Search Engine Land’s Most Read Stories Of 2012: Google Places Goes Google+, Panda, Penguin & More

What were our most popular stories on Search Engine Land over the past year? Below, the news stories that were published in 2012 that were read the most:

1. Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search (May)
2. Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome (January)
3. Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World” (January)
4. How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse (January)
5. The Top Heavy Update: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm (January)
6. Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy (January)
7. Too Much SEO? Google’s Working On An “Over-Optimization” Penalty For That (March)
8. Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update, Plus Changes To How It Evaluates Links, Local Search Rankings & Much More (February)
9. Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice (April)
10. The Pirate Update: Google Will Penalize Sites Repeatedly Accused Of Copyright Infringement (August)

Were these the biggest stories of the year? Not necessarily. If you note, many of the stories date back to January. That means they’ve had all year to accumulate further page views, compared to some published later. But not all of them are from January.
Perhaps next year, we’ll see if there’s a way to adjust to determine the most popular stories relative to when they are published.

By the way, our most “evergreen” or non-news content that received the most visits in 2012 were:

• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO

As for other metrics, we’ve covered our most shared stories on Google+ already. The most tweeted on Twitter and most liked on Facebook will be coming later this week. We’re also sharing some of our most popular columns within each column’s category this week, such as Search & Analytics Year In Review that came out last week. More are on their way.

Happy New Year and all the best in 2013, from Search Engine Land!