Google has had what it has called "comparison ads" for some time, but these comparison units are getting a new look in Google’s search results beginning today. Google hopes the change will better explain to searchers that comparison listings come from companies it has a commercial relationship with. It also highlights how three Google search products now seem to largely operate on a paid inclusion basis. Google was once a vocal opponent to paid inclusion programs. "We’re changing the design layout of our hotel, flight, credit card and bank account results, which help users complete acti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: AdWords | Google: Partnerships | Search Ads: Paid Inclusion | Search Marketing: General | Top News

Those marketing mobile applications via Google AdWords are getting some new weapons in their arsenal this week. Google has announced four new tools: a new Mobile App extension for AdWords, additional information to the click-to-download format, the ability to see Google Play stats in AdWords, and Custom Search Ads for mobile apps. The Mobile App extension -- currently for smartphones only, not tablets -- will help advertisers raise awareness of the fact that they have an app. When users are searching on their smartphones for a brand name or product category, they'll see relevant ads display [...]

Related Topics: 1 | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Five Key Learnings From A Local Marketing Success StoryOne of our most compelling speakers at the 2012 Local Search Association annual conference was Mary Boysman, VP Brand Marketing and Advertising at Aspen Dental, a fast-growing, multi-market health care provider. Speaking to a crowd of local search leaders from around the world, Boysman described in detail how she and her team developed a comprehensive [...] AdWords “Rotate Evenly” [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News Faking A Breadcrumb Trail To Stand Out On Google Google Testing "Trusted Stores" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

One of our most compelling speakers at the 2012 Local Search Association annual conference was Mary Boysman, VP Brand Marketing and Advertising at Aspen Dental, a fast-growing, multi-market health care provider. Speaking to a crowd of local search leaders from around the world, Boysman described in detail how she and her team developed a comprehensive strategy that drove meaningful local leads for her business and elicited support from the highest levels of her organization. The presentation left the group buzzing because it outlined the type of innovative and integrated local marketing [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search

The "rotate evenly" setting on an AdWords campaign has been a long-time best friend to habitual ad testers testers and landing page tweakers everywhere.  Next week, the "rotate evenly" setting will stop rotating after 30 days and default to a different setting, "optimize for clicks." Three settings currently exist: Rotate evenly Optimize for clicks Optimize for conversions The "rotate evenly" setting has been the preferred type for achieving apples-to-apples testing as ads were evenly disbursed at all times.   The change will now require users who are using ads to test l [...]

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

Ask someone who’s new to mobile SEO about it and they’re almost sure to tell you that mobile sites are duplicate content. The fear is that having the same content on two URLs will do the same thing it does in traditional SEO and split link equity and social shares, making it more difficult for either page to rank. In reality, with Google’s Old Possum/Skip Redirect update in December, user agent redirection is all that’s necessary for mobile sites to rank ahead of desktop sites in smartphone search, even if it’s the same content formatted differently. With canonical tags back to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | How To: Mobile Marketing | How To: SEO | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile 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: StarCraft Themed Google Easter Egg “Zerg Rush” Calls An Attack On Your Search ResultsGoogle’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders to save your search results. This Easter egg is themed after the popular strategy game StarCraft, and may just be the geekiest Easter egg to date. In Starcraft a variety of races exist, one of which are “Zergs.” These insect-lik [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Search Marketing Now will host a webcast next Wednesday, May 2 at 1 PM EDT. "Big Data Management - Forensics" will feature Brad Geddes, founder of Certified Knowledge.org -- and also recently crowned the most influential SEM by his peers -- and Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the vast amounts of data you need to assimilate for your marketing campaigns, come listen and learn from the experts. They'll demonstrate how to create a data management plan, how to drill down into large data sets to see what's working, how to avoid 'fire drills' -- a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SMX & DMD Alerts

Google's newest Easter egg, a search for "zerg rush," forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders to save your search results.  This Easter egg is themed after the popular strategy game StarCraft, and may just be the geekiest Easter egg to date. In Starcraft a variety of races exist, one of which are "Zergs."  These insect-like creatures don't overpower, rather that overtake others by sheer numbers.  The zerg attack is also know as "zerging" or the "zerg rush" and is popular gamer jargon for both Starcraft and other video games. The following video depicts an actual Zerg Rush video [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Easter Eggs | Google: Web Search

More and more, I have been interacting with executives using campaign management tools as their internal reporting systems. In most cases, these companies have an analytics package but prefer to use ad server data rather than analytics for internal tracking. Campaign management tools and analytics provide fundamentally different information, and while directionally similar in many cases, choosing the wrong data source can lead to inconsistent perception of success metrics between the executive level and those tasked with execution. Understanding the difference between analytics and ad se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

What began as an experiment 10 months ago is now showing up in nearly one of every five Google search results. I'm talking about authorship -- Google's use of the rel=author markup to identify content creators next to their content. A new SearchMetrics study published this week says that about 17 percent of queries included at least one instance of rel=author within the first 100 search results. The company analyzed a million keywords -- including a mix of navigational, information and transactional -- and found that more than 170,000 included a rel=author display somewhere in the first [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Authorship | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: Web Search | Top News

Was your site hit by Google's new Penguin Update that targets spam? Are you not guilty as charged? Google's got a new feedback form for that, as well as a method to report spam that should have been caught. I'm Innocent! The head of Google's web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the information on Twitter today. The first form is for those who believe they were targeted by mistake. It says: If your site was affected by the "Penguin" webspam algorithm update on April 24th, 2012, and you don't think it should have been affected, please give us more details below. It then asks for the URL of your [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update

Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else and when looking at trends, the more information, the better. Google has made a few other minor adjustments to this data recently. So if you use Google webmaster tools query data, see below for all the details of how these reports work. What's In the Top Search Queries Report First, a refresher on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Webmaster Central | 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: Penguin Update Recovery Tips & AdviceStruggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. We’ve got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with our own. What Was Penguin? The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to [...] The Penguin Update: Google’s Webspam Algorithm Gets Official NameMove over [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

It's unlikely to impact Google or Yelp in any way but Wolfram Alpha is getting into local search. According to a blog post today users can now search online or on its mobile apps for nearby businesses in a range of categories (chains only right now): Wolfram|Alpha now knows the locations of some 2.4 million retail establishments for 1,300 major chains in 220 different categories—gas stations, restaurants, department stores, and much more. It also knows the typical business hours for roughly one third of those locations, which makes queries like that one possible. When I tried it online (PC [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Wolfram Alpha

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News Yellow Pages Sites Beat Google In Local Data Accuracy Test Foursquare Hits 2 Bill [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News How The Bing Toolbar May Accidentally Submit Private Pages & Ads Yahoo's Re-Organ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google's Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we've seen, plenty are. We've got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with our own. What Was Penguin? The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to Google's search results that was designed to punish pages that have been spamming Google. If you're not familiar with spam, it's when people do things like "keyword stuffing" or "cloaking" that violate Google's guidelines. To learn more, see these pages: Google Webmaster Guidelines SEL's [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

  Advertise with Video, Social, and Mobile This white paper discusses: Selling your boss on the importance of investing in video ads Social metrics need to be more than counting "likes" Consumer mobile trends and outlooks Download now » [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages