There’s an old adage that goes “It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it that counts.” Having been married for 31 years next month, I can attest to the simple, powerful truth of that statement. I feel the same way about the differences between Google and Microsoft’s approaches to quality score. For […]
In May 2011, the mantle of the most-trafficked food site according to comScore passed to Food Network from AllRecipes, who had held the position for over two years. What was its secret recipe? Buying an audience through the AdOn network – a recipe that apparently didn’t ultimately taste right to comScore. They determined the surge […]
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 Health To Be Shuttered On January 1, 2012 Google Health, the company’s attempt to improve health care by letting consumers move medical data online and control who can access it, […]
Google Health, the company’s attempt to improve health care by letting consumers move medical data online and control who can access it, is shutting down. The service will be retired on January 1, 2012. In a blog post announcing the news, Google says the product didn’t catch on as it had hoped: Google Health is […]
Forget the 1-800 numbers, the info@ email addresses, and don’t bother hooking up that fax machine anymore. Facebook business pages are an essential customer and business/brand communication tool that are beginning to replace traditional mediums of customer service and communication between brands and businesses. The ability to keep an audience engaged, updated, and responded to […]
What should you do if you are stepping into a role as the new “SEO Manager” of a website? This is a question you could ask yourself either as an in-house employee at a company, an agency taking over an account from another agency, or moving into the role from one account to another within […]
The leading cause for website or software application failure is not having a requirements document prepared and shared with everyone attached to the project. Typically, business and functional specifications, along with possible web design guidelines are gathered. What do most requirements documents miss? The purpose of a formal requirements document is to be sure that […]
As expected, the Federal Trade Commission has begun its formal investigation of Google’s business practices. In a blog post today, Google fellow Amit Singhal wrote that the company yesterday received formal notification from the agency that it would be conducting an inquiry. Though Singhal writes that “it’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are,” […]
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Yesterday we had a Dilbert cartoon telling us to say no to black hat SEO and today we have a Dilbert cartoon telling us to say no to paid links: The comic reads: Employee: “Google found out that we use fake links to boost our search rank.” Employee: “Now our website only shows up when […]
A UK based study by Hitwise analyzed data from the top 100 retailers to find how much additional web traffic was generated by each Facebook fan. The metrics showed that each fan of a Facebook page produced an extra 20 visits to the website. In order to generate this number, Facebook traffic was analyzed and compared […]
Google is finally rolling out the ability to target ads to users by interest — based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior — to all of its advertisers. The company first announced a beta test of this capability more than two years ago, back in 2009, and it has slowly been introducing it 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: Googleopoly: The Definitive Guide To Antitrust Investigations Against Google We’re another step closer to the US Federal Trade Commission launching an expected antitrust investigation of Google. If it does, the FTC […]
We’re another step closer to the US Federal Trade Commission launching an expected antitrust investigation of Google. If it does, the FTC will join the EU and Texas in doing broad investigations. But Google’s been examined for antitrust issues many times before this and mostly come through OK. Here’s our comprehensive guide to Google and […]
The seemingly inevitable antitrust investigation of Google appears to be taking another step forward, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the US Federal Trade Commission is “poised” to serve the company with subpoenas as part of a probe. Google may receive the FTC demands within days, and other companies may get similar requests asking […]
Local SEOs have another tool to add to the “citation belt,” as it were: MapQuest has announced its own Local Business Center, a place where local businesses can add and/or manage their listing(s) on MapQuest. As the video below shows, the MapQuest LBC functions very much like Google’s and Bing’s and offers many of the […]
I’ve been an evangelist for the Yahoo Store platform since 1997, and I’ve gotten a reputation for being a troubleshooter when a store is on fire. I love the idea of being the online Red Adair parachuting in to cap that oil well fire and save the day! This time of year, I get one […]
Imagine a room filled with 20 men or 20 women. Setting aside for a moment that attraction is subjective, if we were asked to identify the most attractive person in the room, most of us could easily narrow it down to the one to two we thought were most attractive. Now, imagine a room with […]
As part of its new “device essentials” data product release comScore put out some interesting comparative findings about web traffic patterns from a broad array of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. But among tablets we’re really only talking about the iPad. According to comScore, the iPad represents “89 percent of tablet traffic across all […]
This morning’s Dilbert comic is on the topic of black hat SEO. Dilbert wisely decides to avoid those tactics: The comic reads: “I want you to use “black hat” methods to raise our website’s ranking on search engines.” “What do you like best about that ideas – the fact that it’s unethical or the near […]
Today Foursquare announced that their Austin-based SXSW test with American Express is going national. The initial Austin-based partnership between Foursquare and American Express gave significant discounts to users who made purchases at local merchants using their Foursquare account tied to an AMEX card. Many of the initial tests were very lucrative for the user checking in; […]
If you’re accustomed to geo-targeting your AdWords campaign by drawing multi-point shapes around your targeted area, you’re out of luck after July 8, when Google is rolling out some changes to its geographical targeting capabilities. After that point, you’ll still be able to edit and delete existing shapes through 2011, but you won’t be able […]
Google continues to tweak and adjust the presentation of local search results on Google.com. I’ve stopped trying to monitor and track all the subtle changes and experiments. However yesterday Mike Blumenthal caught two different presentations of the Places “Onebox,” which appear when you do a business name search (e.g., “Toast Wine Bar”). The first example […]
Google is now showing the Google +1 counts for logged out users. When the Google +1 feature launched in March, searchers were only able to see who in their Google network +1’ed a search result. Now, if you search while logged out, Google will show you the total +1 count for some search results. This […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Use Occupational Targeting In Facebook For B2B Leads & Sales For many B2B marketers, mainstream social channels a la Facebook (FB) and LinkedIn remain the proverbial Wild West of […]
Chalk and cheese? Oil and water? Facebook users and MySpace users? Just how different are search marketers and display advertisers? Just three years ago, these two groups of people would be completely segmented, often sitting at opposite ends of an agency office, rarely collaborating on projects and with a slight dislike of each other. Their […]
We continue to hear about Facebook’s 700 million users, on the way to a billion worldwide. According to comScore Google is already there, at least looking across all its websites. Google: The Biggest Network Of Sites The chart below, provided to us from comScore, shows the number of unique visitors that went to each company’s […]
Recent findings from PageLever revealed the reach of your Facebook Page may be far less than you think. The data shows an average of 7.49% of fans view posts on a daily basis. Pages with the largest fan-base are performing the worst while pages with fewer likes are performing the best. Currently, pages with over one million likes […]
In early May, Google released version 9 of AdWords Editor, with some fantastic new changes for in-house search marketers engaged in hands-on management of campaigns (and one annoying alteration). Today, I’ll show you how to get the most out of these new features! Manage Negatives More Efficiently In prior versions of AdWords Editor, negative keywords […]
In the vast majority of cases, the path to a conversion starts with the click a of button. The most compelling offer in the world will not result in a website goal being completed unless you can successfully entice a visitor to hover over a button and tap their mouse. Accordingly, the biggest single thing […]
Carter Maslan has been the patient and good-natured face of Google Maps and Places at innumerable conferences and events over the past several years. He’s endured a regular onslaught of questions about missing features and local SEO frustrations surrounding Google’s increasingly important suite of local products. Now he’s leaving Google. I got word of this […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Comparing Facebook Like vs. Google +1 Google’s new +1 feature was one of SMX Advanced Seattle most engaging sessions and, as a speaker, I have received a wide variety of feedback […]
Google’s new +1 feature was one of SMX Advanced Seattle most engaging sessions and, as a speaker, I have received a wide variety of feedback and questions. It seems this feature has fomented a great deal of speculation and inquiry. Here is a bit more food for thought. Like vs. Google +1: What Are The […]
Blekko has found its mantra: the war on spam. The search startup, now six months old, is trying to challenge Bing and Google with a strategy that puts human curation and editorial judgment at the center of search and banishes spam altogether. CEO Rich Skrenta has been relentless in asserting that Google is filled with […]
I’m a forum rat, I visit several on a daily basis as a way to keep up with what’s going on. If there’s an update, cool new tool or SEO controversy brewing, chances are I’ll read about it on one of the forums before anywhere else. Conversely, if I have a question or want to bounce a theory […]
With Google Panda Update 2.2 upon us, it’s worth revisiting what exactly Panda is and isn’t. Panda is a new ranking factor. Panda is not an entirely new overall ranking algorithm that’s employed by Google. The difference is important for anyone hit by Panda and hoping to recover from it. Google’s Ranking Algorithm & Updates […]
Google has given us confirmation that they have run an update to the Panda filter recently. We have been expecting the Panda 2.2 update based on news coming out of the SMX Advanced conference. Matt Cutts told SMX attendees that Panda 2.2 has been approved, hasn’t been rolled out yet, but that should happen soon. […]
Today is the first day of Summer season for those in the United States and many other countries, for others it is the first day of Winter. This is also known as the Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice. For the special day, Google has logos for both, depending on which Google portal you go to, […]
Google has bumped into problems with Street View in yet another country. This time it’s India. According to website MediaNama, three weeks after it began driving the local police commissioner in Bangalore notified Google that it must stop photographing the city until a number of issues can be resolved. Google told the publication it had […]
Researchers at Citibank talked to four large agencies doing a lot of SEM — Covario, Efficient Frontier, Marin Software and Position 2 — and what emerged was a picture of second quarter spending that looks weaker than once expected. And the full year, by most accounts, will be down from what most previously thought, if […]