Google’s online feed reader now allows you to track changes on any page – even those that don’t feature an RSS feed. There are a number of other sites that also allow you to track when something changes on a site. ChangeDetection.com, for example, is a popular online service that will alert you whenever a page changes. Unlike Google Reader’s new feature, ChangeDetection.com also gives you a very detailed overview of of what exactly changed and what the page looked like before. The service also offers an RSS feed of these changes.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_reader_can_now_track_changes_on_any_web_pag.php

Pinging sites send out pings to a list of different sites which basically tells them that you’ve updated your site, it’s a great thing to do after every update. Pingler and pingomatic are the best according to Pompei’s comment on DigitalPoint.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1676587

Google has introduced a new feature for its mobile Image Search offering. The feature is “Popular Images,” and lets Android and iPhone users browse popular images (go figure). The Popular Images feature comes in the form of a link just under the search box on the Google Image Search page. When clicked, it brings up a categorized list of image searches and corresponding images. The queries are categorized automatically with an algorithm, which Google says will continue to improve over time.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/29/google-gives-mobile-users-a-link-to-popular-images

If people were already seeing different search results from one another before, that is really going to be true now, now that Google is plugging results based on the individual’s social circle into any given SERP. This is one of the many ways SEO is changing, and it would appear that any business looking to get some play in Google search, would do well to have as many connections established as possible, via various social networking sites and tools.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/27/google-makes-social-even-more-of-a-search-factor

Bing is making steady incremental progress in its bid to gain search marketshare. But the going is slow. The company has inked big “default search” deals with HP, Dell and other PC makers, and with Verizon in mobile. Yet so far Bing has not affected Google’s leadership position in PC search (or mobile search for that matter). There are widely reported rumors that Apple and Microsoft are discussing replacing Google as the default search engine on the iPhone with Bing.
http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-earnings-beat-estimates-online-services-post-loss-more-on-bing-and-the-iphone-34696

Historically, search engines have had trouble accessing AJAX-based content and this proposal would enable Google (and presumably other search engines that adopted the standard) to index more of the web. The standard SEO advice for AJAX implementations has traditionally been to follow accessibility best practices. With Google’s proposal, an AJAX-generated URL that contains a hash mark (#) would also be replaced with a URL that uses #! in place of #.
http://searchengineland.com/googles-proposal-for-crawling-ajax-may-be-live-34411

Though there was a big difference between SEO and SEM but it’s just in a matter of divisions. SEM is the common use of marketing methods designed to create a website more visible to Google and other search engines. These methods include paid search methods, such as pay-per-click advertising. SEO, however, is an organic search marketing method used to make a website rank higher. Organic search in a sense that once you search for a word on a search engine it is what simply comes up.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1672163

Blogs at the most basic level are straightforward or “easy” to start. But the real question is whether they deliver on the SEO promise so many blog marketers make. Community building for content/links promotion and Increase crawl rate/frequency were also indicated as important SEO benefits from blogging. 54% of respondents start to see SEO benefits from blogging very quickly. This short time frame should be very encouraging to those hoping to use blog published content to gain better search engine visibility.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/01/survey-seo-blogging/

Some people argue that real-time search is the next type that will emerge as a growth industry for the search market. Others point to social search and that kind of amalgamation could throw our search vs. social networking equation entirely.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_facebook_social_networking_search.php

Search engine firm Startpage, and its E.U. brand, Ixquick, has released a new proxy service that allows Internet users to surf the web in privacy. The proxy lets users browse websites anonymously, without sharing any private, personally identifiable information to the websites they view.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/28/privacy-search-engine-offers-anonymous-web-browsing

Bing has announced a new “Stocks and Funds page” that offers in-depth information for users following or doing research related to stocks and finances. Searching on Bing for a company’s or fund’s ticker symbol prompts a new link called “Investor Data” on Bing’s main search results page.
http://searchengineland.com/bing-debuts-in-depth-stock-pages-34626

Today Google is formally launching functionality that enables a “clickable local phone number” to appear in mobile ads.  In other words a phone number appears as part of the ad copy and consumer-users can simply tap the number to initiate a call.
http://searchengineland.com/google-formally-introduces-clickable-phone-numbers-in-mobile-search-ads-34608

Based from Randy’s experience, local results are driven by the keyword phrase being entered. For one phrase, local results will appear in the general SERPs, but for another similar phrase they don’t appear in the general SERPs.
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42827

Google PageRank algorithm counts both incoming and outgoing links unless they are nofollow. Google also weighs links based on PageRank of page in question and other factors (such as niche relevance).
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1670649

Blued of DigitalPoint forum, says that base from his experience in the UK, if you have a site which ends .org.uk vs a site which ends .co.uk with the same number of backlinks with the same anchor text, then the .co.uk will appear above it for that associated search term.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1670199

Thanks to a new deal, Bing’s results for local businesses should soon get much better.  A report’s indicated that Localeze, which specializes in local search, is going to provide something like 14 million business listings for Bing Local and Bing 411 to use.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/27/bing-gets-localeze-to-augment-local-business-listings

Starting in 2010, conversion optimization is the new SEO. SEO is still important and still evolving. There are still plenty of companies that need to adopt its best practices. SEO isn’t dead. But among the giants of SEO, there is a growing restlessness for the next mountain to conquer.
http://searchengineland.com/conversion-optimization-is-the-new-seo-32839

Google has begun the rollout of its Social Search product, a way of seeing customized search results based upon the people in your social network. Social Search has been an opt-in Google Labs experiment since its debut in October, but will be available as a beta product in the “next few days” to all users on Google.com.
http://searchengineland.com/google-social-search-goes-live-adds-new-features-34487

Content management systems, e-commerce stores, and dynamic sites in general, used to be big on adding variables to URLs as a way to construct search queries on content or to track visitors. Then along came advice from the search engines that said they see each URL as a unique if it has different variables. That little improvement caused a duplicate content mess.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/01/search-engines-url-variables/

Speed has been emphasized a significant amount in Caffeine discussion, and Cutts told us that page speed would likely become a ranking factor. Regardless of whether or not you are witnessing Caffeine in action yet, rest assured that it will be here sooner or later, and any edge you can give yourself in the meantime is for the good of your own site’s performance. Speed will not only supposedly help you in search going forward, but it just makes for a better user experience.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/26/has-google-begun-changing-how-it-indexes-the-web

Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today, Google is rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/01/follow-changes-to-any-website.html

As SEO is constantly changing and people are releasing new tools on an almost daily basis, it’s always good to share new discoveries and methods with a group of people very quickly. Another benefit of this kind of interaction is that there will be a history of news and updates across an organisation that can be filtered into one view.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-ways-to-increase-the-efficiency-of-your-seo-team/16698/

Collecta has announced the availability of a new widget that allows any webmaster/blogger to show real-time search results on a web page. The widget builder is available now at widget.collecta.com, and includes several customization options including widget title, header background image, and even use of an external CSS file.
http://searchengineland.com/collecta-widget-brings-real-time-search-results-to-any-site-34408

Many of the not-yet-international US sites that select a new market to target seem to choose the UK. This makes sense, of course. Despite what George Bernard Shaw said (”England and America are two countries separated by a common language,”) the UK is closer in culture and language to the US than many others (except of course that we drive on the correct side of the road). It is also wise to enter a market via a nation that you pretty much understand (sic). You would also expect SEO requirements for the UK to be pretty much the same as the US—apart from having to change some “z’s” to “s” of course.
http://searchengineland.com/duplicate-content-the-biggest-challenge-to-successful-international-seo-34319

YouTube just announced that it will begin supporting HTML5 video players this evening across many of the videos on the site. The feature isn’t live yet but is expected to be within the next hour or two. If this test goes live site-wide, it will be a good thing for the web.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_begins_to_support_html5.php

Google has a post up on the Google News blog today talking a little bit about how it recrawls news content in order to provide the most up to date content and eliminate dead links. Google has implemented a recrawl feature that lets it focus on getting the newest content, while displaying the most current version of older content. After Google News discovers an article, it will continue to crawl it repeatedly to look for changes.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/25/google-explains-recrawling-for-updated-news

Microformats should be one of those development trends that are going to change SEO as we know it. Therefore it is a must that you start learning them and implementing them now.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-tools-to-export-microformats/16647/

Building just one or two types of links may work for a while, but what if all you have been doing is article marketing and some directories and Google all of the sudden discounts all of the directories that you had been building? You can surely expect to see a dramatic change in your search engine ranking positions. This is why it is crucial for you to build different kinds of links and make sure to vary the anchor text you are using for your links.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/building-a-well-rounded-backlink-portfolio/16744/

In Google, algorithms on the search side and the content side work very differently. On the search side, Google attempts to match keywords in your account to queries users are searching for. On the content side, Google’s semantic technology tries to match the intent of the advertiser with the potential intent of the reader.
http://searchengineland.com/five-quick-tips-for-success-on-googles-content-network-34300

Five years ago, few people paid any attention to conversion rate optimization. Today, everyone is jumping on the conversion optimization bandwagon. Conversion optimization projects require clients to invest time and resources to make modifications to their websites. While some optimization companies try to get around this issue by implementing changes themselves, this approach does not scale.
http://searchengineland.com/things-to-consider-before-starting-your-next-conversion-rate-optimization-project-33842

According to a comment in SEOChat, the linkwheel technique as it is known is not effective anymore. The reason is that it creates a footprint which is easy to follow. This method has been devalued by Google and no longer gives the results it once did.
http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/what-is-linkwheel-technique-295386.html

The U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google holds on to a commanding position in the global search market, according to a new study from comScore. Google sites were the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December, or 66.8 percent of the global search market. Google sites saw a 58 percent increase in search query volume over the past year. Yahoo sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches (up 13%), followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up 7%).
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/22/google-still-rules-the-global-search-market

Google says it is experimenting with markup for business and location data, but it doesn’t currently display this information, unless the business or organization is part of a review. But when review information is marked up in the body of a web page, Google can identify it and may make it available in search results.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/22/a-markup-that-could-have-big-implications-for-seo

Google has been rolling out local results on Statewide searches for some time. State results are only the beginning of Google’s quest to display local content and can foresee the day where searches based on landmark, neighborhood, city, county, state, or even nation will display the best of the best businesses around.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-now-showing-local-results-for-state-wide-searches/16510/

PageRank sculpting in general has and will continue to be an important aspect of onsite search engine optimization despite Google’s change in its NoFollow policy. Consider the meaning of “PageRank sculpting.” PageRank sculpting is the application of rules regarding the quantity, prioritization and relevance of links on pages throughout a site to efficiently distribute PageRank.
http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

Google has announced a pair of changes to its search results pages that make its search results pages more informational and give searchers information they’re looking for without having to click away from Google.com. Google has also announced plans to add more answers and information into its search results.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-more-answers-info-to-search-results-34221

Landing Page Optimization mainly comes into play in PPC situations. When you have placed an ad say with Google AdWords, the ad description and your web page where you wish the visitor to land (landing page) has some sort of synchronization with keywords and the page content.
http://forums.seochat.com/search-engine-optimization-28/landing-page-optimization-294279.html

The No. 3 search player adopts a more privacy-friendly data-retention policy that one-ups even archrival Google. In a nod to persistent concerns about online privacy, Microsoft has committed to delete the Internet Protocol addresses associated with users’ queries on its Bing search engine after six months. Like the other major search engines, Microsoft has come under pressure from privacy advocates and government regulators to purge its server logs of information such as IP addresses that could be used to identify individual users.
http://www.internetnews.com/search/article.php/3859281/Microsoft+Reduces+Bings+Hold+on+User+Data.htm

Frequency of changes in the search marketing sector seemed to be occurring in ever increasing doses it seems. This does not mean that SEO is dead or anything similar, but rather maturing into another phase of its life cycle where the complexities of SEO seed a growing number of multi-channel optimisation specialists that consider integrated optimisation at the root of what they do.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/big-seo-needs-to-get-bigger-multi-channel-optimisation/16520/

Google’s purpose in its declared goal of making the web faster goes well beyond increasing general user retention but in its end goal of dominating the surging growth in mobile searches done principally on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, & Android phones. There is no declared page load standard but a general rule is no more than a 5 second page load time which can be affirmed via page speed tools or within Google Webmaster Tools.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-caffeine-for-mobile/16579/

When it comes to SEO, folks tend to think of it as super-tactical. Strategic thinking forces you to step back and look at the bigger picture; it keeps you from the trap of treating SEO as merely a collection of tactics.
http://searchengineland.com/in-the-seo-game-its-all-about-strategies-and-systems-34039

Bing is now giving special placement to recipes in response to some food-related searches. Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) and much more.
http://searchengineland.com/whats-for-dinner-bing-now-shows-recipes-on-serp-34083

Redirected URL will probably not give you any point for PR and ranking for when Google crawl where your site is posted with shortened url, they will account the domain of the url. If your site has dynamic URL then learn how to convert them into static with shorter url and with keywords in them.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1659006

Microsoft has improved its autosuggest feature on Bing to provide more timely results. On the Bing Search Blog the company says that its research found 45 percent of search queries result either in a user conducting an immediate re-query, or quitting the page altogether.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/20/bing-improves-its-autosuggest-feature

Google’s use of breadcrumbs in search results is the focus of a recently submitted question to the Google Webmaster Central team. The question was, “Google is showing breadcrumb URLs in SERPs now. Does the kind of delimiter matter? Is there any best practice? What character to use is best? Matt says you should have a set of delimited links on your site that accurately reflect your site’s hierarchy. He also notes, however, that it is still in the “early days” for breadcrumbs.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/20/how-do-you-get-breadcrumbs-in-google-results

Adwords Product Extensions is a new feature that allows Adwords advertisers the ability to display multiple products from their Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) as part of one ad on Google.com search results. Product extensions will display relevant products along with your text ad on relevant user queries. (Note: Ads do not display on Search Partner sites or Google’s Content network).
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/beyond-google-ppc-ads-in-2010/16498/

The Google AdWords blog announced new targeting and ad features for the mobile search ad product. In addition, Google is now allowing advertisers to automatically market their apps as direct downloads in the iTunes App Store or Android Market via AdWords.
http://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-allows-advanced-mobile-targeting-app-downloads-33971

The Wall Street Journal noted that Google has purchased search ads for queries done on Google.com for “Google Leaves China” or “Google vs. Baidu.” Clearly, Google wants people to read their position on the recent move for them ending the censorship of Google China.
http://searchengineland.com/google-buys-search-ad-in-response-to-the-china-decision-33976