Google has settled an investor lawsuit that paves the way for it to issue Class C shares.

Google announced its intention to issue Class C stock last year, however the Brockton Retirement Board and shareholder Philip Skidmore sued the firm, claiming that the firm’s co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page engineered the stock split in order to keep control of the firm. Google has now settled the lawsuit before the case was about to go to trial in a Delaware court.

Google’s rocketing share price that currently stands above $850 highlights the demand for the firm’s stock, but diluting the Class B stock would mean that Brin and Page would also lose some of their voting influence in the company as the pair own over 50 percent of all Class B shares, with each share having 10 votes per share. Page and Brin therefore wanted to issue Class C shares, which would carry no voting rights.

Google’s legal agreement stipulates that the firm will have to pay Class C stockholders if the shares are worth less than the price of the Class A shares. The firm has also agreed that if the Class C shares are between one and five percent lower than the Class A shares it will offer a percentage of the difference to Class C shareholders in cash or additional shares.

Despite Brin and Page having founded Google, with various early investors taking a chunk of the firm, they have only around 15 percent of Class A shares. Page and Brin want to keep control of Google, but because it is a public company the only way they can do so is by keeping significant voting rights through Class B stock ownership.

With Google seemingly having overcome the hurdle posed by Brockton and Skidmore, the

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2276172/Google-Settles-Stock-Split-Lawsuit

Ever since the news hit about the NSA PRISM surveillance program in the United States, many people have become much more concerned about what exactly search engines are tracking about them.

Although Google, Bing, and Yahoo have stringent privacy policies, there have been enough people worried that they have begun looking at alternative search engines, particularly so-called “private search engines.”

DuckDuckGo is probably the best-known of the private search engines, and as a result it has recorded record traffic and shows no sign of stopping. In fact, since the PRISM news broke, nearly every day has been a record search day for DuckDuckGo, including yesterday where it broke 3 million searches for the first time. That is nearly double its pre-PRISM daily search totals.

DuckDuckGo updates their search traffic daily here.

It is worth noting, however, that DuckDuckGo earns revenue through contextual advertising on their search results. Their ads are currently served through Bing Ads, however they state the use of these ads does adhere to their privacy policy.

DuckDuckGo launched in 2008 and gained popularity by not tracking what individuals are searching. As of its 4th birthday in September, DuckDuckGo was seeing between 1.3 million and 1.5 million direct queries per day, on average.

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2275867/DuckDuckGo-Sees-Record-Traffic-After-NSA-PRISM-Scandal

In a move designed to “dramatically streamline” the user experience, Google Analytics announced a redesign of the administration panel.

Not only does the new design have a more consistent look and feel, but it should also go a long way to helping users visualize the settings for an account, property, and profile much easier.

The main administrative settings are now organized into three columns for each of the three main groups of settings: accounts, properties, and profiles.

Each of the three sections may be clicked and selected to reveal a more in-depth look at all of the settings. Once you drill down into an area, the settings take on a look that resembles the more-familiar report navigation in the Reporting areas.

Also note that the moniker of profile is being changed to views. This, too, is a new change. According to the Google Analytics team:

We are also renaming profiles to views to most closely match the present and future meaning of what this object represents: a view of the data Analytics collected for your property.

This is a very dramatic change from the previous design.

Google’s aim is for a more simplified navigation area so that you can set up and configure new accounts and properties faster and easier. So when you log into Google Analytics and see the new look – fear not. You’re in the right place!

Marketers Rejoice! ClickZ has launched ClickZ Live, an educational series to bring you innovative online marketing strategies and techniques. Learn to construct and successfully execute multi-channel marketing campaigns, plus identify key metrics and translate

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2275510/Google-Analytics-Admin-Panel-Gets-a-Redesign

As the Penguin 2.0 dust settles the SEO pundits are racing to interpret what Google has done and what it means. But unlike many other industries where there are watchdog groups, checks-and-balances or elections, Google rules the Monarchy in SEO. The situation is untenable and the message for small businesses nearly impossible to understand.

Julian Assange Challenges Google’s World View

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Julian Assange addressed Google’s recent PR work to position themselves as a thought leader on our digital future. While Google’s intentions may be good, Assange believes that their recent thinking represents the end of privacy for the general public and the rise of authoritarianism on the Internet.

Are we seeing the same thing in SEO via Matt Cutts? His intentions are clearly good (i.e., wanting better search results for end-users), but is he pushing the costs of SEO out of reach for small businesses? Worse, is he pitting the profits of Google Inc. against Ma and Pop’s Main Street?

SEO is like Goldilocks and the Three Bears

SEO does feel a bit like an epic fairytale (OK, maybe a recurring nightmare for some), filled with mystery, fear and vagaries. Usually the good guys win, but not always. I’ve been watching the columns, SEO publications and blogs, and Matt Cutts closely – and here are the definitive messages from Penguin 2.0:

• Analyze your links closely to know you are doing SEO right and which links you should disavow, but don’t think about backlinks.
• Spend years developing high quality link-bait and become an Authority, and then disavow all the links from sites that Google doesn’t like (even though they voluntarily linked to you because of your great content).
• Select a domain name that exactly matches what searchers want, but don’t select an exact match domain name even if that’s what searchers want

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  Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2275191/Google-Doubletalk-and-the-Three-Bears

Local link building is too often overlooked within link building campaigns. I’ve had great experiences involving local link building throughout campaigns, gaining traction within very competitive search verticals, helping drive relevant and converting traffic.

The trick to optimizing links for local search is two pronged – building great national industry links using geo-specific anchor text, and building great links from local authorities.

For this post, I’ll be covering how to build great links from local authorities – which time and time again has proven to require human creativity and leveraging relationships.

Why Local Links are Important

Dr. Pete at Moz wrote a fantastic post about the effect of SERP crowding for organic spots, due to features such as local listings, advertisements, the knowledge graph, rich snippets, etc.

Said plainly, Google is working to evolve. They want to go beyond being a search engine returning relevant websites and become an information provider, social tool, and really, world changer.

I recently read an article in Businessweek that really helps highlight this, specifically concerning their Google X department. The quote involves Google Glass, the latest hot item from Google X:

Parviz wants the world to see Glass in the context of Google X: It’s aimed at making access to knowledge so fast and seamless that it “fundamentally changes the meaning of knowing things.”

One easy way to tap into Google’s effort to provide deeper information within their SERPs – and secure an easy win – is to tap into local link building.

Creating a Local Mindset

The first and foremost step in launching a local link building campaign and building local authority links is establishing a local mindset. This is different than national link building, where it’s supremely important to build links only on sites that are highly relevant to your industry, with a measure of

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2274863/Local-Link-Building-An-Easy-Win