This Week in Search: Triple Roundup for 10/1/09 to 10/21/09

24Oct2009 Filed under: Online Marketing Author: JW

Posted by Sam Niccolls

Bing’s Twitter Search & Google’s Defensive PR:
On the heels of Bing’s Twitter Search announcement, Google’s PR team put their Annie Oakley shades on and announced some upcoming social media moves of their own.

Google Analytics’ New Features:
There are some fantastic features in GA’s latest release including customized alerts, threshold goals (i.e. for time on site and pages per visit), advanced table filtering, mobile traffic reporting, more robust user defined variables, and unique visitor segmentation, just to name a few.

Why SEO Matters:
Derek Powazek’s blog posts aside, About Online Matters’ thoughtful reflection provides some great reminders about the value and importance SEO.

Business Week Best Under 25:
If you’re inspired when you see those 13 year old figure skaters win Olympic gold, Business Week’s list of top 25 young entrepreneurs will have you looping and lutzing in no time.

Please Remove Your Site From Google:
This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold.

SEOmoz News – Lindsay Perkin Wassell Announces Departure:
In her post last week, SEOmoz’s consulting lead reminds us that not all duplicate content is bad. And though we feel bad for the non-canonical twin, we couldn’t be happier for Lindsay and her husband. Many congrats, Lindsay!

Wolfram Alpha Launches $50 iPhone App:
In a month where a search engine launches a $50 iPhone app and Adobe rolls out a free Photoshop app, doubts could be raised. But to the best of our knowledge, the world is still round and pigs are still unable to fly.

Conde Nast to Close Gourmet Magazine:
At the beginning of the month, Conde Nast made their not so savory announcement that they’re closing Gourmet and two other magazines.

New Q & A: Bing Continues to Improve for Webmasters:
Bing made a solid addition to their webmaster suite with the addition of a new Q & A section.

The Evolution of Zuckerberg & Facebook:
VentureBeat’s under the hood look at the evolution of Zuckerberg provides an interesting news feed on Facebook’s company history and culture.

Germany’ Best SEO Resources
We love that Germans love SEO here at SEOmoz. If you’re a German SEO, or you spreken a little Deutsch, you can cast your votes for Germany’s best on SEO United’s site. (Note: If you do not speak German, referring traffic source is a great way to pick your vote for "Best SEO Blog.")

People Are Less Happy on Mondays:
Facebook status updates confirm the brilliance of Bill Lumbergh; We’re all prone to catching cases of the Monday’s… mmm-kay, great.

Google Patents Trust Rank:
Bill Slawski talks about how the trust rank in Google’s recent patent is different from the trust rank described in Yahoo’s 2004 paper and he shares some possible reasons for the patent. In related news, the Google Webmaster Tools patent on crawl rate filed by Vanessa Fox and several others in 2006 was also accepted this month.

Using Google Analytics to Find Links to Your Non-www:
Luna Metrics has a wealth of useful blog posts on web analytics. And though limited to link data on your own site, Jim Gianoglio’s method for finding links to your non-www URLs is a creative, SEO-related use of Google Analytics.

Video – Aaron Patzer Talks About Mint:
The presentation given my Mint’s CEO about the company’s history is an entertaining watch for startup entrepreneurs and tech junkies alike.

Back in the eCommerce Day:
Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos share’s a wayback machine style look at 9 old school eCommerce website designs.

Surprising Web Analytics Usage Data:
The Google commissioned Forrester study uncovers some statistics you might not have guess about enterprise usage of free analytics tools, as well as how ineffectively most people use their web analytics tools.

Video – Matt Cutts Gets His Herr Did:
Members of Matt Cutts’ team shave his head as the camera rolls.

20 Conversion Rate Optimization Resources:
Wordstream’s compilation of conversion rate optimization focused blogs, books, and podcasts is worth a look through. It has several resources you might be familiar with, as well as a handful that are probably new.

First Link Checker Tool:
Based on the idea that Google only considers anchor text for the first link on a page to be relevant, BusinessOnLine launched an early version of a tool that identifies multiple links on a page with the same destination.

10 Worst Money Making Business Ideas:
Neil Patel’s list of bad business ideas is both humorous and reprehensible. So yes, his Homer Simpson graphic is more than appropriate for the post.

Using Google’s Chart API for Map-based Linkbait:
I’m a big fan of Epicurious’ Seasonal Ingredient Map, as well as Travel Pod’s Traveler IQ Challenge, but Google code offers some pretty slick ways to implement customized maps for linkbait on your site.

Highlighted by two great posts from Casey Henry, each of which were promoted to the SEOmoz Blog, there have been a bevy of bookmark-worthy reads this October on YOUmoz.

Top YOUmoz entries:

* Indicates blog post was promoted to the SEOmoz Blog

SEOs Are Spammers, Evil Doers and Opportunists:
And yes, you should read the exchange between blogger Derek Powazek and Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan. If you missed it, the back-and-forth went a little something like this… Powazek made a post disparaging SEO, which sparked a reaction across the industry. Danny Sullivan responded to Powazek’s post. Then, Powazek responded to Danny’s response and Danny followed up again in response to Powazek’s response. There were also a myriad of tweets and blog posts, but that’s the basic gist of the blogger-mama-drama that was.

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