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SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 29, 2010

by Barry Schwartz

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

From Search Engine Land:

• Street Slide: Microsoft’s Next Killer Maps App?
  

  At the SIGGRAPH 2010 event this week in Los Angeles, Microsoft researchers showed off a next-generation tool for browsing street-level imagery. It’s called Street Slide, and it combines the up close realism of, say, Google Street View or Bing’s similarly named Streetside product, with “strip” panoramas that offer a wider perspective of a city block [...]

• A Market Without Google? The Fallacy Of Security
  

  Returns for online investments are still so much greater than the offline world that it is easy to think that the money is somehow less real, or that there is greater risk to it. That perhaps we should diversify out of the web to help make our businesses less risky. Sure, the shift of a [...]

• Diller: Ask.com Was The Little Search Engine That Couldn’t
  

  At one time, IAC’s CEO Barry Diller thought his Ask.com search engine could take on Google. But Diller effectively threw in the towel yesterday on an investors call. Diller downplayed Ask.com’s role in the over IAC company but said he ultimately failed at thinking Ask.com can compete with Google. Diller said: But one thing [...]

• Google Introduces Expandable Map Ads For Mobile
  

  At Google I/O Google VP Vic Gundotra and his co-presenters showcased a dizzying array of announcements and products to come. Included among them was Google’s iTunes competitor, soon to come to market, and well as a range of new richer mobile ad formats. Those new mobile ad formats have been gradually rolling out. This morning Google [...]

• Estimate: Google Mobile Search Market Share Near 100%
  

  Let’s be cautious about running too far with these numbers, but Royal Pingdom (using data from StatCounter) has reported/estimated Google’s global mobile search market share to be almost 100%

  Google is clearly dominant in mobile search across smartphones (and feature phones). However these numbers may not be completely accurate. For example, the chart above shows PC [...]

• Google, US Gov’t Back Same Data Mining Startup
  

  Their objectives may be different but both Google and the “investment arm of the CIA” are funding the same startup: Recorded Future. According to a piece in Wired both In-Q-Tel (the CIA investment firm) and Google will have a seat on the company’s board. This is reportedly the first time the government and Google have invested [...]

• See An Offensive Image On Google? Stay Tuned.
  

  Before the revamped Google Image Search design went live 9 days ago, there was a clear and quick way to report offensive images to Google. In fact, Google released the report offensive image feature just about a year ago, due to complaints. Now, that feature is no longer found in the new design. Here [...]

• More People Go Mobile For Local
  

  Since the beginning of the year, many of us have predicted that mobile will be the top driving force behind local search growth in 2010. A rapidly-increasing number of smartphone users - combined with faster mobile technology, better search offerings, and higher advertiser engagement - suggests that consumers will be more likely than ever to [...]

• What Keywords Am I Missing?
  

  The typical process that an SMB will go through when building an online marketing campaign usually begins with defining their target audience, performing keyword research, analyzing which words bring the most traffic and conversions, and utilizing keyword research tools such as Keyword Discovery. Upon taking these steps, SMB owners will wait to see their results on [...]

• SMX East Super Early Bird Rates Expire Tomorrow July 30 – Register Now!
  

  Time is up! The lowest rates available for Search Engine Land’s SMX East conference expire tomorrow. Register today and pay only $1195 for three days of exceptional tactical content and invaluable networking opportunities. SMX East offers sessions covering search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC) social media marketing, analytics and conversions, local, mobile and [...]

• An Introduction To Paid Search Conversion Tracking
  

  If you asked most marketers what’s the biggest draw of online advertising, you'll often hear is that it is highly measurable. Interactivity (the ability to click and engage) is certainly a huge benefit as well, but if you're a marketer who is spending significant dollars on your advertising, just getting people to interact with [...]

• Up Close With Facebook Questions
  

  Facebook Questions is the latest in a long line of question-and-answer services online but, as Danny Sullivan mentioned in his news article earlier, it’s the only one with a community of 500 million users behind it. For comparison’s sake, Yahoo Answers, the recognized leader in the Q&A space, announced in late 2009 that it had [...]

• Yahoo-Bing Mobile Search Transition To Happen At Same Time As Online, Ads To Be Handled By Same Teams
  

  Microsoft and Yahoo have deferred talk of mobile advertising in previous discussions about the search transition. But now it has been made clear that mobile will transition at the same as the PC, and that the account teams will be the same for both segments. Here are the relevant FAQs from Microsoft Advertising’s discussion of the [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Answers.com Gets 200,000 Video Answers From 5Min , TechCrunch

Business Issues

• Eric Schmidt on Google’s Next Tricks , Wall Street Journal
• Google’s head of Android partnerships departs , VentureBeat
• UK Rules Google Innocent of Capturing Private Data , Read/Write Web
• Facebook CEO talks privacy on Hill , POLITICO.com
• Internet Privacy Infographic: Google Privacy & Your Privacy on Facebook , WordStream
• Large U.S. University Not Renewing Contract for Google Search Appliance , ResourceShelf

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Letter From Silicon Valley: Doing the Math on Android vs. Apple , Wired
• Google Tags – Do They Help? An Anectdotal Review , Mike Blumenthal
• Rain or Snow, Now You Can See Weather in Google Earth , Google LatLong

Link Building

• 27 Link Building Resources: the "Link Building Team Development" Edition – v12 7/23-7/29 , ontolo.com

Paid Search & Contextual

• AdWords Policy Change Log to Announce Policy Changes , Inside AdWords
• Yahoo Search Marketing Reporting Goes Down For Many , Search Engine Roundtable

Searching

• More About Google’s Experiments , Google Operating System
• And Another: Facebook Launches Their Q&A Service to 1% of User Base , ResourceShelf
• Bloomsbury to Publish One Million Page Electronic Churchill Archive , ResourceShelf
• Google has two times more malware than Bing, Yahoo! and Twitter combined , net-security.org
• More On Google Alerts Quality Control , Search Engine Roundtable
• New Mobile Website from the GAO: Government Accountability on the Go , ResourceShelf
• Now Online, Searchable Database: Online Detainee Locator System from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) , ResourceShelf

SEM Industry

• Local University Denver Slated for October 21 , blog.getlisted.org
• Why SEOs are hated , David Naylor

SEO & SEM

• A Quick Site Audit , DazzlinDonna
• When it Comes to Competing in the Search Market, Ask.com Lags Far Behind the Leaders , DailyFinance
• 7 Cutting Edge Web Design Trends (that Can Actually Improve SEO) , SEOmoz
• Demand Media’s eHow.com Using Interesting Expired Domain Redirect SEO Strategy , SEO Book
• First Evidence: Yahoo! and Bing Have Merged Search Results , EZlocal Blog
• Keyword Zoom Takes You Inside Keyword Performance , The ClickEquations Blog
• New Adobe Technology Seeks To Make Rich Media Applications Search Engine Friendly , Go Rumors
• SEO Is Not All About Technical Changes , Search Engine Roundtable
• Should your SEO company create your content? , SEO Copywriting

Social Media

• Twitter Begins User Streams Testing. Realtime Tech Should Help Ease API Strain , TechCrunch
• Facebook data harvester speaks out , BBC News
• Facebook Open Graph: Coming to a Mobile Device Near You , blueglass.com
• Twitter shows people happiest mornings, evenings, weekends , The Sarnia Observer
• Twitter’s Fundamental Change for the Worse , Social Media Today

Video, Music & Image Search

• Image SEO Expert Knocks On Bing Image Search , Search Engine Roundtable
• Upload limit increases to 15 minutes for all users , YouTube Blog
• YouTube Banned in Russia Over Racist Video , mashable.com
• YouTube’s Playlist Bar , Google Operating System

Web Analytics

• Statistics and Rankings: Top 20 Countries on the Internet, and What the Future Might Bring , ResourceShelf

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

• Search and Social? Eh, no. – SEO Bullshit – ‘Social is the new search’, ‘forget about SEO and start going social’, ‘social media will replace search’. Eh, no. It’s not, I won’t, and it won’t.
• Google Patent Trail; Analyzing Recent History – I posted a round up of the patent awards to Google earlier this week and thought it would be an interesting exercise to round up the last 2.5 years of Google patents. Can we see a pattern? Can we learn anything? Read on and find out!
• Content Development and Copywriting, Meet the 21st Century – In order to reach this objective, your goals and the steps to achieve them must be thought out, clearly defined and focused on building long-term business to consumer relationships.
• Elixir Interactive Online Reputation Management Case Study – Very interesting case study on how Elixir Interactive had to employ some extensive online reputation management strategy to protect false acquisations against their brand.
• The Clueless, but “Whitehat”, SEO – Excellent post-"interview" from sugarrae exposing one of the so called white hat seo experts. This guy is really hilarious. He doesn't even know who Matt Cutts is!!!!!
• Demand Media's Interesting Expired Domain Redirect SEO Strategy – Demand Media is buying branded domains (ie. cybersquating) and pointing them at high earning eHow.com pages. It's ok though… even though these tactics would get us normal folks a penalty or ban, it's probably safe to say that Demand Media will get a pass.
• LinkSpam Bombed… But How and Why? – Scott Hendison discusses some "fishy" link reports from Google Webmaster Tools & theorizes why he's being "LinkSpam Bombed".

• SMX Stockholm – September 28-29
• SMX East – October 4-6, 2010
• SMX West – March 8-10, 2011
• SMX Munich – April 5-6, 2011
• SMX Toronto – April 28-29, 2011
• SMX Advanced Seattle – June 7-8, 2011

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