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 Go Worldwide For April Fool's Day 2012 It's Over: Google Has Already Won April Fools Day 2011 Google Books, Google Maps Get 3D View – But Only For April Fool's Day April Fools' Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry It may still be March 31st for me, and maybe [...]

Google Shopping Visibility Plunges In “Universal Search” Results; Video Stays Dominant

Mar 29, 2013 at 9:00am ET by Amy Gesenhues

Findings from a new study show the visibility of Google Shopping in Google's "Universal Search" results dropped significantly after the search engine implemented a new paid inclusion model. Video content also dropped but still remained by far the most dominant source mixed with web page listings. Searchmetrics, a provider of search and social analysis software, conducted the study by analyzing millions of listings to evaluate Universal Search results for videos, images, maps, shopping and news. Google implemented Universal Search in 2007 to offer an improved search experience for users [...]

Google Trends Now Shows YouTube Searches

Mar 20, 2013 at 1:19pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced on Google+ that they have expanded Google Trends to add YouTube search support. Now you can use Google Trends to see what searches are trending and spiking across the world from within YouTube search. The trend data for YouTube goes back to 2008. To use this, go to Google Trends and search for something. Then on the left-hand panel under "Limit to," choose "YouTube" to restrict the data to just YouTube searches. Here is a picture: For more details, see the YouTube Blog. [...]

These Five Websites Captured 20% Of All Search Result Clicks

Feb 22, 2013 at 8:31am ET by Matt McGee

Once in every five times that someone clicks a search result, it goes to one of five websites: Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia or Amazon. That leaves about 80 percent of search clicks for the rest of us. Going further, the top 500 websites received almost 50 percent of all clicks from search results, and the top 10,000 websites got almost 75 percent of all search clicks. All of this is according to the 2013 Digital Marketer Report from Experian Marketing Services (Hitwise). The company says that those five sites I listed above combined to get 20.07 percent of all clicks from US [...]

YouTube Search Adds Time Watched As Ranking Factor

Oct 12, 2012 at 1:39pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The YouTube Blog announced they have adjusted their ranking algorithm to include the time a video was watched. YouTube said they experimented with this ranking factor with suggested videos and it lead to "less clicking" and "more watching" and thus feels it is a good idea to add to the overall YouTube Search ranking algorithm. Part of this announcement, YouTube also added the time watched statistics to video producers YouTube Analytics dashboard. You can access the time watched statistics under the "Views" report. There is a section labeled "Estimated minutes watched." Here are screen sh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: YouTube & Video | Top News

The Google Dance: Google’s Eric Schmidt and PSY Dance “Gangnam Style”

Sep 27, 2012 at 11:02am ET by Monica Wright

Technology news site The Verge shared a photo and video of Google chairman Eric Schmidt doing the "Gangnam Style" dance while visiting Korea this week. He took a break from his tour of East Asia where he is launching the Nexus 7 to meet the PSY - the rapper behind the record-breaking viral YouTube hit. It's a good thing he brought his dancing shoes. The song is currently number two in the country on the Billboard's Top 100. Hankyung journalist Kim Kwang-hyun intially shared the photo in a tweet. You can also get a brief sense of Schmidt's dancing skills in the video below. Perhaps we ca [...]

Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not Just YouTube

Aug 12, 2012 at 1:51pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google says that YouTube isn't going to somehow solely escape its new "pirate penalty." Any popular site may be OK, as the penalty works off of more than pure copyright infringement reports. Nuances in calculating the penalty should save popular user-generated content sites, the company said. The Pirate Penalty Initially, it sounded as if sites with many copyright infringement complaints filed against them with Google -- such as those listed here in the Google Transparency Report -- would be at risk under the new pirate penalty Google will begin imposing next week. If that were the c [...]

How YouTube Will Escape Google’s New Pirate Penalty

Aug 10, 2012 at 8:07pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has announced that it will soon penalize sites that are repeatedly accused of copyright infringement. But one site in particular doesn't need to worry: Google's own YouTube. It has a unique immunity against the forthcoming penalty. POSTSCRIPT: Please also be sure to read our follow-up article, Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not Just YouTube The penalty -- which we've dubbed the Emanuel Update -- impacts Google's web search results. If someone has reported a web search listing as being a copyright violation, using the DMCA takedown mechanism, that's a stri [...]

Google To Discontinue iGoogle, Once Google’s Fastest Growing Product

Jul 3, 2012 at 4:22pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced they are shutting down several products as part of their "summer spring cleaning" efforts. One of those products is iGoogle, once known to be Google's faster growing product. In fact, iGoogle at one point accounted for 20% of all visits to Google's homepage! Now, Google decides to kill it off on November 1, 2013. Why? Google said since the web and mobile are changing, and "with modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time." Google is giving iGoogle users 16 months to learn to use something else. Google is als [...]

Google Recommending New Video Schema.org Markup

Feb 22, 2012 at 10:13am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog that they are now adding video support for schema.org. They are doing this in combination with Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search as a "joint effort." Google says using the schema.org video markup is the "recommended way to describe videos on the web." Google added that they still recommend you continue with your other video XML formats, such as Video Sitemaps and mRSS feeds, if you use them. The new schema.org video markup won't impact the Video Sitemaps and mRSS feeds. The technical details on video markup can be found on schema.org an [...]

Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search

Jan 26, 2012 at 8:03pm ET by Danny Sullivan

The debate about what should -- and shouldn't -- show in a Google search result for "santorum" has been well-documented, at this point. But I'd like to use this now famous search to illustrate something else: how it appears Google is taking its eye off the ball of being a search engine. Searching For Santorum: A New Surprise I did a search for santorum a few minutes ago, and this is what I got: See the YouTube link showing up there? It helps illustrate all that I think many people are feeling is wrong with Google right now. It's a pretty bad result, and it's also something getting there p [...]

Report: Google Controls 44 Percent Of Global Online Advertising

Dec 6, 2011 at 10:04am ET by Greg Sterling

ZenithOptimedia has issued a report that contains both good news and bad news for Google. The good news is: Google controls 44 percent of global online ad revenues. The bad news is: Google controls 44 percent of global online ad revenues. At a time when Google is defending against antitrust investigations on two continents this news is most unwelcome. The shares of all the other major US internet companies are tiny by comparison, though together with Google they control 61 percent of the world's digital ad spending. Overall the internet represents only 16 percent of global ad revenue [...]

How To Get Started With YouTube Promoted Video

Nov 28, 2011 at 4:56pm ET by Matt Lawson

Earlier in the year, YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the world’s second largest search engine. In June 2011, ComScore reported that in the U.S., YouTube attracted 5.6 billion viewing sessions per month and the average U.S. visitor frequents the site 23 times a month with each visit lasting on average 26 minutes. And, just today, ComScore also reported that YouTube passed 20 billion video views during October 2011 alone. No matter how you look at the data, that’s a lot of eyeballs and a lot of time spent on a single site that a marketer can take advantage of. But creating a video is only hal [...]

YouTube Passes 20 Billion Video Views In One Month

Nov 28, 2011 at 2:57pm ET by Matt McGee

Online video viewership reached record levels in October, with YouTube passing the 20 billion views mark for the first time. That number represents a little less than 50% of all videos watched in the U.S., according to the latest statistics shared by comScore. U.S. Internet users watched an all-time high of 42.6 billion videos during October, with YouTube accounting for 20.9 billion of those views -- 49.1% of the total. ComScore credits YouTube/Google with an audience of just under 161 million unique viewers, almost triple the reach of Facebook, which was second with a little less than 60 m [...]

In-House Video Marketing Via YouTube

Oct 12, 2011 at 11:53am ET by Kelly Gillease

The second largest search engine on the web after Google is YouTube. In-house search engine marketers often overlook the promotional possibilities of YouTube, but with the relatively recent proliferation of cheap and easy video filming technologies (iPhones, Androids, Flips), leveraging YouTube’s massive search volume is something in-house search engine marketers should give at least as much time as they devote to other second-tier search engines like Bing, Facebook or Twitter. Create A Brand Channel Establishing a YouTube presence is the critical first step. Setting up a brand channel and [...]

Google Intros AdWords For Video, Folding In YouTube Features

Sep 28, 2011 at 4:53pm ET by Pamela Parker

In a bid to unify its advertising interfaces and improve reporting for YouTube video ads, Google is launching a limited public beta of "AdWords for Video" -- which includes four "TrueView" video ad formats, for which advertisers pay when the video is viewed or started by a user. The release integrates video advertising, previously housed at YouTube.com, into the AdWords interface. "Buying video has traditionally been a difficult process, especially within AdWords," says Lane Shackleton, product manager at YouTube, noting that the new product is meant to ease that pain for advertisers. Th [...]

Google Dominates Online Video, In Hunt For Hulu

Aug 22, 2011 at 3:34pm ET by Greg Sterling

By unique viewer count (per comScore) YouTube is more than two and a half times the size of the next largest US video site, Vevo. It also sees more than five times the monthly minutes of Vevo. Only Hulu approaches YouTube in terms of time spent or engagement. However Hulu is the most heavily and successfully monetized video site, with almost 20 percent of online video ad impressions. Google, the owner of YouTube, is one of a handful of companies, including Yahoo, Amazon and DirectTV, that are rumored to be going after Hulu. The anticipated, competitive bidding could fetch as much as [...]

Google, MSFT, Yahoo In Talks To Buy Hulu: Report

Jul 1, 2011 at 2:45pm ET by Matt McGee

Hulu is apparently a popular dance partner at the moment. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all in "confidential" discussions about buying the popular video service. YouTube remains the dominant video site online, but it's built around user-generated, amateur videos. Hulu, on the other hand, has agreements with major TV networks that gives it access to current (and professional) programming -- an area that YouTube has been trying to beef up for a few years now. That kind of programming is what attracts ad dollars, as the Times report explains: Hulu' [...]

YouTube “First Watch” Creates Massive Reach For Video Ads

May 24, 2011 at 10:17am ET by Greg Sterling

A very long time ago Google was trying to find alternatives to pre-roll to monetize YouTube videos. Google-sponsored consumer research in 2007 found that users don't like pre-roll. But that's ancient history. Today Google is trying to find more ways to generate and capture display and video ad revenue, which it views as a massive growth opportunity for the company. And YouTube is in the center of that opportunity. According to the NY Times, Google is testing a new program for pre-roll on YouTube called "First Watch." [A]n advertiser can buy a preroll spot on most people’s first view [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: YouTube & Video

Google Launches Streaming Movies & Music

May 10, 2011 at 2:42pm ET by Greg Sterling

As widely expected Google launched its Music beta today at the Google developer conference, I/O. Right now the service is US only and invitation only. Users can store 20,000 songs and the service is free (for the time being). By implication Google Music will become a paid-service at some point in the future. No Music Store, Google Still Hopeful There is no music store associated with the new Google Music beta. However Google made clear that it's still trying to strike agreements with record labels and that it's optimisitic that it will be able to do so in the future. Google made a point to s [...]

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