IndustrySearch Week in Review for April 30, 2011

Search Week in Review for April 30, 2011

Here’s a recap of this week’s columns and news stories for the week of April 24 to 30, as reported by Search Engine Watch.

Search Engine Optimization

The SEO Panda Prescription: Think Like Google by Mark Jackson
If you constantly chase algorithms, you’ll always be reacting to changes. To get in front of the numerous search engine algorithm changes each year and build a presence that should stand the test of time, think: “if I were Google…”

3 Use Cases for SEO Tools by Rat “Catfish” Comstock
If you want to improve your SEO campaign, especially if you have a large website, it may be worth your time to investigate what modern SEO tools can do to make you more efficient and help you attain better results.

Google Lifts Overstock.com Penalty by Danny Goodwin
Google has lifted a manual punishment on discount site Overstock.com, which in February was penalized for offering discounts to students and faculty in exchange for links on coveted .edu sites. The toll of the Google penalty on Overstock.com: a 5 percent drop in sales and 32 percent loss of organic traffic.

What is the Click-Through Rate on Google’s Top 10 Organic Results? [Infographic] by Jonathan Allen
We’ve mocked up the results from our previous story reporting that the Number 1 Google result gets 36.4% of clicks in a data visualization. Hopefully the infographic will be a useful tool in your armory to persuade your client teams and or senior managers to invest in SEO.

About.com Pageviews Down After Panda Update Say New York Times Co. by Danny Goodwin
Google’s Panda update has affected New York Times Co. owned About.com, the company confirmed during its Q1 2011 earnings conference call.

Search Advertising

AdWords Instant Previews for Ads: Free Clicks for Advertisers by Danny Goodwin
Instant Previews for Ads, which we reported was being tested last week, are now live in the U.S.

Google AdWords Call Metrics Adding $1 Charge for Calls by Danny Goodwin
Google AdWords has alerted advertisers using call metrics of an added $1 charge whenever a desktop or laptop user manually dials one of the unique numbers Google automatically inserts into your ad.

Analytics & ROI

Designing Websites to Increase Traffic and Conversion by Stephen Cobb
Improving a website’s ability to convert sometimes requires a step back and a fresh look at how it’s designed. The book “Convert!” helps you do just that.

Social Media Marketing

Social PR: 6 New (+ Old) Ways to Win Friends and Influence Search by Lisa Buyer
Considering the search and social trend is no longer about quantity and we live in a world of social PR quality, winning the popularity contest with the search engines means getting back to some marketing basics.

How to Establish a B2B Social Media Benchmarking Plan by Derek Edmond
Some ways you can develop performance measurements for social media initiatives that tie into the search engine marketing needs of your clients. Also: tips on establishing metrics aligned to your Internet marketing objectives. – Apr 29, 2011

Social Design Strategy: Working from the Outside In by Jason Cormier
Insights on what social media marketers should keep top of mind when helping businesses meaningfully engage with their customers.

No Tweets At #RoyalWedding by Jonathan Allen
Tomorrow is the big day for the British royal couple, William and Kate, but don’t expect to see anyone tweeting live from Westminster Abbey.

Link Building

50+ Tools to Automate Your Link Building by Jeremy Bencken
These backlink analysis and link prospecting tools can help link builders shift their workload to computers as much as humanly possible.

Buy Cycle Link Building: A Content Marketing Guide for Link Strategists by Garrett French
How content marketers and link builders can play nicely together to build referral traffic by creating informative, high quality, or purchase-inducing content.

Mobile Search

Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know About QR Codes by Angie
Schottmuller

A comprehensive guide to jumpstart a 2D barcode marketing campaign — code types, tools, best practices, and more.

Local Search

Google Offers Accepting Business Sign-ups in Portland by Danny Goodwin
Business owners in Portland, Oregon, can now sign up for Google Offers Beta. Google is promising businesses on the Offers website that the Groupon-style program, which went live last week, will help bring in new customers, with Google handling all the marketing to users who have subscribed to receive offers to buy a deal worth at least 50 percent off.

International Search

Mobile Search Marketing for BRIC — Country by Country by Christian Arno
An overview of how you can take advantage of the mobile markets in Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Does Anybody Care About the Search Alliance in Europe? by Duncan Parry
For many search marketers, Yahoo and Bing are simply no longer on the map in Europe. Increasingly the preference is to trial ads on Facebook or LinkedIn, or start remarketing. Here’s why.

The Search Industry

The Social Connection between Google Panda and Google +1 by Garry
Przyklenk

Google’s Panda update represents more than just an algorithm change to weed out content farms; it represents (perhaps) a first step in a series of fundamental shifts that will enable Google to become more socially-focused.

Royal Wedding: Searching for Insights on Google, Bing, Yahoo by Danny Goodwin
Search and social data on the Royal Wedding, plus Google, Bing, and Yahoo’s contributions to the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine “Kate” Middleton.

Oh Happy Day! YouTube Founders Takeover Delicious by Jonathan Allen
Forget the Royal Wedding, the surprise piece of news that came out this week was that AVOS, a new company formed by YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen has acquired Delicious – the most famous social bookmarking site on the web – which was in the process of being decomissioned by Yahoo.

Google News

Google Buys Local/Mobile Startup TalkBin by Danny Goodwin
Google has acquired five-month-old startup TalkBin, a local business feedback platform, the company announced on its website. TalkBin describes itself on its website as “a way for your business to deliver a better customer experience by letting customers use their mobile phones to communicate to your business in real time.”

Google Testing New Placements for URLs in SERPs? by Brent Rangen
Google.co.uk appears to be testing out new placement locations for URLs on their search engine results pages.

Google Adds Quora, More Social Sites to Realtime Search Results by Danny Goodwin
Activity on Quora, such as asking questions, adding or upvoting answers, submitting posts, and adding comments have been added into Google’s Realtime search results. Gowalla, Plixi, Me2day, Twitgoo, have also been added.

Women Sue Google for $50M Over Android User Tracking by Danny Goodwin
Following news last week that Android devices track and store your location, two women are suing Google for $50 million and trying to force Google to stop selling devices with the tracking software.

Groupon Counters Google Offers By Hiring Exec. Who Worked On Their Local Offerings by Frank Watson
While Google launched their new Offers service last week, Groupon reached out and hired Margo Georgiadis, the VP of Global Sales Operations at Google, as their new COO.

Wael Ghonim Leaving Google To Help With Egypt’s Reorganization by Frank Watson
Wael Ghonim, the Google Middle East employee who was detained during the revolt in Egypt announced he will be taking a long-term leave of absence from the company to start a non-governmental organization in Egypt.

John James Audubon Birthday Celebrated by Google Doodle by Frank Watson
Google is celebrating the 226th birthday of John James Audubon, the French-American ornithologist, artist, and naturalist with a special logo. Fitting that Google is honoring Audubon, considering that in his day Audubon had a Google-like mission to paint every bird species in North America (Google’s mission today is, obviously, much larger: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful).

Google Doodle Celebrates William & Kate’s Royal Wedding by Danny Goodwin
In honor of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine “Kate” Middleton, Google has posted a special logo in select countries today, including the UK, U.S., Canada, and Australia.

TGIF: Classic Video of Google Meeting from 1999 by Danny Goodwin
Video posted this week offers a trip back in time to the early startup days of Google.

Bing News

Bing Shopping Redesign Offers New Shopping Experience by Thom Craver
If you’re noticing something different on Bing Shopping, you’re right. With continued emphasis on providing users with tools to make more informed decisions, the Bing Team calls their update a “brand new experience” to help users shop.

Video Marketing

How to Find Active YouTube Community Members by Manny Rivas
Ways to locate active YouTube members who are a part of your target audience using YouTube comment search.

Hollywood & YouTube, A Move to Stop The Pirates? by Sarah Carling
YouTube will be launching a movie on demand service for mainstream Hollywood movies. The move touted as a challenge to the iTunes service includes Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal, but so far Paramount, Fox and Disney have declined to join.

Search News & Headlines Around the Web

SES Conference & Expo

Next Gen YouTube Marketing at SES Toronto 2011 by Greg Jarboe
I’ve started to gather examples of contagious viral videos being shared on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs in preparation for the Next Gen YouTube Marketing session at SES Toronto 2011. And here are three candidates that could be included in my presentation.

Search Week in Review 2011 Archives

April 23 | April 16 | April 9 | April 2
March 26 | March 19 | March 12 | March 5
Feb. 26 | Feb. 19 | Feb. 12 | Feb. 5
Jan. 29 | Jan. 22 | Jan. 15 | Jan. 8

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