Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome

May 22, 2013 at 4:17am ET by Danny Sullivan   

The “conversational search” that Google demonstrated at last week’s Google I/O conference is now available to users of its Chrome browser, and it’s a significant leap in how we use search engines. I’m 17 years now into writing about search, and I’ve seen all types of things that have promised to revolutionize the space, especially [...]

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Bing Ads Launches Traffic Quality Center

May 21, 2013 at 3:15pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

Microsoft announced the launch of The Bing Ads Traffic Quality Resource Center today, a website designed to give advertisers and publishers visibility into the traffic quality protection systems of the Yahoo! Bing Network. The site includes sections that cover terminology, network protection methods, an overview of where ads on the Yahoo! Bing network will appear, [...]

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Google’s Data Highlighter Now Supports Movies, TV, Articles, Products, Local Biz & Apps

May 21, 2013 at 9:48am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google has quietly added support for six additional data types to the data highlighter rich snippet markup tool they introduced back in December. Google initially launched a visual rich snippet markup tool in December to allow less tech-savvy webmasters to markup their event based data. The tool only worked with event data and nothing else. [...]

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Google Glass Diary, Part 3: How Search Works On Google Glass

May 20, 2013 at 2:17pm ET by Matt McGee   

There are seven voice commands built into 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 aspect of Google [...]

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Google Testing Ads In New Google Maps, Pushes AdWords Location Extensions

May 20, 2013 at 12:23pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

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 [...]

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Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums

May 20, 2013 at 9:57am ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Domain Clustering To Change Again; Fewer Results From Same Domain

May 17, 2013 at 2:46pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Yandex Announces “Interactive Snippets” & SERP Redesign At Moscow Conference

May 17, 2013 at 1:30pm ET by Andy Atkins-Krüger   

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 [...]

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German “Ancillary Copyright” Law To Go Into Effect, Imposes Limits On Search Results

May 16, 2013 at 10:57am ET by Greg Sterling   

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 [...]

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Across From Google I/O, Microsoft Runs The “Bing It On” Challenge

May 16, 2013 at 6:49am ET by Danny Sullivan   

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, [...]

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“Organization Markup” Supported As Non-Google+ Way To Put Logos In Knowledge Graph Box

May 15, 2013 at 7:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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Exploring The New More Dynamic, More Social Google Maps

May 15, 2013 at 5:41pm ET by Greg Sterling   

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 [...]

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“OK Google” — Hands-Free, Conversational Search Coming From Google

May 15, 2013 at 2:35pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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Google: Nearly 2 Million AdWords Campaigns Are Now Enhanced, Early Results Are In

May 15, 2013 at 10:32am ET by Ginny Marvin   

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 [...]

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Google Zaps Another Link Network, ‘Several Thousand’ Link Sellers Hit

May 15, 2013 at 3:45am ET by Matt McGee   

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 [...]

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German Court Says Google Must Block Libelous Words Added Via Autocomplete Function

May 14, 2013 at 1:33pm ET by Amy Gesenhues   

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 [...]

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Google Authority Boost: Google’s Algorithm To Determine Which Site Is A Subject Authority

May 14, 2013 at 9:38am ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Bing Ads: “Our Commitment To The Search Alliance Remains Unwavering”

May 13, 2013 at 2:55pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

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 [...]

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Black Hat & Link Spammers Less Likely To Show Up In Search Results After Summer

May 13, 2013 at 12:26pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Another One Bites the Dust: Google SMS Search Shuts Down Without Warning

May 13, 2013 at 11:42am ET by Amy Gesenhues   

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 [...]

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