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Google’s New European “Antitrust” Search Results: Here’s What They’ll Look Like

Apr 25, 2013 at 12:31pm ET by Greg Sterling   

I’ve found documents associated with the Google-EU settlement proposal that offer mock-ups of how the new, regulated SERPs will look. It’s very interesting and greatly clarifies the settlement terms and how they will be implemented practically. These mockups look quite different (and less “disruptive”) than what I imagined. There are three basic scenarios: where Google [...]

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Google: We Removed Instant Previews Over Low Usage From Searchers

Apr 25, 2013 at 9:24am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Yesterday we reported that Google changed how you access the cached, similar and share links within the search results by adding a new green down arrow next to the search snippet’s URL. We asked, where did the Instant Previews go that launched on November 9, 2010 with a huge amount of excitement from Google. Google [...]

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Bing: More Than 50% Of Searchers Click The First Result; 75% Click On Deep Links Result

Apr 24, 2013 at 7:47pm ET by Matt McGee   

The value of ranking first on a search results page is no secret, but today Bing is putting some hard numbers on it: More than 50 percent of Bing users click the first result, and more than 75 percent click there if the first result includes Bing’s deep links. In a blog post today, Dr. [...]

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Google Hits Mozilla With Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content

Apr 23, 2013 at 1:19pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Have user generated content on your site? Pay attention to what those users are doing. That’s the takeaway from Google hitting Mozilla with a spam penalty this week, along with another takeaway. Despite Google’s saying it’s being more transparent about spam actions, people clearly find it hard to know what they’re in trouble for. Mozilla [...]

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Public Relations For SEO: How To Target Journalists

Apr 9, 2013 at 1:30pm ET by Ted Ives   

A few years ago, I launched a website called FindHow, and we gave it a full-court press from a PR standpoint. In this series of articles, I’m running through all the best practices we leveraged. In the first part of Public Relations For SEO: The Complete Guide, we talked about how to convince journalists that your topic [...]

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Public Relations For SEO: The Complete Guide

Apr 9, 2013 at 1:30pm ET by Ted Ives   

This is the first of a three-part article about Public Relations for SEO. Let me start by saying that a press release written, issued and leveraged properly, can result in word-of-mouth, articles paraphrasing the release, and at a minimum, at least some backlinks. But, a press release alone will get much less exposure than one [...]

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Public Relations For SEO: How To Pitch Journalists

Apr 9, 2013 at 1:30pm ET by Ted Ives   

A few years ago, I launched a website called FindHow, and we gave it a full-court press from a PR standpoint. In this series of articles, I’m running through all the best practices we leveraged. In Part 1 and Part 2, we talked about how to convince journalists that your topic is newsworthy,  the basics of [...]

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While “Facebook Home” Keeps Google, Search Is Harder To Reach

Apr 4, 2013 at 4:25pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Pick your survey, and one of the top activities on a smartphone is to use Facebook. That’s what the new Facebook Home is all about, making it easier for Facebook users to get Facebook. But it also makes another top activity — search — harder to do. On Android devices, search is almost always just [...]

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Google Upgrades Its Google Places Dashboard With Google+ Local Integration

Apr 2, 2013 at 8:11pm ET by Matt McGee   

Google has begun a staged upgrade of its Google Places Dashboard — the backend tool that allows local businesses to manage their business information that appears in Google’s search results. A new dashboard that looks much more like the current Google (and Google+) aesthetic, and also offers some new functionality, will be available “over the [...]

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Yes, Google Says It’s Having Problems Listing iTunes Preview Pages

Apr 2, 2013 at 6:28pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Yes, it is harder to find pages to iTunes apps in Google. But no, the company says, it’s not part of some nefarious plot. Rather, Google’s having technical problems gathering iTunes Preview pages, an issue it’s working to solve. Google has confirmed the issue, saying: We’ve been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes [...]

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Google Partners With Nixle To Deliver Local Emergency Alerts & Response Information

Apr 2, 2013 at 5:06pm ET by Amy Gesenhues   

Google Public Alerts has broadened its service through a new partnership with Nixle, a company that contracts with public safety agencies to send alerts via cellphones and social media networks. Police, fire, and emergency management agency alerts will now appear when a Google search or a Google Maps search is performed in an area with [...]

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New Tool: BigWebStats Aggregates Website Statistics And SEO Data

Apr 2, 2013 at 3:54pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

Marketers may want to add BigWebStats to their lists of research tools. The new site pulls a wide range of information on just about any website. Enter a URL and BigWebStats aggregates data from several sources across the Web and displays it in one page, including visitors insights, social engagement, domain and technology information and [...]

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Bing’s April Fools’ Jokes Include A Slam On Google & A New SEO Tag

Apr 1, 2013 at 4:21am ET by Matt McGee   

Bing is hopping on the April Fools’ Day joke bandwagon later than Google and even Wolfram Alpha, but it’s taking a swing at Google in one of the two gags that it just announced via separate blog posts. Bing Basic On its main search blog, Bing has an esoteric blog post that talks about “Bing [...]

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Google’s April Fools’ Day 2013 Joke-A-Thon: YouTube Shutdown, Google Nose & More

Mar 31, 2013 at 3:17pm ET by Matt McGee   

April Fool’s Day is pretty much like a national … err, international holiday for everyone that works for Google. It seems that nobody else on the Web takes the tradition of pranks and jokes as seriously as Google does — just see our coverage from the last few April Fool’s Days for proof: Google’s Gags [...]

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Apple Hiring ‘Ground Truth’ Managers To Improve Maps

Mar 28, 2013 at 5:32pm ET by Matt McGee   

If job listings are any indication, Apple remains committed to improving its iOS Maps app. As the iDownload Blog spotted, Apple currently has seven job listings for what’s called a “Maps Ground Truth Manager.” The positions are based around the world — U.S., Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Middle East/Africa. The [...]

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Need A Google Alerts Replacement? Meet Talkwalker

Mar 27, 2013 at 4:05pm ET by Gary Price   

With Google Alerts coming under fire as being broken, an impressive new service has stepped up to appeal to those seeking an alternative: Talkwalker. Luxembourg-based Talkwalker is a social media monitoring company that has now released its own keyword-based alerts resource. The free service utilizes Google’s Web, news, and blog databases and delivers alerts by email or RSS. So, are [...]

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Author Rank, Authorship, Search Rankings & That Eric Schmidt Book Quote

Mar 27, 2013 at 1:44pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Last month, an excerpt from Eric Schmidt’s forthcoming book came out where he discussed how identity and authorship might be used to better rank search results. Since then, I’ve seen that widely cited as proof Google is already doing “Author Rank.” It’s not, nor was Schmidt describing a Google-specific system. But that could come, and [...]

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Microsoft “Research” Discovers The Obvious In Renewed Anti-Trust Attack On Google

Mar 26, 2013 at 11:55am ET by Danny Sullivan   

Did you know that the higher a site is listed in search results, the more traffic that site is likely to receive? If you’re a search marketer, or anyone with a dose of common sense, you do. But Microsoft had research conducted to yet again prove this point, in an attempt to influence the ongoing [...]

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Bing Offers Recommendations for SEO-Friendly AJAX: Suggests HTML5 pushState

Mar 25, 2013 at 10:12pm ET by Vanessa Fox   

Bing has announced support for HTML5 pushState as a way to implement AJAX on a site in a way that enables Bing to crawl and index the URLs and content. As Google has supported this implementation since early 2012, site owners finally have an AJAX option that can be crawled and indexed by both major [...]

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Apple Buys Indoor Location Company, What’s It Up To?

Mar 25, 2013 at 10:06am ET by Greg Sterling   

This weekend the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had paid roughly $20 million for a company called WifiSLAM. The company was an early stage startup that had raised roughly $1 million in angel investment. It appears to have had some ambitious plans, according to a company description on AngelList: We are building the next [...]

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