SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 19, 2011

Jul 19, 2011 at 5:11pm ET 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:

Google Testing URLs Above Descriptions In AdWords

Google is testing a variation on AdWords display that has the URLs shown above the two lines of description, but under the headline. Representatives from the search giant would only say that they’re always experimenting with different ways of displaying information, but multiple members of Search Engine Land editorial team saw the experiment on Google.com [...]

Google Disables URL Removals After Bug Allows Anyone To Remove Any Site

This morning, James Breckenridge discovered a loophole within Google’s Webmaster Tools that allowed anyone to remove any site from Google. Both James and I sent this information to Google as soon as we heard of it. After several hours, Google has told us, “we’re still investigating this report, and to be cautious we disabled all [...]

Google’s Got Logos, But Bing’s Home Page Images Attract Too

Fast Company has a fascinating article on Bing’s background images and how they are used to market the Bing service. While Google updates their logos to be fun and creative on special birthdays or occasions, Bing revamps their background with an image that stands out and leaves users asking for more. If you haven’t noticed, [...]

Google Gets Chance To Appeal In Street View Lawsuit

Just a couple weeks after the latest setback, Google picked up a small but potentially important victory today in its defense against charges that the company violated federal wiretap laws when its Street View cars intercepted personal data over unencrypted WiFi networks. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Judge James Ware has put the case [...]

How Twitter’s Technical Infrastructure Issues Are Impacting Google Search Results

In the last few days, several noticed that the Google Toolbar PageRank value for www.twitter.com had plummeted to 0 (it’s now back to its previous 9). Was Google punishing Twitter for how things went down with the feed expiration that temporarily derailed Google’s Realtime search efforts? Nah, Twitter’s website has just been suffering from technical [...]

Google+ iPhone App Now Available

Just under 30 minutes ago Google’s Vic Gundotra announced on Google+, appropriately, that the site’s promised iPhone app is now available. Google said on its Q2 earnings call last week that there were more than 10 million users of Google+ so far. It didn’t announce how many were using the site on mobile devices or [...]

Intervention & Rehab Time: How To Break The Paid Link Habit

So you have finally made the decision to get off of the paid links crack and go straight. Do you go cold turkey? Do you take this in stages? There are great questions and the ones I will take on in today’s post. There are two major reasons why you should make this switch, one [...]

Google Opens Up Call Metrics, Plans Bid-For-Calls Marketplace

This morning Google is announcing that its Call Metrics call-tracking capability is going to be generally available to all US and Canadian AdWords advertisers. Call Metrics is not to be confused with mobile Click to Call ads, though Call Metrics is available to Click to Call mobile advertisers as well. Below is an example ad [...]

Eli Pariser, Danny Sullivan Headline at SMX East, September 13-15 in NYC

A benefit of attending Search Marketing Expo – SMX conferences is the luxury of participating in horizon-expanding presentations. You’ll be a more inspired, creative and well-rounded internet marketer after these two SMX East keynotes: Marketers strive to deliver action-stimulating messages at the most opportune time. But is there any danger that search personalization will spiral [...]

Bing Gains In Customer Satisfaction, Facebook “Near The Bottom” — Report

The 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) “e-business report is out. Google, Bing and the entire “Internet Search Engines & Portals” category seems to have done well. In particular Bing and Ask improved significantly over last year. Facebook’s report card, on the other hand, is not as likely to make mom and dad happy. The [...]

How To Maximise SERP CTRs With Google Sitemaps & Schemas

Resolving indexing or duplication issues are usually top of the list when working with a new domain, but how can you achieve the same level of performance once the obvious SEO wins are in place?

Mobile Now 12 Percent Of All Paid Search Impressions

Earlier today Performics reported another mobile search milestone: “mobile paid search traffic is now 12% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), while mobile clicks are about to cross the 12% threshold.” The search-marketing firm based this report on aggregated client data from 1H 2011. Mobile by itself, excluding tablets, is about 10 percent [...]

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Pending in Places – A new manual review or a new bug?, Mike Blumenthal3D buildings in Google Maps for Android arise in London, Paris, Barcelona, and more, Official Google Mobile BlogEvolving the look of Google Maps, redux, Google LatLongGoogle Places Pending Review Bug, Search Engine RoundtableGoogle Rushes To Redo Maps Of Sudan After Statehood, Search Engine RoundtableLondon Gets 3D Buildings On Google Maps, periscopix.co.ukSouth Sudan is on the map, and now it’s in Google Earth too, Google Earth BlogTripAdvisor Sends Conflicted Message: We Can Incent Reviews but Business Can’t, Mike Blumenthal

Searching

SEO & SEM

Validation: measuring and tracking code quality, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog10 Simple Techniques for Google Profile Optimisation for Google and Beyond, SEOptimiseBig Google Places Feet on the Street Campaign hits Big Texas with a Big Push for Small Businesses, Google Places Optimization BlogBing Quality Scores: Match-Types & Magic Wands, SEOmozDon’t Let Your SEO Firm Get Back At Firing Them, Search Engine RoundtableHow SEO Can Work With Content Strategy, Online Marketing BlogHow to apply some basic usability to improve our SEO work, Bruce Clay AustraliaIdentifying Quick Wins, Search Engine JournalSEO to do in Half an Hour, Daily SEO TipThe Commoditization of SEO, The Milwaukee SEOThe God Complex in SEO, SEO BookThe One Minute AdWords Account Diagnosis, Certified KnowledgeWords with two meanings and tricky negative keyword lists, Search Engine People

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics

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

Related Topics: SearchCap

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and 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. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.