Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: DIY Link Building, ‘Sexier’ Google Analytics & More Is it possible — and smart — for anyone outside of link building..

Places Search is the latest Google property to add Instant results . Click to read the rest of this post…

Baidu, which already dominates China’s search engine market share, seems to be looking beyond search, testing a new web browser and planning to develop a new mobile operating system. Seems Baidu may be taking their cues from U.S

The Court of Justice of the European Union has an important decision to make in the upcoming months on search ad keyword bidding over trademarked keywords. Currently..

Is it possible — and smart — for anyone outside of link building consultants/agencies to successfully scale a link building campaign? Should a “regular Joe” follow the timeworn advice to mine competitors’ links, contact link targets and ask for links? Is that the best…

We have been covering the Google Panda/Farmer update in extreme detail, giving you every theory, every slight update and everything I think can possibly help webmasters stay n top of the topic. The thing is, we still do not have any concrete information about the update and how to escape from it. There have been maybe a handful of people claiming they are no longer impacted by this Google update but the reality is, it can likely mean they were never impacted by this specific update

If you attended SES New York 2001 , then you probably saw the opening keynote, about 20 percent of the 70+ sessions, and a big batch of the almost 80 exhibitors and sponsors. If you didn’t attend the leading search and social marketing event, then you can still watch what could be called, “The Significant Seven,” the top videos from last week’s must-attend event

Mastercard and Citigroup are teaming with Google to further Google’s mobile payment ambitions using near-field communication technology on Android phones. With the deal, Google is looking to boost its local advertising business and “offer retailers more data about their customers and help them target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. Click to read the rest of this post…

Sina Replaces Google Search Engine On Portal from the Wall Street Journal reports Google has just lost a major search syndication deal with one of Chinese largest portals.

This post is focused around outlining some of the free tools and features that Google AdWords offers but people often don’t make full use of because they forget or don’t know they are available. In the past many AdWords campaigns were monitored from within Bid Management platforms or from within Google Analytics but the new AdWords home tab is seeking to change all that