Google

Google 2001 Search: Party’s Over

Tonight is your last chance to search through a 2001 version of Google’s index. On Thursday, Google added this warning to the search page: “Google 2001 will no longer be available after tomorrow.” The 2001 search was put online as part of Google’s recent 10th birthday celebration, and was never planned to be a permanent […]

Content

Google, Yahoo Prepare To Abandon Paid Search Deal?

Despite public pronouncements of confidence by Google and Yahoo about the future of their paid search deal, which was partly set up to fend off Microsoft and hostile Yahoo shareholders who wanted a Microsoft takeover, the emerging consensus is that it’s not going to happen. The Wall Street Journal this morning reports that the parties […]

Google Ads

Google Now Allowing Ads For Beer

Taylor Pratt discovered a very quiet change made to Google AdWords policy for handling alcohol ads. Now, Google is allowing search ads for beer, wine and champagne to show up on Google.com. Google’s policy says they allow these ads, “since we consider beer, wine, and champagne to be products intended for the sale and consumption […]

Google Ads

Google Updates AdWords Quality Score To Be “Fairer”

The Google AdWords Blog announced that two new changes to the quality score is coming in the next few days. The first change is to make the quality score calculation score an ad’s CTR based on the ad’s position. The second change is to help enable certain ads to be promoted to the top position.

Ecommerce

Spooky Search Engines On Halloween

Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, DogPile and many more are celebrating Halloween with special spooky logos or themes. Below you will find the logos and themes I spotted throughout the search industry. Google seems to have totally ‘geeked out’ the fear in Halloween by adding spooky thoughts to their robots.txt file: User-agent: zombies Disallow: /brains

Apple

The Secret Influence Of Search Behavior

Did you know that Rachel Ray grounds up toasted pumpkin seeds, adds some herbs and uses the mixture to coat chicken?  Me neither.  One day, after my daughter mentioned this to me, I started thinking about how people’s eating habits are changing everywhere.  More fast food restaurants serve healthier, lower fat meals. Today’s families use […]

Local

Finding The Sweet Spot

Many of our customers are companies who sell online marketing services to small businesses. When they come to us for sales leads, they usually know exactly what they want – what profile of businesses they‘re looking for and from which sites they’d like us to get the leads. Nevertheless, we do have customers who come […]

Google

Google Using OCR To Index Scanned Documents

It used to be that, if you hoped Google would index a PDF file, you had to create a PDF that was text-based, not image-based; Googlebot couldn’t recognize the content of scanned or image-based documents. According to an announcement today, that’s no longer the case. Google says it’s now using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology […]

Platforms

Tools of the SEO Trade

In SEO, success is as much about your toolkit as it is about your skillset. Without great tools at your disposal, your ability to get the job done is really hampered. At SMX East this month I presented some of my favorite tools on the “Tools, Glorious Tools” panel. (Download my Powerpoint.) What I came […]

SEO

What Does Search Activity Say About The Election?

With less than a week to go until U.S. voters choose a new president, Yahoo is sharing what it knows about White House-related search activity. Here are some highlights from Yahoo’s blog post today, which taps into data from Yahoo Buzz:

Content

What’s Ahead For Search Marketing In 2009

It’s an understatement to say that we live in uncertain times, and that any data that can help us strategize, plan or even to some extent predict what’s ahead is worth its weight in… well, let’s just say this kind of information is invaluable. That makes the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide very […]

Content

Google’s New Metric For YouTube Ads: Brain Waves

The news came across the wire recently that Google has ventured into new territory to sell the value of their ad space and ad targeting on YouTube. Rather than the standard metrics of clicks and conversions Google is selling a new kind of metric—brain waves. YouTube has recently been pushing overlay ads which appear in […]

Content

Local Search Marketing Tips for B2B Marketers

B2B marketers establish conversions – or desired actions – throughout their customers’ buying process. These actions may take place online, on the phone, or live at a specific location. Regardless, many occur at the local level. Local search enables marketers to capitalize on these interactions and differentiate your firm based upon one very important factor […]

Google

Presentations & Q&A Sessions From Google’s Third Chat Session

Google hosted its third webmaster chat event last Wednesday. The event had three presentations from Googlers and plenty of question and answer time between webmasters and Google employees. The Google Webmaster Central blog has announced that they have posted a recap of the live chat session. Below you will find the presentations from John, Jonathan […]

SEO

The “Bible” Of Search Engine Marketing

It’s common for comprehensive books written by respected authorities to be tagged as the “bible” of a particular topic or industry. My vote for that distinctive title in our industry goes to Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. Both Mike and Bill are longtime search marketing veterans who were responsible for […]

SEO

Bookshelf: New Column From Search Engine Land

Our newest Search Engine Land column, Bookshelf, launches today. Bookshelf features reviews of books, white papers and other publications that help search marketers do their jobs or gain a better understanding of general digital marketing issues. The Bookshelf column appears periodically at Search Engine Land. In today’s debut post, I review the newly updated second […]

Google

Yahoo Search Assist At 1; Google Toolbar At 8

Break out the birthday candles for Yahoo’s Search Assist and Google’s Toolbar. Yahoo reminds us today that its Search Assist feature was launched a year ago this month. Search Assist is the feature that suggests words and phrases while you type in the Yahoo search box; it also suggests related concepts — something, Yahoo tells […]

Content

Is Yahoo’s Buzz A Buzz-Kill?

When Yahoo Buzz launched back in February of 2008, it was thought by many to be the next big player in the social news community space. This was largely due to the fact that if your content got the most “buzz” it had a chance to be featured on Yahoo.com, which can send millions of […]

Apple

Q&A With Kieran Hawe, Director, SEO/Search: MTV Networks

This month in our continuing series of interviews of inhouse SEMs, we speak with Kieran Hawe.  Kieran practices our art as the Director, SEO / Search – Global Digital Media for MTV Networks, based in New York.  He’s taken the time to offer up advice for readers not just on SEO and career aspirations, but […]

Bing

Republican Congressman Calls For More “In-Depth” Review Of Proposed Google-Yahoo Search Deal & Another Microsoft-Yahoo Deal On Deck?

Texas Republican Congressman and Google critic Joe Barton wants more information about the proposed paid-search deal between Google and Yahoo. Dissatisfied with Yahoo’s responses to his questions to date, Barton has asked the US Department of Justice to “thoroughly investigate issues of competition and privacy that Yahoo failed to address fully.”  He is concerned about […]

Google

Google Adds RSS Feeds For Web Search Results

As expected, Google has added an RSS feed for web search results to the Google Alerts service. As seen in the screenshot above, when creating a new alert, you can now choose to get the alert via email or RSS feed. RSS feed alerts are only available to logged-in Google account holders.

Google

Google Settles Book Search Copyright Lawsuit For $125 Million, Paves Way For Novel Services

Google has settled the class action litigation entitled The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc., which alleged that Google Book Search, including the company’s practice of scanning books to distribute them online, violated the copyrights of publishers and authors. Subject to final court approval, the settlement calls for Google to pay $125 million […]

Link building

Beyond Link Building Tools

How did folks build links before tools were available? Just a few years ago, there was no way to identify hubs, authorities, vortals, or spokes, rims, chutes and ladders. (Click here for the full effect of that sentence via a ten second mp3 audio message.) When I wander around conference expo halls, I see booth […]

Paid social

New Media Is Only New If You’re Old

I recently had the dubious honour of being told that I looked a lot younger than one of my closest friends, who was in the same year as me at school. It’s a dubious honour because no matter how well I may be fighting off the wrinkles and laughter lines that pattern the faces of […]

Apple

SEO Tools Come To iPhone

I was waiting for the day someone would bring an SEO tool to the iPhone. Today is that day, Infindigm released a tool named proSEO – iPhone SEO Content Analyzer. You can download the tool on iTunes or on your iPhone. To see the tool on iTunes, use this link. It does cost $14.99 but […]

Advertising

Microsoft adCenter Fall Upgrade

The Microsoft adCenter blog has an army of posts containing details of their large fall upgrade. The main features most advertisers may notice are: Campaign Management: ability to pause and resume ads and keywords, geo-targeting enhancements, and improved performance reporting on the Ads page Editorial Improvements: faster reviews, dynamic feedback about why ads and keywords […]

Google

Gmail Adds Gadgets & Google Reader Adds Subscription Stats

The Gmail Blog announced a new labs option that gives Gmail users the ability to add Google Calendar, Google Docs and other gadgets directly on their Gmail interface. Plus, Steve Rubel reports Google Reader has added subscription statistics, which I find to be awesome. Let me explore both features below.

Google

Google Explains Malware Warning Policy & How To Fix Your Site

Some search industry watchers have called Google the “internet’s traffic cop,” and it’s a role Google seems to be growing more comfortable in, too. Late last week, for example, Google published an explanation of how it handles pages that are found to house malware, and how webmasters can clean up the problem and get back […]

PPC

The PPC Buying Cycle: Buyer Beware!

How often have you heard that keyword level performance data can be misleading? That PPC managers need to consider the phases of the buying cycle when evaluating terms? That specific keywords tend to steal conversions from the more general keywords that started the customer’s consideration, and that you should keep spending money on the general […]

Local

Are You Content With Your Online Advertising’s Content?

An advertisement is only as effective as its content. If the content doesn’t reach out to potential customers and make a compelling case, the ad doesn’t make the sale, which means the people at your business never get the chance to do the same. But even good ads can get lost in the shuffle of […]

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