Ecommerce

Flickr Pro Users To Lose Historical Referrer Data Tomorrow

If you’re a Flickr Pro user, you have about 24 hours to download the historical stats and referrer data associated with your photos. CSV and/or Excel files are available via your stats page until 12:00 pm PDT tomorrow, June 1st. You’ll see a yellow warning message like the one below, with a direct link to […]

SEO

Enhanced Brand Keyword Ads = Industrial Strength SEM

Are you still arguing with your management about whether you should buy your brand keywords or not? Good news for you: I’m here to make sure you have two more good reasons to go ahead and buy that brand and feel good about it. A few months ago I wrote about how advertisers should think […]

Content

Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues

Is Google responsible for giving out bad directions through its Google Maps service? We’re about to find out. After Googling walking directions for a trip in Park City, Utah, Lauren Rosenberg claims she was led onto a busy highway, where she was struck by a vehicle. She’s now suing Google for damages. The case, Rosenberg […]

Apple

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 28, 2010

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 Starting To Manage Its Cash Mountain More Aggressively Google now has roughly $26 billion in cash on hand. That mountain of money has apparently been getting very conservative returns according […]

Google

Google Starting To Manage Its Cash Mountain More Aggressively

Google now has roughly $26 billion in cash on hand. That mountain of money has apparently been getting very conservative returns according to an article appearing in Businessweek. The article also discusses how Google has now turned its formidable technology and software prowess on its short term investments to more aggressively manage its portfolio.  Accordingly […]

Google

Recent Webmaster Related Changes At Google

There have been several changes this week at Google that I found particularly interesting and wanted to summarize for you. Of course, yesterday’s May Day confirmation story from Vanessa Fox has details on the ranking algorithm change Google put into place earlier this month. That may be the biggest Google related webmaster story of the […]

Platforms

Secret Sauce: Leverage Outside Listings To Help Local Rankings

Google Maps (or Local, or Places, or whatever it is calling itself this month) is the bane of my existence. Well, maybe 3rd place behind Bing and Yahoo PPC platforms…but you catch my meaning. Inevitably, I can expect at least one phone call or email a week from a client asking why they’re not showing […]

Link building

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 27, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Location History, “Footstreams” & Aggregated Check-in Data Will Transform LBS Google recently announced a Location History dashboard that allows users to see where they’ve been, based on their Latitude activity: Today […]

Google

Google To German Privacy Official: Turning Over Private WiFi Data To You Would Violate Your Own Law

Google continues to bump up against frustrated government regulators around the globe who are convinced that the company is doing sneaky things and willfully violating domestic privacy laws. Yesterday European privacy officials continued to express disapproval and assert that Google’s data retention policies violate its six month data retention rule. Today the NY Times covers […]

Content

New Link Diagnosis Update Fixes What Was Broken

The team behind Link Diagnosis has announced a list of updates to their popular link analysis/SEO tool. Two of the updates, in particular, provide a fix for a pair of disappointing features that I wrote about last year when Link Diagnosis completed a major relaunch. First, the result sets have been expanded from 100 to […]

Platforms

Understanding Keyword Match Types

In paid search marketing, users searching on specific keywords will trigger ads by advertisers who have indicated those keywords are relevant to their business by participating in the auction on those terms. Beyond just bidding, though, there are many variables that come into play which you can use to tactically enhance the effectiveness of your […]

Facebook

57% Of Americans Have Googled Themselves: Pew Study

The Pew Research Center has released a deep study today that paints an interesting picture of how U.S. adults use the Internet — search engines, in particular — to track their online reputations. One of the primary takeaways that contradicts previous research is that more than half of adult Internet users have “Googled” themselves. The […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 26, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Doodle 4 Google Winner Announced: Melton’s Rainforest Habitat Google announced the winner of the 3rd annual Doodle 4 Google competition. The Doodle is viewable above and will be displayed on the […]

Ecommerce

Doodle 4 Google Winner Announced: Melton’s Rainforest Habitat

Google announced the winner of the 3rd annual Doodle 4 Google competition. The Doodle is viewable above and will be displayed on the Google home page tomorrow, May 27th. The winner was Makenzie Melton, a third grader at El Dorado Springs R-2 Schools in El Dorado Springs, Missouri for her “Rainforest Habitat” doodle. Besides for […]

Facebook

Live Blogging Facebook’s “Simpler Privacy Controls” Press Conference

Facebook is holding a special press conference today, where it will be discussing the new “simplied” privacy settings that the company has developed in hopes of easing recent concerns over privacy. I’ll be live blogging the news. NOTE: See Drill (Down), Baby, Drill: Facebook’s New “Simple” Privacy Settings Still Pretty Complex, our story after this […]

Google Ads

Google Already On Next AdWords API: v201003 Beta

Just about a month ago Google shut down v13 of the AdWords API for v200909. Now Google announced the next version of the AdWords API, v201003 beta. Google explained that v200909 is not going away anytime soon. But they want to release this new beta to enhance the current offerings of their AdWords API. The […]

Google

Top Google Ranking Gets Twice The Traffic Of #2 Ranking: Chitika

A web page that ranks at the top of Google’s search results gets twice as much traffic as the number two listing, and triple the traffic as the page listed third. That’s according to some new research published by the online ad network Chitika. Chitika’s Dan Ruby explains that they looked at traffic coming into […]

Google Ads

Google Rolls Out More Tweet-Based Ads

Two months ago, Google confirmed an “alpha” test of new ads distributed on its AdSense network that featured tweets. Today, it appears more of these tweet-based ads are live an in the wild. Magne Uppman is part of that test and he has shared screen shots and examples of his Twitter Google AdSense ads in […]

Content

Why B2B Blogs Aren’t Achieving SEO Success

Earlier this month, I led the Hot Seat Lab on Better Blogging for Business at MarketingProfs’ B2B Forum in Boston. In it, three brave B2B marketers volunteered to have their corporate blogs critiqued in front of a room full of peers. While the blogs obviously differed in design and content, their shortcomings from an SEO […]

Local

Google Ends Community Editing Free-For-All In Maps

Local business owners can breathe a sigh of relief: Google has ended the “community edit” free-for-all in Google Maps. According to Tuesday’s announcement, “all community edits [will] be reviewed before they are shown.” For local business owners, this means that competitors, spammers, jilted lovers, and the angry parents of the kid whom your son struck […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 25, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Live Matrix Wants To Be Your Guide To The Live Web If you’re looking for something to do, there are several event search engines you might use: Upcoming.org and Zvents are […]

SEO

Live Matrix Wants To Be Your Guide To The Live Web

If you’re looking for something to do, there are several event search engines you might use: Upcoming.org and Zvents are two biggies, while Joobili is a smaller one that combines events with travel search. But all of this is for finding offline events. What about the thousands of things happening on the web every day? […]

Analytics & conversion

A Priceless Formula For Success: Customer Feedback + Web Analytics

Several years after the introduction of feedback analytics, online retailers continue to find ways to put the priceless resource of the user’s voice to work to increase conversions, sales and customer loyalty. Among the most innovative applications of direct customer feedback is analyzing trends to predict search queries, inform SEO design, adjust merchandising and improve […]

SEO

Yahoo Acquires The Foursquare-Like Koprol

Yahoo announced that it has acquired an Indonesian site called Koprol. Think of it as a kind of cross between Twitter and Foursquare, with more emphasis on the latter. (Yahoo had been rumored to be in talks to buy Foursquare. This move may reflect its inability to close that deal.) It touches local, mobile and […]

Paid social

How To Put The Facebook “Like” Button On A Site

Last month, Facebook dropped the news about their “Open Graph” or new Facebook Platform that brings content into Facebook  – and of course expands Facebook’s web reach out to a more granular level. Since the announcement, there have been two questions asked quite frequently: Should I put this on my website? How do I put […]

SEO

How To Target The Savvy European Youth Market

Europeans spend a lot of time on the web—half of all Europeans are regular users and 80% use a high speed connection. Thats nice, but every search marketer out there will tell you that you need to target specific groups. And one specific group of Europeans should be very interesting to search marketers: the youngsters. […]

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.