A busy start to 2012 in search news, including the launch of Google Search Plus Your World, Google banning its own Chrome page, and the announcement of a mass-merging of privacy policies across all Google services….
searchengineland.com
2012 got off to a bad start for Google after sponsored posts were found that contravened Google’s own guidelines resulted in the Chrome home page having a penalty applied against it.
searchengineland.com
In possibly the most radical shake-up of Google’s “ten blue links” since the search engine was founded, Google started adding results from Google+ directly and prominently all over the search results. Reception of this in the search industry hasn’t been entirely positive (especially from social competitors Twitter & Facebook), but it remains to be seen how Google’s wider user base receives it.
www.guardian.co.uk
New privacy policy means Google could log browsing habits on YouTube or Google+ to sell targeted ads in Gmail or search.
battellemedia.com
Will Facebook launch a search engine? Spoiler: probably not, or at least not in the way we might expect them to – John Battelle speculates based on what Facebook has that Google hasn’t.
www.blindfiveyearold.com
Hot on the heels of the Google+ search integration, this comprehensive Google+ SEO guide covers every aspect and angle of Google+ and how it impacts search.
pandodaily.com
An interesting take on how Google is becoming more like Apple in its philosophy – and why that’s not necessarily a good thing…
support.google.com
A potential gotcha here for every web development agency and beyond – put a Google+ button on your site (even on a staging server) and Google reserves the right to index your page and show it in search results, even if you explicitly tell them not to.
searchengineland.com
Google has confirmed reports of a Panda update with – there were no additional signals or algorithm changes, however as this was only a data refresh.
test.visualize.yahoo.com
Absoultely brilliant visualisation of real time traffic to Yahoo’s home page – splice who’s viewing news stories in real time by demographic, gender and more!