There are seven voice commands built in to 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 aspects 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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Project Glass Eyeglasses | Search Features: Natural Language | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Featured | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: Webmaster Central | Top News

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google's search results related to the diversity of the results being displayed. Matt said that Google is launching "soon" a new change that will make it less likely to see results from the same domain name, if you already have been shown that domain name in previous results three or four times before. Matt explained that once you've seen a cluster of about four results from a specific domain name, the subsequent pages are going to be less likely to show you results from that domain name. To explain [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Featured | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | SEO: Host Crowding & Clustering | Top News

Yandex has presented what it claims is a new concept in search engine results pages to a Russian audience at an online industry conference in Moscow. They’ve nicknamed the new concept “Islands,” but are describing it functionally as “Interactive Snippets” and the next step on from rich snippets. To be launched in a few weeks in Turkey, followed by Russia, the new interactive snippets enable webmasters and publishers to coordinate their own on-SERPS interactions with users which are fully controlled by their own sites. [caption id="attachment_159950" align="aligncenter" width="5 [...]

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

According to a report from IDG News, a "toned down" version of an earlier, more restrictive "ancillary copyright" law has been published in Germany and will go into effect in August. The ”ancillary copyright” rule was proposed in August of 2012. In its initial form it would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items -- essentially a "link tax." The law was pushed by German magazine and newspaper publishers that see the Internet and Google, in particular, as the cause of many of their subscription, readership and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Regulation | Top News

Coming out of Google I/O at Moscone Center in San Francisco yesterday, I did a double-take. Was that Microsoft pitching its "Bing It On" challenge against Google directly across the street. Yep. "Put the science back in computer science: test your Google bias inside," read a big banner, over the entrance to the Metreon Mall, which is across from Moscone. Inside, there's a "Bing In On" kiosk: One side is just an invitation to take the challenge; you actually do the challenge on one of the other sides: The kiosk simply takes you to the Bing It On site, where you're invited to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Marketing | Top News

Want to have your company logo appear in Google search results, similar to the way authors get to have their pictures displayed? Keep waiting. New "organization markup" support that Google has announced won't do that, but it might be useful for putting your logo in Google Knowledge Graph boxes. Author Images Many are familiar with authorship images that appear next to some stories, such as this example: That's where I did a search for "google bing," and one of my own articles came up in the top results. My picture appears next to the article because I've gone through the steps to identify [...]

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

At the Google Developer conference keynote this morning in San Francisco, one of the clear highlights was the introduction of a redesigned Google Maps experience for the PC and mobile. The New Google Maps are available now with an invitation. Already the leading digital and mobile mapping service, the various feature and UI improvements put more distance between Mountain View and its competitors. While Microsoft, Nokia and Apple offer some or even many of the same mapping capabilities, no one offers "the complete package" that Google does. The new Google Maps offer a redesigned UI, though it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Top News

Google has allowed you to speak your search to it on the desktop and mobile devices for some time, but now it's going to get smarter -- talking back to you and continuing the conversation you started. Google shared details at its Google I/O 2013 developer event today and also in a blog post that's gone up. The idea is that your devices --  smartphone or desktop -- will apparently be constantly listening for the "OK Google" command. If you say that, then it knows you want to do a search. That command is already used as part of Google Glass in a similar way ("OK Glass") -- and onl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Google Now | Google: Voice Search | Top News

In an update on the early progress of the transition to enhanced campaigns last night, Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce at Google -- and the lead on enhanced campaigns -- said that close to two million campaigns have been set to enhanced. That's up from 1.5 million Google quoted on the first quarter earnings call on April 18. Results From Early Adopters Based on positive case studies from clothing retailer American Apparel, financial services provider Woodbridge Structured Funding, and an unnamed luxury shopping brand among others, Ramaswamy says early adopters of enhanced campaig [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Top News

What a week it's been where Google and SEO are concerned. The company, via Matt Cutts, has issued several warnings about things to come -- and, late Tuesday night, also revealed that it's just acted against another link network. In a pair of tweets, Cutts -- the head of Google's webspam team -- said that Google has taken action against "several thousand" link sellers that were part of a link network that bought and sold links that pass PageRank. In addition to mattcutts.com/blog/what-to-e… it's safe to assume webspam will continue to tackle link networks that violate our guidelines as we [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Featured | Features: Analysis | Google | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Link Building: Paid Links | Top News

In a surprising turn of events, Germany's top civil court overturned two lower court rulings on a case involving Google's autocomplete function. According to the ruling, it is Google's responsibility to block libelous words that appear next to a name via the autocomplete function if Google has been alerted to the defamatory words. The plaintiff in the case was an unidentified nutritional supplements company that filed the lawsuit against Google because the German-language site's autocomplete function was adding the terms "Scientology" and "fraud" to the company's name in search queries. The [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Google: General | Google: Legal | Legal | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Yesterday, we covered and summarized the ten future Google SEO changes coming to Google's search results by the end of this summer. But today, I wanted to pull out one point where Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said Google is working on an algorithm to give authorities in a particular subject a ranking boost for being that authority. Google has long done this within Google News, but this seems to be the first time it's talking about trying to determine subject authorities within Web search. The portion of the video of when Matt Cutts talks about authority boost starts at 4 min [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Top News

Perhaps in response to reports that Yahoo is unhappy with its search deal with Microsoft and looking for a way out, David Pann, GM, Microsoft Advertising Search Group, has written a post on the Bing Ads blog ahead of  "state of the state" meetings with clients in Europe that aims to reassure advertisers that the relationship is sound and the partnership is making progress. In his post, Pann writes, We are pleased with our partnership with Yahoo! and very encouraged by the momentum we are seeing in terms of revenue per thousand searches (RPM), ad relevance and the growth trajector [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Top News | Yahoo: Search Ads

A video from Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, today answers some of the questions about what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the near future in regards to SEO. The primary question Matt asked and answered was, "What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?" Matt addressed 10 points, all summarized at the end as helping improve the search results by awarding the good sites and hurting the spammers and black hats in the search results. Here are the 10 points Matt addressed in his video, followed by the video itself: 1.  Penguin Updates The next g [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Featured | Features: Analysis | Google: SEO | Top News

After trying to perform searches via Google SMS Search last week, many users discovered that the mobile search service had been discontinued. In the Google Web Search Help forum, a Google spokesperson wrote, "Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people's lives." Google SMS  Search let users send search queries and receive results via a text to Google. Beginning last week, users received the following no [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Business Issues | Google: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search | Top News

In March, Google's chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update -- keep waiting. It's still a few weeks off. Along the way, there's some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin 2 or Penguin 4. It'll be Penguin 4, in how we reckon things. Let's dive in. This Week Wasn't Penguin Publishers have already been wondering if a change in rankings that many have noticed this week was some type of Google update. Google won't say what, if anything happened. Howeve [...]

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

Over the past few days, the Webmaster and SEO community have been discussing significant shifts, fluctuations and updates in both the Google rankings and traffic patterns they have seen from Google's organic search. I've asked Google if there was, indeed, an update, and Google would not confirm. Instead, they gave me the boilerplate response, "We have nothing to announce at this time." They of course added, "We make over 500 changes to our algorithms a year, so there will always be fluctuations in our rankings in addition to normal crawling and indexing." This is nothing new; Google often w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Search Diary | Top News

The new Timelapse site, created by Time Inc. and Google, is a pretty amazing way to see how any part of the world has changed since 1984 through 2012. The site offers amazing animations such as the growth of Las Vegas and the shrinking of the Columbia Glacier, and you can point it at any part of the world you want. Google explains more about how it has collected the images with the US Geological Survey since 2009 and sifted through to find those with good quality, and without cloud cover, over every part of the world. Here are some examples of what you can see. Deforestation in the A [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Top News