Microsoft is expanding Bing's capabilities in the living room with news today that Xbox users can search the web via their console. It's part of the "new entertainment experience" that Microsoft is pushing out this week via the Xbox. Bing Voice Search has been available on the Xbox since June 2011, but it could only search content available via the console itself -- games, movies, TV shows, music and so forth. But Microsoft has added Internet Explorer into the mix, and with that comes the ability to do Bing voice searches of web content, not just Xbox content. Here's how Bing explains it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Voice Search | Search Features: Search By Voice | Top News

Webcast October 25, 2012 1PM EST - Inbound links are paramount to getting top search engine rankings. But how do you go about getting those links? And what's more important, quantity or quality? During this webcast you can ask the experts these and your other link building questions. Register now! [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SMX & DMD Alerts

It’s said that keywords are a proxy for a customer, right? So let’s talk about the customer. Schema this, canonical that, and black and white zoo animals… if you don’t have a search expert on payroll, you’re already behind the Joneses. I get emails like the one below all the time, this one being from the talented owner of Castleview 3D Architectural Renderings: “I need your help.  I realy don't get the whole keywords/SEO/web marketing thing -- but I know enough to know that I shouldn't and don't want to tackle it myself. I'm a small business (small = just me) and maybe I can't [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Critics | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEO: General

In the last few articles, we focused on minimums of keyword research and measuring performance, and now we can extend that process to budgeting. With search budgets, especially for paid search, we have three different options for budgeting. As the fairly tale goes, Goldilocks samples each of the bowls of porridge to see which was the right one for her. In developing our global search budget, we need to build our same three bowls, and lets call these bowls of budget could, should and would. For one project recently, I mined a universe of 150,000 keywords for a company across their entire [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Multinational Search

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, a name familiar to most of the readers here, was inducted into University of Kentucky's Arts and Sciences Hall Of Fame last Friday. This was reported in the Kentucky Kernel. The article explains that Matt Cutts attended the University of Kentucky while working for the Department of Defense as part of the university's co-operative program. During that time, he became very interested in information retrieval and search engines and became one of Google's first 100 employees. On Friday, Matt Cutts visited the University's Student Center to talk to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees | SEM Industry: Awards | SEM Industry: General

Google News announced they have improved the search results in Google News to enable expandable clusters, like they have a year ago on the Google News home page. What this means is if you do a search within Google News, you will be able to expand a news cluster to see more sources. You will also see videos and photos related to that news cluster and the improved layout within the cluster as well. Here is a picture: Here is how Google explains the added features: Click-to-expand news results clusters: Each news results cluster is collapsed down to one result with the exception [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: News

Search is a "core priority" at Yahoo, but the company isn't planning any significant investments in local search in the near future. That's some of what new CEO Marissa Mayer revealed today in her first earnings call since she joined the company this summer. Mayer spoke several times about Yahoo and search in general, saying it's one of the "core daily habits" of Yahoo users -- a fact that makes search one of her core priorities as CEO. But that future focus on search won't apparently include Yahoo's local search products. Why? Because local search is, proverbially speaking, a tough n [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Top News | Yahoo: Maps & Local | Yahoo: 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: Election 2012: Searching And Researching The Presidential DebatesThe final debate between U.S. presidential candidates Obama and Rommney airs tonight. Until the election next month, a lot of attention will continue to be on the presidential and vice presidential debates. Here’s an easy and free way to keyword search debate video and then immediately view the video online. In fact, all of the [...] Is Ask.com Continuing To Play The Google Ar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

The final debate between U.S. presidential candidates Obama and Rommney airs tonight. Until the election next month, a lot of attention will continue to be on the presidential and vice presidential debates. Here's an easy and free way to keyword search debate video and then immediately view the video online. In fact, all of the presidential debates back to 1988 can offer keyword searchable video. Where do you search and access? Visit the wonderful, irreplaceable and important C-SPAN Video Library. I'll be taking an in-depth look at this resource in an upcoming report but [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Features: General | Search Engines: Government Search Engines | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

We recently received an email from a reader who'd made an inquiry with Google AdWords support. Why, this reader had asked, is Ask.com allowed to buy AdWords and rank for certain surprising terms, when its landing page features mostly ads above the fold? Doesn't that violate Google's policies on arbitrage? All About Arbitrage Arbitrage, when it comes to Google AdWords, is when a advertiser hopes it can buy traffic from Google for less than it makes off ads on its own site. In other words, say a company buys an ad for $0.60 per click on Google. Visitors click on that ad, come to the adverti [...]

Related Topics: Ask | Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: AdWords | Top News

For marketers, social media is the "new" normal. With Facebook surpassing a billion users, Twitter influencing brand perception and social change, and viral YouTube videos generating phenomenal buzz (positive and negative), marketing via social media is a must for brands and businesses, large and small. We designed SMX Social Media Marketing to help you understand, navigate and leverage the richly varied, but sometimes confusing channels that make up the social online universe. Sessions focus on best practices, tactics, tips and success stories from some of the most effective social media m [...]

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

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 Foursquare Takes On Yelp With New Homepage Search Box SEMPO: FTC Is "Strongly Con [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

Are US small businesses (SMBs) abandoning Google AdWords in droves because of rising CPC prices? That's the implication of a recent story in the New York Times: [Concern over the rising cost of keywords] has become increasingly common as online advertising has become a standard channel for large companies. Attracting those additional advertisers has been great for Google, which reported a 42 percent increase in paid clicks, year over year, for the second quarter of 2012. But the heightened competition has driven up the prices for keywords and made it harder for small companies like Mr. Telfor [...]

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

You've probably heard all of the noise about how much Apple Maps suck, but do you know what doesn't suck? The 1,000,000,000 iOS devices projected to be in the hands of consumers worldwide by 2015. But forget about the far away future. Tomorrow, Apple is likely to unveil the "iPad Air", which combined with the iPhone5 + upgraded older iOS devices + Santa Claus is going to equal tens of millions of new iOS6 devices in use Q1 of 2013, just in the US alone.  And most users will be using Apple Maps to find local stuff, no matter how much they purport to suck. So even if you think Google Pla [...]

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

Enterprise SEO has always emphasized visibility, authority and relevance. If you’re optimizing a site with more than 10,000 pages, you now need a streamlined way to audit site quality. Quality matters, and it matters even more on large sites, because you can repeat the same issues so many times. That drags down your entire site. Here’s what I include in any large site quality audit: 1.  Check For Busted Links Well, duh. Hopefully I don’t have to write about this. Do make sure you’re checking both onsite and outbound links, though. 2.  Check For Duplicate Content Again, d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Enterprise SEO

When I was a math teacher, I spent a lot of time doing what I thought was, well, ‘teaching.’ In my first few months on the job, I focused on the logic behind the mathematics, not the formulas or other shortcuts. Students constantly complained about this, and they were failing tests, so, after higher-level discussions, I started going over the easy way to do things: the formulas. I was rather surprised when students started doing really well on tests – but when I verbally assessed their understanding of the logic, I was still greatly disappointed. Furthermore, they completely fell f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

Google has added explanations in the "people also search for" section of the knowledge graph results. The explanations shows why Google added a specific person or thing in the related area under a specific knowledge graph. Google associates this with the bacon number easter egg they ran earlier this year but in a much more useful way. For example, search for [Kirsten Dunst] and you will see a "People also search for" with Tobey Maguire also showing up. When you hover your mouse over Tobey Maguire, it shows the text, "Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire both appear in Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Web Search | Top News

We've all seen it, lurking in our Analytics reports, nearly always at the top, sucking a huge chunk of data into a black hole of uncertainty and uselessness. Not provided was predicted as having a single-digit impact on sites. In my research, I've found it to have upwards of a 40% impact, especially on smaller traffic sites. In conversations with clients, and looking at my own sites, I knew the numbers had to be better – but what do you tell a client when chunks of data, in some cases over 30%, are attributed to (not provided) instead of the keywords you've given time, attention and te [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Beginner | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

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 Gives Update On Shopping Going Full Paid Inclusion, Hints At AdWords’ Future On Q3 CallNow that Google’s new pay-for-play Shopping is in full swing (the changeover took place October 17), the company used its earnings call to share thoughts on its success thus far, and its future vision for the product. Additionally, Google execs came out with some tidbits about the status and future of other elements of its [...] Search In Pics: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Now that Google's new pay-for-play Shopping is in full swing (the changeover took place October 17), the company used its earnings call to share thoughts on its success thus far, and its future vision for the product. Additionally, Google execs came out with some tidbits about the status and future of other elements of its advertising business. [caption id="attachment_137132" align="alignright" width="259"] Nikesh Arora[/caption] According to SVP and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, the company is listing more than a billion products from tens of thousands of merchants and over 100,0 [...]

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