Google received a procedural setback today in the long running litigation over its book-scanning project. Presiding Judge Dennis Chin ruled that the Authors Guild and a parallel trade organization for photographers could represent their members collectively against Google in the class action. Google had wanted to remove these organizations and deal individually with authors and […]
Oh, Google, you slay me. And it might slay you, too. Go do a search for “lionel richie” (or just click here) and — if you’ve been alive long enough — you’ll get a kick out of the joke that shows up in the Knowledge Graph box. That, for you youngins, is a reference to […]
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 To Chinese Searchers: Your Search Interruptions Are Not Our Fault Google announced on their blog that they have noticed an increase in complaints from searchers in mainland China. The issues […]
Google announced on their blog that they have noticed an increase in complaints from searchers in mainland China. The issues they are reporting is that Google.com and searchers are not coming up, as if Google.com is down. So Google investigated their servers and operations and noticed no issues with anything on Google’s side. So they […]
Last week, I read David Rodnitzky’s Enterprise SEM column on brand term bidding, and I loved it! Even better, it got me thinking about search and affiliate marketing again. While I think David made some excellent points, as I consumed his endless wit and wisdom, I kept thinking: All that brand keyword goodness, it’s almost […]
Google Product Search is getting a new name, Google Shopping, and a new business model where only merchants that pay will be listed. It’s the first time Google will decommission a search product that previously listed companies for free. The company says the change will improve the searcher experience, but it will also likely raise […]
As Google becomes more mainstream you hear random people in coffee shops, the grocery store, church and even kids in elementary school talking about Google’s updates. Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal, tweeted early this morning that he was at a local Starbucks and overheard a conversation that proved to him that Google’s latest updates […]
The Negative SEO conversation has truly been re-ignited and has everyone debating its affect again. Conversations are exploding with claims of lawsuits, paying people to remove backlinks, and just blowing up the site and starting all over. Fair enough. But the way I see it, there is really a simple solution to this issue. Disavow […]
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has once again come out swinging at Google, saying the company isn’t doing enough to fight copyright infringement online. But it may be that the RIAA itself is guilty of that charge. In a blog post this week, RIAA Executive VP Brad Buckles shares what the organization calls […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 5 Ways Conversion Takes Market Share Like Candy From A Baby They are out there, and they are not nice. They seek to take food from the mouths of your children […]
They are out there, and they are not nice. They seek to take food from the mouths of your children and to put your career at risk. They are your online competitors, and they won’t think twice about leaving you crying helplessly as they eat your ice cream cone. In every industry, at least one […]
This January Google launched “Search Plus Your World (SPYW),” a service that drastically customized search results based on social connections while bolstering visibility of Google+ products. While the new changes absolutely increased visibility for Google+, there was concern that SPYW would negatively affect other social networks. Five months into the SPYW, traffic to Facebook Pages is down. However, it’s also down […]
One of the most important aspects of increasing online conversions (particularly for B2B focused sites) is speaking to prospects at all stages in the buying cycle. A prospect doing research on a topic is at a different place than one who is looking to hire a company, and each prospect must be met at the […]
I was shocked by the widespread, deeply negative reaction to the introductory paragraph of my column last month, in which I described beginning every interview with a math problem. The response is probably best typified by EricM: Despite missing the entire point of the article (that you can use simple free tools to calculate confidence […]
Value, like beauty, is usually in the eye of the beholder. In online advertising, the relative value of various campaign metrics has been subject to much debate. For brand marketers, well-designed banners shown to targeted consumers on high quality sites are perceived to have high value. Similarly, clicks and high click through rates (CTRs) that […]
Google has a special logo on their home page today for Peter Carl Fabergé, a Russian Jewelry artist, know for creating easter eggs made of jewels, gems and high-end metals. These eggs were known as Fabergé Eggs. Peter Carl Fabergé was born today 166 years ago in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His family was in the […]
When Google+ and Google+ Pages for business were introduced a little less than a year ago many people in the local search arena began anticipating the day when Google would merge or integrate Google Places and Google+ Pages. Well, today is that day. Google Places pages have been entirely replaced by new Google+ Local pages. As of this […]
Searches are up in the two weeks since Google launched Knowledge Graph, its database of facts that adds context to a variety of search results. Although the company didn’t share specific numbers, Google Fellow Amit Singhal told the Wall Street Journal that “people are interacting with it [the Knowledge Graph] more” and “doing more [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: Google Releases Penguin Update 1.1 No matter that it’s late Friday night on the start of a three-day holiday weekend in the U.S., Google has just pushed out the first update […]
All too often, I get a fair amount of frantic emails from people who are seeing a dropoff in rankings and/or traffic after the latest algorithmic update and are looking for help or just a second opinion. Sometimes a keyword that has been number 2 for 8 months in a row moves down a spot […]
No. That is to say, no method of comparing country to country statistics fairly and accurately really exists. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you have a good day. Now, don’t tell me you want me to explain that? In the case of global organisations, the performance of businesses, people and campaigns […]
I’ve got a joke for ya: What has 250,000 URLs, a content team of 15 people and three target keywords? Your website. I understand SEO’s keyword obsession. It’s hard to let go, and a nice, high ranking for a really juicy phrase tends to justify budget. But, as I’ve written before, there’s more to justifying […]
Last week, iAcquire found itself accused of purchasing links for clients. Google seemed convinced, banning iAcquire from its index. Now, iAcquire says that it will no longer purchase links for new clients and will phase out paid links for existing customers and campaigns. “In certain cases, we have allowed finanical compensation to develop links, not […]
The Google Penguin update first touched down on April 24th and many webmasters that were hit by this update were frantically making changes to their web site in anticipation for a Penguin refresh. That refresh happened late Friday evening and we have one report that appears to be a legit Penguin recovery. An SEOmoz story […]
Google’s admitted the possibility of “negative SEO” for years. But in the wake of the Penguin Update, some have claimed it’s now easier than ever. Does a new change by Google in its help pages acknowledge this? Google’s admitted the possibility of negative SEO since at least 2007. On its help page, it previously had […]
Last week, my colleague and fellow columnist, Brad Geddes outlined 8 Features Advertisers Really Need from Google AdWords and I couldn’t agree more with the points he brought up. Back in December, I ran a wish list of my own, 7 Things On My Google AdWords Wishlist For Santa and many advertisers jumped in with their […]
In his Smashing Magazine response to Jakob Nielsen’s directive to build separate desktop and mobile sites, Bruce Lawson used the line “you never know better than your users what content they want” to argue that we shouldn’t be building separate mobile websites. I would agree with him that you never know better than your users […]
It’s the ‘new’ social network everyone is talking about – and if you’re a local business owner, it could be a strong addition to your online marketing strategy. For the past few years, marketers have stressed the need for local businesses to leverage social networks like Facebook and Twitter to drive engagement with existing and […]
No matter that it’s late Friday night on the start of a three-day holiday weekend in the U.S., Google has just pushed out the first update to its recent webspam-fighting Penguin algorithm. Let’s call it Penguin 2. Google’s Matt Cutts announced the news a short time ago on Twitter, calling it a “data refresh” that […]
Microsoft says it does send copyright-related takedown requests to its own search engine, Bing, in addition to the multitude of requests that it sends to Google. This comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that Microsoft is the number one submitter of copyright-related URL removal requests to Google. It sent more than 500,000 such requests […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations The search marketing agency, iAcquire, that was allegedly responsible for buying links for clients was just banned from Google’s search results. iAcquire was […]
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.
Like fighting spam and click fraud, finding and nixing bad ads on AdWords is a continually escalating battle. One telling stat the company revealed in a blog post today: 134 million. That’s how many ads Google axed in 2011, a 136% rise from the year before. Back in 2008, the company only disapproved 25 million […]
Slowly Bing is handing over more of its mapping “back end” functions to Nokia, as part of the deal that brought the two together for the Lumia-Windows Phone partnership. Yesterday Microsoft announced that in 24 countries, including the US and UK, Nokia (Navteq) will be delivering traffic data to Bing Maps. The company also said […]
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been challenged by advertisers on the topic of trademark search. The question is simple: why “waste” money buying traffic on trademark keywords when it is clear that the user intends to get to their site? Researching the topic, there have been a number of studies all concluding […]
The search marketing agency, iAcquire, that was allegedly responsible for buying links for clients was just banned from Google’s search results. iAcquire was cited as the agency behind Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation’s link buy request emails. For more on that see our story named What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be […]
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 Asked To Take Down Over 1.2 Million URLs Last Month From Search Results Google announced they have enhanced the Google Transparency Report to include the removal requests to take down […]
Google announced they have enhanced the Google Transparency Report to include the removal requests to take down individual search results from showing up in Google. In fact, Google has told us in the past month they have received 1,246,713 removal requests from 24,129 different target domains of 1,296 copyright owners by 1,087 reporting organizations. So […]
Google's Venice update has caused surprisingly few ripples in the search engine marketing industry given the scale of its impact on search: it's easily as important as Big Daddy from 2006, itself the most significant update made by Google up to that point.
Google’s Knowledge Graph has claimed its first “victim,” if you will: The content box that showed “People and Pages On Google+” is gone. In its place? A variety of Knowledge Graph-related content that will show up differently depending on the search query. In making the changes to this prime real estate on a search results […]