Google is testing a variation on AdWords display that has the URLs shown above the two lines of description, but under the headline. Representatives from the search giant would only say that they’re always experimenting with different ways of displaying information, but multiple members of Search Engine Land editorial team saw the experiment on Google.com […]
This morning, James Breckenridge discovered a loophole within Google’s Webmaster Tools that allowed anyone to remove any site from Google. Both James and I sent this information to Google as soon as we heard of it. After several hours, Google has told us, “we’re still investigating this report, and to be cautious we disabled all […]
Fast Company has a fascinating article on Bing’s background images and how they are used to market the Bing service. While Google updates their logos to be fun and creative on special birthdays or occasions, Bing revamps their background with an image that stands out and leaves users asking for more. If you haven’t noticed, […]
Just a couple weeks after the latest setback, Google picked up a small but potentially important victory today in its defense against charges that the company violated federal wiretap laws when its Street View cars intercepted personal data over unencrypted WiFi networks. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Judge James Ware has put the case […]
In the last few days, several noticed that the Google Toolbar PageRank value for www.twitter.com had plummeted to 0 (it’s now back to its previous 9). Was Google punishing Twitter for how things went down with the feed expiration that temporarily derailed Google’s Realtime search efforts? Nah, Twitter’s website has just been suffering from technical […]
Just under 30 minutes ago Google’s Vic Gundotra announced on Google+, appropriately, that the site’s promised iPhone app is now available. Google said on its Q2 earnings call last week that there were more than 10 million users of Google+ so far. It didn’t announce how many were using the site on mobile devices or […]
So you have finally made the decision to get off of the paid links crack and go straight. Do you go cold turkey? Do you take this in stages? There are great questions and the ones I will take on in today’s post. There are two major reasons why you should make this switch, one […]
This morning Google is announcing that its Call Metrics call-tracking capability is going to be generally available to all US and Canadian AdWords advertisers. Call Metrics is not to be confused with mobile Click to Call ads, though Call Metrics is available to Click to Call mobile advertisers as well. Below is an example ad […]
The 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) “e-business report is out. Google, Bing and the entire “Internet Search Engines & Portals” category seems to have done well. In particular Bing and Ask improved significantly over last year. Facebook’s report card, on the other hand, is not as likely to make mom and dad happy. The […]
Resolving indexing or duplication issues are usually top of the list when working with a new domain, but how can you achieve the same level of performance once the obvious SEO wins are in place?
Earlier today Performics reported another mobile search milestone: “mobile paid search traffic is now 12% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), while mobile clicks are about to cross the 12% threshold.” The search-marketing firm based this report on aggregated client data from 1H 2011. Mobile by itself, excluding tablets, is about 10 percent […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Study: Insurance, Loan-Related Keywords Are Google’s Cash Cows Insurance-related keywords are the source of 24% of Google’s AdWords revenue, with the highest CPC coming in at a whopping $54.91, according to […]
Insurance-related keywords are the source of 24% of Google’s AdWords revenue, with the highest CPC coming in at a whopping $54.91, according to a study by search marketing company WordStream. The company used its own keyword database and the Google Keyword Tool to come up with the top 10,000 most expensive English-language keywords over a […]
Google announced they have launched a new URL shortener just for official Google use. The new URL is g.co. Google said this URL will only be used to link to official Google properties, explaining it is reserved “just for Google websites.” Google explained that “you can trust that it will always take you to a […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The Future Of Google+ Is Social In Google’s DNA? is an article written by MySpace’s former co-founder Tom Anderson and takes a look at the filtering of messages by both Facebook and Google+. Are […]
Working on the agency side of search for many years has taught me some valuable lessons. I’ve been privileged to work with the best and brightest, and by turns, saddled to work with the worst and dullest. I’ve seen a little bit of everything: those that get it, those that don’t, and those that don’t […]
Quite a few marketers have raved about QR codes as the best thing since sliced bread. Small-to-medium local businesses wonder if they should jump on the bandwagon as well, but is there enough substance to justify the buzz? Consider this contrarian view before deciding if you should. With new and emerging technologies, it can be […]
A new IAB-sponsored survey of 300 US-based corporations shows that branded apps and display advertising trump search marketing in mobile. According to the just-released survey almost twice as many marketers used mobile display advertising as used mobile search. Percent Using for Mobile Advertising I’m somewhat surprised by these findings. However the survey sample consisted of […]
Over the past several years, I have done numerous case studies with companies looking at the differences in their paid traffic when they also rank organically for a term. In this column, I’m going to share some of that data and walk you through some simple calculations you can do to see if you should […]
Amit Banerjee has spotted a new Google test with the new top bar that places the top bar in a fixed position at the top of the screen and stays there even as you scroll down. Amit captured a screen demo of this in action: As you can see, the top bar stays with you […]
Perhaps the lesson is: be careful what you sue for. The French and German-language Belgian newspaper consortium that successfully sued Google for copyright infringement got more than it bargained for this week. The newspapers’ content has been removed not only from Google News (as desired) but the entire Google index. Now the newspapers are crying […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Official: Google+ Hits 10,000,000 Users Over 10M Google+ Users was shared late yesterday by Larry Page, Google’s CEO, in the midst of the quarterly Google earnings call. This number is still far-removed from Facebook’s […]
Bing has expanded its weather-related coverage with more information and resources, and also updated the display of that information at the same time. The new features are available only in English-language markets. Bing’s blog post explains the new set of weather search features, which are available under the “Weather” tab after your initial search. In […]
I first met Jacquelyn Krones, a Senior Product Manager from Microsoft, at a search show. A mutual friend on the Bing team, Product Manager Stefan Weitz, introduced her to me and said, “You have to meet Jacquelyn. You speak the same language.” Stefan was right. Jacquelyn started talking about the research project she was then […]
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, Twitter Flaunt Social Stats … It’s Like 2003 All Over Again Whether on purpose or not, Google and Twitter are having a little back-and-forth this week about the size of […]
Whether on purpose or not, Google and Twitter are having a little back-and-forth this week about the size of their social networks — or, maybe more accurately, about the activity levels on their social networks. Google+ has X amount of users and the +1 button gets served Y times per day. Twitter delivers N tweets […]
For a long time, I thought utilizing a strong Landing Page Optimization program was only available to large companies with large budgets. The software to create landing pages on the fly by keyword is pricey, and the learning curve is significant. If you have the time, budget and manpower to utilize a design team and […]
A common way of testing landing pages is to do a split A/B test. The test setup typically goes like this: (a) Identify the keyword/adgroup sets for which the new landing page will be tested. (b) Set up identical ad copies in the ad group but with destination URLs pointing to the original as well […]
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.
Google News announced you can now earn badges for reading news on Google News. The badges are awarded by topic, such as stock market, Apple, Harry Potter, U.S. Politics and so on. The more you read about a specific topic through Google News, the higher the badge reaches. It starts at Bronze and goes to […]
Barry discovered that Google had dropped its in-traffic travel estimates from Google Maps on the PC. This is apparently due to some inaccuracy or dissatisfaction with the methodology Google was using to determine travel time. “We have decided that our information systems behind this feature were not as good as they could be. Therefore, we […]
It appears that Microsoft is planning a new project called Tulalip and could be positioning it as a hybrid search/social networking service. First reported by Fusible, Tulalip currently sits on the SOCL.com domain, which is owned by Microsoft. You can see the socl.com WHOIS record on DomainTools to confirm. Tulalip currently only offers a “welcome” […]
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 Kills The Quarter: $9 Billion In Revenue Google had a huge Q2, with revenues of $9.03 billion — a new record. This represents growth of 32% over 2010. Net income […]
Google had a huge Q2, with revenues of $9.03 billion — a new record. This represents growth of 32% over 2010. Net income was $2.5 billion vs. $1.84 billion during the same period last year. Here are some more highlights from the release: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $9.03 billion in the second quarter […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Updates For Business Pages Official Google Update For Businesses from Christian Oestilen, ads manager of Google Plus, covers the current state of businesses on Google+. Google is currently selecting their chosen set of businesses for […]
Google has recently been emphasizing current/fresh images in its image search product, and that effort continued today with the announcement of a new time-based filter. And unannounced is the re-appearance of other filters that went missing in Google’s recent redesign. Let’s start with the new filter: Among the image search filters in the left-side column […]
In June 2011, I spoke at SMX Advanced about SEO issues that I commonly run in to during technical SEO site evaluations. The part of my presentation that dealt with Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) generated a lot of comments and questions afterward, so this column addresses some of those questions about how to improve […]
Google is rolling out AdWords functionality to let advertisers segment reports based on where the ad appears on the page — whether it’s above the organic search results or off to the right side. The feature will allow advertisers to determine whether the benefits they’d seeing from bidding their ads into a Top position are […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Googler Shares How Google+ Is Built I’m a technical lead on the Google+ team is an “ask me anything conversation” with Google engineer Joseph Smarr, Technical lead for Google+. Smarr answers 20+ questions on the […]
The Wall Street Journal has an article out today reporting that Hubpages, acting on advice from Google, has found that using subdomains seems to have gotten some of their content to recover from a Panda penalty. By moving some of their content to new subdomains, it either has escaped the penalty or is being assessed […]