There is little doubt that mobile search is the hot topic in the SEO world at the moment. Some brands are now finding that more than 30 percent of all searches come from mobile devices, according to Mobile Marketer. It’s fair to say that mobile search is quickly moving out of the Stone Age and […]
On June 7, 2011 Google announced rel=author. There are many articles that explain the mechanics of how to setup rel=author tagging, including this excellent one by Rick DeJarnette on Search Engine Land. While this announcement got people thinking about author authority, an “authority strategy” for your business involves a lot more than rel=author. It invoves […]
Why does it seem like a paid search launch has as many moving parts as launching a space shuttle? To make sure that everything gets taken care of, I adhere to a five step launch process when building a new paid search program. This process makes it easier to divide and conquer developing each part […]
Looking for facts about consumer product goods in the US? Open source data platform Factual has just launched its Factual Global Products with information on more than 517,000 consumer products. Records for each product include product name, brand, category , size, and UPC. Direct links to images for many products are also included as well as a Factual ID […]
Microsoft posted and then retracted their announcement of renaming the search alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo to the Yahoo Bing Network. Part of that announcement is that Microsoft adCenter, the name of Microsoft’s search ad network, is now being renamed to Bing Ads. You can see the retracted blog post on the new Yahoo Bing […]
Google appears to be testing out a new navigational layout, one that takes the search options that normally show in the left-hand column of a search results page and moving them to above the search results. It seem similar to one that surfaced in June. This is how things normally look: The arrow points to […]
Google may be in trouble again over the automated suggestions that its Autocomplete feature provides to searchers. According to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (and also reported by TechCrunch), Bettina Wulff — wife of the country’s former president, Christian Wulff — is suing Google because Autocomplete suggests prostitution-related terms when a searcher types her name […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablets Use Bing As Default Search Engine Ubergizmo is reporting that Bing (not Google) will be the default search engine for the Amazon browser on the new […]
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.
Ubergizmo is reporting that Bing (not Google) will be the default search engine for the Amazon browser on the new Kindle tablets. (We were able to confirm this with Microsoft directly earlier this evening.) The original Kindle Fire used Google. Amazon is likely to sell several million of these new devices given their aggressive pricing […]
In the wake of Google’s Panda algorithm update, its cadre of human search quality raters has a new task: giving Google specific quality ratings for individual landing pages. The new “Page Quality Rating Guidelines” section adds a whopping 32 pages to the handbook that Google provides to those human raters (via contractors like Lionbridge and […]
The New York Times reports Vitaly Borker, the merchant who boasted of being abusive to customers and claimed, inaccurately, that such behavior had a side benefit of producing good rankings in Google, has been sentenced. The sentencing was to four years in federal prison and ordered to pay approximately $100,000 in restitution and fines. Vitaly […]
The Atlantic published an article about what Google calls “Ground Truth,” its allegedly top-secret map-development process. As the name implies, the idea is to create digital maps that more accurately reflect the ground truth of the real world vs competitors’ offerings. The trigger for the article is undoubtedly Google’s desire to expose the complexity, layers […]
It’s no secret that the halls of the Googleplex contain more than a few Star Trek fans, and to commemorate the 46th anniversary of what is one of the most iconic sci-fi series ever, Google has produced an interactive Star Trek doodle now airing on its home page today. We won’t give it all away, […]
Google has supported the ability to add authorship tagging to your web pages in order to give authors the ability to get more face time in the search results. But often web sites do not implement them fully. So how do 1 out of 5 results have an authorship image? David Harry dug into it […]
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 Offers Own Version Of “Pepsi Challenge” Against Google: “Bing It On” Surely you remember (or have heard about) the now classic “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign from the 1970s and early […]
SERPs.com has quietly launched a SERPs Volatility Index, which aims to work like the MozCast tool to track search results fluctuations and help webmasters know if there was an algorithm update at Google and Bing. While MozCast only tracks Google, SERPs.com tracks both Google and Bing. SERPs.com also shows a 30-day and 90-day volatility charge. […]
Yahoo’s slide continues with the news today that Pinterest is now sending more traffic to publishers than organic Yahoo search results. That’s according to Shareaholic, a provider of social sharing buttons and widgets with more than 200,000 publishers using its tools. In a blog post today, Shareaholic says Pinterest was the fourth biggest traffic source […]
It’s official. Nielsen’s Designated Market Areas (DMAs) are becoming the paid search targeting standard for metro areas. Microsoft’s adCenter has announced it’s adopting DMAs as its method for targeting metropolitan areas, a little over a week after Google announced the same shift. The change, in adCenter’s case, will take place in late September and October. […]
Google has been dropping lots of hints lately about their desire to become not just a leader in advertising, but a leader in ecommerce as well. A recent Forrester report claims that 30% of all online shoppers start their product research at Amazon.com is just fuel to the fire. Google is trying to combat that […]
Competitive keyword analysis should play in integral part in your paid and organic search optimization strategy. As paid search activity continues to grow, so will the number of businesses you compete against within the search battlefield. Understanding who your competitors are and the keywords they’re optimizing for is critical to staying relevant, competitive and profitable […]
Surely you remember (or have heard about) the now classic “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign from the 1970s and early 1980s. Pepsi went around to public venues like shopping malls and offered people blind taste tests of its own caramel colored soda vs Coke. Overwhelmingly people preferred Pepsi to Coke. Microsoft is now trying something similar […]
Does it bother you as much as it bothers me? Surely you’ve seen it. Perhaps you know someone who’s done it in the past (or good grief, is still doing it!). I can’t imagine anyone who reads Search Engine Land on a regular basis would do it, but then again, many things in life surprise […]
Over the past week or so, I’ve been hearing reports via the forums that Google’s search results have been in a state of flux. Typically when I see such a level of discussion about fluctuations in Google, I expect Google to announce a algorithm update. This morning I saw a spike in that communication and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Activity Makes Michelle Obama The FLOS (First Lady Of Search) A Pew Research study that was released this week showed that Democrats are more likely to mix social media and […]
A Pew Research study that was released this week showed that Democrats are more likely to mix social media and political activity. They might be more likely to mix politics and search, too, at least judging from data comparing search activity from Michelle Obama and Ann Romney that Google has shared today. Michelle Versus Ann […]
There’s a cat and mouse game going on between developers, publishers and mobile users. The former group is often trying to “connect the dots” and gather as much data and information on user behavior and, in some cases, individual activity as possible. By contrast, mobile phone owners (especially smartphone owners) are often trying to thwart […]
In July, I wrote the US Federal Trade Commission asking for it to review whether search engines are complying with paid listing disclosure guidelines it created in 2002, since it appeared these were being ignored. After two months, I finally got a response. The FTC is aware of the issues but didn’t have more to […]
As a parental co-founder (or dad) of 3 girls, I often have to teach them hard truths for their own good – ‘no, your science experiment can’t be asking your sister to stick a fork in an outlet’, ‘no, you can’t marry your 8 year old boyfriend’ and ‘you are absolutely not going out in that!’. […]
As B2B marketers assess the strengths and weaknesses of their SEO programs so far this year, the relationship with social media marketing must come into focus. As I wrote in a column last year, 66% of organizations with a formal SEO process were integrating social media into their overall SEO strategy. But social media plays […]
Regular readers of the Search & Conversion column know well one of my fellow contributors, Brian Massey. His columns are consistently some of the most educational and entertaining. The first time I met Brian was at a Pubcon session on landing pages, where he had donned a white lab coat, was engaging the audience — […]
Microsoft AdCenter advertisers have longed for some way to verify that their ads were running, and a solution is coming, promises a blog post from Microsoft Advertising. The fix will come in the form of an updated ad preview tool, which will let advertisers see whether their ads are showing generally, or to a targeted […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New UK Conservative Party Co-Chair Grant Shapps Founded Google Spamming Business The UK’s Conservative Party has a new co-chair, The Right Honourable Grant Shapps, Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. Honorable […]
The UK’s Conservative Party has a new co-chair, The Right Honourable Grant Shapps, Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. Honorable except with Google, which considers the business he apparently founded to be pushing a tool designed to spam its search engine and fill its listings with rubbish. According to The Guardian, Shapps founded HowToCorp in […]
Fact: All businesses, large or small, want to save money wherever they can. I understand this. I sympathize with this. What I don’t understand, however, is why so many businesses try to take the cheap route and cut corners in their online strategy— and then are dumbfounded when they get scammed/receive terrible results/get blocked by […]
As “online marketing” evolves, you’ll note I’ve used a generic term there rather than SEO — the titles and descriptions of what we do on a daily basis change as does the focus of the effort. Both “Panda” and “Penguin” in their different ways have had a dramatic influence on how important people think “content” […]
Recently, Google went a little crazy — it’s cool; they came back — which subsequently caused anyone who owns a website to go a little nuts, too. Google has sent out oodles of the above messages over the past couple of months, and it has caused a lot of people to question if and how […]
Google’s display network is massive, encompassing more than 4 billion daily page views, 700 million monthly users, and reaching more than 80% of the online audience. Yet, with all this inventory, many marketers fail with display marketing. The major reasons are they either are trying to reach the incorrect goals or they don’t understand how […]