Google +1 Buttons On Display Ads, AdWords Adds Mobile Call Tracking, Google Increases Market Share, & More

The Difference Between ‘Personal Data’ And ‘Trade Secrets’ Is Just A Matter Of Semantics, According To Facebook

A recent Facebook private information request from head of a European anti-Facebook group has prompted the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to stick his nose where it certainly belongs. A red flag was raised when Europe vs. Facebook founder Max Schrems noticed Facebook had omitted some important information from their reply. The social network responded by saying they would be divulging trade secrets by releasing all the personal data they possessed. Godspeed, Facebook PR team!

Source: Tech Dirt

Google +1 Buttons Are Integrated Into Display Ads

Next time you visit a site within the Google Display Network, you’ll probably notice that increasingly familiar +1 widget alongside Google + profile photos underneath an advertisement. Google has officially released the +1 button on the display network, which adds a little extra social proof juice to those advertisements. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how they impact click-throughs and general spending on display ads.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google AdWords Now Allows You To Track Mobile Calls

It’s now possible to track calls driven from pages on mobile devices in Google AdWords. Advertisers simply have to add a JavaScript code to their site, and mobile call analytics are automatically made available in AdWords.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google Wins, Yahoo Loses In Latest comScore Search Market Report

Yahoo’s search market share has dropped to a new low (15.5%), which is .8% less than where it was in August. Likewise, Google gained .5% (65.3% vs. 64.8%) and Bing stayed flat (14.7%) between August and September.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Owns Lion’s Share Of Paid Search, But Top ROI Comes From Yahoo-Bing

Efficient Frontier released its Q3 report on social media/search marketing, which looks at and measures a wide range of trends in the digital marketing world. Some of the most intriguing findings include:

• There’s been a 20% increase in search spending over the past year in the U.S.
• Facebook CPC enjoyed a 54% increase compared to Q2, and Facebook ad spending grew by 25% at the same time.
• Google controls around 82% of clicks and spending in paid search.
• Yahoo-Bing offer better quality traffic, as well as ROI (111% vs. 100% for Google).

Source: Search Engine Land

Mozilla Makes The Majority Of Their Money From Search Partnerships

Roughly 98% of Mozilla’s $121.1 million in revenue comes directly from search royalties and partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Google and Mozilla have a partnership that expires in November, but it is expected to be renewed despite their competing browsers.

Source: Search Engine Land

Android May Control the Market Share Battle, But iOS Wins The Mobile Traffic War

Android phones control 43.7% of the U.S. smartphone market, the Apple iPhone sits at 27.3%, and RIM BlackBerry phones come in third at 19.7%. However, Apple users lead all other brands by a wide margin when it comes to mobile Internet usage (58.5% market share, compared to Android in second place at 31.9%).

Source: Search Engine Land

About That Netflix/Qwikster Experiment…

Apparently all that hullaballoo about Netflix splitting its DVD and streaming services into two separate businesses was for naught. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently announced that Qwickster would be joining Crystal Pepsi, New Coke, Zune, and McDonald’s Arch Deluxe on the all-time list of failed products/services. Netflix will continue to operate as you’ve always known, with a combined service offering physical DVDs as well as streaming movies and shows. For some reason, Hastings felt that the change was too complicated and presented a quandary for most Netflix users. (Side note: “hullaballoo” passed Microsoft Word spell check.)

Source: Wired Epicenter

Google Buys SocialGrapple, A Twitter Analytics Startup

SocialGrapple has been around for just over a year, but Google felt it was valuable enough as a company to become a part of their growing collection of startups. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but most insiders believe SocialGrapple was acquired to assist in building out Google + analytics as the search engine draws closer to releasing its brand pages.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google Announces Dart Language For Programming

Google has unveiled a preview version of its Dart programming language for Web Applications. Designed as a replacement for the notoriously slow JavaScript language, Dart’s capabilities are highly focused around enhancing the mobile browsing experience.

Source: Information Week

Why Going Crazy Over Panda 2.5 Was Pre-Mature

Anytime Google updates their algorithm or releases another version of Panda, the e-commerce world often throws its arms up in exasperation. However, as with any big piece of news affecting any business, it’s best to stand back, take a deep breath, and let time tell the truth. The reality is that the deemed “winners and losers” of the update seem to have bounced back up/down since the update, and Simon Heseltine offers some insight into how that occurred.

Analysis By: Simon Heseltine, Search Engine Watch

Reach The Nirvana Level Of Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of every quality SEO initiative. Tom Schmitz provides a really good run down of the obvious and more subtle ways to execute flawless research that makes competitive analysis easy.

Analysis By: Tom Schmitz, Search Engine Land

Local Google Eye-Tracking Study Reveals Interesting Results

Miranda Miller breaks down SEOmoz’s eye-tracking study that exposes some surprising user tendencies on local-based searches, depending on the SERP layouts. One of the findings in the study includes a generic search for “pizza,” which elicits a strong tendency to focus on Google Places results.

Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch

An Exposé Into Google’s In-Fighting Over Search Retargeting

Much like the existence of domestic oil in some U.S. national parks, Google currently has a ton of search intent data, yet they have chosen to generally leave it untapped. Because of this, there has been some internal dissent and frustration mounting over the data’s lack of use for better retargeting efforts on the display network. Zachary Rodgers has some interesting insight into how Google is dealing with this problem.

Analysis By: Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ

Mobile’s Affect On Search Spending Is Only Growing

Search Engine Land looks into the growing influence of mobile devices on Internet ad spending, the most common user impression/click-through trends, and how advertisers can prepare for the increasingly popular online shopping market.

Analysis By: Siddharth Shah, Search Engine Land

Best Practices For Mass Link Building Outreach

Link building requires fostering and keeping strong relationships in order to obtain high quality references from good websites. Garrett French runs down a list of seven principles to live by when doing a bulk outreach for link building.

Analysis By: Garrett French, Search Engine Watch

An SEOmoz Experiment With Link Anchor Text

A YOUmoz poster conducted an experiment to see how important link anchor text is to Google’s ranking algorithm. His final judgment was that it isn’t as noticeable as it was in the past, but anchor text is still a moderately trusted factor.

Analysis By: James Gate, SEOmoz

The Penultimate Guide To Good Blog Posts On Conversions

Anytime you can get someone to compile a list of useful blog posts arranged by beginner, intermediate and expert comprehension levels, it’s worth a mention. With that said, Unbounce has 50 of the best conversion blog posts put together in a neat, organized fashion for you.

Analysis By: Kristi Hines, Unbounce

The iPod Has Been This Generation’s Biggest Musical Influence

This piece of analysis asserts that the iPod has carried more influential weight than any singular band over the past 10 years. Specifically, people listen and interact with music in a very different way than they did when Walkmans and Discmans roamed the Earth.

Analysis By: Toure, Wired Epicenter

INFOGRAPHIC: The Bing-Yahoo Partnership Could Overtake Google

Although Google rose, Bing remained flat, and Yahoo fell in search market share from August to September, some experts believe the Bing-Yahoo alliance could eventually eclipse Google over time. Search Engine Journal has a great infographic showing the current and future state of search engines.

Analysis By: Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal

INFOGRAPHIC: Sharing Trends Among Social Media Friends

Mashable has a stellar infographic showing how, when, and why social media users share links, comments, and information. This contains useful insights into sharing trends for businesses and general social media addicts alike.

Analysis By: Jennifer Van Grove, Mashable

Reputation Services Fight To Save Their Reputations

In “news of the ironic,” reputation management companies, such as Reputation.com and Integrity Defenders, have often gotten a bad rap for black hat tactics that distort the online views of their B2B customers. However, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik claims these practices are long dead and they work within the system to improve business’ online presence in an ethical way.

Analysis By: Robin Young, NPR

The Letterman Top 10 Hilarious BlackBerry Blackout Tweets

For those of us that own BlackBerry smartphones, the recent global outage was just another painful reminder that we’re stuck in 2008. But for everyone else (and some of us self-depreciating BB owners), Twitter was a goldmine of funniness. Mashable has a pretty solid list of the best tweets poking fun at RIM’s technical deficiencies.

Analysis By: Todd Wasserman, Mashable

A Steve Jobs Column From Guy Kawasaki

Nearly everyone in the tech and business world has commented on Steve Jobs’ philosophy and impact on the way they live their lives. Guy Kawasaki’s is certainly worth mentioning, as he provides 12 interesting lessons he’s learned from Apple’s late CEO and co-founder.

Analysis By: Guy Kawasaki, CNet

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