A year ago, I wrote a quick post called, Google vs. Bing, The Fallacy of the Superior Search Engine, in which I selected twenty search-difficult queries and ran a subjective head to head evaluation of the search results from Google and Bing. The end result confirmed what I had long anecdotally experienced – the difference […]
There is a certain sound a teenager makes when confronted with a choice they aren’t interested in making. It is a sonic mix of indecision, ambivalence, condescension and that sound your finger makes when you pet a frog. It is less committal than a shrug, less positive than a “Yes,” less negative than a “No” […]
Most of the time an increase in search engine visibility does generate additional organic traffic, but what should a B2B marketer do if it doesn’t? Have you ever been a victim of this scenario? Below are three aspects of your SEO Program to analyze and improve to ensure that your SEO investment is generating website […]
Chefs. Musicians. Athletes. Each is a master in their own discipline. Yet, many of these folks have skills that can be leveraged in a completely different channel with great success. Quite often, making the leap to another field can open up an entirely new world for them. And that’s exactly what display advertising offers search […]
Today’s special Google Logo, aka Google Doodle, celebrates the life of Nicolas Steno, the father of modern geology. The logo symbolizes the study of the earth, from the ocean to the mountain tops. In Google Doodle fashion, the art makes up the letters of Google’s name, and this one has the Google colors as well. […]
Last night I posted comScore December search market share numbers, based on a financial analyst report (one of several that came out yesterday or early this morning). The report incorrectly presented the search share numbers as follows. Those figures made it appear that Google had gained share at Bing’s expense. It was Yahoo that lost […]
That didn’t take long. In my coverage today about the new Google “Search Plus Your World” feature, I detailed how part of it gave hefty ammunition to claims that Google is abusing its dominant position in search. The anti-trust charges have now already started. Here’s the short story why. Imagine, Sending People To Other Stores! One of […]
Maybe it’s my bias as a longtime fan/practitioner of local search and SEO. Or maybe it’s because I’m mentioned as one of the sources/contributors. But more likely it’s just that this is an important search reference document, and that’s why I think that anyone interested or involved in local search should know about it. David […]
In a sound byte that might remind you of Baghdad Bob*, Iran’s police chief has announced that Google is a tool for spying. And not only that, but the Iranian government is also using that and other concerns to form a “national internet” under state control. Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam made his comments this week to […]
Anyone—anyone—can make a website. Anyone can create a Twitter account, start a blog, or launch a Facebook fan page. And anyone—from 13-year-old girls to 45-year-old men—can pretend to be an attractive 20-year-old woman on the Internet. In the world of Internet spam, scams, and shams, we’ve learned to be wary of what we find online. […]
Google’s search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new “Search Plus Your World” format begins rolling out today. It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings. The change is live now, though not everyone will […]
The goal of most link building campaigns is to drive traffic to your site and get amazing rankings. However, consider this: with all the available social media channels where people will be engaging with your brand, why not view them with the same importance as your main site? What will happen if your site gets […]
For Yahoo, the new year got underway with the appointment of a new leader, Scott Thompson. Mr. Thompson’s appointment was announced on the 4th of January with him due to take up his responsibilities at the beginning of this week — so right now, he’ll be meeting his new team and finding out what really […]
Ads for illegal Olympic ticket resellers, ads for cannabis, and ads for fake identification cards and UK passports. All illegal, but all could, up until recently, be found on Google.co.uk, according to a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) investigation publicized today. Though Google shut down the illegal advertisers when the matter was brought to the company’s attention […]
For large organizations, keeping a close watch on keyword targeting and on-page optimization across an entire site or network of sites is not an easy task. At the enterprise level, a single site can have millions or tens of millions of pages, and larger organizations such as news publishers may have 20-30 different sites or […]
Happy New Year to my fellow mobile search enthusiasts, and welcome to another exciting year for mobile search! It seems every year about this time consultants and pundits like me become clairvoyant and share their wisdom with those of you who lack the capacity to see beyond the daily planner. While I usually avoid such […]
According to CNET, Google faces the “maximum potential penalty” for allegedly obstructing South Korea’s antitrust investigation against the company. Korean officials “raided” Google’s Seoul offices last Fall in connection with an investigation into whether Google was acting in an anti-competitive way toward home-grown Korean search/portal sites on Android devices. (It wasn’t the first time for […]
paidContent reports the lawsuit brought against Google in 2008 over quality of ads showing on parked or error message web pages has been thrown out by the court. On Thursday, January 5th, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila turned down the class action suit brought against Google. He said he would not allow the suit because […]
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2012 is to do a better job of documenting our mature PPC campaigns, so that any new manager coming in can take advantage of everything we’ve already tested and learned from over the years, rather than repeating the same tests and/or mistakes we’ve already lived through. The AdWords […]
Increasingly over the years, search engines — Google in particular — have given more and more support to SEOs and publishers. But 2011 marked the first significant reversal that I can recall, with both linking and keyword data being withheld. Here’s what happened, why it matters and how publishers can push back if Google and Bing don’t […]
Addams Family creator Charles Addams is the latest artist/illustrator to be honored with a special logo on the Google home page. The black-and-white drawing, created courtesy of the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation, features seven common characters from The Addams Family (L-R): Morticia, Gomez, Thing (sorry, that’s Cousin Itt), Pugsley, Wednesday, Lurch and Uncle Fester. […]
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.
No matter where in the world you live, it’s likely you have rituals that you participate in at various times of the year. Website owners have a New Year ritual too. The first item we need to address is updating the copyright year in the footer of our website. Not only does this show that […]
All forms of paid advertising use the max bid – it’s the most basic concept yet calculating the theoretical maximum value to pay for a click is surprisingly difficult. It’s not that the math is tough; it just takes stepping back from the granularity of channel specific optimization to get a more holistic look at […]
For the past few years, experts and hacks alike have declared – and debated – it being the “Year of Mobile” or the “Year of Attribution.” So, let me go ahead and make my own personal declaration for 2012. It is not just the “Year of the Dragon,” although that makes me feel much more […]
Chris Pendleton announced on the Bing Maps blog that they have pushed out a major update to their driving directions “routing engine.” The new routing engine is twice as fast as the old one and adds more features like adding up to 3 routes in one request. Previously, Bing Maps used a routing algorithm named […]
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen significantly more people reporting they’ve seen AdWords that allow advertisers to collect email addresses directly in the ad unit. Now Google has confirmed it has expanded the trial of the lead generation format to additional advertisers. We’ve seen the format used by daily deal provider bloomspot, which […]
Among several interesting new search tweaks in Google’s latest monthly recap is a project internally called “Megasitelinks,” along with improvements to Google’s image search tool, its detection of “byline dates” on web documents and much more. Google just began doing monthly overviews of its search changes in November, and this latest overview includes 30 tweaks […]
Borrell Associates has come out with an extensive new report about small business (“SMBs”) and social media adoption. It contains forecasts and spending estimates as well as other data about SMB usage of social media as a marketing tool. There’s a great deal of data already in the market about SMB adoption of social media. […]
Your ‘landing page’ is the first step a visitor takes into your online universe. But that page is actually the last step in your strategic plan to attract those visitors. You see, a lot more goes into the planning process of your Web traffic strategy than just the design of your landing page. And while […]
Trada, the crowdsourced PPC marketplace, has secured an additional $9 million in funding from their existing investors, Google Ventures and Foundry Group. This additional seed of Series D financing brings the total money raised for Trada to $17 million. Trada basically lets you offload your PPC management onto a community of SEM experts, who spend […]
Campaign budgets enable advertisers control over campaign-level spend on search engines. Once the campaign spend approaches the set budget, ads show up with lesser frequency, and ultimately ads do not compete in the auctions. However, this is not the best way to control your budget for two reasons: (1) If you have hit your campaign […]
US Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made a surprise leap ahead to practically tie Mitt Romney in yesterday’s Iowa caucus results. Now people are searching to find out more about him and discovering THAT result which makes comedy show hosts like Jon Stewart giggle. But rather than blame Google (or Bing), as Santorum has in the […]
Looking back on 2011, as always, there’s lots of change in the search engine marketing world! New ad products, new features and new media keep in-house online marketers ever on their toes to stay up on the latest and greatest opportunities in an increasingly complex field of online marketing. What were the most interesting and […]
AllThingsD reported late yesterday that PayPal president Scott Thompson would likely be named CEO of Yahoo. It’s now official; Yahoo just put out its formal press release announcing Thompson’s appointment. In appointing Thompson, Yahoo is choosing a leader with a deeper technology and product background than prior CEO Carol Bartz who was abruptly terminated last […]
Searches for “browser” no longer bring up the Google Chrome home page after Google applied a penalty against the page because of Google’s own sponsored post campaign. Google said even though it felt there were no “remaining violations” of its guidelines, the search engine’s spam fighting team was going to reduce the PageRank value of […]
It’s been about a day since we covered Google’s sponsored post campaign to promote its Chrome browser, a campaign that produced posts that violate Google’s guidelines against “thin” content and potentially those against buying links. Yes, it was a Google campaign, but not what the company says it signed-up for. One agency is falling on its […]
In my previous post on ensuring your open graph tags were properly set up, I stressed the importance of having these tags in place so as marketers we can stay in control of the message we send to our audiences. I suggested that a simple solution would be to have your open graph tags reference […]
Welcome back to the first Link Week of 2012, I hope you enjoyed the holidays and had a great New Year celebration! Next up in our tool review series: Ontolo Internet Marketing Tools The current Ontolo toolset is owned by partners Ben Wills and Andy Davidoff and has been a work in progress since 2008. The tool is […]
Earlier this month, Google announced support for additional multinational HTML markup to allow webmasters to indicate the intended market for translated content and, in doing so, changed the SEO game for multinational businesses. Previously, Google’s Matt Cutts had stated that blocks of poorly (or auto-) translated content would be considered duplicate. Obviously, for verticals which […]