This Week’s Industry News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google Offers ‘Search As You Type’ To AdWords Users For Free

Google’s “Search As You Type” feature has been a popular inclusion in its Commerce Search program for some time, and it’s now being offered as a stand-alone product for any AdWords advertiser interested in testing the in-site search function. Mostly applicable to e-commerce and retail websites, Google claims “Search As You Type” helps boost conversion rates and subsequent sales.

Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog

Google Now Notifies Webmasters Of Crawl Errors

If your site has received a Google Crawl Error notification, you aren’t alone. Google has started sending out alerts for this common issue, parsing them out by site-wide problems and URL error anomalies for lesser problems. It’s just another reason why you should enable email forwarding from Webmaster Tools.

Source: Search Engine Land

Microsoft Cuts Workforce, Remains Ambiguous About Specific Details

Microsoft has confirmed a recent “round of layoffs,” but did not elaborate further on the move. One of the most notable casualties was Mel Carson, a well-known search marketer who played a crucial role in launching adCenter in the U.K. and worked for Microsoft Advertising.

Source: Search Engine Land

Matt Cutts: Google Will Probably Rain On Your Infographic Embedded Link Parade

Everyone loves infographics: They’re pretty, rarely contain boring information, and cater to the natural human instinct to process things visually. However, like anything that goes viral on Facebook, many are often misleading. Nothing on the Internet is worse than a viral spread of wrong information.

That’s the logic Matt Cutts used to justify the high probability that Google will eventually start discounting the value of infographic links. In an interview with Eric Enge, Cutts basically said that infographics are very creative, but rewarding the misappropriation of facts with better rankings is probably not a good idea.

Source: Search Engine Land

Autocomplete, Additional Filters Now Present In Twitter Search

Twitter has upgraded their search experience, adding an autocomplete suggestions feature and a new search results box for “People you follow.” The latter eliminates the need to search for a person you follow and then scrolling through their timeline if you’re interested in a specific tweet.

Other improvements include better spelling correction, related suggestions, and a user’s real name will show up in search results when you search for them.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Launches Google+ Friend Recommendations

Few sales pitches are as powerful as a friend’s recommendation for a restaurant, concert venue, bank, or even divorce lawyer. Given their “Eye of Sauron” view of the Internet, Google has to know this. That’s part of the reason why the search monolith rolled out a new feature that offers Google+ users (by default, everyone with a Google account) the option to recommend web pages on the social platform.

The “recommendation” comes by way of clicking a +1 widget on a site, so essentially it’s no different than clicking “Like” or “Tweet,” except the social signal is much more coveted because, well, it’s Google.

Source: The Google+ Developers Blog

Eric Schmidt: ‘This Chinese Firewall Will Not Stand, Man’

Eric Schmidt may not be Google’s CEO anymore, but he’s certainly not afraid to express a brazen opinion, should it cross his technologically-focused brain. Most recently, Schmidt proclaimed that, like another Great Wall artificially separating two cultures, China’s Great Firewall would eventually crumble.

Schmidt predicted that the country’s Internet censorship is doomed to fail, and when it does, the country will experience a social and political liberation that could send shockwaves through the current regime. Outside of the obvious limitations it puts on citizen communication, government censorship, Schmidt argues, tempers China’s ability to modernize and expand its economy.

Source: The Cable

Google Used To Arrest Fugitive

Google aided Chicago Police in verifying the identity of an arresting a fugitive who had been on the run for two years. After a routine traffic stop, Ronnell Jones gave police his real name and birth date. The police searched the information on Google and found a March 2012 America’s Most Wanted episode that included Jones, who was wanted in Yonkers, NY for his role in a robbery, two murders and multiple assaults. After verifying his fingerprints with Yonkers police the arrest was made.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Is Being Sued Over A Privacy Issue? No Way!

To the pint-sized tune of $22.5 million, Google is in negotiations with the FTC to settle a lawsuit filed against the search mothership after they blew by a cookie setting in Safari and decided to collect people’s data anyways. This would be the largest fine ever handed out to a single company by the Federal Trade Commission. Given the existence of inflation and Google’s persistent indifference towards privacy settings on any network other than their own, me thinks this record was made to be broken.

Source: Guardian

Notable Commentary

That Really Ties The Room Together

Tracking Sales Created By PPC Efforts

What are the top goals of your PPC campaigns? If you said “make more money,” or “sell more stuff,” you’re about to get gonged off stage. Brad Geddes explains why these are not valid metrics for success, and how you can craft a script to accurately measure your campaign’s main goals.

Analysis By: Brad Geddes, Certified Knowledge

Spend Less, Make More (Seriously)

This concept is a holy grail of success in PPC advertising, and it’s actually closer to reality than fantasy. Jasmine Aye uses a case study on geo-targeting and local campaigns to argue that it’s very possible to cut PPC spending while increase conversions from using these tactics wisely.

Analysis By: Jasmine Aye, Distilled

Google Shopping May Evolve Into A Google Marketplace

Starting off with a “what if?” analogy, Rick Backus argues that the future of Google Shopping is a direct competitor to Amazon. He also postulates that Google does have a few advantages over Amazon, most notably in the area of local businesses.

Analysis By: Rick Backus, Search Engine Land

A Guide To Bing Link Explorer

Much like the cancellation of Seinfeld, the Internet marketing world mourned the death of Yahoo Site Explorer a few months ago. However, Bing’s new Link Explorer tool in Webmaster Tools isn’t as smooth as its ancestor, but offers some very similar useful applications to SEOs. Sujan Patel is our Sherpa through this revelation in competitive analysis, and suggests a few practical uses for the revitalized tool.

Analysis By: Sujan Patel, Search Engine Journal

How To Build A Lucky Network

This article highlights the role of creating luck in achieving success. Part of creating your own luck includes building a Lucky Network. Lucky Networks aren’t made up of relationships established with business strictly in mind, but rather relationships generated authentically out of friendship and curiosity that end up being pivotal to success in the long run. A person “builds” a Lucky Network by applying their humility, intellectual curiosity and optimism toward their interactions with others.

Analysis by: Anthony K. Tjan, Harvard Business Review

Should Supreme Court Justices Use Google To Find Case-Supporting Information?

Dr. George Lundberg once said, “Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar.” This begs the question: Do you want Supreme Court justices to use Google to find supporting arguments for their decisions? That’s the central question of a recent Washington Post article, which details the proliferation of justice-conducted Internet searches as a way to back up their beliefs in a given court case, regardless of whether those sources of information were cited in the legal brief.

Analysis By: Robert Barnes, Washington Post