We reported yesterday that Google penalized Mozilla over user generated content. Today, we learn that it was a really, really small penalty that only impacted a single page out of Mozilla's ~22 million webpages. Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, added more to the Google thread explaining that this manual penalty was applied in a very granular way. In fact, it only impacted a single page on Mozilla's domain name, blog.mozilla.org/respindola/about. Matt Cutts wrote: In this particular case, it was the url http://blog.mozilla.org/respindola/about/ that we took action on, and that w [...]

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

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 Gets A Penalty Search Engine Roundtable spotted the latest flare-up in Google's fight against spam. Chris More, the Web production manager for Mozilla, took to Google's forums for help in dealing with the penalty notice he received. From his post: We got th [...]

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You may have heard that content is king, but the truth is that informational content is king. It's estimated that approximately 50-80% of search queries are informational in nature (pdf). Most websites have very little informational content on them, preferring instead to focus on driving a conversion. These websites are missing an excellent opportunity to capture search market share. Ratios of Informational Content In previous articles, I've written about the importance of theming content -- developing a strategy that truly plays to your customers' search intent. But usually, very little [...]

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After 2012 being dubbed the “Year of the Penguin,” Google’s Matt Cutts has already hinted that the next “Penguin 4” update will be bigger and more devastating than ever. We have seen big brands like Interflora get penalized and bounce back pretty fast. But how did that work? And what’s coming up for the rest of us? After the havoc wreaked by previous Penguin updates, how should webmasters prepare for what Google has in store next? [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] Matt Cutts has more in store for us webmasters....[/caption] Toxic Link Cleanup Phase Over the past [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Disavow Links Tool | Google: SEO | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

Bing has responded to the malware study conducted by AV-TEST earlier this week, claiming that Bing search results led to five times more malware than Google. To that Bing said, "the conclusions many have drawn from the study are wrong." Why is the study wrong according to Bing? While Bing may show potentially infected search results, Bing clearly labels results that may be infected and this study did not consider that. Bing said the study's methodology used the Bing Search API, which does not contain a malware label, like the core search results screen does. Bing said, "AV-TEST di [...]

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Technical University of Denmark researchers have designed a search engine that indexes specific sets of databases to help identify rare diseases. Users can query patient symptoms on FindZebra.com which crawls over 31,000 medical articles focused on rare and genetic diseases to deliver medically relevant search results. While the search engine's homepage includes a notification stating that the site is a research project and should only be used by medical professionals, the developers boast that it delivers significantly better results than Google when searching for rare disease content. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Search Engines: Academic Search Engines | Search Engines: Other Search Engines

Google & Yandex announced the new x-default hreflang tag earlier this month, and in doing so closed the final gap in executing ‘perfect’ SEO platforms for multinational brands. There is, however, the question of what language content to use as your default, and how you can bring a little quantifiable information to play to determine your best, overall, choice.

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Pop Quiz:  What is the first thing a searcher sees when they type your name into the Google search bar? If your answer was related webpages found in SERPs, you're wrong -- that would be the second thing. The first thing they see are the Autocomplete suggestions that drop down from the search bar. This is your true first impression! There are three basic facts of our Google-centric world: first, like it or not, we each represent the brand of our personal name; second, we are humans, and thus, we all make mistakes; and third, Google searches for individual names are tremendously popular [...]

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AFP reports a Japan court has ruled Google to alter the search suggestions and fined Google 300,000 yen ($3,100). The Tokyo District Court ruled that Google has to change the auto-completions for a search on a particular man's name - the name was undisclosed - because Google provided suggestions that the man committed criminal acts. In addition, Google was ordered to pay the man $3,100 for the mental anguish the search suggestion caused him. What is interesting is that since Google does not operate the search results from within Japan, Google technically does not and historically has not [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Google: Suggest

Google's Matt Cutts answered a question submitted by another Googler, John Mueller, on YouTube asking, "Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages all at once or in stages?" The question is, if you build out a new section of your website with tons of content - is it safe to just launch them all at once or should you do smaller chunks at a time? Matt said that Google can handle it either way, but he did say that if a site released hundreds of thousands of pages overnight, it may raise a red flag and warrant a manual review by the Google spam team. And if you do not want Goo [...]

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Many of our clients face sales cycles in a six- to twelve-month duration. In a recent client interview, one of the sales directors revealed that they were on the verge of closing a multi-million dollar deal that took nearly three years of nurturing alone to finally get to the proposal process. With multiple decision makers and departments impacting complete B2B solutions, marketing plays a pivotal role. A recent news release, which summarized a comprehensive survey of B2B marketing professionals put together by BtoB Magazine and Bizo revealed that the sales cycle is lengthening for many B2 [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEO | Google: Authorship | Site & Enterprise Search

[caption id="attachment_152995" align="alignright" width="267"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] For many years, email was one of just a few ways you could share a URL with another person. And, people were far less accepting of link request spam than they are today. So, for today’s column, let’s talk about the ancient concept of net etiquette and link building. In many ways, it’s come full circle and is as relevant today (if not more so) as ever. Net Etiquette & Link Building There was a thing called "netiquette" back in the day, a concept that today seems almost quaint. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 68 percent of the respondents said they would block a website because it had too many ads, while 60 percent claimed they would block a site because of poor quality content. Respondents were more forgiving of typos and grammar mistakes, with 26 percent claiming to block a website with typos and only 23 percent blocking a website containing bad g [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior

In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled "Google" and the other with a page header labeled "Bing," and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results. Of 641 survey respondents, 379 participants received a survey asking which of two search result pages they preferred. One page of results for the term "file taxes" included true Google results and the other page included true Bing results. The Google page [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Search Quality Raters | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Engines | SEO: Domain Names & URLs | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

With the announcement of Facebook Home, Facebook has pushed the accelerator on its local mobile strategy, which was already in high gear, thanks to Facebook Local Search and its big brother, Facebook Graph Search. By the end of 2013, I expect the social media giant to further strengthen its hold as the #2 local search app; so, it might behoove local marketers to get a handle on exactly how their businesses are showing up in Facebook these days. There are numerous ways that local business data makes it into Facebook, including: "Link" buttons on local business sites "Share on Facebook" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Facebook | Facebook: Facebook Search | Facebook: SEO | Local Search | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] Twitter Cards Image from Marketing Land[/caption] Mobile Application Search in both Apple's App Store and Google Play is frustratingly similar to general online search in the early 2000s -- and the tactics used to make them visible in search resuls also closely mirror the SEO best practices from that era. Searching for and discovering the right apps is a concern for both developers and mobile users, which may recently have been dealt a helping hand from Twitter with its App Cards. How Do Twitter App Cards Work? Currently, you need special [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Mobile | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | SEO: Mobile Search

The Google Operating System blog noticed Google is testing a new form of Sitelinks on the mobile interface. These new sitelinks are sub-sitelinks, secondary levels beyond the sitelink you'd find in the normal search interface. Sitelinks are designed to help searchers quickly find the section of the website they are trying to navigate toward. It is mostly found for navigational queries but also can be found on other types of queries. For example, in the image below, you will see a sitelink category for "phones" and when you expand it, it shows categories of phones: --> We ac [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Sitelinks | Google: User Interface

Yandex has taken exception to a recent study that reported it has more malware in its search results than other major search engines like Google and Bing. The company shared its concerns with Search Engine Land via email, saying that it also sent the same response to AV-TEST, the German IT security firm that published the findings from an 18-month search/malware study. We reported on the study yesterday after PC Mag was first to report on it. The AV-TEST study examined more than 13 million Yandex search results and found malware in about .024 percent -- twice the percentage of malware it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Yandex | SEO: Spamming | Top News

About three years ago, Google was labeled in one study as the "King of Malware." Things have apparently changed a lot since then. A new study reports that Google is beating its primary search competitors pretty significantly when it comes to keeping malware out of search results. The 18-month study (PDF), done by a German IT security group called AV-TEST, reviewed more than 40 million web pages -- the vast majority (about 38 million) coming from Google, Bing, Yandex and Blekko. The results: About .0025 percent of Google's search results were links to malicious websites. Blekko was [...]

Related Topics: Blekko | Channel: SEO | Google: Security | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Yandex | SEO: Spamming | Top News

[caption id="attachment_155242" align="alignright" width="250"] Photo from drp.Used under Creative Commons license.[/caption] In many ways, taking charge of your search engine results page is like answering the age-old philosophical question, “Who am I” -- but for your business. You may still be in the dark about what motivates some of your personal actions, but if you’re a business owner, I’m pretty certain you know exactly what your business is all about. That’s the first step. Now you need to translate that into Google results. Sound easy? Didn’t think so. It’s a bit [...]

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