Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

It’s A Good Time To Be An Internet Marketer, So Infers A Study Predicting 2012 Ad Spend

According to eMarketer, search ad spending is expected to increase by 27% this year. That would push total search ad spending from $15.36 billion to $19.51 billion. One look at the chart below should make you (if you’re an Internet marketer) crack a smile:

Source: Search Engine Land

Mobile Ad Spending Will Increase Drastically In 2012

Mobile advertising spending is expected to exceed $2.6 billion in 2012, according to a recent eMarketer study. Online ad spend has grown constantly over the past few years, but no realm of advertising has expanded at the rate of mobile and tablet ads. Look for this trend to predictably continue, and possibly pass expectations, in the year to come.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google, Apple, Intel, Others Face Anti-Poaching Lawsuit

Poaching isn’t just for Russian tiger hunters and American paddlefish egg enthusiasts. Google, Apple, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar are in hot water for illegally making a pact to not “poach” each other’s employees. The lawsuit was brought forth by a group of those companies’ employees, claiming they were either fired for breaching the agreement or hindered in their career growth.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Google Wants To Explain Its Privacy Policy With Congress In Private

Google is requesting the private company of Congress for the purpose of discussing their ever-evolving privacy policy. Google knows people aren’t happy about its newest privacy brief, and plans to send two reps to D.C. to preemptively discuss it with members of the U.S. government.

Source: Search Engine Watch

The Panda Is Coming! The Panda Is Coming!

Bamboo haters and Ursidae-phobics unite! Google has confirmed Panda Update 3.2 is under way. However, it is just a “data refresh” at this point. Google’s last Panda update occurred on November 18, 2011, so this is just another likely step forward in the algorithm catch-up process since the holiday hiatus.

Source: Search Engine Land

Facebook’s IPO Reaches $5 Billion

Facebook’s initial public offering asked for $5 billion in funding, which is very high, but expected given the popularity of the web’s top social network. Wired follows up this report by offer speculation about where Facebook is headed as a public company. Because it took eight years to go public, some people believe Facebook will be more like Groupon than Google in terms of share prices dropping after the IPO bar is set.

Source: Wired Epicenter

INFOGRAPHIC: How Pinterest Produces More Referred Traffic Than Google+

Google must really hate Pinterest right now. After spending much of the backend of 2011 promoting Google+, Pinterest has skyrocketed to become the “next big thing” in social networking. And now there are numbers backing up its viability.

According to multiple reports, Pinterest accounted for more referral traffic in January (3.6%) than YouTube (1.05%), Reddit (.83%), LinkedIn (.20%), and yes, Google+ (.22%). Pinterest will likely pass Twitter (3.61%) in referrals for February, and Search Engine Watch includes a cool infographic illustrating the possibility of Pinterest as a “game changer.”

Source: Search Engine Watch

Microsoft Updates adCenter Ad Descriptions, Mobile Targeting, And A Budget Widget

Microsoft has revealed its first round of adCenter updates for 2012:

1. Ad descriptions have been extended from 70 to 71 characters.
2. A one-click widget now takes you straight to the overview of your campaign’s budget.
3. You can now target a diverse range of mobile operating systems that is limited only by your imagination!

Source: Search Engine Land

Remember This Acronym: ACTA

While SOPA and PIPA are freezing to death on the island of misfit legislation, an internationally-supported treaty is threatening similar restrictions on Internet freedom of speech in the name of intellectual property rights.

Entitled the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the treaty is backed by 22 European Union members, and is basically an internationally recognized version of the two unpopular U.S. bills. Mashable also includes some analysis of how ACTA would impact the Internet in the U.S., depending on whether the president ratifies the “executive agreement.”

Source: Mashable

‘Average Search Ranking Position’ Has A New Meaning

Google had redefined the calculation for “average position” displayed in Google Webmaster Tools search query and Google Analytics SEO reports. Now, when you see the average search position for your website, it is indicative of the average top rankings for your site. The metric was previously determined through an average of a site’s collective rank in the SERPs.

Source: Search Engine Land

YouTube Senior VP: Future Ads Will Emphasize ‘Context’

Somewhat foreshadowed by YouTube’s development of topic-specific “channels,” Senior Vice President Salar Kamangar hinted that the future of YouTube advertising will rely heavily on context. Kamangar indicated that ads shown on channel videos would be specifically targeted to that channel’s topic and demographic, thus raising the spot’s value.

Source: Wired Epicenter

HP’s Head Of Anti-iPad Developments Resigns

The final guillotine has fallen through the neck of Hewlett-Packard’s Palm program. Head executive Jon Rubinstein, the ex-Apple tech guru originally penned to counter Apple’s iPad at HP, has officially packed his bags. Rubinstein’s departure signifies the end of a fairly unpleasant mobile hardware era at HP.

Source: Wired Epicenter

IPO Will Force Facebook’s Privacy Issues Into Spotlight

As Facebook adjusts to its life as a publicly-traded company, the world’s leading social network will have to come to grips with transparency. As a private company, any government investigation into company practices would remain out of the public eye.

However, the post-IPO Facebook will be forced to disclose any legal inquiries to stockholders, should they affect company earnings. In the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson: “Hold onto your butts.”

Source: Wired Epicenter

France: ‘Google Maps Are Free; Therefore, It’s Unfair’

France is to Google as Devin Banks is to Jack Donaghy. France has a rich history of levying fines against Google for various reasons. Their latest penalty cost Google $660,000 and centered on Google Maps, which a French court determined was receiving an unfair competitive advantage for being a free service.

This is easily the most ridiculous thing France has done in months.

Source: Search Engine Land

Matt Cutts Keeps The Googlebot Peace In South Korea

Matt Cutts, Google’s resident bespectacled ambassador, has persuaded the South Korean government to allow Googlebot to crawl its websites. Given Cutts’ teddy bear-like stature, it’s not surprising he was chosen to play the role of international peacemaker in a country that has anti-trust issues with the massive tech company.

Source: Search Engine Land

Prison Is The Least Of Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom’s Problems

Kim Dotcom, founder of the now defunct Megaupload website, was recently unseated as the top score-holder in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Dotcom was denied bail, and will not be able to defend his Call of Duty legacy as long as he is behind bars.

Source: Mashable

U.K. Website Gets Caught In Major Cookie-Stuffing Scheme

Ben Edelman writes about a United Kingdom website (Eshop600.co.uk) that engaged in a large-scale cookie stuffing operation. Through invisible cookies on over 25 different sites, the offending site was collecting affiliate commissions as high as 40%. The practice is nothing new, but it’s important, as an affiliate marketer, to know how to check for these illegal activities.

Source: BenEdelman.org

Notable Commentary

That’s Very Pinteresting

How Old School Google Spamming Is Hurting Google’s ‘Relevancy’ Agenda

Danny Sullivan brings up a very good point in a recent Search Engine Land article: Google is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way right now, and some of their re-allocated priorities are fanning those flames by ignoring some basic black hat SEO tactics.

Analysis By: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land

Constructing Video And Mobile Ads In Google AdWords

Tom Demers offers a detailed, yet simplified guide to creating video and mobile ads in Google AdWords. Both skills will be crucial to reaching two audiences that are growing exponentially.

Analysis By: Tom Demers, WordStream

The Dawn Of A New PPC Era

Alex Cohen brilliantly explains how Google’s Search Plus Your World will change PPC targeting. Since Google ends up with more personal information, it can more easily decipher a searcher’s intent, and therefore serve up even more specifically targeted PPC ads.

Analysis By: Alex Cohen, Search Engine Watch

Bing Local SEO Tips

Local SEO has been a major initiative in the Internet marketing community, driven by Google’s stated goal of shifting the user search experience to a more personal and location-based product. However, there has been little discussion of how to utilize those tactics in Bing. Chris Silver Smith runs down 10 tips for improving local SEO in Bing.

Analysis By: Chris Silver Smith, Search Engine Land

Streamlining Your Social Media Use

It’s no secret social networks can be a complete time suck, even when all you have is time to waste. Ashley Zeckman offers four tips for avoiding the time waste while getting the most out of your social connections.

Analysis By: Ashley Zeckman, TopRank Blog

Four Techniques To Make Your Submit Button Better

One of the first steps in any conversion rate improvement initiative is evaluating a page’s “Submit” button. John Boyle has a brief four-part list of suggestions that can help to improve the value of this necessary button.

Analysis By: John Boyle, Web Trends

INFOGRAPHIC: How Google Made Its Bones In 2011

Google cashed in big last year, posting revenue totals just south of $38 billion. WordStream put together an infographic parsing out where that revenue was distributed among Google’s many ventures.

Analysis By: Web Analytics World

How To Target Tablets and iPads

Tablets and iPads are growing at unprecedented rates, alongside smartphones. Tablets in particular drive more direct sales (83% of mobile holiday revenue came from tablets), so it’s important to know how to target these spend-happy users.

Analysis By: Bryson Meunier, Search Engine Land

How To Master The Important Aspects Of Geo-Targeting

Geo-targeting isn’t always necessary for an ad campaign’s success, but it can often help you re-allocate efforts to the regions/cities that bring in the most profits for your product. Acquisio has some tips and tricks for maximizing the value of geo-targeting your campaigns.

Analysis By: Alex Schneider, Acquisio

SEOmoz Offers Tips To Boost Your Content’s Viral Chances

SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday segments have been en fuego lately, and last Friday’s workshop was no exception. Rand Fishkin explains how content goes viral, and offers recommendations to increase your content’s chances of doing so.

Analysis By: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Making Sense Of Twitter’s New Censorship Policy

Anytime the words “Internet” and “censorship” are mentioned in the same sentence, all hell breaks loose. Twitter’s recent censorship power, on a country-by-country basis, Is most recently in the crosshairs. Attempting to explain the move, Josh Catone of Mashable reasons that the move is actually good for activists, while David Angotti of Search Engine Journal argues that it’s a commonplace policy among tech companies.

Analysis By: David Angotti, Search Engine Journal

Analysis By: Josh Catone, Mashable

Louis C.K. And Emotional Intelligence

In a terse post, Dan Pink explains the behind-the-scenes reason why Louis C.K.’s much publicized self-released comedy special succeeded: a form of emotional honesty.

Analysis By: Dan Pink, DanPink.Com

The Best Of ‘Sh*t People Say’ Parodies

One of the most popular video series right now is the collection of “Sh*t People Say,” almost all of which have gone viral. Mashable has compiled the 15 best videos, starting with “Sh*t Girls Say.”

Analysis By: Amy-Mae Elliot, Mashable

Gaming Google For Super Bowl Traffic

“What time does the Super Bowl start?” is a commonly Googled question. As such, the Huffington Post optimized a page specifically for this question that is answerable with one word. Ironically, the Deadspin post that criticizes the move as cheap and shallow is optimized for the phrase as well. At worst, it’s a sign that there will always be a place for crappy content that serves no purpose beyond vanity.

Analysis By: Barry Petchesky, Deadspin

Compare Camera Sizes!

If you’re a casual or hardcore photographer, you are probably looking for a specific style and size of camera. Measurements often accompany camera listings online, but it’s much easier to choose when you can visualize the camera’s dimensions. Camerasize.com now gives you that option.

Analysis By: Camera Size

Happiness Is More Than Just A Warm Puppy

Studies have shown that people who spend most of their time immersed in technology tend to be less happy than those that are sporadic, or limited, computer users. Brian Lam attempts to put that into perspective, and offers some ways to stay happy while working in a tech-dominated industry.

Analysis By: Brian Lam, The Wirecutter

A Little Onion Humor At The Expense Of The Huffington Post

It’s hard not to laugh at The Onion’s satirical genius.

Analysis By: The Onion

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google Updates Algorithm With Above-The-Fold Experience In Mind

Google has termed their most recent algorithm update as “minor,” which translates to “major” when the butterfly effect sets in. The most basic change is a heavier focus on above-the-fold content on websites that lead to a frustrated user experience. This announcement is consistent with Google’s stated objective to penalize ad-dominant pages.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Google Better Understands Punctuation Now

Punctuation will now have an effect on Google’s search results, although the search engine admits the process is still in production to produce the most relevant pages. For example, the guitarist Slash ranks No. 1 for a (/) symbol search.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google Eases Download-Ability Of Webmaster Tools Data

Google has been on a download-improvement frenzy in Webmaster Tools over the past month. Most recently, Google now allows CSV downloads for search query data charts, making comprehension of data much easier. Google has also improved the user interface to allow for more data displayed per-page.

Source: Search Engine Land

About That ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Thingy…

The “Don’t Be Evil” slogan has been floating majestically above Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters since the company’s inception. However, like the banner in the Jurassic Park visitor center draping the roaring Tyrannosaurus Rex at the movie’s end, the slogan has effectively become a punch line.

Google recently announced, without reservations, they would be tracking user intentions and movement across all of their services in order to create a “simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” Gizmodo runs down the changes as compared to previous contradictory Google policies, and offers a fairly grim view of the entire situation.

Source: Gizmodo

Eye Movement-Controlled Computers, Video Games Are A Reality

A Swedish technology company has developed eye-tracking technology that allows computer users to control PC interactions simply through eye movement. Tobii Technology recently hosted a demonstration with Microsoft Windows 8 at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

With the exception of a few necessary mouse/touchpad clicks, the technology utilizes four LED infrared sensors to create patterns on the user’s cornea. From there, two digital cameras pinpoint the pupil/iris position in relation to the computer, and the screen reacts accordingly.

This technology is cool by itself, but the video game portion of the demonstration turned out to be the best part. Playing a game called EyeAsteroids, users destroyed asteroids simply by glaring at them for a short time.

Source: Scientific American

The Social Media Super Friends Assemble To Create A ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Tool

Controversy knows no stranger at Google, and their “Plus Your World” update has engendered an activist mindset for the web’s other prominent social networks. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other unknown social network engineers have bonded together to create the “Don’t Be Evil” tool.

Available as a Firefox, Safari, or Chrome extension (ironically), the tool aims to point out Google’s hypocrisy of promoting their products while claiming care for the user experience. It strips the Google+ from your search results, and promotes the “most relevant” results without interference from preferential treatment of Google products.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Speaking Of Google+ Integration Into Search Results…

Google now allows you to “Ask on Google+” straight from the search results page, just in case you trust your friends over the algorithm. It can be helpful if the question falls into that group of queries Google still can’t figure out, or if the results you’re getting are irrelevant. Still, seeing a link asking if you need to consult your friends for “how to search on Google,” or other obvious questions may grow to become annoying.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Patent Aims To Use Historical Data To Determine ‘Freshest’ Search Intent

If you search for “Super Bowl Champion,” the odds are pretty high you are looking for the most recent winner of the NFL’s championship game. But how does Google know to return the freshest result, and how do they know you aren’t searching for the winner of the 1994 Super Bowl (San Francisco 49ers)?

Google has filed a continuation patent as part of their Historical Data set of patents, which in part draws on general term search history as an indicator of search intent. For example, is a page that consistently sits in the sixth spot is being selected at a high frequency over time, it may be possible that page will rise in the SERPs. Some of the other things covered in this filing include a possible spam signal if a page rises too quickly in the rankings, and

Source: SEO By The Sea

Bing No Longer Deciding, Now More Focused On Doing

Bing is undergoing a more activity-based rebranding, emphasizing the search engine’s affinity towards “doing” rather than “deciding.” Look for more advertisements like the one with snowboarder Kevin Pearce to show up sprinkled around your favorite TV stations.

Source: Search Engine Watch

People Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love YouTube

Four billion; that’s not the number of stars in our universe, that’s the amount of videos YouTube serves to users ever day. Broken down, that equates to 60 hours of uploaded video each minute, and a century’s worth of videos uploaded every 10 days. The 60 hours/minute stat is a 30% increase spread over the past eight months.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Summify Gets ‘Twitter-fied’

Twitter traveled north of the border on their continued shopping spree, acquiring Vancouver startup Summify. Summify is a news aggregator with a twist of social, and Twitter is a major engine that drives real-time news in a social setting; it’s a match made in cyberspace heaven. Twitter plans to gradually streamline and integrate Summify’s main products into its interface, so be on the lookout for some new Twitter features in the next few months.

Source: Wired Epicenter

Twitter To Soon Offer Right-To-Left Languages

Once the spring equinox arrives, Twitter’s Translation Center will make the social network compatible for right-to-left reading languages. These languages include Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu, all dialects located in the Middle East and South Asia.

Source: Mashable

Apple Doesn’t Need Your Sympathy; They’re Profiting Just Fine

Apparently the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had little detrimental effect on the company’s stock in the fourth quarter. Blowing away expectations, Apple sold a record number of iPhones (37.04 million) and iPads (15.43 million) during the holiday season. The company also experienced a 73% jump in revenue ($46.33 billion), smashing the Wall Street estimate of $38.91 billion. Apple’s stock rose 8 percent to $452 per share following the release of this earnings report.

Source: Reuters

Notable Commentary

Heavy On The SEOmoz Sauce

SOPA/PIPA Are On Life Support, But Not Dead Yet

With the same jubilation we’d have if Nickelback made the same announcement, the Internet community threw itself an Ewok victory party last week when Congress announced an indefinite hiatus for SOPA/PIPA. However, anti-piracy legislation is still a major concern of both parties, and Miranda Miller offers some details as to how they may proceed with similar bills in the near future.

Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch

Rand Fishkin Answers Your Twitter Townhall SEO Questions

Rand Fishkin took some time recently to answer 43 questions on Twitter, ranging in topic from conversions to content to SEO to general interest industry. Some of the questions are fairly obvious (Will Google soon use “author trust” as a ranking factor?) but the other side of the spectrum yielded interesting responses from Rand (What single site on the web would you most want to see analytics for?; How many people click on related posts lists?).

Analysis By: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

SEOmoz Offers Strategy For Tackling Boring Content Necessary To Rank

Not all content required to rank in Google’s SERPs is going to get your heart racing with excitement, or is immediately sharable among readers. What do you do when your writing subject is particularly snore-worthy? Last Friday, Rand Fishkin explored this topic in detail, as well as ways to keep yourself awake during the writing process.

Analysis By: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Save Time Setting Up a YouTube/Vimeo Video Sitemap With This Handy Dandy SEOmoz Guide

SEO for video is essential for anyone looking to go viral with a YouTube video or video ad campaign. Thankfully, SEOmoz has easy-to-read instructions for setting up a video sitemap that will increase search engine crawlability, even if the video is hosted on YouTube or Vimeo.

Analysis By: Justin Hammack, SEOmoz

Using Eye-Tracking Heat Maps To Help Create Awesome Landing Pages

Eye-tracking heat maps are nothing new; a simple Google search can tell you that. However, applying those studies to real-life can sometimes be tricky. Unbounce has some actionable steps that lead to improved landing pages and their resulting conversions.

Analysis By: Angela Stringfellow, Unbounce

What Constitutes A ‘Good’ Idea?

Why do some of the greatest artists and thinkers produce some awful ideas/creations, and what really goes into discovering a good idea? That is the root question Jonah Lehrer seeks to answer in a recent Wired column.

Analysis By: Jonah Lehrer, Wired

Best Practices For SEO Watch-Dogging

Will Critchlow stopped by SEOmoz to offer some tips for effective SEO monitoring. Some techniques covered include traffic drops, robot exclusions, and status codes.

Analysis By: Will Critchlow, SEOmoz

Are Online Press Releases Costing More Than They Make?

Tim Grice argues that money is almost always wasted when a business opts to distribute an online press release as part of its “link building” strategy. Tim supports his position with SEO-driven logic, as well as some insight from fellow SEO professionals.

Analysis By: Tim Grice, SEOmoz

QR Codes Are Still The Rage; Here Are 10 Ways To Market With Them

QR codes are growing in popularity, alongside Internet-compatible mobile devices. As such, marketers still don’t know what to make of them as a sustainable resource. Ekaterina Walter has 10 outside-the-box ways to utilize this infant technology.

Analysis By: Ekaterina Walter, Mashable

The Real Motive And Origin Of Craigslist

The myths around the genesis of Craigslist, and its original intent, have run rampant for quite some time. Its founder, Craig Newmark goes on record to explain why he started it, and what he’s doing now. A few colleagues also chime in with outsider perspectives.

Analysis By: Craig Newmark, Quora

When To Ask Questions And When To Listen To Your SEO Consultant

There are a lot of snake oil peddlers shilling black hat SEO advice to businesses everywhere. Knowing what to ask your SEO provider, and when to do it, is essential for learning how to spot red flags and get the most out of a legitimate SEO company.

Analysis By: Kristi Hines, Search Engine Watch

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google AdWords Offers Mobile Targeting By Specific Device Version

The newest Android and Apple mobile devices are never new enough after a few months. Not everyone upgrades their smartphone or tablet upon a newer version’s release, leaving users of older Android and iPhone devices frustrated after landing on a page uniquely qualified for the updated iOS and Honeycomb systems.

Google AdWords has relieved this problem for users and advertisers by offering specified mobile targeting based on operating system and Wi-Fi capabilities. The ubiquitous growth of smartphone and tablet use makes this a smart move by Google.

Source: Search Engine Land

AdWords Impression Share Metrics Are On Their Way To The Ad Group-Level

Google AdWords Ad Group view has offered limited insight into the overall effectiveness and visibility of that specific collection of ads. However, Google has now expanded impression share data in the Ad Group tab, also featuring lost impression share, and exact match impression share.

Source: Search Engine Land

It’s Not A Good Legislative Sign When PIPA/SOPA Co-Sponsors Are Jumping Ship

Wednesday’s Internet blackout spread from sites large to small as people across the U.S. rallied to protest the SOPA/PIPA bills making their way through Congress. The blackout was a success, as a handful of both bill’s co-sponsors have now withdrawn support for the legislation, citing public and personal concerns over the depth and breadth of power it gave lawmakers.

Source: Mashable

Study Debunks Social Media ‘Echo Chamber’ Theory

The echo chamber theory, as applied to social networks, dictates that people have a pension for consuming and searching for information that only reinforces likeminded beliefs. However, a recent study of Facebook has discovered users interact with information shared by distant contacts on a majority basis. They are likely to share and discuss information with close friends, but distant Facebook connections tend to provide access to new and different ideas. Whether they agree or not with the information presented, people often take the bait.

Source: Data Facebook

Google Attempts To Make Amends With China

Google isn’t on good footing with a lot of governments, but China is definitely at the top of their 2012 resolution to rebuild burnt bridges overseas. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is taking a lighter tone as they attempt re-entry into China’s good favor. There’s an obvious financial benefit to this quasi-groveling, as China currently has 400 million Internet-capable citizens and 800 million mobile device users.

Source: Search Engine Land

GoogleBot Pumps Brakes During SOPA-Inspired Internet Blackout

Google’s web crawler, GoogleBot, was slowed to a near stop during Wednesday’s Internet blackout SOPA/PIPA protest. While some webmasters claimed their sites weren’t crawled at all, Google said they took this action so as to not punish websites participating in the event.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

A Watch As A Magic-8 Ball?

Can’t make a decision? A new Mr. Jones watch can help you out. The watch alternately displays “yes” and “no” as each second ticks, allowing you to let chance decide when you’re wavering on an answer.

Source: Washismo

Notable Commentary

Keeping SOPA On Ice

All The SOPA You Can Handle

Ian Lurie provides an even-handed critique of both pro-SOPA corporations and Internet Jack Sparrows. Khan Academy has an 11 minute video explaining the devastating precedent put forth in both SOPA and PIPA. Finally, Chris Heald fantastically breaks down each bill bit by bit so you actually understand what you’re railing against. Read away!

Analysis By: Chris Heald, Mashable

Analysis By: Ian Lurie, Conversation Marketing

Analysis By: Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

In Related News…Stalk U.S. Congress On A Mass Scale!

Want to know what all social media-using U.S. Congressmen and women are saying at all times? PolitickerUSA allows you to track Twitter movements from federal-level politicians, as well as parse out the feed by political topic, politician, or general public discussion trends.

Analysis By: Gary Price, Search Engine Land

Linking Out To Improve Google Rankings?

After noticing an interesting trend on his own site, Tad Chef at SEOptimise hypothesizes that ranking higher in Google can be achieved through linking out, as opposed to link building in. In some cases, linking out leads to inbound reciprocated links, but it’s definitely an interesting concept that Matt Cutts himself has acknowledged is something of a factor in the algorithm.

Analysis By: Tad Chef, SEOptimise

Google’s Think Quarterly Is Out!

Like a big bag of Skittles, Google’s Think Quarterly is packed with juicy bits of information of all flavors. One of the main takeaways: whether you’re serving up a website, responding to customers on Twitter, or marketing a new product, speed sells.

Analysis By: Think With Google

What Did You Learn About The Web In 2011?

A List Apart has compiled a large list of responses to the question, “What did you learn about the web in 2011?” The answers are interesting because they came from industry professionals, and range from app popularity, to always measuring performance, to social media’s Occupy Marketing Departments movement.

Analysis By: A List Apart Readers

Success Exists Beyond Ranking #1, Thanks To Rich Snippets

Every SEO loves flexing like Pumping Iron-era Arnold when one of their clients sits atop all other websites in Google’s SERPs. That isn’t the only measure of success for an SEO campaign, and rich snippets make it easier to boost conversion rates by catering to hidden user intent without striving for that #1 ranking.

Analysis By: Byrne Hobart, Search Engine Land

Is Search Plus Your World Too Much ‘Plus’ And Not Enough ‘Your World’?

Steven Levy explores the ramifications of Google’s “Search Plus Your World” update from business and personal ethics lenses. This integration of search and social has been in the cards for a long time, but Levy questions whether the results fall in line with Google’s focus on serving the most relevant information for users.

Benjamin Edelman also makes a solid argument why Google favoring its own brand over others in the social world follows a trend of only monopolistic tendencies for the search engine.

Analysis By: Steven Levy, Wired Epicenter

Compiled By Rocket Clicks

It’s Our World, Google’s Just Serving Search Results In It

Google has revamped their search results to continue their move towards a more personalized experience. Under a now-live format called “Search Plus Your World,” Google aims to immerse your search experience in “Personal Results,” which serve up a combination of personalized, private, public, and social results.

This means that searching for something you’ve interacted with on Google+ may serve up a private photo shared amongst your Circles, which understandably could foster some privacy fears (the results are still only private to the searcher) as well as concern over Google giving preferential treatment to their own services.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Intends To Keep Revenue From Ads Promoting Illegal Olympic Tickets

Google has once again found itself in hot water overseas for displaying ads promoting illegal activities. This time, according to the BBC, unofficial London 2012 Olympic ticket ads are showing on the search engine, and remained live for at least a week after Scotland Yard ordered their removal. The ads have since been blacklisted, but Google has stated intentions to keep the ad revenue generated, claiming they can not always monitor every company’s use of the AdWords platform.

Source: Search Engine Journal

The Latest Search Market Share Report Is In…

Short and sweet, Search Engine Journal has revealed the December 2011 search market share, and as expected, Yahoo posted the only gain for the month. While Google dropped .79% and November’s golden egg, Bing, lost 1.06% in market share, Yahoo gained a solid 1.81%, widening the tiny gap between themselves and Bing.

Source: Search Engine Journal

IFrames Are Now Readable And Valuable To Google

Link value is no longer zero when it comes through an iframe, as a test conducted by Michael Martinez at High Rankings Forums revealed that Google is now capable of crawling iframed pages and passing value through links from and to those pages.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Twitter And Google Aren’t Getting Along

Google’s intention to immerse Google+ into its search results are about as transparent as a the ending to an M. Night Shamalyan movie, and one major social network has a big problem with it. Recently, Twitter (through spokesman Matt Graves) expressed strong dissent towards social and search integration, reasoning that the real-time social network is the easiest place to find the most up-to-date and relevant news on a given topic.

Graves goes on to state that Google’s move to favor itself over other social networks will ultimately make it harder for users to find the latest news updates, and publishers/journalists to get credit for breaking a story. In response, Google basically blamed it on Twitter for not renewing their agreement with the search engine. This is probably the closes thing we’re ever going to get to a Real Housewives Of Mountain View episode.

Source: Mashable

Apple Products Can Now Access Microsoft adCenter

Despite their obvious competition for the hearts and minds of computer users everywhere, Microsoft is now allowing Apple Macs and iPads to use adCenter on their devices. The timetable for this rollout isn’t known at this time, but it’s definitely inevitable.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Funny Story: A Pro-SOPA Representative Is Violating The Bill’s Copyright Provisions

Given Congress’ elementary understanding of the inner and outer workings of search engines and the Internet as a whole, it should come as no surprise that a co-sponsor of the SOPA bill in the House of Representatives has violated copyright laws. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, also an author of the controversial bill, is currently using an unauthorized photograph on his campaign website. Smith’s office did not comment on the matter, and you can bet that he isn’t the only politician supporting SOPA while also violating it.

Source: Mashable

Iran Justifies State-Controlled Internet By Calling Google A ‘Spy’

In a move more predictable than another George Lucas-led re-release of the good Star Wars movies, Iran is restricting national Internet access. The authoritarian Ahmadinejad regime claims Google is utilized by their enemies to spy on Iran, and they are seeking to provide Iranians with a heavily censored, pro-dictatorship flow of online information.

Source: Search Engine Land

Notable Commentary

(Almost) Free Of 2012 Predictions

A 2012 Six Pack Of Mobile SEO Trends

I’m going to type something that will shock you: Mobile online marketing is a big deal, and it’s getting bigger. From “SoLoMo” tactics to the widening chasm between mobile and desktop search results, Bryson Meunier runs down some of the most likely paths of mobile SEO in 2012. He also throws in a friendly objection to Rand Fishkin’s opinion about search engines being “device agnostic,” backing it up with some research.

Analysis By: Bryson Meunier, Search Engine Land

Rand Fishkin Roasts Third Party Traffic Tracking Services

Despite the problems created by Google’s (not provided) initiative, Google Analytics remains the gold standard for accurate traffic measurements day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and so on. In a recent SEOmoz post, Rand Fishkin roasts Alexa, Doubleclick, and other third party traffic trackers, using their own data against them. He provides a good gauge of just how far out in left field most of these services actually are, and laments why anyone would use them.

Analysis By: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Using Social Network Interactions For PPC Ad Copy Inspiration

The viability of Facebook and Twitter as direct revenue sources for businesses is still up for debate, but indirectly, social media trends can be incredibly helpful for crafting PPC ads. Along with being tools for market research, Facebook and Twitter can often give you a great idea of the “buzz” level surrounding a given product or service.

Analysis By: Sujan Patel, Search Engine Journal

Some Great Examples Of Link Bait

SEOmoz justifiably promoted this YOUmoz post from Jon Cooper, exploring 10 extremely effective link bait campaigns and why they worked so well. The links involved come from a diverse array of industries, and are applicable to many different styles of content.

Analysis By: Jon Cooper, SEOmoz

INFOGRAPHIC: Twitter Brand Information From 2011

Mashable has published a cool infographic breaking down the top brands on Twitter for 2011, as well as the top 10 trending topics, hashtag trends, and In Memorium trends. The number one ranking in each of those categories is as follows: Twitter, Justin Bieber, #100FactsAboutMe, and Steve Jobs.

#MayGodHaveMercyOnUsAll

Analysis By: Todd Wasserman, Mashable

DuckDuckGo Would Like To Sell You Their Search Engine Services

DuckDuckGo has an easy-to-read and persuasive mini site, dontbubble.us that does an excellent job persuading visitors to at least give DuckDuckGo a try. Just for their creative efforts, use this small search engine at least a few times.

Analysis By: DuckDuckGo

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google Breaks Own Rules Promoting Chrome, Penalizes Itself, Some Hilarity Ensues

If you search for “browser” right now in Google, there will be one notable absence in the SERPs: Google Chrome. Google ran a sponsored post campaign that paid bloggers to write expectedly positive reviews of Google Chrome, got caught by SEO pros, and swiftly flogged itself with a drop in PageRank and a temporary disappearance of the Chrome site in Google’s SERPs. Talk about starting 2012 off on a positive, not hypocritical note.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Enhances AdWords Email Collection Efforts

Google is testing email collection straight from advertisements above the organic rankings. They have tested this formatting before on the side ads, and Google once again fed their “we test everything” line to the Internet marketing world. It’s also a part of Google’s increased testing on lead-generated AdWords formats, as the opt-in is a pay-per-lead process.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s Monthly Recap Highlights ‘Megasitelinks,’ Image Search, And More

Google’s most recent monthly search recap sheds some light on their most recent search developments. These include Megasitelinks, an internal project aimed to improve the algorithm used to pick sitelinks, image search improvements, which adds weight to pictures on authoritative websites, and byline dates that reflect more accurately when the article was published.

Source: Search Engine Land

Yahoo Hires PayPal President As New CEO

Scott Thompson, the current president of PayPal, has been hired as the new CEO of Yahoo. Thompson has a strong background in technology and product development, and for now it looks like Yahoo will not be attempting to sell itself. Thompson enters Yahoo faced with a multitude of challenges, including the general question of where to take the company as a business. Godspeed You! Chief Executive Officer.

Source: Search Engine Land

Return Of The Yahoo Rich Ads

Mentioning Yahoo Rich Ads elicits the same nostalgia Tupac felt when he penned the classic, “Old School.” OK that may be an exaggeration, but PPC Ian has pointed out the return of an ad format in Yahoo and Bing that accentuates your brand/trademark ad presence in SERPs. He offers some commentary on their resurrection as well.

Source: PPC Ian

The Technology Patent Wars Continue

Google has acquired 217 patents through IBM, involving a wide range of topics and technologies, including email management, online calendars, and the exchange of web applications through different devices. The most notable patent involves a “Semantic Social Network,” which would help Google+ find people sharing your interests or need for expertise without their profiles explicitly displaying that desired word.

Source: Mashable

Sortable.Com Offers Heavily Targeted Search Results For Products

Sortable is a start-up search engine with a twist that could very well turn it into a major player in the online shopping industry. Based on what users communicate to Sortable as important, the search engine serves up products that are completely tailored to what the potential buyer values. This helps users bypass the filtering process on Google, Bing, and other product search websites.

Source: Mashable

Similar Music, Movie Tastes Win Facebook Friends, But Books Are Another Story

In another predictable sign that society has been on a consistent swan dive towards Hades, a recent study from three Harvard researchers found that people are most likely to friend others on Facebook if they have similar interests in movies and music, but books, not so much. According to the study, Facebook users have a relatively low chance of influencing their peers, somewhat disproving the conventional wisdom of marketers that people are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than an advertisement.

Source: Mashable

Sweden Has Their Own Flying Spaghetti Monster Religion

Have you ever heard of the Church of Kopimism? Whatever your religious leanings may be, this Swedish-based faith undoubtedly shares some of your personal beliefs. The Church of Kopimism beliefs information sharing is “holy,” and its value increases exponentially when it is apportioned amongst others for free. Sweden recently recognized Kopimism as a formal religion, and it’s unknown whether Sean Parker is a high priest.

Source: Mashable

Notable Commentary

With New Year’s Resolutions

Rand Fishtrodamus Offers Eight SEO Predictions For 2012

After running through the accuracy of his SEO predictions for 2011, Rand Fishkin runs down an eight pack of hypotheses for the upcoming year. Holding himself accountable, Rand created a scoring system to grade his predictions for the previous year, and vowed to not make predictions for 2012 if the score fell below +1. He made it…at +1.

Analysis By: Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

2012 Local Search Predictions

The string of this year’s prediction posts is reaching its end, but localized search is an especially important topic for any SEO that wants to be relevant 366 days from January 1, 2012. On an interesting side note: we are currently entering the dragon…year, that is, according to the Chinese calendar.

Analysis By: Chris Silver Smith, Search Engine Land

Two Easy Ways To Claim Victory In AdWords

Different clients view ROI in very different ways, but they all share one common measurement of victory: profit. Tom Demers offers two “quick win” reports that can automatically boost the success of your PPC campaigns on Google AdWords.

Analysis By: Tom Demers, Word Stream

A Litany Of AdWords Experts Share Their Knowledge

We love listening to expert advice, right? Word Stream has collected 13 interviews with masters of the PPC arts and compiled them all into one organized post. Interestingly, the subjects were chosen based off their success, as measured by Word Stream’s AdWords Performance Grader.

Analysis By: Elisa Gabbert, Word Stream

How Google+ Is Out SEOing Facebook, Twitter, And LinkedIn

Google+ is kind of like that coach’s kid in Little League that was somehow always batting first, despite his wild wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man-like hand-eye coordination. Despite its infancy in age compared to Facebook and Twitter, its profiles are ranking much higher than the other social profiles when you search for someone’s name on Google. Cyrus Shepard discusses some of these implications on SEO strategies.

Analysis By: Cyrus Shepard, SEOmoz

How To Read Smarter And Increase Comprehension

Living in the Internet age, there is a dump truck of information flooding our brains each day, courtesy of the virtual written word. Lifehacker has a smart post that offers advice to improve reading comprehension and better organize how you view and interpret the written English language.

Analysis By: Alan Henry, Lifehacker

Double Conversions With A Great Tagline

You know your company has an awesome slogan when someone takes the time to parody it. A great slogan or tagline can almost double your sales on a good day, and there’s a process involved in coming up with a memorable one that sticks with people long after they’ve made their first purchase.

Analysis By: Roger Dooley, Neuromarketing

When Statistical Reliance Goes Wrong

We work in an industry that relies heavily on data to interpret the trends and actions we are viewing from users, as well as the return on investment of a project or service. However, there’s a tipping point where confidence in statistical measurements turns to vanity.

Analysis By: Andrew Anderson, Adobe Industry Insights

Pinterest And Retailers Should Split A BFF Necklace

Pinterest is a social network skyrocketing in popularity, allowing people to collect and share images, quotes, recipes, and anything else worth a recommendation under their name on the Internet. Compete Pulse suggests that its biggest marketing value is found in the realm of retail.

Analysis By: Jen Duguay, Compete Pulse

Tips For Creating A Perfectly Intriguing Message

In marketing and in life, the way you present something often determines how many people are listening to you. Kare Anderson offers some helpful tips for crafting a memorable message to get your point across.

Analysis By: Kare Anderson, Harvard Business Review

An Attempt To Find Lost Google Analytics Keyword Data In Google Webmaster Tools

In an attempt to shore up some (not provided) keyword data, Ian Lurie tried an experiment: comparing Google Analytics keyword data to Google Webmaster Tools Search Query reports. What he found was, in his phrasing, comparing the two is more like matching “cats to turnips” versus “apples to oranges.”

Analysis By: Ian Lurie, Conversation Marketing

Best Practices For Small Businesses And Customer Interactions Through Social Media

The whole concept of using social media as a public relations mouthpiece for corporations has become a major hit among Fortune 500 companies. However, small businesses may have some advantages because of their relative size and the generally better sentiments people have towards them. Melisas Zieger has a few pieces of advice for using social networks to your fullest advantage as a small business.

Analysis By: Melissa Zieger, Microsoft Advertising

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s A 56-Year-Old Technological Genius!

Hey kids! Have you ever wanted to build, leave, and then preside over the resurgence of a major technology company? Does the prospect of creating personal computers that are both elegant in design and usability, while requiring no anti-virus software? Do you dream of the day where you can display subtle arrogance while showing off the latest version of a popular product you had a hand in creating? Act now to get this freakishly life-like Steve Jobs action figure and begin building your business model now!

Disclaimer: Get this action figure while supplies last.

Analysis By: Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

The Stop Online Piracy Act Stalls By The Side Of Congressional Highway

With the Congressional holiday recess approaching, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was not taken up for a vote in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. This development means that the controversial bill most likely will drop from headlines for at least a month; until Congress returns from their winter break.

Source: Washington Post

Study Indicates Google, Bing Have Pillaged Content Farms

Content farms were the Death Star to Google/Bing’s Rebellion (I’m well aware there are flaws in this analogy), and a recent study has declared an explosive victory for the search engines. The Google Panda update largely focused on killing the content farm presence in their search results.

A New Scientist article explores a University of Glasgow computer scientist’s research into popular queries known to return articles from content farmers. He found that, in most cases, this generic content has been effectively eliminated from Google’s search results. Cue the medal ceremony for Matt Cutts, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and the rest of the Google Rebellion!

Source: New Scientist

STUDY: Long Tail Keyword Optimization Is Alive And Well

In News Of The Obvious, Yet Still Validation-Worthy, long-tail keyword SEO often yields consistently high rankings and conversions. A recent Conductor study determined users that land on a page from a long-tail query are two and a half times more likely to convert, versus head term searchers. The trick here, of course, is figuring out that ever evasive, supremely popular long tail keyword.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Study Finds People Often Use Search Engines To Discover Local Businesses

According to a recent PEW Internet study, 60% of U.S. adults get news and details about local businesses, not including bars and restaurants. Of that 60%, 47% use the Internet (36% search engines, 16% special websites, 1% social networks). The report also includes numbers on other forms of local business engagement, and it shows how valuable local citations and an enhanced online presence can be for a diverse range of businesses.

Source: Search Engine Watch

AT&T Hits 4G Overdrive With Wireless Spectrum Deal

AT&T has expanding its 4G capabilities by purchasing wireless spectrum to the tune of $1.9 billion. With the purchase, AT&T can now offer 4G LTE broadband to over 300 million U.S. bandwidth-addicted users. The transaction can be seen as a consolation victory after the wireless company’s flopped deal to buy T-Mobile, as AT&T is now closer in service quality to Verizon, the wireless providing industry leader.

Source: Mashable

Google Webmaster Tools Includes Author Stats

Google Webmaster Tools now allows you to view content impressions and clicks on articles linked to your Google profile through a tool called “Author Stats.” The feature is located under the “labs” section.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s ‘Author: Search’ Option Removed From Google News

In a move directly correlated to its rising reliance on the rel=author tag, Google has eliminated the ability to search for an author in the query box through the author: firstname lastname command in Google News. Google is pushing the rel=author markup, although it currently isn’t very prominent in the Google News section.

Source: Search Engine Land

Brands Love Google+, But The Follower Fruits Are Scarce

Where there’s a social network, there’s a branding opportunity. That conventional wisdom certainly has applied to Google+, which recently unveiled its business pages for brands. However, the sea of Google+ users don’t seem to be biting, according to some research from Simply Measured. They determined that, while 61 of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands have Google+ pages, only 13 have more than 5,000 followers. Google+ is obviously very young, but with an estimated 40 million users, it appears that the already over-saturated social media world may be tiring of constant interactions with companies.

Source: Mashable

Speaking Of Google+ Brand Pages…They Are Showing Up In SERPs

As if Google needed any other controversies about anti-trust competitive advantage, they have begun integrating Google+ brand pages into search results based on branded terms. Most of the early reports of this behavior involve huge companies (AT&T, T-Mobile, Macy’s, etc.), so it’s unclear if this is just a test or if it will be rolled out for all decent-sized brands.

Source: Mashable

U.S. Senators Want FTC To Look Deeper Into Google’s Search Practices

Google continues to draw the ire of the U.S. government, as Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s potential bias towards serving up its own products over their competitors. The FTC is currently investigating Google, but having bi-partisan political support doesn’t hurt. Interestingly enough, independent studies have found that Bing has more of a personal bias than Google.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s Facebook Query Problem

Remember last week when we determined that Bing users love searching for Google on the competing search engine? Apparently, Facebook is Google’s Bing (if that makes sense). Hitwise has released their top 10 most searched for queries of 2011, and Facebook occupies 40% of the list. Obviously, Google is the dominant predator in the search engine wild, so this revelation isn’t extremely detrimental to anything other than Google’s pride. It is somewhat funny, however.

Source: Search Engine Land

buySafe Serves Google With Lawsuit For Trusted Stores Program

Google has run into the law quite a bit throughout 2011, so it’s only fitting they close the year out with a new lawsuit for their Trusted Stores Program. buySafe is suing the search engine mothership for a multitude of things, including patent infringement, stealing business information, accosting buySafe customers to start using Google Trusted Stores, and offering higher search rankings if companies use Trusted Stores.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s Panda Update Goes Into Hibernation

Google has announced it plans to shelf any Panda updates until after New Year’s Day. Todd Bailey at Search Engine Journal predicts that keyword density ratios, keyword and supporting term relevancy, and broken links will fall victim as prey to Google’s Panda in 2012.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Google Gets Back Together With Mozilla … For Another Three Years

Google’s Christmas present to Mozilla came a little early, as they agreed to renew a contract that makes Google the default search engine displayed every time someone opens the Mozilla Firefox browser. The deal lasts for three years, which could theoretically save Mozilla, considering 98% of their revenue is from these kinds of partnerships.

Source: Search Engine Land

How Much Are Your Twitter Followers Worth?

The number is about $2.50 per month of following, according to PhoneDog, a recent company lawsuit aimed at an ex-employee that kept all of his Twitter followers curated during his time at the company. Noah Kravitz (no relation to Lenny) is being sued for $340,000 for a total of 17,000 Twitter followers, and Kravitz said the company told him he could keep each of them if he promised to keep tweeting about PhoneDog.

Source: Mashable

Google Estimates 400 Million Google+ Users By Start Of 2013

Google+ is claiming it will have around 400 million users by the end of 2012. That prediction itself isn’t so much a newsworthy topic, as we have no way of knowing the accuracy of their current estimations. The real story here is Google’s paywall strategy with keyword data; more Google+ users means less keyword data unless you use Google AdWords.

Source: Techi

Small Website? Don’t Worry About A Sitemap, Says Google

An XML Sitemap is to Google as car insurance is the American drivers: If you don’t have it, don’t expect anything good. However, on its Webmaster Tools forum, Google recently confirmed that smaller sites are very easy to index, and thus don’t require a sitemap. You still need car insurance if you drive a Mini Cooper, though.

Source: SE Roundtable

Hydrogen Fuel Cells Could Become Power Source For Future Apple Products

Thanks to two current Apple patent applications, your future Apple products could be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Apple is working to design fuel cells that are smartphone/tablet-friendly, and the solution may lie in creating a system that powers and receives power from a rechargeable battery in a computing device. If successful, this breakthrough would extend the life of a single charged battery for potentially multiple weeks.

Source: Mashable

Notable Commentary

Toasting To 2011

A Half Century-Worth Of The Best Citation Sources For Local Businesses

Local search is increasingly important, and pretty much blanketed across every “what to expect from SEO in 2012” list. Myles Anderson has compiled an Excel-friendly rundown of the best citation links for U.K. and U.S. local businesses, ranked from most relevant in the eyes of Google to least relevant.

Analysis By: Myles Anderson, Search Engine Land

Search Engines Are Getting Better With Single-Word Search Queries

One-word search queries have grown in popularity by 6.9% over the past two years, according to Hitwise. Coupled with the rising personalizing nature of search results, it’s evident that Google and Co. are getting increasingly better at serving up relevant websites regardless of the query’s specificity. Paul Burani tackles some of the potential causes of these vague tendencies, and why they just may continue as we head towards the future.

Analysis By: Paul Burani, earch Engine Watch

The Main Theme Of The 2011 Digital World Is…Secrecy

Throughout, 2011, there was a common headline trend surrounding Internet secrecy, those who seek to protect it, those who often violate it, and those who say one thing and do another. EFF has compiled a list of the most important stories concerning how the government and private companies have addressed this ever-present issue in the digital age.

Analysis By: Trevor Timm, EFF

The Best Citations For Localized SEO Strategy

As local search continues to tug at the SEO universe like a black hole, local citations become extraordinarily valuable for a website’s localized reputation. Search Engine Land briefly comments on the Google Places eye-tracking study before offering a good list of link targets worth pursuing for a citation.

Analysis By: Erin Everhart, Search Engine Land

Looking Into The 2012 Link Building Crystal Ball

Link building guru Eric Ward offers some of his predictions for the state of link building in 2012. Links have always been the gold standard of authority in the eyes of Google, and Ward touches on the rising significance of social links, the decreasing influence of directories, and the lowered importance of anchor text.

Analysis By: Eric Ward, Search Engine Land

A Six Pack of 2012 Tech World Predictions

As you’re probably now aware, there’s a major reflection/premonition theme going on with this week’s Industry Update. This one comes to us from Mashable, where Lance Ulanoff offers a six-pack of predictions for where the tech world may be heading in 2012.

Analysis By: Lance Ulanoff, Mashable

2011’s Ten Most Viewed YouTube Videos

Everyone loves viral videos, and most of the ones that make up the most viewed ones on YouTube this year should not be surprising. I’ll give you a hint what the top one is: Its title includes a day that ends in “Y.”

Analysis By: Brian Anthony Hernandez, Mashable

The 2011 Winners, Losers In The Tech World

Mashable has a list of the top winners and losers across all realms of the technology industry. Some of the losers are fairly depressing, mostly because the royal “we” is one of them, but it’s hard to argue against any of these rankings, which could provide some valuable insight into where the industry is headed to start 2012.

Analysis By: Lance Ulanoff, Mashable

Expect Big Things From Online Videos In 2012, But Not These 12 Things

Internet videos have exploded in popularity over the past few years, and as such, people are rushing to offer every possible prediction for where it will go next. However, Tech Crunch has a list of the 12 predictions you should toss in the trash when discussing the path of online videos through 2012.

Analysis By: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, Tech Crunch

The President Has A Crack Internet Marketing Team

Any Internet marketer worth his weight in gigabytes knows a good squeeze page when he/she sees one. Jeremy Schoemaker looks at some whitehouse.gov landing pages for President Barack Obama, and concludes that he knows how to hire a pretty darn good marketing team.

Analysis By: Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoe Money

Email Is Still Very Popular, And Marketing Through It Is Still Valuable

If SEO and PPC are the television and Internet news of the online marketing world, then e-mail marketing is the radio medium. Despite the former two dominating the most recent trends in Internet marketing, e-mail outreach is still valuable for a multitude of reasons. If anything, studies have shown that people interact with e-mail as much or more than they ever have, thanks to smartphones and tablets.

Analysis By: Pamela Parker, Marketing Land

INFOGRAPHIC: Brain Atrophy, Thanks To Social Media

By now you’ve probably heard about (and forgotten) the recent study that determined the average attention span has plummeted from 12 minutes to five seconds. Search Engine Journal has hosted an infographic that explains how, and why, your brain switches its wiring the more you engage in social networks.

Analysis By: Melissa Fach, Search Engine Journal

IBM Thinks Machines Will Read Our Minds Soon

That headline sounds fairly scary, right? Apparently it’s a bit sensationalized, according to IBM Senior Inventor Kevin Brown. The reality is that IBM has predicted mind-reading technology will become a huge technological development within the next five years, and it really isn’t as science fiction-style freaky as you may think.

Scientific American expands on these predictions in a podcast; specifically, the use of biometrics as a replacement for username and passwords. That would bring us one step closer to harvesting all of that turbinium on Mars.

Analysis By: Peter Pachal, Mashable

Don’t Google These Celebrities If You Want To Avoid A Computer Virus

No one has mastered the Trojan horse sneak attack better than cyber criminals (other than the Greeks themselves, of course). Wired has a list of the 10 celebrities most likely to infect your computer with a virus, should you choose to Google and then click on one of their featured websites. The list includes (in order): Heidi Klum, Cameron Diaz, Piers Morgan, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Mila Kunis, and more.

Analysis By: Charlie Burton, Wired

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Yahoo And Bing Are Dead Even In Search Market Share

For the first time ever, Bing (15%) and Yahoo (15.1%) are neck and neck in U.S. search market share, according to a recent comScore report. This change marks a net gain of 4.6% for Bing since last November, when Yahoo sat at 16.4% to Bing’s 11.8%.

Source: Search Engine Land

Tracking The Impact Of Online-To-Offline Sales

Remember that Sam Adams commercial where bar patrons wildly over-estimated the brewery’s share of the American beer market? A similar situation would happen if you asked someone how retail market share e-commerce occupies (it’s actually less than 5% of the $4 trillion spent each year).

However, a recent study has discovered how paid search online really influences offline sales. Every $1 in online advertising revenue leads to an increase in physical store revenue by $6, according to two years worth of research compiled by retail marketer, RevTrax. The study also found that an average paid click is worth roughly $15 of in-store revenue.

Much of this previously hard-to-track information came about because of smartphone saturation and other new online-to-offline tracking technologies.

Source: Search Engine Land

To Paraphrase Liam Neeson: Release The Facebook Timeline!

After months of teaser roll-outs akin to the campaigns for a Christopher Nolan Batman movie, Facebook has officially unleashed its Timeline on the waiting masses. The service is already available on Android devices as well, and Mashable has compiled a very useful list of Timeline resources on and off Facebook.

Source: Mashable

Dynamic Google Media Ads Now Available For Tablets

Google has released a collection of new rich media ads that cater to the wants and desires of smartphone and tablet users. Inherently, both demographics look for interactive ads on their touch screen devices, and these templates will serve as a way for advertisers to give the people what they want.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Chrome 15 Has More Users Than Internet Explorer 8

As the computer-savvy world waits patiently for the Internet Explorer browser to crawl back to the hollowed volcano in the Pacific Ocean from whence it came, there is some good news about its biggest competitor. The most up-to-date version of Google’s Chrome browser (Chrome 15, 24.55%) has more users worldwide than the newest version of Internet Explorer (IE 8, 22.16%). Funny enough, Internet Explorer still owns the top overall spot in market share, which reveals quite a lot about the technological comprehension/interest of its users.

Source: Mashable

Enjoying Ad-Free Facebook On Your Phone? No More!

Facebook has never integrated advertising into its smartphone app, which has been nice for users that are subjected to advertising on the level of patients in Ludovico technique aversion therapy. Unfortunately, there’s profit to be had, so Facebook will soon be fully integrating ads onto its smartphone app by the end of March 2012. The world’s leading social network has remained tight-lipped as to how the ads will fit into its platform, however.

Source: Venture Beat

The Google+ Button Is No More On Google’s SERPs

Citing a need for a cleaner looking search results page, Google has opted to remove its +1 button from immediate visibility under each result. Instead, it has been relegated to anytime you hover over the instant preview of a website. Google has hinted that this may not be the last thing that is removed from the results pages, as they are committed to streamlining its overall appearance.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Users Will Opt For Recognizable Domains Rather Than A Quality Experience

It’s been a long-held belief that search engine users focus on brand domains when deciding whether to click on a search result. A recent study that explored user behavioral tendencies reiterated this assumption, finding that a user will lean towards a trusted, authoritative domain, even if it presents a worse quality experience compared to another vendor.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Webmaster Tools Now Includes Stats On Authors

“Author Stats” are now available in Google Webmaster Tools. The stats allow users to view the frequency with which their tagged content is displayed in Google, how many impressions it gets, and the number of clicks each article receives.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Releases ‘Currents’

If you long for the day that magazines, newspapers, and popular web content are easy to read on your Android or Apple devices, rejoice! Google Currents is now available to make your casual or serious reading life much more accessible. The app features content from over 150 publishers, as well as a self-service platform that allows publishers to customize the design of their content on the tablet/smartphone platform.

Source: Google Mobile Blog

Like Siri? Google’s Got Some Competition For That

Did anyone honestly think Apple’s Siri would go a full year without any competition from Google, Facebook, and/or Microsoft? Google is working on releasing a similar virtual assistant named Majel. For all those Star Trek geeks out there, the name was influenced by the voice of the Federation Computer, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. The initial release will only feature Google search queries, but Google obviously has plans to expand its abilities with time.

Source: Android And Me

Holiday Deal Sites Are Back On Bing. It’s A Festivus Miracle!

Remember when Bing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’d Black Friday and Cyber Monday-related websites from its search results? Apparently they’ve been resurrected, and Bing claims the whole blacklisting process came about because of their algorithm’s heightened sensitivity to scam deal sites around the holidays.

Source: Search Engine Land

If You Had To Pick, Would You Want To Work At Facebook Or Google?

The Glassdoor.com annual best workplaces study was just released, and Facebook (#3) and Google (#5) made the top five. Of course, both workplaces have notorious reputations for attempting to keep their employees around long-term, from paying millions of dollars to do so and offering a very relaxed working environment. For the record, Apple came in at #10, and Groupon ranked at #40.

Source: Search Engine Land

An Original Apple Contract Is Worth WAY More Than Expected

An original Apple contract, signed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, had a predicted auction worth of between $100,000 – $150,000. Instead, it went for a whopping $1.35 million before adding the seller’s 12% commission. Hope it looks good on the buyer’s personal Apple store section of their mansion. It’s also reasonable to assume part of this inflated worth is the fact that Steve Jobs died recently.

Source: Tuaw

Notable Commentary

To Tweet, Like, And Plus

Video SEO Tips For The New YouTube

YouTube is the most visited video website on the Internet, hitting around 4 billion visits each month. Todd Bailey has offered up some SEO advice for tailoring any videos you post on YouTube to popular searches on the site.

Analysis By: Todd Bailey, Search Engine Journal

Let The Top 10 Lists Of 2011 Continue!

Digg’s demise, Facebook’s timeline, Google+, and of course, the kung-fu SEO panda. These are just four of the 10 most influential stories concerning the search and social marketing world. The top story should come as no surprise to anyone, but then again, neither should any of these impactful going-ons on the Interwebs.

Analysis By: Guillaume Bouchard, Search Engine Watch

Six Antibiotics For Toxic, Unwanted Links

Every website has inbound links they wish did not exist, especially if they are on or sitting at the fringe of Google’s index blacklist. SEOmoz’s Pete Meyers gives us a six-pack of solutions that can help remedy these issues.

Analysis By: Pete Meyers, SEOmoz

INFOGRAPHIC: Is Twitter Good For Your Business?

Social networks are becoming increasingly useful for promoting brand awareness and connecting with customers on a human level. However, sometimes they are not exactly worth a business’ time and effort. Search Engine Journal has a flow-chart infographic to help you determine how important Twitter should and could be to your business or clients.

Analysis By: Melissa Fach, Search Engine Journal

Twitter Re-Design Opens Door For Great Brand Opportunities

The new look of Twitter has a fairly obvious bias towards attempts at monetization, thus exposing opportunities for brands to increase their presence on the popular social network. Kaila Strong runs down how brands can utilize everything the re-designed Twitter has to offer.

Analysis By: Kaila Strong, Search Engine Watch

Just How Influential Is Google+?

Like Prince William, Kim Kardashian, and Tim Tebow, Google dominates headlines in their industry every time Matt Cutts feels a sneeze coming on. Google+ has certainly been no different, especially since its Google’s most successful attempt at social networking to date. Sarah Kessler recently sat down with Chris Brogan, the author of Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.

Analysis By: Sarah Kessler, Mashable

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Surprise! Google Dominates The Online Ad Space

Google is one step closer to Skynet-like domination, as a recent ZenithOptimedia report has determined the search engine monolith is in control of 44% of the world’s online ad revenue. It’s not that surprising, but the number itself is fairly shocking.

Another interesting nugget in this report is the motive behind Google’s foray into TV/cable alternatives. Online ad revenue is only responsible for 16% of total global ad spending. However, TV controls 40.2% of all advertising, hence Google’s focus on building out YouTube channels.

Source: Search Engine Land

New Google Markup Helps Spider Read Multilingual Content

Under the “rel=alternate” hrefland-x” link element tag, any multilingual website you run can now communicate its message more effectively to Google’s crawl spiders. This should help websites that use similar content across multiple language-based sites to guide Google to the intended target page when a relevant query comes in. Speculation around this new tag centers on the belief that Google often sees translated content as duplicate content.

Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog

German Search Engine Specialized In Peer-To-Peer Connections

YaCy is a German search engine hoping to replicate Google’s indexing power by way of peer-to-peer information sharing. When someone downloads YaCy (“ya see,” get it?), their actions across the web are considered a decentralized way of indexing. However, none of a user’s personal information is saved, and the sites they visit are simply added to the index on an anonymous basis.

Source: Search Engine Watch

YouTube Gets A Major Makeover Just In Time For The Box Social

We’ll mostly let the actual visuals speak for themselves, but YouTube has undergone a severe re-design. The world’s most popular video sharing website now features an emphasis on its growing channels lineup, customizable menu displays, a completely and new homepage.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Slingshot SEO Conducts Google/Bing Clickthrough Rate Comparison Study

A recent study from Slingshot SEO has unearthed some tangible comparison data on Bing and Google. Compiled in the form of a very aesthetically pleasing infographic, the company found that click-through rates on Google’s first page of results are typically double those of Bing (Google’s top spot: 18.2% CTR, Bing’s top spot: 9.7% CTR).

They also provide a head-to-head comparison of each search engine’s main ranking factors (Bing apparently isn’t too concerned about page loading time), user demographics (Google: 55% men, 45% women; Bing: 42% men, 58% women), and search engine queries on competitors (177 million Bing searches for “Google,” 4 million Google searches for “Bing”).

Source: Slingshot SEO

Facebook Subscribe Plugin Unveiled For Websites

Facebook’s subscribe website plugin has been officially released into the wild, and now works for both profiles and pages. It had previously been available on your Facebook homepage for certain profiles, but with the simple addition of an XFBML or iframe code, the subscribe feature will be displayed on an actual site.

Source: All Facebook

Google Now Graphs Your Complex Equations

Typing any complex or simple mathematical equation into Google’s search bar now yields a smooth graph of that function. It basically turns Google into an online graphing calculator, and anyone that geeks out on math or algorithmic technology is guaranteed to appreciate this. The rest of us not so proficient in signs and cosigns are kicking ourselves for paying $100 for that TI 93 in high school.

Source: Search Engine Land

Baidu Sinks Big Money Into Training SEOs, Developing Online Presence Of Chinese Small Businesses

China’s top search engine, Baidu, is investing around $470 million into beefing up the online marketing world in China. A portion of that money will go towards training up to 100,000 professionals in the ways of search marketing, while the rest will be used to help small businesses build up their presence online (similar to Google’s Get Your Business Online initiative).

Source: Search Engine Land

Facebook Gets Back In The Conversion Game

Like Bon Jovi rising from the depths of the hair band underworld, Facebook conversion tracking has made its way back to useful relevance. Facebook has re-rolled out the feature to select advertisers, and unlike other conversion tracking programs, Facebook actually controls and inserts the pixel on each desired page.

Source: Tech Crunch

Marin Software, BoostCTR Form Ad Optimization Partnership

Marin Software and BoostCTR are partnering together to integrate ad copy optimization into the Marin interface. BoostCTR specializes in ad copywriting at volumes not possible in a standard company or agency. By offering optimized ad copy on a large scale through Marin, both companies hope to help clients increase click-through rates, ad split testing, and of course, sales.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Goo.gl Is Being Used For Evil!

Google’s popular URL shortener, goo.gl, has become a primary catalyst in a recent string of quick hit malware attacks. Hidden in a goo.gl link, the malware comes dressed as a warning that a direct deposit attempt had failed, and clicking the link would send the user to a site that would help them reclaim that money.

The real link actually redirects users to a site that exploits weaknesses in Flash and Java. This recent wave of malware virus infections highlights the increasing use of link shortening programs in cyber criminal activities.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Which Converts Higher: “Happy Holidays” Or “Merry Christmas?”

There has been an ongoing debate over whether “Merry Christmas” or Happy Holidays is the most-used used holiday greeting in the United States. A simple conversion rate test proved one thing: People are twice as likely to click on an ad that includes “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays.”

Source: Conversion Voodoo

For $5, Amazon Wants You To Go In, Walk Out Of Stores With No Purchase

Are you willing to save $5 on Amazon to walk into a store, use their mobile app to compare product prices, and then walk out empty-handed? If so, the online retail giant would love for you to join in their experiment, stating this Saturday. Amazon’s goal in this initiative is to increase usage of their barcode scanning app.

Source: All Things D

Twitter Re-Designs Itself, Apparently Loves Alt Symbols

Twitter has put its user’s personal habits at the forefront of its most recent re-design, which incorporates the @ and # symbols into its options menu. Visuals speak louder than words in these situations, so here’s a screen shot of the impending site-wide re-design:

Source: TechCrunch

Video Ads Got More Popular This Year

According to a report by Free Wheel, video ad views jumped in growth by 128% in 2011. Coupled with the fact that the length of these ads and their increased immersion into online media, this is an encouraging development for advertisers looking to experiment with video advertisements.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Gmail And Google+ Forge A Partnership

Google+ now allows you to grow your Circles from Gmail contacts. If you receive an email from someone in one of your Circles, their most recent activity on the social network will also be displayed at the right-hand side of the email. They now offer a few other features as well, including automatic contact updates, and social sharing right from your Gmail inbox.

Source: Official Gmail Blog

Xbox 360 Gets Binged Up With Voice Remote Controlling

If you’re an Xbox lover, and you happen to use Kinect, Microsoft is about to make Bing a bigger part of your online gaming experience. Bing voice search through Kinect, as well as Bing search technology, has been added to Xbox Live with the intent of creating an easier web browsing experience for users. For example, a voice search for “Batman” would retrieve “Batman & Robin” from Netflix, “Batman: The Animated Series” from Hulu, and “Batman: Arkham City” from the Xbox game store.

Source: Search Engine Land

Notable Commentary

To Double Your Brain’s Conversion Rate

How Google Chrome Eclipsed Mozilla Firefox In Usage

Garry Przyklenk explains why people are leaving Internet Explorer and Firefox in favor of Google Chrome, which is now considered the fastest growing browser in the world. He lays out the primary user-centric reasons why people would make the switch, including a personal conversion story.

Analysis By: Garry Przyklenk, Serach Engine Watch

A Classic Unbounce Guide To A/B Testing

Unbounce has a strong history of providing comprehensive guides for all facets of online marketing. Their most recent compilation focuses on A/B and multivariate testing, of which they provide links to 45 awesome, useful posts on the topics.

Analysis By: Kristi Hines, Unbounce

INFOGRAPHIC: Daily Deals Are Great For Customers, Not So Much For Businesses

A new Search Engine Land infographic details the rapid rise of daily deal websites ($4.2 billion projected consumer spending by 2015), consumer trends (62% of purchases are made by infrequent customers), and some negative consequences felt by the businesses offering a deal (82% unsatisfied with repeat business after running a Groupon).

None of this data should be that surprising, as Groupon and its ilk have been the subject of controversy for some time now, but it’s interesting to see the numbers manifested in a visual form.

Analysis By: Search Engine Land Infographics

You Have 10 BizDev Link Building Questions, Eric Ward Has 10 Answers

Eric Ward’s authority as a link builder can be summed up by the mention of one name: Jeff Bezos. Ward was nice enough to stop by Search Engine Watch and answer a few hot topic questions about the past, current, and future trends in link building, and how to utilize those techniques to achieve maximum ROI.

Analysis By: Garrett French, Search Engine Watch

On The 21^st Day Of Christmas, Social Content Gave To Me…

Jordan Kasteler at Search Engine Land offers 21 varieties of social content that can help boost an SEO profile, and explains how to utilize each to their fullest capabilities. He also provides helpful, real-world examples that illustrate the concepts in action.

Analysis By: Jordan Kasteler, Search Engine Land

Improve Your Efficiency Working From Home

One of the unique things about the Internet marketing industry is that its workplace can be extremely mobile. As long as you have a solid Internet connection and a good computer, you can pretty much do whatever you have to do in a coffee shop or at home. Search Engine Journal has a two-part series on how to work from home more effectively, offering tips that help you to get things done in much less time and with fewer distractions.

Analysis By: Tim Biden, Search Engine Journal

Need Some Quick On-Site SEO Analysis? Turn To This Bookmarklet

Troy Meyer has developed a bookmarklet that rapidly provides on-page SEO analysis when you really need it. He also provides a step-by-step guide for setting it up and utilizing its best features.

Analysis By: Troy Meyer, SEOmoz

Facebook Reveals Top Shared Articles in 2011

The New York Times, CNN, and Yahoo dominate Facebook’s top 40 list of the most shared articles over the past year. The stories range from actual news (Japanese tsunami, giant Filipino crocodile) to fluff (zodiac signs, parents hiding a child’s gender). If you’ve followed our “best of 2011” shares over the past couple weeks, you’re probably in agreement that this is much more encouraging that reading into the top Google searches of the year.

Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch

Ask.com Still Exists, And It Released Its Top Questions From 2011

“Was Kim Kardashian’s wedding fake?”

“What happened to Charlie Sheen’s teeth?”

“What caused Hurricane Irene?”

“Is Michele Bachmann crazy?”

These are just four of the most popular and funny questions (by category) asked on Ask.com in the year 2011. They provide a list, as well as 2012 predictions, that offers some other fairly amusing inquiries from its users.

Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch

Remarketing Advice For The Holidays

Many a column has been written offering techniques for luring the massive school of customers swimming in the online holiday shopping sea. Brad Geddes gives his take on remarketing during the holidays, and how to break some trends that will increase the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

Analysis By: Brad Geddes, Search Engine Land

The Top 10 Worst Ad Decisions Of 2011

As 2011 nears its inevitable end, media publications and websites are counting down the year’s best (and worst) happenings in everything from news to sports to entertainment. At iMedia Connection, they’ve compiled a top 10 list of 2011’s biggest advertisement backfires, and how those companies have responded to the controversies.

Analysis By: Tricia Despres, iMedia Connection

When someone is building an ecommerce website at 13 years of age, you know they’re destined for success in the web. Such is the case with Benji Rabhan, CEO and founder of Morris Mediaworks, a web and marketing solutions company that includes the ConversionCore, ClickCore, and InfusionCore brands under its umbrella.

Recently, Benji was included on the Empact100 list of Top American Young Entrepreneurs, which recognizes the top U.S. business innovators under the age of 30. Benji’s wide-ranging experience in the business world has given him the ability to adapt his ROI and conversion rate improvement strategies to any client’s wants and needs. When you think conversion optimization, you should think Benji Rabhan.

Q: Could you give some insight into your professional background and the concept behind ConversionCore?

Benji Rabhan: I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset and have run many businesses. Some of them have been web and advertising related; website design, development, graphic design, branding, etc. Some have been physical brick and mortar businesses; restaurant and bar, car detailing products, etc. I discovered that my varied background in both the online and offline world gave me a unique perspective on profitability and ROI. Basically, I saw things other people didn’t see in their own businesses.

The concept behind ConversionCore is conversion rate optimization, which is continually improving web pages and marketing funnels so they become more profitable, often with the same traffic and resources. The company evolved from my ROI-focused web development firm, ClickCore, and my coaching group. So, we’ve moved into conversion rate consulting for existing websites based on our success with building high-converting websites from scratch and advising people on their projects successfully for years.

Q: What were your original expectations for ConversionCore, and what are your expectations for the future?

Benji Rabhan: My original expectations for ConversionCore were minimal. Conversion rate and funnel consulting was just a service we offered as part of our graphic design and web building process. When I split it off as a separate entity, I knew it would be useful and valuable. But I quickly discovered that we have a unique process and higher success rate than our competitors. So what was originally going to be a well-defined side service has very quickly become a service in high demand by a wide variety of clients.

We continue to grow, expand and revise our expectations to supply bigger and better results, even faster. The future is looking very promising for our clients. We’re having a lot of fun!

Q: To provide a service that streamlines ROI, you have to feel confident that it will work with multiple businesses and business models. How have you managed to create a universalized program that is effective regardless of the business in question?

Benji Rabhan: We have a unique discovery process, and we’re constantly refining it. Every customer is different, but there are commonalities and strategies that overlap. So as time goes on, we’ve been able to find those similarities faster and implement successful changes in a more streamlined way. We also take into account what stage a client’s business is at from many angles, so we are able to recommend the conversion strategies that pay off the fastest as well as the ones that can help create sustainable and exponential growth.

Q: What have you learned about yourself as a leader since the beginning of your tenure at ConversionCore?

Benji Rabhan: I’ve learned that I prefer to work with really smart people. So now we try to only hire team members that in the past I might have thought were too expensive. I now know that a smart, successful team member doesn’t cost me money, they make me money. It’s important to surround myself with people who are hyper-intelligent and have a willingness to learn new things quickly. So, I may hire someone even without all the knowledge they need for the job just because they are a great fit for my team. The hiring process has become so much easier now that I know what kind of people I want to work with.

Q: What are some of the most common issues you see with businesses when determining areas in need of improvement?

Benji Rabhan: The biggest issue I see is that people have trouble defining their sales and marketing funnel. They don’t know what the real goal is for their website. So, that’s the first thing they need to figure out. Then they have to figure out what the customer’s goal is when they come to the site. Finally, they have to merge those two goals together so the customer finds what they need as fast as possible; so they don’t need to go visit another competing site to find it. Businesses just have a really hard time marrying their goals with the customer’s goals and depicting that on a website.

Web designers and developers mislead businesses all the time. They sell a package of pretty stuff – buttons, graphics, rotating boxes. But pretty doesn’t work by itself. Pretty can be a piece of the puzzle, but there’s a lot more to conversion than how the site looks. Most businesses wind up with a site that’s either too pretty or too ugly, when the sweet spot is in the middle somewhere. They focus on the design more than helping the visitor find exactly what they need as quickly as possible. That’s a huge mistake. It’s important to hire a designer or developer who truly understands marketing and ROI. So you not only get a nice-looking site, but one that converts well and makes you money.

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

AdWords Bidding Estimator Now Available For Top-Of-Page Ads

AdWords now offers bid estimations for the top ad positions on page one of Google’s search results. It’s available in the automated rules section and AdWords Editor 9.7.1. Additionally, the update allows advertisers to raise bids through Advanced bid changes (“Raise keyword maximum PCP bids to their top-of-page bid estimates”), as well as parse out keywords by top-of-page CPC estimates.

Source: Search Engine Land

AdCenter Multi-Metric Trend Graphs Makes Viewing Performance History Easier

Bing adCenter has made accessing and understanding historical campaign achievements easier with Multi-Metric Trend Graphs. The feature is displayed on the Home and Campaign pages of the adCenter interface, and provides much better insight into what has worked in the past, what has failed, and ways to improve your performance.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Efficient Frontier Becomes The Newest Member Of The Adobe Family

Adobe recently acquired Efficient Frontier, a leading search, social, and display marketing company that specializes in Facebook ad creation and campaign management. Adobe has increasingly turned its attention away from product development and more towards actual marketing initiatives, and this move surely makes them a company on the rise in this highly competitive space.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Twitter Finally Launches Self-Serve Ads

Twitter’s release of self-serving ads have been tweets on the wall for a while, and the roll out is now officially official; at least for a select group of advertisers. Those companies can buy ads directly from the social network without having to talk to a sales person. All it requires is a credit card and Web browser, and Twitter has indicated the service will be available on a wider basis in due time.

Source: All Things D

Google Autocomplete = Popular, Google Instant = Not

According to a new Rosette eye-tracking study, searchers typically ignore Google Instant previews when navigating its SERPs, and rely heavily on the search bar’s Autocomplete feature. The study concluded that paid and organic searches are rarely affected by Instant, while Autocomplete is so widely used that it should be utilized as a way to build a keyword targeting strategy for SEO and PPC campaigns.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Scraped Content, Parked Domains Included In Recent Algorithm Updates

Google’s Inside Search blog is now posting a monthly update of algorithm changes, and on Tursday revealed their most recent collection of changes. The most notable modifications include an algorithm crack down detector on parked domains, improved signals to make spotting “original” content scraped by other sites, and a reduction in a single website hoarding first-page real estate.

Another interesting change centers on Google choosing to focus on a rare word in a query that it previously would have ignored. For example, the “rare” part of “rare” porcelain dolls would’ve been omitted, and the query would have returned results for “porcelain dolls.”

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Redesigns Its Black Bar Placement

Google has announced its top-of-browser black bar will soon be eliminated and replaced with a dropdown sidebar available by hovering over the Google logo in the upper left corner of the screen.

Source: The Official Google Blog

No Bing Soup For Holiday Deal Sites!

How much does Bing despise holiday deal websites? Apparently, the group that started the Cyber Monday trend, the National Retail Federation, and owns CyberMonday.com, has been blacklisted in Bing’s rankings because of “thin” content. Bing claims that their complete omission of Black Friday and Cyber Monday-centric sites is consistent with their policies towards low content, high ad count sites in all industries.

Source: Search Engine Land

Top Vs. Other PPC Ads Increase CPC, Decrease CTR

Google recently rolled out PPC ads located at the bottom of its search results, claiming high click-through rates as a motive. Search Engine Watch looked into these claims using Top Vs. Other data, emphasizing its too early to draw too many definitive conclusions. However, they found that conversions on “Other” ads slightly increased, but the click-through rates for these ads suffered dramatic decline (24%). As such, the cost-per-conversion for “Other” ads stayed unchanged while the “Top” ads experienced an 11% increase.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Human Search Evaluation May Soon Influence Google Results

Bill Slawski explores a recent Google patent that aims to allow the search engine to use human search and navigation experiments to tweak the value and influence of current ranking signals in the algorithm. The use of this process is ambiguous in the actual patent language, but Slawski speculates that it’s entirely possible human evaluations will be used to tweak ranking signals and factors based on industries or specific groups of related keywords.

Source: SEO By The Sea

Sales Records Abound On Cyber Monday 2011

Marketers have read the Cyber Monday tea leaves for months, predicting record sales and massive profits for Internet-based businesses, and boy did they fit the role of Nostradamus well. Cyber Monday sales in the U.S. were up 33% from 2010, according to IBM.

Individual shoppers averaged spending totals of $198.26, and 6.6% of online purchases took place on a mobile device (three times the 2010 mobile purchase volume). Purchases on Monday were also, in total, 29.3% higher than those on Black Friday. Ladies and gentlemen, start planning for 2012!

Source: Mashable

(Not Provided) Keywords Impact Is Higher Than Anticipated

While Google claimed the amount of searches affected by its SSL update would be around 7%, the actual number is much closer to 9%, according to a Conductor study of five high-volume traffic sites. The sample size is fairly small, meaning there is a decent margin of error, and the actual number has been fluctuating between 6.5% and 11% as recent as November 11.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google+ Includes Trending Topics, Additional Search Options

Google+ just got a lot more Facebook-y and Twitter-y, as its search box now features suggested matches of Pages or People, depending on your query, and allows you to filter even more of the results to find what you’re looking for. Trending topics are now prominently displayed on the right side of the search page.

Source: Search Engine Land

With WordAds, WordPress Offers A Counter To AdSense

WordAds, a new WordPress blogger-exclusive ad program, was recently released as an alternative to Google’s AdSense. WordPress was ambiguous about the ad revenue split between the blog host and the bloggers themselves, and to apply, bloggers must have a visible website with a  custom domain name. WordPress reserves the right to reject or approve any blog that uses its program.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Dropped Irish Hotel Lawsuit Against Google Raises Interesting Questions

An Irish hotel has dropped a lawsuit against Google based on its concern over the autocomplete feature insinuating that the Ballymascanlon Hotel was financially suffering. Although there’s no indication as to the true motive behind dropping the case, this caused many customers to call and voice their concerns to the hotel. The most interesting question raised here is: Can Google, or any other search engine, be found guilty of libel for an erroneous instant search suggestion?

Source: Search Engine Watch

The Top Yahoo U.S. Searches Of 2011

Yahoo! has released its annual 30 category list of the top searches on the search engine in 2011. This is the first release since Yahoo began using Bing-powered results, and the list is so comprehensive that it’s worth just clicking through to read it rather than see the highlights here.

Source: Search Engine Land

Apparently People LOVE YouTube Videos

YouTube hit 20 billion video views in October, which gives the popular site just under 50% of the total U.S. online video market share for the month. Facebook came in a distant second (60 million unique viewers) to Google/YouTube (161 million unique viewers).

Source: Search Engine Land

Notable Commentary

Void of Stuffing

Replacements For Yahoo Site Explorer

Taps were played on Monday in honor of the death of Yahoo Site Explorer, a valuable resource for SEO and online marketing research. Some of that information is available as a part of Bing Webmaster Tools, but it restricts access to crucial data necessary for competitive analysis. Frank Watson offers some relief by discussing some options for replacing the popular tool; unfortunately, most are not free.

Analysis By: Frank Watson, Search Engine Watch

Important Best Practices For Increasing Google News-Driven Traffic

Search Engine Watch conducted a case study to increase Google News traffic in an effort to improve its standing with Google as an industry authority. The study was a success, as they increased traffic by 300%, and came out the other side with some useful best practices applicable to sites looking to boost their credibility within Google News.

Analysis By: Jonathan Allen, Search Engine Watch

How To Overcome The Inevitable Abandoned Shopping Cart

Despite a quality, holiday-oriented website or landing page, statistics show that one in five customers will abandon a shopping cart because the page loads slowly. Averaged over a year, those missed opportunities result in $3 billion in lost sales. Unbounce has a great case study that explains how shopping carts will be left out to dry if any page in the conversion process is slow to load, and how to fix it in time to save many of those would-be sales.

Analysis By: Joshua Bixby, Unbounce

Best SES Chicago Search, Social Insights

While PubCon was the hit of the online marketing world over the past month, the topics and trends discussed at SES Chicago are equally worth noting. Search Engine Watch has two articles to read: One detailing actionable strategies, and another with the most notable takeaways from the panel and expert presentations.

Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch

What Is IIS And Why Should You, As An SEO, Care About It?

In a fairly long, technical, and highly valuable post, Dave Sottimano breaks down the world’s second most popular web server (IIS), and how to view it as a tool to improve you and/or your client’s website SEO.

Analysis By: Dave Sottimano, SEOmoz

INFOGRAPHIC: The Steps Of Growing Your Authority

All search engines place a heavy emphasis on website authority judged by multiple different aspects. User’s are a main focus of helping to build that authoritative presence, and Search Engine Journal has a cool infographic that visually describes those steps towards gaining respect in the eyes of Google.

Analysis By: Melissa Fach, Search Engine Journal

INFOGRAPHIC: The Best Features Of The Revamped YouTube Analytics

YouTube recently underwent an analytics makeover, switching from Insight to the shiny new YouTube Analytics. This infographic explains the top five most powerful tools now available through this new platform.

Analysis By: David Angotti, Search Engine Journal

SEOmoz Tool Advice From The Horse’s Mouth

SEOmoz has a stellar reputation for developing useful tools to make your SEO endeavors easier. Rand Fishkin was nice enough to stop by Search Engine Journal to discuss four ways to improve the way you use their Pro tools.

Analysis By: Melissa Fach, Search Engine Journal

Strategic SEO And Linking On Pintrest

A golden rule of the Internet is that any social-based website that encourages sharing is worth exploring as a linking opportunity. Such is the case with Pintrest, and Scott Cowley explores how linking occurs on Pintrest and how to leverage that as a business.

Analysis By: Scott Cowley, Search Engine Journal

Social, Local, Mobile Strategies Are Key To Retail Sales

If you excel at social networking, and mobile and local SEO strategy, the odds are fairly high that your retail business is going to thrive. Paul Bruemmer runs down the best ways to efficiently turn efforts on all three crucial platforms into short and long term retail success.

Analysis By: Paul Bruemmer, Search Engine Land

What Makes A Viral Video?

Scientific American takes a fascinating look into common, and not-so-common, elements that are necessary for turning an idea for a video into an Internet phenomenon. They focus particularly on how viral ads become popular and why people don’t get turned off by the impending sales pitch.

Analysis By: Natalie Wolchover, Scientific American

Ever Wondered What Went On In Leonardo Da Vinci’s Head?

A soon-to-be-published book will give you some insight into Da Vinci’s every day “to-do” list, which he actually compiled and documented regularly as he traveled. Much of what’s on the list is a drunken collection of random interests, and NPR delves a little deeper into why this sporadic way of thinking can be a good thing.

Analysis By: Robert Krulwich, NPR