Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: After Penalizing Interflora & UK Newspapers, Google Warns Against Advertorials After penalizing Interflora and UK newspapers Google has issued a stern warning that selling links on sites that pass PageRank can lead to a penalty in Google. Google specifically called this a “reminder,” because in 2007 they clearly went on record that selling paid links can lead to a penalty. Google’s Matt Cutts, the head [...] Google Quietly Rolls Out New Offe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

After penalizing Interflora and UK newspapers, Google has issued a stern warning that selling links on sites that pass PageRank can lead to a penalty in Google. Google specifically called this a "reminder," because in 2007, they clearly went on record that selling paid links can lead to a penalty. Google's Matt Cutts, the head of search spam, specifically called out the techniques believed to have resulted in the penalties leading to the PageRank drop of the UK newspapers and the ranking drop of the huge UK floral company Interflora. Cutts called out advertorials specifically in his warning [...]

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

Google is now rolling out Offer Extensions, their latest ad extension that lets AdWords advertisers post deal offers underneath a normal Google Search ad. If your AdWords account has been upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns, then you’ll see the new Offer Extension in your account right now, in the “extensions” tab. If not, you’ll have to wait until your account gets upgraded, which is supposed to happen by the end of the month. Previously, they were only available to a select few number of beta customers. Here’s what an Offer Extension looks like: Users who click on the View Off [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Offers | Top News

The concept of "influence marketing" has suddenly exploded into all aspects of search and online marketing. In his SMX Toronto keynote address, Sam Fiorrella, co-author of Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media, will present a new methodology that will advance the concept of influence marketing from a social media amplification tool to a true lead nurturing and sales conversion program. Based on real case studies and empirical evidence, Sam will also highlight the growing role that SEM will play in the future of influence marketing. It’s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX

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. Google Cushions: Source: Google+ Google Toys: Source: Flickr Gmail & Google Drive Latte: Source: Google+ Google Istanbul Office View: Source: Google+ Google/Bing Traitor Cake: Source: Google+ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

Google has downgraded the Toolbar PageRank scores for several dozen UK operated newspapers and news sites today. It is believed the reason Google has downgraded their PageRank scores is because they were selling links on a massive scale. Google Penalizes Sites Selling Links As you may remember, in October 2007, Google went on record that selling links can hurt your PageRank and rankings in Google. Shortly later, Google went ahead dished out PageRank penalties to many US news sites including sites like the Washington Post, Forbes, Sun Times and dozens of others. This is nothing new. Goo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search

My previous article was about estimating the potential for growth for those paid search campaigns capped due to insufficient budget. This was definitely the easy part since the logic behind the assumptions involved in the calculation was fairly simple. Now, we can address those paid search campaigns capped due to insufficient rank – and there are going to be more assumptions involved since all metrics are going to be impacted: the rank obviously, then the CTR, CPC, and pretty much everything else as a result. This article goes beyond impression share (IS) analysis and is actually mostl [...]

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

When a direct global response company hired an outside agency for its SEM services, was it worth it? Find out next Thursday, February 28, in a live webcast hosted by our sister site, Digital Marketing Depot. Commissioned by the Covario search agency, Forrester Consulting used its Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology to produce a case study that focuses on the financial impact and return on investment of Covario's SEM services for a global direct response company. Forresterís TEI Project Director Reggie Lau will walk through the financial impact of Covario's paid search program fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SMX & DMD Alerts

The popular UK flower website Interflora seems to have been penalized in Google. They no longer rank for their key terms, such as [flowers], [flower delivery] and related terms -- nor do they rank for their own name [Interflora]. Here is a picture of the search results in Google UK for [Interflora]. As you can see, the number one ranking is not Interflora.co.uk; they are only coming up on the first page right now because they have paid for an AdWords listing. We asked Google to confirm if they have penalized Interflora for any reason, and Google would not comment. They said: We typi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search

Google has a very artistic logo on their home page today for the 88th birthday of illustrator and writer Edward Gorey. Edward Gorey, who died at the age of 75 on April 15, 2000, would have turned 88 years old today. The Chicago-born illustrator and artist is well-known for his works on The Gashlycrumb Tinies and The Doubtful Guest. He is also known for being a puzzling man who never married and never had a desire for a relationship. Google's logo, one of the widest logo's I've seen in a Google Doodle, represents Edward Gorey's work, style and passion. You can learn more about Gore [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos

Once in every five times that someone clicks a search result, it goes to one of five websites: Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia or Amazon. That leaves about 80 percent of search clicks for the rest of us. Going further, the top 500 websites received almost 50 percent of all clicks from search results, and the top 10,000 websites got almost 75 percent of all search clicks. All of this is according to the 2013 Digital Marketer Report from Experian Marketing Services (Hitwise). The company says that those five sites I listed above combined to get 20.07 percent of all clicks from US [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | eBay | Facebook | Features: Analysis | Google: YouTube & Video | Search & Society: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

[caption id="attachment_65488" align="alignright" width="240"] Image courtesy Shutterstock.com.[/caption] A Wisconsin appeals court this week affirmed a circuit court's ruling that it's OK to use trademarks as keywords to trigger the display of paid search ads. The court's conclusions are in line with search engines' policies with regard to trademark bidding and with a Federal case decided last year in California. The Wisconsin case, which involved two personal injury law firms, centered around what it means to "use" a name for advertising purposes. In the 2009 lawsuit, the owners of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Trademarks | Microsoft: Bing Ads

Marketers outside the U.S. have continued to enjoy free shopping traffic from Google, despite the search giant's big change to convert all results to paid listing ads in its home country. But that's beginning to change for folks in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. As Google announced late last year, the company began on February 13 to replace free listings on Google Shopping to Product Listing Ads in those 11 countries. To encourage advertisers to adopt the new product, Google is offering a cred [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Product 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: How Account Quality Score Can Guide AdWords Optimization Last month, I covered four ways to use AdWords Scripts to improve AdWords account management. I didn’t share any actual code for fear of geeking out too much, but people seemed interested enough in how to use Scripts to track historical Quality Score (QS), so this month, I’ll share step-by-step instructions and give you the [...] AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: New Bidding Tools Announced Googl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

With Adobe Social – part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud – you can measure how your social media spend impacts your bottom line. It's time to find out what those "Likes" and "followers" really mean for your business. Click here to remove the guesswork. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages

Last month, I covered four ways to use AdWords Scripts to improve AdWords account management. I didn't share any actual code for fear of geeking out too much, but people seemed interested enough in how to use Scripts to track historical Quality Score (QS), so this month, I'll share step-by-step instructions and give you the code needed to track your own account-level Quality Score. But first, let me explain what account-level Quality Score is all about… Why You Should Track Account-Level Quality Score The Quality Score of your AdWords account is a useful gauge to monitor how good Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords

Google AdWords has begun providing more specifics about the new bidding tools and mobile bid settings for enhanced campaigns. The AdWords interface for enhanced campaigns includes a new bid adjustment calculator designed to show you what the final bid adjustment will be when using multiple bid settings. Bid adjustments for mobile, day, time of day and location are made within the Campaign Settings tab. The calculator shows you what the implications will be when applying multiple bid adjustments.                   [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Search Marketing: Mobile | Top News

Dan Marantz, Senior Program Manager Lead at Bing announced on the Bing Search Blog that they have made two improvements to the auto-suggestions. Bing's auto-suggest is now faster and a lot more accurate, according to Bing. Bing said two "themes" are behind the change including navigational queries coming to the forefront of auto-suggest and search history being more extensively used within auto-suggest. They sped up the auto-suggest by using a technique called "ghosting" where Bing will show the suggestion in blue highlighted text in the search box and then show alternatives below. You c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Microsoft: Bing | Top News

Bing announced, on its  Bing Webmaster Blog, a new feature that helps webmasters create two types of XML Sitemaps. Bing created a server-side application that works on both IIS and Apache servers that helps you create a comprehensive Sitemap and, also, a recently updated Sitemap. The binaries can be downloaded at the Microsoft download site. How do the two Sitemap files differ? The first is a comprehensive Sitemap of all URLs seen in server traffic, and the second is a Sitemap dedicated to store URLs that have changed recently. Duane Forrester explained: Having both comprehensive an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Microsoft: Bing Webmaster Tools

Google's key, game-winning insight, the one that ultimately led to its dominance in Web search, was that links were really votes, that some votes deserved more influence than others, and that you could actually map the relationship between these links/votes by creating something called a "link graph," which in turn, allowed Google to "see" the Web in a unique way that surfaced quality sites that other search engines couldn't. Google is now making an enormous investment in a new type of graph, and as a search marketer, you absolutely need to understand what they're doing, because it's go [...]

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