SEO WORLD NEWS

Posted by randfish

This week had lots of exciting news from inside the search space, but as you’re probably well familiar by now, I generally like to discuss topics that are outside the mainstream dialogue of search marketers (between Danny, Andy & this rowdy crowd, that’s pretty much covered). So, this week, I wanted to go completely outside of search and look at news and posts that have a secondary, but substantive impact on how we do our jobs.

• First off, following in the footsteps on the New York Times’ opening of archived content, Viacom has released the archives of the Daily Show in video format. The power of the web is obviously extremely pervasive in reaching even those who swore only a few years back that Google (and the Internet) were mortal enemies.
• Speaking of online video, how about Disney, News Corp., Veoh, Dailymotion, Microsoft, Viacom and others banding together to issue guidelines on copyright rules for video on the web? As the article notes, the elephant in the room was the absence of Google and YouTube.
• For those among us who wonder why the Perez Hilton’s and tabloid rags of the world seem to rule the headlines, wonder no more. Research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology appears to show that human beings have a fundamental pre-disposition towards gossip. I’ll try to keep fighting my nature, but I guess it shows why stories like this and this (the latter currently linked-to from the Yahoo! home page) do so well.
• Along similar lines, the Scientific American has a fantastic piece that asks if Greed is Good, using eBay and its buyers, sellers and feedback system to illustrate how trust has evolved to make the marketplace efficient and effective.
• I should have linked to this earlier, because it’s fantastic stuff - Nick Wilsdon and the crowd at Multilingual Search have compiled a roundup of search and PPC data from 17 countries.
• In the world of flattening economies and shrinking middlemen, witness the apparent overarching success of Radiohead’s "pay what you want" release of their album last week - an estimated $10 million of "donated" revenue.
• I certainly don’t agree with everything in here, but maybe that makes it even better. It’s Michael Martinez’s 20 Hardcore SEO Tips (and a great piece of linkbait - nice to see Michael taking that route, yet staying mostly positive, if controversial).
• One more SEO insider bit of news - sitelinks are now "manageable" inside Google’s Webmaster Tools. Since brand names are very frequently the top converting terms for online businesses, let me highly recommend that you make sure to address this for your sites and those of your clients ASAP.

Obviously, this week I barely covered anything that I normally would/should, so feel free to link to any & all stories of consequence in the comments.

p.s. Flying back to Seattle tomorrow, and next week should give me more time to address the rewrite of the Beginner’s Guide.

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