If you still think mobile SEO is only about WAP pages and the mobile Web, you may have been living under a rock since July 10, 2008, when Apple launched their App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. This week they announced their 1 billionth App download, and many out of work programmers are wondering how to become the next App Store millionaire. In the new world of digital content optimization (also called digital asset optimization by some) content can and should be optimized to make it more visible on many popular platforms, including the App Store. The few articles that I’ve seen on App Store SEO seem to focus on more black hat techniques like keyword stuffing with unrelated keywords, but there are white hat ways to get your content to the top of Apple’s App Store search engine as well

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | SEO: Mobile Search

Your brand is important to you.  Consumers looking for you or a product like yours will often search using your brand in their keyword phrases.   Your competitors know this and will likely try to advertise on your brands, slogans, and catchy phrases.  How can you tell if you are winning out on your brand terms?  Most advertisers will watch their rank: if they are in position 1, then happiness occurs.  If not, well you know what happens next—you bid higher.  But is rank really the best bellweather of your success on your brand terms?  There are other metrics and ways to l [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: Strategy

Tellme has been in the speech, automated directory assistance and "voice search" segment for a decade. Two years ago the company was acquired by Microsoft for roughly $800 million. Since that time the two companies have been working on integration and developing next-generation services. Tellme powers Microsoft's LiveSearch 411, among other services. Today, two years to the day after the acqusition, Tellme made two related announcements about improved speech technology and an upgraded mobile user experience. (Here's the enterprise-facing release.) On the consumer side of the equation, Tellm [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing 411 | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Top News

After skirting one antitrust action involving a proposed ad deal with Yahoo, Google may be facing a new one -- this over the proposed settlement of the lawsuit involving Google Book Search. Both the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal are reporting that the US Department of Justice is examining the terms of the settlement, to see if it would give Google too much power over digitizing books. Earlier today, the presiding judge in the case granted a four month extension on the deadline for authors and other involved parties to opt-out of the proposed settlement. In the weeks sin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Book Search | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright | Top News

The highly anticipated Wolfram Alpha search engine made its debut today, although Google tossed in a little spoiler. The webcast was apparently difficult for some to view, but you can get impressions of what happened from Between The Lines and Bits. The site also has a new blog and Twitter account, and we'll be looking at it more closely in the near future ourselves. There's more discussion on Techmeme. Postscript: See Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha "Fact Engine", our review of the service. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Experimental | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Wolfram Alpha

Google remains the dominant player in the online video space, but Hulu is on the rise. It's now the number three video property according to the latest comScore numbers out today. According to comScore, Hulu has passed Yahoo properties and moved into the third spot with 2.6% of all videos viewed during March. Yahoo dropped to fourth with 2.3 million videos watched on its sites. Google properties (primarily YouTube) are still miles ahead of the competition with almost 41% of all videos viewed during the month. ComScore estimates that almost 150 million Internet users watched an averag [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: YouTube & Video | Search Engines: Video Search Engines | Stats: comScore | Yahoo: Video

Publishers Weekly is reporting that a judge has granted a four-month extension on the deadline for affected parties to object to or opt out of the proposed Google Book Search settlement. (You can read Judge Denny Chin's ruling on Scribd.) Last week, a group of authors asked the presiding judge for four additional months to review the settlement details. The authors didn't express objections to the settlement; they only argued that it deserves a longer review period. The $125 million settlement previously included a May 5 deadline for authors to opt out of the settlement and other parties to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Book Search | Legal: Copyright

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: MySpace Local & SEO FailuresMySpace and CitySearch recently made big waves in the Local Search and Social Media community with the announcement of MySpace Local. The two companies agreed to a revenue share but no details were released as to what percentages each company would receive. MySpace quickly stressed that this was a completely new revenue source for the [...] Google Launches Public Data Search & Charts During Wolfram Alpha DemoDu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

MySpace and CitySearch recently made big waves in the Local Search and Social Media community with the announcement of MySpace Local. The two companies agreed to a revenue share but no details were released as to what percentages each company would receive. MySpace quickly stressed that this was a completely new revenue source for the company and was not only seen as great opportunity for both companies, but one of the few advantages MySpace would have over rising competitor Facebook. SEO mistakes abound Here's a look at MySpace Local, with some comments on the botched or ignored SEO on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search

During the Wolfram Alpha demonstration today, the Google Blog announced the launch of their own structured data search feature that allows you to find and compare public data. Searches such as [unemployment rate new york] will now bring up a quick answer that looks like this: Clicking on the result will take you to a more detailed graph with ways to plot other data on this charge. Below is me plotting Rockland County, New York, compared to New York State and also adding California: Google promises to add public data for answers on prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequenc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers | Search Engines: Academic Search Engines | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Top News | Wolfram Alpha

paidContent.org reports Marin Software, a search marketing company, has raised an additional $13 million venture capital. The primary source of the money came from DAG Ventures, adding up to Marin raising a total of about $25 million in funding from sources such as Benchmark Capital, Amicus Capital and Focus Ventures. Marin reportedly manages $300 million of online ad spend annually for clients such as ZipRealty and Microsoft's Razorfish. It is nice to see companies in the search field still able to raise money in these slow economic times. [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Organizations

The Google Webmaster Central blog notified us that Googlers have presented a new study on Sitemaps at the WWW'09 conference in Madrid. The study is absolutely interesting and I recommend printing out the ten page PDF document and reading it. For those of you who don't have time for that, I hope to highlight the most interesting findings from the study below. The purpose of the study was to measure the past few years of Sitemaps usage at Google to determine how Sitemap files improve coverage and freshness of the Google web index. By coverage, I mean how Google crawls the web deeper and fi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps | Top News

Local search data and content provider Localeze has introduced what it's calling the "Localeze Confidence Score." The confidence score is the company's statement to third party search engines and local directory partners about the accuracy of its local data and business records. The company is associating a confidence score with each of the millions of records it provides to those partners. According to the press materials: To arrive at a score, local business listings are driven through a comprehensive and ongoing process employing 14 individual weighted validation parameters. When combin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines

While having great content and an appropriate message are crucial for success on social media news sites, having a quality user help with promotion is essential to build momentum. Contacting and conversing with top users who share similar interests as you can be beneficial in helping to spark your content and get it noticed. This is meant to be a resource to find all of those top social users that people continually speak about so you can find related power users on the social site of your choice. Social Media News Digg. Even though Digg eliminated its list of the top Diggers years a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

URL shortening services have become quite popular lately, primarily due to the restricted length of "tweets" on Twitter. Danny Sullivan compared several of these services in URL Shorteners: Which Shortening Service Should You Use? and talked about the SEO implications of using these services, especially when it comes to passing along link love. But not much has been written (yet) about the potential for spam and unintended consequences that can arise with shortened URLs. Matt McGee, in his post Twazzup: New All-In-One Twitter Search Engine, noted that Twitter searching can often produce une [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Week | Twitter

Microsoft is launching Vine today as a limited beta in Seattle only. It's an interesting local/social communications and information tool that plays in the same sandbox as both Twitter and Facebook, and also competes to a degree with online news sites. Vine is Windows-only software that's intended to sit open on your desktop so that users can keep in touch with people, events, and news happening around them. Microsoft is providing printable invite cards so users can get more out of the app by having friends and family in the beta, as well. Vine's dashboard shows a map of your area and th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Microsoft: Other

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft Live Search 411 Adds Traffic To CapabilitiesHow many people are familiar with Microsoft’s Voice Search tool “Live Search 411?” It’s a powerful yet not well-known way to do local search from any phone (1-800-CALL-411 or 1-800-225-5411). Conceptually, it’s exactly like Goog-411 but has more considerably more content and capabilities. Built on the Tellme infrastructure it can provide: Local business search Driv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

How many people are familiar with Microsoft's Voice Search tool "Live Search 411?" It's a powerful yet not well-known way to do local search from any phone (1-800-CALL-411 or 1-800-225-5411). Conceptually, it's exactly like Goog-411 but has more considerably more content and capabilities. Built on the Tellme infrastructure it can provide: Local business search Driving directions Weather Sports scores Stock quotes Gas prices Movie information Travel and airlines information Today traffic information, from INRIX, was added to that list. Live Search 411 will presumably be [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

Our own Barry Schwartz spotted this today on Google Maps: A search for rustybrick includes a link to see Flickr photos displayed on Google Maps: Clicking on that link leads to a fairly lengthy list of photos imported into Google Maps via the Flickr API. The photos are all from a Flickr feed that includes photos uploaded by "rustybrick," tagged with "rustybrick," and geotagged with the photo's location. Barry's feed, for example, includes photos from the RustyBrick office in New York as well as Barry's trips to Israel. I tried to mimic this with other searches, and the only simila [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Top News

AOL recently soft-launched Love.com, which it advertises as a collection of "topic blogs" that "provide a central view into what the world is loving now." But it's really an SEO play. Give the site any subdomain under the sun, and Love.com will make a new site on-the-fly with content scraped from news sites, blogs, YouTube videos, Twitter messages and more. Like this: Everybody loves cold sores, right? Well, not everybody loves Love.com. Says Dave Naylor: "Approximately 1 bazillion keyword specific subdomains filled with scraped content and ads? Are AOL so desperate that they [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Spamming