This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Where There’s Spam, There’s A Matt Cutts PSA
In his second straight video featuring people passing by in the background, Matt Cutts said site widget makers should ensure they do not pass PageRank by adding the “nofollow” attribute. The recommendation plays out much the same way as his advice regarding infographics.
Source: Search Engine Land
New AdWords Editor Released
Google just released version 10.2 of AdWords Editor. Advertisers can now manage sitelinks at the campaign or ad group level in Editor as well as copy and paste them freely. Increased image file sizes and longer sitelink URLs were among some of the minor improvements. And beware that after September 23, Google will automagically transition any legacy ad extensions to enhanced if they’re not switched over before then.
Source: Search Engine Land
Favicons Are Coming To Bing Results Near You
Bing has recently started testing the display of favicons next to titles in their search results. **Insert boiler plate “we’re testing lots of things” response here.**
Source: Search Engine Land
Study: People Are Going To Spend A Ton Of Money On PPC Next Year
Some of the most notable pull-outs from Hanapin Marketing’s 2013 State of Paid Search study include:
- 83% of respondents feel good about the industry in which they work, but 65% said they are as optimistic as they were at this time last year.
- 70% say they will increase spend on PPC in 2014, with most of that spend going to Google and Bing and a smaller margin going toward social media sites.
- 85% say they will focus more on CRO in 2014 than they did in 2013.
Source: Search Engine Land
Get One Like, Get More Likes
Get one ‘Like’ on that picture of your dog sleeping you posted to Facebook and you could be well on your way to a flurry of them. That’s according to a new Association for the Advancement of Science study that found that preexisting votes have a major influence on whether others will follow suit. Specifically, people were found to be 32% more likely to up vote something if positive votes from others already exist.
Source: Marketing Land
Google Now Offering Personalized Travel Answers On PC
Google has made the features of Google Now a larger part of the traditional search results by providing a range of personalized “quick answers” for travel- and logistics-related queries – flights, package tracking, calendar events, etc. – regardless of platform.
Source: Search Engine Land
“Links To Your Site” Is Not Always Fool-Proof, According To Google
Whenever a precocious young webmaster asks Google how they can begin assessing the damage of a manual penalty, Google always defers to Links To Your Site in Webmaster Tools. Well, almost always.
Recently, a webmaster asked why an unnatural link notification was sent to their account, despite no “dirty” links showing up in the Links To Your Site report. The response from Google was an example link that existed outside that report, meaning Google typically prefers to use Links To Your Site, but will look elsewhere if it helps the webmaster and the link is that bad.
Source: Search Engine Land
Interview With A Google Scientist
Google scientist Jeff Dean sat down with the Puget Sound Business Journal to discuss the search engine’s efforts with machine learning and building neural networks. Most importantly, he explicitly confirms Google’s quest to become a one-stop shop for answers to everything, including such complex commands as “Book me a plane trip to Washington DC.”
Source: Puget Sound Business Journal
Microsoft Calls New Gmail Ads “Gspam”
In the latest iteration of its “Scroogled” public relations campaign, Microsoft has come up with a creative name for Gmail’s new Sponsored Promotion ads: “Gspam”. Microsoft claims that the ads, which appear at the top of the list of emails in the Promotions tab of the redesigned Gmail inbox, are basically junk mail. Microsoft cites its survey results to back up the claims, though it’s not clear how much impact the Scroogled campaign is having among Gmail users.
Source: Marketing Land
Yelp Releases Sophomore Version Of ‘To Catch A Paid Review Scheme’
Although Chris Hanson is noticeably absent from this announcement, Yelp recently added an alert notification on a plethora of business profiles it recently caught in a paid review scheme. The last time this happened in October, Yelp cracked down on eight businesses with a note that pops up for 90 days on the offending business’s page.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Blocks Windows Phone YouTube App
Google has blocked the Windows Phone YouTube app for a second time, claiming that it violates its terms of service. According to Google, Microsoft hasn’t made the browser upgrades necessary to support a full-featured YouTube experience and instead re-released an app that Google blocked back in May because it wasn’t showing Google ads.
Source: Ars Technica
The NSA Uses More Of The Internet Than Google
In a recent effort to curb the constant paranoia that is cognizance of government surveillance, the NSA revealed that they only touch about 1.6% of the Internet every day, equating it to a dime on a regulation basketball court. That amounts to 29.21 petabytes of daily data…more than Google’s 20 petabytes used per day.
Source: Ars Technica
How Hearing Affects Vision
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently published a study showing how language can affect vision. For example, it might be hard to spot a cheetah in the tall grass of a savannah until someone next to you says the word “cheetah”. It’s something to think about for online marketers who craft strategies that synch with the “reptilian brain”.
Source: Ars Technica
Notable Commentary
On Neverending Quests
Dr. Pete Performs A Check-Up On Google In-Depth Articles
He also grabs 10 high-volume, very broad searches that triggered in-depth articles ranging from jobs to Bruce Springsteen. How he finds time to do all of this while assisting the Golden State Warriors coaching staff is beyond us.
Analysis By: Pete Meyers, Moz
A 10-Pack Of Awesome Event Tracking Ideas
If you don’t know what Custom Event Tracking is, you should read this. If you don’t know how it can help you add some granularity and clarity to your data collection efforts, you should read this. If you…well, you get the idea.
Analysis By: Josh Braaten, Search Engine Watch
Google’s Neverending Quest For Synonym Identification
As always, Bill Slawski has an excellent rundown of a recent Google patent that explores how its algorithm determines connections between synonyms by way of shared secondary and tertiary keywords. And he uses a Who reference.
Analysis By: Bill Slawski, SEO By The Sea
Eric Ward Decodes Google’s Recent Linking Guideline Updates
Link building’s Nostradamus/Solomon (take your pick) takes a deep dive into Google’s recently altered Webmaster Guidelines regarding acceptable linking practices.
Analysis By: Eric Ward, Search Engine Land
Measuring Search Results Display By Topic, Search Volume
Matt Peters has an awesome data mining operation on Moz, focusing on factors that could have a big influence over high volume keyword rankings. Peters does stress that correlation does not equal causation, but it’s still very useful for optimization.
Analysis By: Matt Peters, Moz
The SEO And PPC Lowdown On Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner
As the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter for Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, it becomes even more important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of its successor. Andre Alpar breaks down the applicable features of the AdWords Keyword Planner tool for both SEO and PPC.
Analysis By: Andre Alpar, Search Engine Watch
Five Ways To Localize Social
Jon Schepke offers five ways to localize your social campaigns in an effort to draw interest and eventually customers.
Analysis by: Jon Schepke, Search Engine Watch
No Know Mobile Technical SEO? No Problem
Vanessa Fox has the ultimate guide to ensuring your mobile website is crawlable, displays properly, and loads faster than a speeding bullet.
Analysis By: Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land
The U.S. Tried To Build A Ring Of Copper Around The Earth
Travel back to a time (1963, specifically) when paranoia wasn’t just for the fine citizens of the United States! Wired explores the forgotten Project West Ford, a U.S. government initiative to build a copper ring around the Earth in the name of protecting the country from Ivan Drago and the vodka-swilling nuclear threats in Russia.
Analysis By: Joe Hanson, Wired
