Watching Google and Microsoft lately has been like watching a tennis match: Each company seems to be taking turns hitting back at the other with new announcements, new products, and so forth. The latest volley isn’t strictly search-related, but it’s very notable: Microsoft announced “lightweight” versions of its Office products that will be free and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing’s Impact: 3 Things Search Marketers Need To Know Bing has made a splash in the media recently – but now that the hype has faded, what will be the real […]
Bing has made a splash in the media recently – but now that the hype has faded, what will be the real impact of the new search engine for search marketers in the trenches? Most professional search marketers are now used to the perpetual changes in algorithms, bidding systems, performance metrics, and ad center tools […]
p>Following a series of presentations on eMetrics Summit about ‘Measuring the Voice of the Customer’, I will give some examples on how User Generated Content can be used to both improve the organic results and the conversion rates of a website. The idea behind using UGC in a website is a two-sided effort that can improve both conversions rates and SEO (see other examples in this previous conversion-driven SEO post).
A second major ratings service, Compete, has now released search engine share figures for June 2009 showing Microsoft’s new Bing service making a tiny gain. That, following Hitwise’s mixed stats from last week, keeps Bing in “it’s too early to say” territory. Meanwhile, Bing itself says at one month old, unique users up 8%. Here […]
The big take-away from this is an understanding of how match types can work together. Match type optimization is the first step in the process to minimize costs without reducing click volume - and is the simplest step to execute.
In some cases, clients are not receptive to new PPC account ideas. It’s even possible for PPC ideas to be kiboshed before they’ve had a chance to make it into campaigns. In this article, I’ll discuss some client obstacles and some important factors involved in getting good ideas incorporated into PPC accounts. For the purposes […]
Microsoft Pitches Razorfish Deal to Big Agencies via the Wall Street Journal reports Microsoft is finally looking to sell off Razorfish, something we have been asking them to do since they acquired them. Google sold search marketing firm Performics a while back, mostly due to the conflict of interest in Google running an unbiased search […]
Google’s Microsoft Moment by Anil Dash is an excellent write up on how Google might now be perceived as if they are evil, even if they are not. Anil’s piece goes through why this is the case and why it matters to Google. What I found more interesting was Matt Cutts, long time Googler, thoughts […]
Search ad spending is stabilizing, advertisers are getting smarter, and Bing is making gains on Google and Yahoo. Those are a few of the trends cited in the latest research report from search marketing provider Efficient Frontier. The company regularly shares reports based on data collected from a portion of its U.S. advertisers. This new […]
Earlier this year, we published The Big List Of Search Engines & Their Employees On Twitter, which included plenty of Google accounts on Twitter. Now Google’s made life even easier by publishing its own list of official Twitter accounts. Google accounts on Twitter is the list on the official Google blog. Also see our past […]
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 Adds Photos To Some Location-Based Search Results Google has announced a minor change to its search results page for some geographic-based queries. To fill in the white space that used […]
Google has announced a minor change to its search results page for some geographic-based queries. To fill in the white space that used to appear next to the small map, Google is now pulling in user-contributed photos from its Panoramio photo-sharing site. (Marketers: This is another reason to start using Panoramio if you’re not already.) […]
Facebook allows you to embed fan pages on your own site, which might result in Facebook outranking you for your own brand name. For example, the Search Engine Land fan page has a link for me to “add a fan box to your site.” If you look at the code of that widget, you might […]
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.
If you go to Google Images and search on a keyword, and then click on new SafeSearch filter drop down (might only work on a PC), you will see a new way of reporting offensive images. A drop down lets you select, “report offensive images.” Here is a picture: When you click it, the page […]
Google has announced they have expanded Google Product Search for mobile to both Palm Pre and any mobile device with an internet connection based in the US, UK, Germany and South Korea. To access Google Product Search on your mobile device, just visit google.com and click on shopping or go directly to www.google.com/m/products. Google also […]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s founders and CEO didn’t see eye to eye on building out the Chrome browser or OS, at least, not initially. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that initially when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, brought the idea of building a browser or operating system to him six […]
In my last Just Behave, I talked about how the vast majority of search engine users never go beyond the vanilla functionality of a search engine. They skip along the surface of search, never diving deep into advanced queries, filters or clicking on the tabs and links behind which lies some truly impressive capabilities. This […]
I hope the previous post of this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) have served you well. My goal was never to create an Excel manual for everyone, but rather to highlight specific tips and tricks to help out the search engine marketer who is toiling away in the tool hours every day. Even […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft Lets You Bing Inside Your Hotmail Microsoft has announced the addition of Bing searches to its Hotmail email service. It works via Hotmail’s quick add feature and lets users search […]
Microsoft has announced the addition of Bing searches to its Hotmail email service. It works via Hotmail’s quick add feature and lets users search the web via Bing while composing an email, then put content found via Bing into the outgoing message. To be clear, this isn’t a new feature. The feature debuted late last […]
Just in from Hitwise, the first month-to-month figures since the launch of Bing. And the figures show Bing has both gained and dropped in the same month. Confusing? Yes it is! Here are the month-to-month figures, percentage of searches each search engine handled in the United States: You can see that from May to June, […]
Two pretty cool things coming out of Google Maps today: First, an official announcement that Google’s “My Location” feature is now available more widely on the desktop. Second, Google Operating System has discovered what looks like a test that lets users create “search layers” in Google Maps. More on that in a moment. If you’ve […]
Google Operating System, like always, spots that Google has added the creative commons filter to the advanced image search page. In June, Google added the filter through advanced URL parameters, but now it is officially added to the advanced search page. Here is a screen capture of the filter options, but you can learn more […]
There seems to be no end to companies saying they offer real time search these days. And no end to people quoting how Google itself says it wants to improve in the area. But what does real time search really mean? This article offers some definitions and focuses on players in the space. Real Time […]
Building links is a struggle we SEOs all face. Of the three pillars of SEO (content, architecture, and links), it’s the “link authority” pillar that i’s usually the weakest. Looking at sites individually, formulating your approach, sending personalized emails, picking up the phone to speak to the webmasters – it’s a lot of hard slog. […]
Late yesterday Google announced (or finally admitted) that it had developed an operating system, called Chrome OS, not to be confused, exactly, with the related Chrome browser. Everyone and their grandmother seems to have an opinion about it. Here’s a sampling of the reaction, positive, negative and in-between: The fans, boosters and generally positive takes: […]
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 Pitches New Small Business Customers, Ignores Existing Ones Google is hitting the streets of San Francisco next week — with at least one high-powered supporter in tow — to talk […]
Google is hitting the streets of San Francisco next week — with at least one high-powered supporter in tow — to talk to small/local businesses about Google products and services. The event is called “Favorite Places,” and Google will have San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other “San Francisco trendsetters” show their favorite local businesses […]
Typically, when Google shows a PDF document in the Google search results, you see a link to “view as HTML,” in the snippet. Here is a picture of what you see most of the time: Now, it appears Google is showing a link that reads just “View” and links you to the PDF within a […]
Citigroup conducted a study comparing 200 queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study found that Google is much more relevant than Bing, in returning relevant results. Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo 30 percent of the time. The […]
In the first part of this series, I explained how B2B Marketers can improve the efficiency of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns via geo-targeting, and why this technique is beneficial, even for national advertising programs. Today’s article will explore a second, proven method of focusing PPC campaigns and improving results: ad scheduling. Ad scheduling Basically, there are […]
In a world where everything changes at break-neck speed, it seems like not a day goes by where I don’t utter some version of the same words and advice. After a recent chat with a couple of other in-house SEOs, it occurred to me… we sound like a broken record. Are we destined to repeat […]
Ars Technica posted earlier that Google is to unveil its long rumored computer operating system, and now Google confirms this is true in a blog post: Introducing the Google Chrome OS. The company says that the OS will be released later this year (likely in the fall, I’m told) to developers, designed primarily for netbooks […]
Our love affair with celebrity continues, as evidenced by news today from Yahoo that it served about five million streams of the Michael Jackson Memorial ceremony. That makes it the most streamed event in Yahoo’s history, surpassing the inauguration of President Obama in January, when Yahoo served 1.8 million streams. While watching the event online, […]
IxQuick, which bills itself as “the world’s most private search engine,” has changed its name to the much-easier-to-remember Startpage. Startpage is a meta search engine that’s tried to differentiate itself from the pack by using privacy as a marketing feature. In 2006, shortly before the mistaken release of three months of AOL search data, the […]
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 Sublinks As Sub Listings Being Tested This morning, I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google was testing some type of sublink to the search results, to show additional […]
This morning, I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google was testing some type of sublink to the search results, to show additional search results from the same site, but not as indented results. It is really hard to explain, so here is a picture provided by BlogsDNA: It seems to currently be forum […]
Danny has described Aardvark as a “help engine” and I’ve called it an “answer community.” Whatever term you want to use to characterize the service it’s very interesting and has enormous potential as a kind of search engine alternative or complement for recommendations, opinions or complex questions. There are other services that are similar though […]