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Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live

May 22, 2013 at 6:09pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The fourth release of Google's spam-fighting "Penguin Update" is now live. But Penguin 4 has a twist. It contains Penguin 2.0 technology under the hood, which Google says is a new generation of tech that should better stop spam. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web spam team, announced the new Penguin 2.0 update during This Week in Google (Episode #199). He referenced the earlier video of him talking about the next generation Penguin update and said this is being rolled out "within the next few hours." Webmasters and SEOs: expect major changes to the search results. Matt specifically s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

DoubleClick Search Tools To Migrate To Enhanced Campaigns Now Out Of Beta

May 22, 2013 at 4:49pm ET by Ginny Marvin

The custom toolset Google designed to help DoubleClick search users migrate to enhanced campaigns has come out of beta. The tools are designed to guide users in identifying similar campaigns that target different devices and merge them into one enhanced campaign in five steps: Identify campaigns for merging: Analyze your current AdWords campaigns and automatically generate a list of campaigns you should consider merging together into an enhanced campaign. Download and verify merge suggestions: Download the merge suggestions in the UI, and review them to ensure you’re comfort [...]

Site Command Limited To 30 Results? Google Says A Temporary Domain Clustering Bug

May 22, 2013 at 4:02pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Over the past day or so, we've been seeing reports that some of us can replicate ourselves, where the site command (i.e., site:www.domain.com) in Google was limited to only showing 30 results. The rumors were that with the recent domain clustering change Google pushed out this week has severely impacted the site command. Those rumors are true. Google's Matt Cutts told us that this is a "temporary side effect of the domain clustering change," they pushed out yesterday. Matt, the head of Google's search spam said, "we expect that site: will be back to showing lots of results by sometime ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Top News

2013 Doodle 4 Google Winner Showcases Heartfelt Reunion Between A Soldier & His Daughter

May 22, 2013 at 3:38pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

The 2013 Doodle 4 Google National winner was announced today on Google's Official Blog. Selected out of 130,000 submissions based on the theme, "My Best Day Ever...", the winning drawing by Sabrina Brady of Sparta, Wisconsin tells the story of being reunited with her father after his 18-month deployment as a soldier in Iraq. As this year's National Winner, Sabrina's doodle will be featured tomorrow on Google's homepage, and Sabrina will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, a Chromebook computer and a $50,000 technology grant for her school. Currently a senior at Sparta High School, Sabrin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Logos

Is Google Poaching Clicks From Travel Advertisers? Spend Trends Down Even As Advertisers Increase (Study)

May 22, 2013 at 3:23pm ET by Ginny Marvin

On the cusp of the summer travel season, AdGooroo has taken a look at the state of paid search in the travel sector in the U.S. The company has found that, on the whole, paid search expenditures have been trending down since 2011. Spend fell 19% from January through April of this year compared to last year. That follows an 11% drop during the same period from 2012 to 2011. The downward trends hold through the summer months. AdGooroo suspects the decline in ad spend since 2011 is due in large part to the launches of Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder that year. The actual number o [...]

Google Trends Gets New Monthly Top Charts & Trending Topics Displayed In Bold Color Visualizations

May 22, 2013 at 2:56pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

Google Trends has started a new monthly "spirit of the times" Top Charts feature with more than 40 categories of Top 10 lists that include people, places and things ranked by search interest. According to today's post from Google's Official Blog, the Top Charts go back to 2004 and will continue to be updated monthly. You can find the Top Charts link from the Google Trends homepage on the left-hand side of the site. While Google states that the Top Charts include their most accurate search volume rankings, they note that no algorithm is perfect and anomalies in the data may be found on rare [...]

Interflora Wins Five-Year Battle Over Google AdWords Trademark Infringement

May 22, 2013 at 11:48am ET by Ginny Marvin

The High Court of England and Wales ended a five year legal battle between Marks & Spencer and Interflora yesterday. The court ruled in favor of flower delivery network Interflora, concluding that retailer Marks & Spencer breached trademark infringement laws by bidding on the keyword "Interflora" in its Google AdWords campaigns. In the European Union, Google allows bidding on trademarked keywords except when the ads are deemed to be misleading and "confusing as to the origin of the advertised goods and service." Yesterday's ruling finds Spencer & Marks in breach of that exc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Legal | Legal: Trademarks | Top News

Free Google Shopping Listings To End Worldwide July 11th

May 22, 2013 at 9:14am ET by Ginny Marvin

On June 11th, Google Shopping will complete the global transition to the pay-for-play model that was introduced in the U.S. last fall. Advertisers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic will need to run Product Listing Ads to promote their products on Google Shopping. Google says over one billion products are now being promoted through PLAs on Google Shopping, driven by a 300% year-over-year increase in participation from merchants, aggregators and marketplaces. Traffic to retailers from Googl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome

May 22, 2013 at 4:17am ET by Danny Sullivan

The "conversational search" that Google demonstrated at last week's Google I/O conference is now available to users of its Chrome browser, and it's a significant leap in how we use search engines. I'm 17 years now into writing about search, and I've seen all types of things that have promised to revolutionize the space, especially products that trot out words like "natural language" and "semantic search" but fail to deliver. Conversational search has natural language, semantic search and more built into it, and while it's far from perfect, this really is one of those significant change [...]

Hollywood Asks Google To Stop Listing Piracy Documentary, Claiming It’s Piracy Too

May 21, 2013 at 12:50pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard, a documentary that sympathizes with the founders of the infamous file sharing website The Pirate Bay, has become the target of fraudulent link takedown requests from major Hollywood Studios, including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate. After its February release on The Pirate Bay website under a Creative Commons license making it free to download, Google has received multiple DMCA takedown requests asking that links to the film be removed from search results. The requests came through anti-piracy firms representing th [...]

New AdWords Editor Update For Enhanced Campaigns

May 21, 2013 at 11:21am ET by Ginny Marvin

Google rolled out a new version of AdWords Editor today. The latest version features more ways to make bulk changes to enhanced campaigns. New capabilities include: Bid adjustments for placements, topics, and audiences Mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level Upgrade campaigns in bulk using CSV import or the Add/update multiple campaigns tool Enter ValueTrack {ifmobile}, {ifnotmobile} parameters In addition, keyword performance metrics in Display Network campaigns are available on the Keywords tab. Performance statistics by targeted location are available in the Locations t [...]

Google’s Data Highlighter Now Supports Movies, TV, Articles, Products, Local Biz & Apps

May 21, 2013 at 9:48am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has quietly added support for six additional data types to the data highlighter rich snippet markup tool they introduced back in December. Google initially launched a visual rich snippet markup tool in December to allow less tech-savvy webmasters to markup their event based data. The tool only worked with event data and nothing else. Google has updated their help page showing the six new data types, in addition to the events data type. They include: Articles Movies TV Episodes Products (link currently broken) Local Businesses Software Applications Google will like [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: SEO | Top News

Enhanced Campaigns: “Flexible Bid Strategies” Launching Soon

May 20, 2013 at 4:48pm ET by Ginny Marvin

Google will be rolling out "flexible bid strategies" in enhanced campaigns in the next couple of weeks. Flexible bid strategies will allow advertisers to override automated bidding and apply manual bidding strategies within a single campaign or across multiple campaigns. The new Bid strategies tool will be located in Shared Library. You can create a flexible bid strategy and then apply it to specific keywords, ad groups, and campaigns. Performance metrics by bidding strategy will be available in Bidding strategies. There will be four types of flexible bid strategies available when th [...]

Google Glass Diary, Part 3: How Search Works On Google Glass

May 20, 2013 at 2:17pm ET by Matt McGee

There are seven voice commands built into this first "Explorers" edition of Google Glass. Two of those six are search-related: "google..." and "get directions to...." The others are "take a photo," "record a video," "send a message to," "make a call to" and "start a Hangout with." There's also the predictive search aspect of Google Now, where the device automatically shows me the kind of information Google thinks I'm looking for. So, the chances are pretty strong that a good amount of Google Glass activity is going to involve searching. Or "googling" as Glass suggests. Yep. Even though G [...]

AdWords Keyword Planner Officially Launches

May 20, 2013 at 1:14pm ET by Ginny Marvin

As of today, all users will see the Keyword Planner available in their AdWords accounts. Keyword Planner combines data from the Keyword Tool and Traffic estimator, both of which will be sunsetted in about 60 days. Users will need to log in to their AdWords accounts to access Keyword Planner. The external version of Keyword Tool that non-AdWords users, including SEOs, could access for general keyword research will also be disappearing. The new tool is designed to make it easier for advertisers to create new campaigns and ad groups from within the planner. To learn more about the ins and outs [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Google Testing Ads In New Google Maps, Pushes AdWords Location Extensions

May 20, 2013 at 12:23pm ET by Ginny Marvin

If you needed another reason to get your location extensions set up in AdWords, Google has announced its testing new ads in the new Google Maps. AdWords search ads set with location extensions can appear directly below the search box and on the map itself. Ads without location extensions can appear below the search box only and not on the map. The screenshot below shows a Rent-a-champ Cars ad below the search box and an "ad", or sponsored listing, on the map, indicated by a red icon with a white square in it. Google announced the new version of Google Maps at the company's annua [...]

New Google Maps UI Calls For Shifts In SEO Tactics

May 20, 2013 at 11:06am ET by Chris Silver Smith

Last week at the Google I/O developer conference, a newly redesigned Google Maps design was introduced. While a number of online commentators have virtually gushed about the new interfacing from an end user perspective, there may be a less-than-rosy view for many local businesses. Thus far, the new version of Google Maps is pretty much in beta, rolled out by invitation or to select user groups. So, some parts of the design may still be in flux for a while. However, the direction of the development is likely crystallized sufficiently to be able to make a number of observations and deducti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Local Search

Didn’t Win The Powerball Or Mega Millions Jackpot? Try Your Luck At The AdWords Jackpot!

May 20, 2013 at 10:27am ET by Larry Kim

[caption id="attachment_160187" align="alignright" width="300"] Image provided by the Multi-State Lottery Association.[/caption] Chances are you didn’t win this past Friday's $190 million Mega Millions drawing or Saturday’s $600 million Powerball jackpot. However, the great news is that if you’re an SEM account manager, you can still try your luck at winning the AdWords Jackpot! What’s An AdWords Jackpot? An AdWords Jackpot happens when all of the paid search ads for a search query are the same or are pretty similar. In this case, of course, having an ad that's like all the rest i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Paid Search

Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums

May 20, 2013 at 9:57am ET by Barry Schwartz

The latest large brand to be hit with a user-generated content spam penalty notification is Sprint, the large US wireless communications company. Similar to Mozilla's penalty and BBC's penalty, Sprint was penalized for user-generated content spam on a portion of their site that was open to anyone to post links and content. Also similar to the BBC and Mozilla, Sprint went to the Google help forums to seek advice because Google's warning message itself doesn't provide detailed information about what's wrong. The employee wrote: I received a message on 5/17/2013 that "Google has detected [...]

Google Drops “Translated Foreign Pages” Search Option Due To Lack Of Use

May 20, 2013 at 9:38am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has quietly dropped the "Translated Foreign Pages" search filter from the Google search options menu. Google tells us the option was removed due to lack of use, but they say they are still committed to making the Web available to as many people, in as many languages, as possible. The translated foreign pages search option enabled searchers to restrict the search results to specific languages only. So, if you want to search for something in English and then show results for that search result in French, you could have used this search option for that. Dan Russell, Google's Search R [...]

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