Google's John Mueller: do not sell your product for links

"I'd strongly recommend not making PageRank-passing links to your site a requirement for any kind of interaction on your website.

Links placed like that are generally not natural links, not the kind of links that our algorithms want to find. Past that, not all businesses or people have real websites, it seems like it would be a bit unfair to block them from being able to use your site to its fullest (and in turn, if they end up loving it, recommending it to their friends & business partners). By all means, make it easy for users to recommend and to link to your site, but don't use that as a requirement."

Apple changes the App Store ranking algorithm

"Apple is making potentially significant changes to the search algorithm in the App Store, at least according to some app developers. If you’re a developer or publisher counting on a well-chosen name to help with visibility, things could get tougher from here on out."

Bing search quality insights

"Microsoft is presenting 41 scientific articles this week in CVPR that have already been reviewed by search experts covering a large number of topics such as ranking and image search."

Google's John Mueller: Nofollow can be used for crawl prioritization

"Using the rel=nofollow microformat prevents PageRank from passing. It's useful for potentially untrusted links (eg in UGC), it's useful for advertising, and to some extent, for crawl prioritization.

There are some good examples listed in this thread - such as event sponsors, etc.. They aren't taken into account when we review sites with regard to paid links or other link schemes, nor are they used for things like authorship. [...]

If you're seeing issues with your site with regards to paid links, link schemes, or similarly, then apart from just removing those links, you could add the rel=nofollow instead, especially if you feel that these links have been useful in driving users to your site."

Chinese search newbie Jike takes on Baidu and Google

"Chinese government-owned search engine Jike took another step towards competing with the big boys, Baidu and Google, a year after its launch by announcing advertising on the site. [...]

The site looks almost identical to market leader Baidu, even down to the blue and red colour scheme, and will have to do something pretty special to make a serious imprint on the market."

• Google tests a new interface with horizontal navigation.
• Google redesigns all AdWords accounts.
• Twitter to roll out ad products to 50 countries.
• Google paying $0 in statutory damages as Oracle plans appeal.
• Google files for a patent on peer-to-peer location finding.
• Bing updates image search.
• Nike becomes first UK company to have Twitter campaign banned.
• Yahoo improves image and video search.

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