Last week, Microsoft Live Search expanded the description that appears below Wikipedia results and added navigational links to major headings within the Wikipedia article. Google has long been gently mocked by the search marketing community for ranking Wikipedia results highly for a large percentage of queries, but the general searching population tends to find these […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
This morning I was handing off a project to a developer and found myself ranting about the common mistakes developers make when coding HTML. These boneheaded mistakes can cause search engines to choke when it comes to indexing your websites. And its easy to avoid making these mistakes. Here’s how:
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
A reader sent us an example of the new Google Merchant Search live and in the wild. What’s Google Merchant Search? After a little poking around, it appears to be a new but unannounced program in beta where people can comparison shop services like loans. Here are the Google Merchant Search FAQs, and here is […]
Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama’s online organizing and fundraising successes are perhaps unprecedented. He’s also the query volume king, among the candidates. But how does he do as an online marketer? We might not know his CTRs or how his campaigns “convert” but now we know where he spent his money. According to US Federal […]
I reported that Google has updated their favorite icon on Google.com, from the old multi-colored boxed in “G,” to a single blue lowercase g. New Favorite Icon: Old Favorite Icon:
We’re all guinea pigs in Google’s search experiment from News.com covers Google’s Marissa Mayer presentation at the Google I/O conference. In her speech, she discusses the various tests they perform to increase searcher activity and responsiveness. Here is a bullet list of what I found to be the most interesting insights from that presentation:
In the last column, we explored some studies that indicate that conscious will might not be the cause of our actions, but instead might be just one of the effects of a motivator still undefined. Conscious will could simply be a feedback mechanism that helps us keep track of our actions and hides the degree […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
There’s a ton of search-related news and intrigue coming out of the Dow Jones “All Things D” conference in Southern California. Let’s start with the ridiculous remark from IAC’s chief Barry Diller that “Google is irrelevant to us.” That’s only true if Diller doesn’t care about search revenue. Google is essentially the source of that […]
During the past year-plus of working with scores of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) on testing and then launching online video advertising campaigns, we have compiled a short list of common myths associated with online video advertising, implications for search, and what it means to the SMB sector. Gleaned from our own experiences, as […]
Today, if you visit Google, you may notice a special logo commemorating the anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest. As most of you know, Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth. Today, 55 years earlier, on May 29, 1953 at 11:30 a.m. local time, Edmund Hillary from New Zealander and Sherpa Tenzing […]
Search Engine Land ran a reader survey recently to help our advertisers know who comes to the site. Now I have a different one that I’d really encourage everyone to take. This is designed so that we know what readers like in terms of content and how we can improve things going forward. It’s fast […]
I know. I know. Seasoned search engine optimization (SEO) professionals might yawn and roll their eyes when the subject of meta-tag optimization comes up, as they might think, "Meta-tag optimization is SO 1990s." Personally, I think meta-tag content gets a bad rap because, in the past, many SEO professionals and website owners exploited meta-tags to […]
Recent data from comScore Video Metrix shows that consumers viewed 11.5 billion online videos in March of 2008, a whopping 64% gain versus March of 2007. This means that 73.7% of the US Internet population is now watching video online. While videos of pandas sneezing on YouTube make up millions of these monthly video views, […]
You should consider many factors when getting involved in Social Media Marketing, such as the quality of your content, your domain name, and who is submitting your content. But there is almost always one thing I find myself looking at before any of the above conversations even begin: the design. You need to make sure […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
When you outsource SEO, you don’t outsource responsibility and accountability for getting the job done and driving more traffic. Even though you may outsource SEO completely, you really should invest the time understand SEO basics to best manage your SEO firm, your strategy and provide greater value to your SEO program. Relying entirely on an […]
Google Earth has always been a great product — and a popular one, downloaded more than 100 million times. Despite this volume it’s still not mainstream however. Microsoft Virtual Earth decided not to go with a big downloadable client and use a browser plug-in instead. This was a smart strategy to “mainstream” the Virtual Earth […]
Remember Google announced that they will be strictly enforcing the AdWords display URL policy a few months back? Well, they actually started enforcing the policy at the beginning of this month. Some advertisers who had display URLs that did not match their destination URLs were impacted. It appears that some of those advertisers are now […]
The Street View feature in Google Maps has caused a flurry of attention from people ranging from privacy advocates to voyeurs to legislators. The ability to pan around browsing photos shot along streets seems fun and compelling, though it’s also raised all sorts of issues and controversy as our ability to search and process information […]
After noticing a steady increase in the amount of mapspam (also documented by Mike Blumenthal) appearing on Google in universal search results, we decided to ask the company about the phenomenon and what measures it’s taking to combat the problem. Earlier this week I posed a series of questions to Google’s Director of Product Management […]
Previously I’ve covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into “regular” web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results.
Google very clearly recognizes how strategic the mobile internet is both for revenue growth and the company’s future. Hence the Android mobile platform, the bidding in the 700MHz auction and all the effort Google is directing toward mobile generally. CEO Eric Schmidt repeatedly emphasizes mobile as the next big frontier and opportunity. He also points […]
Click fraud lawsuit targets IAC’s Citysearch from News.com reports the law firm of Kabateck Brown Kellner is targeting IAC’s Citysearch.com for allegedly “defrauding its advertising customers of millions of dollars” by “turning a blind eye to click fraud” and actually “encouraging” the click fraud. This Los Angeles-based law firm has won suits against Google and […]
Microsoft’s John Martin has shared a preview of the new Microsoft social bookmarking tool that will be demonstrated at the TechEd North America event in the upcoming week. John provided a shortlist of features and two screen captures of the social bookmarking tool at his blog post. Based on the limited detail I can see, […]
Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson is perhaps the main strategist in the company’s battle for online advertising dollars and in some sense driving the future of Microsoft as an entity. Fortune magazine interviews and profiles Johnson. Johnson runs the group that controls the Windows OS and online services, including Live Search.
Yesterday we were reminded of Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. That case of course has yet to be determined. However, in Europe, a group of French-language Belgian newspapers previously won a copyright case against Google and are now moving to collect $77 million (€49m) in damages.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Yahoo Search blog posted a new weather report today. The report tells us to expect some fluctuations in the search results found at Yahoo Search. Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma of Yahoo said, that they are releasing “some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days.” Expect some “ranking […]
When brand awareness is the goal, it’s sometimes easy to implement PPC as a “go to” for increasing awareness quickly and effectively. But, paid search is just one part of a broader, long-term brand awareness campaign. This week’s infographic explores how SEMs can utilize all facets of search to achieve increased brand awareness.
There are many ways to bill for PPC management and each has its own distinct characteristics. Some of these billing techniques align more with an agency, and others more with an advertiser. For agencies, the proper billing types can make the difference between being profitable and going out of business. In addition, if your goals […]
When use of the phrase “linkbait” first started to achieve critical mass, some dismissed it as nothing more than a fad that would be dead in a year. Some truly understood linkbait and tried to explain it while some of those who grasped it ran with it and went on to profit from it (and […]
You may recall that the failure of Google and Viacom, which owns MTV and Comedy Central among other properties, to negotiate an agreement to work together (read: revenue sharing) resulted in a very public Viacom-Google “pissing match” over copyright infringement and whether Google had made good faith efforts to protect against it. (Danny has an […]
Today is Memorial Day, so we plan on keeping it light over here at the blog today. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable, with a collection of logos I have found from the various search related companies and blogs for the special day. Here is a single picture with those logos and […]
Doing A Fake Story For Linkbait? Disclose — Or Face The Wrath Of Google from last week is still a hot topic of discussion in the industry. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a more detailed explanation of why a fake story without disclosure is something, in some cases, Google cares about. Matt says, “if […]
BusinessWeek writes about Google’s potential plans to enter the travel arena with a specialized offering. That offering, assuming it appears, would likely include a heavy dose of video. There would also likely be a heavy helping of Maps. Interestingly, Google is pushing Maps and MyMaps today as a travel/trip planning tool.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s recent decision to make its UK keyword bidding policy conform with the US practice of allowing competitors to bid on each other’s brands has drawn ire and threats of legal action. Today brings more such news of potential legal action against Google from a range of travel companies and retailers in the UK.