Ah, the holidays! It’s that time of year — for egg nog, carolers, sleigh rides, Yuletide cheer, roasting chestnuts, and… link bait! Yes, you heard right. The holidays are a great time to launch link bait campaigns, because you can piggy-back on the popularity of the holiday and of peoples’ enthusiasm for it. That doesn’t […]
First Google questioned Mitt Romney’s chances of winning the US presidential election. Now it’s suggesting that Austria is less important than Australia. You Say Austria, Google Says Australia In a search for Austria’s biggest companies, Google automatically changes the query and searches instead for Australia’s biggest companies: Forbes spotted the glitch, which is the second major problem […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SMX West Super Early Bird Rates Expire Soon – Register Now, Save $400 February 28 – March 1 in San Jose, CA Attend SMX West and get expert insights and real-world-proven […]
By dominating the SERP real estate for related search terms, taking around 65% or more of all search traffic (depending on the flavour of Places functionality) for top level terms, Google Places performance is critical for travel accommodation businesses across the globe.
It’s being reported today (originally by VentureBeat) that Verizon has blocked implementation of Google Wallet on the new Galaxy Nexus handset. Verizon is the exclusive US carrier of the heavily anticipated device. According to a statement issued to Bloomberg, Verizon is citing security as the rationale: Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, blocked Google Inc.’s […]
ZenithOptimedia has issued a report that contains both good news and bad news for Google. The good news is: Google controls 44 percent of global online ad revenues. The bad news is: Google controls 44 percent of global online ad revenues. At a time when Google is defending against antitrust investigations on two continents 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: Yahoo Image Search Adds Social Sharing & Continuous Scrolling Yahoo announced two new features on Yahoo Image Search, social sharing and continuous scrolling. Social Sharing On Images: Yahoo Images enables you […]
Yahoo announced two new features on Yahoo Image Search, social sharing and continuous scrolling. Social Sharing On Images: Yahoo Images enables you to share the images you find on Yahoo Image Search with your friends on Facebook or Twitter, not Google +. When you click on an image result and are taken to the larger […]
Google announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders. The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area. Here are examples of how you may use it respectively: https://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish https://es-es.example.com/ – is the […]
Google announced their answer to Wolfram Alpha‘s advanced math skills with math graphing functionality on Google search results. All you need to do is type basic and complex math functions into the Google search box and Google will return neat graphics. From basic charts for sin(x) to more complex graphs for x/2, (x/2)^2, ln(x), cos(pi*x/5). […]
I am of the opinion that website publishers need to differentiate or die. Earlier this year, I discussed some ways to differentiate in The Importance of Differentiated Content. One great option is to obtain lots of user generated content (UGC). Easy to say, but often not easy to do. Today’s column will go over some […]
This month, a lot of mobile commerce sites are being put to the test for the first time. Mcommerce sites are expected to cross the 10% mark in their contribution to online retail sales, and retailers will be collecting usage data to figure out what users like and dislike. In my own shopping experiences, both […]
Looking for a little extra lift for your holiday season local search rankings? Instead of relying on some elf-magic, consider making your own ranking magic through using Pinterest, a young social media site that is rising in popularity faster than Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve!
Let’s face it – people just go crazy during the holidays. Your CPCs will increase, but so will your click-through-rates, and your cost per action should even go down even through your CPCs have increased. It’s an insane time full of people who want to find deals. Marketers are willing to oblige and throw offers […]
Thinking about being found the old-fashioned yet high-tech way, a coupon through a daily deals service? Stats say these may bring in new business but not necessarily repeat customers. Consumers do like them, nearly half online use the sites and of those, 60% get emailed offers from two or more per day. The people at […]
As promised, Bing is the focus of a new Xbox experience that’s launching this week. Beginning on Tuesday, Xbox Live users who also have Kinect will be able to use their voice — and Bing’s search technology — to find different types of content that are available on their television, including movies from Netflix, TV […]
Seemingly every day, more real-time or near real-time data becomes accessible on the internet. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about many different types of real-time resources, but today, I’ll be focusing on real-time flight data—virtually addicting tools for frequent flyers and aviation geeks alike. For example, two weeks ago, Wolfram|Alpha launched a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Movember SEO Moustache Competition Raises $17,000 For Cancer Research What started out as a friendly rivalry between Bing’s Duane Forester and Google’s Matt Cutts resulted in $17,000 for the Movember, a […]
What started out as a friendly rivalry between Bing’s Duane Forester and Google’s Matt Cutts resulted in $17,000 for the Movember, a moustache campaign to raise awareness and funds for cancer research, specifically prostate cancer. Mike Halvorsen set up the competition while at SMX Advanced. There were 83 participants in the Search For The Cure […]
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.
According to dealReporter (via the Financial Times), the first stage of the formal European antitrust investigation against Google is almost complete. Google will shortly receive a 400-page “statement of objections” presenting findings from the European Commission’s investigation. It will detail Google’s alleged “abuse of dominance” and presumably — this is drawing an inference from the […]
A vitally important first step to the attribution management process is to gather all the data associated with the “touches” that have been experienced by your target audience both as a result of being exposed to all your marketing efforts and direct traffic. Each “touchpoint” associated with each individual has numerous attributes or characteristics associated […]
“I’m standing in front of a Planned Parenthood,” the CNN reporter says, “And Siri can’t find it when I search for abortion clinic.” No, it can’t. It’s not because Apple is pro-life. It’s because Planned Parenthood doesn’t call itself an abortion clinic. Welcome To Search Scandals, Apple It’s been interesting to watch the Siri Abortiongate […]
Yahoo is cleaning up Associated Content by deleting some of the articles, moving the keepers to Yahoo’s domain and giving the site a new name, too. And next year, Yahoo will begin an online training course to help its writers create higher quality content. The company has announced plans to “retire” more than 75,000 Associated […]
Now celebrating a decade of recapping annual search trends, earlier today, Yahoo! released the 2011 list of most popular searches in the US in 30 different categories, topping last year’s extensive list. This year marks the first full year Yahoo! used has used the Bing search engine to primarily power Yahoo! search results, with Americans […]
In September Google did the first part of its integration with ITA, showing flight schedule information in search results and launching a separate flight search “portal” of sorts (Google.com/flights). Here’s what it looked like in Google.com results: The display could be expanded to reveal flight schedule information. However that wasn’t very pretty or useful, especially […]
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: Parked Domains, Scraper Sites Targeted Among New Search Changes In what’s now to be a monthly update on search changes, a new Google “Inside Search” blog post today tells us […]
In what’s now to be a monthly update on search changes, a new Google “Inside Search” blog post today tells us that life is getting tougher for those with parked domains, life may get better for those plagued by scraper sites and those hoping to “push down” negative listings may have a tougher challenge. New […]
AOL announced its most popular global searches (United States, United Kingdom and Canada) in 2011 at https://hot.aol.com. While other search engines have ranked Justin Bieber and Kim K at the top for the year, Charlie Sheen proved he won the hearts of AOL users by climbing to the top of their most searched for celebrity list. Most […]
Google’s teaming up again with NORAD to product one of my favorite Christmas traditions, the NORAD Tracks Santa web site. But new for this year, Bing joins the holiday sweepstakes with a Advent calendar-like Bing Magical Holiday Calendar. NOTE: If you’re looking for the latest information on Santa tracking for the current year, see our Your […]
New York City is the capital of SEO, with Los Angeles just behind, based on job volume measured in those cities. Those working in SEO earn anywhere between $27,000 to $148,000 per year. The lowest pay goes, ironically, to those who often do the most important job in gaining rankings: link builders. These stats and […]
There’s a multi-pronged assault on the internet going on now. It comes from over-zealous legislators, the US executive branch and individual judges. There’s an effort on multiple fronts to grant over-broad powers to copyright owners to instigate domain seizures, cut-off funds and de-index “rogue” websites if found guilty of “infringement,” where that concept is very expansively defined […]
The convergence of social networking, local search and mobile shopping provides consumers with convenience while saving them time, a real winner in the digital world. Because the Social-Local-Mobile trend makes certain marketing channels more important for retail brands, we want to review how e-retailers can get more social while providing mobile functionality and local search […]
Now that the holidays are upon us, we all probably could use some cheering up. So I thought I’d have some fun with our favorite search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, and Blekko. At Nine By Blue, I have been developing software that automatically checks sites for technical SEO best practices. Normally we run it […]