Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New “Save To Foursquare” Button Reaches Into The Real WorldPublishers and developers: are you ready for another button (or buttons I should say)? Joining the Facebook, Twitter, +1 and StumbleUpon button family are new “save to Foursquare” and “follow Foursquare” buttons. Users who click “save to Foursquare” (next to local content) will have that place added to their To-Do Lists. Publishers that have starte [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Publishers and developers: are you ready for another button (or buttons I should say)? Joining the Facebook, Twitter, +1 and StumbleUpon button family are new "save to Foursquare" and "follow Foursquare" buttons. Users who click "save to Foursquare" (next to local content) will have that place added to their To-Do Lists. Publishers that have started to implement this include Frommer’s Travel, Eater.com, Time Out NY, Time Out Boston, Time Out Chicago, Time Out NY Kids, New York Magazine, CBS Local Digital Media and AskMen.com. The difference between "save to Foursquare" and other bu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Foursquare | Top News

We’ve got a special request of our Search Engine Land visitors and SearchCap newsletter readers. Take our 2-minute audience survey! Please? If helping us keep the lights on isn’t enough of an incentive, we’ll include a chance to win a ticket to Search Marketing Expo – SMX West in San Jose, CA February 28-March 1. SMX West will feature a keynote with Susan Wojcicki, Senior VP of Advertising at Google. Susan is responsible for the design, innovation and engineering of all Google’s advertising and measurement platforms including AdWords, AdSense and Google Analytics. You can fin [...]

Related Topics: About Search Engine Land | Channel: Other

Yesterday there were several articles about how, if you asked Siri for help in finding a place to have an abortion, it wouldn't show you abortion clinics. This is something of a false controversy. It's really about understanding Siri's modus operandi and its limitations rather than an expression of any political or social agenda. If you search for a specific place name, such as "Planned Parenthood" you'll get a local answer. However if you simply say something like "I need an abortion" it stumps Siri and there are no results. Even the appeal "Help me find a places where I can have an aborti [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile

Tis the season...to wrap up budgeting and forecasting for 2012. As the year begins to draw towards a close, the hope is that your search engine marketing initiatives have an upward trend attached to them. According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook, SEO ranked as the fourth most effective B2B marketing tactic. For many of us, B2B SEO now includes some component of social media marketing. Even though social media was only the tenth most effective B2B marketing tactic in the chart above, 66% of organizations with a formal SEO process were integrating social [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: Search

The holidays are a wonderful time for conversion optimization, especially for e-commerce. I hear that even Santa is willing to accept third-party cookies, if they're offered with milk. So in the spirit of the season, I thought I'd begin this column by sharing with you an adapted poem I first started playing with a few years ago, 'Twas the Moment of Click-Through (also known as A Visit from Saint Click). My apologies to the original classic. [caption id="attachment_102285" align="aligncenter" width="382" caption="Image from Wikimedia Commons: Cover of "Twas the Night Before Christ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Conversion

Adobe has agreed to acquire digital marketing agency Efficient Frontier, which has a strong search marketing practice and technology to manage Facebook advertising. The companies didn't disclose the terms of the deal. The companies said Efficient Frontier would become a part of Adobe's Digital Marketing suite, which includes technologies and services it acquired with web analytics and optimization firm Omniture in 2009. Adobe has long been building up its capabilities in the digital marketing space, largely through acquisition. Earlier this month, it bought Auditude, a video ad manag [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: SEM | Search Ads

Interestingly, Google made two big announcements right around the same time and one clearly overshadowed the other as far as attention from the press goes. On November 7th 2011, Google announced Google+ Pages for Business, which got everyone excited. But then Google also made a very significant algorithm update right before that called the "Freshness" update. I am with everyone else. The launch of Google+ Pages was and will continue to be really exciting because of the potential that they have for brands and the impact they could have to help marketers gain more visibility in the SERP. In f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social

Ironically, the trade group that created the Cyber Monday concept had its own CyberMonday.com site lost in cyberspace this week. Lost, that is, if you tried to use Bing to find it. The site, along with some Black Friday deals sites, have been deliberately dropped from Bing as being too "thin" in content. Bing's Version Of The Google Panda Update If "thin is bad" sounds familiar, that's because Google kicked off this trend earlier this year. The Google Panda Update was a change in how Google ranked web pages, designed to penalize pages deemed to be content-light. Google's change didn't rem [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Antitrust | Google: Panda Update | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Top News

It's perhaps one of my favorite special Google logos ever, one honoring the 176th birthday of American novelist Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens. It shows the classic scene from The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, where Tom gets someone else to paint his Aunt Polly's white picket fence. It's Wide! It is also perhaps the widest of the special logos -- or doodles, as Google calls them -- that the company has ever done. The entire thing nearly stretches across the width of my 2560x1440 monitor: A Scene, In Three Parts Closer up, we see the scene playing out in three panels: On [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos

It's been about a year since Ask went back to its roots as a full Q&A site and at the end of last year, we offered up its most popular questions of 2010. In that story from 2010, note that Ask.com claimed 90 million users at that time, and in this year's followup release of the most popular questions, Ask.com cited their 60 million users helped predict what's to come in 2012 (see below). According to Comscore's September 2011 web property rankings however, Ask remained around 90 million unique users, and reported in October that Ask's search share remained steady. Whether it's 60 or [...]

Related Topics: Ask | Channel: Consumer | Search & Society | Search & Society: General

Google might like to apologize to those of you who are just now getting accustomed to the new black menu bar that appears at the top of most Google properties. You know, the one that just launched at the end of June? Well, skip that. As the saying goes, what's new is old. The black menu bar is gone. Or will be soon. Google has announced a new Google Bar that sits in the same horizontal space as Google's logo and search bar. I'm not seeing it yet in my searches, nor are others at Search Engine Land HQ, but here's a sneak peek from Google's blog post: Why the change? According to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Unveils New Top-Of-Page Bidding OptionsGoogle introduced a report in July that let AdWords advertisers compare performance between top-of-page ads and those appearing on the side (and now the bottom) of the page. Then it began letting advertisers know how high they have to bid to appear at the top. Now, there are a couple more ways to capitalize on [...] Facebook Downplays Significance Of FTC Privacy SettlementFacebook and the US Federal Trad [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Google introduced a report in July that let AdWords advertisers compare performance between top-of-page ads and those appearing on the side (and now the bottom) of the page. Then it began letting advertisers know how high they have to bid to appear at the top. Now, there are a couple more ways to capitalize on that information. The top-of-page bid estimate is now built into automated rules and AdWords Editor 9.7.1, Google has announced. To create the rule, select "All online campaigns," click the "Keywords" tab, click the "Automate" button and select "Raise bid to top of page CPC when... [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Facebook and the US Federal Trade Commission announced their formal privacy settlement today. Facebook and the federal agency each put their spin on it, with Facebook saying it was very similar to "agreements" previously reached with Google and Twitter: Recently, the US Federal Trade Commission established agreements with Google and Twitter that are helping to shape new privacy standards for our industry. Today, the FTC announced a similar agreement with Facebook. These agreements create a framework for how companies should approach privacy in the United States and around the world. For Fa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Top News

Drive new traffic to your site. Secure more conversions. Retain existing customers. Manage your company's reputation and customer service. Social media networks provide the means; you need to master the platform. SMX Social Media Marketing is a two-day, tactic-rich conference where you'll be immersed in social media marketing of all types. Check out the full agenda, programmed by the editors of Search Engine Land. Over 25 pioneering marketers will share the tips and techniques that make them successful. Join us in Scottsdale, AZ December 5-6 and you'll leave with proven tactics to signi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX | SMX & DMD Alerts

Cadbury posted on their Google + page a picture of their latest milk chocolate bars named "Dairy Milk+ Bars." The Milk+ bars come in two flavors, Sergey Brin & Larry Page - i.e. the co-founders of Google. As part of a social media experiment, Cadbury posted this on their Google + page, saying: Remember our 1kg Dairy Milk+ Bars? We've had some special personalised ones made, including these delicious ones for Google founders Larry & Sergey. Whose name would you like to see on a bar? Hat tip to WebProNews for spotting this first. Related Stories: Google+ Is Slowly Invading Goog [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: +1 | Google: Employees | Google: Other

Google is bringing the blue dot indoors. Google Maps for Android 6.0 is going to start showing interior maps of airports, select malls and retail stores in the US and Japan. In Japan transit stations are also mapped. The floor plan data has been obtained from all the participating entities, which Google's Steve Lee says are "very excited" to be a part of the program. Those entities include numerous Macy's, Bloomingdales, Home Depots and all US IKEA stores. (See the full US list at the bottom.) Below is a Google-provided screenshot of the Mall of America before interior maps and after: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Top News

Previously in Organic Keywords: The First Step In Search Engine Optimization, I covered how to use Google Analytics to choose the organic keyword phrases to focus on first in your optimization efforts: those keywords already contributing to the business goals. We then looked at how to use Google analytics to help "map" those keywords to existing pages on the site for optimization. In this article, I’ll continue on to the next step and show you how I prioritize the keywords by evaluating the difficulty of reaching top results. Check Keyword Rankings The next step I take before beginnin [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content

Google's hiring process is pretty infamous. Multiple interviews. Sign-off at the very top. And those crazy interview questions! It's a wonder that anyone gets a job. The folks at Jobvine have put together an infographic illustrating the hiring process at Google, along with some interesting employment stats about the company, including salaries and growth in employees, over time: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: What does it take to get a job at Google? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees | Infographics