This Week’s Industry News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Google Webmaster Tools Features Schema Markup Dashboard, Domain Verification

Google Webmaster Tools has been a bastion of good news for both users and the constantly maligned search. Webmasters are now able to view their structure data markup (such as Schema.org data snippets) as it exists across the web. Additionally, websites are now able to use CNAME record verification.

Source: Search Engine Land

iAcquire Goes Through Paid Link Rehab, Blogs About Life As Born Again SEOs

iAcquire has begun re-appearing in Google’s index, after nearly 60 days in exile after Google alleged the agency was purchasing links. The most interesting part of this story is iAcquire’s “We bought links, but everyone else does it and will continue to do it!” blog post discussing their reformed philosophy.

Source: Search Engine Land

Facebook Admits It Has 83 Million Fake Profiles

In a recent admission to the SEC, Facebook revealed that 8.7% of its user accounts are fake profiles. Over 45 million current users run these phony accounts. Facebook exposed a few more issues of which it is aware, including 14 million accounts that exist to solely to violate Facebook’s terms of service. I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg is throwing a party once their fake profile count reaches 100 million.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Bing Adds “Choose Friends To Notify” Tool To Sidebar

Bing’s Social Side Bar will soon allow users to tag five Facebook friends that they want to share their search results with. Before, the sidebar only allowed you to share search results with all your friends or the couple connections Bing suggested for you as “Friends Who Might Know.”

Source: Search Engine Land

Facebook Faces Claims Of Click Fraud, Holding Page Name Hostage

Facebook is in hot water after being accused of click fraud and page name blackmail by a small hosted e-commerce store company. The company, Limiting Pressing, says it’s through with Facebook because the majority of their ad clicks are coming from bots.

Limited Pressing also claims that when it approached Facebook about changing their page name, the social networking site said they would only oblige if LP agreed to spend $2,000 or more on advertising a month. Facebook says they are investigating the claims and asserts that some miscommunication must have taken place because they don’t charge for name changes.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Journalist Has Twitter Account Suspended

Guy Adams, an LA-based writer for The Independent, has had his Twitter account suspended for tweeting out the e-mail address of NBC’s Olympic Coverage President Gary Zenkel. Adams encouraged his followers to email Zenkel and voice their criticism of NBC’s choice to broadcast events in prime time rather than live as they occur in London.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Notable Commentary

Better Than A Speeding Porsche

Brad Geddes’ Best Practices For Big, Small PPC Accounts

Not all PPC accounts are created equal in difficulty. Big or small, there are challenges present in any paid search campaign. Brad Geddes recently posted a “best practices” guideline to help you proactively deal with the diverse problems you could encounter running PPC accounts of all sizes.

Analysis By: Brad Geddes, Certified Knowledge

A Dozen YouTube Ranking Factors

The latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday video explores the lesser-discussed YouTube ranking algorithm. Jeff McRitchie outlines 12 main ranking factors, and explains how you can implement these SEO strategies for video marketing.

Analysis By: Jeff McRitchie, SEOmoz