Out of control spam, PCI compliance, and the Google data Export API – The Monday Jan 31st roundup

Big news today. Google has updated with its big anti-spam update, and everyone’s freaking out. The CRTC rulling in Canada has forced ISPs such as TekSavvy to drop their allowed bandwidth limit to 25 gigs. But all this is dwarfed by the Middle East and the protests popping up across the area.

But hey, you’re going to read all that at home, right? So instead of talking about all that, we’ve got out of control spam on Google, PCI compliance, and the Google data Export API.

• SEO by the Sea is back with a great post on how search engine’s might be clustering concepts in order to improve search results.
• SEOMoz thinks spam might be getting out of control on Google. Interestingly, for the same keywords I got completely different, and actually not too bad, results. Could this be the problem with personalized search when you’re an SEO? I dunno.

• Is this technology technically? Tough call. But get Elastic has an interview with Gary Palgon about Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards and why PCI compliance is important for ecommerce sites.
• Oh where were you when we were building the new vkistudios site? This week InspiredMag has the fourth part of their series on Drupal, explaining the terminology of content types.

• Google has updated its Data Export API and have added 127 new dimensions and metrics. Cool.

• Gettingmoreawesome (which I’d never read before) has posted a nice observation of how to get users to notice your ads, and how reddit.com does this really, really well. The gist of it? Add content to make users look that way, duh!
• U of W has put out a paper on using cursor movements to understand and improve search. It’s a little technical, and to be honest I’ve only skimmed it, but it looks cool.

• The latest Edelman Trust Barometer is out, noting that that people are trusting their friends less than they used to. Interesting stuff, though when you start to consider their methodology and what they’re asking, the meaningfulness of it drops.
• A month has gone by since New Years, so how well have you stuck to your resolutions? Psyblog has some simple techniques for making sure you commit to your goals.