The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Today, as widely expected, Nokia adopted Windows as its smartphone software. Its other mobile operating systems, Symbian and MeeGo, will not entirely disappear but Nokia will be building and distributing Windows Phones as its primary competitive offering to go head-to-head with the iPhone and Android. That could […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Results Get Localized & Personalized The idea of “normal” search results died a little more today, as Bing has begun delivering personalized listings depending on a searcher’s location or past […]
Twitter wasn’t the only social media platform that recorded super levels of activity associated with the big game last weekend. Local check-in player Foursquare says it saw 200,000 check-ins, making this year’s Super Bowl the most checked-into venue ever for the company. Green Bay Packers fans showed greater check-in activity than their rival Steelers supporters […]
Google has been planning its ThinkMobile event for three months. Google’s Jason Spero (former AdMob VP) is on stage first and says he’s been anticipating an “event like this” for “about four years.” He says it reflects the fact that mobile is ready. Google’s Dennis Woodside reports that Google has seen a “400 percent increase […]
The idea of “normal” search results died a little more today, as Bing has begun delivering personalized listings depending on a searcher’s location or past search history. Google has already been doing the same for several years.
A lesson I learned many years ago (the hard way), is that the “free traffic” from organic rankings (SEO) is anything but free. Even something as basic as rewriting your vendor’s product descriptions to create unique content takes time – or you have to pay someone to do it. And if you’re getting traffic, you […]
Mapquest has introduced public transit and walking directions. It has had walking directions on mobile for awhile. The transit directions are limited right now to rail (including subway) and in only a few cities: Rail Transit Directions are now available in six major metro areas (NYC, Chicago, D.C., San Fran, Boston and Philly) all of […]
Google is often changing and experimenting with their web search interfaces. Most recently, Google switched back from the purple AdWords background color the the yellow color. There are at least three new changes Google has implemented or is testing on their search results interface. (1) Google Instant Works For Search Operators: As reported at Google […]
There are three companies that we know are interested in or “hungry” for Twitter: Microsoft, Google and Facebook. In an article on bubbly valuations, the Wall Street Journal says that Twitter is again in “low-level” acquisition talks: Executives at both Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., among other companies, have held low-level talks with those at […]
Having a search engine friendly website, a site with no barriers to the search engines is critical to success within “organic” search engine results. Here are some relatively simple SEO Site Review/Audit steps that should help you flush out the most important site wide issues within a small to mid size website. A SEO site […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Super Bowl Sparks Twitter Record For Sporting Event Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: […]
Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: 4,064 Tweets were sent at 10:07:16 p.m. EST, according to Twitter. The previous TPS record, of 3,283, was set during Japan’s 3-1 win over Denmark during the World Cup soccer tournament last […]
In July 2010, Google changed the color of the AdWords background from yellow to purple. Now, less 7 months after the switch, it appears Google has gone back to the yellow color. Here is a screen shot of the yellow background color from today and directly below it a screen shot of the purple color […]
Google’s Matt Cutts wrote a blog post comparing a “time capsule” of search results he saved from Google’s index in 2000 to the search results in Google today. He showed how for the search query “buy domain name,” Google has tremendously improved in terms of spam and search quality.
Headline grab your attention? True story: Steven Levy, one of our keynote speakers at SMX West actually found Einstein’s brain 22 years after the great scientist’s death. But that’s not the main reason he’s keynoting—Steven has spent the past two years as an “embedded” journalist at the Googleplex, attending strategy and development meetings, interviewing key […]
A number of reports out underscore how strategic mobile is now for Google’s business. The first, from IDC, says that there were more smartphones shipped in Q4 than PCs. Think about that. And earlier analyst reports found that tablets (read: iPad) have cut into PC sales. The PC era is now officially over. PCs will […]
According to a recent Marketing Sherpa report, the top 3 marketing challenges facing B2B marketers today are: Generating high quality leads Generating a high volume of leads, and Dealing with lengthening sales cycles This column explores how business marketers are tackling these tough issues in terms of their search marketing efforts. B2B Budgets Continue To […]
I had lunch today with a young, ambitious entrepreneur. He’s fresh out of a prestigious tech university, has a fledgling company and visions of shaking up a big industry. He wanted to talk about search. Him: “I’m pretty psyched, we just launched about 4 months ago and we’re already ranking number one for <insert obscure […]
If we want our children to grow up healthy and happy, we can’t be squeamish about addressing issues of conversion scenarios, analytics packages, value propositions, storytelling, split testing and personas. We must arm our children with these tools, or the Web will continue to bore and repel us.
Total unique Facebook visitors in 2010? Up 38 percent. Average daily Facebook visitors in 2010? Up 69 percent. Total Facebook page views in 2010? Up 71 percent. Overall time spent on Facebook in 2010? Up 79 percent. The list could go on and on. In fact, it does. Here’s a look at comScore’s estimates for […]
Do you recall the merger of AT&T and Cingular Wireless back in 2007? At the time, experts questioned AT&T’s decision to retire Cingular’s brand name. After all, it was very popular. But now the AT&T brand is stronger than ever, and hardly anyone remembers the brand they cut. When faced with a merger today, marketers […]
Yahoo has just announced that they’re about to launch a new version of BOSS with a fee structure based on query volume. (The initial version launched in 2008 was free, and a fee structure for high volume use was first talked about in 2009). Yahoo BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) provides an API that […]
No stranger to controversy, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis threw down a gauntlet at his “content farm” competitors, arguing they’re polluting the web and angering Google, to the detriment of searchers and their own companies.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Demand Media & Being “The Best Click” On Google Demand Media’s success? Listening to what people want and generating great content to show up at Google. At least that’s part of […]
Demand Media’s success? Listening to what people want and generating great content to show up at Google. At least that’s part of it, said Demand’s chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford — and she came armed with screenshots and examples to prove it.
A question I get asked all the time is “what’s the future of search?” Everyone wants to know what’s coming next. I mostly tend to answer that search has become so ubiquitous that it’s becoming part of nearly everything we do and we probably won’t always recognize the future of search as “search”. Urban Spoon’s […]
Bing was the big gainer in year-over-year search activity, picking up 29% more searches in 2010 than it did in 2009. But Google, despite already having a huge lead in the market, also picked up 13% more searches last year. Those numbers, and many others, are part of comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” […]
Ask many search marketers what the holy grail of link building is, and their top answer may likely be: .edu links. Golden, right? Ranking rocket fuel. Not quite. You see, not all .edu links are treated equally, both by those who link to them, and by engines that examine those links. It’s hard to believe […]
Twitter doesn’t claim to have caused the biggest Super Bowl viewing audience in history, but maybe it helped, says Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. Stone sees Twitter as helping drive live viewing by creating a shared experience. Stone also had a further rebuttal to Malcolm Gladwell’s dissing of the value of social media in political movements. […]
Social media experts, typically self-appointed, trumpet their belief that social media marketing (SMM) “throws out the rules” and is a “game-changer.” However, the extent to which SMM can change the rules depends very much on how thoughtful its practitioners are, and how well they understand the connection between the various ways people associate things and […]
FM’s Signal LA event kicks off today with a dynamic duo: Aol CEO Tim Armstrong, who is joined by Arianna Huffington, who’s Huffington Post site Aol bought this week and becomes the new president & editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within Aol. Tim and Arianna were at the Super Bowl together, it turns […]
If you're building a search marketing campaign globally, you want to know what your options are. What are the alternatives to Google? Are there still any alternative or do we just log on to Google and go?
Searches on Bing-powered engines grew 6.5% in the U.S. from December to January, climbing from 25.77% of total search volume to 27.44%. Google lost 2.5%, dropping from 69.67% to 67.95% of searches. This according to the latest Experian Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report, which looks at U.S. traffic. Bing.com saw the greatest increase in searches […]
Yesterday, we gave you a sneak peek at the Jules Verne Google logo. The logo is to celebrate Jules Verne’s 183rd birthday. Jules Verne is the author of the popular novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Google Doodler, Jennifer Hom explained her inspiration for creating the logo. But she also explained how the logo was […]
The latest mobile data from comScore are out, showing Android handsets continuing to outpace others in the market. These new figures obviously pre-date the release of the Verizon iPhone, which is coming this weekend. More interesting will be seeing what these figures look like in March. Reportedly Apple has prepared two million CDMA iPhones for […]
Publishers running AdSense will soon see fewer public service announcement banners on their sites, as Google has announced changes to phase them out of back-up ad options. Previously, publishers were able to choose to show PSAs, to redirect to another URL, or to show a solid color when Google couldn’t find an ad to match with […]
This month, we continue our exploration of cross-compatibility issues between Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter, and how understanding the subtle and not-so-subtle differences, PPC campaigns managers can design and build portable and easier-to-manage campaigns that take both networks into account. In last month’s column, we explored strategies for dealing with negative keywords and made a […]
Istvan Turk has tipped us off to a blog post over at SEO Sport noting that the verification page of Google Webmaster Tools now includes a Link to Google Analytics option for all verified sites. Note this this is different from site verification using Google Analytics, which was added last year. The Google Webmaster Tools […]
Talk of the 2010 U.S. Census is heating up on the web – as local information starts to trickle out – with discussion about what national and local census figures mean for everything from politics to the Superbowl. For local search companies and marketers, the U.S. Census delivers valuable information that helps us understand who […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Instant Replay: Where To Find The Super Bowl Ads Are you one of those people who get upset when the Super Bowl gets interrupted by football or corny half-time events? You […]