May 1, 2013 at 12:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

For the 20th anniversary of CERN making Web technology available to anyone royalty-free, the European science lab has restored the very first website to its original location. Could today's search engines of Google and Bing, which didn't exist when the site was first posted, find it now? Time for a test. The answer turns out to be tricky. Searching For The Page By URL The easiest test was to see which of them had the page listed by searching for it by its URL, which is: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html It looks like this, by the way: Google found it when I searc [...]

The Google Dance Is Back

Sep 24, 2012 at 9:15am ET by Danny Sullivan

Vets in the SEO space remember the "Google Dance," how search results used to jump around on a monthly basis as Google rolled out algorithm changes. The dance eventually died, but now it's back. My latest column over at our Marketing Land site, The Return Of The Google Dance, covers how the dance has made a comeback. The column takes you through the history of the old Google Dance and how we've returned to a monthly "Panda Dance." It also explains how the results at Google may dance for other reasons that Google doesn't announce, like refreshes of the Penguin or Top Heavy updates. [...]

IAB & PwC: Search Still Tops Online Ad Revenues, And Share Grew In 2011

Apr 18, 2012 at 1:43pm ET by Pamela Parker

Through online advertising's ups and downs, search -- because of its orientation toward performance -- has always been a stalwart category. Despite much talk about branding, social and immersive advertising lately, search still commanded the lion's share of online advertising revenues (46.5%) in 2011 and its share grew from 2010 numbers (44.8%), when it experienced a bit of a dip. That's according to the latest report on interactive advertising revenues put out by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in partnership with Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), which looked at full-year 2011 revenues [...]

Google Presents The Evolution Of Search In Six Minutes

Nov 28, 2011 at 11:47am ET by Chris Sherman

Google released a short video today highlighting some of its key milestones in search over the past decade. It's both a fun blast from the past and a worthwhile reminder of how much things have changed over the years. The video is also a nice follow-on to the look under the hood of search that Google released in August. From the Google blog post announcing the video, Google sums up its approach to improving search: "Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That mean [...]

Research: Optimism Fueled SEM Growth in Q4, But ROI Lagged

Jan 18, 2011 at 12:01am ET by Pamela Parker

Spending on search engine marketing (SEM) grew 23% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2010, signaling optimism both from marketers and consumers, according to the latest report from Efficient Frontier, a search marketing agency that manages more than $1 billion in annual spend for its clients. The company attributed the strong growth to increases in cost-per-click, indicating larger budgets and competition among advertisers for coveted keywords. Consumers' likelihood to click on ads also increased, the 4Q report indicates. Interestingly, while spend increased, return-on-investment dr [...]

Need Pre-Facebook Movie Drama? Go Read “Googled” This Week

Sep 25, 2010 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

With the Facebook movie's debut a week away, how about something to keep you entertained while you wait? A book. About that other major internet drama story, Google. The book? "Googled, The End Of The World As We Know It," by Ken Auletta. Googled came out at the end of last year, and I've been terribly remiss in not writing my review of it until now. It is a masterwork. Required reading for anyone trying to understand how disruptive the internet has been to businesses, and how Google has ridden that disruptive wave, as well as having churned it up. You want drama? Here's drama, about [...]

Let’s Celebrate Google’s Biggest Failures!

Aug 5, 2010 at 3:55pm ET by Danny Sullivan

"We celebrate our failures," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday when speaking at the Techonomy confernce, in response to the surprise closure of his company's Google Wave product. When it comes to failures, Google's celebrating more than you might realize. Some believe that anything Google touches is golden. Yesterday's closure of Google Wave is another reminder of how this isn't so. Below, a summary of important Google products that haven't made the cut, over time. For each product, I've also pulled a "celebratory failure quote." I don't mean for that to be as snarky as it seems. It [...]

Tim Mayer, Who Worked For Practically Every Search Engine, Leaves Yahoo

Aug 3, 2010 at 9:13pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Earlier I wrote about the depature of Yahoo's Srinija Srinivasan. Yahoo's lost another person, and another big figure in search, that of Tim Mayer. Tim just tweeted, as shown above, that he's enjoying his first "post-Yahoo" day. Tweeted using the Twitter account I personally set up for him ages ago, I might add! Who Didn't He Work For? Where to begin with Tim? How about his LinkedIn profile, which recounts his storied past moving from search engine to search engine: RealNames, in the summer of 1999 Inktomi, as director of product management, from 2000 to 2002 FAST Search, [...]

Once The Most Powerful Person In Search, Srinija Srinivasan Leaves Yahoo

Aug 3, 2010 at 5:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, the most powerful person in search was arguably Yahoo's Srinija Srinivasan. If Yahoo's was the "gateway" to the web in the way some think Google is today, Srinivasan was the chief gatekeeper. And now after 15 years, she's leaving Yahoo. Srinivasan was Yahoo's "Ontological Yahoo," among other titles including being a vice president and editor-in-chief. She was Yahoo's fifth employee, hired in 1995 to help organize Yahoo's listing service. That's all Yahoo was at the time, a listing service. Human editors -- "web surfers" as Yahoo called them -- organized web [...]

Yes, People Do Say “Bing It” — Barely

May 18, 2010 at 4:04pm ET by Danny Sullivan

It was around 2001 when I first really noticed the transition from people talking about "searching" for something to "Googling" information. As Google's brand grew, it also became a synonym for search engines in general. That's something Bing, coming up on its first birthday, has hoped to challenge. Good news. Yes, people are saying "Bing It." That's a huge accomplishment. Bad news: many, many more continue to say "Google It." Binging It On Twitter I came across people saying "Bing It" on Twitter recently. It's easy to find real-life examples. Here are are some from the past few days, [...]

Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?

Mar 4, 2010 at 3:10am ET by Danny Sullivan

I've found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes SEO. That's not how I defined SEM -- search engine marketing -- back 2001. I'd still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. Below, how I think we arrived at this conflict and some thoughts on where we go from here. Types Of Listings To understand where we're at now, let me start with some core concepts. There are two basic ways to show up in search results: Editorial / Organic / Natural Listings: Any good search engine, such [...]

How Wikipedia Turned PPC / Paid Search Into SEM

Mar 4, 2010 at 3:03am ET by Danny Sullivan

What's search engine marketing? If you ask Wikipedia, it's currently defined as the act of buying listings on search engines. That's not how SEM started out being defined. It's still not how I define it, though that might change, as my Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up? article explains. But in this piece, how did SEM end up this way on Wikipedia? Come along and see how small changes snowballed into an entirely new meaning. June 2005: Wikipedia Starts Out Wrong The first Wikipedia page for search engine marketing was made on June 25, 2005. It said: Search Engine Marketing is a marketin [...]

2002 In Review: Google Powers AOL; AdWords Go Cost-Per-Click

Feb 5, 2010 at 7:37pm ET by Danny Sullivan

This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2002 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Google Powers AOL Search The deal for Google to provide search results for AOL Search was the big story of 2002. It showed the necessity of being a "single solution" provider to portals and others without their own search technology. It also tipped Google's share of the search marketplace over 50%, when you factored in all of its partners. Both [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: History | The Google Decade

2001 In Review: Search Engine Marketing Gets Respect, As Does Search Generally

Feb 4, 2010 at 5:48pm ET by Danny Sullivan

This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2001 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Search Marketing Gets Respect For me, the biggest story of 2001 was the recognition that search marketing was a legitimate activity that major companies should consider. Despite search being a powerful channel for years before this, the profits that were being generated by public search companies like GoTo (later Overture) helped wake some people u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: History | The Google Decade

2000 In Review: AdWords Launches; Yahoo Partners With Google; GoTo Syndicates

Feb 1, 2010 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2000 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Google Launches AdWords To me, the big story of 2000 was Google's launch of AdWords. It allowed anyone to buy ads -- through a self-serve system -- on Google and its network of partners. But this wasn't the AdWords that many know today. In its original system, ads were sold on a cost per impression basis, rather than cost per click. The CPC change [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: History | The Google Decade

The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009

Feb 1, 2010 at 8:30am ET by Danny Sullivan

The 2000s were notable as the first full decade of consumer search. The first decade ever where you could try to sum up what happened in search, as a consumer product. And what happened, in a word, was Google. In the 1990s, Google barely existed. If search were a religion, it was polytheistic. There were a variety of search gods -- Infoseek, Excite, Lycos and more. Yahoo was more powerful than the others, but it didn't rule supreme. In the 2000s, Google effectively swept aside those other gods. Search became monotheistic. Search become Google. It literally became Google, as people began [...]

Google Webmaster Help Group: Version 2

Dec 5, 2008 at 12:35am ET by Vanessa Fox

Today, Google relaunched several of their help forums, moving them from Google Groups to a new help-specific platform. The English and Polish Google Webmaster Help group have made the move to this new format, with the other languages soon to follow. Below, more details about how this change will benefit site owners and a bit of history about the start and evolution of the Google Webmaster Help group. Historically, all official Google discussion forums have operated on Google Groups. While it made sense for Google to use its own products, Groups was initially built for old school [...]

Who Coined The Term SEO?

Oct 2, 2008 at 3:55pm ET by Bob Heyman

Someone's trying to trademark the term SEO, which has roiled the SEO community. The someone is named Jason Gambert, and he has filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, claiming to have coined the term "SEO" (for Search Engine Optimization). SEOMoz and others have moved to challenge Gambert's claim. As the person (along with my partner Leland Harden), who actually did coin the term Search Engine Optimization back in 1995, I feel uniquely qualified to weigh in on the validity of Gambert's claim. Jason Gambert asserts that he was the first to use the term SEO, in a 2007 email. The act [...]

Google 10th Birthday Site: Interactive Timeline, Project 10×100 To Improve The World & Share Your Google Stories

Sep 23, 2008 at 5:02pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Spotted via Google Blogoscoped, Google's finally acknowledging turning 10 this month with a special Google 10th Birthday web site. It features a cool interactive timeline where you can click on various events in the company's history and get more information, along with a new "Project 10 to The 100" challenge for ideas to improve the world and an invitation for anyone to share stories about Google. Here's a sample of the timeline: Nice! My first review of Google back in 1998 made the timeline. If you click any link, more information shows up about it, with further references. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: General | Stats: History | Top News

Happy 10th Birthday Google, Whenever You Celebrate

Sep 8, 2008 at 10:44am ET by Barry Schwartz

A number of stories about Google's 10th birthday have appeared, as rounded-up below. However, the company itself isn't yet celebrating, as its official birthday has tended to happen on Sept. 27 these days. Make sure to read Google Is 10 Years Old? Finding The Real Google Birthday for more about Google's moving birthday. NOTE: See Google 10th Birthday Site: Interactive Timeline, Project 10x100 To Improve The World & Share Your Google Stories for news of the official Google 10th birthday site launched since this was written. Google at 10: Larry, Sergey , gigaom.com At 10-Year Mark, Google's [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: General | Stats: History | Top News

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