Man, did I have a stressful week. Which, unfortunately, is why the SEO News is coming a little late. First we were in Salzburg from Thursday to Saturday, then we went straight to London for the iStrategy Conference. I will write up the recap in the next few days. There were several interesting speakers and topics.

The main subject was Facebook’s announcement that they will start competing with Google’s Adsense. Imagine the potential: They know so much about you – and using this information for targeted advertising bears unlimited potential. Initial speculation suggests that Facebook will at least double its revenues, ultimately exceeding 10 billion dollars. WOW! We’ll see if GM decides to take its 10 million back to Facebook.

And there were also a lot of other exciting stories from the week:

• Views could become more important, say some experts, thereby joining in what the proponents of display advertising have been preaching for years. Hard to measure, but clearly worth consideration.

• Everyone knows “online video advertisements” are becoming more and more important. But what James Dohnert had to say here is definitely worth a look: According to a new research report, spending for online video advertisement increased by 27% this year and is expected to increase by a similar amount again in 2013. Such growth is bound to have an impact on standard television advertising.

• It’s hard to believe: According to a current study by xAd and Telmetrics, 49% of those searching for a car using a mobile device convert within the first 24 hours. Their search behavior, in particular, is very interesting. It is generally non-specific, which leaves a lot of room for targeted measures, but also promises great potential.

• And to ensure “backlinks” don’t get neglected: Scott Mclay wrote the Guide for the Post-Penguin Era at SEOmoz. No overwhelming news – but it offers a nice summary.

• What’s giving me a headache: Barry Schwartz took a look at 424 websites, 17,143,603 visits and 7,241,093 keywords for Search Engine Land. He saw a significant jump in the number of those whose status was “not provided”. 39%, or every 2.5 visitors, are not providing any statistics. And it’s a growing trend. I also know of sites with nearly 75% “not provided” visitors. Luckily we have our rankings with search volume and traffic potential. Perhaps that will all remain unchanged and still show the webmasters where the traffic is coming from.

• Why can’t Google find Tweetdeck.com? I wasn’t the only one asking myself this last week. Google’s own John Müller took a closer look at the situation and came to a funny conclusion that raises the question as to why Twitter cut its own product off from the Googlebot. After all, a lot of people use it, including myself.

• What are you doing on December 13 in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, New York, Saarbrücken, Zurich, etc.? Probably: Good deeds. If you’re the type who doesn’t like to just do it, but would rather have a little hot spiced wine beforehand, “Doing good deeds while drinking 2012” is probably the thing for you. And in case your city (like Bonn and Stuttgart) isn’t on the good deeds ticket yet, Marcus Tandler took down all the info for you.

• We’ll finish up with an entertaining look at a few unusual PR internships in the USA, something even Techcrunch fell for.

That’s it for this week. As always, if you have any posts/articles worth reading: Let us have them, (in the comments, via Twitter etc). The topic that has made us all so happy here at Searchmetrics is, of course, our new CEO  Tom Schuster. I am extremely happy to see Tom bring his international know-how to the company. We will be hashing out plans to further expand our position as global leader. We will also be expanding our workforce, so you can expect to see quite a few changes next year.

But come what may: We will continue to rely on your comments, feedback and opinions. After all, it was your feedback that helped us turn Searchmetrics Suite into the world’s leading search marketing tool.