Hello and welcom back to ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. After taking a few weeks off over the holidays to re-charge, we’re back stronger than ever with everyone’s favourite weekly round up (it is right?). While I try to avoid the year end posts/lists, it is a bit impossible. Have no fear tho, between the barrage of round up posts, we did find a few gems as well as other newsworthy goodies for ya!

And away….

Lead Story

Prediction posts are redundant

Yea, it’s a slow week. We really didn’t see any ‘big story’ out there as the landscape tends to be dominated by lists, wrap ups and year end predictions. Me? I generally don’t bother with them. I mean seriously, did ANYONE see all the changes that we faced last year? The on-set of Google’s Caffeine saw a TON of changes, mostly SERP presentation than anything, and nobody saw that coming. So why bother?

Now, that being said, I was nailed down by Pete Young for some thoughts on 2011, which wasn’t the usual garden variety of specific changes. More industry related. So, I decided to play along. He also got input from quite a few great search peeps I respect and the eventual series turned out pretty damned good.

Have a read;

From what I gather, the series will continue on this week. Be sure to add Pete’s blog to your reader and catch the rest of the series. And if you just HAVE to have your year-end lists, then SEL’s seems to be the granddaddy of them all; The Big List: 168 Marketing Trends, Predictions & Resolutions For 2011

On with this week’s other stories of interest.

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

Talk of the Town

Why you cannot reverse engineer Google’s algorithm – have I mentioned lately how much Michael rocks? I have said it many a time; you can’t test ranking factors. Sure you can gain some insight, but ‘reverse engineering’? Get real. Mr. Martinez (via SEO Theory blog) can explain the rest to you. Great stuff.

SEO Research: Because Nothing Makes You More Informed Than Being Misinformed– this one from Mike, goes a step further and looks at many of the long standing myths in the SEO world. Misinformation is a huge problem for the SEO community and maybe that’s a goal for 2011, enhancing the legitimacy of the industry.

Link Bait: Bringing Big Catch or Wasting Your Time? — this one was over on (newsletter sponsor) Link Assistant’s blog. Good post, but I still wonder if we shouldn’t call it something else? Maybe; link magnets? Not sure, but it would help the aforementioned legitimacy for the industry. As for the post, link bait can be hit and miss at times. It’s not as easy as it looks my friends.

“Learning” On The Job; SEO Ninja Training – ok sure, Dana is a friend of the Fire Horse. Yes, the post does mention my wandering web warriors from the Dojo. But seriously, it’s still a damned fine post ok? Sheesh. Thanks to Dana for preaching the gospel of never-ending learning on the job. It’s not a bad thing ya know.

15 Link Building Predictions & Recommendations For 2011 – Debra (Mastaler), Eric (Ward) and Julie (Joyce) put out their thoughts into the next year. Yea, I don’t like lists, but hey it’s two kickass linkers and a mention for the Dojo. I just have to take the bait..erm.. magnet.. on that one right? A good read as always Deb!

How Human Factors May Affect Information Indexing And Retrieval– huh, would ya look at that. Someone talking IR that isn’t Bill. LOL. Kudos to Kim for this post. Humans, in case you hadn’t heard, are the users that drive search. All to often we focus on tools and data and leave the human element behind. Qualitative data is important for 2011 if you ask me…

Link Building this Year – yes, I am working another list into the mix. But Wiep is one guy that I listen to when it comes to recommended reading. Another bonus is that it’s not some uber-long list either. Some good posts worth checking out if you haven’t.

Page Segmentation and the Effects on Link Building – it was also nice to see this topic revisted again. I had been writing about page segmentation since 2009 or so. If you haven’t yet gotten your head around it, this post should be mandatory reading.

SEO’s own online reputation mess – and of course, on the earlier theme of the state of the industry, this post from Virginia (via Raven blog) asks what we can do to make things better in 2011.

SEO Dojo Radio; the year in review – last week on the podcast we spent some time looking at the more visited stories of 2010 and looked ahead for 2011. It was a bit of a marathon, so be sure to have some time booked to listen to the entire show.