SearchInfluence

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about the difference between comScore’s organic search market share numbers and what I’ve seen in Google Analytics accounts over the years. In the numbers I’ve seen, Google’s share of search was always much more dominant than the approximately 65% market share reported by comScore.

So, what does comScore say this time?

In the graph above, you will see that Google, Bing and Yahoo had 66%, 15% and 14% of the search market share respectively in February 2012 (read the official report here).

1. Mapping the Mobile Future, Apple To Drop Google Maps for In-House Creation — Marketing Pilgrim

A permanent split between Apple and Google is on the horizon. In a key test of the company’s post-Jobs era leadership, Apple is planning to do away with Google Maps on their devices to make way for an in-house project. They’ve vowed to stick with the familiar “cleaner, faster, and more reliable” design strategy, but there are bound to be some surprises — check out this article for all the information that’s available right now.

Over the past couple of months, there has been a great deal of hysteria surrounding the unnatural link warnings being sent out in Google Webmaster Tools. These warnings and the release of Google’s Penguin update mean that now is definitely the time to start trying to “act natural” with your link-building methods. While I don’t have any major revelations about this alarming issue, I have been following it rather closely and have some informative posts on the subject to share.

If you surf the Internet casually, you probably don’t particularly care what browser you use. Internet Explorer is the default on most people’s computers, and friends I love dearly and don’t judge have told me they just don’t feel like downloading and installing a new browser. Laziness is also probably the same reason people don’t upgrade their browsers, though if you’ve managed to avoid upgrading Internet Explorer 6 for the last decade, I’m going to assume you don’t actually use the Internet (or your computer) for much of anything at all.

How to Survive Google’s Unnatural Links Warnings & Avoid Over-optimisation - SEOMOZ

With the recent updates made by Google, over-optimization of your site could come back to haunt you. Google does not want to reward sites with “webspam” any longer. This article will let you know how to navigate the changes Google has implemented.

Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo - SEOMOZ

Last week, Google released the “Penguin” update to stop over-optimization of websites.  This update has impacted sites in wildly varying ways so far, and this is only the beginning. Here, you can read about the different aspects of the update and get some basic do’s and don’ts for your site.