Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
- Location History, “Footstreams” & Aggregated Check-in Data Will Transform LBS
Google recently announced a Location History dashboard that allows users to see where they’ve been, based on their Latitude activity:
Today we’re launching an experimental new view in Beta for Google Location History to visualize your location history in a different — and hopefully more interesting — way than just a string of locations.
If […] - Q & A With Brent D. Payne, In-House SEO Director, Tribune Company
Brent D. Payne is the SEO Director at Tribune Company, whose properties include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Baltimore Sun. In one form or another, Brent has been engaged in search engine marketing for over a decade. He’s also a well-known name in the SEO community, with many speaking appearances augmented by an […]
- Google To German Privacy Official: Turning Over Private WiFi Data To You Would Violate Your Own Law
Google continues to bump up against frustrated government regulators around the globe who are convinced that the company is doing sneaky things and willfully violating domestic privacy laws. Yesterday European privacy officials continued to express disapproval and assert that Google’s data retention policies violate its six month data retention rule.
Today the NY Times covers Google’s […] - Google Confirms “Mayday” Update Impacts Long Tail Traffic
Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent […]
- New Link Diagnosis Update Fixes What Was Broken
The team behind Link Diagnosis has announced a list of updates to their popular link analysis/SEO tool. Two of the updates, in particular, provide a fix for a pair of disappointing features that I wrote about last year when Link Diagnosis completed a major relaunch.
First, the result sets have been expanded from 100 to 1,000 […] - Google Lists Top 1,000 Sites On The Web & Then Lets You Advertise On Them
The Google AdWords blog announced new features for Google Ad Planner and AdWords content network today.
The big news is that Google publicly released a list of the top 1,000 sites by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. The list ranks sites based on category, unique visitors, reach and page views. Not only […] - Understanding Keyword Match Types
In paid search marketing, users searching on specific keywords will trigger ads by advertisers who have indicated those keywords are relevant to their business by participating in the auction on those terms. Beyond just bidding, though, there are many variables that come into play which you can use to tactically enhance the effectiveness of […]
- Drill (Down), Baby, Drill: Facebook’s New “Simple” Privacy Settings Still Pretty Complex
Today, Facebook announced new simplified privacy controls designed to ease a settings overload problem that it admitted has challenged its users. Did it succeed? I’d give it an A for effort but a C+ to B- for actually solving the overload problem. Rather than a “one click solution” or a single-page recap, there remains a […]
- 57% Of Americans Have Googled Themselves: Pew Study
The Pew Research Center has released a deep study today that paints an interesting picture of how U.S. adults use the Internet — search engines, in particular — to track their online reputations. One of the primary takeaways that contradicts previous research is that more than half of adult Internet users have “Googled” themselves. The […]
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- Facebook News Feed: Now Delivered To Your Yahoo! Mail, ymailblog.com
- Google Buzz for mobile now available on more devices, Official Google Mobile Blog
Business Issues
- Google and American Booksellers Association Announce Strategic Partnership, ResourceShelf
- Yahoo Investor Day Exec Presentations in Living Color: Collect Them All!, AllThingsD
- Yahoo’s Bartz Downplays Engagement Worries, paidContent.org
- Oregon Judge Slaps Google With Restraining Order Over Private Wifi Data, Business Insider
- We’ve officially acquired AdMob!, Official Google Blog
- Yahoo, Facebook, EBay Urge End to Viacom YouTube Suit, Bloomberg
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Foursquare To Add Photos (Which Set Facebook Growth Off Like A Rocket), Business Insider
- Google Maps New Documentation On Merging Duplicate Business Listings, Search Engine Roundtable
- Map your data with the Maps API and Fusion Tables, Google Geo Developers Blog
- Palm Loses Their Lead webOS Designer To The Google Android Team, Others May Follow, TechCrunch
- The 7 Deadly Sins of Google Local Listings, Search Engine Journal
Link Building
- All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines’ Valuation of Links, SEOmoz
- Did newspapers just destroy SEO?, David Naylor
Paid Search & Contextual
- Google Testing Gray Background For AdWords Ads?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Rudd continues to spend big with Google, The Australian
Searching
- Two New Online Databases (Free) of Digitized Content from Emory U. & U. of Texas at Austin, ResourceShelf
SEM Industry
- Matt Cutts Outed Again As GoogleGuy?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Podcast: Hiring Trends in 2010 for Internet Marketing and Interactive Jobs, Onward Search
SEO & SEM
- Dealing With a “Scam” Listing For Your Company Name in the SERPs, Michael Gray
- How to Get A New Site Fully Indexed, jaankanellis.com
- How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign to Profit From Every Click (Advanced), Search Engine Guide
- No Robots Allowed, Search Engine Journal
- Outsourcing your SEO copywriting? 9 ways to get the best quote, SEO Copywriting
- SEO Goals, KPI’s & Managing Client Expectations – Part 1, Vertical Leap Blog
- SEO Will Never, Ever Die, AIM Clear Blog
- Understanding Semantic Search and SEO, Search Engine Journal
- Using Account Organization to Spend PPC Dollars More Intelligently – Part 1, Search Engine Guide
Social Media
- State of Pennsylvania Now Participating in Foursquare; First State to "Sign-Up", ResourceShelf
- "Reshare" in Google Buzz, Official Gmail Blog
- Smart Ways to Promote Your Business on Twitter, New York Times
- The Logic of Landing Pages, inc.com
Video, Music & Image Search
- Video Resource: A Massive Treasure Chest of Author Interviews (1988-2004), ResourceShelf
- Google Moderator on YouTube enables real-time feedback from your audience, YouTube Blog
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- Understanding Semantic Search and SEO
- Did newspapers just destroy SEO?
- Google TV; it's all about the data
- The Future of Niche Social Networking