Local Search Rankings are all about location prominence. The better your case in proving that your name, address, phone number, and other business data is correct… the better chance you have at ranking well. So, in dealing with KML data, you are confirming that your information is correct and going the extra mile to do so while notifying search engines.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/local-search-recipe-making-kml-files-and-geo-sitemaps-are-a-piece-of-cake/20426/

Understanding what your competitors are doing online is a must and absolute priority when launching a new website that is entering a competitive space and also when established websites want to keep an eye on their competition. By knowing what your rivals are doing in their SEO and social media space, not only will you have a better knowledge of their online marketing strategy, but you can also emulate what is working for them, and generate internal ideas to stay proactive.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/competitive-intelligence-in-seo-social-media/20507/

Most ad sales reps didn’t care if your keywords were relevant or not. They made money on the ad display, not the click. So if you were selling tent pegs but wanted to buy keyword “baseball,” they didn’t put up too much of a fight. The ads were, in many cases, completely irrelevant to searchers and their mindset.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26631.asp

As technology advances and consumers continue to evolve digitally, their online behavior changes — it’s up to marketers to follow suit if they want to reach and engage with their desired consumer base. Marketers must look at ways to integrate and optimize their digital marketing and media mix to reach and engage with consumers while supporting their business goals.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26626.asp

LinkedIn has introduced a new “Follow Company” feature as a way to (you guessed it) follow companies on LinkedIn. Now LinkedIn users can simply follow organizations to see their latest happenings, and this has a tremendous amount of potential for networking and job opportunities of interest.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/29/linkedin-gets-major-upgrade-in-usefulness

The Google Webmaster Central team posted  a known issue report with a bug in the reporting engine within Google Webmaster Tools. The indexed URLs report is currently showing 0 pages indexed for most sites who have submitted sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools.

http://searchengineland.com/known-issue-with-google-sitemaps-index-count-40873

If you try to access Google’s external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new keyword tool Google began offering in September 2009. A Google spokesperson told me that they are now encouraging users to use the new tool over the old tool and have decided to direct a portion of those users to the new tool.

http://searchengineland.com/google-new-external-keyword-tool-40937

Google has launched a new version of Image Search for Android 2.1 devices and iPhone 3.0+. This version provides a slicker user interface that fits in with how users of these devices would browse native images.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/29/google-improves-mobile-image-search

Good quality analytics (such as Google Analytics or another paid analytics software packages) provides good and very useful information. If you pay attention to it you could very quickly increase the overall efficiency of your website. You just have to look at the numbers and list to what they tell you. The proof is in the pudding as they say and if you ignore your analytics information you could be missing out on a great deal of potential business and traffic.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/advanced-seo-requires-good-analytics-information/20388/

As your client’s market share continues to grow, remember to expand your targeted keywords. Let’s say your client’s store is located in downtown Chicago, but after your nifty local SEO work, the client wants to draw customers from surrounding suburbs. Use the strategy we talked about above and repeat it with towns and villages you wish to pull from.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-links-locally-strategies-to-improve-local-seo/20397/

Google’s longstanding Google Advertising Professionals program is going away, to be replaced with a new Google Adwords Certification program, Google has announced. The change means those certified through GAP will have six months to recertify under the new program. The change may also allow more companies to gain certification, as the overall required spend level has been lowered.

http://searchengineland.com/google-closes-google-advertising-professionals-for-google-adwords-certification-40637

Google is also raising the bar for certifying agencies that manage AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers. The search giant is retiring its Google Advertising Professionals program and replacing it with the new Google AdWords Certification program, which is designed to provide agencies with up-to-date, comprehensive training and certification for managing AdWords accounts.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26594.asp

Google has started to combine its Earth and Maps products with the announcement  that Earth view is available to all Google Maps users.To see 3D imagery in Google Maps, you’ll need the Google Earth plugin which anyone can now use; it’s been available to developers since 2008.

http://searchengineland.com/google-earth-added-to-google-maps-40720

Google has launched a new feature in its search results, which displays results that are deemed “similar” to the query. If you search for eBay, for example, you may get results for Craigslist, uBid, Buy.com, and ebayanuncios.es. Basically, if someone searches for a brand, there is a good chance Google will inject links to the competition on that results page by default (though at the bottom).

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/28/google-facebook-similar-to-gmail-bing-similar-to-dogpile

Search Engine Watch points to Google’s own documents. Child pornography removals are not counted in the requests. Business Week quoted Google as saying Brazil had a large number of requests “in part because of the popularity of our social networking website.” Orkut is very popular in Brazil.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/brazil_objects_to_google_request_data.php

In its continued effort to custom tailor search results and suggest that what your searching for might actually be something else, Google has brought its similar page results onto the front page of your search results. You’ve likely seen the feature we’re talking about before, but never clicked on it and now you won’t have to, as it will be included directly at the bottom of your first search results page.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_adds_similar_page_suggestions_to_search_res.php

Campaign organization is one of the most overlooked pieces of paid search management. It’s not uncommon for advertisers to spend hours sorting their keywords into well thought out ad groups, and then limit their effectiveness by throwing them all into a single campaign.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3640177

Google’s obsession with usability is well-established. They use human evaluators to test search results and many algorithmic methods to establish quality scores that can impact rankings, such as the recently introduced site speed value. There are a number of common usability elements of business websites which I believe could be leveraged for rankings in local search.

http://searchengineland.com/googles-usability-fixation-reveals-local-ranking-factors-40579

Accuracy topped the list of marketers’ biggest challenges around measurement. The lack of ability to take action on data and lack of standards are also key barriers. This is hardly a surprise. Looking back to a few recent brand measurement studies, better, common, and more meaningful metrics for online audience measurement are in high demand.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26562.asp

The Link Builders Toolkit is the ultimate resource and collection of over 1400 websites to gain high-quality inbound links from. Each site has been hand-picked to find only the websites that are at least a PR 3 or higher. They are also organized by category so you can easily find the right type of sites, depending on the type of link building you are doing. This excel document saves hours and hours of manually trying to find places to acquire links from.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-builders-toolkit-now-available-over-at-stayonsearch/20407/

Now, along the top of your Google Map, you will see a button next to Map and Satellite for Earth. Immediately, we noticed that Google Earth zooms in further and clearer than the Satellite view, at least out in the countryside, where the satellite view is often less detailed.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_earth_gets_in_maps_browser-based_embeddable.php

According to the report, Android traffic in the U.S. increased to 46 percent of operating system share compared to 39 percent for the iPhone operating system. Worldwide, the iPhone OS still took the top spot, taking 46 percent of the OS share, with Android phones seeing 25 percent of impressions. AdMob measures mobile ad impressions, which is a proxy for overall traffic.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/admob-android-passes-iphone-web-traffic-in-u-s/

Sorry, Google fans, but from a financial perspective, the search giant seems to have lost some of its luster.  Goldman Sachs hasn’t come close to suggesting that anyone sell their stock – and is in fact still recommending that people buy more – but at the same time, the firm has removed Google from its “Conviction Buy” list.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/27/goldman-sachs-takes-google-off-conviction-buy-list

In a recent article we talked about why Facebook’s Open Graph and particularly its social plug-ins will be good to drive traffic. It’s pretty straightforward. The like and recommendation buttons are essentially different versions of the share buttons that people have been using to drive traffic for quite some time. The main difference is that instead of only showing up in the news feed only disappear shortly thereafter, they will remain on the user’s profile page for people to see in the future – a fixed link to your content.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/27/facebook-likes-mean-more-to-businesses-than-just-traffic

The idea of “build it and they will come” is a great way to succeed in any venture. However, with the continuing evolution of search and online user behavior, resting solely on the build is the quick death of your local search success.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3640161?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29

Microsoft expects its search ad sales to continue to grow through a partnership with Yahoo. In that deal, Microsoft will manage the ad sales on both Bing and the Yahoo search engine. Yahoo has essentially ceded the search market to Microsoft and will focus on its display ad sales. Coincidentally, strong display sales gave Yahoo a strong quarter as well.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26570.asp

Available from today for pre-order  on Vodafone UK, the Android-powered Google Nexus One can be had for £35 per-month on a 2 year contract, including a bundle of minutes and texts, and the much needed 1GB monthly data allowance — this is a Google Phone after all.

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/26/nexus-one-googles-superphone-hits-vodafone-uk/

Google has quietly canceled plans to release a Verizon version of its Nexus One phone and is instead steering customers toward the HTC Incredible, a phone described as a “Nexus One on steroids” by one analyst. As a result, industry watchers are weighing the news and what it means for the search giant’s foray into marketing its own smartphones.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3878621/Google+Backs+Down+From+Verizon+Nexus+One.htm

The first Motorola devices with Skyhook’s location services as the default will ship later this year. According to Skyhook, developers won’t have to make any changes to their Android apps to work with Skyhook’s location engine. Motorola will simply replace Google’s libraries with Skyhook’s Core Location services.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/motorola_will_replace_google_location_api_with_skyhook.php

Google just announced a nice addition to its Street View feature in Google Maps. Starting today, you will be able to see the names of local businesses as you move through a town in Street View. A click on one of these names will bring up the standard Google Maps business listing with the name of the business, hours, phone number, address and reviews.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_street_view_now_highlights_local_businesses.php

“The Google AdWords API allows developers to build applications that interact directly with the AdWords platform,”explains Penry Price, Vice President, Global Agency Development at Google. “Agencies and developers of search engine marketing tools use these applications to manage large AdWords campaigns more efficiently and creatively.”

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/26/google-gives-qualified-agencies-preferred-adwords-api-pricing

Dell appears to be going with a sort of ancient Greece theme in terms of giving these devices codenames, dubbing them Sparta (the netbook tablet) and Athens (the true netbook).  It doesn’t appear that the company is in any way creating antiquated gear, though.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/26/dell-to-match-android-with-advanced-tablet-netbook

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/04/search-suggest-opinions/

Following Twitter and Facebook’s conferences, it looks like Yahoo will keep the “significant social announcements” ball rolling in the weeks and months ahead.  Execs have shared some rough details and vague timeframes with regards to address book-, Facebook-, and Twitter-related integrations.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/23/yahoo-pushes-forward-with-social-plans

It looks like Vladimir Prelovac has become our SEJ featured developer. I have already shared his plugin for smart blog interlinking and mentioned another Wordpress plugin by him called “Insights”. Today I am sharing his FireFox addon that has been developed for about a year.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-new-feature-rich-seo-firefox-addon-seo-doctor/20082/

Marketers generally don’t audit their search campaigns, but when they do, it’s usually when the project is not going as well as expected. So typically what they do is put their work up for tender in the hope that a new agency will get them back on track.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26452.asp

The bill features three initiatives that would increase the FTC’s power. These include expedited rule-making, the ability to issue fines for false and deceptive advertising, and an “aiding and abetting” rule that would fine those who assist in making false advertising.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/26568.asp

Blippy, the controversial site where the over-sharing, web-connected generation can link their credit cards and share their purchases has just come under fire from numerous tech blogs as it has been discovered that people’s credit card numbers are now available on Google.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/credit_card_numbers_now_on_google_thanks_to_blippy.php

Parsing real-time information that streams down a screen as a list of short text updates isn’t easy. Thanks to two new visualization tools from PostRank, however, the company’s users can now use PostRank’s new entity extraction feature to see real-time updates in your stream on a map and through a tree map interface.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/postrank_launches_two_new_tools_to_visualize_the_r.php#comments

As the economic outlook begins to improve, our industry will continue to shape its own future with digital products and services that grow audience and offer maximum value to advertisers. The Nielsen Online figures reflect recent data from comScore indication consumers consider local newspaper websites to be the most trusted source of online advertising, with ads that are perceived to be the most credible and relevant to them. The study also found consumers consider local newspaper websites to be the top source for local information.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/23/newspaper-websites-see-record-traffic

This is dependent on bandwidth, but try and keep management of search and display under the same team. Managers with search experience tend to manage network campaigns much like they manage their search strategy — granularly. It also allows the team to efficiently communicate daily trends and related adjustments.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3640143

The concept is to do a lot of testing of various versions on your pages, measure which ones convert the best, and then pick the best converting one. Often, simple changes can have the best impact.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3640123

The iPhone was indeed revolutionary and provided the true smartphone leap forward, that has been followed and in many ways being surpassed by Android, with more and more mainstream users browsing online via mobile devices.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/mobile-seo-future-planning/20258/

Checklists can be incredibly useful tools for search engine marketers. Not only do they help standardize processes and best practices across a multi-person search engine marketing group, but they help you achieve consistent performance for yourself. Invest some time in making a checklist of your routine search engine marketing tasks and refine it over time.

http://searchengineland.com/go-green-with-your-time-recycle-your-ppc-work-38577

So, it’s important to know which of your keywords are being used by consumers at different stages in the buying cycle. That way, you can present the most relevant ads and the most relevant landing pages on your site.

http://searchengineland.com/the-blueprint-of-the-modern-paid-search-accouno-40315

Now, Facebook has taken a clear lead, with nearly half of driven traffic, with StumbleUpon in a surprising second place position, accounting for nearly a quarter of all traffic, and Twitter just behind that with one out of every 10 hits to websites from social media. Myspace, on the other hand, has virtually disappeared, dropping from 16% of hits to nearly 1% this month.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_accounts_for_half_social_traffic_stumbleu.php

Sobees’ Android app allows you to access multiple Twitter accounts, share photos and your locations, shorten URLs, read Tweets when you are offline, search recent messages using Twitter Search and see profiles, pictures, maps and more directly in the app. Sobees is also monetizing the app by adding Riotwise ads from realtime search startup OneRiot to the app.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/sobees-launches-twitter-client-for-android-ipad-app-on-the-way/

Our clients’ innovative use of the voice of the customer has helped Bazaarvoice become one of the fastest growing technology companies today. Now, Google is affirming the power of social commerce with this partnership to integrate Bazaarvoice reviews content into Google.com – the heart of its business – as well as throughout product search and advertising vehicles.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/21/google-to-show-bazaarvoice-reviews-in-search-results

“Facebook isn’t just a destination or platform moving forward, it truly is becoming a provider of social communication tools for the entire Web,” the company says. “Facebook is going to make the entire Web social, thus a social Web means an entirely different way of thinking about advertising and marketing.”

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/22/why-facebooks-news-is-great-news-for-your-sites-traffic