My December article, Think Beyond The Click: How To Build Landing Pages That Convert, received some great feedback, and raised some questions, so I’ve decided to address a few more important topics about landing pages. Readers commented that the success of a landing page depends on its audience and how many different landing pages are […]
Paris-based Publicis Groupe is one of the four largest ad agencies in the world, with a portfolio of subsidiary brands that includes Leo Burnett Worldwide and Saatchi & Saatchi, among many others. In late 2006, the firm also bought online ad agency Digitas. Reuters is reporting that Publicis and Google are “combining their expertise to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Getting your linkbait post, widget, or other content featured on the front page of Digg is one thing—a good thing, as this can drive a spike in traffic. Getting a whole bunch of links to that content, however, is entirely another matter. After all, the purpose of linkbait should be to attract links, not just […]
Having relevant keywords as the anchor text of a link is extremely beneficial to an SEO campaign. Because search engines depend on links as a sort of pathway around the Internet, anchor text helps categorize what a destination page will be about as well as what it may be relevant for in a search result. […]
In this post, I’d like to introduce a handy little tool for paid and natural search called RKG Duck. I wrote the app a few years back, and we find it useful in our agency’s work in paid search and site conversion optimization. We’re releasing RKG Duck under the GNU Public General License, so you […]
Yahoo has announced the first Yahoo Search update of 2008. Sharad Verma said Yahoo has been rolling out updates to their “crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms” over the past couple days. Yahoo tells us the update will be done soon, but you may notice “some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.” I reported […]
Last December, Vint Cerf — Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist — said Google CEO Eric Schmidt will provide official statements to the press, if needed, within an hour. Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped decided to test that claim. He generated a list of questions from readers and sent them in. A month later, he’s still waiting […]
Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury wrote about a design in Satya Paul’s latest collection named "Oogle sari." As you can see above, it looks like a sari made up of the Google web search results.
China couple to sue subway over leaked kiss video from Reuters reports a Chinese couple is suing a Chinese subway operator for uploading a video of the two kissing while on a subway platform to YouTube. The video reportedly drew over 15,000 hits in just two days and has apparently embarrassed the couple tremendously. The […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google has created the Google Webmaster Tools Quick Start Guide to help webmasters learn the features and reasons to use the tool. The ten step guide displays details on the dashboard, the overview section, the diagnostics section, the top search queries screen, crawl stats page, the “What the Googlebot Sees” page, the links page, the […]
I conducted a very informal, online Search Engine Land reader survey several weeks ago on a range of high-level topics pertaining to mobile search. The ultimate number of responses from SEL readers was a small sample of 77. Mike Blumethal, a contributor to SEL who writes the Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local blog, thought […]
Much of the discussion and debate in the U.S. over Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick was about the impact of the deal on consumer privacy, even though that wasn’t technically part of the anti-trust analysis before the FTC. Accordingly, the FTC approved the acquisition with one commissioner dissenting largely on privacy grounds. Now, Pamela Jones […]
Yahoo has sent word that they are testing integration of data from their Delicious social bookmarking site within the Yahoo search results pages. For some users, a search will now show whether a page listed in Yahoo results is also on Delicious and how it has been tagged. It brings back memories of Yahoo My […]
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and many of the search engines have special logos up for the day. Google has an artistic logo, with children drawing the face of Martin Luther King Jr. on a sidewalk. Ask.com illustrates their background with Martin Luther King Jr. speaking and pointing. Dogpile […]
Over the past several days, a number of blogs (PaidContent, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch) have reported and speculated (based on tips) that Yahoo was contemplating significant job cuts, perhaps as many as 2,500.
Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data from Wired reports Google Research will be hosting terabytes of open-source scientific datasets under Project Palimpsest. The data that Google will be hosting will not only be available for scientists but also available for free for anyone. Google will also be providing algorithms “for the examination and […]
Welcome to the jungle. As the first column from the Yellow Pages Association and the Local Search Guide, it is very exciting to join the Locals Only forum with some of the most notable local search contributors in the industry. Representing more than 150 Yellow Pages publishers, we are looking forward to sharing the internet […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for the Digital Future is engaged in an ambitious longitudinal study on consumer behavior and media usage. Each year the center surveys the same 2,000 US adults to track attitudes toward media as well as any changes in actual media consumption. This year the center […]
There are now a range of local forecasts in the market, some more bullish and some more conservative. But all generally agree that locally targeted ads in search, display (including video), and classifieds are growing at rates faster than overall online ad growth.
Singapore launches contest for next-generation search engine from PhysOrg.com reports Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research is managing a contest to build out “a next-generation multi-media online search engine.” What I find humorous about the contest is that they expect $100,000 and eight months to be enough time and money to be enough to […]
SMX® - Search Marketing Expo & Conference series
The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced the 3rd Annual Yahoo Searchlight Awards. The awards will be taking place on February 12th in New York City. At the awards, Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction, will be giving a keynote address. One of the four panelists is our very own Greg Sterling. Here is the […]
In the past, searches involving for “stop words” — prepositions, pronouns, articles, and other small words like “be” or “to” — would return a warning saying that these words were “a very common word and were not included in your search.” Now, searches involving stop words no longer do this. Here is a before and […]
Nice — I picked up 5,000 new feed subscribers today, while Barry Schwartz saw Search Engine Roundtable grow 35,000. Overnight! Obviously, the FeedBurner numbers we and others get have gone wonky. To blame? FeedBlitz seems to be putting out bad stats. Consider the comparison above. The left side shows reported subscribers from various feed reading […]
A few columns ago I talked about user behavior on the results page and compared it to a shopping mall. In recent eye tracking studies, we’ve seen that several factors can create barriers or “walls” in this mall that can keep traffic from ever finding your listing.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Americans are increasingly turning to the web for video, averaging 3.25 hours of video per person during the month of November, according to new data released by comScore today. Americans viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos during the month and Google was the leading destination, with 3 billion videos viewed (31.3 percent share of all […]
“Brevity is the soul of wit.” Polonius from William Shakespeare´s Hamlet Twitter is a simple web application that asks the following question: What are you doing? You get 140 characters to answer. In Twitter: More Than Messaging, It Can Generate Traffic and Twitter Useless For Driving Traffic? Think Again, Neil Patel runs through the basics […]
AOL’s video search engine Truveo has created a new election videos site/area that collects candidate videos as well as commentary and news footage. Truveo claims the site is more comprehensive in terms of its sources and range of content than others. YouTube offers YouChoose, featuring candidate and user-generated videos, and Yahoo News has election-related video. […]
Today, Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 9:00am PST (12:00pm EST), Google.org will be holding a conference call to discuss the launch of five strategic initiatives for the organization. The conference call participants include Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President, Global Online Sales and Operations, Google Inc. and Board Member, Google.org, and Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org. Google […]
The Library of Congress has teamed up with Flickr to create The Commons. The Library of Congress has added a sample of their over one million photos to Flickr, so that the Flickr community can help describe the photos through tagging. My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven from the Library of Congress […]
Everything you do has a chance to provide a clean or dirty signal of relevancy to search engines and searchers. While a date in the URL may provide a signal of relevancy to some searchers looking for archived information, many people who are explicitly looking for old information will likely put a date in their […]
OpenID is a single sign-in infrastructure that potentially alleviates the need to create new passwords and user names for every new site one joins or visits. There’s been lots of discussion about OpenID and who’s in, who’s almost in, and so on. Today, Yahoo formally joined (and fully legitimized) the effort. Microsoft Passport was originally […]
Here’s the primary thing on my mind as we begin 2008: If we, the search/online marketing industry, don’t do a better job of helping the small business owner understand and adopt the best practices of search marketing, we are doomed to irrelevance. “Oh, but there’s no money in small businesses,” you say. Or, “Small business […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
If you are a one-person show, you have to balance everything for your site — from writing content, doing backend and technical work, research, promotions, advertising, and just about everything else that goes along with being a self-employed webmaster. Managing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns is just one of the many things that falls under the […]
Microsoft and EDGAR Online have formed an alliance to provide content and ads to one another’s sites. According to a press release just out: “Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party provider of display, contextual and video advertising for EDGAR Online and its global audience of more than 2 million unique visitors per month, and EDGAR […]