Getting buy in for your SEO work is critical. For in-house SEOs, there is usually at least a small measure of politics involved and a number of different levels of understanding during each phase of sign off. During all of your conversations, pitches and back-room deal making (ex. I’ll wash & wax your car for a month if you install the rel=canonical code for me), have you ever asked yourself if you’re having the right conversations with the right people? And, are those conversations being held at the right level? Having the right people in the conversation is obvious and critical. A [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | In House Search Marketing

This morning, there is a lot of buzz around a Google Street View Image that shows a woman giving birth to a baby. You can see the image below or on Twitpic. The bottom line, this is a fake image. How do I know? Google tweeted that it was fake. Google said on their German Twitter account: Bei der angeblichen Geburt auf Street View, die hier gerade die Runde macht, handelt es sich um ein Fake! That translated to: When the alleged birth to Street View, which makes this just the round, it is a fake! TechCrunch EU shared the real street view image, which you can see live here. The image [...]

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

The PEW Internet and American Life Project has come out with a new study about internet use based on household income that includes some data on how these segments use search. There's also interesting stuff here about how income correlates to likelihood to rate and review products, pay for online content, book travel, and access online news. The top-level conclusions are that Americans in higher income brackets (over $75,000 a year) use the internet  more often than those in lower income brackets. Those in higher income brackets are also more likely to have broadband access), which PEW has [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General

Last week, the Roku player gained support for Hulu Plus. I've been trying out the combo for the past few days, and it's pretty awesome. It further fulfills the promise of streaming TV content from the internet and back to your TV in the way that Google TV hasn't. Roku: My First Day Review & Impressions is my look at the Roku box and how it works from last month. That piece also covers Hulu Plus, a version of Hulu that allows access to more episodes that the regular Hulu offers -- for a $8 per month fee. The Hulu Plus price just dropped last week from $10 per month. Coinciding with th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Features: Life With Google TV | Internet-To-TV | Top News

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Blekko & DuckDuckGo Partner On Search ResultsIt’s not exactly a case of If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, because Blekko has insisted all along that it’s not trying to beat Google or any other search engine. It is trying to beat web spam in search results, and that’s what has fueled today’s announcement that Blekko and DuckDuckGo — another upstart [...] How To Make Your Social Media Strategy Accounta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

It's not exactly a case of If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, because Blekko has insisted all along that it's not trying to beat Google or any other search engine. It is trying to beat web spam in search results, and that's what has fueled today's announcement that Blekko and DuckDuckGo -- another upstart search engine -- are partnering on search results. Users doing searches on Blekko will sometimes see "Zero-Click Info" from DuckDuckGo with background about individual websites, as shown here: The Zero-Click Info box can be seen by clicking the "info" link below a search result. M [...]

Related Topics: Blekko | Channel: Consumer | DuckDuckGo

Most businesses either already have a Social Media Strategy, or know they need one. But what makes a good strategy? And how can you set – and measure – success in terms of bottom line business benefit?

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

Microsoft announced that it has hired CloudeMade and OpenStreetMap (OSM) founder Steve Coast as "Principal Architect for Bing Mobile," as well as a kind of liason to the "open map community." According to data in the Bing post announcing Coast's hiring, there are "more than 320,000 people" who have participated or are participating in the OpenStreetMap project. As part of this new effort, Microsoft is providing Bing Aerial Imagery to OpenStreetMap. Microsoft says that Steve Coast "will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Top News

Some people who chose to blur their houses on Google Street View in Germany received an unexpected real life blurring: Google fans who threw eggs at their homes. Deutsche Welle reports that on Saturday, several homes in the Bergerhausen area of Essen that opted to be blurred were hit with eggs. "Google's Cool" notes were also taped to their mailboxes. Der Westen reports similarly, in German here. Neither gives the exact number of homes involved nor are pictures of the eggings posted. To the right, an example of one of the blurred homes in the area. Google Street View launched in Germa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Street View | Top News

With the rush to move sites up to the top of the SERPs, all of my clients want keyword-rich text links. It makes sense, as if you're trying to rank number one for the phrase "cheap environmental home design" you're obviously going to want that in your anchor text. However, there's much more to the general link health of a site than loads of properly keyword-ized text links, and, in fact, we're occasionally seeing that having too few non-keyword based links can actually be a detriment. Having a good link profile is really no different than any of the other basic SEO ideas. You want your effo [...]

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

If you visit Google.com today, you may notice a special Thanksgiving logo from Google. Yes, Thanksgiving is not until Thursday, but this year, Google is showing a logo days early. The logo leads to a Thanksgiving landing page with six recipes from Food Network TV Chef, Ina Garten. There is a link on the landing page that leads to a search result for her name, [ina garten]. This logo is different from the past logos in three ways: It is uncommon for Google to offer pre-holiday logos (yes, it happens) The logo leads to a landing page as opposed to a search result The logo promot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos

Yelp continues to play catch-up with some of its competition in the local search landscape. The company's latest move is the announcement of "Check-in Offers." If you're familiar with the premise behind Foursquare's business users rewarding "mayors" and others who check-in to local businesses, you'll be familiar with Yelp's product. The idea is the same: Local businesses using Yelp's business tools can reward customers when they check-in via Yelp's mobile apps. Check-in offers is available now in the countries where Yelp offers a business dashboard, namely the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland. W [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Foursquare | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Search Engines: Location / Checkin Services | Top News | Yelp

Clickability, or perceived visual affordance, is a key element of search-engine friendly website design. How do searchers and search engines perceive clickable and unclickable elements?

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Search & Usability

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: Not Optimizing For Bing-Yahoo Means Loss Of TrafficFrom an SEM-SEO resource-allocation perspective focusing on Google historically made lots of sense for small and even medium-sized firms. Some firms didn’t have the bandwidth to address Yahoo, let alone Bing. But after the merger the two now control about 28 percent of all search traffic according recent search market share data from comScore. So [...] Hot At Sphinn: Article Spinning, Se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

From an SEM-SEO resource-allocation perspective focusing on Google historically made lots of sense for small and even medium-sized firms. Some firms didn't have the bandwidth to address Yahoo, let alone Bing. But after the merger the two now control about 28 percent of all search traffic according recent search market share data from comScore. So now that there are two, it makes sense to devote resources to the Yahoo-Bing combination. Search ad network Chitika says that many of the publishers on its network -- almost 50 percent -- are receiving less traffic than they could if they were to p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search Ads

Do you remember the best piece of SEO advice you ever received? Do you think "article spinning" is spam? And are you up on the latest research about how consumers use search engines? Those were some of the hot topics last week on our sister site, Sphinn, where the community interacts by commenting, tweeting, and liking articles. Sphinn's "Discussion of the Week," which asked What's the Best Piece of SEO-related Advice You've Ever Received?, picked up the most comments (12) and tweets (100) over the past week. If you're looking for some good nuggets of SEO wisdom, don't miss the comments the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sphinn

All Google AdWords advertisers know the importance of having a good quality score on Google. A poor quality score can result in your cost per click prices to soar, virtually knocking you out of the auction space and competing during the holiday shopping season. That is why tracking and monitoring your ad's quality score in the AdWords console is a top priority for many advertisers. So when you see your quality score drop suddenly, you worry. 3 weeks ago, I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on an AdWords quality score bug that impacted the AdWords reports. Many advertisers saw [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Top News

GTVHub reports that Google TV is now being blocked by Viacom. Shows such on popular networks such as Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon are not viewable via the Google TV. Previously, ABC, CBS and NBC blocked Google TV and so did Fox many of those channels returned to Google TV soon after. Viacom, which has a long history with battling Google over YouTube, has surprisingly not blocked Google TV until now. Now, if you try to access any of the Viacom channels, you will see a message that reads: Sorry, this content is unavailable for your device. For more stories on this n [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Business Issues | Google: Partnerships | Google: TV

There are confirmed reports that Google Instant Previews may be skewing your web analytics data. It appears that in some cases Google will conduct an on-demand fetch of your page to dynamically create an Instant Preview. The on-demand fetch happens when a searcher places his mouse over the search result on Google and the image preview comes up. Some analytics tools, including Google Analytics, may consider that a visit, because Google Instant Preview is actually visiting the page in real-time to get that on-demand Instant Preview. There are several complaints about this issue in the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Instant | Top News

TechCrunch reports Facebook has removed the Gmail option of finding friends on Facebook. If you go to the find friends section on Facebook, you will find options to find your friends via Skype, AIM, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, MSN, sbcglobal and verizon.net, but you won't see Google's Gmail as an option: This doesn't come as a surprise to many. Earlier this month, Google changed their terms of service to force Facebook to either open up more of their information or have to drop Gmail as a friends find option. Here are more of the related stories below to track this [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Google: APIs | Google: Business Issues | Google: Partnerships