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 Astonishing Tribe) designed user experiences for new interactive screen technologies. One of the many fascinating topics we discussed was this idea of personal and public screens and how they may interact together. Jakobbson talked about how our notion o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Search & Usability

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 above the search results. After clicking to use the filter, the corresponding search results also include the hours that each business is open. (They also include a disclaimer warning searchers that the information might not be accurate.) It's a useful tool, but somewhat l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile

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 rank web pages -- starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today. Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Content Farms | Demand Media | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Panda Update Must-Reads | Panda Update News | Top News

60 Tactical Sessions. 150+ Expert Speakers. Less than 2 weeks til SMX West — Register Today! Join us March 8-10 in San Jose, CA for exceptional content on SEO, PPC, social media marketing and more. Check out the multi-track agenda. At SMX West, more than 150 of the world's most knowledgeable speakers will share the tactics and strategies that make them successful — see who's speaking. Register today and secure your spot! Want to send your team? Discounts of up to 35% are available – check out our group pricing. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages

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 ConversionsOptimizing 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 [...] Google’s Action Ag [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

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 a blog post. "However, some of you have told us that the ad with the highest clickthrough rate isn’t always the ad with the highest conversion rate and that you’d like to be able to optimize for conversions rather than clicks." To take [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

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 their core unpaid search goal of providing the most relevant and useful results to searchers, seeks out these types of manipulations and knocks down the rankings of sites involved with them. Several days later came news that Forbes.com ran afoul of the Google guid [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | SEO: Spamming | Top News

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, restaurant ratings and more. Currently the Tiles program is a beta program being tested with some webmasters. Microsoft plans on announcing more details of the program at SMX West. A Microsoft spokesperson told us: "We are always looking at new ways to impr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Bing

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 of your Facebook friends has liked on Facebook, Bing would display this after all of its "regular" results. Facebook Likes Meet "Regular" Results Today, Bing has announced that Facebook Likes will be more tightly integrated.  Now, if the regular search [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Microsoft: Bing | Top News

[caption id="attachment_65899" align="alignright" width="147" caption="Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com"][/caption] 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 categories, product types and price ranges are top performers and which are not. Once you know this, reallocate, prioritize and execute for success. It is so much more fun [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search & Retail

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 expensive site design changes that could have been easily implemented during the design process. Sometimes, it's difficult or impossible to correct issues after a website is launched without essentially rebuilding the site again. In addition, [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To: SEO

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 16 destinations with coverage at launch. Those include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Maui, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. By working with the hotel chains and independent contra [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Travel Search Engines

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 sense that Bing has featured special treatment for recipe content since last January, and it added a dedicated tab for recipe search last Spring. However, Google still represents the lion's share of searches. The project marks the first time that Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: Rich Snippets | Top News

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 until now, nearly secret) way around this problem: get the listing removed from Google’s search results. While it doesn’t get rid of the Ripoff Report listing itself, it keeps the average web searcher from finding it, which is the important part. Allow me to back up and explain… In case y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features: General | How To | Legal

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 Google that the company should manually review all Street View images taken in Switzerland or "take the service offline," according to the Wall Street Journal. The Swiss have very strict privacy rules (obviously). Currently Google is prevented by court order from up [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US | Google: Street View

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 ToolsToday, 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 [...] Ob [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

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 in-house marketing, and improving measurement of SEO impact beyond just search result rankings. There's a features comparison chart which includes technology integrations available with each tool, including web analytics packa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Headlines | SEM Industry: General | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | SEO: General | Top News

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 content in Google News. Google immediately appealed the decision and also took the position that the case was narrowly limited to the newspaper-specific facts. Google dismissed the significance and larger potential impact of the decision on Google's a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Features: Analysis | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Google: Web Search | Top News

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 call-to-action, which is often glorified in conversion circles, is certainly important. But frankly, it's not as important as the content for which that call-to-action is associated. Similarly, although testing is crucial (motto: "always [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

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 Facebook removed the ability to export email addresses to some third-party applications. Google responded by warning Google users to not export their contracts to Facebook. The Google & Facebook conflict is nothing new, especially with Bing & Facebook's spe [...]

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