There is some buzz around the community that there may have been a Google update, specifically a Penguin update, yesterday.

We’ve heard plenty of cases of SEOs extorting their customers by threatening to hurt their rankings or online reputation if they do not pay them a fee or ongoing monthly stipend. Well, this landed one SEO in federal prison for 37 months..

Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Twitter asking if it is okay to use a decimal point in your URLs, such as mysite.com/page.goes.here/. John Mueller said you surely can but he said it was a “bad idea…

A new London-based search engine, Oscobo, just launched promising an anonymous searching experience on a platform that won’t sell or store user information. The post New Search Engine Oscobo is Focused on Privacy, Won’t Sell or Store Your Information by @mattsouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Search Engine Roundtable Stories: January 2016 Google Webmaster Report December was a pretty quiet month…

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: “Illegitimate” SEO Sentenced, German Publishers Sue Google & App Indexing Crawl Errors appeared first on Search Engine Land. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article

A group of German publishers has filed a civil complaint against Google. The group, constituted as VG Media, claims to be enforcing Germany’s “Ancillary Copyright” Law, passed in 2013. This is the latest episode in an ongoing dispute between German news publishers and Google.

We know Google has an HTTPS Ranking Boost.

How will local marketing change this year? From apps to beacons to mobile wallets, columnist Adam Dorfman covers six trends local search marketers should pay attention to

The New Year is upon us and it’s time to review the latest in social as well as brainstorm new social media strategies for the year. The post This Month in #SocialMedia: Updates from December 2015 by @thebigdebowski appeared first on Search Engine Journal .