Search Week in Review for Dec. 18, 2010
Here’s a roundup of this week’s columns and news stories for the week of Dec. 12 to Dec. 17, as reported by Search Engine Watch, as well as search news and tips from around the web.
Search Engine Optimization
Search is Search, Social is Social: Treat Them Separate by Frank Watson
SEOs should keep doing the normal things to improve rankings in the SERPs. Tweets and Likes may generate some traffic, but these “social signals” won’t magically help your site rise in Google or Bing’s organic results.
SEO Planning for 2011 by Eric Enge
Highlights of the year that was in SEO, plus a look at what big changes we should expect in the new year.
How Will SEO Evolve in 2011? by Gareth Owen
SEO, rather than being purely an ongoing process of optimization, will be more influential as part of a campaign-led marketing strategy. We’ll need to work with our clients to ensure this happens.
Google Webmaster Tools Adds Redirect Links, Search Query Info by Frank Watson
Webmaster Tools has added some major improvements to the information they provide on search queries and inbound links to redirected pages. You can now see if a link to a redirected pages has been passed – but not the juice passed – and drill deep into search queries to individual pages.
SEW Forums Adds New Forum On CMS SEO by Frank Watson
Many website owners use CMS to generate their sites – so Search Engine Watch Forums has added a special place for you to get and share information about optimizing them.
Search Advertising
Google AdWords Placement Targeting Campaign Tips by Melissa Mackey
A step-by-step guide for advertisers on how to set up placement targeted campaigns.
Ad Group Structure: A How-to Guide for SEMs by Thi Thumasathit
Building a solid foundation of the right ad group structure is vital to search engine marketing success. Here’s how SEMs can greatly improve the success of their search marketing campaigns.
Everyone Is Rushing To Stop FTC’s Do Not Track Registry, Why? by Frank Watson
The impact of a Federally regulated Do Not Track registry has search engines and other online advertising vendors scurrying to self regulate. What steps are these online players implementing and why is the question.
Star Wars Reference Hidden In Google AdWords Thank You Video by Jonathan Allen
The Google AdWords team, who are celebrating 10 years of AdWords, sent this hilarious video out to advertisers yesterday in 43 different languages – the same number that the AdWords UI works in.
SEM Basics
Analytics & ROI
The Truth About Conversion Rate Optimization: It’s Not About You and Me! by Stephen Cobb
In the blizzard of advice about CRO, it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamentals. One fundamental truth about optimization: it’s not about what you like, it’s about what works.
Social Media Marketing
It’s Time for True Social Media Analytics by Nathan Linnell
A social media analytics tool that brings together data from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, social media monitoring, analytics, and advertising has the potential to drastically alter how we analyze and evaluate our social media efforts.
What Does the Career Path of the Social Media Strategist Look Like? by Jacob Morgan
The goal of social CRM is solving complex business challenges. A new survey examines whether social strategists have the right skills and support to overcome the challenges they’ll face.
Advertising On Twitter Hot Commodity To Major Brands by Frank Watson
Seems Twitter cannot meet the demand from advertisers right now, Wired Magazine reported. The “company has signed on more than 80 of the largest brand advertisers in the country.”
Top 10 Twitter Trends of 2010 by Danny Goodwin
After analyzing 25 billion tweets that have been sent so far this year, Twitter revealed the top 10 overall trends, as well as trends in eight categories (news events, people, movies, television, technology, World Cup, sports, and hashtags). Google Android was a hot topic overall this year, while Google Instant was a top trending topic in Twitter’s technology category.
Twitter Top Trends for 2010 Contained Sponsor Promoted Tweets by Frank Watson
A number of the Trending Topics listed in Twitter’s year end top trends lists contained listings from sponsor’s promoted tweets.
Link Building
5 Tips on Link Bait Campaigns by Justilien Gaspard
With a little planning and repetition, your link bait campaigns will become more successful. Here are some ideas on how to produce a brilliant campaign.
Local & Mobile Search
Google Releases 3D Maps v5.0 for Android by Jonathan Allen
Google released 3D Maps for Android phones equipped with Google Maps 5.0.
Tron: Legacy Tie-ins Launch iAds for iPad, Yahoo Search & Virgin’s Project Magazine by Jonathan Allen
Walt Disney Co.’s new Tron: Legacy movie is proving to be a strong marketing vehicle for tech companies who want to promote the potential of their online display products. Disney has partnered with Apple, Yahoo & Virgin in a move that seems to launch concept ads that mark the future of brand advertising.
SMB Search Marketing
International Search
International Social Media Marketing: Addressing Cultural Quirks by Christian Arno
Statistics and anecdotal evidence of how the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) use social media.
French Create Google Tax, Starts Jan. 1 by Frank Watson
The new tax on online advertising spends called the “Google tax” was passed by the French government this week and will start Jan. 1, 2011. The tax will be paid by online advertisers, not Google directly unless they advertise their products a lot in France.
Swedish Bombing Information: Email Warning, Twitter Response by Frank Watson
One person died and two were injured when two bombs exploded in Stockholm Sweden just minutes after the national news agency TT and Swedish security service Säpo received an email containing an audio attachment criticizing “anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan.”
Venezuelan Govt Wants To Regulate The Internet by Frank Watson
The Venezuelan Vice President Elías Jaua has asked his country’s government to pass a law that would allow regulation of the internet and create one central access point for all distribution of the internet.
The Search Industry
Has Google Jumped the Shark? by Kristine Schachinger
Google’s core product (search) has become steadily inferior while distracting people with “cool” technologies. Here’s my wish list of things Google should change in 2011 (but probably won’t).
Gawker Hacked, Huge Problem For Users With One Password by Frank Watson
If you have a Gawker account and use the same username and password for all your online activity, you better hurry and change them as hackers accessed the Gawker servers making off with about 1.5 million username and passwords.
Renowned Agitator Michael Moore Offers To Help WikiLeaks Founder by Frank Watson
Film director Michael Moore has offered to help bail out Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, and provide him a server to continue hosting his controversial site, not because it is one of the top searched terms at Google this month – but because he sees the site as a necessary free speech forum.
SNL Risks Wrath Of WikiLeaks Hacktivists by Frank Watson
Guess Saturday Night Live is counting on the hackers from ‘Anonymous’ – the group that has attacked Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and others – having a good sense of humor.
Court Rules Police Need Warrant To Access Email by Frank Watson
The Sixth Court of Appeals ruled that police need a search warrant to get ISPs to divulge emails, Tech News Ninjas reported. This is the first case that has dealt with email under the Fourth Amendment that deals with illegal search and seizures.
Jeopardy! Pitting Humans Against Computer Searching For Answers by Frank Watson
IBM will be pitted against the two most successful Jeopardy contestants in a test to see if the computer can search its database and find the correct answer faster.
SearchEngineWatch.com’s Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2010 by Jonathan Allen
With many search and social networks releasing their Top 10 queries and trends for 2010, we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon to find out which were the most popular blog posts (not expert columns) of 2010 on SearchEngineWatch.
Google News
Google Fights Claims of Bias in Instant, Local Search by Danny Goodwin
Google has been busy defending itself from accusations of bias in its local, organic, and paid results in recent weeks. Yesterday, Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and head of the company’s search quality, ranking, and algorithm team, denied another common allegation: that Google Instant favors big brands.
Google Refuses To Release Data CT Attorney General Wants To Check For Criminal Activity by Frank Watson
Outgoing Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal requested the data collected during Google’s Streetview data recordings and the civil investigative demand had a deadline which Google did not meet.
New York City Wants to Build the Next Google by Jonathan Allen
New York City’s Bloomberg administration wants to build the next Google in New York. Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Robert Steel, gave his first policy speech at Google’s recently purchased New York City headquarters on Ninth Avenue. He said that the administration is seeking to attract a university to set up in New York and is issuing a formal request for expression of interest and will contribute a significant (undisclosed) sum to attract a new schools of applied engineering or applied science.
Google Doing Body Searches by Frank Watson
If you have a compatible browser Google offers an internal search of the human body in a new offering from Google Labs. Called Body Browser you can explore the human body in great depth.
Google Prevails in Patent Complaint vs. Paul Allen by Danny Goodwin
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen believes that most of the Silicon Valley tech giants have built their businesses around technology that he owns the patents on. A Seattle district court judge disagreed, and dismissed Allen’s complaint against 11 corporations, including Google and AOL.
Google Crawler May Have Helped Leak Colorado Drug Informants by Frank Watson
Colorado sheriffs are working with Google to find out how their database “mistakenly revealed the identities of confidential drug informants and listed phone numbers, addresses and Social Security numbers of suspects, victims and others interviewed during criminal investigations.”
Is Google Ageist, Or Do The Kids Think They Know More Than Their Parents? by Frank Watson
I realize that some of the information Google is offering at TeachParentsTech provides invaluable simple instructions to bring people up to speed on online things many take for granted, but their presentation does seem a little ageist. Why not just call it Tech For Dummies?
Bing News
Bing Improves Facebook’s ‘Like’ Results – Is This A New Ranking Factor? by Jonathan Allen
Yesterday Bing announced that specific links that have been ‘liked’ by your Facebook friends will be highlighted in the search results page. This is a development from the separate set of Facebook results that occasionally appear for generic search queries.
Bing Incorporates FanSnap into Event Search by Jonathan Allen
To enable users make a better decision whilst searching for tickets to concerts and sporting events, Bing have incorporated FanSnap into Bing Events.
Yahoo News
R.I.P. Delicious, AltaVista, Alltheweb & 5 More Yahoo Products by Danny Goodwin
The hits just keep coming at Yahoo. A day after laying off about 4 percent of employees and shuttering Yahoo Video, a screenshot leaked on Twitter that revealed Yahoo is planning to cut (or “sunset”) eight Yahoo products: Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, Alltheweb, Yahoo Bookmarks, MyM, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, and MyBlogLog.
Delicious May Live On Outside Yahoo by Frank Watson
The Delicious blog told its members that they were looking for a way to cointinue outside of Yahoo and for them not to panic about moving their bookmarks just yet.
Yahoo’s Holiday Layoffs: 650 Let Go by Danny Goodwin
Yahoo laid off “about 650” people — roughly 4 percent of the company’s entire workforce of 14,000. Estimates were that between 650 and 700 people will be let go before the end of the day.
Carol Bartz’s Leaked E-mail RE: Yahoo Layoffs by Danny Goodwin
Following up on our previous story about the latest round of Yahoo layoffs, a copy of an internal e-mail memo from CEO Carol Bartz about the staff reductions has been leaked.
Carol Bartz Has No Flickr Account Writes Flickr Enthusiast by Jonathan Allen
Following Carol Bartz’s email, announcing 650 layoffs at Yahoo (just days before the holidays), Thomas Hawk, an enthusiastic Flickr user – one of the, if not most, successful photos-sharing site in the world – has written an open letter to Carol Bartz airing his frustration towards the Yahoo CEO.
Blekko News
Blekko Makes Your Facebook Likes Searchable by Jonathan Allen
Search engine upstart, Blekko, has done in weeks, what seems to have taken Bing months to do – integrate Facebook like data into search results. Simply connect your Facebook account to Blekko, via the Facebook button at the bottom of the home page and quicker than you can say “Bob’s your uncle” (British slang for ‘and you’re done’), you can search your uncles’, fathers’ brothers’, mothers’, sisters’, cousins’, friends’ Facebook likes.
Ask.com News
Video Marketing News
Ad Networks, Content Networks, and the Economy of Syndicated Video by Jonathan Allen
Grab Networks’ proposition to brand advertisers using video: why focus solely on video portals when video is being embedded and watched all over the web?
Who Leaked YouTube’s Talks With Next New Networks to The New York Times? by Greg Jarboe
According to Claire Cain Miller and Brian Stelter of The New York Times, “YouTube, the video site owned by Google, is in talks to buy Next New Networks, a Web video production company, according to two people briefed on the discussions.” Now, who might those two people be?
YouTube Rewind: Top Searches, Videos of 2010 by Danny Goodwin
More than 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed in 2010, and users uploaded more than 13 million hours of video (35 hours of video is uploaded every minute to the site). So what were people searching for and watching the most in 2010?
Yahoo Video Becomes #2 Video Site — Just Before Being Shuttered by Greg Jarboe
comScore Video Metrix reported that Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in November 2010 with 145.8 million unique viewers. Yahoo Sites took the #2 spot last month with 61.8 million viewers.
Yahoo Video To Close March 15, 2011 by Frank Watson
Yahoo Video is no longer allowing uploads and has announced it will be deleting all videos and shuttering this product in March 15, 2011.
SES Conference & Expo
Search Week in Review 2010 Archives
Dec. 11 | Dec. 4
Nov. 20 | Nov. 13 | Nov. 6
Oct. 30 | Oct. 23 | Oct. 16 | Oct. 9 | Oct. 2
Sept. 25 | Sept. 18 | Sept. 10
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