Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Helping Or Hurting: The Debate Over Google+ Local It’s been two months now since Google replaced Google Places with Google+ Local. The reactions thus far have been mixed: SEOs hailed it […]
It’s been two months now since Google replaced Google Places with Google+ Local. The reactions thus far have been mixed: SEOs hailed it as a revelation for small businesses, while consumers were left scratching their heads over the new Zagat system. Google+ Local has the potential to be everything this column is about: the intersection […]
The difference between intent and content is what Google is missing. Keywords at their most basic level are what we use to communicate, and if you think back to those COM 101 days, you’ll remember that the way it works is our thoughts are encoded in our brains into words, those words are spoken or […]
The interwebs are all a flutter over how a critic of NBC’s Olympic coverage had his Twitter account suspended after tweeting the email address of the executive in charge of that coverage. It was private, said Twitter. Public to anyone with Google, said journalist Guy Adams, whose account was suspended. Actually, from what I can […]
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 Explains Removal Of Age And Gender Targeting From AdCenter What do you do when you figure out that a lot of self-reported data you’re using to target ads is inaccurate […]
What do you do when you figure out that a lot of self-reported data you’re using to target ads is inaccurate or just plain sparse? If you’re Microsoft adCenter, you remove that targeting capability — in this case, age and gender. In a support thread from last week, a representative gives the reasoning behind a […]
Bing has just announced a small tweak to how its Social Sidebar functions — but it’s one that overcomes one of the Sidebar’s true limitations. The change is this: When using the Social Sidebar, you can now tag up to five Facebook friends with whom you want to share your search results. Before this change, […]
2012 is the year of mobile. Or is it 2013? Or maybe it was supposed to be 2011. Regardless of the calendar year that we’ll end up attributing the explosion of growth to, the mobile tide has been on the rise for some time. This past April, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a report citing […]
When you are managing hundreds of ad groups, it’s easy to neglect certain details; however, the diamonds in the rough can often only be found through account deep-dives. Thus, I’m always looking for the next tip or tool that could speed up and make more efficient my management of large, complex AdWords accounts. Below I […]
As SEOs, we focus on external customers: Getting more people outside an organization to sign up, buy, read, follow and otherwise participate. We don’t invest a lot of effort at helping internal customers: Colleagues at our own company who need help finding critical information, but end up grinding their teeth after 10 minutes lost in […]
During last week’s Facebook earnings call COO Sheryl Sandberg argued that the company could and would compete for marketing dollars “throughout the entire marketing funnel.” That is, from branding and awareness at the “top” of the so-called funnel to “demand fulfillment” at the “bottom.” Below is the quote in broader context: We believe we are […]
Confused by the latest link warnings that Google has been sending out? As we covered before, it’s all been pretty confusing. That’s why Google has posted more information meant to calm some worries, though it’s still likely that even after this, some are going to panic. The “Old” Link Warnings: Entire Site Impacted Google’s post […]
Want to know the how various countries are doing in the London 2012 Olympics? For finding out using a major search engine, I give the gold to Yahoo, with Google narrowly missing to earn silver and Bing getting bronze mainly by virtue of being third in a three contestant race. Ready, Set, Search! Checking for […]
iAcquire, banned by Google in late May after allegations of buying links for clients, has now has been restored to the Google index after two months. The company has blogged about the news and changes to its business model. iAcquire never says itself that it was banned over buying links for clients. Instead, it uses […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Gold Medal Roundup Of Online Olympics Resources The games of the XXX Olympiad begin in a few hours in London. For the next two weeks people around the globe will […]
Google has made some changes to the way advertisers do remarketing on AdWords, and is expanding an ongoing test. The various moves are aimed at making remarketing on AdWords simpler and more effective. The process of putting tags on websites for creating remarketing lists is undergoing a substantial change. Rather than putting a separate remarketing […]
The games of the XXX Olympiad have begun in London. For the next two weeks people around the globe will be viewing the games in person, on television and on the web. There will also likely be record numbers of posts, tweets, pins, etc. from viewers, media and athletes and other participants in the games. […]
Thomas is the CEO of a major corporation. He had supervised a recent website redesign project, loved the snazzy new look with bells and whistles created by a talented graphics designer – but was calling me to help with a problem. His beautiful new website wasn’t getting many visitors! “Why don’t people want to visit […]
As search marketers, we are constantly digging around in analytics, finding data, thinking it looks neat, then stepping back and saying, “But is this important?” I’ve done this a million times, and recently came across a quote that put some of what I’m always looking for into perspective. Don’t make the measurable things important but […]
In early June, at its “next dimension” mapping event, Google promised more complete 3D coverage in Google Earth. Yesterday it rolled out new versions of Earth for iOS devices. The list of fully rendered 3D cities includes: “Boulder, Boston, Charlotte, Lawrence (Kan.), Long Beach (Ca.), Los Angeles, Portland (Ore.), San Diego, Santa Cruz, Tampa, Tucson, […]
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.
The London 2012 Olympics kick off in a few hours and the opening ceremony is just around the corner. To celebrate the special day, Google and other search engines have special logos for the event. Today on Google, you will find the special Google logo for the opening ceremony. You should expect the Google logo […]
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 Now Allows You To Write Your Search Queries It started with typing your query, then voice queries, then image based queries and now Google announced you can hand-write your queries. […]
It started with typing your query, then voice queries, then image based queries and now Google announced you can hand-write your queries. Google announced today you can hand write your query on your smartphone or tablet when on Google.com. All you have to do is place your finger on the Google home page and use […]
We invite you to take this 2-question Search Engine Land survey. It will take about a minute. Those who complete the survey will be eligible to win some great prizes. The Grand prize is a 16GB iPad2. Lucky runners up will win an Apple iTouch and one of two iPod Nanos. Click the link to […]
It seems like I am always investigating new SEO leads. I’m constantly digging through sites, looking for SEO-related issues and opportunities. Sometimes I find glaring issues. Some SEO issues are really tough to find. It’s like in that Weird Al movie UHF when the kid has to find a marble in a pool full of […]
Among the scores of data points search marketers have at their disposal, perhaps no other metric is as shrouded by mythology and misconception as ad position. Despite careful studies showing, including one by RKG in 2006, and confirmation by Google in 2009 that conversion performance doesn’t vary much by position, you will still hear pronouncements, […]
Google’s results are getting even more deeply intertwined with Google+. New links are now showing under results that show “Actively Discussed On Google+.” The link is expandable and brings in Google+ comments or posts when clicked. The “Actively Discussed on Google+” displays much like a sitelink with a blue “Show” button that will expand the discussion without […]
Google’s calculator results has just got a major upgrade to the answers provided and the user interface. Now when you search Google for a math answer, Google will not only show you the answer but also give you a new interface for the answer, including a full size 34-button scientific calculator. Here is a screen […]
B2B SEM often feels like the ugly step-sister of B2C SEM, mainly because the budgets for most B2B campaigns are so much smaller than consumer campaigns. The ‘sexy’ side of B2B SEM, however, is in the potential ROI that a company can get out of a great paid search campaign. Imagine a company that has […]
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 Antitrust “Settlement” Take Two: Not Quite Yet On the basis of statements and representations made in a Financial Times report, I wrote a post yesterday entitled “Google Strikes Antitrust Deal […]
On the basis of statements and representations made in a Financial Times report, I wrote a post yesterday entitled “Google Strikes Antitrust Deal With EU, Avoids Legal Battle.” But it’s clear 24 hours later that it was premature to make such sweeping statements and declare the case “settled” in Europe. A Reuters article today makes […]
Facebook is working on improving its search engine, but a company executive says it doesn’t make sense “to even begin to think about doing web search” right now. Lars Rasmussen, Director of Engineering at Facebook, made the comments in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. He told the paper that he’s “working on something […]
Yesterday, Google webmaster tools launched Index Status (available under Health) that charts the number of indexed pages for your site over the last year. Total Indexed Count Google says that this count is accurate (unlike the site: search operator) and is post-canonicalization. In other words, if your site includes a lot of duplicate URLs (due […]
Looking to do research based on data gathered from across the web? That’s one of the purposes of Common Crawl, and the group has just released new data, as well as a contest to encourage use of that data The 2012 data, which contains 3.8 billion web documents, shows stats such as 63% of top […]
Joel Harvey is, among other things, the Video Scientist at Conversion Sciences. Over the past four years, he has developed video strategies for a large number of online retailers. We’ve found that video is great for drawing and converting qualified search traffic, so I asked Joel to tell us his tricks for getting video ranked […]
Invariably, when people get a taste of a good thing, they want more of it. This is definitely the case with online advertisers and their use of first party data in site retargeting. Site retargeting has been one of the hottest sectors in the online advertising space over the last couple of years, as advertisers […]
One of the key findings of the Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update from Adobe (Efficient Frontier) is that search marketers can get more value from mobile campaigns than they now can on the PC. According to the report cost-per-click (CPC) prices are lower for both tablets and smartphones than comparable PC search campaigns and […]
Twitter is working on a project that will give users access to an archive of all of their own tweets. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told the New York Times this week that the company is building a tool that would let Twitter users download their own tweets. He didn’t provide a timeframe for such a […]
Alex Chitu reports Google is testing a new feature for the Google Knowledge Graph. The new feature is a way to show an expanded version of the knowledge graph in the top of the search results. Currently, when you search in Google and the knowledge graph comes up, it shows you up to five related […]