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 | Features: Analysis | 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 | 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 | 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 Marketing | 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

Google announced that ad group-level mobile bid adjustments will start rolling out today and continue over the next couple of weeks in the Web UI. The added feature went live in the AdWords API last week. Like the elusive Keyword Planner that is rolling out now, ad group mobile bid adjustments are only available in a small number of accounts today. So, be patient and remember it could take two weeks or so to be active in your account. Google made the announcement along with the introduction of the 'Set bid adjustment' button to make bulk edits to location and daypart bid adjustments. [...]

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

From Yahoo! to Facebook to Quora, social sites have long been struggling to leverage the Q&A format successfully. Today Klout officially enters the 'social answers' space with a unique proposition, integration with Bing search -- outside of the social search bar and into a big bold listing within the main search pane. The new 'Klout Experts' product leverages answers from top Klout users and influencers. These top Klout users have been asked questions that prompt a simple 300 character response directed to a topic that the user is influential in. For example, a photographer may [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Social Search | Top News

There are expectations in some quarters that publishers will soon be able to have their logos showing up in Google in the way that authors can have their pictures appear. But, Google says there are "no plans" for some type of "publishership" to go live similar to the way it handles authorship. Expectations were raised after Kahena Digital and Standing Dog noted that publishers using rel=publisher can see how their logos would look in Google's Rich Snippets testing tool. However, Google told us generally that this has been working that way in the testing tool for months and that there are [...]

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

Google is celebrating the work of graphic designer Saul Bass today, giving him his very own Doodle video complete with a musical composition by composer Dave Brubeck. Born in New York City on May 8, 1920, Saul Bass made a career creating iconic film posters, title sequences and corporate logos. Many know Bass's work from the title sequence of The Man with the Golden Arm, the credit sequence of North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho. Bass worked with many of Hollywood's great directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | Top News

Despite effectively renewing its search deal with Microsoft recently, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo wants a way to break that deal. Why didn't Yahoo take the opportunity it just had? I suspect that technically and financially, it couldn't. Yahoo's "Get Out Of Microsoft Free" Card The WSJ story says that Yahoo has been "quietly" trying to find a way out of its deal with Microsoft. There are some very specific reasons why Yahoo could break that ten year deal early. One of them is the failure for Microsoft to help Yahoo to reach promised "revenue per search" or RPS goals. T [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Business Issues | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Alex Chitu reports Google is testing a new Google Maps interface, possibly to be launched next week at Google I/O. The new interface is a complete and major overhaul of the current Google Maps user interface. The design and interface changes touch everything from the map colors, icons and text formats to dropping the navigation elements on the left hand side and adding in Google+ integration. For example, you can filter local search results specifically to friends in your Google+ circles. The navigation seems to have been moved to button like methods, similar to how mobile apps work, wit [...]

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

Yahoo is giving Microsoft a further chance to prove that its search ads really can make Yahoo as much money as promised -- at a price. Microsoft has agreed to extend "search revenue guarantees" that it has continually paid since the two companies signed a deal in 2009. Yahoo Declares An Extension Reuters spotted the extension as part of Yahoo's latest quarterly financial filing: On April 30, 2013, Microsoft extended the RPS Guarantee in the U.S. for an additional 12 months commencing April 1, 2013. Second Time Guarantee Extended To translate into plain language, when Yahoo & Microso [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues