There's so much to cover in the search world this week it's practically unbearable. Hopefully the weather is terrible and you're bored so this won't interfere too much with those pesky weekend plans. I'm personally going hiking Sunday - my first time this year (hooray!). On to the topics:
- The "Google hates paid links" story is huge and has been discussed by every blog but ours (we pride ourselves on differentiating content). However, I have to link over to Scoreboard's How to Turn Google's Paid Link Reporting Into Profit. A genius plan, Brian.
- Mr. Dave "F" Naylor put together a remarkably good post on how to trap and identify rogue bots.
- Brian Clark was on Digg for this story, but I need to contribute to my share of Linkerati-ism and the post on avoiding headline mistakes is worth everyone's time to read and apply.
- Loren Baker authored a post on Digg vs. Del.icio.us that I thoroughly enjoyed. He picks apart the logic of why a site with a smaller userbase has so much viral attention pointed its way - I'm thinking about how to apply those same principals to our sites and our clients to earn that same kind of buzz.
- Richard Zwicky knows what Google's real market share is - about 78%... Also, check out which portions of Google drive what percentages of traffic. Very good stuff, considering the quality of his datasources.
- This is what I want for SEOmoz - to be self sustaining purely via the premium content - and to be able to privately incubate great ideas internally.
- YCombinator has their own developer-centric news site... How did I not know about this earlier - that site rocks!
- Everyone's linking to it, but that's because it's so good - read Todd Malicoat's SEO Playbook... twice.
- You've succeeded Jonah - now you just need them to get a mention on the Colbert Report :)
- The Economist has a terrific article about how social media sites are finally overtaking that which has never been overtaken before - porn sites.
And, I'd be remiss not to send a link over to Julian, who originally contributed the idea for our tagline. His new site is Dfinitive - the Elite Directory. Sounds a bit ominous, and the categories are a bit narrow right now, but at least Brian Turner's top on the SEO page, so they've got that right :)
So, what did I miss... I mean, besides everything that Todd and Lisa covered?
Richard Zwicky's post on market share is fascinating. It is so dramatically different than what other companies that report market share post.
I tend to agree with it.
Further there is an interesting anomaly reported that doesn't reflect the power and importance of google maps/local. While the totals reflect very low numbers consistent with several years of reporting in fact the importance of g maps/local is extraordinary following google's insertion of gmaps onebox and gmaps serps at the top of g serps.
This is most evident in the complaints found at Google groups for Maps users. The most extraordinary case was when the webmasters for two different hospitals reported widespread problems with phone calls to wrong numbers. It turns out that the information in G maps/local can be very different than what is in the web site. (It might be pulled from old or extraneous data).
When you extrapolate back to Zwicky's research on actual G market share (extracted from his data) as being possibly 50% greater than what is reported by sources like Comscore, Hitwise, Nielson, and Compete....and then you get a feel for the importance of G maps/local for all those long tail local/regional searches one gets a sense for how important and critical G maps/local has become.....even if users aren't turning to this advanced search option initially.
What's Up Rand!! Happy Saturday!
You are right about the weather being bad. How did you know? I just hope the Giants game doesn't get rained out.
Thanks for sharing the links. There were a few that I missed out on this week. All are great reads and very informative.
Scott
iSearch Media
Nice set of links, some good links there i hadn't seen yet :)
The Google market share article was quite interesting
w00w thanks for the list, this weekend the sun in shining in the netherlands, so you will see me in the garden reading all that!!!
Beside Seomoz I like to read Eli’s blog at Bluehatseo.com Lots of good stories.
Hi Rand,
Thanks for the link, you are a man of your word.
Not sure what part of my website you think "sounds a bit ominous"?
Julian Paling
Dfinitive.com
Hahaha!! Genius indeed! Got through half so far. Thanks for the round up Rand.
hey... even if i will not go hiking, i do not have the time to read it all... the weekend has only 48 hours :)
I thought Google was double, maybe three times as Yahoo but wow, they are almost a monopoly. I don't know weather to say Congratulations or run and hide. :)
Hey Rand,
When should we expect a new Link Building article update? I really want to buy but I don't know if I should wait or if updates will be available??
Bud - Scott's working on it today, actually. I suspect it will launch before the week is out.
Awesome -- thanks so much for the quick response!
In blatant self-promotion, you missed Reputation Monitor on Marketing Pilgrim. twice (though in your defence, the 2nd mention was after you wrote this post!
:)
Ooohhh... so no work getting done by me this week *winks*
Hi Rand,
"Mr. Dave "F" Naylor put together a remarkably good post on how to trap and identify rogue bots."
Again, an excellent set of useful links. I am keen to test the robot trap. Definately worth a read....
Shahid.SEO
Hiking? Cool man. Spring is right around the corner I guess.
I am going to go golfing for the first time this year in the northwest.
Hopefully I can catch up on all this stuff before I go, or maybe Sunday would be a good day to catch anyhting I missed!
Thanks for pointing out all the happenings Rand.
Great list, many thanks here!
Great reading list, I especially enjoyed the article in the Economist.
Thanks!
Getting to read the Economist make a double entendre about "climax"... priceless!
Thanks for the list,
Gradiva
Brian's post maps out the exact concerns I have over the paid link reporting - I realise that my post was 3 days later but I honestly didn't read his (although I will be from now on!)