What a week! I'm still recovering from the highlight, which, of course, was SMX. But even when conferences are held, search doesn't stop. Here's what happened in this week of search:
Google Adds Features
Early this week, we saw reports that Google AdWords has rolled out new features. On the same day, we reported that Google Webmaster Tools link data updates are more frequent. This was confirmed by the new announcement today about Google Webmaster Central has gotten a bunch of new features including extra sitelinks. Barry illustrates how 8 sitelinks can really change the landscape.
Similarly, Google Analytics is getting a major overhaul and Urchin is returning. I can't wait for the latter, quite frankly.
Google Q3 Earnings: No Surprise There
Google Q3 earnings have soared 57%. That means that anyone owning Google stock is rich. Unfortunately, that excludes me.
Oh, and and 77% of their 34% of revenue goes to AdSense publishers. That means that you're profiting off of Google's success.
Yahoo Catches Up
Yahoo has now added a blocked domains for advertisers so that their ads will not display on certain websites.
...and then Yahoo Slows Down
Yes, the Yahoo spider is out for coffee as many people are seeing its slurping activity slowing down.
Google Gets Naked
Now this is why Google is the #1 search engine of choice! Nude images are easily accessible on the search engine. Sweet!
Microsoft Gets Voice Activated Search
Microsoft Live is going mobile and their 1-800-CALL-411 will compete with 1-800-GOOG-411. Has anyone tried it yet?
Google's YouTube Anti-Piracy Tool Rolls Out
But will it work? How many of you are worried about this new YouTube anti-piracy tool will do nothing for copyright thieves?
China = Dumb
China has directed all search traffic to Baidu in an attempted coup d'etat on search. This totally sucks for American tourists stuck in China. I'm not going there till it's fixed.
Too Many Identical Results on Google
So at SMX, Danny pulled up a page of mine with a search query and my result, on the same exact URL, showed up in positions #1 and #2. Weird. I'm not the only one. Barry reported that others are seeing this behavior too. My robots.txt is fine. Something's up with Google. Danny, it's not my fault!
Link Buys to Stay... for Now
Many folks think that buying links is great. In fact, most are not afraid of penalties. Will Google's algorithm change drastically to affect the sentiment? I think that the results are pretty relevant right now, link buying or not. The truth might be related to the number of clicks on a result. I think that Google should take note.
SMX Recap
We blogged every session at SMX Social Media (except for the Wikipedia Clinic) and Barry summarized what we covered:
- Social Media Marketing Essentials
- Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
- Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
- A Marketer's Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
- Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
- Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
- Evangelist - The Marketer's Role in SMM
- Micro Communities
- Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing
For the record, I spoke at one and blogged three of them. Kim Krause Berg covered the remaining six. Thanks Kim!
Oh, and did you know I was mentioned in Forbes with a bunch of wonderful people? Neither did I -- not even after I got home and was told "great job in Forbes!" I had to do the research myself. Next time, people, please provide a URL. :)
See you next week!
