In a bid to improve the consumer experience with Google Product Search listings, the search giant will soon be requiring three new types of data for feeds targeting the U.S., and one new type for those targeting the U.K. A fourth type of data, which is recommended, but not required, will allow merchants to specify […]
Search Engine Land has long been chronicling Google Doodles, the special logos the company produces to celebrate a wide variety of occasions. So, of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hear the stories behind the Doodles, when Doodle team creative lead Ryan Germick, along with user experience designer Marcin Wichary, took the stage […]
Austin’s beloved Amy’s Ice Cream got a shout-out from Google’s Marissa Mayer at the SXSW Interactive conference today, as the new head of local shared her vision for a future enabled by the search company’s technologies. In the scenario Mayer described, she was at Amy’s — which she’d visited for the first time last night […]
Local business owners who have claimed a Facebook Places Page can now get reporting on how many people are checking-in to their business, and how many are redeeming deals they’ve offered through Facebook. The new reports, announced today, can help business owners refine the deals they’re offering and track foot traffic from Facebook users over […]
AdWords advertisers have long had the ability to use negative keywords to limit the situations when their ads will display, and now product listing ads — rolled out in November — will have this feature, too. Google announced the new targeting capability, saying it’s the first of more extensive targeting features that it is working […]
How can you find a new restaurant, a well-curated boutique, or a artisanal cheese shop, if you never even knew it was there? Local search works well when people know what they’re looking for, but companies like Pelago, with its Whrrl application, are looking for alternative ways to enable those serendipitous discoveries. The start-up company […]
Microsoft has announced it will be rolling out a Quality Score feature within adCenter aimed at giving advertisers feedback on how their keywords are performing — very similarly to Google’s Quality Score. Interestingly, Microsoft says scores won’t directly — stressing the word directly — influence how ads are ranked, but it’s more of a reflection […]
Hubspot, a software company that makes tools for online marketing, has garnered a $32 million series D funding round from Google Ventures, along with Sequoia Capital and Salesforce.com. The firm’s original investors also participated in the round. Hubspot, founded in 2006 by two MIT alums, offers businesses a suite of software to help them attract […]
Google’s Instant Preview feature, which lets users view thumbnails of the Web pages in results, is now officially being rolled out to mobile for Android and iOS devices. The feature, which is accessed via a magnifying glass icon to the right of the search result, had been spotted as early as the end of January […]
Are digital porkers continually outwitting your Angry Birds? Try Bing for the answer to vanquishing the porcine menace. In a first for Rovio, the developers of the hit mobile app, the company has struck a deal whereby Microsoft’s Bing search will be integrated into the Angry Birds game. Angry Birds, which boasts versions for the […]
Despite what many believe to be an overheated market for tech start-ups, Google hasn’t been shy about spending. Last week it bought security company Zynamics; today it reportedly agreed to acquire BeatThatQuote.com; it’s still waiting for Justice Department approval on the $700 million purchase of ITA Software announced last year; and it reportedly offered $5 billion for […]
Google today announced the first upgrade to its AdWords API this year, touting features like the ability to run reports across clients, better filtering, improved geo-targeting, and the ability to deploy and measure “experiments,” or A/B split testing. In coming weeks, API v201101 will also feature the ability for agencies to use interest-based advertising at […]
Some have speculated that Google made the “Farmer” update to help its advertisers, and its own bottom line, but data from large search marketing agencies shows revenue wasn’t the search engine’s primary signal. Yet, data from Efficient Frontier and the Rimm Kaufmann Group indicate that revenue-per-click is showing a modest improvement, all the same. Both […]
In a nod to the legions of smartphone users running AdSense on their sites or apps, Google has announced a mobile-friendly web interface to AdSense accounts. The site represents Google’s response to apps such as DuoSense for iPhone, which third-parties have developed to serve mobile users of AdSense. Folks who go to the usual AdSense […]
Content sites that once benefited from raucous discussion in comments have complained that some of the conversation has been drained off by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook today announced changes to its Comment Box widget that will plug the hole a little and keep at least some of the comments next to […]
If you search for “cashmere sweaters under $100” on Bing or Bing Shopping, the search engine now understands what you mean, returning results for products in the category under the price point specified. Microsoft announced the ability to recognize price constraints today, describing the innovation as “a small step in our journey to make search […]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says consumers’ adoption of the company’s mobile services has happened more quickly than executives expected. Schmidt, who is set to step down as CEO in April, spoke at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs. “It’s happening, and it’s happening faster,” he said. “We look at the charts internally, and […]
Optimizing based on click-through data? That’s so 2010. Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates. “We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often,” the company wrote in […]
Food content webmasters who’ve dutifully been coding their pages with recipe rich snippets since Google announced them in April get a big reward today. Google is rolling out recipe search, taking advantage of the structured data to launch a whole category with the same prominence as image and video search. It’s playing catch-up in the […]
Why does search giant Google care about Isohunt, a search engine that few have ever heard of? That’s the question raised in a Paid Content report. Turns out Google filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a civil case against Isohunt Web Technologies, a BitTorrent site, because it’s concerned the court will set a precedent it doesn’t […]
Google is eliminating managed placement default bids in an effort to simplify bidding on its Display Network. Now Display Network advertisers who use managed placements will only have to deal with a regular default bid and a Display Network default bid. The change will go into effect March 15. They effect managed placements only, which […]
A Federal judge in California has denied Google’s motion to dismiss a “false association” claim in Daniel Jurin’s case against it, surprisingly reversing his own previous rulings. Intellectual property attorney Eric Goldman reported the development in his Technology and Marketing Law Blog. Jurin has been waging a legal battle against Google for years, alleging that […]
As former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum sets his sights on the White House, he has a lot of awareness-raising to do, and he desperately needs some help with search, a Roll Call piece this week shows. Currently, when you search for Santorum, the first result is a blog apparently started by gay syndicated sex columnist […]
Set it and forget it AdWords? Um, no. But Google announced changes today to roll out its AdWords automated rules, in limited release since December, which it says will help make things just a little less manual. Maybe you could even take a day off. Automated rules let advertisers set up certain actions — pausing […]
Bring on the trademarked keywords in the U.S. and Canada, says Microsoft AdCenter. A policy change, which takes effect March 3, means ads appearing on Bing and Yahoo will soon able to be triggered by trademarked keywords, though only authorized users can include trademarks in the text of their ads. The shift brings Microsoft AdCenter […]
One should be able to access Twitter anywhere, on any platform, and the interface should be instantly usable. So said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in outlining the company’s vision for its future at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, going as far as to compare the service to running water. “It needs to be water. […]
When the digirati descend on Austin for the SXSW interactive conference next month, Google is hoping their smartphones will brim with local listings and reviews on Places and Hotpot. To that end, the company today began a promotion to get local businesses, along with Austin visitors and residents, on board with the search giant’s local […]
Twitter wasn’t the only social media platform that recorded super levels of activity associated with the big game last weekend. Local check-in player Foursquare says it saw 200,000 check-ins, making this year’s Super Bowl the most checked-into venue ever for the company. Green Bay Packers fans showed greater check-in activity than their rival Steelers supporters […]
Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: 4,064 Tweets were sent at 10:07:16 p.m. EST, according to Twitter. The previous TPS record, of 3,283, was set during Japan’s 3-1 win over Denmark during the World Cup soccer tournament last […]
Searches on Bing-powered engines grew 6.5% in the U.S. from December to January, climbing from 25.77% of total search volume to 27.44%. Google lost 2.5%, dropping from 69.67% to 67.95% of searches. This according to the latest Experian Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report, which looks at U.S. traffic. Bing.com saw the greatest increase in searches […]
Publishers running AdSense will soon see fewer public service announcement banners on their sites, as Google has announced changes to phase them out of back-up ad options. Previously, publishers were able to choose to show PSAs, to redirect to another URL, or to show a solid color when Google couldn’t find an ad to match with […]
Many noticed it last month, but Google has made it official: many AdWords placements at the top of the page will be getting extended headlines. For ads in which each line seems to be a complete sentence, ending in the proper punctuation, Google will move the first description line to the headline, separating the two […]
Back in October 2010, Twitter announced that then-CEO and co-founder Evan (@ev) Williams would step down to focus on product. According to a report in the Business Insider, that hasn’t really materialized. Says the Business Insider report by Nicholas Carlson: The truth is, right now, a few months after Williams wrote a blog post saying […]
AdWords advertisers seeking to target ad to cities in China, Brazil, Mexico and 14 other countries will soon get their wish. Google today will begin rolling out new city and regional targeting capabilities. The changes will allow advertisers to target, analyze and optimize ad campaigns based upon more granular geographic data. Retailers could, for example, […]
Click-through rates on Facebook ads only averaged 0.05% in 2010, down from 0.06% in 2009 and well short of what’s considered to be the industry average of 0.10%. That’s according to a Webtrends report that examined 11,000 Facebook ads, first reported upon by ClickZ. Meanwhile, the price of those clicks is increasing, rising from $0.27 […]
Attention AdWords resellers falsely trumpeting your “special” relationship with Google and the discounted pricing you can offer as a result: Google is coming after you. The company today rolled out new policies for third parties, such as agencies, who offer their clients AdWords as part of their services. Under the terms, agencies must provide their […]
Friends or enemies? Partners or competitors? Google’s relationship with review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp is as complicated as ever, and the disputes are likely to increase as the search giant pursues mobile and local ambitions that center around its controversial Place pages. The rancor stems from the way Google aggregates content from various review […]
Google has redesigned the homepage for its AdWords advertiser interface in an effort to bring more relevant, customized information up front for marketers. The main change for the “home” tab is that advertisers can create their own modules based on saved filters created on the campaign interface. Filters let advertisers identify problems with their campaigns, […]
After more than two years of beta testing, LinkedIn’s self-service PPC ad offering, now called LinkedIn Ads, officially launched today. The service, launched in beta in July 2008 under the name LinkedIn DirectAds, originally offered targeting by geography, job function, industry, company size, seniority, age and gender. Now, with the official wide release, advertisers will also […]
That self-serve advertising platform that MediaPost got a look at? Well, Twitter is denying that it’s the self-service platform it plans to roll out this year for long-tail advertisers, according to a report in ReadWrite Web. “Reports that Twitter is testing a self-serve ad platform are inaccurate,” the company’s PR folks tweeted this afternoon. “We […]