This Week’s Industry News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Ad Sitelinks Now Feature Embedded Format

The new embedded sitelinks feature eases integration of targeted links into ads. With the embedded format of Ad Sitelinks, there are no additional lines appended to your text ad. Instead, text in your ad that exactly matches one or more of the sitelinks in your campaign will automatically be linked to that sitelink’s destination URL. With embedded sitelinks, potential customers can pick the part of your ad that applies directly to their current interests and visit the most specific page for that topic.

Source: Inside Google AdWords

My Client Center Account Management Streamlined

Google recently announced a new multiple links feature in My Client Center, making integrating work in the MCC structure and between partnered clients easier. Each AdWords account can be linked to up to five MCCs.

Source: Inside Google AdWords

Webmaster Tools And Google Analytics Together At Last

If you use Google Analytics, the odds are pretty high that Google Webmaster Tools are also a primary focus of your web site’s search engine presence. Now, Google has made it easier to access both through a pilot integration program in Analytics that utilizes data gathered from Webmaster Tools.

Source: Google Analytics

Bing, Google, And Yahoo Combine Forces To Form Schema.org

The one commonality among all search engines is their desire to make searching and discovering information easier for the user and web site owner alike. That’s a main reason why Bing, Google, and Yahoo have joined together (you read that right) to create schema.org, a site that allows webmasters to add markups to their sites to better get their message across.

All three companies acknowledged that adding markups can take quite a bit of time, especially when each search engine reads the language differently. The execution of this quest to find a common language is similar to their combined efforts in 2006 to universalize sitemaps.

Source: Bing Community Blog

Spending For Online Ads Expected To Increase Again

According to eMarketer Inc., online ad spending is expected to grow by as much as 20% over the next year. That would bring the total amount of money spent on Internet ads to $31.3 billion in 2011. eMarketer had originally predicted the growth to be around 10.5%, but the new projection matches increases that haven’t been seen since 2007, when marketers had scaled back their spending due to the recession.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Microsoft And Facebook Support The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger, While Google Pleads The Fif

Quite a few notable tech companies, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Research In Motion, are backing the $39 billion proposed joining of AT&T and T-Mobile. However, Apple and Google have declined to take a position on the issue, and the bronze medal winner of the wireless company race (Sprint) has been vocally against the measure. We could very possibly see the tech version of Clash of the Titans or The Avengers at some point in the near future!

Source: Wired

Steve Jobs Is Working This Graveshift To Build Apple A Spaceship

Apparently Steve Jobs wants to turn Apple’s California headquarters into a donut-like spaceship. Jobs even said there wouldn’t be a straight piece of glass on the building, and had a few thinly veiled threats about taking their taxpaying dollars elsewhere if the building wasn’t approved by the Cupertino City Council.

On an unrelated note, it’s very fitting that the Apple HQ is in a city that sounds like a barista creation at a local coffee shop.

Source: Business Insider

Twitter Eliminates Independent URL Shortening With New Feature

If you regularly use the web version of Twitter, but get annoyed with the extra URL shortening step required before posting a link, fret no further. Using their official t.co, Twitter now will automatically shorten URLs to 19 characters. Once tweeted, the full link is previewed to help users understand what exactly they’re clicking in order to guard against spam links.

Source: Search Engine Land

Unlimited Data Plans Will Soon Be Extinct, And Android Users Will Feel It Most

Like the dodo, quagga, Baiji River dolphin and Caribbean monk seal before it, unlimited mobile data plans will become extinct in the near future. Verizon has already indicated they plan on changing their policy to a tiered data plan, and a recent Nielsen study has revealed that Android smartphones are the top data hogs on the market. The study also found that Blackberry phones use the least amount of data, in part because Research In Motion compresses data before it’s downloaded.

Source: CNN

Twitter Engagement Is 80 Percent Link Clicks

Further backing the belief that the real-time access social network serves as a pure information-sharing platform, Twitter President of Global Revenue Adam Bain announced that 80% of user interaction on the site comes from link clicking. The remaining 20% of interactions are simple Tweets and Re-tweets.

Bain also said 20%-40% of all users are connected to a brand on Twitter, and on average, one of a new Twitterite’s first 10 “Follows” is a brand. This could be a major selling point for marketers and companies skeptical of Twitter’s monetization possibilities. Bain also provides a few specific examples of all-time popular re-tweets that happen to be advertisement-based.

Source: CNN

Coming Soon: Live TV On Xbox 360!

At the E3 video game expo on Monday, Microsoft pledged to create more mature second generation games for the Xbox Kinect, and provide access to live TV from the Xbox 360 console in the future. The live TV promise in particular is expected to be fulfilled by the end of the year on the Xbox Live network, which already produces $1 billion in revenue annually for Microsoft.

There weren’t any concrete details about what TV networks would be involved. However, Dennis Durkin, Microsoft’s chief operating and financial officer for interactive entertainment, indicated partnerships will be announced between now and an expected fall rollout. Perhaps the most important development from the gaming portion of the presentation was a new “Kinect Star Wars” game that allows users to move their arms to control The Force or a lightsaber.

Source: CNN

Notable Commentary

That’s Gatorade For Your Brain

The Periodic Table Of SEO Elements

This is probably the best and most complete description of search ranking factors through visual representation. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Analysis By: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land

A Guide To 43 Useful Paid Search Tools

Alex Cohen introduces 43 worthwhile paid search tools and details the usual paid search plan, some of its flaws, and how any PPC tool can have significance.

Analysis By: Alex Cohen, ClickEquations

Reviewing InBoundWriter: A Content Optimizing Program

Conclusion: InboundWriter is a tool that has a ton of potential and is attempting to set a pretty high bar for any future ventures into content evaluation programs.

Analysis By: Brent Rangen, Search Engine Watch

Ian Lurie Invents A New SEO Word: ‘QualityRank’

Conversation Marketing’s Ian Lurie coins a new term to define the newest changes to the Google algorithm and their impact on search results.

Analysis By: Ian Lurie, Conversation Marketing

What Is Twitter Worth, Personal Investment-Wise?

Everyone loves infographics, especially when they lay out everything you could possibly ever want to know about a social network. In this case, Twitter demographic, usage, and news trends are placed under the spotlight.

Analysis By: Dona Collins, Pro Blogger

Authorship Notations From Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Central outlines the potential increasing relevance of authorship when determining search query relevance, and a couple HTML5 tools that can link content pages to the correct author page.

Analysis By: Google Webmaster Central

Google Electric Cars…Assemble!!!!

Picture a fleet of Google cars descending on the Death Star like the Rebels in Star Wars: A New Hope.

Analysis By: Rolf Schreiber, Google (YouTube Video)

Why Facebook Experienced A Backlash For A Fairly Common Facial Recognition Tool

Ryan Singel details the major reasons Facebook is getting hammered for their default inclusion of a facial recognition tool into every account. He notes that Apple and Google have similar features in different programs, but Facebook’s handling of the situation has been dismissal of critics, to say the least.

Analysis By: Ryan Singel, Wired

The Cons Of Cloud-Based Music

Chris Taylor explains why cloud-based music storage may not be the coolest thing since the word “cool” was first successfully used as an adjective to describe an aesthetic pleasure.

Analysis By: Chris Taylor, CNN/Mashable