SearchCap: Google expands Featured Snippets, penalizes free product reviews & more

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’s manual action penalty this weekend was over free product reviews
  Apr 12, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  The mass Google manual actions for outbound links were related to the warning Google gave a few weeks ago around bloggers giving links in exchange for free products or services.
• Study: Sales, keywords & fulfillment correlate with Amazon search rankings
  Apr 12, 2016 by Greg Finn
  Unlike a traditional search engine, Amazon search places a premium on products that sell. See what factors correlate the most with high rankings, thanks to a new study from Ripen eCommerce.
• Google now blocks searchers from sites with deceptive download buttons
  Apr 12, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  Google is now serving a big red warning to searchers before they go to websites with deceptive download buttons.
• Google adds Featured Snippets to 10 new European locales
  Apr 12, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  Google expands Featured Snippets in 10 new European locales, expanding it to more than 20 different regions.
• Social advertising? Earned/owned social? Get the latest tactics at SocialPro.
  Apr 12, 2016 by Search Engine Land
  We hear from three kinds of social media marketers: social media paid advertising specialists; organic (earned/owned) social specialists; and those responsible for both. Marketing Land’s SocialPro is for you, regardless of which description best fits you. SocialPro features sessions jam-packed with paid social tactics, organic social best practices and solutions to thorny issues shared by all social media […]
• 2016 State of Link Building Survey coverage
  Apr 12, 2016 by Andrew Dennis
  What does modern-day link building look like? Columnist Andrew Dennis explores the results of a 2016 survey on link building conducted by Moz, Credo and Page One Power.
• Develop free, lightweight attribution insights for your paid & organic channels
  Apr 12, 2016 by Chris Liversidge
  Looking to reallocate or reduce your paid search spend and not sure where to start? Columnist Chris Liversidge shows how you can identify opportunities by comparing your paid and organic search performance data by keyword and device.
• Act now: SMX Advanced super early bird rates expire this Saturday
  Apr 11, 2016 by Search Engine Land
  SMX Advanced rates increase Saturday. Register now for the lowest rates. Here’s what’s in store: 30+ sessions, keynotes and workshops featuring results-producing strategy and tactics on paid search, SEO, analytics, mobile and social media; panel discussions, single-speaker TED-style presentations and interactive Q&A sessions that solve the search marketing challenges you’re confronting and inspire you with new […]

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

• Facebook brings its Instapaper-like Save button to wider web
• Facebook’s Messenger Platform launched, allows businesses to build bots
• Forrester Consulting study confirms that best-of-breed marketing stacks are “thriving”
• Don’t trust Google to structure your local data
• The evolution of SEO
• Nielsen launches Marketing Cloud with eXelate infrastructure
• Sci-fi film and video game studios find the way into the mainstream via social media
• The road map to personalization
• Sales rank & fulfillment play a major role in Amazon search visibility
• MarTech Today: Brave browser’s ad-substitution, SurveyMonkey’s mobile analytics & HTML5 ad tool
• Google Voice Access beta enlarges role for voice, conversational device interaction
• Twitter Awards to recognize innovative ad campaigns

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• Creating a world that works for everyone with Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities, Official Google Blog
• With Google’s Gary Illyes & John Mueller On Vacation Will Google Launch Penguin 4.0?, Search Engine Roundtable

Local & Maps

• Google My Business App For iOS Now Available For Download, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• Don’t NoFollow All Links for Outbound Link Manual Action Recovery, thesempost.com
• How to Use AnswerThePublic to Create Local Linkable Content, semrush.com

SEO

• Examining Traffic From Google’s AMP Carousel, Builtvisible
• Analysing Server Log Files For Crawl Data, Branded3
• Former Googler Reports Spam But A Week Later, It Still Is In Search Results, Search Engine Roundtable
• Google Says Log File Analysis Is Underrated, Search Engine Roundtable
• Great Content ≠ Long-Form Content, Moz
• How to Check an Enterprise Website for Google Cache Status, Seattle Search Network
• How to Use Customer Reviews and Ratings for SEO, Search Engine Guide
• Screaming Frog Log File Analyser – The New Must-Have SEO Tool, stateofdigital.com
• Should I 301 Redirect Old Product Pages to Existing Category Pages on Sites?, Hobo

SEM / Paid Search

• AdWords: Updates to impression share in reporting, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Google Testing Additional Structured Snippets Options, serptests.com