Search Month is an exclusive monthly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land from the previous month. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past month. 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 More Than 10 Is The New 10 Blue Links For Bing New UK Conservative Party Co- [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Month

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 Amazon Refuses To Pay-To-Play In Google's New Shopping Search Google Removed The [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

The head of Google web spam fighting team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google will be rolling out a "small" algorithm change that will "reduce low-quality 'exact-match' domains" from showing up so highly in the search results. Cutts said this will impact 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. He added it is "unrelated to Panda/Penguin. Panda is a Google algorithm filter aimed at fighting low quality content; Penguin is one aimed at fighting web spam. This should come as no surprise, as Cutts said a couple years ago that Google will be looking at why exact domain m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: EMD Update | Google: SEO | 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: Apple Does The “Miracle On 34th Street” Thing, Promotes Third Party Maps In App StoreIn the beloved holiday film Miracle on 34th Street, people at Macy’s department store in New York begin sending shoppers to rival Gimbels and other stores when they haven’t got what customers want. That’s essentially what Apple did today — first with its apology letter and now with its promotion of third party maps in [...] After [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

In the beloved holiday film Miracle on 34th Street, people at Macy's department store in New York begin sending shoppers to rival Gimbels and other stores when they haven't got what customers want. That's essentially what Apple did today -- first with its apology letter and now with its promotion of third party maps in the App Store: "Find maps for your iPhone." Apple is not equally calling attention to the many public transportation apps available for iOS, but they also can help compensate for the current deficiencies of Apple Maps. Danny writes that had Google been ready wi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Top News

It's official. Apple's new Maps in iOS 6 have problems so serious that even Apple CEO Tim Cook has issued a public apology about them. What does Apple do next? Going back to Google-powered Maps is unlikely but not out-of-the-question. More likely, Apple will push through the pain. However, it could reconsider whether maps really should be a a home-built product. Ripping Out Google Previously, Maps in iOS were largely powered by Google's mapping data (and remain that way in iOS 5). Google has been building its mapping product for years, something that makes sense for a search engine. Many s [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Maps | Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Top News

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. Googler's Car Hits 149009 On Google's Birthday: Source: Google+ Psy At Google Korea: [...]

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has issued a letter apologizing for the current mediocrity of Apple Maps. The letter is striking in a couple of ways. First, it's noteworthy for its direct admission that Apple Maps "fell short" and, second, for its recommendation that people try other, competing map apps or services such as Google, Bing, Mapquest, Waze or Nokia. Here's the letter in its entirety: To our customers, At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: Maps | Channel: Mobile

Messy, incomprehensible analytics make my stomach churn. Just knowing that I’m going to spend the next several hours cleaning up sloppy data puts the kibosh on my day. The problem with Google Analytics, or any analytics package for that matter, is that even if my site is properly tagged and I’ve developed a systematic inbound link tagging notation, it’s almost certain that my Source/Medium/Referral URL reports will still include inconsistencies that need to be resolved to provide accurate reporting: Software doesn’t know what isn’t logically defined. Google does a decent job of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Right as all the negative Apple Maps stories were coming out, Google's Motorola division created an ad and Twitter campaign to argue that, unlike Apple Maps, Google Maps won't get you lost. The campaign #iLost, also promoted on Google+, used a specific address as an example of one that Apple wouldn't get right: 315 E 15th Street in Manhattan. As the Siri screenshot indicates, Apple Maps can't find this address. However Apple Insider says the address is a park and not a real street address at all. The blog argues that Google created a false example to make Apple look bad: The problem, [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: Maps | Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile

If you're searching for movie information on Google, you can now watch trailers right in your search results. Google posted about the change this afternoon, saying that a new "trailer" button will appear on searches for specific movie titles, and on queries like [showtimes nyc] or [movies nyc]. On that more generic type of search, Google offers a list of movies with corresponding trailer buttons, like this: Clicking a button brings up the trailer in a full-screen pop-up window, with the video coming from a "Googlemovietrailers" YouTube account. The YouTube trailer page is unlisted [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: Web 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: Bing’s Social Sidebar Gains Klout Scores & People RecommendationsKlout has become the latest social service to be integrated into the new Bing Social Sidebar that was launched earlier this year. Bing says that Klout scores will now appear next to people surfaced in the sidebar, plus Klout’s data will be used to help determine some of the people who show. From Bing’s post: [...] Google Merges Insights For Search With Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Klout has become the latest social service to be integrated into the new Bing Social Sidebar that was launched earlier this year. Bing says that Klout scores will now appear next to people surfaced in the sidebar, plus Klout's data will be used to help determine some of the people who show. From Bing's post: On Bing, we will surface Klout scores and influential topics for many of the experts in the People Who Know section of the sidebar. Klout as a social influence signal in the sidebar will really help customers connect with the right experts on the topics they are searching for. Here's [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: Analysis | Klout | Microsoft: Bing Social Search | Top News

3 of 7 keys this guide will discuss: Let technology do the heavy lifting Place a high value on speed Combine premium and marketplace ads for greatest impact Download now » [...]

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Google has merged two of its popular search/keyword research tools. Google Insights for Search has been absorbed by Google Trends; the combined tool keeps the Google Trends name and exists at the www.google.com/trends address, too. If you try to access the Insights for Search address (www.google.com/insights/search), Google redirects you to the new Google Trends. When Google launched Insights for Search in 2008, I remember one of the first really helpful uses that I had for it was to help a client figure out if he should be using the term "lawyer" or "attorney" more frequently. As I use [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Trends | SEM Tools: Keyword Research

Technology news site The Verge shared a photo and video of Google chairman Eric Schmidt doing the "Gangnam Style" dance while visiting Korea this week. He took a break from his tour of East Asia where he is launching the Nexus 7 to meet the PSY - the rapper behind the record-breaking viral YouTube hit. It's a good thing he brought his dancing shoes. The song is currently number two in the country on the Billboard's Top 100. Hankyung journalist Kim Kwang-hyun intially shared the photo in a tweet. You can also get a brief sense of Schmidt's dancing skills in the video below. Perhaps we ca [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: News | Google: Other | Google: Outside US | Google: YouTube & Video

Time is running out! Search Marketing Expo - SMX East begins next Tuesday in New York City. Register now to reserve your spot! The search marketing landscape changes almost daily, but your goals don’t. You strive to increase traffic, improve conversions and maximize your ROI. Invest in attending SMX East and you’ll get 3 days for cutting edge tactics that will make you a more successful internet marketer. Conference chairs Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, and the all-star SMX programming team, have developed a comprehensive agenda that is tactical, strategic and inspiring. Whether [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX | SMX & DMD Alerts

Twitter recently updated its robots.txt file and, though the change opens up millions of pages to being crawled, there's no guarantee that the main search engines want what Twitter is offering. The Sociable seems to have been the first to notice Twitter's robots.txt changes, which now specifically allow Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and other bots to crawl through some of Twitter's search results pages. Twitter: Change Made To Help With Discovery Twitter confirmed the change to us, saying: This change will help people find popular and helpful Twitter pages, such as the #olympics hashtag pa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | SEO: Blocking Spiders | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Search

Another source of Google search referrer data appears lost. Searches through Google that happen in Apple's Safari browser search box in iOS 6, Apple's latest mobile operating system, no longer pass along search terms to publishers. For those unfamiliar, "referrer" data is information a browser passes along to a publisher about the last page you were on. When you do a search on a search engine, this means what you searched for -- the exact words -- are passed along as part of the referrer. The change, as we've learned as this story has developed, is because Apple apparently -- as part of [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Analytics | Features: Analysis | Google: Analytics | Top News

Poor URL structure is a frequent SEO issue, one that can impair rankings, keep pages out of the search engine indexes, and suck ranking authority from your other pages or even the entire websites. Some content management systems bake poor URL structures right into their websites. Lax rules can be a culprit, for example, not encoding spaces or special characters. Meanwhile, some CMS platforms devise URLs using illegal characters that should not appear in addresses. Others generate multiple URLs for pages, creating duplicate content. While it is true that search engines go to great leng [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO