LSF Interactive Blog

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Feb 18 – 24:

Top Stories:

• It’s Our First Pandaversary!
• Wikipedia Appears on Page 1 of Google for 99% of Searches [Study]
• Optimizing Your Local Listing on Apple’s Siri

The Rest:

• Google Acquires Cuil Patent Applications
• Pinterest Takes A Small Step Toward Fighting Copyright With Opt-Out Meta Tag
• Broken Link Building Guide: From Noob to Novice
• Google: One URL With Special Stylesheet Is Easy Mobile SEO
• 20 Landing Page Designs Get Picked Apart & Analyzed for Conversion
• Using schema.org markup for videos
• Park My Domains With OpenBH Now Adsense For Domains is Retired
• 101 Best Businesses to Start With Your Computer for 1990
• Nuts.com Migrates Domain, Follows Google’s Instructions But Rankings Don’t Follow
• Google Panda Hail Mary Pass: Disallow Google For Six Months
• The Bro’s Guide To Pinterest
• The problem with Facebook Connect
• 17 Tips for Improving Website Conversion
• 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue [Infographic]
• Facebook Promotion Guidelines, DECODED

Video of The Week:

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Feb 11 – Feb 17:

Top Stories:

• 62 Percent Of Valentine’s Day Restaurant Searches Were Mobile
• Everything You Need To Know About SEO Web Structure & Internal Links
• Demand Media posts $6.4-million loss in fourth quarter
• Dilbert SEO Comic Strip
• The History of Marketing: An Exhaustive Timeline [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Rest:

• Google and the death of beta testing
• Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research
• Where do you want me to click?
• Google may be officially launching Rater Hub and pay you to rate search results
• What is AuthorRank? [Infographic]
• National Car Rental Commercial Features SEO
• Want People to Return Your Emails? Avoid These Words [INFOGRAPHIC]
• The 17 Rs of Mobile Marketing
• Reaching The Multi-Tasker In 2012
• The worst social media screw-ups of 2011- Live from Social Media Week – Suxorz Awards
• Facebook Timeline for Brands Coming Later This Month [REPORT]
• How $66 Dollars Could Double Facebook’s Advertising Revenue

Video of The Week:

RC Plane W/ Camera Flies Around Scenic Germany

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Feb 4 – Feb 10:

• 17 Search Quality Highlights: January
• Final Score: Twitter & Facebook 8 Super Bowl Mentions Each, Google+ Gets Zero
• Google PageRank Update: February 2012
• Klout Myth Busters: Thoughts From The Experts
• Giving Away The Secrets Of 99.3% Email Delivery Noah
• Google Unveils ‘Solve For X’ Website, Hints At TED-like Think Tank
• The Secret To Going Viral: It’s All About Culture
• 4 Simple Steps To A Facebook Timeline That Tells Your Marketing Story
• Guide To Finding Linkbuilding Targets With Social Media
• 5 Essential Spreadsheets For Social Media Analytics

Video of The Week:

Sleepy Man Banjo Boys

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Jan 28 – Feb 3:

Top Stories:

• Facebook Files To Go Public, The S-1 Is Live
• The Inevitability of Internet Regulation
• Study: Only 1% of Facebook ‘Fans’ Engage With Brands
• Bruce Clay Inc.’s Statement on Local Paid Inclusion

The Rest:

• Google fires Kenya boss over Mocality
• Why Bricks & Mortar Retail Will Continue to Get Harder – Mobile Price Comparisons
• What Pinterest is Doing That Facebook Isn’t
• Google: Spam Links To 404 Pages Won’t Hurt You
• Is Local Paid Inclusion for Real?
• Bing Now Including Full Articles On Bing Results
• StumbleUpon Kills Direct Links, iFrames Everything
• Kill The Bugs!

Video of The Week:

Flying People in New York City

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Jan 21 – 27:

Top Stories:

• Focus On The User
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater
• Breaking down Google’s revenues
• Google Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed

The Rest:

• New Improved Download Options For Google Webmaster Tools
• Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans
• Forbes showing the SEO love again!
• Answers to 43 Questions About Search, Social, Content, Conversions and More
• Google’s Query Based Analysis and Reranking of Search Results
• Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube
• New: Test Sitemaps & Googlebot Mobile In Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Updates Average Position In Webmaster Tools & Analytics
• Public Alerts now on Google Maps
• How To Get Your Clients To Be ‘Yes’ Men
• For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews

Video of The Week:

Did you know that every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube?!

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Jan 14 – 20:

Top Stories:

• Tech News Can Be So Dramatic
• Why The Web Is Going Dark Over SOPA & PIPA
• Page layout algorithm improvement

The Rest:

• Website outages and blackouts the right way
• Using Eye-Path Heatmaps to Design Kick-Ass Landing Page User Experiences
• Never Worry About an Algorithm Update Again, a History
• GoogleBot Completely Stop Crawling Yesterday For SOPA?
• Pinterest Sending Webmasters Lots Of Traffic
• Making sense of Google (not provided) data
• No, Google+ Doesn’t Have A 60 Percent Engagement Rate

Video of The Week:

Great Video That Explains How PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Jan 7 – 13:

Top Stories:

• The Real Reason Google Turned off Keyword Referrals for Logged in Users?
• Better page titles in search results

The Rest:

• Links In IFrames Pass Value In Google
• Search, plus Your World
• Michael Whitaker’s web analytics blog
• Testing the Accuracy of Visitor Data from Alexa, Compete, Google Trends, Doubleclick & Quantcast
• Mobile Website or Please Read the Fine Print?
• 5 Tips For Optimal Mobile Site Indexing
• More Bang for Your Buck: Maximize New Links on Old Pages
• Was Google Caught in a Sting Operation in Kenya?

Video of The Week:

Static Dog!

Here are the top search engine marketing stories from the past week of Dec-24 to Jan-6:

Top Stories:

• Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome
• This Post is Sponsored by Google
• Google: Chrome Page Will Have PageRank Reduced Due To Sponsored Posts
• Google: Yes, Sponsored Post Campaign Was Ours But Not What We Signed-Up For

The Rest:

• How Google Might Identify Transient Content on Webpages
• SEO Pricing: 600+ Agencies Share Costs of Services & Pricing Models
• 8 Predictions for SEO in 2012
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• 30 search quality highlights (with codenames!): December

Video of The Week:

Walking upside down under the ice. mind = blown

Well folks its that time of year again! This is a time when we start to look back at the past year and reflect upon the changes and progress made in the world of Search Marketing, and what a year it was! There were many new products launched, link buying schemes exposed, microformats started to shine, Yahoo Sitexplorer passed away, and plenty of new algorithm updates were released to give us even more factors to consider.

As always, Google was very busy this year launching the following notable products: Google Offers, Google Plus One, Google Instant Pages, Google+, and Google Music. They also focused on improving existing products by giving Google Places, Youtube, and Google Analytics interface improvements. In addition Google Analytics released multi-channel conversion data, realtime data, and a premium version that will give Omniture a run for their money.

Google also introduced a major algorithm update called Panda which aimed to lower the rankings of “low-quality sites”, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. Google also built upon the Caffeine web indexing system and launched significant improvements to their ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give searchers more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness. We also saw strong updates from Social channels like Facebook, Twitter and more.

Below are the top search engine marketing stories that stood out from 2011:

January

• Introducing the New Facebook Profile
• Google Confirms Testing a Groupon Like Product – Google Offers
• Eric Schmidt Dodges Future Bullets By Stepping Down As CEO
• Google search and search engine spam
• Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Live? Sites Are Dropping.
• Algorithm change launched
• Facebook & Twitter Both Blocked in Egypt
• Facebook Launches Deals Page on Site

February

• Facebook Pages Redesign
• The Dirty Little Secrets of Search
• Overstock.com’s Great Rankings Got Them Penalized In Google
• Finding more high-quality sites in search
• The ‘Panda’ That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google’s Top Search Engineers

March

• Latest Facebook Investment Values Company at $65 Billion
• Google Analytics Unveils A New User Experience
• Twitter Brings Local Trends to 70 More Locations Across the World
• Meet +1: Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button
• Facebook Encourages Users To Covert Profiles To Pages

April

• Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design
• Introducing Multi-Channel Funnels
• Google Offers Now Live
• Here’s The Guy Who Unwittingly Live-Tweeted The Raid On Bin Laden

May

• 90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings
• Introducing schema.org: Search engines come together for a richer web
• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• LinkedIn Goes Public
• New Edition of the Ranking Factors for 2011 is Now Live!
• Twitter Acquires TweetDeck
• Twitter Launches “Follow” Button for Websites

June

• Google Instant Pages: An Impressive & Speedy Addition To Google Search
• Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update
• Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives
• Pandora Becomes a Social Network
• Twitter Unveils Photo & Video Sharing
• Twitter Exceeds 200 Million Tweets per Day

July

• 20 Million Google+ Users May Exist by the Weekend
• Site Explorer shutdown
• Hello America. Spotify here
• Google Overhauls Place Pages, Emphasizes Reviews & Kills Citations
• Replicate Google’s Panda Questionnaire – Whiteboard Friday

August

• Google Algorithm Change History
• Google Analytics Traffic Change? Here Is Why
• Google Analytics Visits Metric: Change. Implications. Opportunities.
• Twitter Adds an Activity Stream
• Facebook Rolls Out Major Privacy Update

September

• When CTA’s Attack! – 10 Real World Call To Action Examples
• Google Buys Zagat Ratings, Rocks Local
• Beyond Exact Match Anchor Text To Next Generation Link Signals
• Facebook Introduces The Subscribe Button
• .xxx rated: internet’s red-light district has arrived
• Reconsideration requests get more transparent
• Americans and Text Messaging
• Google Analytics Realtime
• Introducing Google Analytics Premium
• Facebook Rolls Out New Site Features And Designs
• Facebook Reaches 800 Million Registered Users
• Facebook Improves WIth New Friends List, Ticker, Chat, Top Stories
• Twitter Reaches 100 Million Active Users

October

• Twitter Releases Web Analytics Tool
• Facebook: Moving to OAuth 2.0 + HTTPS
• Steve Jobs passed away today
• Introducing Facebook for iPad
• The Not So Leaked Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines
• Skype Your Facebook Friends
• Facebook Launches Dedicated Messaging App for iPhone & Android
• Making Search More Secure: Accessing Search Query Data In Google Analytics
• Celebrities Killed The SEO Star
• GET, POST, and safely surfacing more of the web
• Most Young Adults in U.S. Now Own Smartphones, Survey Says
• Giving you fresher, more recent search results

November

• Groupon Is the Biggest Internet IPO Since Google
• Google Plus For Businesses & Brands: Google Plus Pages
• Google Music is open for business
• Yahoo Sunsets Site Explorer (A Eulogy)
• Facebook Employees Go Nuts As Zuckerberg Tells Them The IPO Is Coming

December

• StumbleUpon: New Design, New Logo, & New Features
• Get more into what you love on YouTube with our new look
• Facebook Officially Rolls Out The Timeline
• Twitter Launches Major Redesign, Including Embeddable Tweets
• New Markup For Multilingual Content
• A Tale Of Two Studies: Google vs Bing Click-Through Rate
• Introducing Smarthphone Googlebot-Mobile
• Google Places Check-in Offers Now Live
• Zeitgeist 2011: How the world searched

Did we miss something that you feel is worthy of the list? Please share your posts and thoughts below. See you next year!