Microsoft’s Meenaz Merchant, Senior Program Manager at Bing, posted a behind the scenes look at why Bing is a better image search engine than Google. Here are the seven examples on scenarios on why Bing is better than Google with image search, as described on the Bing blog. (1) Entity Understanding – Bing says while […]
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.
In a brief exchange on Twitter yesterday evening, the original Captain Kirk gave Bing a shout-out, recommending the Microsoft search engine could possibly enlighten a fellow Twitter user. William Shatner responded “I hear Google pr Bing helps with that problem” after @Andypops1 tweeted on Shatner’s feed, “I still have no idea what spumoni is.” Assuming […]
BrightEdge has released a report showing that for the 8,400 brands they tracked over the last quarter, 49% of the queries collected did not provide (i.e. not provided) search query data due to Google’s secure search. 49% was the average, in fact, it is higher for the technology industry. BrightEdge said that “56% of traffic […]
Sometimes the captain can’t afford to go down with the ship, no matter the temptation or emotional investment. Every few weeks, I receive another hopeless phone call from another desperate webmaster. Since Penguin, I’ve seen more ships go down than I care to count. Websites that have delved too deeply into black hat SEO and […]
Google announced on Google+ that they have overhauled the Web definitions interface and results, adding a lot more meat and details to your definitions queries. The new options include an expandable box that contains additional synonyms, ways to use the word in sentences, the origins of the word, translation, the use of the word over […]
Last month Apple bought Locationary and Hop Stop. The point of the first was to improve the overall quality of local data for Apple Maps and the second was for mass transit information. Apparently, according to former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin, Apple has made another buy for transit purposes. The company has acquired app developer Embark. […]
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 Now Gains Car Rental, Concert Tickets, Reminders While You Search & More More cards have come to Google’s predictive search service, Google Now, including information to alert you to your […]
More cards have come to Google’s predictive search service, Google Now, including information to alert you to your car rentals, concert tickets and a way to set reminders related to TV shows, book releases and more, when you are searching. Car Rentals Google posted the news to its Android page on Google+, since these are […]
Today, Google is rolling out a brand new Paid & Organic report in AdWords that gives advertisers at-a-glance insights into query performance across the Google landscape. This is pretty big news from a reporting viewpoint. In the screenshot below, you’ll see query performance when an ad was shown, when an organic listing displayed and when […]
In an updated digital and mobile advertising forecast, eMarketer has projected that mobile search will be worth more than $15 billion in the US by 2017. Accordingly, it will lead all other types of mobile advertising, similar to its current position online. Display advertising will follow with $14.5 billion by the end of the forecast […]
China’s dominant search engine, Baidu, offers huge potential for marketers seeking to connect with Chinese consumers. Yet, for US companies, there are several barriers to entry that haven’t made it worth the hassle — for starters, all documentation is in Mandarin and ads and landing pages need to be written in Chinese to see any […]
In a recent video answer, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts said that page speed is not any more important in terms of a ranking factor for mobile search than it is for desktop search. Matt Cutts said: It is not that in mobile, we apply that [page speed ranking factor] any more or […]
Today’s Google logo is a melodic and artful animated illustration to honor French composer Claude Debussy on the occasion of his 151st birthday. Set to the tune of Debussy’s popular Clair de Lune, the logo depicts a riverside scene on a moonlit night as silhouettes of cars, bicycles, steamboats, and row boats pass by. Born […]
When it comes to online marketing, the conventional wisdom has been that the overarching goal is to have content — any content, so long as it links back to my website — appear in front of the user. Put another way, the thinking for many has long been that the singularly-focused goal is to appear […]
A great many folks spend time thinking about position on pages, both for their ads and for their organic listings. People care about position, but it’s really a proxy for what we should pay attention to: traffic volume and quality. Indeed, position itself as a KPI is pretty meaningless, and focusing too much attention on […]
Bing For Schools officially launched today, a program created by Bing to promote digital literacy to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The program was initially announced in June, inviting school administrators to register for the free service that gives participating schools ad-free Bing searches, SafeSearch filters to remove adult content from all Bing searches […]
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 Responds To #GoogleGate: AdWords Account Manager’s Accidental Voice Mail Recording Earlier this week, Martin MacDonald, inbound marketing director at Expedia EAN, in a post on his website titled “#GoogleGate – […]
Earlier this week, Martin MacDonald, inbound marketing director at Expedia EAN, in a post on his website titled “#GoogleGate – Can you Trust Google?,” embedded a voice mail recording a Google AdWords account manager unknowingly left for a client. Presumably thinking he’d hung up, the account representative is heard cursing the fact that the client upgraded to […]
Trying to get your head around Google authorship? The Google Webmaster Central blog has posted a new FAQ designed to provide some answers. What Qualifies For Authorship? What pages can have authorship applied to them? Criteria include the page actually being mostly authored by the designated author, that it carries a byline and that it’s […]
In a recent article in AdAge, Bert DuMars cites Forrester research which found that “only 11% of marketers set aside a specific budget for marketing innovation efforts, and only 9% make marketing innovation a part of every marketer’s budget.” I won’t go into how to secure that budget, as he details some good tips — […]
On Twitter, there are many different “conversations” happening simultaneously. There are also particular moments — TV finales, sporting events, breaking news and more — where many people have all “tuned in” at once. Both types of conversations are opportunities for marketers, when approached the right way. I’ll be talking more about tapping into these conversations […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Without Fanfare, SEMPO Turns 10 Today marks the 10th birthday of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization – SEMPO – formed to be a trade advocacy body for the search marketing […]
Today marks the 10th birthday of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization — SEMPO — formed to be a trade advocacy body for the search marketing industry. What’s a decade of the group produced? An annual industry survey. Beyond that, little that really seems to stand out, especially compared to other industry groups like the DMA. My column today […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said once again that Google’s +1 data has no direct impact on their web search ranking algorithm. Moz published a story today named Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings in which Matt Cutts responded to in Hacker News thread saying, “correlation != causation.” He said […]
The first “synergies” from Google’s Waze acquisition are being rolled out to both Google Maps and Waze users. Google announced this morning in a blog post that real-time Waze traffic updates will appear in the Google Maps app (for iOS, Android): Users of Google Maps for Mobile will now benefit from real time incident reports […]
A year ago, I wrote a post about 50+ things that every link builder should know. Over the past year, link building has definitely gotten a lot tougher — it’s been renamed several times, become more vilified than ever, and generally taken a beating. However, it still holds up as a viable way to market […]
As some sharp eyed users noticed yesterday, Google has now confirmed the roll-out of graphical time period segmentation. A new drop down allows you to view AdWords data by day, week, month and quarter on the graph. The new feature makes it easy to view trends quickly and toggle back and forth by time period […]
A question I get asked pretty often is, “What tools do you use for managing paid search ad campaigns?” I love this question, especially when there are other paid search managers within earshot. Everyone’s got their favorite tools and everyone wants to add their two cents’ worth. More often than not, I go home with […]
The vast majority of local businesses out there – even those heavily invested in digital and mobile marketing – are constantly looking for insights on how they can improve their placements in Google’s search engine results. While there’s plenty of advice available on specific tactics ranging from leveraging keywords and linking to boosting reviews 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: What The Heck Is AdWords Quality Score And Why Does It Matter Anyway? Last month, Google announced some changes in how Quality Score is being reported. While it’s been described as […]
Last month, Google announced some changes in how Quality Score is being reported. While it’s been described as just a reporting change (as opposed to a change in how Quality Score is calculated), some of my respected colleagues have pointed to the news as evidence that Quality Score somehow doesn’t matter any more! I respectfully disagree […]
In partnership with Discovery Communications, Bing is honoring World Photography Day with a Hometown Homepage Photo Contest. According to the announcement, Bing wants, “Images that highlight and capture the beauty of your hometown.” Starting today through September 3, Bing is asking users to submit photos of their hometown on Bing’s Homepage App on Facebook. Ten […]
Google is testing a new search feature within the search results to show you a search result snippet overlay with additional details about that search result. The interesting fact is that this overlay doesn’t have text from the search result itself, the text may be sourced from Wikipedia or other third-party sources. Techno-Net first spotted […]
Findings from a recent Google Webmaster Hangout on Air (video) demystify link disavowals, penalties and more. Read on for the official word from John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google and friend to webmasters everywhere. First, Some Background Last month, I introduced Five Steps To Clean Up Your Links like A Techie. The commenters on the […]
Long ago and far away, there was a world where there was no Web. Back in those early years (such as the 1960’s through the mid-1990s), there were certain basic concepts that guided the world of marketing. One of the facts of life during those times was that each market space tended to support somewhere […]
Last year Google was embroiled in controversy over its circumvention of the Safari browser’s cookie-privacy settings (on the iPhone and beyond). As a result the company paid a $22.5 million fine to settle the case with the US FTC approximately a year ago. The FTC summarizes the facts that lead to the settlement: [F]or several months […]
Behold a brilliant display of Google AdWords advertising policy violations: This ad was spotted by Luke Alley from Avalaunch Media. As it turns out, Alley unearthed a deep pit teeming with ad violations. Search for “facebook support” on Google, and you’ll quickly see the ads are crawling with AdWords policy violations. The ad above features “Symbols, numbers, and letters […]
It wasn’t you. It was Google. Specifically, Google.com went down around 3:50pm PT for about five minutes, a very rare occurrence. Other Google services also appear to have had issues. We’ll update if we hear more, but it appears back now. It certainly sparked brief panic on Twitter. Twitter search service Topsy tweeted a chart […]
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: Here’s Why AdWords Cost Per Conversion Calculations Don’t Always Add Up In the past couple of weeks, the question of how Google calculates cost per conversion in AdWords has been […]