Are you one of those people who get upset when the Super Bowl gets interrupted by football or corny half-time events? You know, those sideshows to the real reason people watch—the ads. Fortunately, you can find all of the Super Bowl ads online. Even better: there’s no need to sift through parodies or spam on […]
Now in its fourth year, Google I/O is more popular than ever. The company’s annual conference for the developer community opened for registration today and promptly sold out … in just 59 minutes. Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering, posted successive tweets earlier today about the speedy sellout, saying it took 90 days and 50 […]
Yes, Google might consider changing its ranking algorithm in response to an EU anti-trust investigation. However, that would fit in with Google’s general practice of changing its algorithm on a regular basis in response to anything the company thinks will improve its results.
Tired of winter? Want to win a trip to SMX West in sunny California? Click on over to take the 3rd annual SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest sponsored by Marin Software. The contest consists of 20 challenging questions related to search marketing. The highest scoring contestant will win a trip for two to SMX West […]
Embargoed news for this morning was published last week. That news was that Blekko had 30 million search queries in January and “users have created more than 110,000 slashtags since the company’s launch in November, an indication the search market is thirsty for innovation.” Blekko has recently gained attention for banning the “top 20 spam […]
TechCrunch reported that CNN’s news anchor Hala Gorani tweeted that the Egyptian PM, Ahmed Shafiq said Google’s executive based in Egypt will be released today at 4pm Egyptian time. Being that it is after 4:30pm local time in Egypt, I’d hope he has been released. Although I still do not see any confirmation from Google […]
Raise your hand if you’ve had to choose between mobile and social for your emerging media budget this year. Budgets sometimes have a line item for social and a line for mobile, but in truth, sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart. Case in point: this past week Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said “My sense […]
Google announced they have added Google Instant to Google Shopping Search view within the web results. If you are on Google.com, search for a product and then filter your search on the left hand side by “Shopping”, Google Instant will allow you to search for new products. Interestingly enough, this does not seem to work […]
What do I mean by that headline? A study from Stanford University, summarized by the NY Times, found “that bloggers, over time, had more influence than mainstream publications in areas like technology or entertainment.” In other words a mention or write up in a top publication will generate a “sugar rush” of interest and activity […]
Every year, advertisers pay millions to air commercials during the Super Bowl. (The price this year is around three million dollars for a thirty second slot.) Advertisers are looking not only for conversions (sure, Hyundia would love for you to run out and buy that new Elantra tomorrow) but also heightened awareness and engagement. The […]
(For those wondering what time the game really does start, the 2011 Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers kicks off on Fox at around 6:30pm ET.) Before the Super Bowl in both 2009 and 2010, I checked out the search engine results for the Super Bowl start time. In 2009, […]
Part of this week’s debate over whether Microsoft’s Bing search engine is learning from Google involves data that Bing gathers through Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Google has suggested Microsoft isn’t giving fair disclosure. I disagree. To better illustrate, let’s turn the tables and look at the Google Toolbar and disclosure.
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: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations Along with everything else going on for Bing’s Harry Shum on Tuesday — a panel about search spam, dealing with Google’s accusations that Bing […]
Along with everything else going on for Bing’s Harry Shum on Tuesday — a panel about search spam, dealing with Google’s accusations that Bing “copies” Google’s results — Shum dealt with perhaps his most important worry. Reassuring his son that Bing wasn’t “cheating” as a search engine.
The most difficult group entity we design for, engage with and market to is commonly referred to as “users”. Some of you know members of this group as people. A few use the term without thinking it through. The term “users” has an official formal name in some industries, which to be honest, only serves […]
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.
Here’s a rough paraphrase of a classic business cliche: “In business, at the end of the day, your reputation is all you’ve got.” Let’s say that after years of working hard to build a solid reputation, one day, a result surfaces in Google for a search for “your name” and one of the top results […]
Yelp released some new mobile data yesterday based on usage and activity in December. The company said that its mobile apps generated calls to local businesses “every other second.” Here are some of the other data: 3.2 million unique visitors used a Yelp mobile app Every other second a consumer generated directions to a local […]
Many noticed it last month, but Google has made it official: many AdWords placements at the top of the page will be getting extended headlines. For ads in which each line seems to be a complete sentence, ending in the proper punctuation, Google will move the first description line to the headline, separating the two […]
The Google Webmaster Blog announced a “slight change” to how the search queries reports are displayed. Google will be rounding the impressions and clicks to one or two significant digits instead of with two or three significant digits. What does that mean? Basically the reports are less accurate because they are more rounded. For example, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Did A Google Employee Just Register Hiybbprqag.com To Help Recruit New Employees? That’s a screenshot of Google’s “Jobs” page, which can be found at https://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html. But it can also be reached […]
That’s a screenshot of Google’s “Jobs” page, which can be found at https://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html. But it can also be reached by going to hiybbprqag.com, which does a 302 redirect to the Google.com URL. Say what? And who? And why? Let’s sort this out: “Hiybbprqag” is one of the nonsense words that Google used in its sting […]
Yahoo and Zillow have finalized the details of their agreement last year that effectively sees Yahoo outsourcing its popular Real Estate search vertical to Zillow. The two companies say this deal “creates the largest real estate network on the web,” and involves several elements: Yahoo Real Estate search will gets its for-sale listings exclusively from […]
The popular questions and answers site, Answers.com has announced they have been acquired by AFCV Holdings, LLC. for $127 million. AFCV Holdings is paying $10.50 per share for the outstanding shares. “This is a great outcome for our shareholders,” said Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman and CEO. “After an exciting six years as a public company, […]
In 2004, our family business came off the tracks. Sales growth stopped. Overhead skyrocketed. We took a hard look at how we sold online, and made one simple, but substantial change. The result was an extra $10,354,767 in additional sales above our normal growth. How? In this column, I’m going to show you. We created compelling […]
Enter a new referee in the Copygate dispute between Google and Bing: comedian Stephen Colbert. Despite being sponsored by Bing, Colbert came down in Google’s favor last night on the Colbert Report — at least jokingly.
Back in October 2010, Twitter announced that then-CEO and co-founder Evan (@ev) Williams would step down to focus on product. According to a report in the Business Insider, that hasn’t really materialized. Says the Business Insider report by Nicholas Carlson: The truth is, right now, a few months after Williams wrote a blog post saying […]
AdWords advertisers seeking to target ad to cities in China, Brazil, Mexico and 14 other countries will soon get their wish. Google today will begin rolling out new city and regional targeting capabilities. The changes will allow advertisers to target, analyze and optimize ad campaigns based upon more granular geographic data. Retailers could, for example, […]
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: “We Do Not Copy Results. Period.” The war of words between Google and Bing has escalated today with a strong denial about copied search results from Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi, who […]
The war of words between Google and Bing has escalated today with a strong denial about copied search results from Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi, who also accused Google of a form of click fraud in setting up its test involving “honeypot” search results. Mehdi, Microsoft’s Senior VP of Online Services, just published a strongly-worded denial of […]
This morning Google showcased the features of its new tablet-optimized version of Android: Honeycomb. Danny live-blogged the press event, Honeycomb represents a dramatic improvement over Gingerbread for tablets in several respects. The UI is the most obvious example, as well as developer tools on the back end. There are some distinct UI differences between Android […]
I’m here at the Googleplex in Moutain View, where any minute, Google plans to update the world on all things Android. We expect news about Android 3.0 — “Honeycomb” — and perhaps Android tablets. Stay tuned. Andy Rubin, leader of all things Android is up, saying we’re going to hear about Honeycomb, the Motorola tablet […]
Click-through rates on Facebook ads only averaged 0.05% in 2010, down from 0.06% in 2009 and well short of what’s considered to be the industry average of 0.10%. That’s according to a Webtrends report that examined 11,000 Facebook ads, first reported upon by ClickZ. Meanwhile, the price of those clicks is increasing, rising from $0.27 […]
Google’s Shopper mobile app is being introduced for iPhone. It already exists for Android devices. Shopper allows users to search for products by voice, with the camera, via barcode scan or by text entry. Users can also share products on Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email. Google Shopper shows prices, product reviews and local inventory availability […]
Greg Linden reports that Google has switched the algorithm they use for YouTube’s recommendation engine from their own to a variation of Amazon’s algorithm that was designed in the late 90s. This is an interesting move being that Google has the man power and smarts to build a fairly good recommendation on their own. But […]
It’s all starting to come together. Yesterday Google announced that it was adding check-ins (and loyalty categories) to Latitude. It also announced the global expansion of HotPot, its recommendations tool. Google Places apps for both iPhone and Android allow people to rate and review businesses (HotPot’s objective). And on Places Pages, in Android, you can […]
Establishing a clear visual hierarchy is key to creating a well-optimized web page. But how do you achieve the right balance? In this article,I’ll look at nine visual “toggles” you can use, with examples of their effects. I’ll start by saying that every designer I’ve ever met despises the word “pop.” It’s one of those […]
Less than two years ago, I wrote an article for Brand Aid about display URL tricks used by affiliates and other brand hijackers in paid search ads. In that article, one of the tactics discussed, ‘tactic # 2’, was a misdirected display URL – where the display URL of the paid ad shows one domain, […]
Got a new mobile app that needs marketing? I wish I could say there’s an app for that, but for in-house search engine marketing managers, marketing a new mobile app involves a lot of the same elbow grease and detailed, tactical campaign work as a search engine marketing campaign. The App’s (Finally) Approved After a […]
The war of words between Google and Bing continues with the latest pair of jabs coming from Google. In a blog post this afternoon, Google’s Amit Singhal reiterates the claims we reported this morning that Bing is copying Google’s search results. But he also goes a step further, or perhaps a couple steps, and accuses […]