Google seems to be testing a new format for sharing reviews on Google+ of Google My Business (Google Places) listings…

Don’t let excitement for content marketing blind you to other uses for content, like brand building, increasing conversions and setting up a proper framework.

Controversies regarding SEO are probably as dated as the methodology itself, and performance-based SEO couldn’t really make its place as an exception, not completely at least. The problem is many agencies who offer performance-based SEO are more concerned about optimizing their own profit than focusing on the businesses of their clients.

Social Networking Accounts For (at Least) 28% of All Media Time Spent Online [STUDY] – Internet users now spend a daily average of 6.09 hours on online media, and more than one full quarter of all that time that is used by social networking on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, reveals a new study.  AllTwitter The U.S. Accounts for 41.5% of all Mentions on Twitter (UK: 9.7%, France: 5.4%) [INFOGRAPHIC] – Did you know that more than two in five of all mentions on Twitter – all those @replies and @username tags we each do many times each day – take place in the United States? Find out more from this informative infographic.

Mark Traphagen posted on Google+ that Google started dropping a lot of the Google+ elements you’d find in the Google Knowledge Box on the right hand side of the page. UPDATE: This was just a bug on Google’s end, see details below…

It’s not often you have a vote that might create a new, independent nation. But that’s what’s happening today with Scotland. It’s such a big event that you’d think Google and Bing would be doing something special to provide election results. That’s not the case….

Posted by randfish We’re seeing Google continue to move beyond just reading pages, instead attempting to truly understand what they’re about. The engine is drawing connections between concepts and brand names, and it’s affecting SERPs. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just what Google is doing, and how we can help create such associations with our own brands

A couple weeks ago, Google announced changes to the search within search box in the Google search results. One of those changes was the ability to direct the query done on Google, directly to the publishers site by adding some schema.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Image Search Updates Include Touch Friendly Result Pages That Adapt To Screen Size & Resolution Over the next few weeks, Bing is rolling out new updates…