IndustryWeekly Rundown: Google & Spam, Search Malware, GM Back to Facebook & More
Weekly Rundown: Google & Spam, Search Malware, GM Back to Facebook & More
Google's Matt Cutts and former ex-Googlers talk spam, rankings, and SEO tips. Google has safer results than Bing, Yandex, and Blekko. GM likes Facebook ads again. Here's a quick recap of search and social marketing news and tips from the past week.
Google’s Matt Cutts and former ex-Googlers talk spam, rankings, and SEO tips. Google has safer results than Bing, Yandex, and Blekko. GM likes Facebook ads again. Here’s a quick recap of search and social marketing news and tips from the past week.
INDUSTRY
Bing Delivers Five Times as Many Malicious Websites as Google – PC Magazine
By the numbers: Google (272 malicious results out of 10 million examined); Bing (1,285 out of 10 million); Yandex (3,330 out of 13 million); Blekko (203 out of 3 million), according to study by Germany’s AV-TEST.
Introducing “x-default hreflang” for international landing pages – Google Webmaster Central Blog
Says Google: “The new x-default hreflang attribute value signals to our algorithms that this page doesn’t target any specific language or locale and is the default page when no other page is better suited.” Annotation also supported by Yandex.
5 common mistakes with rel=canonical – Google Webmaster Central Blog
Google shares its best practices to avoid the following problems: rel=canonical to the first page of a paginated series; absolute URLs mistakenly written as relative URLs; unintended or multiple declarations of rel=canonical; category or landing page specifies rel=canonical to a featured article; rel=canonical in the < body>.
Google Tops Facebook in UK Digital Ad Revenues – eMarketer
Google at 44.2 percent; Facebook at less than 5 percent. Overall spending will increase 10 percent to £6 billion ($9.52 billion)…
UK digital ad spend up 12.5% to £5.42bn in 2012: report – Econsultancy
Meanwhile, the IAB reported that UK digital ad spend in the UK increased 12.5 percent to almost £5.42 billion in 2012; £526 million is from mobile advertising…
UK paid search CPCs overtake US for first time – The Drum
Meanwhile, Kenshoo reports that “CPCs in the UK rose by ten cents taking the total CPC to $0.48, overtaking the US CPC of $0.45 in the final quarter and dwarfing the rest of Europe which saw CPCs drop to $0.35 in the final quarter.”
Prepare for Product Ads Coming in Q3 2013– Bing Ads Developer Blog and Forum
Product Ads are in testing now and, when rolled out this summer to U.S. advertisers, will include image, price, description, and merchant information.
Better Quality Score = Better Results?– Portent
A study of 27 small business accounts shows moving from a quality score of 3 to 9 has no conversion rate benefit, while improving from a quality score of 2 to 10 reduces CPA by 90 percent – and going from 6 to 10 can improve conversion costs by more than 50 percent.
STUDY: What Do Millennials Like On Facebook?– AllFacebook
A look at the favorite activities, brands, movies, music artists, TV shows, sports, sports teams, and athletes among 18- to 34-year-olds.
Facebook Fatigue Among Teens Should Freak Out Marketers – Bloomberg Businessweek
Facebook and YouTube are on the way out, Reddit and Twitter (plus Snapchat, Vine, and 4chan) are in with teens, according to Piper Jaffray.
Adding What You’re Doing to Status Updates – Facebook Newsroom
Facebook status updates can now include what you’re watching, reading, listening to, eating, or drinking, and how you’re feeling.
Twitter Use Drives Up, LinkedIn Stalls in the UK – eMarketer
Kinetic Worldwide survey finds social network usage was led by Facebook with 72 percent (up from 60 percent two years ago), followed by Twitter at 28 percent (up from 13 percent), and LinkedIn at 11 percent (up from 9 percent).
What you told us – Digg
As Digg works on a Google Reader replacement, it shares survey results: 80 percent check Google Reader many times a day; 40 percent of users follow more than 100 feeds; 75 percent use it for both work and play. “Search is a huge investment in terms of development time and infrastructure costs. We don’t yet know if we’ll have the necessary infrastructure up and running in time for our initial beta launch, but it’s definitely on the roadmap.”
Sharing new data and stories about U.S. small businesses on Facebook – Facebook Marketing
Facebook reports there are more than 2 billion connections between local businesses and people; in an average week, there are over 645 million views of, and 13 million comments on, local business Pages; about 70 percent of monthly active users in the U.S. and Canada are connected to a local business.
The new Foursquare, 4 years and 3.5 billion check-ins in the making – Foursquare Blog
With v. 6.0, company had added a prominent Explore search box in the top nav of its iPhone app, and has made a ton of behind-the-scenes improvements to make the search experience even better.
IDC: For Mobile Advertising Networks, Era of Dominance Is Over – IDC
Mobile ads to hit $7 billion this year; $2.8 billion spent on mobile search ads (up from $1.6 billion in 2011) and Google dominates with $2.166 million in revenue; Facebook was tops in mobile display with $234 million.
Silicon Valley’s Mouthwatering Tax Break – The Wall Street Journal
A couple professors are complaining that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and other companies are feeding their employees. It’s not clear if the IRS is actually investigating anything here.
Google adds local safety alerts to search results – CNET
A partnership between Google and tech startup Nixle will allow safety notifications from local authorities to appear at the top of search results.
Google Notifying Searchers In EU That They Use Cookies – Search Engine Land
Users now seeing a message that “Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies,” and links to a page explaining how Google uses cookies.
Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet – CNNMoney
Nothing connected to the Internet is off limits to Shodan, which collects information on servers, webcams, iPhones, routers, traffic lights, control systems, security cameras and much more.
Google Maps reveals tax cheats– Associated Press
StreetView helps identify 100 homeowners and 30 construction companies as suspected tax dodgers in Lithuania.
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