Google has had what it has called “comparison ads” for some time, but these comparison units are getting a new look in Google’s search results beginning today. Google hopes the change will better explain to searchers that comparison listings come from companies it has a commercial relationship with. It also highlights how three Google search […]
Those marketing mobile applications via Google AdWords are getting some new weapons in their arsenal this week. Google has announced four new tools: a new Mobile App extension for AdWords, additional information to the click-to-download format, the ability to see Google Play stats in AdWords, and Custom Search Ads for mobile apps. The Mobile App […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Five Key Learnings From A Local Marketing Success Story One of our most compelling speakers at the 2012 Local Search Association annual conference was Mary Boysman, VP Brand Marketing and Advertising […]
One of our most compelling speakers at the 2012 Local Search Association annual conference was Mary Boysman, VP Brand Marketing and Advertising at Aspen Dental, a fast-growing, multi-market health care provider. Speaking to a crowd of local search leaders from around the world, Boysman described in detail how she and her team developed a comprehensive […]
The “rotate evenly” setting on an AdWords campaign has been a long-time best friend to habitual ad testers testers and landing page tweakers everywhere. Next week, the “rotate evenly” setting will stop rotating after 30 days and default to a different setting, “optimize for clicks.” Three settings currently exist: Rotate evenly Optimize for clicks Optimize […]
Ask someone who’s new to mobile SEO about it and they’re almost sure to tell you that mobile sites are duplicate content. The fear is that having the same content on two URLs will do the same thing it does in traditional SEO and split link equity and social shares, making it more difficult for […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: StarCraft Themed Google Easter Egg “Zerg Rush” Calls An Attack On Your Search Results Google’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders […]
Google’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders to save your search results. This Easter egg is themed after the popular strategy game StarCraft, and may just be the geekiest Easter egg to date. In Starcraft a variety of races exist, one of which are “Zergs.” These insect-like creatures […]
More and more, I have been interacting with executives using campaign management tools as their internal reporting systems. In most cases, these companies have an analytics package but prefer to use ad server data rather than analytics for internal tracking. Campaign management tools and analytics provide fundamentally different information, and while directionally similar in many […]
What began as an experiment 10 months ago is now showing up in nearly one of every five Google search results. I’m talking about authorship — Google’s use of the rel=author markup to identify content creators next to their content. A new SearchMetrics study published this week says that about 17 percent of queries included […]
Was your site hit by Google’s new Penguin Update that targets spam? Are you not guilty as charged? Google’s got a new feedback form for that, as well as a method to report spam that should have been caught. I’m Innocent! The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the information on Twitter […]
Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else 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: Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. […]
It’s unlikely to impact Google or Yelp in any way but Wolfram Alpha is getting into local search. According to a blog post today users can now search online or on its mobile apps for nearby businesses in a range of categories (chains only right now): Wolfram|Alpha now knows the locations of some 2.4 million […]
Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. We’ve got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with our own. What Was Penguin? The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to […]
Move over Panda, there’s a new Google update in town: Penguin. That’s the official name Google has given to the webspam algorithm that it released on Tuesday. What’s An Update? For those unfamiliar with Google updates, I’d recommend reading my Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update post from last year. It explains […]
It's been long known in the industry that brand term keywords garner a much higher click-through-rate. As a result, marketers often start by bidding on their own brand terms.
Quality Score display and the addition of labels aren’t the only AdWords changes this week. Google has also updated the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator, eliminating the standalone Traffic Estimator that could be used without logging into an AdWords account. With the Keyword Tool changes, advertisers will be able to see keyword ideas grouped by […]
Robin Wauters at The Next Web recently wrote about an interesting trend taking place at upstart search engine DuckDuckGo. DDG (DuckDuckGo) is self-described as: We are a search engine with: Way more instant answers. Way less spam and clutter. Lots and lots of goodies. Real privacy. Wauters reports that DuckDuckGo’s daily search traffic has grown by […]
Google’s latest search algorithm change designed to fight spam and improve its search results went live yesterday. Plenty of people are seeing its impact already. Better or worse? It’s easy to find some examples of things being bad; it’s hard to say overall if there’s been a net improvement or not. Judging Relevancy Is Tricky […]
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 Launches Update Targeting Webspam In Search Results Google has announced that it is releasing a new search algorithm that it hopes will better catch people who spam its search results […]
You know that rumor about Microsoft shopping Bing to Facebook? It sparked lots of speculation about whether that would be a good move for both companies. Turns out it did happen, according to a report in the New York Times citing executives who made overtures to Facebook on behalf of Microsoft — but without the […]
Last week, Google released a new update to its Panda algorithm that targets low-quality content. Who won and who lost? Searchmetrics has posted an analysis of that. Our original story here reported the winners/losers list, as Searchmetrics did, showing who was estimated to have gained and lost in the new Penguin Update that was released this […]
Ad network Chitika, which regularly publishes findings from activity on its network, has released some data that show owners of iPhones and iPads search more than Android owners. This is a bit counter-intuitive and unexpected, given how prominent search and the search box are on the homescreen of most Android handsets and how deeply integrated […]
Google announced they are removing three features from Google Webmaster Tools. Google made the announcement on the Google Webmaster Central blog saying the three features going away include the site performance report, the subscriber stats and the robots.txt creation tool. Google placed reversed the order of these features when they wrote about it, trying to […]
Google today unveiled two changes to the AdWords interface that will likely be useful to marketers — three additional components to the Quality Score, along with account labels to allow the easier grouping of keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns. Quality Score, one of the most important metrics for marketers, will be displayed with the […]
Google has announced that it is releasing a new search algorithm that it hopes will better catch people who spam its search results or purposely do things to rank better that are against Google’s publishers guidelines. Going live today, Google says the “Penguin Update” will impact about 3% of search queries. From the company’s posts […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Breadcrumb Trails Come To AdWords Display URLs on AdWords search ads are getting another element — breadcrumb trails, a set of links next to the URL that lets users navigate directly […]
Display URLs on AdWords search ads are getting another element — breadcrumb trails, a set of links next to the URL that lets users navigate directly to relevant sections of a site. An example of a breadcrumb trail would be “Apparel > Women’s Clothing > Tops > Sweaters.” As with organic breadcrumbs, the breadcrumbs displayed […]
Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of being part of a Search Marketing Now (SMN) webinar, it was sponsored by Optify and focused on B2B link building tactics. Scott Fasser, Director of Customer Experience at Optify and I shared a number of B2B linking tactics and then hosted a lively Q&A session. We ran out of time and […]
Marthe types the word “Melkeallergi” into Google.no, searching for information about a health condition she’s worried about. In her discussion group for Norwegian school moms, one parent suffered from stomach cramps just like she did, and mentioned the diagnosis of “milk allergy“. “Could this be what I have, too?” Marthe wondered, and decided to find […]
Before we get to the everyone’s favorite collector of white tigers and facial tattoos, it is important to set the stage with another heavyweight. “Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.” – Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO and current Chairman of the Board, Google. For the last […]
Lately, Twitter has been on my mind. Not only because I am speaking about it at SMX Toronto, but also because I have been trying to come up with new strategic ways to use it for clients in order to enhance their SEO efforts. For me, and I suspect for others as well, one of […]
Ever amassed a collection of Web bookmarks on a particular subject and then wanted to search through their contents? Delicious users will be familiar with link curating and sharing, but there’s no ability to actually search the contents of the bookmarked pages and sites. A few Florentines, mostly former colleagues from the Italian internet company […]
When you visit Google on April 24th, you will see a huge zipper down the middle of the Google of the logo. The logo is to commemorate the birthday of Gideon Sundback, the man who invented the zipper. He was born 132 years ago on April 24, 1880 in Sweden. In 1905 he immigrated to […]
Google is testing the effect of adding “Trusted Stores” badges to qualifying advertisers’ search ads, as it considers deploying the badges more widely. The experiment was first reported by Internet Retailer. A Google spokesperson, asked to comment on the test, sent a statement that said: “As part of the Google Trusted Stores program, we’re currently […]
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 Cutts Explains How Google Search Works Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a 8 minute video on how Google search works. From crawling, indexing to ranking, he gets […]
Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a 8 minute video on how Google search works. From crawling, indexing to ranking, he gets into a brief overview of how Google’s search engine does its job. Matt explains how PageRank is used, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases. Here is […]
We usually hyperfocus on Google Place search and Maps results, since they have such large market share. But there are good reasons for local businesses to be concerned with ranking elsewhere as well. So, here are a few other local search engines to consider, and a few tips for ranking effectively in their results. It’s […]
Google Rich Snippets are an outstanding way for webmasters to get more exposure for their pages in the Google search results. Using them, you can add add images, review stars and more to your listings. But for some webmasters, that is not enough. Back in November I noticed HTML entities working in Google’s breadcrumb rich […]