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.

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 them into actionable plans.
Thursday, July 18: ClickZ Live will be in Vancouver, BC. Register before July 1

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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

John Gagnon, Bing Ads Evangelist at Microsoft, jumped into his morning keynote at SES Toronto talking about changing technology and how users are being impacted by it. He says the way people are searching and interacting with technology is changing and it is causing a lot of things to come to the forefront.

He goes through some of the projects coming out of Microsoft Research, including Trajectory, which is a map integration that allows you to take a photo of the street you are on, and it then tags the locations of various businesses, such as restaurants, right on the photo for you.

In another example, he showed how you can do a search for a type of restaurant, such as “Chinese Restaurant”. Bing maps can deliver results not only for where you are currently, but it also knows you are headed home so it will also show results for those restaurants also near where you live.

Next he talked about food science and psychophysics, specifically as it related to the work of Howard Moskowitz and Malcolm Gladwell.

Gagnon brought up the spaghetti sauce brand Prego, and how they wanted to jump from the #2 best selling spaghetti sauce to #1. Earlier, for Pepsi in the early 1970s, Howard helped design the perfect diet Pepsi and specifically how much aspartame they needed. Sweet stop was 8-12 percent – 8 percent wasn’t sweet enough but 12 percent was too sweet. So they taste tested at 0.1 percent increments, hoping to find that sweet spot. But instead, they found there wasn’t the perfect result, and there was no perfect Pepsi because of personal differences and preferences.

He then discussed spaghetti sauce marketing. Ragu was the #1 spaghetti sauce, but Prego was #2 despite having better ingredients and better quality. Moskowitz came

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2275173/Trends-and-Techniques-for-Digital-Marketers-and-Data-Geeks-SESTO

It has always been difficult for Twitter users to get specific stats about their impact on Twitter, such as how many times a tweet has been favorited, the number of retweets, and how many replied a tweet received. While you might notice it on the fly, it can be hard for Twitter users to spot trends in their tweets, such as the type of content that is most popular with their followers.

To access the Twitter Analytics, simply go to ads.twitter.com and login with your Twitter account information. Click the Analytics link to see your Twitter stats for favorites, retweets and reply interactions.

The data can also be downloaded as a CSV file. The information is basic, and is the same information that business users have had for some time. But for smaller businesses and marketers, having this information at a glance is helpful without having to resort to a third-party tool.

Hopefully Twitter will expand their analytics offerings. It would be great for Twitter to include even more information in their analytics, especially for marketers using Twitter for business.

It would be useful to know whether it is the same people retweeting and favoriting tweets, or if it is different people everytime. Knowing the overall reach of each tweet based on retweets would be helpful, such as knowing how many followers those retweets went to.

This will also have the added bonus that it will get more Twitter users familiar with their advertising, since you need to login to the ad platform in order to access analytics data. Even if a small percentage of users test Twitter ads or tell others about Twitter advertising, it would be a net win for Twitter, particularly since Twitter has seemed to struggle a bit in getting advertisers on board

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2274888/Twitter-Offers-Free-Analytics-For-All-Users

Google has reached an agreement to buy navigation app maker Waze in a deal believed to be valued upwards of $1 billion, beating rivals Facebook and Apple, which were also rumored to be mulling a bid for the startup.

The much-rumored deal was confirmed by Waze chief executive Noam Bardin on a company blog.

“We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world,” he wrote.

Waze, which currently boasts nearly 50 million users, offers map and traffic data services using satellite signals sent from smartphones. The firm was reported to be in discussions with Facebook last month, as the social network giant looked for ways to strengthen its Home offering.

But according to Israeli website Globes, that deal foundered on Facebook’s insistence that the developers moved to the U.S.

Brian McClendon, VP of Geographic Services at Google said, “The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now. We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities.”

Maps have become a key battleground in the smartphone wars, not least because of the self-inflicted damage Apple unleashed with its calamitous release of its own geo-location app for iOS 6.

Waze has attracted suitors partly in recognition of how accurate its traffic updates are in areas where it has gained critical mass. The app uses a crowdsourcing approaching to traffic monitoring, providing real-time updates on routes.

If the deal goes ahead, it would be among the largest acquisitions Google has made. It paid an eye-popping $12.5 billion

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2274482/Google-Buys-Navigation-App-Waze-for-1-Billion

Recent research from the Unruly Social Video Lab has found there is a huge appetite for branded videos on the web. Unruly currently tracks 506,976 “shares” of online video ads every 24 hours.

This morning, Unruly opens its doors on its first Social Video Lab in America, enabling advertisers to make the most of this trend. Located in New York, the new lab is modeled on the video technology company’s original Social Video Lab in London, which was launched last summer.

Visitors to the New York lab will be given a hands-on interactive journey through the science and history of online video sharing, plus a tour of current video trends. They will also have access to the Unruly Viral Video Chart, which has tracked 329 billion video streams since 2006. Advertisers can find out how their current social video footprint compares with their competitors, how to create shareable content, and how to determine the distribution strategy required to achieve their campaign goals.

Visitors will also be able to test the shareability of their own campaigns using Unruly ShareRank, an algorithm-based tool which uses over 100,000 data points to predict the number of shares a video will attract, before it is even launched, meeting the seemingly impossible desire to “predict viral success.”

During a tour of the new lab last week, Cat Jones, Unruly’s Director of Product Innovation, said, “Video is the world’s fastest-growing ad format in terms of ad spend, so it’s really important that brands have their fingers on the pulse and allocate their marketing dollars wisely. Leaving it to luck simply isn’t an option.”

Devra Prywes, Unruly’s Marketing Director, added, “Creating and distributing shareable content for social media is at the top of the agenda for CMOs, and brands can use the Lab experience to pinpoint exactly what’s trending.”

So, do social video

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2273968/Branded-Videos-Shared-More-Than-500000-Times-Every-24-Hours

Maurice Sendak was born on this date 85 years ago. A Google Doodle today pays tribute to the author and illustrator known for such children’s books as “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Night Kitchen”, and “Outside Over There.”

Sendak captured the imagination and hearts of children and adults alike through his creative storytelling and colorful illustrations. If you aren’t familiar with his books, you may remember the 2009 screen adaptation of the 1963 classic children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Today’s Google Doodle takes visitors on an animated journey through Sendak’s alternate storybook worlds, and ends with a gathering of the creatures from his tales in celebration of the author.

Explains Doodler Jennifer Hom:

To honor such a cherished cultural icon is no small task. How can anyone sing the praises of Maurice Sendak with enough affection? The doodlers and I decided to let Sendak’s characters do the talking, or the walking rather. The doodle is a kind of parade– sixteen of his characters march through their stories and gather around a birthday cake decked with candles that read “85.” Even his dog, Herman, makes an appearance to wish Maurice a warm happy birthday.

Google gave us a sneak peek into the evolution of the artistic process that made today’s Doodle come to life. Here, you can see how one piece developed over time:

A Look into the Mind and Inspiration Behind Sendak’s Books

Sendak had a somewhat difficult past. Born to immigrants, he lost family members in the Holocaust, and said he drew inspiration for his stories – stories that many believed were too dark for children – from his own life.

In a 2004 interview with PBS, Sendak talked about how

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2273963/Google-Doodle-Celebrates-Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-Author-Maurice-Sendak