Hullo, and a belated happy new year to everyone. We trust that you all had an enjoyable break, and are delighted go be back in the swing of things at work 
. 2013 is certain to be another frantic and interesting year in search. We’ve already had some predictions from some fine Scottish SEOs about what may transpire this year.
Anyway, it’s time for the first newsblast of 2013, so what’s been happening thus far this month?
FTC decides against Google action
This year started positively for Google as they managed to avoid major crackdown from the Federal Trade Commission antitrust investigation in the US. Accusations of bias towards their own properties in the serps were dismissed by the FTC, although the search giant has agreed to certain concessions. There has been some strong reaction to the ruling; the Fairsearch group states that ‘The FTC’s inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators‘. It will certainly be interesting to see what comes from the European Commission antitrust antitrust investigation due to come up later this month.
US Phone support for Google Local verification
We were pretty surprised by this development earlier this week. Anyone who has tried dealing with places verification will be aware of the issues that can arise with this (postcards!?). Therefore, the move to bring in phone support is most welcome. We hope that this system rolls out over here as well. The question is, will we be able to resist firing a few more questions at them while we’re on the line?
Data and insight posts
Cyrus Shepard with a detailed breakdown on using the Disavow tool to recover from a penalty.
Gianluca Fiorelli on the increasing interaction between the knowledge graph and Google+.
Winding up the spammers
Us Scots love a good wind up and our old friend Chris from Hitreach in Dundee has delivered with this classic spammer wind up post. There’s no words for the hilarity that ensues……..do we all know how to do the Google Dance?
