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Danny Sullivan: My new role as advisor for Third Door Media
Search Engine Land continues on strong, with an outstanding team in place.
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
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The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors: 2017 edition now released
Mobile, direct answers & site speed factors gain greater weight.
Content
Wall Street Journal’s Google traffic drops 44% after pulling out of First Click Free
Despite less traffic, paid subscriber conversion said to be up fourfold.
Content
Google warns against misusing links in syndication & large-scale article campaigns
If the primary purpose of distributing content is to gain links, both authors and publishers risk a Google penalty.
Content
How Google measures the authority of web pages
Google has no single authority metric but rather uses a bucket of signals to determine authority on a page-by-page basis.
Content
Google’s ‘Project Owl’ — a three-pronged attack on fake news & problematic content
Google hopes to improve by better surfacing authoritative content and enlisting feedback about suggested searches and Featured Snippets answers.
Google did not ban Infowars; did rescind quality example using an Infowars article
Infowars article was used to help illustrate how quality raters might judge content, but raters have no power to censor, ban or penalize pages.
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Google expands fact-checking effort to all searches worldwide
Is an online claim true or not? Google hopes special callouts for fact-checking articles will help searchers get the right answers or better make their own decisions.
SEO
Please take Search Engine Land’s SEO Success Factors Survey
Your feedback helps us update The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors. Please lend us a few minutes and your expertise!
Amazon
A deep look at Google’s biggest-ever search quality crisis
Under fire for months, can Google reverse the drip-drip-drip of criticism as incorrect, absurd or even dangerous results surface to the top?
Google Posts now gives museums, movies, musicians & sports groups dedicated space in search
Program opens in US and Brazil. Expansion is a sign Google no longer sees it as just an experiment.
SEO
DMOZ has officially closed after nearly 19 years of humans trying to organize the web
The closure marks the final end of a chapter of humans trying to organize the web.
Google Home gets ‘Beauty & The Beast’ promo, but Google says it’s not an ad
Appears to be the first-ever commercialization of Google's home assistant product.
Google launches new effort to flag upsetting or offensive content in search
Using data from human "quality raters," Google hopes to teach its algorithms how to better spot offensive and often factually incorrect information.
Amazon
Your guide to using Google Assistant and the Google search app on Android & iPhone
Google Assistant is coming widely to Android phones. Here's how to use it and other ways to Google on your smartphone -- even for iPhone users.
Amazon Advertising
FAQ: How to get Google Assistant on your Android phone
Google Assistant is officially available for many Android phones now, but the rollout will take time.
Amazon
Google’s “One True Answer” problem — when featured snippets go bad
Obama's planning a coup? Women are evil? Several presidents were in the KKK? Republicans are Nazis? Google can go spectacularly wrong with some of its direct answers.
SEO
RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project is closing
As of March 14, DMOZ will no longer be available.
Content
No more free ride: Wall Street Journal pulls content out of Google’s “First Click Free” program
WSJ move might cause other publishers to remove content from Google's program, if it turns out "Subscription" label doesn't hurt conversions.
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Google makes it easier to see and share publishers’ real URLs from AMP pages
New anchor button enables copy-and-paste of URLs directly to publisher sites.