Google has lifted the 60-day paid link penalty Google Chrome was given the first week of January. Now if you search for [chrome], [browser] or similar searches, the Google Chrome landing page will once again show up on the first page of the search results. Here is a picture showing the page ranking in position […]
No matter how good you are at something, you can always use a second opinion. For paid search, getting even a surface level audit of your AdWords account can be fairly expensive. A consultant would have to access your account, pull your reports, check your settings, and evaluate your Quality Scorse, match type usage, etc. […]
Think you know the web searcher goals and behaviors that are important for long term search engine visibility? Take this quiz and find out.
March Madness (an annual U.S. tradition where virtually all sports fans go crazy over college basketball finals tournaments) is underway. Want to keep track of what’s going on? There are many places on the internet to access statistics and other useful information as the games are played and teams move toward the Final Four games […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Create An SEO Positive Company Culture My message today is to tear down the walls: not the ones in your website but in your company, between and within divisions. […]
My message today is to tear down the walls: not the ones in your website but in your company, between and within divisions. Too many businesses, especially larger companies, divide website responsibilities throughout different parts of the organization chart. Without strong central leadership, this can slow-down critical functions as each department fits their Web work […]
As competition intensifies, it becomes increasingly more difficult for retailers to thrive, with big retailers like Sears, JC Penney and Macy’s resorting to Every Day Value Pricing. To succeed, retailers must avoid missed opportunities. This article identifies three opportunities retailers can take advantage of: (1) use every available local search tactic, (2) have your site […]
The sirens suddenly sounded, shattering my concentration and halting the flow of my presentation. “Please evacuate the building immediately”, the robotic recorded male voice advised. More blasting sirens. “This is the emergency response system. Please evacuate the…” Was this really happening? I’d been preparing all morning and patiently waiting my turn to speak as the […]
So you’re looking to hire someone to do conversion optimization on your team? Here are six interview questions that you might consider asking. The answers aren’t necessarily black-and-white, but these kinds of questions can help reveal how a candidate thinks about conversion optimization. 1. How would you approach deciding what to optimize first? For most […]
Google Flight Search is taking off to international destinations. Starting today users can search for flights to 500 airports outside the US. Google hasn’t provided a comprehensive list of destinations, but most European and Asian cities I searched for were available. It’s not clear how well flight search is doing or whether people are using […]
In this corner is Google, about to make “major changes” to its algorithm and presentation of search results according to a much-discussed article in the Wall Street Journal. In the other are Google’s critics who now scrutinize and critique the company’s every move. The WSJ-Google article speaks about new innovations to search in an effort […]
The Bing Maps Blog announced several enhancements to Bing Maps. In summary, the changes include: A refresh to the Pushpin buttons and Popup menu Transit symbols and icons were improved Added sharing options to transit directions Ability to now drag to modify your route The explore venue maps option is easier to find The most […]
Bing has been very upfront about the fact that people and social stats can power search results. A new implementation of social data was spotted in the wild by techie-buzz.com who found Twitter trends making their way into the search results pages. The query in question was for a hot topic (Pepsi Next) that had quite […]
The Wall Street Journal is out with a story saying that Google is about to make one of the biggest changes in its history of offering web search, providing more direct answers and gaining “semantic” smarts to understand more about what words mean. I’m scratching my head, since Google already does this. Methinks Google’s PR […]
It’s not your imagination. Google is showing a new “Latest Posts” section for some Google+ pages and profiles alongside its regular results, in the space where ads have traditionally resided. The format allows people and brands on Google+ to occupy more of the top-half of the search results page. Google told us about the change: […]
Followers of news about Google AdWords know that problematic errors — instances in which ads that violate the company’s own advertising standards slip by — come up quite regularly. Most recently, Google, along with advertiser ProFlowers, was roundly and publicly criticized for AdWords that seemed to indicate that local florists were sold out in advance […]
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: Demographic Bidding Being Eliminated To Clear Way For New AdWords Features Though it hasn’t been announced, a few eagle-eyed folks have noticed a change to Google’s Help pages that says […]
Though it hasn’t been announced, a few eagle-eyed folks have noticed a change to Google’s Help pages that says demographic bidding will be phased out on March 21. We spoke to Google about it, and received confirmation that this is the case. “This is a feature that we have to retire to introduce additional features […]
The US FTC has subpoenaed Apple to provide documentation and information about Google’s presence on iOS as the default search engine. According to Bloomberg the FTC is also seeking similar information from handset makers and carriers. This arises in the context of the US government’s broad anti-trust investigation of Google. These “default search” deals are […]
Marketing firm Slingshot SEO is picking up where Microsoft left off. Five years ago Microsoft/Atlas began trying to educate marketers and the marketplace about the fact that more online sources than the “last click” were responsible for conversions. This was partly an effort to undermine the centrality of Google, which gets lots of credit for […]
Today’s special Google logo is to honor the contributions of Akira Yoshizawa the individual credited with creating modern origami. The Google logo is made up of true origami, in fact, Google explained how they did it and how you can also make the origami on the Google blog. Akira Yoshizawa was born today 101 years […]
Knowing what topics are top of mind to your customers can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. After all, there are always unique challenges and obstacles to every prospect and client. The good news is that your search program can be an amazing resource to identify topics of interest to your clients and the industries […]
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 Research: Yes, You Still Need To Keep Buying Search Ads Though most marketers likely think of their SEO activities and their paid search advertising as complementary, you’ve probably wondered, at […]
Though most marketers likely think of their SEO activities and their paid search advertising as complementary, you’ve probably wondered, at one time or another, what would happen if you paused your CPC ads entirely or just cut them back dramatically. Google’s research folks covered this topic back in July of last year, when it concluded […]
Have your seeds germinated yet? Last time, we talked about keywords as “seeds” of ideas; a single keyword to represent an entire keyword cluster. Now it’s time to make our seeds grow. Using the example of Artisan Construction Services again (thanks!), we’ll walk through the process that I use to grow a single seed. In this […]
Those who are responsible for creating awareness of content take great pleasure seeing a shared link riding the waves across Twitter, Facebook, G+, or anywhere else the sharer wants to push it. And rightfully so. It is rewarding to see your efforts succeed and click traffic increase. But from a search results standpoint, there are […]
Google’s latest blog post provides details and a video from Maile Ohye about how they handle the pagination attributes within a page’s source code. You can use these attributes to indicate pages in a series (such as a multi-page article or set of product listings), which enables Google to cluster the pages into a single entity […]
Nearly two years ago, I wrote about creating a Global Search Center of Excellence and since have had the opportunity to keynote a number of company search summits, conference panels and then last week at the International Search Summit at SMX, I spoke for an entire session on how and why you should use your […]
The good folks over at Stone Temple Consulting released an in-depth interview with Bing’s Principal Group Program Manager for Bing Social Search, Paul Yiu. The Bing social search team integrates social content and indicators into the search results to add both personalization and relevance to the search results. Bing currently ties in data from both […]
Google has just revamped the crawl errors data available in webmaster tools. Crawl errors are issues Googlebot encountered while crawling your site, so useful stuff! I originally started this article by writing that in most cases, these changes are for the better and in only a few (really maddening) cases, useful functionality has been removed. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft’s Photosynth App Goes Worldwide After 6 Million US Downloads Microsoft’s Photosynth iOS app, which has been available to US users for almost a year, is now available worldwide and includes […]
Microsoft’s Photosynth iOS app, which has been available to US users for almost a year, is now available worldwide and includes a couple updates. In its blog post today, Microsoft says the app has passed six million downloads since its US-only launch last April. The app is now in version 1.1.3 and is available to […]
How does Google create its search algorithms, its recipes for making the listings and search results you get? For the first time, the general public gets a glimpse into the decision making process, through a video that Google has posted of one of its search quality meetings. The Video I was fortunate enough to witness […]
SEMPO & Econsultancy have teamed up again this year to run the State of Search Marketing Survey. The survey will cover topics including budgets, marketing objectives, and the latest trends in paid search, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. SEMPO and Econsultancy are asking those in the search and social communities to take the […]
Last week the Pew Internet Project released findings of a survey on search, personalization and targeted advertising. In a nutshell, survey respondents had a very positive view of search and the quality of search results. Yet the majority gave an unequivocal thumbs down to search personalization (and behavioral targeting). This isn’t necessarily a contradiction or paradox […]
The findings of this year’s Local Consumer Review Survey (2012) show a positive shift in consumer trust and appreciation of online reviews. Approximately 72% of consumers surveyed said that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, while 52% said that positive online reviews make them more likely to use a local business. About […]
One of the staggering facts in Facebook’s public filing last month was that 50% of their traffic is driven by mobile devices. That’s about 5x more than the average website. Perhaps even more staggering: the growth rate of their mobile traffic actually exceeded their US growth rate last year (17% vs 16%). With US smartphone […]
Log out of Google and search for [binary], [octal] and [hexadecimal] and you will see a little geeky easter egg. The easter egg shows the value of the results in that number systems. For example, here is a picture of searching for [binary]: When you convert that value, it returns 29,200,000 results. So there are […]
Ah, the IT team: The land where SEO dreams go to die. The bigger the institution, the harder it is to pry a few tiny SEO tweaks out of the developer group. They’re resource-constrained, buried in the poop that the entire company dumps on them and, by the time you get to their office, not […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Four Seriously Cool Information Resources As a librarian, researcher and frequent blogger, I’m constantly coming across incredibly useful online information resources that are most effectively searched using their own site search […]