For content marketers, link builders, search engine optimizers (SEO) and other industry players, this month has been full of newly released goodies from the larger internet companies.

These new tools are available to everyone, and their features and functionality expand the options available to web users. There were also a few shakeups in terms of personnel.  The following is a list of highlights of the latest updates in the world of search.

Blekko’s SEO Suite of Tools

New kid (relatively) on the search engine block, Blekko just announced via press release that it has a new suite of tools for SEO purposes.

“The mission behind blekko has always been to offer full transparency on the web,” said Rich Skrenta, CEO of blekko, “blekko’s premium SEO tools give developers unique and often privately kept data about web domain content. Unlike other search engine analytic tools which only show general data on inbound links, our premium SEO tools provide full data reports that can be used to compare SEO stats between sites and direct SEO access from blekko search result pages.”

blekko’s premium SEO suite has a re-designed UI and new features, including:

  •          Page Analysis & SEO Report Cards
  •          Inbound Links Organized by Category
  •          Full Link Reports, including:

– Inbound Links by Host
– Live Inbound Links
– All Inbound Links from a Host
– All Inbound Links to Specific Page URL
– Outbound Links from a Page URL
– Internal Links
– Domain Comparison of Inbound Links

  •  blekko Crawler Sections Reports & Domain Reports
  • Instant SEO Data and Direct SEO Access from blekko’s Search Engine
  • Adsense and IP Hosting Information
  • Full List of Pages Crawled
  • Page Source and Cache

The company, headed by Rich Skrenta, said on its SEO Data site, that it, “doesn’t believe in keeping secrets.” To that end, it provides data from its crawlers that includes inbound links, the geographic location of inbound links, duplicate content domains and site crawl dates.

Google’s Disavow Link Tool

Matt Cutts announcing the new Disavow Link Tool at Pubcon 2012.
Photo by Michael Dorausch.

Following in the footsteps of Bing back in June, yesterday during Pubcon Las Vegas 2012, Matt Cutts announced Google’s new, actually, “new and improved” tool, the Disavow Link Tool. The tool is an advanced tool for webmasters that allows them to disavow (deny responsibility for) spam links to their site. But, Cutts did issue several caution about utilizing the tool.

“There are some things you should know….this is not magic fairy disavow dust,” Cutts said, during his keynote address to attendees at Pubcon.

“You can’t sprinkle the disavow dust and your site will just instantly be perfect, okay? Number one, this is an advanced tool. Unless you’ve actually gotten the message that says, ‘you have unnatural links’ or unless you have a very good, very compelling reason to think to need to tell Google to please ignore these links, you should be cautious. Think about this link you would a chainsaw. You want to respect the tool. You don’t want to just turn it on and just see what happens and just throw some scissors in the air while you’re at it.”

The new tool is live, and you can read more on what Google has to say about it here.

Yahoo’s Pricey Corporate Head Hunt Continues

In a move that financially resembles more mergers and acquisitions than a hiring spree, Yahoo has wooed Google’s former president of global media, Henrique De Castro, into a new position for the company as chief operating officer for a total of $56 million dollars, though other sources have put the figure at $58 million.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo!’s strong leadership team,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!.

“His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo! as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

To announce the press release, the brand new mother as of Oct. 1, headed back into the office and tweeted the press release about De Castro’s new position. This comes on the heels of Yahoo’s hiring of Mayer, herself another Google ex-employee, for an estimated $60 million. That means that 3-minute tweet likely cost Yahoo! (if my math is correct) $195, 312, 50.

At the very least, other Google execs should be buoyed since Yahoo’s chief revenue officer has left the company, leaving a massive sales void for Yahoo and a potential new Google worker steal.

Twitter API Changes, Company Acquisitions

Twitter has been making changes of late. Last week, Twitter quietly announced the acquisition of the IP of Clutch.io. It made its real-time search capability much more obvious, made updates to the site to make it more crawlable to the search engines and it added a user profiles directory.

In a move to get ad revenue and monetize the social network, Twitter released a new API in September. The move angered many in the API community, since it was much of their work that helped make the company so successful. But CEO Dick Costolo didn’t back down.

In addition to the new API, Twitter also acquired the company Cabana to strengthen its third-party developer tools. VentureBeats’ Meghan Kelly reported that, “The company has gleefully touted the newest version of the Twitter API as a way to improve consistency from web to mobile and beyond. That may be so, but the version also forces a number of new restrictions — potentially life-threatening limitations — on third-party developers building applications for Twitter.”

 

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://pageonepower.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/430031_3485059449445_1841286648_n-1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Link Building News is an online publication of Page One Power that educates consumers, companies and individuals about industry news and events, and the tools and strategies of internet marketing. The content in Link Building News is a collaborative effort between Page One Power’s most talented writers and is under the editorial direction of Zach Ball and Kaisja Clark. A new publication, Link Building News‘ mission is to become recognized as the source for the newest, most credible information on online marketing. Learn more at http://pageonepower.com/about/writers/[/author_info] [/author]

 

 

 

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