This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Google’s 50 Pack Of Search Updates For March
As per (recent) tradition, Google has released a list of search algorithm tweaks that were tested and approved throughout the month of March. Some of these changes include alterations to anchor text, image search, autocomplete for math symbols, and “navigational queries,” or searches that involve a particular website or brand.
Source: Google Inside Search Blog
The Display Campaign Optimizer Is No Longer In Beta
The Google AdWords Display Campaign Optimizer entered the limited beta phase in 2010, and has grown in popularity over the past two years. On Wednesday, Google announced the program would be available for all advertisers, regardless of your campaign’s total spend and size.
Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog
Google Ads Joins Google+ Pages
Google launched Google+ Pages last November and now are also including Google Ads to the Google+ pages mix. Google+ Pages provided a way that updates and news could be included in business dialogue and client conversation as messages were tailored to specific customers. Now, Google Ads as an extra bonus will include the latest Google advertising product news, tips, training opportunities and other ways to grow business.
Source: Google Inside AdWords
Social Media Report Reveals Bias Towards SEO Rather Than PPC
Social Media Examiner has released their 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, chock full of interesting tidbits about the growing social marketplace. Some of the findings include a preference for SEO over PPC among social media marketers (65% vs. 38% usage), Facebook finished first in overall use (91%), and Google+ finished a distant sixth, although most surveyed professionals plan to use it more in the future.
Source: Social Media Examiner
Just A Google FYI: Your Links Look Artificial
Google is more open to webmasters about potentially suspect links. The search engine has sent an increasing amount of Webmaster Tool notifications letting users know they are detecting a disturbance in the link Force. Google says they aren’t ramping up crack downs, but rather vocalizing their red flags on a more consistent basis.
Source: Search Engine Land
Fast Is Faster: HTTP Edition
Google and Microsoft are just two of many technology companies and engineers that are discussing ways to reformat Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to essentially make the Internet faster. A faster web is good for Google, Microsoft, and anyone with an Ethernet cable or wireless router.
Source: Search Engine Watch
The Possible Google Third Party Commenting System, And Its User Influence Over Rankings
Google has introduced a patent for a Facebook-like third party commenting system that could become a ranking factor based on author reputation. Bill Slawski outlines some of the most important parts of this patent, and speculates how Google might integrate it into Google+ and their algorithm to boost the ranking power of a given author/post.
Source: SEO By The Sea
Yahoo Lays Off 2,000 More Employees
The technological job market just got more saturated. Yahoo has officially confirmed layoff rumors numbering around 2,000 employees, and in doing so, saves $375 million on its increasingly red bottom line. The layoffs will hit every department in the company, but most notably its product division, local businesses, and marketing and research divisions.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Makes A Bigger Profit On Apple Devices Than On Androids
Google is making a lot of money in the smartphone market, but revenue is coming from an unexpected place. Reports indicate Google is monetarily benefitting from being the default search engine on iOS devices, and is actually experiencing a drop in profits from its own Android smartphones and tablets. Google only makes $1.70 per device sold in the U.S.
This does make some sense. Google is responsible for every aspect of building the Android brand, whereas a simple signature is required to make it rain as Apple’s default search engine.
Source: Tuaw
Arthur C. Clarke Forecasts The Future Of Technology
Someone should’ve taken Arthur C. Clarke to Las Vegas while he was still alive. Clarke has a startlingly accurate track record of predicting future technology, starting with his speculation about GPS and satellite television … in 1956. In this video, you can see Clarke explain how, by 2001, every house will have a personal computer and be connected to everyone through technology. Oh, and the video was recorded in 1974.
Source: Gizmodo
HuffPost Vs. Unpaid Bloggers Lawsuit Is Taken Out Back, Ol’ Yeller Style
Last Friday, a U.S. District Judge tossed a lawsuit pitting around 9,000 bloggers against AOL Inc. and the Huffington Post. A year ago, AOL purchased the blog website for $315 million, and many bloggers on the Huffington Post felt they were entitled to at least some of the profits.
However, the judge dismissed the suit on the grounds that the writers knew they were not getting paid, and willingly remained contributors to the website for free. Basically, bloggers knew the risk when they put on the uniform, and can’t claim any share of profit because that was not an expectation in the first place.
Source: Reuters
Look Incredibly Awkward With Google’s Siri-Like Glasses
Project Glass is the official name of Google’s foray into “augmented reality” eyeglasses. The glasses, as previously discussed, would provide users with information about surrounding businesses, directions to a chosen restaurant, calendar reminders, and taking phone calls. Search Engine Land has a pretty good demo video.
Source: Search Engine Land
InstaGrAndroid (See What We Did There?)
Instagram is now available as a free app on Android devices. It’s one of the web’s most popular photo sharing sites, and the app will automatically upload images to Instagram’s sharable service.
Source: Digital Photography Review
Notable Commentary
That Aint’ Afraid Of No Panda
The Pinnacle Of Google Analytics Dashboards
Google Analytics Dashboards are incredibly useful for easing the access to any given metric. Portent has a useful blog post outlining what should be included in the best dashboards, and how to go about crafting it to your client’s liking.
Analysis By: Michael Wiegand, Portent
Want To See What A Google Search Quality Meeting Looks Like?
Google has an incredibly interesting video posted on YouTube of its search quality team solving a spelling problem in long queries. They offer helpful pop up notes, and although it may look like a C-SPAN clone, any Internet marketer should take eight minutes out of their day to watch it. On a side note, it’s funny that almost every person in the meeting has a MacBook.
Analysis By: YouTube
I Don’t Want To Close My Eyes, Don’t Want To Kill These Links…
Jeff Beford says that Google has announced that there has been a de-indexing of all blog networks. This change will leave SEOs in the dust as they attempt to recover some of their heavy blog and syndication network skills. With broken link building, this pushes SEOs to work with forums and blogs and other forms of mechanical turk.
Analysis By: Jeff Bedford, Search Engine Journal
No Money For Link Building? No Problem.
Link building can take a lot of time, and more importantly, money, depending on your chosen industry. However, “passive” link building can be a cheap, hyper-effective way to gather links directing an increased number of eyeballs to your page. The process mostly involves following the Golden Rule: Link to others as you would like to be linked.
Analysis By: Craig Bradford, SEOmoz
What If We Told You Facebook Tracked Everything You Did On Its Site?
Doug Antkowiak breaks down a recent post on Reddit that uncovers Facebook’s apparent tracking code that follows users to every page they visit on the site. While it’s very likely Facebook uses the snippet to return relevant in-site searches, the question to ask here is: How much information is too much information?
Analysis By: Doug Antkowiak, Portent
Think ‘Inside’ The Link Profile Box
When I say “link building” you very likely say “external!” It’s natural to constantly evaluating nofollowed, followed, paid, and non-paid links; after all, Google will always determine website authority and relevance based on links pointing to a given page.
However, the attention paid to external linking often comes at the price of improving your internal linking structure. Josh McCoy runs down an easy-to-read guide to optimizing internal links, and why it’s beneficial to your users and search engines alike.
Analysis By: Josh McCoy, Search Engine Watch
Symptoms Of Over-SEO Disease
Obviously, SEO is an important and profitable part of any Internet marketing strategy. However, there are definite ways to over-saturate yourself with SEO, resulting in missed opportunities and insight elsewhere. Daniel Burstein has a WebMD list of these problematic signs, and how to not lose sight of the reasons behind SEO tactics.
Analysis By: Daniel Burstein, Marketing Sherpa
Celebrate 404 Day With The Internet’s Most Creative Error Pages
As you already know, April 4th was National 404 Day for the Internet community. Mashable has appropriately compiled a list of the web’s best 404 messages, which converse to the standard 404 page, can reap major benefits for your website traffic and notoriety.
Analysis By: Sam Laird, Mashable
The 8 Pinterest Personas…Which Are You?
Every person fits into a general personality type and psychological profile. In the case of Pinterest, David Israel has narrowed down the eight types of Pinterest users, and how to figure out which bucket you fit into.
Analysis By: David Israel, Mental Floss
If You’re Considering Investments In Groupon, You Should Probably Look Elsewhere
Uncertainty over Groupon’s viability as a sustainable business has run rampant for the past few years. Felix Salmon discusses why it’s right to be skeptical of their profitability, and exposes some of the accounting tricks and policy issues that have the SEC bearing down with an investigation.
Analysis By: Felix Salmon, Wired Epicenter
