SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 26, 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:

• 
  YouTube Video Overlay Ads Becoming More Visible
  Beet.TV and Silicon Alley Insider discuss the new Adobe campaign (and others) featuring graphical ads and video overlay ads on YouTube. Below is a screenshot I captured, after watching numerous streams because the ads don’t always appear. But the appearance of these ads indicates that YouTube is ramping up its…
• 
  Google Loses Local Ad Guy, Preuss, To MeetUp
  MeetUp Nabs Google Vet Dominic Preuss from Silicon Alley Insider reports Google’s aged Product Manager for Local Advertising has left to join a start up. Dominic Preuss worked at Google’s NYC for three and a half years running Google’s local business team. Preuss was hired as the Vice President of…
• 
  Struggling For Links In Competitive Markets? Try Reputation Link Bait
  Building links in a competitive niche is one of the most difficult marketing tasks I’m asked to do. Not only do I have to work in link-saturated industries, but more times than not I have to find a way to out-rank a “complaint site” and/or Wikipedia. If you’ve ever…
• 
  The Mobile Internet: Still Years Away?
  The New York Times ran a kind of overview article this weekend about the mobile Web and the fact that it may still be far off as a practical matter. The article talks about different efforts, from the iPhone to Yahoo Go and recent Microsoft spin-off Zumobi that are trying…
• 
  EveryScape And 3-D Store Interior Mapping
  The New York Times on Sunday covered mapping site EveryScape and its effort to create 3-D maps of urban environments, but also store and business interiors. (Here’s our post from when the site formally launched in October.) The Times’ piece focuses on the interior mapping dimension of what EveryScape is…
• 
  New Signs Of JotSpot & Google Wiki?
  JotSpot to replace Google Pages soon? from Googling Google reports recent activity spotted with some of Google’s URLs. Tony Ruscoe wrote at a Google Blogoscoped Forum thread that http://pages-beta.google.com/a/google.com now contains the “service=jotspot” parameter in the URL. Google bought Jotspot in October 2006. Since then there have been rumors that…
• 
  Internet Yellow Pages: Worth The Effort?
  Here at the end of 2007, it’s painfully obvious that the local search advertising market remains highly fragmented. Numerous local search experts attending the recent SMX Local & Mobile Conference reiterated the observation that businesses seeking to target local audiences have a plethora of options, and identifying and selecting…
• 
  Malibu Corral Fire Maps: Burn Area, Evacuation Centers & More
  Fires are burning again in Southern California, and the map makers are hard at work helping people know what’s happening where. Below, maps relating to the Corral Fire in Malibu:…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

• Live Documents enters the Office suite ring, Between the Lines
• Google Checkout announces holiday promotions and special offers, Google
• Google Talk Gadget in 20 new languages, Google Talkabout
• Google’s Base Products, Google Operating System
• Is the $10 million Android contest actually slowing developers down?, Googling Google
• orkut on your homepage!, Orkut Blog
• Rule-Based iGoogle Themes, Google Operating System
• Zoho Office Goes Completely Offline with Google Gears, Digital Inspiration

Business Issues

• Time to write our own rules, Doc Searls Weblog
• With its two latest deals, is Google reaching too far?, CNN Money
• Google’s Chinese foray depends on local know-how, Reuters
• Is Google recession-proof?, Times Online
• Yahoo is selling Kelkoo, This is Money

Conferences

• SMX London Part 5 – Understanding the Needs of a Searcher, Marketing Pilgrim
• The Global Search Universe | SMX London 2007, Site Visibility

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Australian Election Results Live in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Mobile: AOL Launches Mobile Portal in the UK, ResourceShelf
• Add Google Coupons to your main search results via Google Co-op, Mike Blumenthal
• Arctic Ice Melting Animation in Google Earth, Google Earth Blog
• Google And Microsoft Want To Hear From You, Lots of Other Free Voice-Activated Services Also Available, ResourceShelf
• Microsoft Windows Live Local SUV’s Hit Tampa, Search Engine Journal

Link Building

• Divide and Conquer: Creating and Managing Your Link Campaign, SEOmoz
• How PageRank Works & Why the Original PR Formula May be Flawed, SEOmoz

Paid Search & Contextual

• A taxing day of holiday shopping, Inside AdSense
• How To Solve Facebook’s Beacon Problem, Silicon Alley Insider
• MySpace Hypertargeting vs Facebook Beacon: Which one is creepier?, News.com
• Landing Pages and Google’s Website Optimizer Patent Applications, SEO By The Sea
• Techniques that Always Work?: Who Uses Dynamic Keyword Insertion?, Traffick
• 5 Ways Google Might Monetize Natural Search Results, Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
• Canadian Google AdWords Advertisers Change to US Dollar But Take Hit Anyway, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to Import Campaigns from a 3rd Party to Yahoo Search Marketing, Search Engine Roundtable
• Is Google Spiking the Kool Aid With The Content Network’s Domain Ads?, SEM Geek
• Maximize Your Holiday Sales With adCenter, PPC Discussions
• Monthly PPC Performance Report Template, Shimon Sandler
• Play it safe, family-safe, Inside AdSense
• Publishers Complain that Google AdSense Video Units Aren’t Targeted, Search Engine Roundtable
• The Five Commandments of Content Advertising, Search Engine Watch

Searching

• New Voting System Launched! You can now Appeal your Final Ratings!, Askville Blog
• Creative Aussies bane of Google, Australian IT
• Enable Auto-Complete on Google Homepage, Google Blogoscoped
• Get Your Meta On with One Dozen Metasearch Engines, The SEO Scoop
• Google News Indexing Captchas, Google Blogoscoped
• Sick of Blog Search? Time To Give Ask.com a Try, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM Industry

• Hiring Search Marketers? Five Interview Questions You Should Ask PPC Candidates, SEOmoz
• 32 Important Search Marketing Acronyms, Search Engine Journal

SEO & SEM

• Model_number: back and better than ever, Google Base Blog
• How to Use ColdFusion to Ping the Ask, Google, MSN, and Yahoo Sitemap Services, Jason Bartholme
• Advantages of a smart robots.txt file, sebastians-pamphlets.com
• Duplicate Content Issues, Duplicate Content, rbdrodeo.com
• Free Guide to Optimizing Your Blog for Google, SEO Book
• Google’s Treatment of Underscores vs Hyphens – The Confusion, Search Engine Journal
• How Do You Complain if Your Site is Banned from MSN Search?, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to Get Your PHP Pages Indexed on Google, SEO.com
• How to sell SEO to Generation Y, SiteMost
• The Advanced Webmasters Guide to Google News, BlogStorm
• The Importance of Keywords Meta Tag in SEO, Search Engine Journal
• WikiAnswers’ Search Engine Optimization, Google Blogoscoped

Social Media

• Digg Refugees May Be Heading To Mixx, TechCrunch
• Scoop: Yahoo to launch MyM "social messaging" site, Valleywag
• Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market, www.doshdosh.com
• ABC News reaching out to Facebook users? Good luck, guys, News.com
• MySpace plans Facebook-style news feeds, Reuters
• The Economic Idiocy of Blocking Social Media Traffic, Read/Write Web
• Why Digg Is Still The Best, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

• Google on Generating Statistics from Search Engine Query Logs (Hot Trends and More), SEO By The Sea
• Tools for Competitive Search Intelligence, ClickZ

Other Items

• Doodle: Australian Election, Googlified
• Google Body, Wired
• Human resources director profile: Liane Hornsey, HR director, Google, Personnel Today
• Superficial: The nerdiest tattoos you will ever see, Valleywag
• Yahoo Can’t Cope with Cyber Monday, CNBC

Last 20 Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• Trading In My White Hat For a Black One
• An Interview With Seth Godin about Meatball Sundae
• Optimizing HTML Links In The Aftermath Of A Blog Storm
• Advanced Reputation Management With Profiles And Presell Pages
• 32 Important Search Marketing Acronyms
• How To Totally Screw Up An Email Campaign
• Social Networks Make Poor Advertising Bedfellows
• How not to write an SEO analysis
• Alexa’s Make Believe Internet
• School officials unite in banning Wikipedia
• Does your page load size suck? Mine does
• The Blogger’s Guide to SEO
• Social Media Roundup: Black Friday
• What’s changed in the Matrix… ehm I mean Algos?
• Hiring Search Marketers? Five Interview Questions You Should Ask PPC Candidates
• Things to do before hitting publish
• Digg Refugees May Be Heading To Mixx
• Can Advertisers Make Fake Blogs Work Or Is Flogging Still A Dirty Word?
• Google Sees What You Hide in Images
• SEO & Ninja LinkBuilding > A Chat with ‘We Build Pages’ Jim Boykin
• Google Wants YOU to Report Paid Links!
• Congratulations SHANA! SocialDesire Blog Makes TopRank’s BIGLIST
• Avoiding Potential Website Optimization Disasters
• Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market

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.