More from Search Engine Land: Page 3

Analytics & conversion

Time For A Site Redesign?

Since the 1990s, usability experts and site visitors have been chanting the same web design mantra: Make your site easy-to-use, professional… easy-to-use, professional… Research into how people interact with sites shows that visitors make snap judgements—often within seven seconds of landing at our virtual doorsteps. In fact, the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility Study found […]

PPC

Vetting An Agency: Protecting The Family Jewels

One of the biggest realizations that hit many in-house search marketers is the simple fact that they cannot do it all themselves. Despite the best of intentions and the strongest work ethics, the fact remains—you are but one person and there are only so many hours in a day. If you are fortunate enough to […]

Ecommerce

Spock: People Search With A Man + Machine Approach

Last week, I wrote about the overall people search landscape, which, while not new, has been recently expanding and making full use of all that is shiny Web 2.0. Spock is the latest of these services to leverage social networks, intelligent web crawling, and community involvement. Spock launched in private beta in April, then in […]

SEO

Digg To Get Truly Social With Major Update Today

At some point today, Digg will be rolling out a massive update to help users of its service connect more and to become more social. As BusinessWeek reports, these changes “might seem more at home on Facebook or MySpace than on a web site where users post links to online articles and other media”. So […]

SEO

Why I’m Bullish On Mobile Search

I am a strong believer in the future of mobile search or what I prefer to call mobile access to information. This takes into account not only what we think of search today but also audio, video, text messaging, location based info, and more. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search […]

Google

Google Presentations Security Issue Leaked Email Addresses

Nathan Weinberg reports that Google fixed a security issue with the new Google Presentations, which leaked user email addresses to the public. What happened was that when webmasters tried to embed presentations into their web pages, it would then log people into Google Talk via their Google Account. After they logged in, to view the […]

Google

Weird Results At Google Being Reported

AltaVista is now in the top search results for a Google search on SEO? And what’s with all these Chinese pages suddenly showing up. Folks are noting that Google’s results have suddenly seemed to have gotten funky.

SEO

Reuters Introduces Video People Search

Google Operating System reports on a new video search engine from Reuters that uses face recognition technology developed by Viewdle to find people in videos. Riya, which became, Like, uses similar “visual search” technology applied to product search. The Reuters engine only yields Reuters video results — at least for now. From a certain end […]

Bing

Live.com Gets New Home Page Ahead Of “Searchification” Next Week

Next week, Microsoft takes a page from the Google Searchology Day book and is planning a special day of its own to talk about its search efforts. Called Searchification, Microsoft has invited a number of bloggers and journalists for the event next week, on September 26. But Microsoft apparently can’t wait to release some things, […]

Google

Google Hires NY Ad Exec To Lead New ‘Creative Lab Unit’

Both the Wall Street Journal and AdAge are reporting this morning that Google has hired Ogilvy & Mather’s Andy Berndt to run a new New York-based group it’s calling the “Creative Lab Unit.” The Wall Street Journal article says the unit “will look for more creative ways Google products can be used in marketing pitches.”

SEO

Turf Wars: How Aggregator Search Results Can Affect Your Brand

Are you a marketer looking for additional online sales outlets? If so, you’re probably considering partnering with aggregation sites as they have proven to be a highly effective solution for many marketers. However, keep in mind that partnering with such sites is not risk free. Doing so can both cause overall branding issues, as well […]

SEO

The Pros And Cons Of Mobile Marketing

Managing a mobile marketing campaign can be a challenge because there are many different entities contributing to a successful campaign. At minimum, we have the carriers, advertisers, and consumers. But in the background, we have third-party technology companies like Enpocket, ThirdScreen and Quattro; not to mention industry organizations like The Mobile Marketing Association, the CTIA […]

Content

B2B Search Tips: Writing Killer Ads

One of the most fundamental elements of any successful B2B advertising campaign is the ad itself… The message… The copy. I’ve found that writing great ads really comes down to five simple principles:

Google Ads

Google Expands Google Gadget Ads For Advertisers Beta

Google has announced they are expanding Gadget Ads Beta to AdWords advertisers worldwide. Before now, Gadget Ads was a very limited beta, but now, Google is expanding this program to more advertisers. Google Gadget Ads are interactive ads that contain rich media capabilities. Gadget Ads can contain data feeds, images, and videos, plus they can […]

SEO

Podcast: SMX Local & Mobile Preview

Want to understand more about all that’s happening in the local and mobile search space? That’s what our SMX Local & Mobile conference on Oct. 1 & 2 in Denver is all about! To give you a preview of what will be covered, Search Engine Land executive editor Chris Sherman and staff writer Greg Sterling […]

Content

Search Illustrated: Six Simple Steps For Local Optimization

Optimizing content for local search is similar to, but subtly different from, optimizing for general web search. Many key factors, such as optimizing for specific keywords, securing good backlinks to content and so on all apply. But there are several other steps—simple ones, fortunately—that you can take to really give your local content a better […]

SEO

Internet Yellow Pages Flex Local Search Muscle

The Yellow Pages Association put out a press release, supported by comScore data, that shows very healthy growth and usage of online yellow pages sites. Previously TMP Directional Marketing released findings from a consumer study that showed, among other things, that local search and yellow pages sites have some of the most qualified traffic on […]

PPC

The Long Tail Of Search

What is the “long tail” of paid search, and why does it matter? Chris Anderson coined the long tail concept in a 2004 Wired magazine article. Anderson’s original argument applied to online merchandising. Because web-only merchants (think Netflix) should have lower inventory carrying costs than traditional retailers (think WalMart), web-only merchants can afford to offer […]

SEO

Mobile-Friendly Websites & The Duplicate Content Trap

Sometimes even large, successful websites have problems when trying to implement a mobile version of the site. While the iPhone and its competitors-to-come will change exactly what the mobile web will look like, it’s still imperative that companies have a quality mobile version of their site because specialized optimization is required to make mobile content […]

Content

A Power Tool For Social Media Submitters

One very important factor in executing successful linkbaiting campaigns is to have power accounts on the various social news sites. Having a power account increases the chances of hitting the popular pages for the content you submit. Building up a power account takes a lot of time and one of the more difficult aspects of […]

Google

Google Formally Introduces AdSense For Mobile

After a period of beta testing, Google is rolling out AdSense For Mobile in 13 countries: US, England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, India, China, and Japan. Much like AdSense on the desktop, it’s aimed at publishers and site owners and intended to extend Google ad penetration farther into the mobile Internet.

Bing

Sprint And Microsoft Extend Mobile Partnership, Offer New Services

Microsoft has been powering the search box on Sprint for awhile now, and the companies have had a public, strategic relationship since last November. But this evening they announced some new enhancements and mobile services. There are essentially two things being introduced: location-aware mobile search and a rich client download (voice local search) powered by […]

SEO

Yahoo Buys Zimbra For $350 Million

Yahoo announced that they have agreed to buy Zimbra, an open source email, calendar and office applications software company, for $350 million. Of course, Google and Microsoft both have online/offline office suite applications. This acquisition may help Yahoo compete in that space.

SEO

Mobile Search Week!

Hot on the heels of last’s week’s Local Search Week, this week we’re going to focus on mobile search. More than any other enabling technology, mobile devices hold out tantalizing possibilities for search marketers, allowing us to reach searchers anywhere. It seems like this promise has been dangled forever, but has never been quite fully […]

SEO

AOL Introduces ‘Platform A’: Integrated Ad Targeting

AOL has moved its corporate headquarters to New York to be at the center of the U.S. ad and media universe and has introduced what it’s calling “Platform A,” an integrated ad buying platform and network that the company says has broader reach than any other today. Advertising.com and some of the more recent AOL […]

Local

Local Search Is About Products Too, Not Just Restaurants And Plumbers

Often when people discuss local search they’re referring to finding restaurants or plumbers. But the concept of “local search” should include goods and product purchases as well. Whenever I discuss products and retail as part of the definition of local search people are often a little skeptical. Yet again and again studies show that consumers […]

Content

Iran Blocks Google Over Filter “Error”

Philipp Lenssen reports that Iran blocked Google and Google’s various services for a short time span. Iran blocks and then unblocks Google from News.com reports that Iran had an error with their filter list, which blocked Google.com and other Google services such as Gmail.

Ecommerce

Google Pulls Roald Dahl Logo Due To Anti-Semitic Concerns?

Philipp Lenssen reports that Google pulled the special Roald Dahl Logo early, possibly due to anti-Semitic concerns. Google released a statement saying “Google has decided to remove its Doodle of Roald Dahl based on user concerns.” Google has not explained what those concerns might have been. But some believe it may have been about the […]

Content

Show Your Linking Acumen With Chipmunks

Let’s play a game to illustrate some not-so-silly linking strategies. Imagine you just launched a new web site devoted to breeding chipmunks. If I gave you a choice of the following three sets of inbound links, and I told you you could have one set and only one set, which set of links would you […]

SEO

Superpages Parent To Acquire InfoSpace Directory Sites

Recently Superpages has been putting out a press release a day, and today is no exception. The company just announced that it would be buying the directory assets of Infospace — the only one explicitly named is Switchboard.com — for $225 million (mixture of cash and debt). Infospace.com itself is a directory site and so […]

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