episodes, we explored hands-on tactics for locating target audiences on Twitter based on topical conversations, categories, content consumed, and respected power-users. By leveraging tweet-based search engines, user-powered directories, Twitter lists and other […]

• Roll Out The Decorations, The Holiday Etailing Season is Here

  Growing up, the holiday season always started early in our house. It started in April to be exact. No, we didn’t put up the tree or start decorating the house (did we even take the lights down from last year?), but my mom would always start asking that question: what do you want for Christmas? […]

• Yahoo Rolls Out New SERP, Will People Notice?

  In the wake of the firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and amid the growing speculation surrounding a possible sale of the company, work continues for the Yahoo rank and file. (The employees must have a kind of PTSD.) But in the spirit of “life goes on,” Yahoo search engineers announced that the company is […]

• Google Books Lawsuit: Trial Proceedings Move Ahead, While Negotiations Continue

  The lawsuit over Google Books is back on track for trial but purposely with enough time to allow the parties involved to keep negotiating a settlement. In a New York City courtroom today, Judge Denny Chin heard from Google, the Authors Guild and the American Association Of Publishers about progress in talks. Bloomberg reports that […]

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Blumenthal In Hearing Next Week On Google; Criticized Search Giant For Collecting Data From Street-Level Pictures, Capitol Watch
• Google Registers Google Analytics Domain Name Typos, Bill Hartzer
• Google: I will miss you, Pedro Dias
• Senior China Officials Meet With Baidu Chief, Wall Street Journal
• Twitter Shakes Things Up Again: Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet Leaving Board, AllThingsD

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Google Announces Fix to Closing Report Issue, Mike Blumenthal
• 1 million apps! (iOS + Android), appsfire.com
• Quick and simple Street View with the Google Street View Image API, Google Geo Developers Blog

Link Building

• A Guide to Long Tail Link Building, explicitly.me

Paid Search & Contextual

• View your top channels on the new interface homepage, Inside AdSense
• Malicious ads make their way onto bing and yahoo, The Inquirer

SEM Industry

• Video: Bing’s New Home Page, Google Solves Pagination, AdWords API Rejection & SMX, Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & SEM

• Keyword Metrics for SEO (And Driving Actions from Data) – Whiteboard Friday, SEOmoz
• Learn From Failure: 5 Big Names Penalized By Google, Search Engine People

Social Media

• Facebook Locks the Top Navigation Bar in Place as Users Scroll, Inside Facebook
• How to Write a Social Media Audit, SEOptimise
• SSL Support for Tweet Button and Follow Button, Twitter Developers

Video, Music & Image Search

• Introducing Voice Actions for Android in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, Official Google Mobile Blog

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

• 5 Simple Steps To Stop Wasting Budget With Poor Retargeting – A detailed breakdown of how to approach retargeting as well as specific actionable tips. Worth a read if you're venturing into retargeting waters or want a quick refresher.
• Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev” – From the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Much like rel=”canonical” acts a strong hint for duplicate content, you can now use the HTML link elements rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to indicate the relationship between component URLs in a paginated series. Throughout the web, a paginated series of content may take many shapes—it can be an article divided into several component pages, or a product category with items spread across several pages, or a forum thread divided into a sequence of URLs. Now, if you choose to include rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup on the component pages within a series, you’re giving Google a strong hint that you’d like us to do.