In my almost twenty years of online marketing, I’ve rarely seen a report showing the average worldwide visitor traffic most sites receive on a monthly basis. Truth be told, around 95% of all websites are below 30 visitors a day. Unfortunately, this number tends to include friends and relatives and seemingly random visitors from countries […]
Last night at SMX Advanced, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts was on stage to answer questions about Google search and webmaster topics with Danny Sullivan. We covered the session in live blog format and pulled out several key points. Of all my years watching Matt Cutts talk, I believe it has been over […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced at SMX Advanced a new beta application is testing within Google Webmaster Tools named the Structured Data Dashboard. The new dashboard will show webmasters more errors and reporting based on their schema, rich snippet and structured data implemented on a website. Matt said if you as a […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced at SMX Advanced that Google is likely going to roll out a version of the site speed ranking factor for mobile sites. Back in 2010, Google said site speed is a ranking factor. Google’s Matt Cutts said expect something similar to come to mobile search soon. This […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced at SMX Advanced that starting in the next day or so, Google Webmaster Tools notifications will now include example URLs of problem areas. For example, if you receive a manual penalty for unnatural links, Google will provide a few sample URLS. If you have other manual penalties, […]
At SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced that the Panda algorithm is still being updated roughly every month, but that update is rolled out slowly throughout the month. It is like a Google Dance, but in this case, a Panda Dance. What happens is Google will run the update on a […]
Financial analysts are releasing May comScore search market share data to their clients, which means we’re getting an early look at what the metrics firm will be generally exposing in the next 24 hours. Here are the numbers — comparing April and May of 2013 as well as May 2012: Google: 66.7 percent (May) vs. […]
Google has officially launched a new search update to target “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic and other heavily spammed queries. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced this on Twitter saying “We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries.” He pointed to the video he published where he […]
Day one of our SMX Advanced show is almost over, but there’s one last session still to come: the traditional “You&A with Matt Cutts” keynote session. Search Engine Land’s founding editor, Danny Sullivan, will be sitting down for a lengthy chat with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team. The session is due to […]
Bing Maps announced a number of new additions today, including a more expansive collection of Bird’s Eye Imagery locations, new Venue Maps and a Report a Problem feature. According to Bing, the search engine has published 1,452,948 sq km of Bird’s Eye images from around the world with the largest collection posted today, offering users […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: DuckDuckGo Passes 2 Million Daily Searches DuckDuckGo, the upstart search engine that hangs it hat on protecting its users’ privacy, hit a new milestone on Monday: its first day with two […]
DuckDuckGo, the upstart search engine that hangs it hat on protecting its users’ privacy, hit a new milestone on Monday: its first day with two million direct searches. According to the company’s traffic page, DuckDuckGo saw 2,211,203 direct searches on Monday — up about 400,000 over Sunday’s searches. The phrase “direct searches” refers to humans […]
Google announced they’ve officially acquired Waze, the popular app based social driven mapping technology. This was expected and the rumors are Google paid $1.3 billion for the Israeli startup company. The big questions are (1) will this acquisition be allowed and if so (2) will Google allow Waze to be an independent product and brand? […]
Is your site not doing a good job for mobile visitors? Better get that fixed. Sites with mobile experience issues won’t rank as highly in Google’s mobile or smartphone search results, in the future. Bad Mobile Site? Fewer Smartphone Search Rankings, For You Google’s Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far said about the change in a […]
In the biggest update since the Auction Insights Report last year, Google AdWords advertisers now have the ability to run reports on more than just a single keyword to learn how their ad performance compares to the competition. The Auction Insights Report allows advertisers to get competitive auction data on: Groups of keywords. Filter your […]
I apologize for talking yet again about hreflang — but there is an important point I really want to make for those working in geo-targeting. For some, “hreflang” is becoming an auto-reflex, and that’s definitely not helping their international success. Allow me to explain why. A quick recap of hreflang first. Hreflang is an attribute […]
With the growth of social networks and the ability to instantly tell the world how you’re feeling, we’ve watched power shift from brands to consumers. No longer can companies simply rely on their marketing to do the talking — they now have to rely on what their customers are saying. Why? According to American Express, […]
Successful communication is all about getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. In the first part of this two-part series on search and social media sites, I noted the undeniable importance of social media as evidenced by the sheer volume of social media updates posted daily on Twitter […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video discussing some of the more common mistakes when using the disavow tool. Below are the six most common mistakes. Note the first one is by far the most common mistake of them all. (1) The file you upload should be a regular text file […]
The Majestic SEO team announced today that they have made their Site Explorer tool free for verified domains. With that, they also announced improvements to the user interface, additional features and unlimited use for paid users of the tool. Free user accounts can get up to 2,500 links to their site, while paid users can […]
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 Makes Bing The “Default Search Engine” For Siri One of the things that you might have missed if you weren’t paying really close attention to the live blogs of the […]
One of the things that you might have missed if you weren’t paying really close attention to the live blogs of the Apple WWDC keynote is that when iOS 7 comes out Siri will be able to directly search Twitter, Wikipedia — and Bing. From a search perspective that’s potentially huge news. I’m speculating that […]
Early yesterday, Israeli business website Globes.co.il said that Google will acquire social mapping app Waze for $1.3 billion. That report has subsequently been all-but-confirmed by others, including the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which said the announcement could come this week. The WSJ said that by size Waze would constitute Google’s fourth largest acquisition, assuming it comes to pass. […]
Are you an agency trying to sell super cheap search marketing services to SMBs? If so, here’s some free market research! Last week, I got my kitchen counters resurfaced. Inevitably the service guy asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I did SEO, the conversation quickly turned to the local […]
Beloved children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak is being celebrated today on Google’s home page with an animated Doodle showcasing the author’s work. Users can click the play icon to view an animated wheel of Sendak’s characters. Born June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, Sendak would have been 85 years old today. He […]
One of the nicest things about AdWords Enhanced Campaigns is that you can now control sitelinks at the campaign or the ad group level. From a feature standpoint, this sounds great. However, when you start considering the execution phase of creating sitelinks for every single ad group, the task can suddenly seem quite daunting. First, […]
Two years ago, we released “The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.” Now we’re back with an update. We’ve introduced some new elements, adjusted a few rankings and given the table a more encompassing name, The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors. Clicking on the image above will take you to the permanent home of the […]
We’ve updated our Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors that was created in 2011 to add several new elements, drop a few, broaden it to include “success factors” rather than just “ranking factors” and adjusted weightings of several elements on the table. For those curious about the details, here’s the rundown. First, if you’re not […]
Last November, a fraudulent release claiming Google was acquiring Wifi provider ICOA was circulated by the popular release distribution service PRWeb, exposing a number of loopholes in their verification and editorial processes. Our own Danny Sullivan published a comprehensive story explaining how such releases find their way through PRWeb’s system. After posting a statement on the […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Image Extensions: Early Reactions & In-The-Wild Examples The PPC world is abuzz over the news that Google opened its beta for image extensions, which allow AdWords advertisers to include images […]
The PPC world is abuzz over the news that Google opened its beta for image extensions, which allow AdWords advertisers to include images with their text ads. In these very early days, PPC managers that have had campaigns in the beta are in experimental mode, while others are eager to get their accounts into the […]
Bing Desktop launched a number of features today, including inline search capabilities, a new weather app, updated news apps, and Facebook notifications. Bing’s new inline search allows users to search directly from a webpage, word document or PDF file without having to open a Web browser. After highlighting a word or phrase, a user can […]
When ranking the favorability of tech giants Google, Apple and Facebook, a recent Washington Post survey discovered that Google trumps both Apple and Facebook. According to the poll, 83 percent of the 1,007 Americans surveyed gave Google a favorable rating. Apple ranked second, with a 72 percent favorable rating. Facebook ranked least favorable, with only […]
One of the most classic and beneficial analyses conducted for paid traffic acquisition channels is day parting. Not all visits are equal, and the time of day/day of week of the visit usually has a strong correlation with user qualification and likelihood to convert. That said, day parting is one of the most commonly misconstrued […]
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.
Dr. Peter Meyers, the Marketing Scientist at Moz (formerly SEOmoz), tipped us off to a new Google search interface test. It appears Google is testing showing “in-depth articles” in the search results for local queries. In the screenshot below, Pete triggered these results by searching for [mexican restaurants]. The local results and maps came up, […]
The Google Operating System reports Google is testing a new Image Search interface for related searches. The example given shows images for [nexus 7], At the top is a carousel of related searches to the [nexus 7]. When you click on one of those related images, Google will show you a larger thumbnail image of […]
The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is accusing Google of continuing to give consumers access to illegal and counterfeit goods — including drugs — in its search results, and is allowing sites that deal in such goods to advertise with Google. NAAG has asked Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page to discuss its concerns […]
A newly released white paper from Google claims the search engine can predict a movie’s opening weekend performance within 92 percent accuracy based on search query and paid click volume. After evaluating search and paid click data for 99 top box office films in 2012, Google correlated the data with each film’s success by analyzing […]
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 Pushes To Build Marketshare Through “Bing It On” For Faster Airport Wifi I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. When I tapped into […]