Google’s Matt Cutts: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away

May 10, 2013 at 5:08pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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If That Was A Google Update You Felt, Google’s Not Confirming It

May 10, 2013 at 8:59am ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Google & Time Inc. Launch Timelapse: See How Any Part Of The World Has Changed Over Time

May 9, 2013 at 12:10pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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AdWords Ad Group Mobile Bid Adjustments Roll-Out Starts Today

May 8, 2013 at 3:46pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

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 [...]

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Klout Integration Pushes Human Powered ‘Expert’ Answers Atop Bing’s Search Results

May 8, 2013 at 12:15pm ET by Greg Finn   

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 [...]

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No, Publishership Isn’t Coming Soon To Google Search To Join Authorship

May 8, 2013 at 9:04am ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Google Celebrates The Iconic Work Of Graphic Designer Saul Bass

May 8, 2013 at 8:00am ET by Amy Gesenhues   

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 [...]

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Even If Yahoo Wants To Leave Microsoft, Here’s Why It Can’t

May 7, 2013 at 7:52pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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Google Maps To Get A Major Design Overhaul

May 7, 2013 at 4:38pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

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 [...]

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Yahoo Extends Microsoft Search Deal & Revenue Guarantees

May 7, 2013 at 1:14pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

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 [...]

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Yahoo Expands Search-Ads Relationship With Chitika Into Mobile

May 7, 2013 at 10:43am ET by Greg Sterling   

Yahoo has apparently been working with search-ads network Chitika since 2006. Chitika ads appear on various Yahoo PC sites (e.g., Answers, Local) and Yahoo (Bing) search/text ads are syndicated across Chitika’s network of roughly 250,000 publisher sites. Now that relationship is expanding to mobile. According to the news out this morning: The multi-faceted agreement with [...]

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Google Local Results Drops “More Results Near…” To “Improve” Local Search Experience

May 7, 2013 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google has quietly dropped yet another search feature; this one is related to local search results within a search on Google. Google has removed the “more results near…” link on local search results for queries with local intent. For example, if you search for [pizza] on Google.com, Google will show you local businesses selling pizza [...]

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Bing Asking Users To Break Their Google Habit In Latest Bing It On Challenge

May 6, 2013 at 5:17pm ET by Amy Gesenhues   

Bing announced today a new version of their Bing It On Challenge, an online campaign launched last September that offers users a side-by-side comparison of Bing and Google search results. In the latest Bing It On Challenge, Bing asks users to perform five separate search queries on BingItOn.com and choose the unbranded search result list [...]

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More Proof Google Counts Press Release Links, Using Matt Cutts’s Own Blog

May 6, 2013 at 9:44am ET by Barry Schwartz   

About six months ago, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, made a comment in a Google forum thread that links within press releases won’t “benefit your rankings.” Since then, we showed one case where Google not only discovers the links within typical press releases but uses the anchor text for ranking purposes. Maybe it [...]

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Google Search App With Google Now Breaks Into iTunes Top 10

May 3, 2013 at 10:32pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

When Google first released its updated Google Search app last October, it never made the iTunes top ten and, last week, wasn’t even in the top 100. But the addition of Google Now helped the app make the top ten in less than a week. Google relaunched its app last October with Siri-like voice recognition [...]

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Report: Mobile Traffic To Local Sites Growing Faster Than To Total Internet, Now At 27 Percent

May 3, 2013 at 12:29pm ET by Greg Sterling   

The Local Search Association has released a new Local Mobile Search report, which affirms many of the big themes and trends in the market now: PC traffic is flat, mobile is gaining rapidly and mobile is heavily used for local search. The Q4 2012 data in the report are from comScore. And because the data [...]

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Study: PLAs Buck Post-Holiday Trends For Google Shopping, Traffic Nearly Doubles in Q1

May 3, 2013 at 10:42am ET by Ginny Marvin   

The momentum of Google’s PLA program didn’t slow after the holidays. After seeing Google Product Listing Ad traffic jump 82% in Q1 over Q4, CPC Strategy followed up its latest quarterly review of top CSEs with a closer look. The agency hadn’t been surprised to see the 87% increase in PLA traffic in Q4 over [...]

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Bing iPad App Gets An Upgrade

May 2, 2013 at 9:31am ET by Barry Schwartz   

Bing has quietly released an update for the Bing iPad App, adding new features and making optimization improvements to the app. The app can be downloaded for free over here in the app store. The changes, as listed in version 1.3 include: Bookmark Web/Image/News Search Query Provide Daily Trending Images with density layout Enable Map [...]

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How “Not Provided” May Make BuzzFeed Think Google’s Search Traffic To News Sites Is Down

May 1, 2013 at 4:16pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Well look at that! Search traffic to news sites has dropped over the past eight months, according to how BuzzFeed tracks referrals to sites within its network. A change of user behavior? Or perhaps more the result of “Dark Google” and “Not Provided?” Come on, I’ll explain how Google may be making itself look like [...]

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Holding A Patent Doesn’t Mean We Use That Patent In Search Quality

May 1, 2013 at 3:53pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a YouTube video talking about a recent SEO misconception that he would like the SEO and webmaster world to “put to rest.” Matt said, just because Google has a search quality or ranking patent it does not mean that the patent was or is currently part of [...]

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