More from Search Engine Land: Page 2

PPC

Online Marketers: Stop Funding Virtual Blight

Urban blight is easy to recognize: seedy liquor stores and payday lenders on alternating corners, trash-strewn lots and front yards, graffitti-covered buildings, crumbling sidewalks, broken glass, and billboards everywhere you look. Websites afflicted with virtual blight are just as easy to spot: banners promising hot sexy singles and cheating spouses, pornography and Viagra, payday loans […]

Google

Google Deemphasizes Search In Experimental Mobile Interface

Spotted over the weekend by Garrett Rogers, Google has quietly introduced a new, experimental mobile interface called “LCB” that emphasizes browsing instead of search. Something of a radical approach for Google, which is synonymous with search, the site allows users to get to results in top “local search” categories such as restaurants, travel, transportation, retail, […]

SEO

A New Scourge For Yahoo: Affiliate Mapspam

I’ve been writing about Mapspam appearing in both Google and Yahoo search results for some time now. Mapspam is where black hat SEOs spam local search and map listings, and like all black hat techniques, it seems to get more sophisticated as the search engines find ways to combat the spammers’ techniques. There’s a new […]

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Adds New Company Directory

LinkedIn, with help from BusinessWeek’s CapitalIQ, has added a company directory and related factual information to its business network. It’s not easy to get to the company directory, which is only accessible to LinkedIn users at the moment. One can’t simply go to the LinkedIn search box and type a company name.

Ecommerce

Google Suggest Becoming A Default Feature?

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable about how I spotted a WebmasterWorld thread that has three members noticing Google Suggest like features on Google.com. Basically, when these users go to Google.com and begin typing in a query, Google begins to offer search suggestions. Google has implemented this feature as a default on other non-U.S. […]

Analytics & conversion

Google Analytics Benchmarking Data Now Live

The Google Analytics Benchmarking feature is now live for those users who have chosen to opt in to the program. You can access the data by visiting a site profile and clicking on “Visitors” and then on “Benchmarking (Beta).” Google said that the current list of “verticals and the quality of the data will likely […]

Google

Google Gets What It Wanted From 700MHz Auction

The US 700MHz auction is now over; the winners were announced yesterday. The spectrum is becoming available as television broadcasters make the mandated switch to digital signals in early 2009. The big winners (no surprises here) were US carriers Verizon and AT&T. Verizon bid more than $9 billion and won the coveted “C block,” as […]

Content

Human Hardware: Men And Women

In this week’s column on Human Hardware, we look at the differences between the two basic models of humans: men and women. As a species, the vast majority of our history has been spent not really thinking about the differences between men and women. The distinctions seemed obvious, and while survival was the main objective, […]

SEO

SES NY Day Four Coverage Recap

Search Engine Strategies day four, the last day, is now officially over. The live bloggers should have put down their ‘pens’ by now, so I thought I share the final day’s live blogger sessions. Before doing so, I wanted to personally thank all the live bloggers from aimClear Blog, Alt Search Engines, Andrew R H […]

PPC

Search Biz: New York Privacy Law May Set National Precedent; AOL Worth Half Of Yahoo?, & Surprise, Google Still #1

A privacy law taking shape in the New York legislature will make it a crime for internet companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent. And because of the generally boundary-free nature of the internet, it would effectively set a national precedent for companies collecting data about internet use. The New […]

Content

Branding Coming To Search In A Big Way

Search has historically been seen as a direct response vehicle and the notion that search is a branding medium has traditionally been met with considerable skepticism by search marketers, albeit somewhat less recently. In an effort to be provocative in moderating the “branding and search” panel at SMX West last month, I said, “Search is […]

Local

Add Videos To Your Google Local Business Profile

Stephen Espinosa notes that you can now add videos to your Google Local Business Center profile. Beforehand, to get a video to show up in your profile, you had to somewhat get lucky. Now, you can add them manually. This is a great way to add customer video testimonials, product demos, commercials, and more to […]

SEO

Ten Strategies For Avoiding Search Marketing Burnout

Search marketing is the ultimate seductress. It lures you in with the promise of an interesting, exciting career that can actually pay the bills, but soon you’re regularly pulling 12 hour days with no vacations. There’s intense pressure to achieve high search rankings and triple digit ROIs to keep clients happy in a dynamic industry […]

SEO

Being Off-Topic, Off-Message, Or Off-Brand Can Be Good For Your SEO!

Ok, perhaps I’m being a bit provocative here, but sometimes it’s the off-topic, off-message, or off-brand content that earns you the most valuable links—links that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. Those links can really pay the bills, in terms of the extra search traffic and resulting sales. The brand police within your company may pitch […]

Content

Can EveryZing Automate Video SEO?

EveryZing (formerly named Podzinger) is a Boston based company that has announced a suite of products for video search, EveryZing’s ezSearch product lets media companies offer their users a single integrated search box for audio, video, images, and text. Once ezSearch has blended results into a unified database, the company’s ezSEO service can then make […]

SEO

Search Biz: Online Marketing Will Continue To Grow Despite Slowdown, Yahoo Woos Shareholders, & Alibaba Wants To “Close Sesame”

Markets are riding rollercoasters, central banks are bailing out major financial institutions, inflation is rearing its ugly head, and consumers are apparently pulling back into their shells, but none of this gloom-and-doom is even remotely threatening the growth in online marketing and advertising spend, according to eMarketer. The market research firm is predicting that, despite […]

Ecommerce

Google Japan Adds Tabs In New Design

Google Blogoscoped reports Google Japan has a new design being pushed out to their users. The new design can be seen at this IP location and contains tab links to other Google properties. Here is a screen capture of the new design:

Content

Lowering Your Quality Scores To Increase ROI

B2B search advertisers must confront an annoying paradox. For most advertisers the billable event is the click. Yet for most B2B advertisers success depends not on clicks, but rather on conversions: the percentage of visitors who take the desired online action, such as downloading a white paper or registering for a webinar. B2B marketers must […]

Content

Google Sees “Watershed Moment” For Mobile Usage

Google is now reporting that it is seeing a rapid increase in mobile Internet search and usage on several platforms. According to an interview with Reuters, Google mobile product manager Matt Waddell said, “We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage. We are seeing that mobile Internet use is […]

SEO

Why You Should Track “Soft” SEO Metrics

As an in-house search marketer, you hold a unique position. You help manage all your company’s content with the goal to maximize the return on that content’s creation. You are the pointy end of the spear in the quest for low-cost traffic and conversions. Setting aside the growing salaries and the added costs of benefits […]

Content

Search Illustrated: Factors That Increase TrustRank

Just like you choose to buy products from companies you trust, search engines factor in levels of trust when determining which websites to include in their search results. Whether it’s an issue of security, privacy, or just easily-accessible information, every little bit helps when it comes to the search algorithm. This week’s infographic visualizes those […]

Bing

Yahoo Expects To Double Cash Flow In Three Years & Reaffirms 2008 Outlook

Yahoo announced at an investor presentation that they expect to double their operating cash flow in three years from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion. Yahoo also took the opportunity to reaffirm their 2008 financial outlook. Yahoo said by 2010, they expect to earn $8.8 billion in revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs). This presentation is to […]

Google Maps

Google Maps Opens Up Editing To Everyone

Last year in November Google opened up Maps to community editing, allowing people to move the pushpin markers to correct or improve the accuracy of business locations. John Hanke, Director of Maps & Earth, told us at the time that Google would move beyond just place markers and allow registered users to edit Maps more […]

Link building

Life, Death, and Links

Imagine for a moment that you need to find some information on the web, and it’s really important. You need to be able to trust what you find, and you need to have confidence that what you find is truly the best-of-class content you could find, or darn close. Let’s say the search term is […]

PPC

Yahoo Partners With 3rd Party Click Fraud Company, Click Forensics

Yahoo and Click Forensics have partnered to combat click fraud together. The partnership was announced on the Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues panel at SES NY today. Yahoo said: Click Forensics will allow advertisers to securely share relevant account information, such as site-side click behavioral data, with Yahoo!. Industry analysts like Dr. Tuzhilin […]

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