1) Cyber Monday Desktop Spending Up 18% Over Last Year
It’s no surprise to see online shopping rise around the holidays. Although, this year bore witness to an unprecedented leap in Cyber Monday spending. Social media yielded big wins this year with Facebook retargeting clickthrough rates nearly doubling on Cyber Monday and revenue from Pinterest up 3.6 times the average. Read more here.
2) Amazon Air Drones Fly Onto The Scene
Whether it’s a PR stunt or the real thing, this Amazon Air concept has the Internet buzzing with debate about the future of package delivery. Will Jimmy John’s also be jumping in on drone delivery? Read the full article on Amazon Air here.
3) Google Changes SERP Layouts, Emphasizing Ads & Images
Google has dramatically changed the layout of search engine results pages this week. Ads are now called out with yellow image labels, images are taking up more space, and Product Listing Ads have gained prominence. The bottom line is organic search just got tougher and ads just got bigger. Cancel your weekend plans. You’ll need to optimize your paid search campaigns and PLAs right away. Read the full article here.
4) Supreme Court Set To Review Software Patents
Startups and angel investors alike will be interested in where the Supreme Court draws the line with software patents in the coming months. According to law, an invention must be “New, non-obvious and useful” in order to be eligible for patent. And it must fall within the realm of subjects eligible for a patent, which excludes abstract ideas like math formulas. The debate centers on whether many softwares and computer algorithms fall into this non-patentable category. Just for reference, Google owns some 50,000 patents or patents-pending. Many feel that many of these patents should be ineligible. Has the patent game killed innovation in software? Read more here.
5) Apple Buys Topsy
Topsy hit the scene with a very small splash. Back when it came out, our very own Brent Rangen covered Topsy’s capabilities on Search Engine Watch. Topsy focuses on gathering and parsing data on Twitter. So, why would Apple buy them? We’re interested to see what Apple will do with all that data. Better App recommendations, perhaps? Read more here.
6) What Will Developers Do With Affordable Eye-Tracking?
Retailers and big businesses have had their hands on eye-tracking technology for years. Until recently, eye-tracking has been too pricy for developers, small companies and innovators to play with. Check out the $195 kit and read more about eye-tracking here. Now that the price has come down, what will developers and innovators do with eye-tracking?
7) Facebook Admits Algorithm Favors Paid Content Over Organic
Marketers are seeing their organic reach slowly diminish on Facebook. In a recent sales deck, Facebook admitted, “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time…” In other words, their algorithm favors paid content versus organic and marketers will simply have to sack up and buy more ads. Read the full article here.
8) Links! We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Links.. Says Yandex
Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine for commercial sites recently revealed that links are no longer going to influence rankings. This move will ceratinly pique Google’s interest. With a less-than-smooth transition in link toxicity and links acquired from non-organic methods, Google has instituted warnings to webmasters, disavow tools, shut down blog networks, devalued press release sites, article directories and more. Granted, this will only effect 10% of queries on Yandex, but it’s still a bold move in a turbulent time for search engines. Especially now, as most major search engines are changing positioning of algorithmic weight from linking signals. Read the full article here.