SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 5, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google: Low PageRank & Bad Spelling May Go Hand-In-Hand; Panda, Too? If your website and/or web pages have low PageRank, it’s possible that they also suffer from poor spelling and grammar. […]

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

From Search Engine Land:

  • Google: Low PageRank & Bad Spelling May Go Hand-In-Hand; Panda, Too?

    If your website and/or web pages have low PageRank, it’s possible that they also suffer from poor spelling and grammar. Google’s top spam cop, Matt Cutts, made the correlation between low PageRank and poor spelling in a Google Webmaster Help video just made public today. In responding to a question about whether spelling and grammar […]

  • They’re Back! Google Issues Weather Report For Panda Update

    Google’s Matt Cutts has just issued a “weather report” about upcoming changes to be expected from Google’s Panda algorithm. If you’re not familiar with algorithmic weather reports, sit back and learn. Because they’re back, and that’s a good thing. Before There Was Panda, There Was Florida At the end of 2003, Google released what became […]

  • Report: Android Nears 50% US Smartphone Market Share

    Metrics firm comScore released new US mobile data today. Google’s Android has increased its market-share lead over everyone else. Now at nearly 44 percent, Google could reach 50 percent US smartphone market penetration by the end of Q4 this year. The only other smartphone platform to show growth is the iPhone, but it’s less than […]

  • 3 Considerations For Successful Lead Generation With Search & Display

    More and more companies are building large online lead generation campaigns to drive inbound leads to their growing sales forces. Delivering a high volume of leads can prove to be just as important to companies as building a very targeted campaign. Often, those two goals are contradictory to one another. But by paying attention to […]

  • 5 Tactics For Improving Visibility Of B2B Content Marketing Initiatives

    It should come as no surprise that for B2B marketers surveyed in Marketingsherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, five of the top six B2B marketing priorities and challenges were related to lead generation process. More importantly, while brand awareness (the only priority outside of the lead generation process) was an important priority, its fourth place […]

  • As Buyers Circle Yahoo, Will It Be Carved Up?

    Now that it’s for sale, there are several reports indicating multiple buyers are interested in some or all of Yahoo. Among the names mentioned are Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, Yahoo search partner and former suitor Microsoft, News Corp. and Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba, in which Yahoo owns a multi-billion dollar stake. […]

  • New Google+ Feature Allows Users To Lock Posts Or Disable Comments Before Sharing

    Yesterday Google Software Engineer Ebby Amirebrahimi announced new features that allow users to lock posts and disable comments. The lock option had previously existed, but could only occur after the share had actually occured. How To Lock Posts Or Disable Comments Before Posting To Stream In order to turn comments off on a post before […]

  • How Siri Patches Up The iPhone’s Voice Search Weakness Vs. Android

    The Siri voice search assistant that Apple demoed today as part of its big press event looks pretty impressive. If it works as shown, it’ll go a long way in patching up one of the big weaknesses the iPhone has had versus Android, that of lacking built-in voice commands. Voice Actions: A Spoken Magic Wand […]

  • Eric Ward, Richard Stokes on SMN Thursday: Debunking the Myths of Link Spam Detection

    Search Marketing Now, our sister site, hosts a webcast this Thursday, October 6, “Inside the Black Box: Debunking the Myths of Link Spam Detection – and How You Can Benefit From It” Link-building expert Eric Ward and AdGooroo CEO Richard Stokes will take a look inside the “black box” of the search engines to 1) […]

  • With New Siri Promised For iPhone 4S, Apple Pulls Existing Siri From App Store

    All excited about Siri coming to the iPhone 4S? It does look pretty cool. And many people enjoyed using a version of Siri already on existing iPhones. But that enjoyment appears to be over, as the Siri app no longer works consistently. Siri Gone For Some, Gone From App Store I fired up Siri on […]

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Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

  • Discussion: Are Directories Still a Good Source of Inbound Links? – For years, SEOs have talked about getting links from online directories as part of a basic/foundational link building program. In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know — have times changed? Are directories still a worthwhile source of links? Does it depend on the business/industry? Or, are there more effective ways to go about building links in 2011? The floor is open!
  • Beating the Panda – Diagnosing and Rescuing a Client’s Traffic – A few months Distilled was approached by a large website in the UK because they had been hit by Panda and had some link-based penalties in place as well. At first I was not sure that they had been hit, but then dug a little deeper and saw it. We then put in place a strategy for them to implement that we hoped would bring their Google traffic out of the depths.
  • 50+ Awesome Posts on Conversions – A great collection of CRO posts including grouped topics such as Beginner’s Guides, Copywriting, Case Studies, Landing Pages, Tools and more.
  • Online Reviews: The Superhero Of Content Marketing – A really good overview about a very important topic.
  • Tips For Using Descriptive Links For SEO On Mobile Websites – On a typical website, navigation menus are often loaded with links, and sometimes forced to rely on context to keep the links short.
    For example, the “Services” link tells you… not very much at all. But it’s assumed that you can see that you’re on a landscaper’s website, so “Services” will mean something to you.
    While this works from a usability standpoint, it can fall short when it comes to search engines.
  • Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics for everyone – The Webmaster Tools section contains three reports based on the Webmaster Tools data that we hope will give you a better sense of how your site performs in search results. We’ve created a new section for these reports called Search Engine Optimization that will live under the Traffic Sources section
  • Principles of Effective Blog Design – How should you design your blog for BOTH humans and search engines? With a ready dose of usability, readability, and good typography, of course.
  • The Future of the Social Web: Social Graphs Vs. Interest Graphs – A very important distinction is made in this article. This is a must-read if you're into leveraging data to inform social strategy (and marketing strategy in general).

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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