Social discovery service StumbleUpon has released a new infographic looking at the “half-life” of content shared via its service versus Twitter and Facebook. Rather than being visible for only a few hours, StumbleUpon’s chart argues that content shared on its network gets attention for days. While the infographic comes from StumbleUpon, and so you’d expect […]
The holiday spirit has kickstarted already. Agreed that there are still two months to go until Christmas, but the winter chill and the endless discussions about oncoming holidays are starting to grow. The holiday season also means you need to perform a job loved (or hated, depending on which side of fence you reside) by […]
Ask.com has a long history in TV advertising; some of it has been entertaining and some of it controversial. But the IAC-owned search engine was on a TV hiatus of sorts during the past couple of years. Now, according to AdWeek, the company is running new TV ads in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The […]
Likely sensing an opportunity after Google’s recent encrypted search announcement, Ixquick — a tiny and widely unknown search engine — has announced that it will make SSL encryption the default on all searches. Ixquick says it became the first search engine to offer encrypted search back in 2009. In its announcement, Ixquick notes that the […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: US Government Makes Most Content Removal Requests To Google So Far in 2011 The US government sent Google 5,950 content removal requests in the first half of 2011, more than triple […]
The US government sent Google 5,950 content removal requests in the first half of 2011, more than triple the number of requests that 2nd-place India sent in during the same period. The numbers come from Google’s latest semi-annual update to the Government Requests section of its Transparency Report. The Government Requests data represents government inquiries […]
The introduction of the iPad last year sparked a new revolution in how people tap into the web, using tablet computers. A new report from Pew Research, which we covered today, shows that one of the most popular uses is for reading news. Below, some additional stats from the report, in infographic form: Want the […]
SMX® - Search Marketing Expo & Conference series
Several search marketing-related companies are included on the Tech 200, a list of the fastest-growing tech companies in the U.S. It’s the second year that Lead411 has compiled the list (although last year’s list included 500 companies), which includes companies in several industries: software, hardware, internet, media, advertising, wireless, telecom, IT services, e-commerce and consulting. […]
Creating a linking instructions page is a fairly common technique for encouraging organic links. It’s also somewhat puzzling. Do we need instructions for this most basic Web action? Apparently, at least 2.4 billion of us do. A webpage can link to another webpage in several ways, from the basic text link like this, https://searchengineland.com, to […]
Nearly all search vendors have some sort of agreement, and the larger the client, the more complex the terms of service will be with procurement as well. Most of these focus on the standard stuff: how long, how much, scope and what happens if their vendor screws up and the relationship needs to be terminated. […]
During the 2010 U.K. general elections, I, like thousands of others, was glued to my various screens as I kept up to date with one of the closest contest in living memory. This included the first ever televised leadership debate in a British election, during which Twitter acted as a default running opinion poll. At […]
A new report on tablet ownership and usage, from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, finds that 11 percent of US adults own tablets (mostly iPads) and 77 percent use them daily. Beyond this 53 percent of tablet owners consume news on these devices on a daily basis. The report focuses primarily […]
Earlier this summer Google gave an indication this was coming. Now Google is rolling out what it’s calling “bid for calls,” a pay per call (PPCall) offering on the PC. This is distinct from Click to Call, its successful mobile PPCall product. The program will launch in the US and UK at first and relies […]
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 Says SEO Is Not Spam Matt Cutts, head of the Google’s web spam fighting team, has gone on record by saying Google does not consider SEO to be spam. Matt […]
Matt Cutts, head of the Google’s web spam fighting team, has gone on record by saying Google does not consider SEO to be spam. Matt said outright, “We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and added that SEO is “a valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines.” He did […]
Last week speculation arose about a new cloud based Google Music Store that could compete against Amazon and Apple. This week more news broke including the social integration that the Google Music Store may bring. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google Music will tie in closely with the Google+ social network. Users will reportedly be able […]
Ahh, annual planning season. Nothing quite like it. You can almost smell it in the air. Dozens of spreadsheets packed with endless assumptions, each one more fantastic than the last, combining to ultimately seal a marketer’s fate for the next 12 months. What could be better than that? Well, how about three steps to make […]
It’s been about a decade now since marketers woke up to the reality of the deep “invisible Web” – that mass of dynamic content search engines couldn’t see, index, or associate with keyword search. Remember the days when engines bragged about how many pages they indexed? Seems like forever ago. Search was new, the sitemap […]
Local search is big business and big opportunity. How big? The folks at MDG Advertising have produced a “Local Search Evolved” infographic with statistics and info about the subject that you might find interesting: Want the infographic for yourself? You’ll find it here: Infographic: Local Search Evolved.
As Pamela Parker described at SEL recently, Google has announced that going forward, landing page quality will be a larger factor in an ad’s overall Quality Score. Given that my last post for SEL was on Quality Score and suggested that landing page quality was mostly a hammer used to beat up bad actors and […]
In a recent staff meeting, it emerged that the most regular question our customer support agents get asked by our customers* is: “When we track our local search rankings, how much should we focus on search terms that include a local term (e.g. town name, ZIP code) vs. generic keywords without the local term?” From […]
Google has quietly removed one of the older search operators, the + search operator. Now if you try adding a + sign in your query, Google will ignore it. Why did Google remove the old search operator? Kelly from Google said in a forum thread that you can now use the quotation marks operator instead […]
According to stories that ran on Friday and Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, both Microsoft and Google are potentially going to bid for Yahoo. Various unnamed sources and “people speaking on condition of anonymity” told the WSJ that Microsoft is planning to act as source of financing for others in exchange for preferred stock […]
It looks like adding a suggested user list to Google+ has finally paid off in solving its “Mark Zuckerberg problem.” Facebook’s CEO is no longer the most popular person on Google+, having just now been passed by Google CEO Larry Page. Zuckerberg has been the most followed user since the first week that Google+ launched. That’s […]
Earlier this week, Google made a significant change purportedly to better protect the search privacy of users. In reality, it specifically — and deliberately — left a gaping hole open to benefit its bottom line. If you pay-to-play, Google will share its search data with you. Google’s a big company that goes after revenue in […]
In what may be a sign of things to come across other Google properties, the advanced search search options in Google News have been moved away from their own page and placed right inside the main search bar. Here are before and after screenshots to show what I’m talking about. Before: After: There’s a small […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Want Better Google Analytics Data? Learn To Tag Your Campaigns! One of the most important hurdles to tackle before analyzing data is collecting clean and correct data. There are many ways […]
One of the most important hurdles to tackle before analyzing data is collecting clean and correct data. There are many ways to make your data more accurate; tagging is one of them. Although the correct tagging of your campaigns seems something basic, I still see a lot of companies and websites that aren’t tagging at […]
Ah the holiday season. Time to welcome back apple-picking trips, pumpkin spice lattes and the smell of pine needles. In the retail search space, time to welcome back gruelingly long work days, insane volume spikes, working on days normal people have off (e.g. every weekend from November through Christmas) and enough last-second surprises to make […]
Paid Discovery campaigns on StumbleUpon will be getting smarter as of today. StumbleUpon has announced the addition of something called “interest optimization” that will help advertisers reach relevant audiences. Previously advertisers had the option to choose categories manually, or set up automatic campaigns (where StumbleUpon would choose set categories for you.) With ‘interest optimization’ campaigns won’t […]
Mary Blair, an Oklahoma-born artist who worked on many iconic Walt Disney films and attractions, is the subject of a special Google logo today. Blair was born on October 21, 1911 — today would’ve been her 100th birthday. The Google logo is reminiscent of her Disney work, which included the films Cinderella, Peter Pan and […]
We already knew that Steve Jobs felt betrayed by Google’s launch of Android but wow, was he really mad. But oddly, despite vowing nuclear war against Google, as his forthcoming bio reveals, he kept Google as the search default in Apple products. The AP obtained a copy of the authorized Jobs bio that comes out […]
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 Growing Need For SEO In Political Campaigns It’s going to be a while before we see a political campaign that’s “less digital” than the last one. Budgets keep getting bigger, […]
It’s going to be a while before we see a political campaign that’s “less digital” than the last one. Budgets keep getting bigger, and investing in online outreach continues to provide candidates with the biggest bang for their buck. But selling voters on politicians and policies isn’t remotely similar to selling, well, anything else. But […]
I wanted to take a deeper dive into mobile this month. It’s a hot topic that’s here to stay, and leading mobile ad network xAd recently shared some interesting and relevant stats. xAd’s local mobile ad network generates, on average, a click-through rate (CTR) of 5% to 8%, compared to an average general mobile network […]
In the US roughly 40 million mobile users access social networks (broadly defined to include blogs) on their handsets on a daily basis, according to comScore. The large number of mobile-social users comes as no surprise. Facebook previously announced it had 350 million active mobile users globally. Google also sees mobile as a strategic front […]
You’re actively monitoring the online chatter about your company. You’re utilizing a powerful social monitoring tool and have plenty of data. But are you truly prepared to respond when negative commentary about your business hits the web? One of the most effective ways to handle negative opinions in the marketplace is to proactively provide positive […]
In a new whitepaper from Covario, a search marketing firm and SaaS SEO provider, Facebook brands were analyzed and monitored in a quest to find the top brand. Additional stats were provided including brand goals, and key success factors and Facebook search for brands.. Social Media Goals One of the most interesting tidbits in the report was the […]
It appears that Google is listening to feedback on their new social networking site and acting accordingly. Google+ had a bit of a rocky launch with issues around brand accounts, and a total lack of Google Apps support. Even a Google Engineer recently called the service a “knee-jerk” response to Facebook. During the Web 2.0 conference […]
A new survey of roughly 500 small businesses (SMBs) in the UK reveals that only a minority perceive AdWords to be delivering a positive ROI. The online survey was conducted by Workbooks.com and YouGov. The question asked was: “Do your sales exceed the cost of AdWords?” Only 18 percent said “yes,” 45 percent said “no” and 37 […]