This Week’s Industry Update News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google ‘Highlights’ By A Bing Name: ‘Insights’

While Google’s Search Quality Highlights were created as a thinly-veiled counterpoint to anti-privacy concerns, Bing has launched a similar blog series (Search Quality Insights) in an attempt to become more visible to search engine users and optimizers. Perhaps the funniest thing about this announcement comes at the end, where Bing essentially admits to the program nepotism that has caused Google so much trouble over the past year.

Source: Search Engine Land

Approved Third Parties Can Now Officially Access Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools recently added a User Administration feature that allows third parties to access your data through their own username and password. Similar to Google Analytics, there are three levels of access (Owner, Full, Restricted) limiting what and how a third party can interact with the account.

Source: Search Engine Land

Pinterest Gets Its First Official Scam-troversy

It was only a matter of time before Internet scammers exploited Pinterest’s rapidly increasing user base. The scam comes in the form of a “gift card for survey completion” offer, where scammers offer Pinterest users a gift card or swag for a re-pin and “survey” participation. The survey is designed to phish out personal information, and is really just an evolved version of phishing scams seen on other social networks.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Bing Tests Re-Designed Local, Organic Search Results

Bing is rolling out a few test layouts new to their local search listings and organic search results. This isn’t the first test alteration to Bing’s SERPs, but some changed features include “Suggested Searches” below the search box, a right sidebar, smaller navigation elements, prominent user controls, and a local listing box in the middle of the SERPs.

Organic changes:

Local changes:

Source: Search Engine Watch

+1 A Page, Get A Thank You Note…In The SERPs

Google is currently testing a blended search feature that allows you to “thank” a user that +1’s your page, website, or other medium. This is accessible through the note shown below, and is posted privately to the user’s Google+ page. If this change remains permanent, it will be interesting to see how this affects engagement and customer/reader retention.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Street View Has Problems With Patents, Urination Pictures

Google and Apple are the subject of a legal complaint from PanoMap Technologies, who claims they have the rights to a patent featured in Google Maps Street View on iPad and iPhone devices. Additionally, Google is facing a lawsuit over a French man caught by Google’s car cameras “relieving himself” in his driveway. The man is claiming the photo has ruined his neighborhood image.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Figure Out Who’s Tracking You Online On Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla has released its Collusion plugin, which allows you to visualize who is tracking your movements online. The program works through monitoring the third party cookies that follow you as you navigate around the web. Simply visit the link below to try it out on the Firefox browser.

Source: Mozilla Collusion

U.S. Government Can Take Whatever .Com Site It Wants, Thank You Very Little

Despite the Canadian-registration for Bodog.com, the U.S. government took down the sports betting website, much to the behest of a few Internet infrastructure companies. However, the U.S. authorities insist they have the right to go after any website if its administrating company resides on U.S. soil. The government mainly targets sites selling counterfeit goods, streaming sports illegally, and illegal movies and music file sharing.

Source: Wired

Twitter’s Blowing Up! All The Dead Bodies Showing Up…

While Facebook’s growth plateaus, Twitter is exploding more than ever. While Facebook’s global audience is currently over 1 billion, Twitter is fast approaching that mark with over 383 million current users with growth of 20% in the past nine months.

Source: Mashable

Yahoo Loses Staffer To Google

Prahbhakar Raghavan, Yahoo’s Head of Labs, is leaving Yahoo for a position at Google. Raghavan’s occupational decision most likely has to do with Yahoo’s major restructuring, as it is on the verge of making large cuts to its labs unit and laying off thousands of employees. Due to this restructuring, many leading directors, including founder Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock, are also leaving.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Notable Commentary

Without A QR Code

Linking For A Business First, SEO Second

Eric Ward tells a frustrating tale about a company spending tons of energy acquiring links in order to break onto Google’s front page for their desired term. They hit their rank ceiling on page two, so the company decided to find link-driven business elsewhere with mutual marketing partnerships with local businesses. The end result is fairly astonishing, and is a great example of linking “for people” and not allowing Google’s enticing front page to hold your strategies hostage.

Analysis By: Eric Ward, Search Engine Watch

Discover Keywords That Convert And Put Them To Use

Analytics, patterns, and extra love: These are the three pillars on which to build a marketing strategy geared towards your highest converting keywords. The strategy may sound simple, but acting on it is always the hard part.

Analysis By: Elisa Gabbert, Search Engine Journal

Advice For Non-Profits Looking To Utilize Pinterest For Their Cause

Matt Petronzio has an interesting collection of 10 Pinterest strategies common among non-profits that are using the fledgling social network successfully. He also talks to some of these non-profits to get a first-hand understanding of what has, and hasn’t worked for them.

Analysis By: Matt Petronzio, Mashable

Enterprise SEO Is Rarely Understood Among Big Companies

Despite brand recognition carrying a solid amount of weight in the eyes of Google’s algorithm, many companies have leaking holes rampant throughout their SEO ships. Marshall Simmonds explains why many companies don’t actively compete in non-branded spaces, and why they often fail to keep up with the constantly shifting world of SEO.

Analysis By: Marshall Simmonds, Search Engine Land

As Facebook Changes, So Should Your Social Media Strategy

The Facebook Timeline for business pages are sweeping across the social network, coaxing businesses to update their Facebook strategies. Andrea Vahl offers seven things about the new Facebook Timeline that will influence user interactions with businesses.

Analysis By: Andrea Vahl, Social Media Examiner

Ryan Healy Criticizes Ad Copy, Company Responds In A Smart Way

In a recent blog post, Ryan Healy critiqued a piece of ad copy for a young pants company. He was very direct in his advice for improvement, going so far as to re-write the ad. The company, Bonobos, responded in a very respectful way, welcoming the criticism and thanking him for offering useful advice. It was a great example of how to respond when someone you respect offers constructive criticism.

Analysis By: Ryan Healy, RyanHealy.com

The Best Laid Plans Of QR Codes Go Awry

WTF QR Codes is a collection of QR Codes in places that should elicit the reaction bore in the website’s name. Some of the best QR Code fails happen on a car, stalk of broccoli, cows (seriously), and more.

Analysis By: WTF QR Codes

SEO Will Live Forever

Ray Cornstock believes SEO is the most important aspect of Internet marketing. As SEO continues to make money, bridge gaps, communicate with customers and prospects, and benefit users, its value stays indispensible.

Analysis By: Ray ‘Catfish’ Cornstock

Don’t Blame The Site Links!

Julie Joyce believes we need to stop blaming rankings on bad site links. Many people overlook problems with redirects, robots.txt files, duplicate content, and Google Webmaster Tools.