SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 28, 2014

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Tweet Showing How Google Itself Is A “Scraper Site” Goes Massively Viral
  Perhaps it’s SEOs’ “Oreo” moment, a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much attention as Oreo’s famous Super Bowl blackout tweet. But the subject was a perfect storm of goodness — a real-life example of Google doing the type of thing in search it seems to be telling others not to […]
• New Bing Ads Editor Version Now Available
  Today Bing Ads announced the latest version of Bing Ads Editor is available and ready for download. We’ve covered some up the updates already, including the improved sync results window, Bing Ads Editor Update Gives The Lowly “Sync Update” Window Real Functionality (be sure to check out the “Nearly Hidden Gem” section in that article), […]
• Study: Women Spotlighted In Only 17% Of Google Doodles Between 2010 & 2013
  In its expansive Google: Doodle Us study, female advocacy group SPARK revealed only 77 women were represented in the 445 Google Doodles featured on the site’s various country-specific homepages between 2010 and 2013. Analyzing the individuals honored by Google logos appearing on the site’s global and regional homepages, as well as homepages for individual countries, […]
• AdWords Mobile App Download Campaigns Get Deeper Reporting In Google Analytics
  This week, Google added new reporting available for mobile app campaigns in Google Analytics. By linking AdWords and Google Analytics accounts and enabling auto-tagging, mobile app advertisers will be able to access more detailed performance reports about their campaigns in Google Analytics. New reports on mobile app campaign performance include day parts, destination URLs and […]
• When To Consider A Backlink Cleanup
  If you’ve been paying attention to the SEO world over the past year and a half, you know that link removal is all the rage. There are countless tutorials that detail how to go about identifying and getting rid of harmful backlinks. If you have the tools, time, patience and ability to follow step-by-step articles, […]
• How Fast Is SEO Really Changing? A Look Back At Search Ranking Factors
  Ready for a walk down memory lane? The Search Ranking Factors studies by well-known SEO Rand Fishkin started in 2005, and he and his group have been churning out perceptive insights every two years ever since. If you take a look at how the findings have changed throughout the eight years that the studies have published, […]
• 6 Essentials Of E-Commerce SEO You’re Probably Still Missing
  Shopping cart SEO can range from the simple to seemingly impossible. In a competitive landscape, how do you separate your store from the competition? How do you balance SEO and usability? Here are six things I look at early in any shopping cart SEO project. 1. Maintain A Simple Site Structure Make it easy for […]
• Search In Pics: Yahoo’s 19th Birthday Cake, Google Jugglers & Canadian KitKat Android Statue
  In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Yahoo Turns 19 Tomorrow – Their Birthday Cake: Source: Flickr Google Fire Pit: Source: Google+ Google […]
• Google Yanks Fake FBI Listing From Google Maps, Puts New Blocks In Place To Stop Further Abuse
  In response to a string of cases where fake business/organization listings have been added to Google Maps, Google says it has removed those listings and put in place new hurdles to make it more difficult for this kind of abuse to get through its system. This latest run of problems came to light about a […]

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Facebook Cuts Into Google’s Lead As Top Traffic Driver To Online News Sites [Report]
• Foursquare Opens Up About Using Check-In Data For Ad Retargeting, Revenue Generation
• Google Got Called Out For Being A “Scraper Site” & You Won’t Believe What Happened Next
• WTF Is Tag Management? Do You Really Know, Or Just Think You Do?
• Mobile Devices: 30 Percent Of Traffic, 15 Percent Of Sales
• Grabbing Attention Vs. Getting People To Care About Your Content

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• Inside Look at Yext’s Weekly ‘Manifesto’ Meetings, The Yext Blog

Local & Maps

• Bad Guys Beware: Good Luck Getting Past Yelp’s Consumer Alerts, Yelp Official Blog
• Wandering in the footsteps of the polar bear with Google Maps, Official Blog

Link Building

• Are Links Losing Value in Google’s Algorithm? – Whiteboard Friday, Moz

SEO

• 3 tips to find hacking on your site, and ways to prevent and fix it, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Best SEO Techniques and Practices for 2014, Search Engine People
• SEO: Bing Webmaster Tools for the Other 20 Percent, Practical E-Commerce

SEM / Paid Search

• Get Your Pay-Per-Click Pacing Up To Speed, SwellPath
• PPC Tool Review: Inside the Free AdWords Grader from @WordStream, BruceClay.com
• Product Listing Ads Guide, koozai.com
• Use AdWords Scripts to Quiet the PPC Noise, PPC Hero

Search Marketing

• A Formal Proposition of Search Ethics, The Google Cache
• Doing Right By Customers, Bing Webmaster Blog
• Video: Google Targets Poland, Movie Blogs Return, Scraper Sites Next Up & Bing On Poor Grammar, Search Engine Roundtable