Facebook

Facebook Modifies “Beacon” To Mollify Privacy Critics

As we wrote yesterday, Facebook faced a furor from critics who argued its Beacon program went too far in tracking its users’ actions on non-Facebook sites and broadcasting those back through Facebook newsfeeds. As of last night the company had decided to make changes in the advertising program to appease critics who have brought much […]

Content

The Search Shopping Mall: Moving Up The Long Tail

Some time ago, I did a blog post called the “Other Long Tail of Search“. When Chris Anderson’s book came out, several smart search marketers realized that the long tail phenomenon applied to our industry as well. If you look at the keywords that drive traffic to your site and plot them according to traffic […]

Local

Yahoo Testing “Neighbors” Organizing Tool For Local

Yahoo has always been an innovator in local, and today the company is rolling out (only in two California markets) a new feature that allows community members to identify, discuss, and potentially organize around local issues of concern. Called “Neighbors,” it combines functionality found on Yahoo’s suggestion boards and in Yahoo Answers. It came out […]

SEO

ACAP Launches, Robots.txt 2.0 For Blocking Search Engines?

After a year of discussions, ACAP — Automated Content Access Protocol — was released today as a sort of robots.txt 2.0 system for telling search engines what they can or can’t include in their listings. However, none of the major search engines support ACAP, and its future remains firmly one of "watch and see." Below, […]

PPC

Yahoo Search Marketing Adds Campaign Bid Tune-Up & More

Yahoo Search Marketing has announced two new features to help advertisers run their accounts. The two features include: Campaign Bid Tune-Up: This tool helps advertisers optimize their campaigns by giving them suggested keyword bids and daily spending limits. Saved Preferences: Finally, when you change your column views, those changes will be saved for the next […]

SEO

Yahoo Seeks To Boost Europe Operation With New Hire

According to the Guardian, Yahoo has named former BlackBerry and Orange executive Kristof Fahy to be vice president of marketing for Europe. Fahy is a seasoned executive facing a challenging time for Yahoo, which has properties across Europe that are performing in an uneven fashion. The article goes on to say, “poorly performing parts of […]

PPC

Yahoo Contextual Ads To Power “Ads For Adobe PDF”

Yahoo, Adobe team on PDF ads from News.com reports Yahoo and Adobe are working together to put contextual ads in PDF documents. Over at the Adobe Labs, you can find a new product named Ads for Adobe PDF. Yahoo will be powering the ads within PDF documents that are contextually relevant to the content within […]

Facebook

Facebook To Potentially Change Beacon After Privacy Furor

Facebook has faced a steady stream of complaints, negative PR, and other criticism after rolling out the “Beacon” component of its new suite of advertiser tools and programs. For those who aren’t up on it, Beacon captures actions and transactions Facebook users conduct on third-party sites and essentially broadcasts those through newsfeeds to their networks. […]

SEO

The “Design” Part Of Search Engine Friendly Design

For the past few years, I have been silently listening to and observing other search engine optimization (SEO) professionals speak and write about the topic of search-engine friendly web site design. I’m the one in the back with the black wig, sunglasses, mustache, and trench coat. All joking aside, I am genuinely interested in how […]

Content

Search Spam Is Getting More Dangerous Every Day

Search spam, using techniques that manipulate the search results, feels like it is getting more dangerous every day. Some search spammers go as far as hacking sites to inject link spam into unsuspecting web pages. And some go even further by polluting the search results with nasty malware. Yesterday we covered a story about a […]

Content

Managing Your Small Business Blogging Schedule

I’m not a blogger—I just play one on the Internet. There are a lot of professional bloggers out there. I’m not one of them. Like many small business owners that also happen to blog, I have to find ways to balance my time between the demands of running a business and pushing out information that […]

Google

The Anatomy Of A Google Search Result

As Barry noted earlier, Matt Cutts, keeper of all things webspam and webmaster for Google, is reviving his video series. This new set is on the official Google Webmaster Central blog, rather than his personal site, and so far, don’t seem to feature either of his cats. But even cat-free, they are a welcome addition […]

SEO

Interested In Speaking At SMX West?

Want to speak at our upcoming SMX West conference? We’re now taking submissions through the Speaker Pitch Form that was updated today, with all open sessions listed on the form and in more detail here. Please use this form even if we know you and you have spoken before. We’re moving to a centralized conference […]

SEO

It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank

Have you ever wondered what it really takes for a story submitted to Digg to get to the home page? Or why a certain story—even a really good, social media friendly story—never got to the home page? I’m frequently asked the question, “Hey, my story has [number] of Diggs but it still hasn’t been promoted […]

Apple

Google Gadgets Meets Apple’s Dashboard Widgets

Google Gadgets can now run on Apple’s Dashboard as a native Dashboard Widget. Now you can have the same Google Gadget on your iGoogle page and Google Desktop Sidebar as well as in your Apple Dashboard. From a developer’s standpoint, now if you make a Google Gadget, that gadget can work easily on a Mac, […]

Google

Google Introduces New “My Location” Feature for Mobile Devices

Many mobile industry insiders and pundits have argued that when GPS becomes ubiquitous then “location based services” will really take off. The problem is: GPS doesn’t always work, it isn’t yet in every device, and isn’t always enabled even if it is present. But the premise that passive location awareness represents a big opportunity in […]

Content

Malware Hits Search Results — Google’s Malware Warnings Not Working?

Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress from ComputerWorld reports that Google, along with Yahoo, Live Search have been targeted in a massive attack that puts links leading to malware sites into top search results. Alex Eckelberry, Sunbelt Software’s CEO said “So far we’ve found 27 different domains, each with up to […]

Local

Google Allows Group Collaboration On My Maps

The Google Lat Long Blog announced that My Maps now can be built by groups of people, not just individuals. Maps can be edited by only selected friends and family or by Google Maps users at large. The benefits of this are fairly straightforward: group travel planning, collective favorites, better overall data (wisdom of crowds), […]

SEO

You’ve Made Digg – Now What?

When you work with Digg, reddit, and the like, you want to get the POP: getting your content to a coveted spot on the homepage. Getting the pop can be difficult— social news users are wary of ulterior motives and will sometimes bury your wonderful content before it can see the light of day. So, […]

Apple

Verizon Wireless To Consumers: Bring Your Own Phone

It a potentially dramatic move, Verizon Wireless is saying that it will allow customers to use phones and applications that it does not specifically sell. As a practical matter that potentially means that a mobile consumer could buy any phone and use it with the Verizon network, so long as the phone meets certain technical […]

Google

More Google Book Scanning Controversy

The Google Book Scanning project has been controversial from the start. There are a number of competitive efforts, including from Microsoft and the Yahoo-supported Open Content Alliance, which appear to replicate the competition among these companies in other areas online. Now Ars Technica explores a new phase of the debate sparked when the University of […]

Bing

Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution

This has been a remarkable year. After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation finally arrived. Google calls it Universal Search, and I’ve been tending to say “blended search” as a generic name for the change that’s now hit all the major search engines. But in doing the agenda for our upcoming SMX West conference, a […]

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