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.
Google has confirmed that new “In The News” box appearing in some of its search results now lists content from more than just the traditional news sites. Discussions at Reddit, blog posts, videos and more from non-news sites may turn up. Earlier, Search Engine Land reported how content from Reddit was showing up in the […]
For some, it may seem like there has always been Google, and it’s always been the main way people have found things on the web. But before Google, there was the Yahoo Directory and its hand-compiled list of websites, organized into topics. Now, the venerable Yahoo Directory is closing. Yahoo shared the news today, a […]
Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released. Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into next week, before being complete. Google said that […]
It’s not often you have a vote that might create a new, independent nation. But that’s what’s happening today with Scotland. It’s such a big event that you’d think Google and Bing would be doing something special to provide election results. That’s not the case. Both search engines have long done special presentations for U.S. elections or […]
Who says rivals can’t work together? If you search on Google for “iPhone 6” or “Apple Watch,” you’ll discover new information boxes about each product that Google created with the help of Apple. Here’s how it looks for search on iPhone 6: And for the iPhone 6 Plus: And for the Apple Watch: These boxes, commonly called […]
News publishers often want to be listed in Google. News publishers also often want to have paywalls or registration barriers. The good news is Google has rules that allow for this. The bad news is that Google routinely fails to enforce these rules. Below, a case study involving content in a major publication authored by […]
Google continues to expand the number of quick answers it offers in its results, as well as the size of those answers themselves. But since Google takes these answers from other sites without any human review, that can lead to goofs. The latest: some advice on eating sushi that might not go down well with […]
Google ended its three-year experiment with Google Authorship yesterday, but the use of Author Rank to improve search results will continue. Wait — you can have Author Rank without Google Authorship? And just what is Google Authorship versus Author Rank? Come along, because they are different things — and Author Rank lives on. What Google Authorship […]
Microsoft’s new predictive search agent Cortana is finally becoming available to the general public. How does it compare to longstanding champion Google Now? After months of using them both, it’s no contest. Google Now easily wins, in my daily life. But Cortana does gives Microsoft an important foundation in the predictive search space and puts […]
Earlier this year, eBay was hit with a search penalty by Google. The loss of traffic resulting from that has been noticeable enough that eBay acknowledged it in a financial call this week, suggesting it may have cost up to $200 million in revenue. eBay also said it plans to improve its efforts in paid search, something […]
Writing today in the Guardian, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond spoke to mistakes Google made in removing some links last week under the EU’s new Right To Be Forgotten mandate, as well as the difficulties in implementing the law, including naming some criteria where removals are less likely to happen. Some Links Restored; Removal […]
Yelp may once again feel Google is robbing it of its fair share of search traffic, with a study that’s been leaked to TechCrunch to prove it. A close read of that study actually shows that it proves the opposite — or at least, that it’s certainly not as damning as it sounds. Leaked Documents […]
It turns out that those in the European Union asking Google to “forget” links they don’t like that appearing for searches on their names are also getting links removed for any search that involves their names and additional words, rather than just their names alone. Until now, it wasn’t clear that Google was removing links […]
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” the saying goes. There are plenty of good intentions with the EU’s Right To Be Forgotten mandate, as well as Google’s attempt to meet new obligations under it. Things are still going to hell regardless. Thanks to the new right, the EU has helped enable convicted […]
Google’s Matt Cutts — who holds the title of “distinguished engineer” — is taking a break from his duties as Google’s chief web spam fighter. Cutts has announced on his personal blog that he’s taking leave through October. It will be the longest break Cutts has ever taken from Google since he started with the company […]
Google began removing listings in response to the EU’s new Right To Be Forgotten mandate last week. As promised, Google is also disclosing to searchers when such removals have happened. However, it is also confusingly reporting that removals may have happened even when they have not. Welcome to Google’s new blanket notice that all name-based […]
German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google for being included in its listings rather than choosing to opt-out. This time, the publishers want an 11% cut of Google’s revenue related to them being listed. The news comes from Jeff Jarvis, who writes that a […]
Cast your mind back to November 2011, only a few months after the launch of Google+. That’s when Google made one of its biggest Google+ification moves. It demoted a long-standing search feature involving the plus symbol so that searchers could instead more easily reach new “Google+ Pages” that had been launched. Today, this “Direct Connect” […]
Google scored a goal against itself by mixing up the flags of Cameroon and Ghana in a special logo highlighting the Mexico versus Cameroon match happening today in the World Cup. Well, it is Friday the 13th. Google’s already fixed the logo and tweeted an apology with a pun: p.s. thanks to followers for calling […]
The EU’s new Right To Be Forgotten doesn’t just apply to Google. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has to obey it, as well — and Microsoft says today that it expects to provide information on how to request removals “soon.” In a short help file page that went up today, Bing said that it is working […]
Google My Business is Google’s new unified interface designed to make life easier for local businesses as well as brands to be better found within Google. It’s a big, huge change. Our visual tour below is designed to give you an overview. Getting Started Google My Business was announced today. You’ll find our overview story […]
Microsoft’s Bing search engine has turned five this week. There are good reasons for some birthday celebrations at Microsoft. The company has created a solid competitor to Google, grown its market share and created a search platform for other Microsoft products. But when it comes to mindshare, Bing is still far behind rivaling Google as […]
Bing has gained another win with Apple, becoming integrated into a new version of Spotlight in Apple’s forthcoming Mac OS X “Yosemite” operating system and in the coming iOS 8 mobile operating system. Spotlight will also tap into a wide-range of search resources similar to how Siri works on iOS. During Apple’s WWDC keynote today, […]
Google has taken a big step forward in complying with the European Union’s new “Right To Be Forgotten” that was established after a court ruling earlier this month. The company has created a new form allowing those in the EU to request takedown of URLs they dislike. Removals will only happen for EU-versions of Google, […]
How can publishers receive a greater percentage of search traffic from Google than the market share Google has in the U.S.? It’s likely due to what I call “The Recirculation Gap” and how Google probably “recirculates” searches back into itself less than Yahoo and Bing. Every month for ages, it seems the same. comScore releases a “U.S. […]
MetaFilter is a news and discussion site dating back to the early years of the web. Founded in 1999, it’s attracting attention this week after coming forward about how a Google penalty has severely harmed its business, to the degree of having to let staff go. It serves as a poster child of problems with […]
Depending on what you read, a “Right To Be Forgotten” court ruling in the European Union this week means that now anyone can ask for anything to be removed from Google, which will soon collapse under an overwhelming number of requests. In reality, it’s far more limited than it sounds, though the ruling does raise […]
Incisive Media, which purchased the Search Engine Strategies conference when it was near the height of attendance, killed the brand entirely last year in place of a new ClickZ Live event. But now, after what seems to have been a disaster of the first ClickZ Live show, the company is scrambling back to revive SES. […]
Apparently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants to be the default search for Apple’s Safari browser on iPhone and iPad and has been preparing to make a solid pitch. Well, we all want things we can’t have, and I’d be incredibly surprised if Yahoo got its wish here. Kara Swisher over at Re/code has the scoop, […]
One of the most interesting things about Microsoft’s new Cortana search assistant has just gone live for those early adopters of it: integration with Bing’s search results. Cortana Personalization Comes To Bing Those using Cortana will now find “personalized cards” that will appear at the bottom of the Bing home page: Personalized information cards will […]
Google made it clear earlier this year that those doing guest posts “for SEO purposes” might be subject to penalties. But the latest chapter in its war on guest posts feels a bit crazy: an entire site put into Google’s penalty box because of a single guest post that Google didn’t like. Your Entire Site […]
Google’s amazing predictive search tool, Google Now, is finally being made available to people on desktop and laptop computers using the regular release of its Chrome browser. Until now, it had only been available through mobile devices or to those using beta versions of Chrome. Google shared the news via its Google Chrome account on […]
When Google moved to secure search in October 2011, it was a blow to publishers, who began losing data about the search terms used to reach their sites. It also opened Google up to claims of hypocrisy, in that advertisers continued to receive the terms. Now, Google says it’s reexamining the issue and seeking a […]
Perhaps it’s SEO’s “Oreo moment,” a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much attention as Oreo’s famous Super Bowl blackout tweet. But the subject was a perfect storm of goodness — a real-life example of Google doing the type of thing in search it seems to be telling others not to […]
One of the most frustrating experiences for any publisher is discovering that someone not only has copied your content but outranks you on Google for searches related to that content. Now, Google seems to have heard the complaints and has launched a tool to help. Called the Google Scraper Report, it was announced by the […]
It’s definitely not what you expect to make the top of a Google News section, a crappy article promising that you can watch The Lego Movie online for free, not when the film is still in theaters. But that’s what Google is delivering up. The screenshot above shows the situation, which reader Vishvesh Agrawal of […]
It’s been big news recently about major brands and Google penalties, and the floodgates feel open on people spotting even more brands possibly hit out there. Some new crackdown by Google? No. It’s the rise of hyperactive attention in this area, and that’s turning into a problem. Hence this open letter, on how we’re planning […]
Make no mistake. Plenty of sites — big brands included — willingly do things in an attempt to rank better on Google that go past SEO tactics that Google itself considers acceptable. However, there’s also no better poster child for how complicated and confusing Google’s rules can be than the fact that Google has had […]
First Yandex, and now Bing has beaten Google to offer Bitcoin conversion prices. Bing has announced that people can find the current rates by doing a search on Bing. Bing shared the news in a blog post today. It can be triggered in various ways, such as asking “one dollar in bitcoin,” which yielded this […]
Be careful what you wish for. In this case, the French privacy agency CNiL demanded that Google link from the Google France home page to a privacy ruling made against it. Google complied — and now the traffic seems to have slowed and sometimes crashed the CNiL website. Our story on Marketing Land has more […]