Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Why The Search Engines Still Need Display Search ad revenues remain the driving force behind the big search engines, Google and Microsoft’s Bing. However, the rise of display advertising and the […]
Search ad revenues remain the driving force behind the big search engines, Google and Microsoft’s Bing. However, the rise of display advertising and the threat of “new” competitors in the display arena, such as Facebook, are causing the search engines to scramble for a way to get a bigger piece of the display pie. While […]
Bing hit all-time high market shares in June for both “core search” and “explicit search” according to the latest comScore figures out today. But, Bing’s gains aren’t coming at Google’s expense; Google maintained its share in explicit search and made gains of its own in core search. Here’s a look at what comScore is reporting: […]
The irony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being the most followed person on Google+ is over. He’s disappeared from the top rankings, along with Google CEO Larry Page who was the second most followed and other Google execs. It’s down to a glitch, Google says. Google+ allows you to show the number of people you […]
B2B marketers, it is unbelievable that we are already halfway through 2011. While I hope your SEO campaign thus far has yielded positive results, it is not uncommon to fall behind schedule, as unexpected initiatives arise. Link building is often the first SEO initiative that we see clients getting delayed on, or leave unattended in […]
We have a lot to learn in the upcoming Clash of the Titans cage match: Google vs. Facebook. The nastiness has already started with Facebook blocking the chrome extension to download FB friends and numerous petty PR quips. Twitter further kicked the hornets’ nest by letting their data agreement with Google lapse. (This was a […]
Landing pages almost have a tradition of bad design. After all, it’s easy enough to slap a headline, a few bullets of text, and an image next to a form and — voilà! — you have a landing page, right? “Landing pages” have proliferated as a check-the-box feature: sure, we do landing pages. The problem […]
Infographics (or data visualizations) are all the rage in content marketing today, and Visual.ly is launching with hopes of becoming “the largest community for sharing, creating and promoting data visualizations.” The site currently offers a search functionality and a submission feature to help users find & share infographics from across the web. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiVKfNeRbPQ[/youtube] As expected with […]
WhitePages.com has launched a couple of new local search products this morning. Both are focused on neighborhoods and “hyper-local” information (hate the term). One is effectively a neighborhood-based social network called WhtePages Neighbors. The other, the subject of this post, is a new Android search app called “Localicious” I won’t go into WhtePages Neighbors except […]
Perhaps the best thing about the new and improved Android market is movie rentals. For others it may be books and still others may like the easier app discovery. For me it’s movies. The online Android market has had movie rentals but they haven’t been available directly on the phone until now. The new Android […]
The tablet-specific AdWords targeting Google promised back in May is now rolled out to all accounts, according to a blog post by the search company. Access the “Tablets with full browsers” option under the “Networks and devices” section of Settings. Previously, one could target iPads under Mobile Devices, but now tablets of all types get […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Adoption Rates & 10 Million+ Users? Google+ Vaulting Past 10 Million User Mark by eWeek’s Clint Boulton covers the stats behind Google+’s massive user influx. This report comes on the heels from Paul Allen’s report of 4.5 […]
CDBaby* is an online distributor of independent music. Founded by well-known entrepreneur Derek Sivers, the service became a huge hit with independent musicians because it offered the first easy way for artists to distribute and sell their music online. Sivers, a professional musician, took CDBaby on a unique path that differentiates it from many other businesses […]
Russian search engine Yandex has launched an English-language version of Yandex.Webmaster, its suite of webmaster tools. The service can be reached at webmaster.yandex.com. If you’ve used the Google and/or Bing webmaster portals, Yandex’s will be familiar to you. On sign-up, users have five options to confirm site ownership: HTML file, meta tag, text file, WHOIS […]
Hashtags are the world’s chat room. Where else can you hop on the phone or computer and have an instant, passionate conversation about something that shares a hashtag? When it comes to primetime television, current events, or sports events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl, hashtags allow anyone with a Twitter account to take […]
Global growth in search marketing spend slowed in the second quarter, according to reports from two large agencies, Covario and Efficient Frontier. Data released this week is consistent with an earlier report from Citibank. According to Efficient Frontier, search spend grew only 8% in the second quarter, as compared to the same period in 2010. […]
Based on the growth of active users in markets such as Russia and Turkey, maybe it's time to consider changing the targeting of your international business. Meanwhile, the most active users and the most active population in Europe right now is Dutch! Who would've guessed?
Today is the 450th Anniversary of the St. Basil’s Cathedral, which had its groundbreaking in 1555 and was officially completed on July 12, 1561. It is a Russian Orthodox church erected on the Red Square in Moscow. The building looks like no other building in Russia and has 9 domes and 2 spires. Their official […]
Following a relatively successful launch in Portland last month Google is now rolling out Google Offers in two more markets: San Francisco and New York. Google has also updated its Shopper Android app to include deals. The app is generally focused on products but now contains tabs that allow users to access the featured daily […]
Bing has announced a set of much-needed tweaks to the Bing Maps user interface. Rather than scattering navigation options both above and below (not to mention off to the side of) the map itself, all menu options are now accessible in a nav bar that stretches across the screen above the map. It’s a much […]
Google is reportedly developing technology that would create a market for data designed to help target display ads better, according to a report in Ad Age that cites “executives familiar with Google’s plans.” The story says the data exchange is known internally as “DDP,” and, according to comments made by Google ad chief Neil Mohan, […]
As Google+ goes into its second week of life, how’s the service doing? I could quote some numbers. I will, below! But I wanted to do a personal take contrasting it against another social site that I find essential. Not Facebook. Twitter. Me & Facebook Yes, I have a personal Facebook account. But I do […]
Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Problems & Changes Changes Are Coming To Google+ – From ComputerWorld, a report that the many Google+ criticisms are making their way to top Google execs, and that changes will be rolled out this week. […]
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 Shutting Down Site Explorer This Year Yahoo has announced they are shutting down one of the old and beloved SEO tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, later this year. This isn’t unexpected, […]
Search Engine Land has a thriving community of readers, and I’m happy to announce that we’ve added Monica Wright as our new “community editor” to help support that community. Monica is a long-time search marketer, known to many throughout the industry. Many have met her at our SMX search marketing conferences or other industry events. […]
The Google Merchant Blog announced “important changes to Google Product Search feed specification & policies.” These changes go into affect September 22, 2011 and if you are not compliant, you will find your products missing from Google Product Search. To see the changes, you can go to this document and select the country that you […]
I have no idea what social network Google Plus (Google+) is going to kill. I have no idea if it is going to be huge or not. But I do have an idea of what it’s going to do to Local Search, or at least I have a vision. Whether my vision is right or […]
The Pew Internet Project put out results of its first survey looking at smartphone ownership. Pew found that 35 percent of all US adults own a smartphone. When the base is just mobile phone owners however (83 percent of American adults) the number goes up to 42 percent. The numbers go even higher in certain […]
Let me just start by saying the there is no such a thing as “mobile SEO”, just SEO for mobile search. True mobile SEO could only exist if you only have a mobile site and the only link building you do is from other mobile sites and pursue other SEO activities on only mobile based […]
Negative keywords are a necessity in any well constructed high volume paid search campaign. In a perfect world, large advertisers would run all keywords on exact match to ensure that the keyword bids truly reflect the quality of each keyword’s expected conversion rate. Unfortunately, limiting campaigns to only exact match keywords sacrifices too much volume, […]
Last week Google bought a company called Punchd (first reported by TechCrunch). It was a small acquisition but may turn out, in several respects, to be more significant than it looks. Loyalty Card on a Smartphone Essentially Punchd enables small businesses (SMBs) to run loyalty programs on smartphones, very much like paper punch cards (e.g., […]
Yahoo has announced they are shutting down one of the old and beloved SEO tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, later this year. This isn’t unexpected, and I am personally surprised it has been live for so long. That being said, the tool that launched on September 29, 2005 will be closing down “later this year” according […]
With the Google+ user base already in the millions and growing, Google is planning heavy investments in it and will eventually use Plus as the infrastructure behind all of the company’s products. Speaking to reporters this week in Idaho, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google is pleased with the early response to Plus and is […]
The New York Times’ interest in the underbelly of SEO continues today with an article that details Google’s struggle to fight locksmith spam in Google Places. While not as deep as the Times’ recent articles on J.C. Penney’s SEO tactics and floral industry SEO, it nevertheless casts Google — again — as unable to keep […]
It turns out that Google will testify in September before the Senate Judiciary Committee Antitrust subpanel, according to The Hill. Before the formal initiation of the FTC’s antitrust investigation Google had declined to send Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt or new CEO Larry Page to testify following an informal request by the Senate subcommittee. Utah Senator […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: My Top 10 Insights From 10 Years In Search I recently reached my nine year anniversary in the search industry, which means I’m now on my tenth year in SEM. I […]
I recently reached my nine year anniversary in the search industry, which means I’m now on my tenth year in SEM. I started buying keywords on Overture with a company I wasn’t even doing marketing for, which got me into some early e-commerce activity, and then to the agency world. It definitely feels like a […]
Interview with information architect and author Louis Rosenfeld about search analytics that can (and should) be used for optimizing your website.
Google recently released its new Analytics interface to all of their users. Personally, I think that one of the biggest improvements is the ability to create multiple dashboards as well as the flexibility of widgets to customize your dashboard with essential metrics. This post will elaborate further on: how to create (multiple) dashboards the possibilities […]
Today BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform, released a report on the adoption of social sharing plugins on websites and links to those sites. The findings show that about half of the top 10,000 websites have a link to their Facebook pages from their home page, 40% link to their Twitter pages and when it comes […]