Matt Cutts has been the subject of a number of parody/comedy videos during his tenure as the chief of Google’s webspam team, and the latest has him starring in a rap-style clip called “Spam Around The World.” It’s a collage of clips from past webmaster videos edited together into a short (1:43) video with a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: RKG: Q1 US Paid Search Up 17 Percent, Fueled By PLAs; Smartphones Drove Just 7 Percent Of Spend RKG is out with its first quarter Digital Marketing Report today, showing US […]
Twitter continues to expand its collection of search filters with the recent addition of search for Timelines and Lists. I’m not aware of any announcement about this, but it’s showing up as a search filter on Twitter.com and in the official Twitter apps (both iOS and Android). The option in the left-side navigation says “Timelines,” […]
The recent Yelp/Yahoo partnership has angered some local business owners who say years of positive reviews are now gone from their Yahoo Local business listings. Some of their stories were told this week in the Wall Street Journal, including Colonial Hardwood Flooring of Lexington, Mass. The company says it had built up “six years of […]
You’re going to hear a lot of rejoicing when this news spreads: Google has returned the “search nearby” feature to Google Maps. #celebrate!!! Amidst all of today’s Google April Fools’ joke announcements, the company tweeted the feature’s resurrection earlier today. After doing a search on Google Maps, you can click again in the search box […]
Is it just me, or does it seem like Google starts celebrating April Fools’ Day earlier and earlier every year? No company on the web takes April 1st more seriously than Google, as we’ve been covering for years now. So what about this year’s April Fools’ Day antics? Let’s have a look. Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge It […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Car Makers Drove 14.4 Million Clicks From Google Ads In 2 Months (And That Doesn’t Include Mobile) A whopping 177 automotive manufacture sites drove 14.4 million paid search clicks from Google […]
We all saw this one coming: Web Design Library, the website that was using Twitter to renew paid links last week, appears to have earned a Google penalty. While I was researching last week’s article, I saw the site ranking at No. 8 for the term web design. Today, I’m seeing it at No. 48 […]
Here’s a lesson in how not to sell links. As Search Engine Roundtable pointed out this morning, someone named “Vince” from WebDesign.org is using Twitter to contact companies about renewing paid links that are about to expire. You can look at the @vitaliykoloswdl account and see numerous conversations about selling or renewing paid link agreements. […]
As promised, Google has taken manual action to penalize link networks in Italy and Spain. It was just four days ago that Google warned webmasters in those two countries about its rules on paid links and willingness to take action against websites that violate those rules. The penalties were announced separately on Friday by Google […]
Good evening/afternoon (or early morning for our European readers!) from sunny San Jose, Calif., where day one of our SMX West conference is almost finished. We’re wrapping up the Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit with a keynote conversation between Google’s Amit Singhal and Danny Sullivan, founding editor of both Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Using First-Party Data For SEM On Google & Way Beyond! As a general rule, the marketer with the most actionable data wins. There are many types of data but the most […]
That Google menus experiment we told you about a couple weeks ago? It’s now official. But it’s only available in the U.S. at the moment. Google announced that it’s now showing restaurant menus as a OneBox-style answer at the top of its search results. It seems to be primarily triggered by searches that involve both […]
In response to a string of cases where fake business/organization listings have been added to Google Maps, Google says it has removed those listings and put in place new hurdles to make it more difficult for this kind of abuse to get through its system. This latest run of problems came to light about a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West Begins In 2 Weeks – Register Now! Join the most accomplished internet marketers in the world at SMX West, March 11-13 in San Jose, CA. Check […]
Google Maps users can once again right-click anywhere on the new Maps to get quick directions to or from the spot that they’re clicking. They can also use the “What’s Here” option to quickly get the lat-long coordinates for any spot on the map. These are two of many features that users have asked Google […]
We’ve grown again! Third Door Media, the company that produces Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, is excited to welcome Martin Beck to our editorial team. He joins the team as our new Social Media Correspondent, and his first day will be Monday, March 3rd. Martin has spent nearly 25 years in a variety of […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: McDonald’s & Cadillac’s Sochi Olympics TV Ads Spark Nearly 500K Online Searches Television advertising analytics firm iSpot.tv evaluated a number of key metrics for this year’s Olympic advertisers and found ads […]
If Ray Kurzweil is right, computers will be smarter than humans 15 years from now. It’s called “technological singularity” and a big part of his job at Google is making sure that vision becomes reality. Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist that became Google’s Director of Engineering in late 2012, recently told the Guardian that his […]
Google took its new Maps site out of beta this week, but many users noticed that some of their favorite features from Classic Maps were missing. Not to worry, Google says. It’s aware of that and plans to bring at least some of those missing over to the new Maps site in the near future. […]
Satori, Bing’s knowledge index, is expanding with the addition of timeline-style facts about important individuals. The new “Timeline” section is now showing up in the right-side search results for famous people such as Abraham Lincoln and Isaac Asimov (shown above), along with athletes (Serena and Venus Williams), artists (Vincent Van Gogh), business people (Bill Gates, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yandex Reports Revenue Up 37% In Q4, Ad Network Revenue Nearly Doubles Russian search giant Yandex reported a strong Q4 2013 today, with overall revenue up 37 percent from Q4 2012 […]
Russian search giant Yandex reported a strong Q4 2013 today, with overall revenue up 37 percent from Q4 2012 and continued growth in text-based advertising. Take away revenue from its payment platform, Yandex.Money, and the Y-o-Y revenue growth would be 40 percent. The company says it now has more than 270,000 advertisers, a 30 percent […]
What will search look like in 2028? That’s a question that the folks at Bing were tasked with answering for the new movie, Robocop. (Well, “new” as in a remake of the 1987 original that just hit theaters this week.) In a blog post this week, the Bing search folks shared a few screenshots showing […]
Millions of us have asked Google to play weatherperson. In order to get an answer to one of our oldest and most basic questions, we type a variety of words and numbers — city names, neighborhoods and ZIP codes, plus words like “weather,” “forecast” or maybe “temperature” — into the Google search box, and Google […]
Google has started showing complete restaurant menus in its search results when a query specifically looks for menu information. We think Allie Brown was the first to spot this when she shared the results of a search for “jones brunch menu” on Twitter. For that query, Google begins the search results with a card-style answer […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Brings Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool To AdWords Google announced it is adding a Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool to AdWords to help marketers better understand how AdWords campaigns are […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Nadella Would Bring Search Cred To Microsoft CEO Role Based on several reports is appears very likely that Microsoft will announce that Satya Nadella will be the next CEO. He brings […]
You’re gonna say to yourself, “That looks a lot like Google’s local search results.” I’m talking about the latest interface change that Yahoo has announced: the display of local business information alongside search results. The local business info includes basic business information, photos, hours of operation and some data specific to the business type — […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SMX West Rates Increase Saturday – Register Now, Save $200! Early Bird rates for Search Engine Land’s SMX West conference expire Saturday. Register now and get three days of exceptional content […]
Move over, pandas. Fly away, hummingbirds. Waddle away, penguins. Google has a new animal friend: crows. But unlike its past associations with the animal world, this one isn’t about SEO or algorithms — it’s a new search trick that adds distance calculation to Google’s OneBox feature. (The OneBox is where Google often presents immediate answers […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Days-Old Error In Google Search Causes Gmail User To Get Thousands Of Emails Earlier this week, we reported a glitch in Google Search, where clicking on a link after a search […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: MapQuest Transfers Local Listings Management To Yext Last October, MapQuest started outsourcing local business listings management to Yext. The “claim your MapQuest listings” page is hosted by Yext (I believe) with […]
Google has announced the formal rollout of a test that some searchers have been seeing for a few days now — a test that associates a Knowledge Graph popup with certain web pages in desktop search results. The popup adds more information about certain search results, which sounds like it should be good for searchers. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and […]
Google — and Matt Cutts, in particular — has made a number of statements about guest blogging over the past year as the tactic has grown as a link building tactic. None of those statements are as clear as the one Cutts wrote today on his personal blog. Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Alerts Get A Shiny New Redesign Google flipped the switch this morning on a new design for its Google Alerts emails. The change brings Google Alerts closer in line with […]
Google flipped the switch this morning on a new design for its Google Alerts emails. The change brings Google Alerts closer in line with Google’s general aesthetic. The emails now have a similarly clean look-and-feel to the card-style layout that’s becoming so prevalent in Google search results, Google Now, on Google’s mobile apps and elsewhere. […]
Bing ended 2013 with an all-time high market share of search activity inside the US; but, it was Google with the biggest monthly gain in December, according to the latest comScore qSearch data. Google’s share of search queries was up 0.6 percent in December to 67.3 percent. Using comScore’s numbers, that’s Google’s second-highest share estimate […]
A new social network or online community comes along and every brand has to answer one basic question: Should we be active in this channel? No matter whether you’re among the world’s biggest brands, or a small home-based business, that’s a question you have to wrestle with. Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, appears to have […]