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+ Has Been Blocked In China Just one day after Google offered invites to Google+, China has blocked access the new social networking site. This is not surprising at all as […]
Just one day after Google offered invites to Google+, China has blocked access the new social networking site. This is not surprising at all as China typically blocks all social sites including Twitter and Facebook. The Chinese censorship system has been dubbed the “Great Firewall” and is currently blocking Google.com. Other notable blocked sites include: YouTube Foursquare IMDB […]
No matter where you are in your mobile marketing efforts – whether you are an advertiser still developing a mobile strategy or a growing mobile ad network selling to national advertisers – you should know how to effectively measure mobile and your measurement efforts should include call tracking and attribution metrics. Mobile attribution is key […]
Google is currently considering its options after a federal judge gave the go-ahead for a group of consolidated lawsuits to proceed against the company over a potential violation of the Federal Wiretap Act. Wednesday’s decision by US District Judge James Ware, first reported by Wired, actually dismissed two of the three claims against Google, but […]
Business Insider broke the news today that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Twitter apparently due acquisition tactics of applications. Twitter had begun offering “official” versions of apps by way of acquisition back in 2010 with some notable apps including Tweetie and TweetDeck. Entrepreneur Bill Gross had also started buying Twitter apps under a company named TweetUp. […]
SEO tasks vary wildly in complexity: some of them are best done by a seasoned expert, some of them require creative flair, and many are fairly rote—directory submissions, some kinds of copywriting, and some varieties of link-building. For those simple, repetitive tasks, it’s tempting to turn to outsourcing. In fact, some SEO consulting firms act […]
Google and Virgin America have teamed up in a clever Chromebook promotion that will benefit both brands. The airline sent out an email this morning that offers a free Chromebook test drive, “From July 1 to September 30 . . . on select flights from San Francisco, Dallas-Fort Worth, Boston, and Chicago, exclusively on Virgin […]
Last night I had my first experience with Google+ Hangout, the video chat feature that allows up to 10 people to talk simultaneously. Bradley Horowitz (pictured below in the big window) announced a public Hangout and very quickly the room filled up. People were waiting in line to get in. Sergey Hung Out Though it’s […]
The Financial Times has identified a “privacy flaw” within Google+: re-sharing. A privately shared post or picture can be subsequently re-published or shared by the recipient to any of his or her Circles or the entire world. This would potentially thwart the privacy “settings” or objectives of the original creator of the post. Google is […]
As expected Google has launched the +1 metrics within Google Webmaster Tools in addition to social tracking in Google Analytics. Google breaks down the +1 reporting within Webmaster Tools into three reports: (1) Search Impact Report shows you an idea of how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your clickthrough […]
Already in Google+ and want to let others in? Google’s now allowing this. Just look to the bottom of the right-hand side of your stream. You should see an invite icon, like this: Select that, and you can invite anyone you like! About 30 minutes ago, this post covered an alternative way to doing invites […]
Yahoo has relaunched Yahoo Clues, its search trends product that doubles as an underrated keyword research tool. Among the new features, the most important from a search marketing perspective are these: Expanded data: Yahoo Clues now includes a full year of data, up from just a month Wider coverage: It includes all English-language searches made […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Official: Google Analytics Gets Social Engagement Reporting Google Analytics has just announced a new set of reports (and functionality) that will enable websites to track social interaction with their content. This […]
Google Analytics has just announced a new set of reports (and functionality) that will enable websites to track social interaction with their content. This comes as a welcomed addition to the new Google+1 button, as it now enables one to measure the impact of social interactions in and outside websites (either through a Facebook like, […]
We frequently hear about the consumer brands that dominate their markets. Amazon controls 25% of all Internet commerce. Zappos grew to a billion dollar company in ten years with its Web-friendly business model and rule-breaking culture. But who holds the dominant Internet-driven position in your slice of the economy? Is it you? It could be. […]
Google+ has been live for a full day now, and there’s plenty going on within the service, even with the limited number of people in there. Curious to see? Here’s a guide on peeping into Google Plus. Anything that happens with Google+ can be made public with the world, if someone chooses to do so. […]
When I first logged into Google+ I was a bit underwhelmed, but the more I used and explored the site, the more I liked it. While it has already been deemed Google’s Facebook competitor, it is quite different. I want to share my opinion on the pros and cons of the site to help shine […]
One of the most common goals for a B2B website is lead generation. Yet B2B marketers consistently identify lead quality as their #1 challenge. Here are four proven techniques to improve the quality of your search-generated leads. Understand Inquiries vs Leads First, track and evaluate raw inquiries and accepted leads. Raw inquiries include every contact […]
Today, Google has launched the first of many design changes that will impact all of their products, including search. Their blog post says the updates will roll over over the next few months, but that they have a philosophy of “constant revision and improvement”, and notes three primary principles driving the change: Focus They say they’re […]
I’ve been manically playing with Google Plus for about an hour now and, while there is disagreement here among the editorial team at Search Engine Land, I give it a qualified “thumbs up.” At first glance many people will dismiss Google Plus as redundant and derivative of Twitter and Facebook, in particular. This was also […]
Online authors are now being highlighted in Google’s search results … if they’re using the recently announced rel=author markup language. Right now, Google says it’s working with a small group of authors who have linked their Google Profiles to their online content. One of those authors is Search Engine Land’s Editor-In-Chief, Danny Sullivan, and his […]
Biz Stone is following in Evan Williams’ footsteps in stepping away from day-to-day operations at Twitter, joining with Williams and Jason Goldman, also a Blogger and Twitter veteran, to re-form The Obvious Corporation, the company that incubated Twitter. On his blog, Stone explained his departure: “…it has come to my attention that the Twitter crew […]
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’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives Google’s long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ […]
These days, local business owners are regularly faced with the question of where to advertise to attract new customers. While there’s basic knowledge that consumer media habits are transitioning, many businesses often lack an in-depth understanding of exactly what has changed and how they should be adjusting their marketing strategies to match current trends. This […]
My previous column, Key Problems With Current Social Link Graph Signals hit a nerve with a few people who felt I was too harsh in my critique of social signals as content quality indicators. See this post from bigmouthmedia for one of the more in-depth responses. It’s not that I don’t feel social signals have merit. […]
Google’s long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ Project. It has some interesting twists on the social networking model but is far from a Facebook-killer. That Name The terrible name is a bad start. Google+? Google+! I can’t even question or […]
Privacy is a much discussed topic and most focus seems to be privacy issues in Europe. But people have different attitudes to privacy throughout the globe with some having an intense fear of compromising their privacy or identify. How does this affect search? And where are the most privacy senstiive nations>
The mystery of how and where articles, information, graphics, and more are shared online has been something to plague both marketers and content creators alike. Catering your information towards your target audience and where they share it most is crucial to producing content that spreads like wildfire online. Linkbait tactics would be without effectiveness if […]
Perhaps sensing “blood in the water,” a French company called 1plusV has sued Google in the Paris Commercial Court for the equivalent of $421 million. (The civil complaint was orginally filed on February 22, 2011.) An operator of vertical search sites, 1plusV is the corporate parent of legal search engine Ejustice.fr, one of three companies […]
Google has launched a new service at wdyl.com, which stands for “What Do You Love” from Google, which allows users to search for anything and see what comes back from a variety of Google’s many different search resources. Over the years, Google has continued to add new products, services, portals, and features to their portfolio. […]
Google’s +1 button is rolling out internationally. The company has announced that 1 buttons will start showing on a few select Google search engines at first: Google.co.uk Google.de Google.jp Google.fr The +1 button will be “expanding quickly to most other Google search sites” in the near future. Up until now, the +1 button has only […]
Google has added key pieces of information to its Government Requests Transparency report. The semi-annual release of data chronicles the search engine’s interactions with government officials around the world, in which those officials request that information be removed from Google’s index, or ask for data about its users. It also tracks user traffic from countries […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New: Google Now Showing Local +1 Counts Last week we confirmed Google was showing raw +1 counts in the search results and now today, Google seems to be testing showing location […]
Last week we confirmed Google was showing raw +1 counts in the search results and now today, Google seems to be testing showing location based +1 counts. @tomcritchlow shared a screen shot with us showing Google only displaying the people in New York who +1’ed a page. Here is that screen shot: As you can […]
Twitter launched Twitter For Newsrooms, a detailed resource to help professionals in news, TV, sports and entertainment use Twitter effectively. The guide is geared toward the novice to intermediate user and helps to standardize the use of Twitter. Specific sections include: #Report #Engage #Publish #Extra The guide contains advice including: ways to properly brand yourself, recommended tools, […]
Today, Oyster.com, a hotel review site and booking engine rolled out “Oyster Shots”, a new search by hotel photos feature, following a similar trend of expanded image search capabilities by Google. All images are editorially tagged and categorized, and include underlying geocoded data signals, such as GPS camera data. In the challenging travel vertical, Oyster […]
On Friday Google confirmed that the FTC had launched a broad — really broad — investigation into its search and ads businesses seeking to determine whether the company was doing anything anti-competitive in the market. The news was immediately welcomed by some Google critics and competitors who believe the company is systematically abusing its power […]
Google is now heavily testing a new top bar color, that color is black. Google began testing this back about a month ago, as reported by Google Operating System but now Google seemed to have stepped up those tests. So much so, users are complaining that their custom Google home page designs look bad because […]
One of the hot topics at SMX Advanced in Seattle this June was the best way to handle paginated sites. It seemed like the topic that would not go away, as it came up in panel after panel. The reason this happened is that it is a complicated topic. There are two major scenarios that […]
For those of you expecting me to make good on a promise from my last column to continue the theme of how mobile is changing SEO with regard to link building, look for that next month. Since Google’s Inside Search event had a mobile theme, I think it’s more important to address the implications of […]