SEO

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Following the exciting automotive year-end shopping season, Compete and Twitter partnered together to understand the impact that Tweets posted by automotive companies have on the consumers who see them.  Specifically, we wanted to know whether Tweets influence consumer behavior; are people exposed to an automotive Tweet more likely to visit the manufacturer’s website and take action by locating a dealer, looking at offers or building their own car. To answer these questions, Compete observed 3,289 U.S.-based Internet consumers and 593 U.K.-based Internet consumers who saw Tweets from over 700 companies within the automotive space (manufacturers, dealers, aftermarket/parts and 3rd party online resources) from September 1 to November 30, 2012.  We limited the scope of the study to desktop browsing only (no mobile or table activity) and exposure on Twitter.com only (no Twitter clients were included in the analysis).  We also studied the behavior of two control groups comprised of a similar set of consumers who visited Twitter but did not see an automotive Tweet and who were simply average internet users. Compete and Twitter uncovered two key findings highlighted below: 1. Twitter users, U.S. and U.K. alike, who see Tweets from an automotive company are more likely to visit their websites or conduct a branded search We found that Twitter users who were exposed to an automotive Tweet visited those automotive websites or conducted a branded search at a higher rate than general Internet users. This finding is true for manufacturers and dealers as well as specific categories like aftermarket/parts. Key takeaway: Twitter users are auto enthusiasts. Twitter is a medium for advertisers to impact consumers’ consideration sets from the point of initial decision to purchase. 2. Conversions are influenced by auto Tweets Auto Tweets not only influence consideration, but they drive Twitter users to take lower funnel actions such as locate a dealer, request a quote or explore financing options. Key Takeaway: People who see an automotive Tweet are more likely to make perform a lower funnel activity. This means Twitter users arrive on an automotive website with a higher intent to get information to help inform their purchase decision. Compete and Twitter also uncovered other findings around how exposure to Tweets influences visitation by type of auto manufacturer as well as other interesting results. Click here to download the full U.S. whitepaper or here for the U.K. whitepaper.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Where Have All The Linkers Gone? A unique combination of factors is having a profound effect on the “link graph” being created today, with many implications for those of us in the content publicity/link building field. First and foremost among these factors is the “device effect.” The device effect means that a huge number of us are now consuming our content [...] Bing Ads Launches Traffic Quality Center Microsoft announced the launch of The Bing Ads Traffic Quality Resource Center today, a website designed to give advertisers and publishers visibility into the traffic quality protection systems of the Yahoo! Bing Network. The site includes sections that cover terminology, network protection methods, an overview of where ads on the Yahoo! Bing network will appear, [...] Hollywood Asks Google To Stop Listing Piracy Documentary, Claiming It’s Piracy Too The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay – Away from Keyboard, a documentary that sympathizes with the founders of the infamous file sharing website The Pirate Bay, has become the target of fraudulent link takedown requests from major Hollywood Studios, including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate. After its February release on The Pirate Bay [...] New AdWords Editor Update For Enhanced Campaigns Google rolled out a new version of AdWords Editor today. The latest version features more ways to make bulk changes to enhanced campaigns. New capabilities include: Bid adjustments for placements, topics, and audiences Mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level Upgrade campaigns in bulk using CSV import or the Add/update multiple campaigns tool Enter [...] Google’s Data Highlighter Now Supports Movies, TV, Articles, Products, Local Biz & Apps Google has quietly added support for six additional data types to the data highlighter rich snippet markup tool they introduced back in December. Google initially launched a visual rich snippet markup tool in December to allow less tech-savvy webmasters to markup their event based data. The tool only worked with event data and nothing else. [...] Graph Search Turns White, Looks More Like A Traditional Search Box This morning many hardcore Facebook users will be surprised when they login and look towards the iconic top blue bar. The coloring of Graph Search has been inverted and now features a bright white centered search box in the midst of the top bar. Searches still act the same and provide the same results, the coloring has [...] Social Signals Are So Last Week – Use Infographics to Drive Real Leads There is a lot of talk these days about social signals affecting Google Search Results, and many SEOs are feeling the effects for their clients, who are disconnected from the social world. When it comes to infographics, you may find yourself scratching your head at the many conflicting claims out there from the marketers that [...] Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing: Nutella Gives In, Allows Fan To Continue With “World Nutella Day” How To Organize Your Informational Content: A Case Study Apple Remains Most Valuable Brand, While Facebook Falls & Yahoo Returns To Top 100 [Brandz] Nutella Tells Fan To Stop Promoting It, Social Media Backlash Ensues Transformative Analytics — Envisioning The Next Generation Of Social Media Marketing Tools Google Sunsets Google Checkout To Put Focus On Google Wallet The Shortcomings We Settle For Behind Flickr’s New Pricing: Yahoo Really Wants To Show More Ads New Flickr Debut Puts Photos First, Free Terabyte Of Space For Each User Search News From Around The Web: Local Search & Maps Bing It On, The Yext Blog Google Starting to Convert Existing Dashboards to the New Places for Business Dashboard, Mike Blumenthal Paid Search Advanced PLA Tips, Tricks and Strategies, ppcchat.co Searching Advanced Search Operators: SEO Expe

YouTube has announced the winners of the Next Vlogger 2013 contest. 15 lucky winners will now receive $4,000 in production stuff, a Google+ Hangout workshop series with experts in the field, and the chance to collaborate with a whole bunch of other vloggers around the world.

At Google I/O, Google Analytics introduced a new feature that's quite a big deal to Premium Analytics users. Google is now giving Analytics Premium users the ability to use Google BigQuery to crunch their analytics data and other offline data sets.

Pinterest has detailed several types of pins that have added information on them, including product pins, recipe pins, and movie pins. But this move is really seen as Pinterest working better with brands who get their products pinned frequently.

Google announced a new keyword tool named the Keyword Planner. The tool can be found under the Tools & Analysis tab when you are logged into your Google AdWords account. The tool combines the benefits of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator into an integrated workflow...

I'm sure you heard the news by now, Yahoo has acquired Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion in cash. Seriously...

The Google Data Highlighter tool, which initially launched in December with support for just marking up pages that had event data...

Google Now is now more baked into Google Search. For example, if you do a search for [when is fathers day 2013 or other factual dated queries...