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Search Week in Review for Feb. 5, 2011

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Here's a recap of this week's columns and news stories for the week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 5, as reported by Search Engine Watch, as well as search news and tips from around the web.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Advertising

Radical LinkedIn B2B #PPC: Targeting Competitor's Employees by Marty Weintraub
A step-by-step LinkedIn PPC targeting tutorial to finger competitors' employees in a tight grid of job titles, geographic location, and places of employment.

Will a New Tier of Search Advertising Providers Emerge? by Kaley Dobson
Google and Microsoft will dominate paid search in 2011, but we'll see a new category of search providers differentiate themselves from the rest of the ad networks and become trusted partners for those marketers looking to expand their reach.

The Challenge of Parenting Single-Keyword Ad Groups by Thi Thumasathit
Managing hundreds or thousands of single-keyword ad groups is a big challenge for SEMs. Here's how advertisers can provide "only-child"-style attention to all of their keywords, customized, highly relevant ad copy, and landing pages scaled across their entire product portfolio.

Are You Losing Money to Microsoft adCenter's Syndicated Search Partners? by John Lee
As Microsoft adCenter continues to gain in importance thanks to the Search Alliance, it also becomes more important to manage adCenter to its full potential. Here are some ways to improve your ROI.

Google Adds Location Markers To Adwords, Blue Marks The Spot by Frank Watson
Google launched blue location markers in to Adwords ads and tie them to the same colored marker on the adjoining map to make your listing stand out amongst the other businesses.

Advertisers Benefit More From Top Ad Spots on Google Than Bing [Study] by Danny Goodwin
People who use Google spend more time looking at the top three paid ads above the organic results than Bing users, according to the results of a new eye-tracking study from research firm User Centric.

Analytics & ROI

Top 6 Skills of a Great Web Analyst by Garry Przyklenk
Having trouble finding skilled analysts? Take a chance on an individual who may not be perfect for the role but can be mentored and who shows some of these key attributes.

Anchor Your Landing Pages and Convert Wayward Clickers by Stephen Cobb
Your chances of converting the traffic you drive to your site will increase if you can keep visitors focused on your conversion message. A landing page anchor is designed to do just that.

Social Media Marketing

Advancing Strategy for Social Marketing by Jason Cormier
How to realize higher fan growth and engagement on Facebook with game mechanics. Plus: strategic modeling for social strategies using the Four Cs: content, context, campaigns, and community.

5 Ways Twitter Can Be Leveraged for B2B Search Engine Marketing by Derek Edmond
Engagement is a critical ingredient for seeing measurable results from Twitter on SEM initiatives. Ongoing dialogue is what makes Twitter valuable in B2B organizations.

Quora Review: Too Confusing To Survive? by Frank Watson
The question-and-answer space seems to be gathering some momentum despite Google's recent address about "content farms" and the latest popular Q&A site within the search industry is Quora.

Year Of Rabbit Proving Big Real Time Search Ad Play by Frank Watson
Amid the warm wishes for the Chinese New Year, there are a lot of advertising plugs. Seems Google may need to add spam filters if their real time search results are not to become inundated with irrelevant information.

Link Building

Fixing the Web's Lost Content: An 8 Step Guide for Link Builders by Jeremy Bencken
This strategy takes an extreme approach to designing an entire campaign around creating content curators want to link to -- it's a safe bet they want to fix their dead links. Here's how to do it.

Local & Mobile Search

Google Brings Instant Previews to iPhone, iPad by Danny Goodwin
Google's Instant Previews are beginning to show up in Safari for Apple devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, 9 to 5 Mac reports. Google has yet to make an official announcement.

Android Becomes Best-Selling Smartphone, Serious iPad Challenger by Danny Goodwin
Google's Android is now the top smartphone platform in the world. Meanwhile, Android has seriously cut into Apple's domination of the tablet computer market.

Google Has Check-ins Using Latitude by Thom Craver
In a move that seemed inevitable, Google Latitude announced the ability to check-in to places.

Android + Classic PlayStation Games? Sweet! by Danny Goodwin
Sony has announced plans to bring classic PlayStation 1 games to Android phones and tablets before the end of 2011. Users will be able to download the classic games via a new PlayStation Store, which is part of Sony's PlayStation Suite mobile gaming platform.

SMB Search Marketing

Enterprise SEM

10 Things Enterprise SEO Management Tools Must Do by Ray "Catfish" Comstock
Looking for an SEO tool to drive results for your biggest clients? This superior enterprise-level SEO management tool has 10 features you need.

SEM Agency Issues

Google Plans To Audit Adwords Resellers, Agencies by Frank Watson
If you act as a Google reseller or manage customers' Adwords accounts, Google will be starting audits and checking if you are sending out - at a minimum - monthly reports with spend, click and impression information, the Adwords blog reported. The audits will begin April 1st.

International Search

Localizing Your Website: How to Simplify a Huge Project by Christian Arno
Reduce the mammoth task of localizing every page on your site by using these simple strategies.

UK PPC: Is Microsoft Distracted in Paid Search? by Duncan Parry
Where are the new initiatives, the new ideas from engineers that will differentiate the adCenter platform from AdWords, raise the revenue per search Microsoft receives, and grow loyalty with advertisers?

Paper Industry Ablaze In Australia Over Google Ad Decisions by Frank Watson
A civil liberties group in Australia is criticizing Google's decision to pull ads by the Wilderness Society that brought attention to "a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old growth forests."

AdWords Region And City Drilldown Added To 17 More Countries by Frank Watson
Being able to select specific cities to run your Adwords advertising has always been handy, but in many countries this has not been possible. Bur now there are "17 additional countries to help you reach more customers in local markets with your AdWords campaigns,: the Adwords blog reported.

Chinese New Year 2011: Google's Year of the Rabbit Doodle by Danny Goodwin
Today is the Chinese New Year. In celebration, Google Hong Kong posted a new Doodle to usher in the Year of the Rabbit.

The Search Industry

Hiybbprqagate: Google, Bing, and the Burning Building by Danny Goodwin
Cheating. Copying. Stealing. These three words have been repeated ad nauseum over the past few days, and it's not just because blogs and mainstream media websites have bothered to check their thesaurus for an original verb that adequately describes the ongoing flame wars between Google and Bing this week.

Bing Copying Google: And I Care Why? by Frank Watson
Okay so Google set a trap to verify Bing was copying some of their results. They then presented the story to Danny Sullivan to get it out to the search industry and other news sources this morning just before ThinkBig's Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box, an event sponsored by Bing. Representatives from both Google and Bing met on a panel during the event and accusations flew.

The Google Spam-Jam by Mike Grehan
Google must find an effective, scalable solution to fight spammy web results, rather than just plugging holes in its old PageRank model for organic results.

Google's Groundhog Day: Is The Search Giant Scared Of Its Own Shadow? by Jonathan Allen
Google's Bing-sting to "prove" that they were copying search results is noteworthy for how elaborate the operation was to catch the hand in the cookie jar. What does Google have to fear from Bing? Here are some reasons that Google might be feeling vulnerable right now.

Google, Bing and Facebook: The Tale Of Clickstreams by Frank Watson
With the hullabaloo over Bing copying Google search results that occurred yesterday, I started to think what may have motivated the announcement and its timing. Obviously, maximum impact was one, but beyond that why would Google take it to the court of public opinion before using other methods.

Startup America: Google, Facebook Among Companies to Lead White House Entrepreneurship Initiative by Thom Craver
Less than a week after announcing a commitment to entrepreneurship during the State of the Union address, the Obama administration announced Startup America, a national campaign to help create jobs and industries of the future. Yesterday morning, President Obama stood with several economic advisors and a number of America's top business leaders to announce the program.

Homeland Security Wants Internet Kill Switch by Frank Watson
Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Wired magazine that there was a need for "kill switch" legislation that "would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency."

Profits Up, Revenue Down At AOL by Frank Watson
CEO Tim Armstrong announced that AOL's profits for 2010 were up, despite an overall drop in revenue.

Google News

Google's Social Acquisitions - SayNow is the Latest Conquest by Thom Craver
Last week, Google announced two more acquisitions of companies into their collective. SayNow, a voice/telephone service was announced first. The very next day, YouTube, one of Google's many properties, announced the acquisition of fflick, a 6-month-old startup that used sentiment analysis to recommend movies to people. Both of these companies are social services.

Google: Only 2% Opt-Out of Instant by Danny Goodwin
Only about 2 percent of users have opted out of using Google Instant, according to Ben Gomes, Instant lead engineer. Launched in September, Google Instant tries to predict what you're looking for and shows you results as you type.

Google Employee Goes Missing In Egypt by Frank Watson
Google's head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa Wael Ghonim has gone missing in Egypt. Ghonim, a supporter of the Egyptian opposition, has been missing since Friday.

Google Creates Work Around For Blocked Egyptian Tweeters by Frank Watson
As protests continue and the Egyptian government blocks access to the internet, Google created a workaround over the weekend so people can access Twitter via phone calls and leave updates.

Google Gathering Egyptian Protest Videos At CitizenTube by Frank Watson
YouTube has been flooded with videos from the Egyptian protests and is now collecting them at CitizenTube - Google's news and politics channel, the YouTube blog reported. "We understand how closely the world is following these events, and want to help people access and share this information quickly and easily on YouTube."

Visit Museums Of The World From Home With Google's Art Project by Frank Watson
Google has launched Art Project, an online walk through the world's greatest museums, using the technology they employ for "Street View."

75,000 People Really Want to Work at Google by Danny Goodwin
Just a little over a week after announcing plans to hire more than 6,000 and make 2011 the largest hiring year in Google's history, the company has received more than 75,000 job applications worldwide.

Google Luring College Recruits With Swag And Pizza by Frank Watson
Google is holding a recruiting drive at Carniege Mellon University and it seems just the idea of a chance to work at Google is no longer enough to fill a college hall with potential interns and aspiring employees.

Is Google Next Area Of Growth Germ Warfare? by Frank Watson
Google may be finding it hard to keep its exponential growth going, but is getting in to bacteria culture growth may be pushing in the wrong direction.

Bing News

Bing Gets Served on The Colbert Report [Video] by Danny Goodwin
Google's accusation that Bing copied Google's search results has gotten mainstream media attention from the BBC to the Wall Street Journal. Last night, the search wars received the Colbert bump.

Yahoo News

Blekko News

Blekko Removes Content Farms From Search Results by Danny Goodwin
In an effort to combat web spam, Blekko will block from its search results 20 of the worst-offending SERP clogging content farms, including Demand Media's eHow and Answerbag.

Video Marketing

YouTube Homepage Layout Protest Shows Less Civility Than Egyptian Protests by Greg Jarboe
On Jan. 20, 2011, YouTube changed its homepage layout. On Jan. 28, Liz of the YouTube Team said in the Help Forum, "We've been listening over the past week, and it's clear that some of you don't like the new homepage."

SES Conference & Expo

Wassup #SESLondon? 1 Cowboy CEO, 1 Ship Parrrty, 10 Solo Sessions & 50 Jaamit Tributes by Jonathan Allen
With only three weeks to go until SES London, you might be asking yourself what you can expect to get out of the conference and what is going to make it different this year when compared to every other year? Well, as Alan Sugar (the UK equivalent of Donald Trump, and also host of The Apprentice) often says, 'let me tell you'.

Mobile Marketing Session at SES New York and Mini MBA Program at Rutgers by Greg Jarboe
According to a new survey from the Association of National Advertisers and the Mobile Marketing Association, 88 percent of marketers at large retailers and consumer brand manufacturers say they will use mobile marketing this year. What's more, 75 percent of those already marketing to mobile consumers plan to increase their spending by an average of 59 percent compared with 2010.

Who Is Duncan Watts and Why Is Everything Obvious ... Once You Know the Answer? by Greg Jarboe
The keynote speaker at SES New York 2011 is Duncan Watts, a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directs the Human Social Dynamics group. He's also the author of the forthcoming book, Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer.

Search Week in Review 2011 Archives

Jan. 29 | Jan. 22 | Jan. 15 | Jan. 8

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