More from Search Engine Land: Page 3

PPC

Using Predictive Modeling In Seasonal Search Campaigns

Optimal bidding for performance is a complex task for search marketers. When placing bids every day, you must be mindful of the volatility in the marketplace due to changing search traffic, competition, matching algorithms that vary across search engines and the changing needs of your business. For many of you, particularly if you work in […]

Bing

Google Fires Back At Bing, Launches “Explore Google Search”

I wrote earlier that it was probably driving Google crazy to see people “amazed” that Bing is doing stuff that Google itself has long offered. Now Google’s fighting back. The first shot? A new Explore Google Search page. Google’s had help pages like this before. For example, this one still remains, showing various special features […]

Content

Five Steps To Leveraging Great Content For Better Rankings

Recently, I was at an internet marketing convention where the question was posed to a panel: “As a search engine optimizer (SEO), what would you advise your clients to do if an extra million dollars fell into their lap?” The response from the SEOs on the panel was essentially “invest it all in creating great […]

Google News

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 17, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask.com Expands AnswerFarm Q&A Database Continuing its move from being a traditional search engine to an “answer engine,” Ask today has announced that its “AnswerFarm” database has tripled in size, from […]

Ecommerce

Ask.com Expands AnswerFarm Q&A Database

Continuing its move from being a traditional search engine to an “answer engine,” Ask today has announced that its “AnswerFarm” database has tripled in size, from 100 million Q&A pairs to 300 million. Ask says they’ve also improved the quality of the Q&A database content: “Our semantic search technology advancements in clustering, rephrasing, and answer […]

Bing

Bing: comScore sees Gains; Compete Sees Same Old, Same Old

More early stats are coming in on how searchers are reacting to the Bing launch. comScore shows Microsoft’s Bing search engine continuing to make gains, but Compete shows things remain largely the same. From comScore, the latest stats show that “searcher penetration” has climbed from 13.7% in the week before it launched, to 15.8% during […]

SEO

Choosing A PPC Campaign Management Application: SMN Webcast Thursday

Tomorrow, Thursday June 18 at 1 PM Eastern, Search Marketing Now hosts a webcast “Choosing a PPC Campaign Management Application: 20 Questions You’ll Need to Ask.” Speaker David Rodnitzky has come up with 20 key questions to help you determine what you need and how to evaluate your options and make an informed decision about […]

Content

PPC Segmentation: 4 Tips To Better Target Customers

Any marketer will tell you that the more you know about your audience, the better you can speak to it. That’s why research is so essential in paid search — it can help you choose the right keywords, match them up to the best copy, and ultimately, help you better speak to your audience. But […]

Google

China, Censorship & Google Redux

In the wake of the 20th anniversary of the Chinese Government’s crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, the issue of Google’s (self) censorship of search results in China has come around again. CNET has a lengthy and critical article on the subject: Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three […]

Link building

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 16, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Report: How The Internet Has Changed Music Consumption Music file sharing services have always been a mutant species of search, offering different tools and methods for finding and listening to tunes. […]

SEO

Report: How The Internet Has Changed Music Consumption

Music file sharing services have always been a mutant species of search, offering different tools and methods for finding and listening to tunes. Napster was one of the first and most infamous, and its widespread adoption caused the recording industry to panic, suing both the company and thousands of its users. That hasn’t stopped the […]

Microsoft

Microsoft Taking Click Fraud Battle To Court

The New York Times reports that Microsoft is taking the click fraud battle to court. “Microsoft filed the civil complaint on Monday in United States District Court in Seattle against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia, along with several corporation names they were believed to have used, and several unnamed […]

SEO

Clean Tweets: New Add-On Zaps Twitter Spam

If you use Twitter regularly, you probably know spam is a growing problem — particularly with Twitter’s search engine and the way it surfaces trending topics. Danny Sullivan described how spammers are targeting hot keywords in his Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article 10 days ago. Since Twitter hasn’t addressed the problem yet, the folks […]

Google SEO

PageRank Sculpting Is Dead! Long Live PageRank Sculpting!

Earlier this month, Google’s Matt Cutts sent a shockwave through the advanced SEO community by saying that site owners could no longer perform “PageRank sculpting” using the nofollow tag in the way they’d previously thought. Now Matt’s posted more explanation about the change. But rather than stop PageRank sculpting, I expect his explanation will simply […]

Link building

Understanding Federated Link Building: A Primer With Examples

You’ve probably heard the term “Federated Search“.  It’s the term used to describe the process of simultaneously searching multiple search engines or online databases from a single search box. Federated search is unfortunately an awkward term. It sounds like something from the Civil War. Federated search is closely related to meta-search. If you’ve ever used […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 15, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo! Announces Common Tag: Like The Meta Keywords Tag, But Even Better Yahoo! recently announced their role in creating and supporting Common Tag, a new semantic tagging format. Yahoo! says that […]

SEO

Yahoo! Announces Common Tag: Like The Meta Keywords Tag, But Even Better

Yahoo! recently announced their role in creating and supporting Common Tag, a new semantic tagging format. Yahoo! says that Common Tag makes “web content more discoverable” and enables the community to “create more useful applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the web.” Their blog post mentions that they want to accelerate the structuring of the […]

Google

Voice Search Now On Google Maps For Android

Android OS phone users can now use Google’s voice search tool inside of Google Maps. According to today’s announcement, the tool recognizes English-language speakers with American, Australian, and British accents. There are other improvements, too: Transit and walking directions are available for more than 250 cities Business listings have been upgraded to include store hours, […]

Local

Clean Up Your Local Data!

Local search is a huge opportunity for many businesses, particularly those with hundreds (or more) of locations. In this article, we are going to cover one of the most difficult aspects of that – getting your data to show correctly in the search engines. This turns out to be an extremely important thing to do. […]

Apple

MapQuest Launches iPhone App With Innovative Local Search Features

AOL’s MapQuest has been in mobile mapping longer than any of its rivals, but it’s playing catch up when it comes to the iPhone, which remains the most important smartphone platform for the time being. This morning, MapQuest launched the iPhone version of its MapQuest4Mobile app (launches iTunes). Prior to this app the company has […]

Bing

Microsoft Makes It Easier To Filter Out Unsafe Images In Bing

Microsoft announced two new ways Microsoft is making Bing image and video search safer to use. The first change Microsoft made was to serve up all adult related images and videos on a new domain, explicit.bing.net. Having the content served from a different domain will help schools and homes set their own safe filters to […]

Bing

NY Post: “Fear Grips Google” — Really?

Perhaps now more than ever traditional media’s challenge is to get and keep attention. That can lead to overreaching and hyperbole, as in the case of a headline and story appearing in the typically sensational NY Post over the weekend: “Fear Grips Google.” Cue the music. CNET picks up the story as do others. The […]

Ecommerce

Hunch: Your “Personal Decision Maker”

Hunch is not a “search engine” insists Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, one of the people behind the new site. But you’ll probably start seeing it show up in (Google) search results, just like Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers. And in some ways it’s like a mix of both of those concepts, as Matt McGee discusses in […]

Ecommerce

Hunch: A Real Decision Engine

Caterina Fake’s enthusiasm for her latest project is contagious. Hunch is now open to the public, but it’s still three days pre-launch when we talk and, at this point, about the only uncertainty is how best to describe it in all the media interviews she’s doing. Phrases like “Q&A community” and “knowledge tool” are mentioned, […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 12, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Analytics Now Considers Bing A Search Engine As promised, Google Analytics is now logging traffic from Microsoft’s new Bing search engine into the “search engine” traffic source category, rather than […]

Analytics & conversion

Google Analytics Now Considers Bing A Search Engine

As promised, Google Analytics is now logging traffic from Microsoft’s new Bing search engine into the “search engine” traffic source category, rather than in the “referring sites” category. As a result, Google Analytics users can now see for themselves whether all of Microsoft’s Bing marketing is producing more traffic for Bing, which in turn is […]

Content

Affiliates: Trusted Allies Or Conniving Cannibals?

It is not uncommon for businesses to find that the relationship they have with their affiliates is one of the most difficult to handle. On the one hand, affiliates can be valuable partners that provide leads and sales for your company. But on the other hand, they are independent entities which require compensation for their […]

Local

Yahoo Improves EU Mapping, Does It Still See Maps As Strategic?

These days it’s hard to remember that at one time Yahoo was the pioneer in dynamic mapping. It introduced enhanced local search features and capabilities into the map before Google, Microsoft and MapQuest. At a certain point, however, Yahoo opted out of the map feature wars that erupted between Google and Microsoft (StreetView, 3D, aerial, […]

Ecommerce

WolframAlpha Goes Halfway On iPhone Mobile Search

The WolframAlpha Blog announced they have launched an iPhone mobile friendly version of their search engine. If you visit www.wolframalpha.com on your iPhone, you should see an iPhone friendly home screen. It looks like this: The issue is, if you conduct any search, it doesn’t give you an iPhone friendly version of the results page. […]

Google

Yet Another Mobile iGoogle For iPhones & Android

The Google Mobile Blog announced yet another shot at an optimized version of iGoogle for iPhone and Android devices. About six months ago, Google quietly dropped the iPhone optimized iGoogle, before that, they had an optimized version since January 2008. After living without an iPhone/Android version of iGoogle for about six months, Google came out […]

PPC

How To: Excel At Excel For SEM Applications, Part 2

In part 1 of this series on Excel for search engine marketers, I started off by applauding the tool and pointing out how important it is to our industry. This week, before I get into the tips and tricks, I’d like to talk a little about training. Excel, like any sophisticated tool, can be dangerous […]

Bing

Bing Zaps Commercials On The Daily Show (& More Shows Coming Soon)

Microsoft’s ad campaign for Bing took a(nother) turn for the clever tonight on The Daily Show with a new campaign called “Fast Forward.” It’s the first in a week-long run of advertising that will see Microsoft paying for several minutes of commercial time, only to air a 30-second spot in place of several ads. The […]

SEO

Yahoo Hires Morse As CFO

Yahoo has announced the hiring of Tim Morse as Chief Financial Officer. He’ll report directly to CEO Carol Bartz. Morse most recently was CFO at Altera, and before that served as CFO for General Electric Plastics. According to Yahoo’s SEC filing, Morse gets a base salary of $500,000, a signing bonus of $500,000, and has […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 11, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Images Quietly Adds Creative Commons Filter A couple weeks after Yahoo Images added the creative commons search filter, Google quietly added their own to Google Image Search. The option is […]

Google

Google Images Quietly Adds Creative Commons Filter

A couple weeks after Yahoo Images added the creative commons search filter, Google quietly added their own to Google Image Search. The option is not available in the user interface, but you can set the filter by adding a parameter to the URL. For example: Public Domain Images: Add &as_rights=cc_publicdomain to the URL Creative Commons […]

Bing

Translation: A New Instant Answer From Bing

The Microsoft Translator Blog announced that translation is now an instant answer in Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. Here are some examples: Google added limited translation as a OneBox over a year ago. But it seems like both Yahoo and Ask.com do not have smart answers for translation. Hat tip to LiveSide for spotting this.

Google Ads

Google AdWords Testing “Opportunities” Tab?

The AdWords Expert Blog noticed that for one of his AdWords accounts Google is testing a new tab in the AdWords interface named “opportunities.” The new tab seems to include “ideas” for adding new campaigns, keywords and ad groups to your Google AdWords campaign. Here is a picture of the new tab: Do note, adding […]

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