Google's new Los Angeles office had its grand opening yesterday, consolidating operations that were previously spread-out among three different offices in Santa Monica into the funky Frank Gehry-designed "Binoculars" building in Venice Beach. The new operation is home to 500 employees, who begin work tomorrow. The were welcomed by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising at Google. A photo tour of the event. Above, the exterior of Google LA. You enter the offices through the Google Doodle Museum, a hallway filled with Google's [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General

Back in June, Google Analytics unveiled a new set of Social Engagement Reports, which can be used to get content interaction metrics from social sharing icons such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other. Google+ is tracked by default (no codes needed), but other networks must implement the _trackSocial method in order to collect the interactions. Last week, the Analytics team announced an official integration with social sharing services ShareThis and AddThis. According to their blog post: To enable the integration for all of your AddThis buttons, you are now just one lin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features: General | Google: Analytics

Today, Google webmaster tools has launched a new message alert to let site owners know when a particular URL doesn't appear because Google sees it as duplicate of a URL on a different domain. In the blog post announcing the feature and in an in-depth help topic, they provide details on how they identify duplicate clusters of content and choose a "canonical" version of that cluster to display in search results. "When we discover a group of pages with duplicate content, Google uses algorithms to select one representative URL for that content. A group of pages may contain URLs from the same site [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Duplicate Content | Top News

Fresh on the heels of a free pass from a befuddled congress after admitting that they are a monopoly, Google’s decision to cloak search query strings under the guise of privacy makes it clear they are doubling down on their abusive, anti-competitive practices. Consider the following points: Cloaking the referrer and the query string it contains severely hampers publishers and competing ad networks' ability to monetize site traffic while Google gets to keep all the data and use it to target. The Google display network already had an enormous advantage over competitors. Google is using [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features | Features: General | Google: Privacy

Earlier this summer Google gave an indication this was coming. Now Google is rolling out what it's calling "bid for calls," a pay per call (PPCall) offering on the PC. This is distinct from Click to Call, its successful mobile PPCall product. The program will launch in the US and UK at first and relies on the Call Metrics (Google Voice) infrastructure. AdWords advertisers must use Call Metrics and a Google Voice-generated call tracking number to participate. But rather than just paying $1 per completed call for call tracking, advertisers can now separately bid on calls. In the near f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: General | Google: AdWords | Google: Outside US | Search Ads: Pay Per Call | Top News

The search marketing industry was buzzing last week after Google announced plans to begin encrypting all logged-in searches from Google.com. The buzz was strong on our sister site, Sphinn, where that topic was by far the most discussed of all last week. Our "Discussion of the Week" asked users to weigh in on the impact of Google's encrypted search and we currently have close to two dozen responses. Most of those were about the fact that some searches will no longer pass keyword referrals through to analytics programs. Our favorite comment came from Sphinn member Matt Crouch, who said: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn

Google has quietly removed one of the older search operators, the + search operator. Now if you try adding a + sign in your query, Google will ignore it. Why did Google remove the old search operator? Kelly from Google said in a forum thread that you can now use the quotation marks operator instead of the + operator. She said: We've made the ways you can tell Google exactly what you want more consistent by expanding the functionality of the quotation marks operator. In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Google: Web Search | Top News

It's perhaps one of the strangest product pitches I've heard. Asked on stage at Web 2.0 Summit by John Battelle about his Bing search engine, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer encouraged the audience to try Bing because, well, it's pretty much the same as Google. The Ballmer 70/15/15 Challenge "I would issue you all a kind of challenge to try any search you want on Bing and Google," Ballmer said, explaining that 70% of the time, there won't be any difference in the results, that 15% of the time, Bing will be better and 15% of the time, Google will be better. Now, if Ballmer had said that maybe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: General | Microsoft: Mobile | Microsoft: Windows Phone

It was time to vent last week on our sister site, Sphinn. Though there were several active discussions going on, none generated the interest and participation as our question that invited members to share their SEO frustrations. And it wasn't just about SEO, actually. Our "Discussion of the Week" asked, What Frustrates You Most as an SEO/Online Marketer? There are 18 replies there already, and you're welcome to add yours into the mix, too. I'm finding it impossible to pick out a single, favorite comment, so here's a quick sample of some of the frustrations mentioned in the conversation: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn

How does content help with SEO efforts? The folks at Brafton have produced a "Why Content For SEO" infographic with lots of stats and information about the topic that you might find interesting: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: Infographic: Why Content for SEO? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Infographics | SEO: Writing & Body Copy

Today Topsy Labs, a real-time social search platform, announced the addition of Google+ as a source in its real-time social search index.  Topsy features an influence algorithm to display the most pertinent and popular social results.  In addition to social posts, Topsy displays shared links with social context within the results.  A little over a month ago, we had previously anointed Topsy as the biggest winner in the Google real-time search fallout.  Now it's getting more powerful with the addition of Google+ data. Influence Algorithm One of the most beneficial features touted by [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: General | Google: Google+ | Top News | Topsy

Are links from the Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, Best of the Wen and other directories still valuable for SEO purposes? Or has the rise of social media and other channels made directory links less relevant? That was the topic of the "Discussion of the Week" on our sister site, Sphinn, last week. We asked, Are Directories Still a Good Source of Inbound Links? and currently have more than a dozen comments with a range of opinions on the topic. Our favorite reply came from Sphinn member Justin Briggs, who said (in part): The other problem with directories is that it isn't a defensible link (anyone c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn

It's as you would have expected -- searches for Steve Jobs skyrocketed at Google, after news of his death spread. Oddly, Google Trends -- which shows spiking search queries -- failed to show this activity until hours later. Google, Yahoo Didn't Show Spike Yesterday, I had some people ask me why Steve Jobs wasn't showing on Google Trends. This is how things looked at 7:15pm PT yesterday, about 2 1/2 hours after the news that Steve Jobs had died broke: As you can see, "steve jobs" wasn't in the top trending searches. There was nothing related at all. Going to the full list: You can see t [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Google: Trends | Stats: General | Top News

Can Google beat Facebook in social media? Not unless Google changes the game, says Google chairman Eric Schmidt. Schmidt's comments on Facebook, search rankings and a possible joke about a teenager civil rights act to protect them from social media discrimination came during an interview this week with PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill. Change The Social Game To Beat Facebook Ifill asked Schmidt if Google could "beat Facebook at its own game," getting this response: It's very hard to beat a fast-moving incumbent in exactly same game in technology because it changes so quickly. What you hav [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: General | Google: Business Issues | Google: Critics | Google: Google+

Beyond some of the processing and other technical upgrades in the new iPhone 4S, the standout feature of the new device is the Siri "Assistant." It's an expanded and enhanced version of what's behind the existing Siri iPhone app, which is being shut down on October 15. And while Siri is not a "voice search engine," people will certainly use it to find information and accomplish tasks they might otherwise have used search or apps to complete. Siri is more "transactional" than search, taking users to an "answer" or a page where a task can be completed (e.g., making a reservation on OpenTable, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

Google's Matt Cutts has just issued a "weather report" about upcoming changes to be expected from Google's Panda algorithm. If you're not familiar with algorithmic weather reports, sit back and learn. Because they're back, and that's a good thing. Before There Was Panda, There Was Florida At the end of 2003, Google released what became known as its Florida Update. Now kids, if you think Panda was bad, Florida was a storm that seemingly blew the roofs off SEO homes everywhere. It hit during the holiday shopping period. It caused confusion and havoc among many SEOs. Search engine optimizati [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | Panda Update News | SEM Industry: Community | SEO: General | Top News

After quietly testing in Brazil, Spanish-speaking Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, Google will roll out a new algorithm globally that gives more weight to landing page quality when it comes to AdWords Quality Score. This means ads with landing pages that Google deems to be most relevant to the query will be able to rank higher for lower cost-per-click bids. "What we've seen is that there are ads available in the auction that are as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages -- the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages -- are of much higher quality than the ads that we se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: General | Google: AdWords | Top News

Drive new traffic to your site. Secure more conversions. Retain existing customers. Manage your company’s reputation and customer service. Social media networks provide the means; you need to master the platform. Advance your marketing skill-set. Attend SMX Social Media Marketing, a two-day tactic-rich conference Dec. 5-6 in Arizona that will give you the techniques, best practices and tools to maximize your social media marketing efforts. Register for SMX Social Media Marketing now and you’ll get the lowest rates offered. Super Early Bird pricing expires this Saturday, October 8. Do [...]

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

Google is launching an e-commerce certification program this morning called "Trusted Stores." The company says that it's trying to give consumers greater confidence to buy products online. In very limited beta right now, qualifying e-commerce stores will be able to display a "Google Trusted Store" badge. What's more interesting is that Google is backing its program with $1,000 in consumer purchase protection (more on that in a minute). To qualify as a Trusted Store etailers must apply and voluntarily provide a range of data to Google. Google believes getting data directly from online retail [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Features: General | Google: Product Search | Top News

Facebook is launching a new "People Talking About This" metric for fan pages this week, designed to show conversations happening about a brand or page owner across the web. It's part of an upgraded Page Insights tool. Also released is a new Page Insights API tool. Facebook emailed us the information about the launches tonight, which coincide with the start of Advertising Week in New York tomorrow. Given it's a Sunday evening, I'm just going to post what was sent, and we may do a deeper follow up tomorrow. Page Insights Tool Facebook emailed the following about the updated tool: With the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Features: General | Top News