Big Data + Big Math = Big Mess or Big Money?

Jun 17, 2013 at 11:00am ET by Kevin Ryan   

What happens when you combine big data with some big math? Good things, bad things and things we have yet to truly comprehend. Big Data is the most talked about, misunderstood and nebulously defined component of online marketing. Big data can mean anything from large scale consumer behavioral analysis to a relatively simple study of [...]

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Google Knowledge Graph Carousel Sightings Becoming More Frequent Within A Wider Variety Of Searches

Jun 17, 2013 at 10:06am ET by Amy Gesenhues   

While the Google Knowledge Graph Carousel was launched nearly a year ago, more reports are confirming Carousel image displays appearing more often and for a wider variety of categories in SERPs. The Carousel display shows results in an image-focused fashion, listed horizontally at the top of the SERP. The new reports show an updated design, [...]

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Google Webmaster Tools Adds Google Tag Manager Verification Support

Jun 17, 2013 at 9:22am ET by Barry Schwartz   

The Google Webmaster Central blog announced you can now use a new method to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. Now, you can use Google Tag Manager‘s container snippet code to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools. To verify your unverified site with Google Tag Manager, go to the Webmaster Tools home page. [...]

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Spurred By PRISM Scandal, StartPage & Ixquick Surpass 3 Million Daily Searches

Jun 14, 2013 at 3:08pm ET by Matt McGee   

Alternative search engines are having a good week, likely thanks to public awareness and concern over data and privacy issues being raised by the PRISM scandal. StartPage and Ixquick, two small search engines from the same company, announced this week that they surpassed three million daily searches for the first time. More specifically, they hit [...]

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More New Tools From Bing Ads: Change History Graph In The Works

Jun 14, 2013 at 10:44am ET by Ginny Marvin   

Following up on the new Bing Ads keyword performance visualization tool, Keyword Distribution Graph, Microsoft will soon be rolling out a visualization tool for change history. The Change History Graph will be available in the Web interface and is meant to offer quick visual insight into the effectiveness of your optimization changes. When you hover your mouse [...]

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Facebook To End Sponsored Search Ads — For Now

Jun 13, 2013 at 2:33pm ET by Greg Sterling   

Facebook has said that it’s getting rid of sponsored search results for the time being. It’s not walking away from “search advertising,” however. In the future, there will be ads in Graph Search. But, the company is still in the process of working all that out. Facebook told me this morning that, as a practical [...]

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Have The Same Ad-To-Organic Ratio As Google Search? Then You Might Be Safe From The Top Heavy Penalty

Jun 12, 2013 at 7:22pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

At SMX Advanced tonight, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts explained that if Google’s search results pages were run through the top heavy algorithm it would not be hurt by that algorithm. So if you wanted another guide to whether you’re safe from Top Heavy, perhaps the ratios of ads to content with Google’s [...]

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SMX Advanced: Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall Talks About Voice Search, Entities & More

Jun 12, 2013 at 12:02pm ET by Matt McGee   

Day two of our SMX Advanced event is getting started with our second keynote event: a conversation with Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall. He’s the VP for the Information Platform & Experience team at Microsoft, and is responsible for vision, product strategy and R&D for Bing. Search Engine Land’s founding editor, Danny Sullivan, is leading the [...]

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Google’s Cutts Talks Structured Data Beta, Mobile Site Speed Need, Penalty Notices To Get Example Links & More

Jun 12, 2013 at 8:42am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Last night at SMX Advanced, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts was on stage to answer questions about Google search and webmaster topics with Danny Sullivan. We covered the session in live blog format and pulled out several key points. Of all my years watching Matt Cutts talk, I believe it has been over [...]

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Google Payday Loan Algorithm: Google Search Algorithm Update To Target Spammy Queries

Jun 11, 2013 at 8:03pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google has officially launched a new search update to target “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic and other heavily spammed queries. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced this on Twitter saying “We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries.” He pointed to the video he published where he [...]

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SMX Advanced: You&A Conversation With Matt Cutts (Pandas, Penguins & Payday Loan Spam)

Jun 11, 2013 at 7:38pm ET by Matt McGee   

Day one of our SMX Advanced show is almost over, but there’s one last session still to come: the traditional “You&A with Matt Cutts” keynote session. Search Engine Land’s founding editor, Danny Sullivan, will be sitting down for a lengthy chat with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team. The session is due to [...]

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DuckDuckGo Passes 2 Million Daily Searches

Jun 11, 2013 at 2:18pm ET by Matt McGee   

DuckDuckGo, the upstart search engine that hangs it hat on protecting its users’ privacy, hit a new milestone on Monday: its first day with two million direct searches. According to the company’s traffic page, DuckDuckGo saw 2,211,203 direct searches on Monday — up about 400,000 over Sunday’s searches. The phrase “direct searches” refers to humans [...]

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Google Officially Buys Waze, Will Integrate Technologies

Jun 11, 2013 at 11:50am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google announced they’ve officially acquired Waze, the popular app based social driven mapping technology. This was expected and the rumors are Google paid $1.3 billion for the Israeli startup company. The big questions are (1) will this acquisition be allowed and if so (2) will Google allow Waze to be an independent product and brand? [...]

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Google: In Future, Pages With Bad Mobile SEO Won’t Rank As Well In Mobile Search

Jun 11, 2013 at 11:11am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Is your site not doing a good job for mobile visitors? Better get that fixed. Sites with mobile experience issues won’t rank as highly in Google’s mobile or smartphone search results, in the future. Bad Mobile Site? Fewer Smartphone Search Rankings, For You Google’s Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far said about the change in a [...]

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Apple Makes Bing The “Default Search Engine” For Siri

Jun 10, 2013 at 4:26pm ET by Greg Sterling   

One of the things that you might have missed if you weren’t paying really close attention to the live blogs of the Apple WWDC keynote is that when iOS 7 comes out Siri will be able to directly search Twitter, Wikipedia — and Bing. From a search perspective that’s potentially huge news. I’m speculating that [...]

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Now Updated: The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors

Jun 10, 2013 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan   

Two years ago, we released ”The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.” Now we’re back with an update. We’ve introduced some new elements, adjusted a few rankings and given the table a more encompassing name, The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors. Clicking on the image above will take you to the permanent home of the [...]

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PRWeb Claims Percent Of Releases Put On Editorial Hold Doubled Since Updating Policies & Software

Jun 10, 2013 at 8:00am ET by Amy Gesenhues   

Last November, a fraudulent release claiming Google was acquiring Wifi provider ICOA was circulated by the popular release distribution service PRWeb, exposing a number of loopholes in their verification and editorial processes. Our own Danny Sullivan published a comprehensive story explaining how such releases find their way through PRWeb’s system. After posting a statement on the [...]

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AdWords Image Extensions: Early Reactions & In-The-Wild Examples

Jun 7, 2013 at 3:30pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

The PPC world is abuzz over the news that Google opened its beta for image extensions, which allow AdWords advertisers to include images with their text ads. In these very early days, PPC managers that have had campaigns in the beta are in experimental mode, while others are eager to get their accounts into the [...]

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Google Testing “In-Depth Articles” Search Results, A New Rich Snippet?

Jun 7, 2013 at 9:02am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Dr. Peter Meyers, the Marketing Scientist at Moz (formerly SEOmoz), tipped us off to a new Google search interface test. It appears Google is testing showing “in-depth articles” in the search results for local queries. In the screenshot below, Pete triggered these results by searching for [mexican restaurants]. The local results and maps came up, [...]

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State AGs: Google Still Allows & Profits From Illegal Drug Ads

Jun 6, 2013 at 7:48pm ET by Matt McGee   

The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is accusing Google of continuing to give consumers access to illegal and counterfeit goods — including drugs — in its search results, and is allowing sites that deal in such goods to advertise with Google. NAAG has asked Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page to discuss its concerns [...]

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