Perhaps Google may finally have to figure out a "fix" for Rick Santorum's "Google Problem," now that an anti-Romney site is making it appear that anyone can rank any protest page for any politician's name. Bing has the same problem, but no one ever seems to care about that. Spreading Romney I was pretty surprised to discover the "Spreading Romney" site appearing in the top results on Google and Bing in a search for "romney" that I did today. I don't recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain. Here it is on Google, as the ninth regular listing: I've also seen it as high a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Link Building: Link Bombs | Search & Society: General | Search & Society: Santorum Google Problem | Top News

US presidential candidate Rick Santorum pulled off a surprise last night, winning caucuses and primaries in three states. So what's with Bing listing an anti-Santorum web site first in its results in a search for his last name? Does Microsoft have some type of liberal agenda! Wait, you didn't realize Rick Santorum has a "Bing problem" that's exactly the same as his well-documented "Google problem," where a search for "santorum" lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum's official web site? He does. In fact, Santorum's had his Bing problem for months [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Link Building: Link Bombs | Search & Society: General | Search & Society: Santorum Google Problem | Search Marketing: Public Relations | Top News

Over the past couple of days, numerous stats and figures have been published about how Super Bowl advertisers took advantage (or not) of social media this year. But commercials also drive people to search engines, which in turn (when things go right) can lead potential customers to advertiser web sites where rather than talk about a brand as they can on social media sites, they can watch the commercials again, cementing brand messaging, and take a closer look at the products being sold. (Which is presumably why a company would spend $3.5 million dollars on a thirty second spot in the first pla [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Search Ads: General | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Top News

Super Bowl 46 kicks off on February 5, 2012 at 6:30pm EST on NBC. Amazingly enough, I found this information by searching on Google and clicking on the second result: nfl.com. Amazing because every year, football fans flock to search engines searching for the start time, and until now, organizations like the NFL, the playing teams, and the broadcasting station didn't show up at all in search results because none of their sites answered the question. Seem crazy? 2009  Results: In 2009, start-time related searches were among the most popular the morning of the game, but neither the N [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society | Search Marketing: Search Term Research

The longest search queries are happening on Ask.com, where users average almost five words per search. That's according to research from Chitika. The ad network analyzed search referrals on "hundreds of millions" of impressions across sites in its network between January 9th and 12th. And the longest search referrals -- at an average of 4.81 words -- came from Ask.com. AOL users are at the other end of the spectrum; their user queries average barely above four words, by far the shortest of the five sites that Chitika studied. It makes sense that this would be the case, since Ask.com [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Web Search | Channel: Search | Search & Society: General | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | Stats: Search Behavior

US Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made a surprise leap ahead to practically tie Mitt Romney in yesterday's Iowa caucus results. Now people are searching to find out more about him and discovering THAT result which makes comedy show hosts like Jon Stewart giggle. But rather than blame Google (or Bing), as Santorum has in the past, much of the fault remains with his own campaign. Searching For Santorum Here's how Google Trends currently looks: The arrow shows how searches for "rick santorum" are now that second most "hot searches" happening, searches that are occurring f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Search & Society: Santorum Google Problem | Top News

I've seen some weird Google results in my time, but this one is pretty strange. Search for "define an english person" or some related queries, and Google brings up the Wikipedia page about the C-word in response. As spotted by Search Engine Roundtable, people were asking in Google's help forums why various searches related to defining English people returned the Wikipedia page about the C-word, as shown below: The screenshot shows Google listing the Wikipedia page first in a search for define english person. It also lists that page first or in the first page of results for related sear [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Link Building: Link Bombs | Search & Society: General | Top News

Following the major engines themselves, Experian Hitwise announced the top search terms of 2011. The company looked at the top 1,000 search queries of 2011 and found that Facebook topped the list for the third year in a row. Overall Facebook had four of the top 10 search terms for 2011, the same as in 2010. However query volume for the collection of Facebook terms grew 33 percent vs. last year. Top search queries of 2010 and 2011 What's noteworthy is that all of the top 10 are navigational queries. Beyond the top 10, Hitwise said that "social networking-related terms dominated the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society | Search & Society: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Popularity | Top News

Google released the Google Zeitgeist 2011 today. Google made several lists this year and even broke them down by country. You can play with the interactive lists at googlezeitgeist.com. Those in the picture above are included in the "fastest rising searches" category, including Rebecca Black, Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, Battlefield 3, iPhone 5, Adele, 東京 電力, Steve Jobs and iPad 2. Google summed up the year also in this video: Here is a partial text based list: Fastest-Rising Toys 1. Lego Alien Conquest 2. Unova Pokedex 3. Fluttershy Fastest-Rising Costu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google | Google: Trends | Google: Web Search | Search & Society: General | Stats: Popularity

Google gets a mention in The Simpsons this week, future Google, that is. Google has enslaved half the world, apparently, but as Lisa Simpson puts it, it's still a damn fine search engine. Within the the Ultranet of the future, Lisa accesses Google through the Google door: "Right, it's Dr. Suess's birthday," she says, when seeing the Suessian Google logo over the door: That's nod to the real Dr. Seuss doodle that Google ran in 2009. After entering, she accesses Google itself: "Google, even though you've enslaved half the world, you're still a damn fine search engine," [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General

First Google questioned Mitt Romney's chances of winning the US presidential election. Now it's suggesting that Austria is less important than Australia. You Say Austria, Google Says Australia In a search for Austria's biggest companies, Google automatically changes the query and searches instead for Australia's biggest companies: Forbes spotted the glitch, which is the second major problem like this to hit Google recently. Romney Can't Win Last month, Google gained attention because of how a search for "romney can win" caused Google to suggest, "Did you mean: Romney can't win," a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Web Search | Search & Society: General

"I'm standing in front of a Planned Parenthood," the CNN reporter says, "And Siri can't find it when I search for abortion clinic." No, it can't. It's not because Apple is pro-life. It's because Planned Parenthood doesn't call itself an abortion clinic. Welcome To Search Scandals, Apple It's been interesting to watch the Siri Abortiongate scandal blow up in Apple's face over the past few days. Apple is learning for the first time what it's like to run a search engine. People hold you accountable for everything, even if you the information isn't even from your own database. Google is a bat [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Top News

Now celebrating a decade of recapping annual search trends, earlier today, Yahoo! released the 2011 list of most popular searches in the US in 30 different categories, topping last year's extensive list. This year marks the first full year Yahoo! used has used the Bing search engine to primarily power Yahoo! search results, with Americans conducting nearly 3 billion searches a month on Yahoo.com. While every year, it seems these lists are mostly littered with celebrity gossip, it's important to look at the totality of these lists for the overall trends in how online users use search to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General | Yahoo

AOL announced its most popular global searches (United States, United Kingdom and Canada) in 2011 at http://hot.aol.com. While other search engines have ranked Justin Bieber and Kim K at the top for the year, Charlie Sheen proved he won the hearts of AOL users by climbing to the top of their most searched for celebrity list. Most notable about the AOL hot searches feature this year is the ability to view the UK and Canadian top searches independently, by clicking each country flag to view the differences in search behavior among all three countries. As AOL has over 60 million montly [...]

Related Topics: AOL | AOL: General | Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General

It's been about a year since Ask went back to its roots as a full Q&A site and at the end of last year, we offered up its most popular questions of 2010. In that story from 2010, note that Ask.com claimed 90 million users at that time, and in this year's followup release of the most popular questions, Ask.com cited their 60 million users helped predict what's to come in 2012 (see below). According to Comscore's September 2011 web property rankings however, Ask remained around 90 million unique users, and reported in October that Ask's search share remained steady. Whether it's 60 or [...]

Related Topics: Ask | Channel: Consumer | Search & Society | Search & Society: General

First out of the gate this year in the annual rush to declare search winners is Bing, who earlier today unveiled the top searches of 2011 at BingTrends.com. Bing.com also created an original video to recap the year in search, ending the clip with the Twitter hashtag #My2011. Video: Bing Originals: Decisions That Shaped 2011 Top Celebrity Searches Justin Bieber proved he's a  ladies' man by edging out 9 female celebrities for the most searched person of the year: Justin Bieber Kim Kardashian Jennifer Aniston Lindsay Lohan Jennifer Lopez Britney Spears Katy Perry Megan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Bing | Search & Society | Search & Society: General

Yesterday, I saw a few tweets go by noting that the popular show Dexter on Showtime mentioned SEO and said that "Google was so 5 minutes ago" while typing in the URL: eliotsearchengine.com* - which supposedly "uses an algorithm to aggregate content without getting tripped up by SEO bull$h!t." Because Dexter shows are behind a paywall on Showtime's website, our own Rob Snell posted a short video clip of the segment (your sound may need to be turned up) from the episode that aired Sunday, November 20th: [youtube width="560" height="315"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUHmR3u4emM[/youtube [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search & Society: General

Lady Gaga and Snooki … err, Nicole … from MTV's Jersey Shore were among last year's hottest Halloween costume searches. Are they back this year, or have other pop culture icons replaced them? Let's take a look at the hottest 2011 search halloween costume searches, courtesy of a few different sources from Google to one shopping search engine. If you're still on the hunt for a last-minute Halloween costume idea, you're bound to find something that works below. Google's Halloween Costume Search Trends Google has been digging into Halloween costume searches [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search & Society: General | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

US presidential candidate Republican Mitt Romney can't seem to catch a break even from Google. Not only does it suggest that he can't win, if you start typing in Romney's name, but if you disagree, Google tries to correct you. Suggestion: Romney Can't Win Start typing in Romney, and Google as its top suggestion "romney can't win," as you can see below: Did You Really Mean He Can Win? Romney believers who ignore the suggestion and go on to search for "romney can win" get this response: "Did you mean: romney can't win" -- that's Google's spell checking system kicking in. Don't Bla [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Instant | Google: Suggest | Google: Web Search | Search & Society: General | Top News

It was pretty funny - Stephen Colbert started The Colbert Report last night talking to Siri on his iPhone 4S and not feeling particularly happy about the responses, all of which were real. Colbert began by asking Siri to "write the show" since, as he later explained, he'd been playing with it all day and hadn't gotten anything done. In response, Siri offered to search the web. Colbert's iPhone screen wasn't shown, but the response from Siri was read back. Doing the same thing myself, the response was real: After that, Colbert snaps back at Siri, "I don't want to search for anythin [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Search & Society: General