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 Confirms Panda 3.3 Update, Plus Changes To How It Evaluates Links, Local Search Rankings & Much MoreGoogle has confirmed a new Panda update at the same time that it’s announcing 40 search updates that happened in February (or are in progress right now). It would be all but impossible to fully sum up the full slate of changes here, but there are a few that seem especially noteworthy and will no [...] Google, Yahoo Both Fail At Moneyb [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Google has confirmed a new Panda update at the same time that it's announcing 40 search updates that happened in February (or are in progress right now). It would be all but impossible to fully sum up the full slate of changes here, but there are a few that seem especially noteworthy and will no doubt produce a lot of speculation among search marketers. Here's a look at the ones that stand out to me: Panda 3.3 Update Here's what Google says about its latest Panda-related change: Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitiv [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Maps & Local | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Panda Update News | SEO: Local | Top News

Both Google and Yahoo used search data to create their own Oscar ballots. Turns out, their predictions were terribly wrong. At best, Google may have correctly predicted Meryl Streep winning, depending on how you read things. But overall, neither of them really got the winners right. Google's predictions are here; Yahoo's here. Let's see how they did! Best Picture Google: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (or The Artist, Midnight In Paris) Yahoo: War Horse Winner: The Artist What went wrong here? With Google, it's actually hard to know what it was predicting. It narrowed thi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General | Top News

Former AdMob executive Jason Spero, who is now Google’s head of mobile sales, took the stage earlier today at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona to offer up some new, global smartphone user survey data and 2012 predictions. The Google-sponsored survey had a sample size of roughly 1,000 respondents in each of the represented countries: US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. The data reflect that mobile search usage has nearly 100 percent penetration among smartphone owners, most of whom search at least once a week. Though it's not made clear in the data released I assume this [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Web Search | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

Last week my colleague, Michael Martin presented Mongoose Metrics data that demonstrates that less than 10% of you are mobile ready in 2012.  He also presented some pretty compelling reasons for going mobile in 2012, including the Compuware study that 57% of customers would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site, and 40% would actually even go to a competitor with a better mobile experience. If you’re a regular reader of this column and you don’t have a mobile experience, you are in the majority of site owners; but you’re also way behind and may not be able to catch up if yo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To | How To: Mobile Marketing | Intermediate | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search

Despite Google moving away from the large black navigation menu on the web version, it seems like they are testing that exact same version on the mobile version of Google. Alex Chitu posted screen shots of Google testing the new large black drop down menu on Google mobile. Here are pictures: The second image shows how the "more" option overlays those more options over the first set of options. What do you think of this user interface on a smartphone screen? Related Stories: Google Moves Away From Large Navigation Drop Down Menu Google’s New Black Menu Bar Is Now [...]

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

SMX West is approaching fast, and one of the sessions that caught my eye was the Enterprise SEO – Challenges & Solutions. The panel is loaded with speakers with deep experience in enterprise SEO. I decided to reach out to the panelists and get a preview of their presentations, so I asked each of them some questions in advance of the show. Jordan Koene - Head of Global Content, Ebay Eric Enge: Can you tells us how Ebay deals with the challenges of producing content on a large scale? Jordan Koene: The cool thing about eBay is that we have millions of pages making the management of t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Enterprise SEO

So you’ve set up your PPC account, have been monitoring it for a while, and things are going swimmingly. But now what? You feel you’ve done everything you think you can do to the PPC account. Not so! There’s always more to do! In this article, I’ll discuss some ideas you can use to give your account a serious kick in the butt! Note: some of the strategies require statistically significant data before implementing. I like to see data from at least 100 conversion events before moving forward with any strategy. 1.  Geographic Targeting Dig through the data and determine if there a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Check-in services have been one of the few Web 2.0 concepts to tightly combine location data with social media interactions, but it has not been clear if such services convey distinct local ranking benefit beyond the sort of citational reference provided by general online business directories. However, there are some good reasons to believe check-ins may be unique popularity signals for Google local search. Google's blog post on how local search ranking works stated that they use three primary signals for rank determination: Relevance, Prominence and Distance. Businesses have little control [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search

Are you used to using Google as a way around the Wall Street Journal's paywall? Think again. The WSJ has been holding back stories available through Google's "First Click Free" program, a move that I suspect other newspapers might soon emulate. Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that I wasn't able to read some Wall Street Journal stories when visiting from Google. I figured this was some type of bug. But a recent case got me digging deeper: the Journal's story about how Google created a workaround past Safari's default privacy settings as a way of enabling +1 buttons on Google's ads. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Features: Analysis | Google: News | Top News

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search In Pics: Life-Size Google+ Circles, Google Tinfoil Office & Church SignsIn 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. Google Tinfoil Aviation Desk: Source: Google+ Geeky Sign At Google: Source: Google+ Google Church Sign: Source: [...] How The Era Of ‘Big-Data†[...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

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. Google Tinfoil Aviation Desk: Source: Google+ Geeky Sign At Google: Source: Google+ Google Church Sign: Source: Flickr Large Google+ Circles: Source: Flickr Google Coffee Machines: Source: Google+ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

In the early days of ‘Mad Men’ marketing, half of all Marketing spend was famously wasted - the Marketer just didn’t know which half. Many a Marketer’s sleepless night was spent wondering what levers of their Marketing spend to push forward and which to dial back. Then, along came the Internet, and with it a new kind of marketing. Marketing online brought with it ‘cause-and-effect marketing’ and a greater ability to measure the effectiveness of marketing effort. New metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates and page views made its way into our lexicon and marketing gr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

One year ago, Google launched its "Panda Update" designed to filter low quality or "thin" content from its top search results. Below, our infographic produced in conjunction with BlueGlass covers how Panda works, what it impacted and the various updates from Panda 1.0 through Panda 3.2 that have happened along the way. After the infographic, you'll also find more information about the Panda Update ranging from in-depth analysis of how it works, "winners and losers" and well as recovery tips. (Note: An earlier version of this infographic listed scraper sites as something targeted by Pa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Panda Update | Infographics | Panda Update Must-Reads | Panda Update News | Panda Update Tips | Panda Update Winners & Losers | Top News

Reported first by TechCrunch last night, Apple has paid a reported (but unconfirmed) $50 million for Chomp and its roughly 20 employees. Chomp offers both iOS and Android apps and a desktop site and is dedicated to solving the problem of app discovery. Chomp can either be described as a search engine for apps or "Yelp for the app store," because of its reliance on reviews as a ranking signal and its engaged community of users. The CEO Ben Keighran and his CTO are apparently already working at Apple/iTunes in anticipation of a significant redesign of the app store, using some of the infra [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

Google announced they are now showing concert rich snippets on band web sites so that you can see upcoming concerts and even book them on ticket sales web sites. The results will show you upcoming concert tour dates in your area right on the results page under the band's web site. Here is a picture: The interesting part is there aren't many rich snippets markup that show up on third-party web sites. Normally, when you add rich snippets to your web site, Google will list those rich snippets only on the page that has the markup on it. Here, Google is listing third-party web sites ri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: SEO | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search

Imagine searching on your own company's name and finding a competitor's ad that said you were "Sold Out" right on your business' most important holiday. That's what florists like the owner of Chez Bloom in Minnesota had happen, as originally reported by Brand Channel. Indeed, as the owner of Chez Bloom Laura Chase told BrandChannel, she searched for a lot of other local flower shops, and found them "Sold Out" -- at least in AdWords ads -- as well. Jen Caroll, a spokesperson for the AdWords advertiser in question, ProFlowers, said that the situation was inadvertent. Here's the statem [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Top News

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Is SEO Killing America?Last week at the Tools of Change conference, Clay Johnson, author of the new book The Information Diet gave a keynote talk titled “Is SEO Killing America“. Sigh. If you’ve been involved in search for any length of time, your first reaction may be, this again? Haven’t we done this before? Once or twice? Clay’s [...] Google Images Related Searches Now More VisualGoogle announced the related search l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Last week at the Tools of Change conference, Clay Johnson, author of the new book The Information Diet gave a keynote talk titled "Is SEO Killing America". Sigh.  If you've been involved in search for any length of time, your first reaction may be, this again? Haven't we done this before? Once or twice? Clay's a friend of mine and I've read his book (it's quite good, by the way), so I knew both that he doesn't really think that SEO is killing America and that he's unaware just how much we're all over this particular linkbait-y title. And indeed his talk was not about how SEO is kill [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Top News

Google announced the related search links at the top of the Google Images search results are now visually appealing. You can now mouse over the related search phrase and Google will hover open an image preview of what the first three images look like for that image search query. Here is an example of searching for [greece] and hovering my mouse cursor over the related search phrase [santorini greece]: You can click on the image for a larger preview. Google is rolling this new feature out over the "next few weeks." Related Stories: Google Images Carousel For Tablets & [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images