The Week in Review

Google Loses in July as comScore Unveils ‘Explicit’ Core Search

In the afterglow of all the buzz about Bing continuing to outdo Yahoo in the search realm (according to Chitika, at least), comScore’s latest figures show Google with 65.8 percent of the market in July, down 0.4 percentage points. Yahoo followed with 17.1 percent, up 0.4 points, as Microsoft trails with 11.0 percent. What many will point out is comScore’s unveiling of “Explicit Core Search,” which the company defines as “user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results.” (comScore)

Swingly Aggregates Billions of Answers

As the Q-and-A arena heats up with more and more major competitors, some users may want more of an all-in-one solution. They might have on in Swingly, which could be seen as a Google of Q-and-A queries. Instead of searching by keywords, Swingly matches statements to questions it might answer and understands 10,000 “entity types.” (VentureBeat, TechCrunch)

The Progress of Webspam

While webspam has made progress in the past year or so, Google’s webspam team has not. Just try searching for “seo software,” “nanny services” and “french doors.” Legitimate marketers should take notice, but they shouldn’t take this as a reason to jump into the spam game. While reporting spam from your competitors is a choice that’s up to you, what you can definitely control are your efforts to pump out great, quality content that creates value for people. (SEOmoz)

AOL Set to Expand Patch to 500 Sites

AOL has plans to expand the number of its local-news Patch sites from 100 now to 500 by the end of 2010. This should make it the biggest hirer of full-time journalists in the country. The question is, is this kind of growth sustainable? There’s good reason to believe so, but what about its revenue model? (WebProNews, Business Insider)

Shopkick’s Verification System

Shopkick, a new iPhone shopping app that allows users to check in to stores and earn real-money rewards, has a simple way to verify that all check-ins are honest: a small device installed in stores. (Business Insider)

Facebook’s Location-Based Weapon Nearly Ready

Facebook is expected to rock the boat with its location-based service today. Foursquare should probably bust out plenty of Mylanta, but not all might be lost – there are rumors that suggest that Facebook will play nice and integrate with existing location-based services. Still, it’s tough to imagine that a site with 500 million+ users wouldn’t be something of an inconvenience for the smaller fish that have enjoyed their time alone in the pond. (MediaPost)

Missing a Page? Take 10 Minutes and Find Out Why

If you’re wondering why one of your pages isn’t showing up on Google, here’s a 10-minute audit to find out what’s going on. Confirming the site is indexed, confirming the page is not indexed, checking for bad Robots.txt, checking for META Noindex and reviewing link profile quality are all part of this quick-hit process. (SEOmoz)

Hulu IPO: $2 Billion

The online video sensation appears to have plans for unveiling an IPO in the fall that could be valued at more than $2 billion. Its reception could foreshadow things to come. (NYTimes.com, MarketWatch)

Facebook Buys Chai Labs, Google Eying Like.com

Facebook acquired Chai Labs for $10 million. Chai Labs helps publishers launch scalable, search-friendly sites in several verticals, including shopping and entertainment. The move could be a signal that Facebook intends to tread on Google’s dominance of dropping ads into editorial content. Not to be outdone, Google is reportedly near the acquisition of the once-jilted Like.com for around $100 million. (NewsFactor, TechCrunch)

PPC vs. SEO

Though some may think otherwise, PPC and SEO are friends, not enemies. Among the myths floating around are: “Running Google AdWords will improve your organic search results,” “SEOs are just cowboys. You have to run PPC campaigns to get results from search engines,” and “PPC is quicker than SEO.” PPC and SEO work well with each other, especially for new sites, seasonal or last-minute offers and when a client is a control freak. When you mix them, be sure to learn the basics of SEO, avoid doubling your efforts and use the best PPC tactics. (Search Engine Journal)

Facebook Marketing is More Than Just Fans

While it’s comforting to see your fan count grow and grow, there’s a lot more to marketing on the social network than the number of fans you can boast. You have to engage your community the right way by emulating the coffee shop example, the TV example and the restaurant examp0le. (Search Engine Journal)

5 Landing Pages to Admire

Great design still sells, according to KISSmetrics. Mint, Apple’s QuickTime and Jott are among the five great landing pages to observe and learn from. The bottom line is that landing pages don’t have to be ugly and off-putting. (KISSmetrics)

Apple Pondering Mobile Payments?

After faring well with music, mobile phones and books, Apple seems to be licking its chops at another prospective market: cash. The company recently hired an expert in all things mobile payments, who is now its product manager for mobile commerce. This isn’t the first time Apple appeared to be considering diving into near-field communications (NFC), but it sure is an intriguing move with potentially landscape-shifting possibilities. (NYTimes.com)

The Best and Worst of Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt Deals

With so many big brands leveraging the power of location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla, it’s interesting to observe what some are offering on these platforms. Some of the best campaign deals seen on these services come from Paul Frank, Ann Taylor and Sports Authority. Some of the worst come from Olay, Starbucks and Chili’s. (ClickZ)

China Will Build its Own Search Engine

In a way, we had to have seen this coming: China plans on pumping out its own government-controlled search engine, which looks like a land grab of the Internet, as well as a way to profit from the growing mobile craze. It also looks like homegrown Baidu, which has benefited from Google’s departure from China, could have some serious competition in its future. (NYTimes.com)

Spamming Twitter, Contextual Book Suggestions and $7K in Sales

A programmer who left his system admin job and found himself unemployed, broke and bored decided to learn tf-idf and use it to generate book suggestions to Twitter users based on the content of their tweets. After four months he had generated more than $7,000 in sales for Amazon and took more than $400 in commission for himself. His account was suspended, of course, but not before he got to observe a conversion rate of 0.13 percent, which might not seem like much, but it was better than his e-mail spam. He’s taken this idea and turned it into a friendlier project called BookSuggest. (Business Insider)

Parents Want Mobile Ads

A new Harris Interactive survey shows that the demographic group most interested in getting opt-in mobile ads is mobile owners with children. This group is also more “promotionally active” than others. Thirty-two percent of parents with children between 6-12 years old express interest in mobile marketing, compared to 25 percent of those without children. However, just 7 percent of mean and 3 percent of women showed interest in location-based services. (ReadWriteWeb)

Co-Creation is Appealing to Most Consumers

Co-creation seems to be a growing trend and it appears that it’s more than just buzz. A Forrester report shows that 61 percent of consumers are willing to be co-creators for products and services they use in everyday life. However, 63 percent say participation depends on receiving some kind of compensation. (ReadWriteWeb)

Facebook Connections Are More Trustworthy than Twitter Connections

According to a study from Invoke Solutions, the most trusted information online is posted by someone’s real-world friends, with blog posts from friends more likely to be trusted (26 percent) than posts on Facebook (23 percent) and messages via Twitter (12 percent). For brand messages, blog posts led the way (11 percent), followed by Facebook (9 percent) and Twitter (6 percent). (Econsultancy)

Google Acquires Virtual-Currency Company

Google acquired Jambool, a virtual-currency software startup, marking yet another step into the social media realm for the search giant. This comes just a week after the purchase of Slide. (CNET)

Tweet Button

Twitter finally unveiled its Tweet Button yesterday. It’s essentially what TweetMeme has been offering all along. Speaking of which, TweetMeme’s founder and CEO announced a new product called DataSift, which seems to indicate a shift toward tracking data. The two companies will be “working closely.” (Twitter Blog, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat)

Booshaka: Facebook Trend Search

Booshaka is offering a search experience to find out what’s trending on Facebook. Searches can be filtered by topics. This is in the line of what OneRiot and OpenFacebookSearch have been doing. (TechCrunch)

Delta Sells Tickets on Facebook

Delta Air Lines has launched its “Ticket Window” on its Facebook page. This is yet another example of e-commerce creeping its way into the social network. “Toy Story 3” made a big splash selling tickets on Facebook earlier this summer. (WebProNews)

How to Get People to Tweet About Your Presentations

Creating a “tweetable moment” during a presentation is something of a science. To get audience members to tweet about your presentation and give it life and legs beyond the actual time slot you’re allotted, prime them, deliver “aha” moments and give them a sound bite. (Mashable)

Are Questions About the Best E-mail Send Times Irrelevant?

In many ways, yes. One rule for one set of marketers (e.g., don’t send e-mails on Fridays) might not hold up for another set. Also, the mobile aspect of e-mail access changes the game completely, and better e-mails make questions about timing less important. The focus should be on, “how do we create value?” (MediaPost)

Five Ways to Build Links at SEO Conferences

SEO conferences offer great ways to network and learn, but how can you use them as ways to grab links without paying anything for them? Speaking at the event, liveblogging/livetweeting, taking photos/videos, volunteering and doing something crazy are five ways to build links at these events. (SEOmoz)

Ad Spending on Social Games to Reach $220 Million in 2010

According to eMarketer, worldwide ad spending on social games and applications in 2009 was $183 million. This figure is set to rise to $220 million this year, with $142 million of that spent in the U.S. Next year the worldwide figure is expected to reach $293 million, with $192 million of that spent stateside. (eMarketer)

Broadband Adoption Slows

Broadband adoption slowed down in the U.S. during May, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of Americans now have a broadband connection at home, which is a bit higher than 63 percent in April 2009. However, this was the smallest percentage-point increase since March 2005. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said expanding affordable high-speed Internet access to everyone in the U.S. was “not too important” a priority, while 26 percent said this was a task that shouldn’t be attempted by the government. (WebProNews)

Twitter is More Popular in Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela and Others

It’s easy to think that Twitter is popular in the U.S. After all, it is. But based on reach, Twitter is far more popular in Indonesia (20.8 percent), Brazil (20.5 percent), Venezuela (19.0 percent) and a host of other countries. In fact, the U.S. (11.9 percent) ranks 11th in the list of the top 20 markets by Twitter penetration, according to comScore. (comScore)

iPhone Users Click, BlackBerry Users Don’t

The latest data from Smaato shows that Symbian users had the highest click-through rate in the U.S. during July, followed by Windows Mobile users, iPhone/iPod users, Android users, feature phone users, Palm users and BlackBerry users. CTR for Apple iOS users saw a significant boost during the month. (ReadWriteWeb)

Cybersquatting and Paid Search

According to Direct Magazine, 14 percent of branded searches never get to the brand’s site. For luxury products, this number can reach 45 percent. Who’s to blame? Savvy online scammers who cybersquat like pros – or better. They also invest in paid search. Brands should report these misdeeds to search engines and take measures to protect themselves. (PPC Hero)

Twitter Button on its Way?

Tweetmeme might have some hefty competition charging its way. Twitter is reportedly near the unveiling of a “Tweet Button,” which would offer embeddable sharing buttons akin to those offered by Tweetmeme. (CNET)