A week in Digital
Digital budgets increasing in 2011:
According to eConsultancy 72% of businesses are set to increase digital spend in 2011 versus 68% in 2010. Those planning to increase budgets will do so by approx 35% compared to 33% last year.
More penalised for spammy tactics:
Google’s war on spam continues with more news of sites being penalised for dodgy link acquisition strategies. Overstock.com and Forbes.com are both said to have been penalised in recent days for alleged spammy practices. This on top of the very high profile JC Penney story which took a new twist last week when they claimed that someone else must have bought those links! How can Google say with any certainly who did?
Last week also saw an algorithm change targeted at so called ‘content farms’. Another spam driven initiative, this time targeted at low quality sites created with stolen duplicate content.
It’s pretty clear that while Matt Cutts is adamant that spam isn’t on the rise, it has certainly risen on their ‘to do’ list. I personally love the approach of Blekko – let the people decide what is spam and what isn’t. Humans versus bots – I know who I’m backing….
Increased social integration for Microsoft
Microsoft social search integration deepens with Facebook in the US. Now all search results will include Facebook ‘liked’ tags. Previously not all results were included. I loved this quote from Lawrence Kim, the principal program manager for social search:
“This is the first time in human history that people are leaving social traces that machines can read and learn from, and present enhanced online experiences based on those traces,”
