Late last week, a group of Google critics, rivals and complainants sent an “open letter” to EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia asking him to focus on the “vertical search” or “search neutrality” dimensions of the Google antitrust case. The letter says, essentially, that of the “four areas of concern” raised by the EU over Google’s business practices, this […]
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 Shows Off Coming Improvements To Bing App’s Voice Search Microsoft has shared video of what was a confidential, employee-only demonstration of new voice search capabilities in its Bing app for […]
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.
Microsoft has shared video of what was a confidential, employee-only demonstration of new voice search capabilities in its Bing app for Windows Phones. The demo, reported by MSFTKitchen, shows a substantially faster and more accurate voice search experience that also performs better in noisy situations. In the demo, Bing’s new voice search system appears to […]
The commercial in the middle of an episode of “Worst Cooks In America” this weekend caught me off-guard. Was that an ad for the Google Search App? It sure was, and the restart of Google’s campaign to push its cross-platform search tool. It was the first time I spotted this particular campaign on TV, though […]
As every search marketer should be aware by now, AdWords enhanced campaigns now allow you to set campaign-level bid multipliers for your mobile impressions, and also by geo. While mobile bid multipliers seem to be more of a step backward compared to mobile targeted campaigns, geo bid multipliers are actually a nice feature and definitely […]
You may have missed Google’s quiet and brief announcement that, starting in April, AdWords ads with phone numbers in the text will be disapproved. Advertisers who want to display phone numbers will have to use the call extensions feature instead. Google states in the announcement, “We are making this change to foster a safer, more […]
Google announced they have added three improvements to the Google Webmaster Tools verification system. View Verification Methods Now, you can not only see who the verified users on your sites are, but the verification method they used to achieve that status. Where appropriate, the verification details will have links to the correct URL on your […]
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 Primer On How To Get The Most Out Of Sitemaps Search crawlers are becoming more and more effective every day in discovering new content pages on websites. But, that process […]
Search crawlers are becoming more and more effective every day in discovering new content pages on websites. But, that process of organic discovery can be slow and spotty, so it’s hardly any solace to sites that publish hundreds of new pages a day, or publish extremely time-sensitive content such as news articles, or publish a […]
Last week at SMX West, I was on the “SEM Best Practices Debate” panel. Several of the topics we debated were related to Enhanced Campaigns, clearly something on the minds of search marketers these days. This month, I’ll recap a few take-aways from the event and share some ideas for workarounds and automation that may […]
Over the past year, Bing’s been steadily growing the “Snapshots” it shows on the right-hand side of its pages. Now, Bing says those are taking another leap to better understand relationships between people, places and things, using an expansion of what it calls its “Satori” technology. Bing writes on its blog today saying: Today, we […]
Last month, I wrote my Dear Google Alerts: Why Aren’t You Working? story. Soon after, Google told me things were improved. That’s not been the case for me; and now, another open letter about how poorly the service is working has appeared. The latest letter is from The Financial Brand, a website for financial marketers. It writes, […]
You would think that when you search for something in Google, and an image comes up in their knowledge graph box, that the image would be rated PG-13 or lower. Well, that is not the case when you search for Angel Tompkins (warning: topless image if you click the link). The image shown for her is from […]
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 To Snag A Sale From A Simple ‘Contact Us’ Page Getting website sales isn’t all about product pages and shopping carts. Many business owners forget there is a whole conversion […]
Getting website sales isn’t all about product pages and shopping carts. Many business owners forget there is a whole conversion funnel every visitor goes through before choosing whether or not to make a purchase on your site. One of the most important aspects of that funnel is the “Contact Us” information and page on your […]
Earlier today Yahoo and Jybe announced that the latter was being acquired by the former. Jybe, which I had not heard of previously, is described by Yahoo as “a personalized recommendation company founded with the vision to help people find the things they love to do based on what’s trending in their social circles.” It sounds […]
Google announced on Google+ that they have expanded Google Trends to add YouTube search support. Now you can use Google Trends to see what searches are trending and spiking across the world from within YouTube search. The trend data for YouTube goes back to 2008. To use this, go to Google Trends and search for […]
A few weeks back, Dr. Peter J. Meyers (“Dr Pete“) wrote a post on SEOmoz about the average position in the browser screen a number-one ranking in Google appears. It is an interesting piece of research, and I recommend reviewing it. My two key takeaways were: More Google-specific features, such as advertising and local results, […]
One of the highlights from the SMX West show a week ago was the session named “The Search Police: Matt & Duane’s Excellent Search Engine Adventure.” The panel featured Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester as Bill & Ted with Danny Sullivan playing Rufus. Matt (Bill) and Duane (Ted) both give presentations and then […]
Google has published over 500 videos on the Webmaster Help YouTube Channel, most of those videos features Matt Cutts answering quick SEO related questions. Sometimes you want the quick answer from Matt Cutts and sorting through hundreds of videos with the average length of two to five minutes can take a while. That is where […]
AdGooroo has released a new study titled Yahoo! Bing PPC Performance Metrics that analyzes advertiser participation and performance metrics on the Yahoo! Bing network through Bing Ads compared to Google AdWords. The study looked at U.S. advertisers in six verticals during Q312. Backing up one of the loudest complaints among advertisers about the Yahoo! Bing […]
I suspect that most college basketball fans will be following the NCAA College Basketball Tournament on TV and via their favorite bracket contest website, but they could follow it via a simple Google search, too, if they want. As Google’s Dan Vanderkam shared this afternoon on Twitter, certain college hoops-related searches are now showing the […]
For advertisers using keyword level URLs, Google AdWords will soon be launching new ValueTrack features to help improve enhanced campaign performance by device. Based on feedback from advertisers, the new features will make it possible to direct users to a device-specific landing page at keyword level and enable better tracking of enhanced campaigns. The ValueTrack […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Latest Google Shopper App Offers New Refinement Options & More Product Details Google Commerce has released Google Shopper 3.2, an updated version of its app that includes category-specific refinements for improved […]
Google Commerce has released Google Shopper 3.2, an updated version of its app that includes category-specific refinements for improved search results. When searching for products, users can now filter their results by brand, store, price and other options, as well as view detailed product information, read product reviews, watch video reviews from YouTube, and see […]
Some are spotting new author images appearing in Bing’s search results today, similar to the way Google shows author images. Except, they’re not really author images. They’re what I’d call subject images, something that might be coming more formally to Bing. Author Images At Google Here are two examples of authorship images as they appear […]
A study by Portent, an Internet marketing company, shows that Google’s tolerance of spammy links to trigger a Penguin algorithm ranking drop has declined by 30% since the Penguin algorithm launched. The study shows that of the 500,000 links found, Google has been steadily reducing its tolerance for webspam. Now, Google is likely to penalize […]
Besides covering The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we’ll also go into The How and The What of Facebook Graph Search, which launched in January 2013. Graph Search was hardly a surprise to many of us, yet its implementation to date has been interesting. If well-understood, it can be leveraged by marketers and brands; […]
We’ve filled three positions on our editorial team and it’s a pleasure to introduce you to the newest Third Door Media staffers: Amy Gesenhues, Jessica Thompson and Ginny Marvin. Amy Gesenhues is our new, full-time General Assignment Correspondent. She’ll be covering a variety of search- and marketing-related stories for us on both Search Engine Land […]
Along with our new writer and editor hires announced today, more news: Elisabeth Osmeloski and Monica Wright are gaining new titles, reflecting their work on growing and working with our Search Engine Land community. Elisabeth started with Search Engine Land as our managing editor in September 2008, then became its Executive Features Editor in December […]
Google’s flight search tool had been limited to a few markets in the US. As such, it was of limited value. But last week, the company expanded flight search internationally to include 500 airports outside the US. (See postscript below below for correction.) Flight search can also be used by people in other countries — […]
I love reading articles about which tools different people use for link buildng purposes. In trying to put together a recommended list of tools for a client who wants to do part of his own link building in-house, I realized that this might be a helpful way for someone to easily build a nice little […]
Animated GIFs have been making a comeback, particularly since Google+ gave them support when it launched, not to mention Tumblr. So, no surprise, Google’s now pushing a new way to find GIFs within Google Image Search. Google posted the news today on Google+, explaining that a new “Animated” option is available for those who search on […]
Speakers at the International Search Summit, which took place alongside SMX West in San Jose last week, shared many useful tips on improving various aspects of international search from geo-targeting issues to targeting and handling different languages. Maile Ohye of Google spent over an hour speaking to delegates and answering detailed questions covering many of […]
Google Maps offered users breathtaking views of the world’s highest mountain peaks today with the launch of 360-degree images from Aconcagua in South America, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe, and the base camp at Mount Everest in Asia. Taken with a lightweight tripod and digital camera using a fish-eye lens, a group […]
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 Week: March 18, 2013 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 […]
The 2013 SMX West conference could have easily be confused as the first SMX Authorship show with extensive interest in and questions surrounding Google’s use of authorship and the prominence of those articles associated with verified authors. However, it was mobile that led the way with one of the first sessions of the conference being Trends in Mobile Search. […]
In 2007, I had the unique opportunity of building an in-house SEO team for an enterprise-level e-commerce retailer. From an SEO perspective, the website had been the accouterment of hacks, built over a six-year period with absolutely no consideration for search engines. The founder CEO was persuaded by a very bright 26-year-old VP to rebuild […]
Two weeks ago, Greg Sterling and I published “YQ,” a study on the state of location data for Yext, where we discovered (surprise!) that the state of business location data on the Web is pretty messy. The study provided us with the opportunity to look at patterns among thousands of Yext’s customers, and I thought […]