The Ad Strength and Some Levity Edition

Google introduced its new Ad Strength Best Practices Guide which got hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger to pine for the days when the SEO world used cool names like "Ad Strength" to describe stuff. Google has again been declared a monopoly by yet another US court while, just to keep up, a UK based class action over Google's search dominance has been approved. It wasn't a great week for Google legally. It wasn't a great week technically either as a bug continues to exclude the first image in many Product Snippet image carousels. A Financial Times interview with Google head of search Elizabeth Reid suggests Google is getting strong user feedback about AIO results and is looking for new ways to connect originating websites with information in AIO results. We go on to discuss censorship in social media, particularly at Facebook and TwiXter. Bing Answer Snippets is starting to self-reference back to its own search results. Google says structured data does not make your site rank better, again. Google also noted that international search TLDs (ie: Google.ca, Google.co.uk. Google.fr, etc...) will be phased out in 2026 though localization will continue to play a factor in certain result sets. All this and a lot more in a fast paced newsy sort of edition.