First Graywolf’s blog was hacked, then I just found Stuntdubl has gone down when I was about to send some link love his way. I’ll hold that for tomorrow. They’re not the only ones. The culprit is over here and writes (NOTE: Links no longer work as this WordPress hosted account was promptly suspended for violating the terms of service): My name is XXX. […]
Last month, we reported how Google was testing related searches at the bottom of search results pages, which Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed in comments on our post. In the past few days, I’ve seen a flood of further posts about related searches as more and more people spot these. Yes, they do seem to be […]
Google contributes thousands to conservatives from USA Today looks at how while 98 percent of Google employee money went to Democrats in the last election, the company-controlled Google NetPAC gave 61 percent of its contributions to conservative candidates. Then again, donations of $31,000 were tiny and the "company" PAC has donations that come almost entirely […]
Hooked on Google from the San Jose Mercury News revisits a theme from Microsoft that I’ve reported to readers over the years. That’s how Microsoft’s failure to beat Google in search — despite millions in spending — gets the "it’s early days, give us time" defense from Microsoft. The defense is partially true, but it […]
Today I noticed Live.com trying to get me to search with it in Firefox. Then Yahoo did the same thing. So I guess a new round of “let’s change search defaults” is going on within Firefox. That seemed a good excuse for a revisit how the various search engines are trying to pull us as […]
On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings is that search marketers may need to be more concerned about getting into the top […]
I’d like to welcome Eric Ward who kicks off Link Week today, a regular weekly column from Search Engine Land. Eric’s has been both building links as a professional over the past 14 years and educating people about the space over that time. We’re thrilled to have him writing for us. Link Week is the […]
Looking to better understand Microsoft’s adCenter and the tools it offers that let you target searchers by demographics? Microsoft’s doing a webcast about the system and related tools next Wednesday, January 17, at 8:30am. You’ll find more detail and registration information here. It’s the first time Microsoft adCenter says they’ve done an online seminar like […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, sends word that the organization has opened nominations for the 2007-2008 Board Of Directors election. Any SEMPO member can nominate another member or themselves through next Thursday, January 18, by 5pm Eastern. Nominations are accepted via email, through the member login section of the SEMPO web site. Actual […]
The "Is SEO Overrated Or Rocket Science" debate continues. Sigh. OK, I give up. I guess we have to have this every two or three years. All the arguments I’m reading, I’ve read (or made before). But maybe that’s healthy in an industry where you always have new people coming in. I’ll give you the […]
Google’s Matt Cutts has issued a weather report on Google indexing and ranking issues, which I’ll get into below. In addition, I’ll recap a number of Google concerns that I’ve noted over the past two or three weeks. I’ve been saving these to follow up on when I’m out at Google later this month. I’m […]
Having your own domain name for your feeds is incredibly easy and cheap to do via FeedBurner. Moreover, failure to maintain control of your feeds by not using your own domain is one of the biggest mistakes I feel many marketers make. I love FeedBurner. I’ll say it again — I love them. They make […]
I saw Should Google Give Brand Owners A Cut? from InsideGoogle earlier, about the idea of Google paying brand owners a share of revenues of those advertising on their names. Then a reader just emailed me asking what I think about the idea. OK, I’ll bite. In short — probably not. More on that below, […]
Freeing Google Books from Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped covers him trying an interesting experiment. Can Google dictate that public domain books that it has scanned and distributed on the web really be subject to restrictions on non-commercial work? First a look at how Google provides these books. Google says that PDF downloads are available […]
Last month, I wrote Public Spam/Splog Report over on my personal blog, begging Google to stop the "people search" spam that’s been clogging my Google Blog Search feeds with junk off Google’s own Blogger service. Today, I noticed Steve Rubel writing recently on the same issue. Steve gives you the screenshots of how the junk […]
Earlier I did a review of traffic stats for Search Engine Land in December 2006. Today, I’m looking at what happened on the site yesterday, in terms of most popular stories. I can’t promise to do this every day. But doing a daily stats review is part of my regular routine, and it helps me […]
Google to help build telescope from the Associated Press covers Google looking again to space as a new frontier. This time, the company is getting involved with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. To be built in Chile, the LSST is planned to scan the sky on a continuous basis, which should allow "movie-like" looks at […]
Google — officially the best place to work. So says the latest survey from Fortune. But then again, Google’s got to keep the standards high as pre-IPO employees leave. A San Francisco Chronicle article also out covers how one-third of Google’s first 300 employees have gone, along with some comments on the culture getting more […]
After several weeks of rumors, Yahoo has officially announced it has agreed to purchase the MyBlogLog service. You’ll find some discussion of the sale via Techmeme here and here.
Dear Wikipedia Editors: I came back from vacation today to discover that in (some of) your infinite crowd wisdom, apparently the page at Wikipedia about Google’s Matt Cutts might get deleted. Wow. It’s inept things like this that can instantly reduce any respect I have for Wikipedia that builds up over time.
Now joining the questions answering game is LinkedIn, with its new LinkedIn Answers service, just two days old. Jason Calacanis pinged me about it just via instant message, saying he loves it. Sequoia Capital is an investor in LinkedIn — and Jason now works for Sequoia — so you can easily assume some interest in […]
There's growing concern about the type of company Google is becoming. Yet Google's has survived these "tipping points" so far.
News came out earlier this week that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had a new project in mind, to build a community-driven "Google-killer" search engine. I’ve just finished talking with Jimmy about his plans. Here’s a rundown on his vision and what may come as his Search Wikia project grows over the course of the next […]
It feels like a bad week to be Google. Honestly, if there’s a tipping point, the freak-out that they’ve become the evil company they said they didn’t want to be seems to have arrived. Goodness knows there’s plenty to be concerned about with Google, as with any large powerful company. The entire Google could become […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google’s Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some people were seeing were likely […]
SEM and SEO, Rocket Science, or Just Plain Science? (Part 1) from Kevin Lee at ClickZ has Kevin jumping formally into the "SEO is easy versus SEO is rocket science debate" and digging a hole even deeper for himself, as far as I’m concerned. Sorry, Kevin. Kevin writes: To recap the roots of the controversy, […]
Last week, I wrote The Lies Of Top Search Terms Of The Year covering how the top terms of 2006 from Google turned out not to be the top terms at all in raw popularity. I caught up with Google at the end of that week to talk about this more but didn’t have a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
I’ve been making up a Google wish list to update from my earlier one this year. Pandia just came out their own wish list, as did David Wallace more generally. And for whatever reason, it came to me. I want an interactive Matt Cutts to provide Google webmaster assistance. Think Ms Dewey meets Matt Cutts. […]
Over the years, I’ve done many introduction to search marketing sessions where I talk about the value of having good, descriptive pages. Those let you tap into the search tail, the "onesies and twosies" terms, as I’ve called them, that might come up only once in a month. Add all those up, and they can […]
Yahoo’s Delicious has rolled out a new Tagometer allowing people to better bookmark your pages plus see how they have been tagged. In addition, it shows the number of others who have save a page — reminiscent of Digg’s Digg Count button.
Like Greg Boser, I saw the articles and counter-articles emerge from Did-It’s swing at search engine optimization back in October, rolled my eyes and moved on. The argument’s been done before, done to death. But Greg’s got his back up now, and he provides an excellent read in The Half-Truths of Talking Frogs. I’ll highlight […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Google Book-Scanning Efforts Spark Debate from the Associated Press is an excellent look how the rivalry between Google’s library scanning project and that of the Open Content Alliance — backed by Yahoo and Microsoft — is getting more heated. Google pretty much comes off as the evil company trying to lock up books for its […]
Now that Blogger is officially out with a new version, I guess Google’s ready to get behind the service in a big way. The screenshot above shows a new promotional “tip” I just got in my web search results. I’ve never seen anything like that before for Blogger nor that I can recall for any other […]
I wanted to make some time and dive deep into the issue of why all those top search terms from the various search engines don’t match. Others have thankfully been doing that. The short answer, as I’ve written before, is that they are all heavily filtered. That’s why you don’t see popular terms like […]
When I posted Enquisite’s search engine popularity stats yesterday, I almost went into a riff about how site owner traffic stats are often so different from what the major measuring services report. Google almost always comes out much, much higher when you look at site traffic referral sources (as with Enquisite’s stats). I did get […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: