The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Microsoft is offering substantial financial incentives to “steal away” the mobile search relationship with Verizon from rival Google. Verizon is the US’s largest wireless carrier (given the recent approval of the Alltel acquisition) with more than 80 million subscribers.
Dan Russell from Google’s search quality team has a post at the Google Blog on the art of field study. In short, he describes how the search interface plays a role in search quality, and what measures Google takes to study and improve the user interface, to ultimately help improve search quality.
Profy reports that a Russian company is suing Google for $3 billion over Google’s contextual ad program, AdSense. The Russian company, Era Vodoleya, claims they patented contextual ads a year before Google came out with AdSense. The funny thing is this is not the first time Google was sued for patent infringement over AdSense. We […]
In website usability, one of the hardest obstacles to overcome is the mentality of “This is what I would do.” Whenever we hear Person A (or B or C or D, etc.) say this phrase, it means that Person A is not focused on users. It means that Person A is superimposing his or her […]
The 2008 election is over and so, in all likelihood, are Samuel J. Wurzelbacher’s appearances on cable news shows. Wurzelbacher, better known as Toledo’s own “Joe the Plumber,” gained national celebrity, of course, as the symbolic everyman both presidential candidates hoped to reach with their economic messages. Joe’s 15 minutes of fame are about up […]
For the 13+ years that our SEO company has been in the biz, we’ve consulted with businesses of varying sizes and types. From one-person professional practices–to huge, globally branded corporations–and just about everything in between. While SEO best practices are nearly the same for most websites, there are different tactics and strategies you need to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
If you’re looking for more about how the Change We Need will be implemented by incoming President Elect Barack Obama’s administration, good news! He’s got a new transition website up: Change.gov. Bad news — you’d be hard pressed to find it in search being both new and being untargeted toward any search terms. SEO 101: […]
You may have heard the story about how the band Journey found a replacement for their lead singer on YouTube. Videos of Arnel Pineda performing Journey covers in the Philippines were uploaded to YouTube by Pineda’s friend in February of 2007. These videos caught the eye of Journey guitarist Neil Schon, who happened to be […]
For all the great data that Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) offers, there are also some notable things missing. One that webmasters and search marketers have asked for is a way to track links over time. If you wanted a timeline of your inbound link counts from GWT, you had to chart them manually. Until now.
Channel 10 reports Microsoft has integrated Photosynth into Live Maps. Greg covered Photosynth when it first went public, he described it as a “totally cool” tool that allows Windows users to upload photos, “the technology automatically “synths” them, creating a 3-D, 360-degree interactive photo collage of whatever the photographs depict.” Microsoft has now integrated it […]
Everyone at Yahoo must be totally exhausted — perhaps most of all CEO Jerry Yang. It’s probably apprpriate to now use modifiers such as “beleaguered” or “embattled” to describe Yang. Mike Arrington has called for Yang to be replaced, as have others before him. After the termination of the Google paid search deal yesterday, more […]
As companies in many industries start to more closely evaluate their marketing budgets, communicating the success and impact of search marketing within your company is as critical as ever. When presenting this information to your executive team or colleagues who may not be as familiar with search marketing, you want to be thorough but concise. […]
When you hear the term Generation Y, what do you think of? iPods? Instant messaging? Online communities? If so, you’re on track. But as a B2B marketer, you should add target market to that list. And if you don’t think this demographic is part of your audience, think again. The Opportunity Inherently tech savvy and […]
Our next three day search marketing conference comes to Silicon Valley this coming Feb. 10-12: SMX West. I’m preparing the agenda later this month. As part of that, I’ve put out a call for session ideas. Pitching a great session idea is the very best way to get to speak at our popular shows. You’ve […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Fortune 500 are “woefully unrepresented in natural search,” according to a new report out this week. Conductor, a New York-based search/analytics agency, studied the natural search visibility of Fortune magazine’s 2008 Fortune 500 — a list of America’s biggest companies. “The Fortune 500 as a whole,” the report says, “had extremely limited natural search […]
Only days after the two companies submitted a modified proposal to try and win the favor of anti-trust regulators, Google has unilaterally decided to discontinue its paid-search agreement with Yahoo, citing “a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.”
The US Federal Communications Commission approved a plan to allow unlicensed broadcast TV spectrum to be used by companies to create wireless broadband services that amount to “WiFi on steroids.” This was a hotly contested issue, with tech and electronics companies like Google, HP, Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Motorola, among a number of others, lining […]
I’m struck that people always seem interested in stories that appear to reveal Google as “an ordinary company,” subject to the same rules and economic pressures as others. That’s partly schadenfreude, partly about Google as internet bellwether and partly about Google’s own self-promoted uniqueness and related curiosity about how long it can be sustained. But […]
Amit Agarwal reports Yahoo Image Search has added some additional search filters and options. I personally do not see these options when I access Yahoo Image Search, but Amit posted screen captures. The options include the ability to filter by sizes include wallpaper, large, small or even a custom size. You can select black & […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
When you think about the skills it takes to do link development your first thought probably isn’t “coding” is it? However, as we see more template-based sites and sites administered by people who don’t have much coding knowledge gain authority, you’ll potentially want to think about paying a bit of attention to at least basic […]
This morning I reported that the “fairer” AdWords quality score changes went live. In that post, I asked you to submit your questions, because I had scheduled a call with Google’s Nick Fox to answer some questions I had over this quality score change. The call is now over and I have some pretty transparent […]
Try it, go to askjeeves.com, notice how it redirects you to ask.com and then shows you the old Jeeves character.
Today, the United States is electing a new president, voting on one-third of the seats in the U.S. Senate, and voting on all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. An important election? To say the least! And interest in the election results is higher than many of us “experienced” voters can ever remember. Tonight, […]
Billionaire inventor/corporate gadfly Carl Icahn, who owns 5 percent of Yahoo and is now a board member, continues to publicly advocate a MIcrosoft deal for the portal site. Icahn has at least two board members aligned with his positions (former Viacom CEO Frank J. Biondi Jr. and former Nextel CEO John H. Chapple) based on […]
The new, improved and billed as “fairer” quality score changes made to the AdWords algorithm are now live. In short, Google made two changes: (1) Improved how they normalize the formula for taking into account ad position when calculating an ad’s click-through rate. (2) Enabled more ads to reach the top ad spot, through a […]
Faced with continuing opposition to their original search ad partnership, Google and Yahoo have changed the terms and submitted a new agreement to the U.S. Justice Department. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new deal changes the agreement from 10 years to two years and limits the amount of money that Yahoo can collect […]
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from October 2008:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Australian media are reporting that Google recently sent a five-person crew to Australia to investigate the idea of building a data center there. According to Australian IT, some Google services cost more in Australia due to the need to route data to and from the U.S. and other countries. Says Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin: […]
According to Google Trends, lots of people are currently trying to figure out where their local polling place is. So it’s time for a good reminder of what we covered earlier. Google Maps has a special area and search shortcut to help you find where you’re registered to vote, voting location hours and more. Searches […]
We’re all pretty familiar with the well reported search landscape of the US/UK. But, in other parts of the world, the search engine landscape is very different. In this article, I’ll focus on China, Japan and Russia. The goal of this article is to present PPC opportunities in counties that are not Google-centric and provide […]
AOL is unveiling When.com this morning. It’s a local events site powered by Zvents. When.com deemphasizes the AOL brand but will become part of the “AOL Local Network,” which includes MapQuest, AOL Cityguide, AOL Travel, etc. There will also be an When.com widget soon.
We all know the history of the Viacom and YouTube litigation: users relentlessly uploaded clips of The Daily Show and other premium content to YouTube. Viacom didn’t like the “settlement” deal Google offered after it acquired the site and so Viacom sued for a billion dollars in copyright violations. That suit may partly succeed or […]
The Israeli woman behind the Google logo from Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, has an interview like story about Ruth Kedar. Ruth was contracted by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to design the Google Logo. Unfortunately, she did not accept payment in shares of Google stock. Besides for the Haaretz interview, Google Blogoscoped has a brief […]
Across the globe, retailers are bracing for a challenging holiday shopping season. If you run an ecommerce site, what can you do to be sure to get the most out of “Cyber Monday” (the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States which falls on Dec. 1 this year) and beyond? […]