This Week’s Industry Update

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google Accuses Bing Of Copying Search Results

Google is claiming Bing is stealing their search results and improving their formula off Google’s hard work, and the search engine giant has the sting operation to prove it. Bing says they don’t copy Google’s results, but they really do. Here’s a quick graphic describing Google’s virtual James Bond adventure:

Phony search terms that returned exact same results in Google and Bing include hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys, and indoswiftjobinproduction. The question we now ask is do users really care, especially since both search engines have a history of imitating each other when one rolls out a new development. Page preview and social media results are two examples of things Google adopted from Bing.

Source: Search Engine Land, The Colbert Report

Amidst Internet Blackout, Google Unveils Phone-In Service With Twitter

It seems Google’s “don’t be evil” motto has a little more juice, as the search engine promptly rolled out a landline phone “speak-to-tweet” service to help Egyptians stay connected and organized online despite Hosi Mubarak’s shutdown of the Internet. Google set up an international phone number Egyptians can call, leave a message, and be confident that it will be tweeted with the hashtag #egypt.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Twitter Tells Citizens In Oppressive Countries To Tweet On

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone co-authored a decree calling for the freedom of people everywhere to tweet and organize through Twitter in the name of basic human rights.

Source: Twitter Blog

What Not To Do With Twitter

Designer Kenneth Cole demonstrates exactly how you lose customers and get bad publicity making a cheap joke of a serious situation.

Source: Forbes

Google Updates Their Third-Party Policy

Google has announced a change to their third party policy, affecting mostly third party partners that have 80% of their clients spending less than $1,000 on AdWords per month. Google now requires those agencies (like Rocket Clicks) to sign an agreement that says they must share a financial disclosure document with those clients. Thankfully, Rocket Clicks is not affected, as we already adhere to this policy.

Source: Google AdWords Help

Blekko Bans Content Farms

In a move that probably won’t be copied by Google, Blekko has become the first search engine to completely ban content farms from their search results. They named the top 20 that its users have marked as spam (you can see the list in the link). The war has against spam has just begun – consider this the first shot.

Source: Tech Crunch

AOL Business Plan Centers Around Content Farming

Business Insider has obtained a leaked memo sent out to all AOL editors, journalists, and content writers detailing the company’s current and future business plan. Among them, AOL is calling for its media employees to embrace more of a “content farming” philosophy, despite the Blekko developments and Google’s soon-to-be introduced penalties for content farmers.

Source: Business Insider

Web Addresses Are Quickly Becoming Few And Far Between

The Internet is running out of IP addresses, and although a system is in place to increase the number of addresses, it isn’t compatible with the current web set up. The switch to IPv6 is slated to happen in a few years, although there seems to be a sense of urgency in testing and implementing it sooner.

Source: Wall Street Journal

No E-Reader For You (The iPhone/iPad User)!

Apple recently blocked Sony’s e-reader app from the iPhone app store. Apple said to Sony that they’re not going to allow apps that sell content or allow people to view content they’ve bought elsewhere. Apple’s next move could be to block the Kindle app, which is much bigger than Apple’s own iBooks app. This move is a contradiction to what Apple indicated before about loosening up its hold on the app store.

Source: Business Insider

Google Art Project Brings World Class Museums To Your Living Room

Google’s new Art Project allows people to view famous works of art from select museums around the world. You can also take a virtual tour inside the 17 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Art Project allows you to zoom in to view brush stroke details and you can also save your favorite artwork to create your own collection that can be shared with friends or family.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Dating Site, Plenty Of Fish, Warns: If You Hack Us, Fear Your Mother’s Wrath

According to Markus Frind, CEO of online dating site Plenty of Fish, an Argentinian hacker reached out to him late one night to inform him that the security of his site had been tampered with. The caller, Chris Russo, frantically explained that the Russians had taken over his computer and had threatened to kill him. After disclosing this troubling information, Russo then offered up his services in analyzing the security data in return for very large sums of money.

After tossing off Russo’s tactics as an attempt at extortion, Frind quickly fixed the security glitch and assigned new passwords to all of the users that had their accounts tampered with. He then threatened to sue Russo and his accomplice for their suspected devious act. What next you ask? Frind retaliated in a way that any other adult that felt extremely violated would; He emailed his mother.

Source: Tech Crunch

Notable Commentary

From IP Addresses In Limited Supply

Get Solutions, Not More Problems

Ever spent large amounts of time searching for a solution to a tech problem online and only managed to find results that are filled with searches for the same problem that your are experiencing? Check out this article on Life Hacker that attempts to help you [solve] this issue.

Analysis By: Whitson Gordon, Life Hacker

With An Increase In The Number Of Online Pirates, Have You Ever Wondered About The State Of The Pirate Ship Business?

While you’re checking out tech blogs, internet shopping sites, or catching up on the latest tweets from great leaders, do you ever wonder what everyone else is doing online? According to Politico one quarter of internet traffic can be attributed to people stealing copyrighted material. Click the link for a more in depth look at the numbers and what is being done to stop it.

By the way, while I often wonder about the pirate ship business, I continue to come up with insufficient information.  Personally, I think someone is stealing the data.

Analysis By: Jennifer Martinez, Politico

Meet Google 3.0, Or The Team That’s Ready To Take On…Everyone

In case you haven’t noticed, Google has been competing and conquering their rivals since their beginning in 2001. Well, now they are being challenged by some very reputable competition and they have made some personnel changes in an attempt to continue their domination. Take a little bit of time and check out this great profile of Larry Page’s Google 3.0.

Analysis By: Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek

Dude, Your Phone! It’s A Relic!

Ever wonder why your phone, the best on the market when you bought it two weeks ago, is no longer the most powerful and stylish? It’s called “Android’s Law.” Take a look at this interesting article that talks about how cell phones have evolved and how they are quickly able to be smaller, better, faster, and stronger than their competition.

Analysis By: David Goldman, CNN

Why Won’t You Increase Your Online Spend?

Take a look at this short and insightful article that examines possible reasons that ad agencies and clients have been adopting digital marketing and increasing their online spend at a very slow pace. It’s interesting to think about this topic and also to think about how soon it may change.

Analysis By: Frank Reed, Marketing Pilgrim