It’s been a difficult month for Google, and the company is bound to take another hit in the morning as a Wall Street Journal article makes the rounds — an article that offers new details about the government sting that compelled Google to pay $500 million after acknowledging that it both allowed and helped Canadian […]
The longest search queries are happening on Ask.com, where users average almost five words per search. That’s according to research from Chitika. The ad network analyzed search referrals on “hundreds of millions” of impressions across sites in its network between January 9th and 12th. And the longest search referrals — at an average of 4.81 […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Infographic: How Much Does SEO Cost? How much does SEO cost? How much time do you have to discuss the various models and prices out there! However, a new survey sheds […]
How much does SEO cost? How much time do you have to discuss the various models and prices out there! However, a new survey sheds some light on the subject. Over 500 people and companies who offer search engine optimization services were asked about how their models. Turns out, it’s most common to charge $100 […]
We’ve all seen them: too much of them. They filter through our Twitter stream, pop up in our News Feed, and infiltrate our search results. My dear friends, we are in infographic overload, and if we don’t do something now, it may be too late for us all. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against […]
Wall Street wasn’t terribly impressed with Google’s figures for the last quarter of 2011 announced after the bell last thursday. To a normal person, you would think that generating $2.71 billion profit and significantly beating your own previous quarters would be a cause for celebration. But these aren’t normal people and this isn’t a normal […]
For the past two weeks, I feel like I’ve been witnessing some type of Cuban Missile Crisis going on between Google, Twitter and Facebook. I’d like to suggest some ways that social-nuclear war might be averted. Beyond Blame, Believing In Cooperation Let’s set aside blame, because blame isn’t going to move anything forward. Let’s also […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Projecting 2012 Google Mobile Revenues: $4 or $6 Billion? On Google’s Q3 2011 earnings call CEO Larry Page casually mentioned that Google had a mobile revenue “run rate” of more than […]
On Google’s Q3 2011 earnings call CEO Larry Page casually mentioned that Google had a mobile revenue “run rate” of more than $2.5 billion. On the Q4 earnings call, just last week, Google announced a $5 billion annualized “run rate” for display advertising (including mobile). These two pronouncements have led to several financial analysts to […]
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work with form optimization. In this article, I’ll cover some tried and true form optimization tips. I’ve done most of my testing on the PPC side, but obviously, the information can also be used effectively to improve overall form conversions on websites. 1. Include A Privacy Line […]
Mobile search results not only produce different rankings from desktop search but can also vary based on the mobile device type that the query was performed on, as has been written about here at Search Engine from myself and Bryson Meunier among others. You can see mobile results directly from your desktop for feature phones at https://www.google.com/xhtml and […]
A couple of weeks ago, Google caused a big hub-bub when it launched Search Plus Your World (“SPEW” for short), the catchy-titled deep integration of Google Plus and Google’s organic Web results. Naturally as soon as that happened, many of my clients, big and small, called to get some perspective on what this might mean […]
Alex Chitu reports Google is now showing search results for punctuation marks and other types of symbols. In the past, Google ignored most punctuation marks and didn’t show any results for them that were useful. Now Google is. For example, a search for , returns pages on the topic of usage of comma in your writing. […]
I’ve written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its new Search Plus Your World feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new “Don’t Be Evil” tool that lets anyone leverage Google’s own results to see this. The tool […]
Before Google was formally approved to buy travel software company ITA, the company argued that the acquisition would result in “innovation” for travelers and travel search users. Beyond the appearance of flight times/routes in search results we haven’t seen much “innovation” yet. Google’s new “find hotels by travel time” experiment is, however, an example of […]
The invasion of Google+ into Google’s search results continue. The latest Google+ification? Now Google’s encouraging people at the end of its search listings if they “Want to ask your friends about” what they were Googling. Want To Ask Your Friends? Tom Critchlow tipped me off to spotting this in his search results. I checked, and I found […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing’s New Ad Campaign: Bing Is For #Doing Bing is set to launch a new ad campaign this weekend that includes a subtle change from its previous messaging. Rather than promoting […]
Bing is set to launch a new ad campaign this weekend that includes a subtle change from its previous messaging. Rather than promoting the idea of making decisions, the new campaign is about people doing interesting things and uses the slogan, Bing is for #Doing. More specifically, the new TV campaign focuses on winter sports […]
Google webmaster tools data is helpful stuff, but has been somewhat tough to download and use. Last month, Google made things a bit easier by providing a Python script for downloading search query data (as this report isn’t available as of yet through the API). Now, they’ve added new download options that significantly add to […]
I am a long time admirer of Wolfram|Alpha and I’m happy to report that my admiration continues to grow, as you can now access NFL (National Football League) statistics using Wolfram|Alpha. So, queries like: Tom Brady Joe Flacco Passing Yards 49ers 2011 New York Giants field goal attempts, field goals made Chicago Bears Record 1985 […]
Since at least 2005, Google has been using a large, worldwide focus group to help review its search results and the quality of the web pages that rank well in its algorithm. The people in this program are called Quality Raters and, as you can imagine, the work they do is important to search marketers […]
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.
More than 300 Billion searches were made in the US in 2011, according to ComScore. In December each year, the Big Three search engines publish the most popular searches of the year. In 2011, the top ten searches from the three search engines added up to more than 250 million searches alone. We thought it […]
Want to be better at search engine optimization? What all SEO professionals should know about website usability.
Some of you may not have any issues with other advertisers infringing on your trademarked terms via search marketing… count yourselves lucky. For those of us who have been left by the search engines to self-police these problems, AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool can turn a laborious challenge into a fairly efficient task. AdGooroo is well […]
Do you shove lots of ads at the top of your web pages? Think again.
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: Paid Clicks Up 34% While Cost Per Click Down 8% YoY Google just posted their Q4 2011 earnings resulting in a massive quarter but not meeting expectations of investors. In […]
Google just posted their Q4 2011 earnings resulting in a massive quarter but not meeting expectations of investors. In fact, Google’s stock is down over 9% in after hours trading. That being said, part of those earning results showed that paid clicks on Google’s network is up 34% year over year but cost per click […]
In May of last year I had a conversation with someone who told me that Nokia Maps (Navteq) would effectively replace the infrastructure behind Bing Maps. I was surprised to say the least and wrote about it in a story entitled Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia? The impression I got is that […]
Google Maps has added a feature where it will highlight in a pink color the borders of a city, postal code or other borders based on your search. To see it yourself, go to Google Maps and search for a city name or even a zip code. You will see a pinkish highlight around the […]
Many U.S. Senators and Representatives are tweeting opinions, updates, images, documents, etc. these days, and Twitter can be a very useful, if not an essential tool, to learn about what’s going on directly from each member, especially regarding controversial legislation such as SOPA. An easy to use but powerful web tool (it’s also free) named […]
It’s a new year. Somebody needs to declare something dead. Recently, I gave a presentation on Google’s Search+ in which I said ranking reports no longer matter because there is no such thing as consistent Google rankings. What you see in the Google search results and what I see, for the exact same query, are […]
2011 was the year that shopping on mobile devices moved into the mainstream. It won’t be long before the majority of retail sales are made from tablets and mobile devices rather than laptops and desktops. With mobile usage increasing dramatically in 2012, it’s important for retailers to start accommodating mobile shoppers. This article will review […]
Having been through a number of re-orgs over the past few years, I’ve been thinking lately about SEM and direct marketing within the larger organization, and it seemed like a good time to take a step back and look at the different ways companies organize around SEM, and which models make the most (or least) […]
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’s 5th “Doodle 4 Google” Contest Opens For K-12 Students Google has launched its fifth annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest, and this year’s version appears to be bigger than ever and […]
Google has launched its fifth annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest, and this year’s version appears to be bigger than ever and easier to enter. This year’s contest theme is “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…”. Students in grades K-12 have until March 20th to enter, and it’s even easier this time around — […]
In the last nine months, I have seen a hiring blitz as Adobe moved its search program in house. Seventeen search marketers were hired and each has turned out to be extremely capable. One colleague compared the new search marketing team to the Seal Team 6 that took out Osama Bin Laden. Through an interview […]
As you know, there are many sites going black to protest SOPA and PIPA. Google has already offered blackout SEO advice but they decided to take it one step further by slowing down their spiders today. Pierre Far from Google posted on his Google+ that Google is slowing down GoogleBot’s crawl activity to reduce the […]
Say you’re marketing an Android app via AdWords targeted to mobile devices, but your product only works on Honeycomb and newer versions of the OS — still, you keep getting folks with older versions showing up on your landing page, and likely getting frustrated. That’s exactly the type of problem Google is trying to address […]
With 2012 stretched out before us, it’s a perfect time for B2B marketers to make sure that the year ahead is poised for success. By now you have laid the groundwork, and have clear learnings from your 2011 search efforts to build upon. But … are you operationally structured for success? The Importance Of The […]