Google CEO Eric Schmidt says consumers’ adoption of the company’s mobile services has happened more quickly than executives expected. Schmidt, who is set to step down as CEO in April, spoke at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs. “It’s happening, and it’s happening faster,” he said. “We look at the charts internally, and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top […]
I’ll be the first to admit that I have little knowledge of formal project management. While I cherish quality project managers and certainly know the importance of prioritization, stakeholders, and overall project management, it is not my job. My job is to bring the best SEO strategies and ideas into an organization. Luckily for me, […]
Some commonplace, traditional promotion methods provide significant SEO benefits for local search marketers. However, many managers expend more time and energy focusing upon elusive technical tricks. Here’s one local SEO tactic that businesses should consider: write a book.
Ad copy testing is essential for anyone running a paid search account. Testing ad copy in accounts in high traffic accounts is fairly easy, as you can add new ad copies to existing ad groups, wait, and then examine the metrics. However, in low volume accounts, testing is not nearly as easy, as it could […]
The Xooglers Blog has been posting videos of the old GooglePlex, old Google office from back in November 1999. I believe these videos are from the office Google had at 2400 Bayshore, Mountain View. As Alex said, Google started off in Susan Wojcicki’s garage, then moved to 165 University Ave in Palo Alto, then to […]
A new report from agency GroupM and comScore details the degree to which search and social media have become intertwined in the purchase path that consumers take across the Internet. The report is a follow-up to a similar study done in 2009. GroupM and comScore looked at consumer behavior associated with purchase decisions in the […]
Mobile carrier AT&T is introducing location-based “ShopAlerts” with Placecast in four US cities: NY, SF, Chicago and LA. This is opt-in “push” marketing via SMS or MMS tied to “geo-fences.” Privacy is a non-issue because of the opt-in dimension. Once a user has opted-in, which can happen on AT&T’s site, Facebook or many other places […]
On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top search results. Content farms were seen by many as the target. Were they hit? Who was hit? Some figures are coming out.
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 Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. […]
Social ad network OneRiot is introducing the ability to target mobile audiences by interests, demographics and influence on its ad network of Twitter clients. The company produces an influence score for individuals and organizes them into buckets based on several targeting variables. Advertisers can then buy audiences according to those groupings. In a case study […]
You built out your new ad copy, tested out a bidding strategy, measured web and store sales to measure the online to offline effect; however, in the end you got the worst outcome possible – inconclusive results. A negative result would have been better; at least you would have known that your hypothesis was wrong […]
Politico is reporting, as have other outlets, that Google and the Justice Department (DOJ) are now negotiating intensely in the waning days of its investigation into the anti-trust implications of Google’s potential acquisition of travel software company ITA. According to the Politico article: The Justice Department has made it clear to Google that it’s willing […]
Last night, Google released the Farmer Update, which was Google’s response to improving the quality of the search results, particularly removing sites “which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.” Many suspect that this was aimed at “content farms” and some labeled properties from […]
Over the last year or so, Google has been steadily adding features to the AdWords interface that on the surface seem wonderful, unless managing and learning AdWords isn’t your full time job. It seems like just keeping up with what remains and what is gone and how to work the new stuff is a 40+ […]
In part one of my interview with Hampus Jakobbson, TAT Co-Founder and now Strategic Alliances EMEA at Research in Motion, we talked about user experiences designed for Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. As we continued to chat, we went into some fascinating territory that is literally right out of science fiction. TAT (short for The […]
When you’re on the move, there’s often no sense finding local businesses that are closed. That’s the impetus behind a new feature that Google has added to the iPhone and Android-powered devices: a tool to filter results that are open now. After doing a search, the new “Show only businesses open now” filter shows up […]
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material. New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Advertisers Can Now Optimize By Conversions Optimizing based on click-through data? That’s so 2010. Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates. […]
Optimizing based on click-through data? That’s so 2010. Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates. “We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often,” the company wrote in […]
Last week, J.C. Penney made the news for plummeting in Google rankings for everything from “area rugs” to “grommet top curtains”. Turns out the retail site had a number of suspicious links pointing at it that could be traced back to a link network intended to manipulate Google’s ranking algorithms. Google, in order to protect […]
Like Google’s rich snippets and Yahoo’s Search Monkey, Bing is introducing a new flavor of richer search results named “Tiles.” Tiles are interatice logos or images displayed next to a search result. The tiles can share data in a more graphical way, such as a call to actions for downloading files, watching movies, movie ratings, […]
Bing announced that it has integrated Facebook Likes within its regular search results, similar to a move that Google made with social “shares” from Twitter and other services last week. Facebook Likes Previously Separated In October, Bing added Facebook Likes to the bottom of its search results page. If you searched for something that one […]
Data has always been at the center of marketing decisions, but today it enjoys a constant, glaring spotlight! Results based marketing is here to stay, so it’s time to get the tracking machinery in place and get in front of the dashboard for some action. At a very basic level, you need to know which […]
Following these simple steps could help improve the immediate impact on search results for a new website, and help avoid the often significant reduction in search traffic after a website is re-launched. Website owners often wait until after their site is redesigned and launched before getting a SEO expert involved. Unfortunately, this can lead to […]
Like “seat guru for hotel rooms,” was my immediate thought; Room 77 is a search engine for hotel rooms. The site is creating and indexing data on hotels in the US and UK (and eventually around the world) that qualify with three stars and above. There’s also an iPhone app launching simultaneously today. There are […]
Food content webmasters who’ve dutifully been coding their pages with recipe rich snippets since Google announced them in April get a big reward today. Google is rolling out recipe search, taking advantage of the structured data to launch a whole category with the same prominence as image and video search. It’s playing catch-up in the […]
If you’ve been listed on Ripoff Report, you know how frustrating it is and how helpless you feel. You’ve read the fine print and have probably thrown in the towel. There’s just no way to get off of Ripoff Report once you’re on it. Well, I’m here to tell you there’s a proven (and up […]
Swiss privacy officials want Google to blur every face in Street View, even it’s by hand. Google typically does facial blurring with automation and says that process works in 99 percent of cases. However there’s that pesky 1 percent of cases where that doesn’t fully obscure people in the photographs. Now the Swiss are telling […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Forrester Research Publishes 1st Report On Enterprise SEO Automation Tools Today, Forrester Research unveiled a 6- page report on the utility of SEO automation tools for use in larger enterprises. Six […]
Today, Forrester Research unveiled a 6- page report on the utility of SEO automation tools for use in larger enterprises. Six vendors were covered in the landscape report, including Altruik, BrightEdge, Conductor, Covario, SEOmoz PRO, and Yield Software. The report mainly covers key issues in scaling automation across larger enterprises, integration of IT services and […]
A 2006 Belgian case that found Google in breach of copyright law for indexing newspaper headlines and snippets without permission is now on appeal and approaching conclusion a little over four years later. In 2007 Google was ordered to pay fines and remove links and/or obtain permission from the newspaper copyright owners before indexing their […]
In a recent presentation on conversion content marketing, I walked through several excellent examples of “the new microsite.” I thought I’d share one of my favorites with you here. The essence of conversion content marketing, taking lessons from content marketing and applying them in conversion optimization, and vice versa— is that content is king. The […]
TechCrunch reports Google has intentionally dropped the phonebook data sync from Facebook. The reason Google cites is because Facebook contacts “cannot be exported from the device” and thus do not allow users to “control their data” as freely as Google would like. This topic has been going on for months, starting back in November when […]
First things first, let’s start with a little background…If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be working as an in-house SEO, I would have laughed in your face and told you to go do something dirty to yourself. Yet, here I am today, working as an in-house SEO, and I couldn’t […]
One of the major obstacles marketers face, particularly with B2B search engine marketing, is the availability of content to support keyword initiatives. While we realize the importance of new content, the demand for time and resources will always be tested. The key to success: don’t try to reinvent the wheel every time new content is […]
China Mobile and state-run news agency Xinhua have launched Panguso a new search engine that will let people search for news, web sites, images, videos and audio, according to Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua. The new search engine will filter results according to the guidelines issued by the Chinese government, often referred to as “the […]
With Hollywood’s golden night fast approaching, buzz is building in Yahoo! search for the 83rd annual Academy Awards set to air this Sunday, February 27, 2011. We’ll know soon enough if Yahoo! users are any better at predicting winners than Bing or Google Trends. According to Yahoo!: Searches for “when are the Oscars” are spiking […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Should Korean Search Engine Naver Worry About Local Competitors Or Google? For just about the last decade, Naver has been the dominant player in the south Korean search market holding a […]
For just about the last decade, Naver has been the dominant player in the south Korean search market holding a share of some 70%. However, this doesn’t mean that Naver is not worried about competition — including from global players such as Google. How many other industries do you know where the principal worry is […]