Citing violations to the countries strict privacy laws, the Independent Center for Privacy Protection (ULD) called for all Facebook ‘like’ plugins to be removed in the German state of Schlewsing-Holstein. The ULD stated that the Facebook ‘like’ plugin infringes on the Telemedia Act and the Federal Data Protection Act as Facebook transfers data back to the […]
Bing’s Facebook fans really “like” searching. And they like searching on Bing, it appears. According to a recent comScore white paper, Bing’s Facebook fans do 68% more searches (on Bing) than the average Bing user. And it extends out a bit further, too: The friends of those fans do 27% more searches than regular Bing […]
Google has confirmed a new user interface test on the search results page where the left side search filters are in a scrollable frame, and the middle of the search results are in their own scrollable frame. Technically, they are not frames, but rather some form of AJAX or HTML5 like interface. I am honestly […]
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.
I analyze websites every day, as well as a lot of Facebook pages, and a ton of blogs attached to websites and Facebook pages. I realized something this week. There are a lot of junktastical blogs out there, and I now wonder why people have even added this feature to their site. Here’s the truth….you […]
First click. Last click. Linear. Reverse decay. Linear reverse decay…everyone accepts that attribution is a necessary consideration in analytics, but no one seems to be able to crack the code. There are countless ways to attribute revenue, yet the major analytics systems stick with the traditional last entry. The reality is that we, they, you, […]
Google is considering a settlement offer from federal prosecutors in Belgium who say the company broke national privacy laws when it collected personal data from unsecured WiFi networks via its Street View vehicles. According to Bloomberg, prosecutors have offered Google a €150,000 penalty (currently about $215,000 USD) for the gaffe that Google has repeatedly said […]
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 News Archive Search Page: Gone Forever Or Temporary Bug? Another Google search interface has gone missing: The specialized interface/homepage to Google News Archive Search is no longer available. It was […]
Another Google search service has gone missing: the home page for Google News Archive Search is no longer available. It was previously accessible at news.google.com/archivesearch. Google News Archive Search allows you to search through news articles that date back longer than the 30 days that are typically covered by regular Google News. It’s still available. […]
Google announced they have added yet another rich snippet support, this one is for music results. The snippet will display the name of the song, the duration of the clip, and the album the song is from. The song title will link to the site’s specific page for that song. This works for both audio […]
In my last column, we talked about why website load speed matters and how important it was for online retailers. Guess I touched a nerve. I got more emails and phone calls about that one than any other column I’ve written! Load speed issues affect all websites, but we’re retailers, so today, I’ll cover some […]
It’s one of those things that you almost wonder why it wasn’t there before: current weather conditions on Google Maps. Well, Google has added current weather conditions around the world on Google Maps, and it’s a helpful addition. The new weather layer can be turned on or off by clicking the options widget in the […]
One of the many beauties of attribution management is the multi-dimensional nature of the analysis that it performs, and the extremely granular nature of the cross channel insights that it delivers to marketers as a result. So not only can a marketer learn which publisher is producing the best ROI or most revenue, but he/she […]
When you began learning SEO, someone probably told you not to optimize a webpage for more than two or three queries. At the 101 level, treating each keyword with the same reverence makes a lot of sense. It is easier to teach and execute. Now, at the 303 level, we want to wring out every […]
Google is experimenting with an AdWords ad unit unique to Gmail which allows the company to introduce more graphical interactive ads without going so far as to introduce display ads. The new AdWords units appear above the text ads in the right sidebar. They include an image, a headline and a couple of lines of […]
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 & Bing (Still) Handle Underscores & Dashes Differently It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and […]
It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and so forth: Should we use dashes or underscores in our URLs? Google re-opened the discussion recently with a new YouTube video that highlights how Google currently handles dashes and underscores, and also reminds […]
Google has confirmed that they are indeed testing a form of infinite scroll web search results. I covered the news this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable sharing a screen shot from WebmasterWorld and a video from Waebo of this in action. Here is the video: As you can see, Google replaced the pagination feature […]
Two well-known online marketing agencies are joining forces. RKG (Rimm-Kaufman Group), based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced its acquisition of Bend, Oregon-based AudetteMedia. The acquisition allows RKG to continue expanding its service lineup. Long established as a leader in paid search marketing, RKG has recently added services such as shopping engine management, social media advertising […]
In the recent articles Why Search Marketers Are The Future Media Planners and How to Maximize SEM Efforts with Search Retargeting, we discussed how search marketers are ideally positioned to own a larger portion of the total media budget because the skills needed to buy display media are becoming more and more quantitative, just like SEM. Techniques […]
In March, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Today, which was dubbed as a news source from your connections and peers in the industry. It has quickly grown to drive massive amounts of traffic to popular content. This service works by aggregating news from industries, connections and sources that you follow, then displaying stories in a visually appealing […]
Google is celebrating the life of Pierre de Fermat, born 410 years ago today in 1601 Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France. He lived for 63 years, dying on January 12, 1665 in France. He was a lawyer but most well-known for his breakthroughs in math. Pierre is most well known for the Fermat’s Last Theorem, which states that […]
After about a month of testing with a select group of users, StumbleUpon today has rolled out its Explore Box — a new tool that adds a search layer to the site’s popular, but sometimes quite random, content discovery. It can be accessed at www.stumbleupon.com/explore or, if you’re logged in, at the StumbleUpon home page. […]
Google and Facebook are at it yet again. Ever since Google+ launched, the two social networks have been trying to out maneuver each other any chance they get. Whether it be Facebook announcing video chat just weeks after Google+ launched with ‘Hangouts,’ Google+ offering Facebook-like games, or Facebook responding to Google+ games the same day… […]
DuckDuckGo, the one-full-time-employee search engine that has somewhat aggressively challenged Google on privacy issues, picked up a nice pat-on-the-back this week: It made a TIME magazine list of the 50 Best Websites of 2011. In its short profile, the magazine calls DuckDuckGo “one of the most appealing Google alternatives to date” and has high praise […]
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 Power Of Facebook-Only Content And Contests Not only is it important to make sure your tabs are interactive, but you need to give users reasons to keep going back for […]
Not only is it important to make sure your tabs are interactive, but you need to give users reasons to keep going back for more. Facebook-only content and contests help drive users back to your tabs time and time again. What’s even better, these techniques can also help drive new users to your Page. The […]
Over the past few weeks, Google has been testing really large expanded Sitelinks in the search results for some queries for the past few weeks. After much testing, Google finally posted official confirmation that these new large sitelinks are here to stay. Google Expands Sitelinks: Google said the Sitelinks will now be “full-size links with a […]
At the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle last June, Google announced it was supporting the HTML5 “rel” attribute in anchor tags for the “author” and “me” variables. To me, this was very interesting news. I have been in the business of content development for a long time (stretching back deep into the 1990s), and Google’s […]
Google has just released a new info discovery tool named Google Related that allows users to find and access content that’s similar to what they’re viewing in their web browser. Before the brief overview below, we need to point out that we’re writing this post without having had an opportunity to actually use Google Related. […]
Whether you are taking over a new multinational account as an agency, or maintaining your company’s global Web presence as an in-house SEO, being able to quickly identify internal duplicate content is a vital skill. Duplicate content is a big problem for SEO for a number of reasons. If you’ve been following this multinational series, […]
Google has partnered with a variety of catalog merchants to launch its next-generation catalog search as an iPad application (with an Android version “coming soon”). The app launches with products from Anthropologie, L.L. Bean, Land’s End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Pottery Barn, Sephora, Tea Collection, Urban Outfitters and Williams-Sonoma, among others. This isn’t Google’s first crack […]
What a way to start the week. The company that once said it would never build its own mobile phones, Google, wants to buy mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility. The technosphere has gone into 5G coverage over the news. Here’s what I’ve been finding interesting and some thoughts. Patent Protection A big part 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: Foursquare Adds ‘Lists’ Functionality For Profiles & Pages Over the past few years Foursquare has been rapidly evolving, and their newly announced “lists” feature looks like a very promising new addition. […]
Over the past few years Foursquare has been rapidly evolving, and their newly announced “lists” feature looks like a very promising new addition. Touted as being “super easy to use,” Foursquare lists can be created from a users profile page with assistance from Foursquare, built from scratch or added while browsing Foursquare. Lists can be […]
Bing announced new features for their Shopping Search features. The features inluce: Refine Your Searches Faster Find Sale Prices Share Your Shopping Lists on Facebook Bing Shopping has added a form of Google Instant results for shopping refinements. Here is an example: You can also just filter by sales, see the screen shot below showing […]
Google has again slapped a comparison shopping site owned by its primary search competitor, Bing, as part of its most recent expansion of the “Panda” algorithm update. It’s only been a few days since Google pushed out Panda around the world in all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean. But Searchmetrics has already published its […]
Internet Marketing is in a state of constant change. This places major stresses on organizations that try to keep up and are not quite sure what initiatives they should invest in and which ones are a waste of time. For many companies, one of the biggest current challenges is to decide how much energy to […]
One way to kick up your local search optimization game is through beefing up the local signal through images. There are a few techniques for doing this — read on for details. Incorporating images as part of your overall content mix is a good idea for search optimization in and of itself. Images can provide […]
Search engines use a computer program known as a bot to crawl and index the Web. A robots.txt file is an instruction manual that tells a bot what can and cannot be crawled on your site. An improperly configured robots.txt file can: Lower your quality scores Cause your ads not to be approved Lower your […]