Weekly Search & Social News: 05/17/2011

Hello and welcome to another edition of ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. Your weekly round up of the very best in SEO and social search.

Lead Story

Nuking competitors is NOT the answer

Ok, first things first. I am not really against using any tool in the box including reporting those that are up to no good. Do I use it often? No, but I wouldn’t take it out of the box. As it is my responsibility to consider all tactics, I must consider all potential competitive advantages (such as having compliant SEO tactics).

Along my path I came across this article from Barry; NY Times Hates Google Or Just Simple Reporting?

There’s yer first problem right? Google knows that the JCP and Overstock instances were initiated by competitors in their space. From what I know talking to peeps at Google, they aren’t going to let that become a habit. Which is pretty much what seems to have happened in this instance.

Next is the more obvious; it’s a short lived strategy. I have worked for larger brands that have ran afoul of Google (peeps seem to think geeks can help in that dept.). I can guarantee you that in all but the most egregious cases, they will be back in the index in short order. Why? It’s about search quality my friends, people search a brand they expect to find it or ‘Google Sucks’.

So, at the end of the day, using the media or other avenues, reporting top competitors will often only be a very limited and short term solution. Move along… nothing to see here.

Also have a read of Aaron’s post; Google Brand Bias in Search Results

Or Tony Verre’s; Google Violators and The New York Times: No One Cares

Ok? Let’s move along shall we?

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

Talk of the Town

The Insanity That is an SEO Theorist’s Thoughts – is Michael writing about insanity or merely just gone insane? It’s rather hard to tell from this post. But DAMN it was entertaining at least. Oh yea, tis another Panda sighting too (will it ever end?).

5 Suggestions for Google Suggest – one of my the more interesting aspects of Google’s recommendation engine goodies is the suggest elements. In this post Rhea (from Outspoken Media) does some great analysis and makes a few suggestions of her own.

Getting big links from big media sites, the fundamentals – while they aren’t always the easiest to get, link from media sites are often quite valuable as they carry not only link equity (such as PageRank) as well as trust. This article on Distilled, has some good tips for those not familiar with journo chasing.

5 Often Surprisingly Overlooked SEO Tactics – as a fan of on-site tactics (being undervalued) it was nice to see some of the ideas that Alan had in his post over on SEJ. Some handy tips to add to the toolbox (if they’re not present already of course).

Beyond Blog Posts – A Guide to Innovative Content Types – sure, I have always advocated content centric SEO programs in this space, but it does seem to really be a big deal since the ol Panda came to town huh? This one is great for thinking outside the box. A worthy read fer sure.

How Facebook Enables The Google Social “Scraping” It’s Upset About – it’s not often we’ll have a social (search) related story in the lead, but this one I had to. The part about FB’s Open Graph in particular. Hard to bitch when you’re asking peeps to semantically mark things up (publicly available info).

Using The Scotty Principle to Sell SEO Services – and last but certainly not least is some deffo geek-bait from Stoney. Seriously, how can any self respecting search geek not feel the need to click on that one? And hey, it’s also some great advice (that I am kinda weak on personally…sigh).