Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
- Viacom Loses Google Lawsuit
Google has won a “motion for summary judgment” in its bitterly fought lawsuit with Viacom over YouTube. Viacom had sued YouTube/Google for copyright infringement surrounding the posting of scores of clips of Viacom-owned programming (e.g., Jon Stewart) on YouTube. Viacom had sought damages for infringement that might have run more than a billion dollars.
This is […] - Four Search Agencies Merge To Form BlueGlass Interactive
If you felt a rumble yesterday amongst the search marketing ranks, it was probably caused by the news that four well-known marketing companies announced a merger into one new agency known as BlueGlass Interactive.
The companies coming together are 10e20, Search & Social, Brent Csutoras Inc., and SecondStep Search. In a blog post announcing the […] - Twitter’s First Head Of State Visit: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Twitter’s having its first ever visit by a head of state today, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. He arrives at the company’s headquarters some time this morning, Pacific Time.
For security reasons, Twitter’s not giving out the exact time. But the company will post pictures on its Flickr account later today, it tells me. I’d also expect […] - Privacy, Location Sharing & Opting-Out On Apple iDevices
On Monday when Apple released its iOS 4 software update it changed its terms and privacy policy. One of the provisions of the new privacy terms — though few typically read them — concerns location monitoring and sharing in the background.
Here’s what it now says about location:
To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and […] - Conversion-Optimized Touch Points: The Thank You Page
In the field of conversion optimization, there’s an understandable focus on landing pages. But why stop there? Every single touch point is an opportunity to improve the user experience and the bottom line. In this article I look at ways to optimize one of these oft-overlooked points: the thank you page.
What is a thank you […] - SEO Automation: Streamlining Workload With Templates, Tools & Modules
Spending lots of time redoing and recreating the same tasks can be draining. You don’t want to have to type out hundreds, if not thousands of title tags, it’s just not sensible. But along those same lines, there are a lot of other things that can be automated or “modularized” (yup, I just made that […]
- Search Old Scanned Documents By Uploading Them To Google Docs
The Google Docs Blog announced you can now upload old scanned documents into Google Docs and Google will OCR the documents. OCR will convert the text scans from a picture into selectable and searchable text within Google Docs, which you can then export to a multitude of file types.
Back in October, Google would OCR […] - Google Retiring AdWords Report Center
The Google AdWords Blog announced they are going to soon be retiring the AdWords Report Center.
The reports will soon begin migrating over to your campaign tabs and eventually the reporting center tab will be completely removed. Google said you can access all the reports you had now on “the same pages where […] - Watch Out For These Unsavory Affiliate Tactics
Many affiliates offer an honest additional marketing channel that is necessary for your marketing mix. However, there are affiliates who are looking for ways to beat your system, beat the search system and hide when you try to find them.
Here are specific things you should watch out for:
Direct linking. Direct linking in paid […] - Bing Has A New Look, Now Hosts Deep Content In Search Results
While Bing is throwing a star-studded party to announce changes to its entertainment-based search results, there are several other changes that deserve a close look, not the least of which is the amount of deep content — including full articles with thousands of words — that Bing is now hosting in its search results. More […]
- Bing Entertainment Unwrapped: Music, Movies, Games & TV
Per my previous post, Bing To Rollout Red Carpet In Hollywood Along With New Features, Danny Sullivan and I are liveblogging from Hollywood, where Bing is officially unveiling its new entertainment features.
The official Bing blog has all the details about the new features in all aspects of entertainment: Music, Movies, TV listings and gaming information.
At […] - Bing Paparazzi Photos
Opening remarks by Yusef Medhi:
Part II of the Bing Entertainment event
set up for discussion session about the future of entertainment in search with Hollywood hitters:Joseph Gordon Leavitt & Kathryn Bigelow share their thoughts:
- Live From Hollywood: It’s Bing & Ryan Seacrest
Bing’s holding a big press event here tonight in Hollywood, California. We’re live on the red carpet. OK, no red carpet, but we do have Ryan Seacrest hosting the event. Sit back and stay tuned as we live blog what’s to come.
NOTE: See our Bing Entertainment, Unwrapped: Music, Movies, Games & TV story which covers […]
Search News From Around The Web:
Business Issues
- Google Sued by Frontier Communications Over New Telephone Service Patent, Bloomberg
- Yahoo Fires Search Employees, Reinvests Elsewhere (YHOO, MSFT), San Francisco Chronicle
- It’s Your Data, It’s Your Bot: It’s Not A Crime, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Yahoo Continues its March into the Location Game with PlaceFinder, Read/Write Web
- Minor Style Updates, Major Improvements, Google LatLong
- New and Cool: Ready Reference To Go: Another iPhone/iTouch/iPad App from the National Library of Medicine, ResourceShelf
- Oh, hey! Check out the 360 View in Canada, eh?, MapQuest Blog
- Why doesn’t Google Places allow access by multiple users?, YouTube
Link Building
- Linkscape Index Update: New Partnerships & API Data, SEOmoz
- Like A Match.com For Search Marketers, Linker Facilitates Relevant Link Exchanges, TechCrunch
Searching
- Google One Box For Sunrise & Sunset, Search Engine Roundtable
- Historic Newspapers: Chronicling America Adds 275K Digitized Pages; Overall Collection Now at 2.3 Million Pages, ResourceShelf
SEM Industry
- Sphinn Interview Series: David "theGypsy" Harry, seoroi.com
SEO & SEM
- Are We Ignoring the New Golden Age of Technical SEO?, Site Visibility
- Dialects, Diversity and Keyword Research, Search Engine Watch
- Google’s New Keyword Broad Match Modifier: The AdWords PPC Targeting Savior, webranking.com
- How to Compare Your PPC Performance to Your Competitors, Search Engine Watch
- Is Your Affiliate Datafeed Site Sinking in Mayday?, outspokenmedia.com
- Keyword Capitalisation & Full Stops in Google Adwords, Vertical Leap Blog
- More Reports of Google Referrals Down Despite Top Rankings, Search Engine Roundtable
- Must-Have SEO Recommendations: Step 7 of the 8-Step SEO Strategy, SEOmoz
- WordPress System Admin Calls Out Google’s Evil Spiders, Search Engine Roundtable
- Wrong Post & Author Information In Google Snippets? Tell Google, Search Engine Roundtable
Social Media
- Consumers say: In tweets we trust, Reuters
- Dear Facebook Friends, You’re Doing it Wrong, Techipedia
- Facebook Tests A News Feed For People With Few Friends, Business Insider
- How I Drove Over 36 Million Pageviews Following This Social Media Policy, Search Engine Journal
Video, Music & Image Search
- Flickr Gets More Photogenic With A Complete Photo Page Overhaul, TechCrunch
- New from Blinkx Video (Free): Search Historic Content via CrititcalPast, ResourceShelf
Other Items
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- Meet the World’s First Free Negative Keyword Tool
- Four Engines, Four Ways To Generate Links
- Social Darwinism; a guide to Twitter dorking
- SEO Link Building Strategy: Quantity vs. Quality of Inbound Links
- 8 things linkbuilders shouldn’t do when asking for links