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.
The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors: 2017 edition now released
Mobile, direct answers & site speed factors gain greater weight.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
RIP DMOZ: The Open Directory Project is closing
As of March 14, DMOZ will no longer be available.
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.
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.
Former Google search chief Amit Singhal joins Uber
Singhal will become a senior vice president of engineering, overseeing Uber's Maps & Marketplace departments.
Where is Santa Claus? Your 2016 guide to Santa trackers from NORAD & Google
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus ... but where exactly is he? Our guide to Santa trackers helps you locate Jolly St. Nick in a flash.
Google’s top results for ‘Did the Holocaust happen’ now expunged of denial sites
Initial fix merely bumped denial site down, then failed to work consistently. Now the denial site is gone from first page of results.
Google will change AMP display to make it easier to find & share publishers’ direct URLs
Change will be to the header in AMP content, expected in early 2017.
Official: Google makes change, results are no longer in denial over ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’
Criticized for listing a Holocaust-denial site first, Google's results are finally changing -- but probably due to external factors.
Google studying ways to deal with offensive search suggestions & results
Facing criticism over "fake news," inappropriate search suggestions and more, the search company is looking for long-term and comprehensive solutions.
Move over, Amazon Echo & Google Home: Here comes Microsoft Cortana
Cortana will be baked into a new smart speaker from Harman Kardon to be released next year, potentially the first of many Cortana-powered devices.
How Google may be slowing down AMP by not using direct links to publishers
What's in a name? When it comes to AMP, a URL that's not the publisher's may not smell as sweet.
Why Google might not be able to stop “fake news”
Google says it wants to prevent fake news from spreading, but the search giant has serious challenges in actually curbing it.
For answering questions, Google Home bests Amazon Echo & Alexa
If you've always wanted someone around the house to answer all the questions you have during the course of your day, that someone is a something -- Google Home.
How Google Home turns voice answers into clickable links
It turns out Google's new hands-free voice-based assistant has a way to let users click to the answers it gets from publishers. That's via the companion app.
Google creates its own antitrust woes with poor communication over search listings
Have an issue with your listings in Google? Getting an official answer might be tough. And when that happens to a Google competitor, as it did with ProtonMail, it could come back to harm Google's defense from antitrust charges.
Direct answer fail: Google gives only one side of proposed gun ammo & magazine law
Want to know about California’s Proposition 63, a measure to control gun ammunition sales and large magazines, which is on the state ballot this month? Google has the answer. It’s a “deceptive ballot initiative that will criminalize millions of law-abiding Californians.” So much for balanced search results. Google presents that answer at the very top of its […]
How Trump & Clinton have failed to use free space in Google for US presidential candidates
For a week, neither campaign used the special program giving them guaranteed listings in Google for their name.
With Google Assistant & Google Home, Google seeks to win the hands-free generation of search
Having won on desktop and mobile, Google now wants to succeed in an entire new area: hands-free search, especially within homes.
There’s no Google Search widget for the iOS 10 Search screen: why that matters
Google search could be on the iOS Search screen with a widget, if it wanted. Why isn't it offering that option to its users?
How many days has it been since the last Google Penguin Update?
Caught by the Penguin anti-spam filter and fixed your site? Here's how long you've been waiting for a chance to be released.
Google launches ‘In Apps,’ a way to find content within apps on Android phones
Somewhat similar to Apple's Spotlight, the new feature allows you to search your Android phone for content, as opposed to the web.
Google lets any publisher apply to have “Critic Reviews” of local businesses
Initially open to five publishers, Google opens the doors to anyone to apply after criticism by Yelp and TripAdvisor.
FAQ: All about the Google RankBrain algorithm
Google's using a machine learning technology called RankBrain to help deliver its search results. Here's what's we know about it.