More from Search Engine Land: Page 2

Google algorithm updates

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 28, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: DIY Link Building, ‘Sexier’ Google Analytics & More Is it possible — and smart — for anyone outside of link building consultants/agencies to successfully scale a link building […]

Google

Sina Corp, Large Chinese Portal, Drops Google As Search Provider

Sina Replaces Google Search Engine On Portal from the Wall Street Journal reports Google has just lost a major search syndication deal with one of Chinese largest portals. In 2007, Sina Corp partnered with Google, where Google would power the news, ads and search results for the huge Chinese portal. That deal has ended and […]

Google

Google Instant Now For Google Places

Google has launched Google Instant Search for Google Place search results. To see this yourself, conduct a search on Google and then click on “Places” in the left-hand panel. Then type in the search box and Google Instant will predict and auto fill your searches. Here is an example query for pizza: Google continues to […]

Google algorithm updates

Why Quality Is The Only Sustainable SEO Strategy

One of the most important takeaways after the Panda Update / Farmer fallout is to make your sites as high-quality and useful as possible. The next year should be interesting, as some sites invest in quality, while others try to game signals seeking shortcuts to the hard work. Both are valid, as long as you’re […]

Content

3 Simple Strategies For Organizing Your Match Types

When you have two or more keywords that can be triggered in your AdWords account from a search query, Google tries to show the most restrictive option. The constraints go beyond just match type to include geography, time of day, etc. However, Google does not always show exact match over phrase match and phrase match […]

Local

For Local SEO, Lack Of Call Tracking Solution Spawns Cloaking

Referrals via phone calls have historically been challenging for marketers to assess by promotion channel, although special tracking phone numbers set up to count calls have arisen to satisfy the need. Unfortunately, using different numbers per channel can impair local SEO, and lack of an alternative option is causing some to use a potentially risky […]

Analytics & conversion

Google Joins Forces With MasterCard On NFC To Test The Future Of Digital Marketing, Analytics

Google’s Gingerbread (Android 2.3) offers near field communication (NFC) support, which can be used for both “contactless payments” and marketing purposes. People tend to think about and discuss NFC in the context of “mobile wallets” and payments exclusively but there’s a great deal more it can do. For example, Google has been testing NFC-based marketing […]

Facebook

Zuckerberg In Zion: Speaks To Senator Hatch, Students At BYU

You might wonder what in the world could bring the Harvard dropout and under-30 founder of Facebook together with the 77-year-old conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to talk to students and attendees at Brigham Young University earlier today. I’m still trying to figure that out myself, despite having attended the event. Overall, it was fairly […]

Facebook

Updated: Is “FaceSense” Forthcoming?

Facebook is testing new ad targeting options that display creative beside content that is contextually relevant, similarly to Google’s AdSense but with one important difference — ads would be targeted in real time as conversations are happening on the social network. Irina Slutsky reported the test in AdAge earlier this week. Facebook confirmed to me […]

Analytics & conversion

How To Make Your Statistics Skimpy Yet Meaningful

“Statistics are like a bikini – what is revealed is interesting but what is hidden is crucial. ” – Aaron Levenstein, Associate Prof. emeritus of Business, Baruch College. Statistics tell us about general trends and properties about our data but often they hide information that would give key insights. The goal of every analyst then is […]

Content

How To & When To Use Product And Sitelink Ad Extensions

A few weeks ago, we went over the pros and cons of using Phone Extensions and Location Extensions in your AdWords campaigns. This week, I’d like to finish up our AdWords Extension feature by running through the best practices for using Site Extensions and Product Extensions. Using Product Extensions In Adwords Being in the travel […]

Apple

Five Visionaries Sum Up The Future Of Search

For the past several months in this column, I’ve been asking a number of people the same question: Where will search go from here? For the next two columns, I wanted to sum up what came out of those conversations and find the common themes. A Shift In Our Expectations Of Success A number of […]

Apple

Was Android Tablet OS (Honeycomb) Rushed to Market?

Google said that it’s not going to release its tablet version of Android, Honeycomb, to the broader market for several months yet. This comes despite the fact that an onslaught of Android tablets using the software have been announced, some of which are now hitting the shelves (e.g., Xoom) Big mobile hardware makers and close […]

Google Ads

Google Morphs AdWords Offering For Major Motion Picture Studios

Google has announced a new version of AdWords called Media Ads, aimed initially at marketers of major motion pictures with new releases. It will allow them to embed the trailer into their ad, and have it automatically come up first when someone searches for the title, or some variation of it. When someone clicks, Google […]

Content

Google Wants TV Show Owners To Start Tagging Video

Google is encouraging TV show owners/providers to begin tagging their online videos with several new fields that can be used in both video sitemaps and mRSS feeds. The new fields include specific data for identifying the show/series title, season and episode numbers, premiere date and more. Google’s blog post explains and shows the correct code […]

Content

Google Settles & Wins Lawsuit Against ‘Google Cash’ Scammers

Google has won a $1.6 million settlement against five defendants that it sued in December 2009 over the use of Google’s name in what the company called “a widespread Internet advertising scam.” Today’s decision involves five of the 50 defendants that Google originally sued: Bloosky, Just Think Media, Crush, Hyper Interactive, Search 4 Profit, and […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 24, 2011

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Yahoo Search Direct Alphabet: Where Every Letter Starts With Yahoo And you thought Google favored its own properties? Check this out: In Yahoo’s new Search Direct feature, 21 of the […]

Ecommerce

The Yahoo Search Direct Alphabet: Where Every Letter Starts With Yahoo

And you thought Google favored its own properties? Check this out: In Yahoo’s new Search Direct feature, 21 of the 26 one-letter alphabet queries show a Yahoo property as the first “answer.” If you type the letter “A,” for example, Yahoo Answers is the featured result; type “B,” and Yahoo Bookmarks is the first answer, […]

Google

Everyone Wants A Piece Of Google: More Antitrust Saber-Rattling By States Attorneys General

Bloomberg is reporting that Ohio Attorney General (AG) Mike DeWine is the latest figure considering an antitrust investigation against Google. So is Wisconsin’s AG, but specifically around the proposed ITA acquisition. Texas is already conducting its own broad antitrust investigation against Google. Google is formally under antitrust investigation by the European Commission. In addition, Wisconsin Senator […]

Ecommerce

10 Tips To Check The SEO Soundness Of Product Listings

Optimizing for search engines and shopping engines is all about accessibility, relevance and authority. In the process of continuously optimizing for search and searchers, sometimes basic areas get ignored, overwritten or overdone leading to entire sections of the site being blocked, duplicated or rendered useless for search engines. Here are ten quick checks to ensure […]

Apple

“Anti-Search Engine” FindTheBest Adds Buying Guides, Top 10 Slideshows

There are a number of ways to describe FindTheBest, the site launched last year by DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor. One is “decision engine” another might be “comparison engine,” a third could be “anti-search engine.” It might be called an “anti-search engine” because, like Blekko’s Rich Skrenta, FindTheBest’s O’Conner believes that search results have become cluttered […]

Google Ads

New Reports Aim To Add Value To AdWords Campaign Experiments

Google is now providing new reporting for its AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE), which allow advertisers to test keyword, bids, placements and other variables. The new report allows advertisers to see ACE metrics side-by-side with their regular campaigns. Previously, one had to download reports and do analysis in a spreadsheet. The results also show whether differences […]

Bing

Italians Issue Another Dubious Anti-Search Decision

Earlier this year the Italian Communications Authority decided that YouTube was effectively a TV broadcaster and imposed the same rules and restrictions that apply to TV in Italy — and potential penalties for their violation — on Google. It said that Google is now legally responsible for any content appearing on YouTube. Now an Italian […]

Google

Wait… Google Banned BeatThatQuote Again!

On March 7th, Google acquired BeatThatQuote.com. The attention of the acquisition got SEOs to call out that BeatThatQuote was violating Google’s webmaster guidelines and led to the site being penalized by Google. Then yesterday, I reported BeatThatQuote was no longer penalized, at least that was until they were found to still be violating Google’s guidelines. […]

Content

Report: Google Most Valuable Brand Of 2011

Brand Finance published their annual report on the most valuable brands and this year Google reached the top spot, ranking as the most valuable brand in the world. Brand Finance said, “the world’s increasing dependence on the internet is reflected by Google’s position at no. 1.” According to the full list, Google was the number […]

Google

Google’s Think Quarterly: An Online Magazine Done The Google Way

Google has published its first edition of Think Quarterly, a 64-page online magazine/book that comes from the company’s UK & Ireland offices. The first issue is dedicated to “data” as a topic and features a series of articles written by guest authors and Google employees. Hal Varian, the company’s chief economist, writes about “data obesity” […]

Google algorithm updates

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 23, 2011

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 Reveals Secrets Of “Search Direct” Alogrithm I had about 20 minutes with Yahoo’s Shashi Seth after the press conference to discuss a range of things related to the Search Direct […]

PPC

Yahoo Reveals Secrets Of “Search Direct” Alogrithm

I had about 20 minutes with Yahoo’s Shashi Seth after the press conference to discuss a range of things related to the Search Direct announcement. First, he confirmed that Search Direct entirely replaces Yahoo’s Search Assist. Indeed one way to look at it is as Search Assist Plus. The Answer Is Out There Seth said […]

Ecommerce

Head-To-Head: Yahoo Search Direct Vs. Google Instant

Yahoo rolled out Yahoo Search Direct today, its rival to Google Instant. Yahoo says that its service is focused on providing actual answers, while Google’s is focused on bringing back links. True? Let’s have a face-off. Test 1: Who’s #Winning For Charlie Sheen? Yahoo says one of the 15 areas that it’s especially focused on […]

Google Ads

Location Controls on AdWords Get More Granular

Google has modified the way its location targeting controls function on AdWords to give advertisers more control over who sees their ads. Most importantly, advertisers can now distinguish between people that signal a location as part of their search query, and others that search from an IP address or GPS location in the area. For […]

Bing

Bing Mobile Updated: Improved HTML5 Features, App Search & More

Microsoft’s Bing team announced some significant changes and updates to Bing For Mobile. The core changes include better HTML5 support, better and faster image search, real-time transit and directions, iPhone app search, improvements to shopping, weather and movie search results. The new interfaces and features currently work on all smartphone browsers that support HTML5, so […]

Content

SMBs Need Most Help With Keyword Selection, Tracking

To promote its Search Manager service (powered by Clickable) American Express has released small business (SMB) survey data about search and social media marketing. The survey was conducted this month and was a collaboration between Amex and SEMPO. The qualifier was that these small business respondents did some sort of online marketing. The sample size […]

Bing

Bing News Adds Tweets To News Results

Bing has added tweets from Twitter on the Bing News search results pages. The tweets are public updates from the Twitter stream related to the news query. For example, search for [japan] on Bing News and you will see a box on the right that says “Public updates for japan.” You can pause the stream […]

Google

Sprint Integration Of Google Voice Start Of Something Bigger?

You no doubt read on Monday that Sprint and Google Voice have done a deep integration. This now enables a Sprint subscriber to either a) make Google Voice into her Sprint mobile number or b) use an existing Sprint number as the Google Voice number. Those who choose to do this get all the benefits […]

Google

Google Hires Georgia Tech To Build Internet Monitoring Tools

Ars Technica reports Google has given a $1 million grant to a team at Georgia Tech in order to build tools to help users around the world monitor the internet for free. The goal is to build web-based tools any user can use that enables them to detect Internet throttling, government censorship, and other transparency […]

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