It’s a mad mad world out there and with spring in the air this web wanderer is getting in the groove. Oh crap, I have posts to get out? Grumble mumble… Oh, Hi. How long were you standing there? Welcome to another edition of ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘ – your weekly feast of SEO and social search goodiness. Things were fairly active with a premium on tool posts and a tad light on the social search stuff. Plenty for all… let’s get into it.

Lead Story

Google Brands Recommendations

Last year there was quite the grumbling around the ‘Vince’ update which seemed to be leaning hard on brands. This year we’ve another interesting development that seems to be happening with generic product related queries;

We had some pretty lengthy discussions on this in the SEO Dojo chat room, and it is an interesting development. Some felt it was from Gbase data, personally looks like it is using query data (search volumes) and part of the recommendation engine (usually at the bottom of the SERP, ‘Searches related to’).

In some ways this might be an advantage for local suppliers/distributors of brands in that they might get some higher query traffic. I tested it and there is an element of ambiguity to the queries that are producing it.

Easiest way to find one? Type in something like ‘laptop’ and pick one of the Google Suggest listings (such as ‘laptop computers’).

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Talk of the town

An April Fools joke 27 days later – OMFG – I had a huge laugh with this one. I won’t give away the joke though, go read it.

SEO Benchmarks and KPI – we recently found that SEOs were still using rankings as a benchmark. We (at the SEO Dojo) thought it would be an interesting exercise to get a list of KPIs/Benchmarks together. Bookmark it I tells ya!

The scope and limitations of SEO – Barry Adams continued on the whole benchmarks/KPI debate via the State of Search blog. I do love this convo and it’s worth discussing further IMO.

Don’t Penalize Yourself: Mobile Sites Are Not Duplicate Content – was an interesting post over on SEL. For the record though, we’ve been hearing ‘This is the year for mobile’ for like, the past 5 years or so? I’ll stay on the fence for now.

The danger of performing SEO in a vacuum – Hugo looks at some of the problems that can affect a ‘best case scenario’. Advice to a client isn’t much use without a little deu-diligence right?

How Not To Sell Links On Your Newspaper Site – Shaun was getting a little cheeky this week with some crap-hat spam he received. Go get ‘em matey!

Link Building Campaign Prep – Garrett French stopped into the Fire Horse Trail with an interesting post on the common steps to be taken BEFORE you start prospecting. Short and suhweet… thanks for dropping in G!

The Link Builder’s Guide to Conducting a Linkability Audit: It’s YOU, Not THEM! – the Garrett’s world tour continues, this time on Wiep’s blog. A great guide to page/site analysis for link building.

What the Hell is SEO Now Anyway? – who doesn’t love a good Marty-Rant? Right? One thing Marty, anything with a search box, IS a search engine. M’kay? Twitter or FaceBook search, are search engines. #justsayin

Competitive Intelligence in SEO & Social Media – speaking of social and search, I really did like this one from Loren via SEJ. Lots of great ideas/approaches and metrics to be had.

How to Write a Kick Ass Press Release – after a recent appearance in the Dojo chat sessions, Nichola asked Claire to write us up a How-to. And boy did she deliver. For those interested in PR/D for their SEO, this is a must read!

Web Spam: The Definitive Guide – I spent the last few months digging into the world of webspam; this post is the end sum of the journey. A good one for the geeks among us!

Time Sensitive Elements in Universal SERPs – Terry dropped part three in his investigations into the world of Universal search. I’ve been pushing Uni search strategies the last few months.. if ya haven’t yet, get on it.