Hello and welcom back to ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. While there was a lot of good posts last week, there was also a fair bit of drama, animosity and oddities as well. I found it kinda odd since the search world had been fairly calm the last few months. Everyone get’s grumpy in January? Dunno…

I hope this edition finds you well, let’s get it on!

Lead Story

Google seeks to clean up the SERPs!

Over the last while there has been plenty of buzz around the quality of the SERPs. This is starting to hit a bit more mainstream, it’s nothing really knew in the SEO space (we have Aaron Wall and Michael Van Der Mar dontcha know).

Is it REALLY getting worse? Or is there just an expectation out there for it to get better? I’d have to imagine as Google and the internet itself grows, there are going to be more and more spammy sites (and tactics) to deal with.

And of course, getting into new signals such as social, sure ain’t going to make it any easier.

Fear not, super-Matt is on the job!

Google’s blog post

Google targeting content farms

Relevancy Changes at Google

What is a content farm?

It is some interesting news and I am sure a LOT of SEOs would be happy to see the thin-content spammy sites given the true value of what they’re worth. How effective will this be?

Is this just lip-service from Google given the recent spate of public grumbling? Not sure, time will tell…

And now, the rest of the week’s news…

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Talk of the Town

The drama returns!!

Long time readers know of my love of the drama’s that spark up in the industry from time to time. Over the last few months, things have been pretty damned quiet. But no more… so here’s some interesting rants from the week past;

SEO Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around – Jessica highlighted a few unsavory moments of late and then opened the can of worms that is; SEO Ethics.

Black Magic SEO – Alan goes on a bit of a tangent started by some recent advice coming out of Umoz (easy pickins methinks). Good post and the comments are equally entertaining.

SEOs: Google is not your friend – in this one Barry (Adams) talks about the adversarial relationships between SEOs and search engines. Something I’ve written on in the past, I shall let you decide (there’s a reason it’s called; adversarial information retrieval).

Are You A Link Loud Mouth? – this time out it is the uber-fabulous Debra Mastaler whom just couldn’t take it anymore and smashed up a recent SEW post. Particularly enjoyed this one.

Myths, BS and FUD, Oh My! – and last but not least, Doc Sheldon also lashes out at the many myths and other crud dolled out in the SEO space. Meoooow.. hissss….

And while not entirely Drama, it was interesting to watch this one;

First off there were a couple posts; Guide to Competitive Backlink Analysis, (via the Moz) and Performing a Competitive Link Analysis, (via Search News Central). Which, not by design, was beat up on a bit by Michael (Martinez) with; Why competitive link analysis wastes your time. And that, was retorted with a post from Wiep entitled; Why a Link Analysis is Anything But a Waste of Time

Anyway, that’s if for; As The Search World Turns (seriously, it’s fun stuff). Let’s get back to the rest of the news from the week shall we?

Getting a grip on social signals in search – was a post from yours truly that was a bit of an extension on last week’s ‘Lead Story’. What exactly IS the value from social in SEO? Take a ride along to find out.

How to Get Links from Journalists – was an interesting post from Nichlola Stott (via Search Engine Watch) that looks a journo relations. Important stuff worth reading. On a side note, don’t ‘settle’ for a citation. Why? Because non-link citations are becoming more important these days – so it’s just FINE to have them.

Enterprise SEO: 5 Tips To Create A Governance System – What can I say? If you’ve ever worked corporate or large scale SEO, you will enjoy this one. Even if you haven’t, still a good read. I personally know this pain all to well and concur with many of the points in it.

Study: Google “Favors” Itself Only 19% Of The Time – some great analysis of a recent study done that (tries) to show Google results are biased towards themselves. Interesting the author of the study has worked for Bing and has a lawsuit against Google… LOL. Aaron also had some input with; How To Measure Bias In Google’s Results

SEO Gets Dissed by CBS TV Series “The Good Wife” – Yea? Well screw you too!! hee hee…

Talking Search with Danny Sullivan – last week the gang from Search Geeks Speak (SEO Dojo Radio) did an interview with Danny Sullivan. Some interesting stuff and Danny is always an entertaining listen.

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents -