A Spot of International SEO News

Wow! Everything has been so busy lately.  Here’s a roundup of what’s going in in international SEO, search, and social media.

• China has blocked YouTube, Twitter, Bing, Flickr, and a host of other social and email sites (especially those from Microsoft).  The block occurred in the countown to the Tiannamen Square anniversary, but is likely to continue.  Some users in China were reporting successful access of services through third party apps.  Many have noted that is is the first widespread blocking of social media.  Google.com and Facebook have not yet been affected.

China also announced that computer makers will be required to install filtering software, known as “Green Dam,” on all Windows computers sold from July 1 (there are no Linux or Apple OSX versions).  This will allow the “government to regulary update computers with an ever-changine list of banned websites.”  Many industry experts and civil rights waters are very concerned by these new directives, issued suddenly by the Ministry of Information and Technology.  The software maker insists that users will be able to turn off the filters, and that the software is merely a program designed to neutralize others that are built to override the Great Firewall.

• Bing has attracted a lot of attention lately, but it’ll be a while yet before we know exactly how searchers feel about its technology and results.  In the meantime, Bing Canada has launched officially.  Andrew Goldmann at Traffick played around with it and noticed a few issues.  In the US, others have noticed unusual related search suggestions or contextual ads.  User Centric is already conducting eyetracking tests to determine how users might behave differently on Bing and Google.  Interesting that the categories displayed on the left got much more attention than the flyouts on the right.

• Facebook in launching vanity URLs this weekend.  Go here to claim yours as soon as it opens at 12:01 am EST on Saturday, June 13.  With a custom URL you’ll have an easy way to direct people to your profile or fan page.  Usernames are currently for Romanized text only, but they do say they are looking into supporting other input texts in the future.

• A family in the US was shocked to discover their picture being used on a supermarket advertisement in the Czech Republic.  The family only found out about it when a friend travelling in the Czech Republic saw the advert and notified them about it.  The store owner says he found the picture online.  He’s agreed to take it down and would offer the family a bottle of wine – if they lived locally, that is.

• StumbleUpon has launched a new URL shortening service: Su.pr.  The service will also allow syndication with Facebook and Twitter to post your interesting content.  Su.pr will also “provide you with tools to identify the best times to post, schedule future posts and see real-time results on clicks, tweets and traffic associated with your posts.”

• Hitwise Canada is releasing stats on search behavior up there.  The top Canadian searches include “Facebook,” “YouTube,” and “games.”  Hitwise has also examined the number of keywords in search queries, as well as where Canadians spend their time on line.  Interesting reads!

That’s it for this news roundup!  As usual, there will always be more to come!

Reminder: Don’t forget to sign up for the International SEO Webinar on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:45am CST.  Sign up here and download our previous webinars too!