This Week’s Industry News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

New AdWords Feature Makes Landing Page-By-Device Easier

Google AdWords’ ValueTrack feature will soon give marketers a nifty way to guarantee users will get to the landing page specifically designed for their device. This roll out is part of the broader Enhanced Campaigns update, which aims to make using AdWords and optimizing ads simpler and more efficient.

Source: Search Engine Land

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds New Site Move Tool

Bing Webmaster Tools has added a new Site Move tool. The tool is much like a 301 redirect and is used to notify Bing that you have permanently moved URLs from one location to another. The tool is located under the Diagnostic & Tools tab.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google Adds GIF Search Option In Image Results

People love animated GIFs. Like, LOVE animated GIFs. It would only make sense, then, that Google makes them as easy to find as the equally addicting treasure trove of cat videos parked throughout YouTube’s database. Under “Search tools,” users can select “Animated” and GIF away! Google also added a “Transparent” color filtering option, which parses out only photos that have a clear background.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Webmaster Tools Upgrades Verification Program

Google recently completed a trifecta of upgrades to its Webmaster Tools system:

Verified users and their verification methods are now available to webmasters, along with the proper URL where the verification is located.
To remove admins and verified users, webmasters now have to delete their verification method first. If this is not completed prior to deleting a user, Google displays an error message.
CNAME verification strings are shorter so Google can support a broader number of DNS providers. This won’t change existing CNAME verifications, though.

Source: Search Engine Land

Facebook May Add Hashtags

While the fact Facebook doesn’t have hashtag functionality hasn’t topped users from tacking them onto the end of their status updates, it would appear they will officially become a part of the Facebook universe sometime in the future. “Informed sources” told the Wall Street Journal that the social networking site is serious about the considering the idea, though the change isn’t on the very near horizon.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Authorship Tagging? Try Subject Tagging (In Bing, At Least)

Google’s rel=author tag has been the talk of ChiliTown over the past year, with Bing failing to follow suit with their own alteration. Until now. The Wendy’s of search engines is now displaying “Subject”ship tags in its search results, which visually match authorship displays in Google, but focus on the subject of an article rather than the writer of that article.

Source: Search Engine Land

Digg Inadvertently Wiped From Google’s Index

Google accidently wiped Digg from its index Wednesday morning. The mix up happened when Google accidently applied the Webspam action to the whole site when trying to remove a spammy link from Digg.com. The mistake didn’t have a major impact on the site because the vast majority of its traffic is direct.

Source: CNET

Over Time, Google Penguin Has Allowed Fewer People Into The Ranking Night Club

According to a recent study by Portent Interactive, each successive Google Penguin update has decreased the search engine’s tolerance for spam/low quality links as part of a site’s SEO profile. Specifically, the study found that the first update hit sites with 80% or more spam links, and the current threshold (for the most part) is now 50%.

This isn’t entirely unexpected, as Google is unlikely to set one mark and stick with it if there are still lots of sites with bad links pointing to them after each update. However, concern is warranted over whether this trend will hit a point of diminishing returns, or if Google will just crank things down to a crazy percentage level for acceptance (such as 10%).

Source: Search Engine Land

BBC Gets Unnatural Link Warning From Google

BBC news received an unnatural link notification from Google last week. The Search Engine Roundtable broke the news when they discovered a post in the Google Help Forums from Nick, a mysterious BBC news representative, that confessed to the notification and asked for any advice on how to discover the unnatural links. David Naylor posited that the notification was the result of RSS scrapers, but it’s likely a bigger sign of Google’s lack of a firewall that could lead to more negative SEO.

Source: Search Engine Land

Mark Zuckerberg Has An Approval Rating That Would Make The Occupy People Proud

Dictators aren’t the only figureheads with 99% approval ratings. Or are they? According to a recent Glassdoor survey of the Facebook workplace, the social network’s employees love CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, 99% of them do. This was an increase (obviously) over last year’s 85% mark, and was likely sparked by the IPO and the fact that these employees are probably all Zuckerberg’s friends on Facebook.

Source: Search Engine Watch

eBay Claims Branded PPC Ads Are Useless

eBay recently released a study that claims brand keyword PPC ads offer no short-term benefit and usually wind up generating a negative ROI. Danny Goodwin at Search Engine Watch explains the reasons for eBay’s claims and why they’re not entirely accurate.

Analysis by: Danny Goodwin, Search Engine Watch

Notable Commentary

That Is ‘Cutt’ing Edge

Here Is Every Video Matt Cutts Has Ever Recorded, With Abbreviated Answers

Matt Cutts has been answering questions from befuddled webmasters since 2009. TheShortCutts.Com has every video he’s recorded on one page, along with a much more useful succinct summary of each answer below the corresponding video.

Analysis By: Click Consult, TheShortCutts.Com

Need Some Link Research Tools? Here Are 20 Of Them

There’s no shortage of research tools available to SEOs and link builders. However, which ones are the best use of your time? Julie Joyce has a great column breaking down 20 recommendations, including how they fit into every niche part of the link building process.

Analysis By: Julie Joyce, Search Engine Land

Fixing Bid Overlaps In Google Product Listing Ad Groups

It’s very easy to overlap bidding within Google AdWords PLAs, especially if products are included in the main hub group as well as the more specified groups. Mary Weinstein has a few pieces of advice for preventing this cannibalistic bidding structure.

Analysis By: Mary Weinstein, Search Engine Watch

A Handy Dandy SEO Guide To Webmaster Tools

Most SEOs know what Google Webmaster Tools is, and they probably use it on a regular, but limited basis. Google has all kinds of resources to help explain how Webmaster Tools benefit SEOs, but sometimes it’s better to hear a break down from someone within our industry.

Analysis By: Jayson DeMers, Search Engine Journal