Battle for Search Dominance – SEO Weekly News 21 Feb 2010

Another week, another barrage of exciting SEO and technology related news. Highlights this week include the struggle for search dominance on mobile and desktop, Google Buzz getting more press – both good & bad and Tiger Woods’ streamed apology.

Mobile

Mobile Search Dominance

WebProNews discussed Windows 7 Phone having Bing built in potentially increasing its market share, but it’s balanced by the growing popularity of Android with Google search built in.

Indeed Bug Labs, a company who build various different, mostly portable, devices (cameras, LCDs, GPS) have announced that they’re supporting Google’s Android OS, so this is likely to inspire more market share for Google.

As its market share increases, Vodafone’s CEO warns of his fears of Google’s dominance, suggesting regulators “ensure choice and avoid concentration before it’s too late”.

After the recent release of Firefox Mobile on the Nokia N900, Mozilla have announced that they’ll release their mobile browser on Android this year. Given the aforementioned Google & Android vs Bing & Windows 7, this looks like another point for Google.

In similar news, in response to EU regulators, Microsoft have published screenshots showing how in the near future Windows 7 will offer a choice of browser rather than having IE installed by default. This will be achieved via a Windows update.

Blackberry radiates with Kindle

Meanwhile Amazon rolled out Kindle for Blackberry, balancing the equation a little amidst the forthcoming iPad eReader – all good news for eBooks and us folk in the publishing industry.

It was also revealed in a study this week that Blackberry’s 8820 emits the most radiation of all the smartphones. Fortunately my Storm is not in the list, but it’s reminded me not to carry it in my trouser pocket…

Yahoo & Microsoft

Talking of search dominance, Yahoo and Microsoft have now announced teaming up with their search alliance website. WebProNews discussed how their deal will help them reach up to 150 million searchers and get about 62% more search volume.

As SEO Roundtable put it, reporting on the same news, Yahoo is out of search and Bing takes over. So it’s well worth trying to improve your ranking with Bing…

SEOmoz

SEOmoz published an interesting article about Google using personalised results whether you want them to or not – this can skew checking the rank of your own or other websites. The conclusion is to use other tools (e.g. Open Site Explorer, powered by their LinkScape index, which they just reported has fresher than ever links) and to be sceptical!

On a related note, I posted an article about Open Site Explorer revealing how diverse affiliate linking can be incredibly powerful for SEO based on the top ranking UK SEO website, but this practise treads a fine ethical line.

Whiteboard Friday on SEOmoz covered the value of brand in search, explaining how it informs choice for users and search engines.

Social

Blogging

Matt Cutts posted an interesting (although non-Google related) article about a tool to turn blogs into books. Seems like we’re going full circle after Google scanning millions of books to turn into web pages.

In more search-centric blog news, Matt also explains that it’s not worth spending too much time on tags or categories on a blog for the sake of search engines, as Google will find content quite easily so long as it has relevant keywords within an article. He must have had a lack of interesting questions to answer this week, taking the time to answer a random question about cat’s backsides!

In slightly scandalous, but very temporary news, WordPress.com went down briefly this week, but was soon back up and running.

Google Buzz

Buzz is still making the news this week, not always in a positive light. Robert Scoble discussed why it’s a poor copy of FriendFeed in many ways. WebProNews talked about how the Electronic Privacy Information Center claimed that Google Buzz violates federal consumer protection laws.

Google’s Rick Klau talks about how to use Google Buzz to monitor your reputation.

And perhaps less newsworthy, I decided to add a buzz icon to my blog posts.

Community Management

Social Media community management tool Viral Heat has added Google Buzz to its social monitoring coverage – I hadn’t come across this until now, but it looks like a rather useful tool, which I’ll be investigating further.

And the top Twitter topics last week predictably included Superbowl, Google Buzz and still iPad.

Realtime MySpace in Google

WebProNews and Mashable discussed how after earlier deals, Google realtime search now includes MySpace, but Facebook is still to be integrated.

Lists of tips

Mashable published a couple of useful lists of tips this week – namely: 4 steps for managing social media attention and 7 rather useful social plugins for WordPress.

The Dangers of Sharing too much Information Online

A website called Please Rob Me was set up showing how it’s possible to figure out when people are away from home by hooking up with the FourSquare API. The website highlighted the dangers of sharing too much information online.

And finally, under the same heading ‘The Dangers of Sharing too much Information Online’, Tiger Woods’ cringeworthy live apology managed to draw in 683,000 views on Ustream. Nice.