More from Search Engine Land: Page 2

PPC

The Who, When & Why Of PPC Account Audits

Auditing your PPC accounts on a regular basis is something every company should be doing. Performing an audit lets you step outside of your normal day-to-day activities within an account to reevaluate the big picture and see where large opportunities may lie. Normally, when you hear about a company doing a PPC audit, it’s a […]

Ecommerce

Google Grew Their Own Earth Day Logo

Google has a special Earth Day logo that flips through the various cycles of the growth of flowers and plants over time. In fact, A Google Doodler named Jen planted and grew the logo, taking pictures over time, which made up today’s Earth Day logo for Google. Here is a video of the logo in […]

Google Ads

Behind The Scenes In Google’s Battle Against Bad Ads

When new employees join the Google ad quality team that manually reviews suspect ads, they start by studying internal documentation of policies that outline examples of ads that would be approved, and those that would be rejected. Then the employees’ skills are tested on ads that don’t run, they graduate to ads that get little […]

Bing

Analyst: Mobile To Overtake PC For Local Search By 2015

Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs  in the US. It’s a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on […]

Link building

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 20, 2012

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 Shuts Down Patent Search, Google Related Toolbar, One Pass & Vaccine Finder After only eight months, the Google Related toolbar is headed to the dead pool. That’s one of several […]

Google

Google Redirects Patent Search, Shuts Down Google Related Toolbar, One Pass & Vaccine Finder

After only eight months, the Google Related toolbar is headed to the dead pool. That’s one of several Google products being phased out in the company’s latest “spring cleaning” announcement, along with the One Pass payment system for news publishers, Google Patent Search losing its own home page and Google Flu Vaccine Finder. Google Related is […]

Analytics & conversion

Conversion Rate Optimization In Paid Search: Why Click Through Rate Matters

One might find it strange to talk about click-through rate (CTR) optimization when talking about conversion rate optimization, since these indicators do not initially seem related. Yet, while these metrics are not always correlated, they sometimes – and actually often – are. However, a high click-through rate does not assure a high conversion rate. The […]

Google

Google Street View Images Now Online In Israel

Although a formal launch is planned for this weekend, Google’s Street View imagery for Israel is already online. It marks the first time Google has put street photographs online from any Middle Eastern country. Shown above is a screenshot of the Wailing Wall (also called the Western Wall) in Jerusalem, one of the city’s most […]

Apple

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 19, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Home Depot To Correct Misleading Link Request It read like one of those bad link requests you get. Link to me, and you’ll rank better. It even suggested hiding the link. […]

Content

Home Depot To Correct Misleading Link Request

It read like one of those bad link requests you get. Link to me, and you’ll rank better. It even suggested hiding the link. But the request was from Home Depot, to its network of nearly 2,000 service providers. Now that it’s come to light, the home improvement store chain says it is correcting the […]

Bing SEO

No, Bing Doesn’t Support Pagination Attributes to Consolidate Pages In A Series

Last week, the Bing Webmaster blog published a post about how Bing handles rel=”next” and rel=”prev” attributes. On the surface, it seemed as though Bing was announcing that it now supported these tags in the same way Google does. Last September, Google announced support of the rel=”prev” and rel=”next” attributes to designate paginated content, which enables […]

PPC

Benefits Of Cross-Channel Analytics For Search Marketers

John Wanamaker once stated, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” One of the things we love to tout as search marketers is our ability to track our efforts. We pride ourselves on it. But, as much as our tracking capabilities would leave Wanamaker dumbfounded, […]

Google

Getting Started With Google Shopping Feeds

With the amount of news we read each day about Google, the words “Google” and “secret” are rarely thought of together. Yet, one of the best-kept “secrets” for creating incremental traffic to online retail sites is actually Google Shopping. Not only is this traffic “free,” but the conversion rates are often higher than the more […]

SEO

Dropped In Rankings? Google’s Mistake Over Parked Domains Might Be To Blame

Search rankings got you down on Google recently? It’s not the expected over-optimization penalty, as some have been guessing at. Rather, Google may have thought your site was a “parked domain,” when it wasn’t. Search forums like Webmaster World and Google’s own search discussion areas have had much discussion about recent drops in ranking, such as here, here and […]

SEO

AT&T Interactive: More Than 30 Percent Of Searches On Network Are Mobile

AT&T Interactive released its Q1 2012 “Local Insights Report” (.pdf) earlier today. The report covers search activity on AT&T Interactive’s various properties (online, mobile and IPTV), which together comprise its YP Local Ad Network. The data in the report are gleaned from more than 190 million monthly searches across the network. Below are the overall […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 18, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 8 Products That Might Be On Yahoo’s Chopping Block Yahoo’s product teams are officially on notice. Shortly after announcing Q1 earnings yesterday, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson dropped a bomb during […]

SEO

8 Products That Might Be On Yahoo’s Chopping Block

Yahoo’s product teams are officially on notice. Shortly after announcing Q1 earnings yesterday, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson dropped a bomb during the analysts’ call when he said the company will be “shutting down or transitioning roughly 50 properties that don’t contribute meaningfully to engagement or revenue.” He went on to say that Yahoo’s focus […]

Content

IAB & PwC: Search Still Tops Online Ad Revenues, And Share Grew In 2011

Through online advertising’s ups and downs, search — because of its orientation toward performance — has always been a stalwart category. Despite much talk about branding, social and immersive advertising lately, search still commanded the lion’s share of online advertising revenues (46.5%) in 2011 and its share grew from 2010 numbers (44.8%), when it experienced […]

PPC

Four Things You Need To Know About Search Retargeting

In two very short years, search retargeting has been created, tweaked and matured to the point where most serious marketers already have it on their media plans or are considering it for a 2012 test. In short, search retargeting finds those individuals who have searched for a term that matters to your business but who […]

Apple

The Most Destructive Lie In Search Marketing

The biggest lie in search marketing is that paid and organic search are separate channels. From the customer’s perspective, paid and natural search are nearly identical. In fact, according to this study done by Performics last year, around a third of all searchers don’t even know the difference between a paid and a natural search listing. This […]

Content

4 Key Recommendations For Social Media Execution In The Industrial Sector

Published earlier this year, GlobalSpec conducted its third annual Social Media Usage Survey of engineering, technical, manufacturing, and industrial professionals. While social media adoption is on the rise, more traditional social networks might be blocked or limited at the workplace, even if a percentage of usage is work related. The research also showed that industrial […]

Analytics & conversion

5 Colorful Sketches On Conversion Optimization

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But are five sketches are worth approximately one column’s worth? Doodling with a new drawing app on the iPad — 53’s Paper, which is a real beauty — I took a pass at illustrating what I consider to be five important ideas in conversion optimization. The […]

Google Ads

AdWords To Automatically Match For Misspellings, Other Variants

Most experienced AdWords advertisers have developed keyword lists that include things like misspellings, plurals, and other variations on a keyword or phrase. Now, Google will do all this automatically — as it does with organic results — with exact and phrase matching, though advertisers will be able to opt out. The new behavior will take […]

Link building

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 17, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Q1: Revenue Beats Expectations, Search Up 8 Percent A short while ago Yahoo released Q1 earnings, which exceeded financial analysts’ consensus estimates. Total revenue was $1.22 billion, up 1 percent […]

SEO

Yahoo Q1: Revenue Beats Expectations, Search Up 8 Percent

A short while ago Yahoo released Q1 earnings, which exceeded financial analysts’ consensus estimates. Total revenue was $1.22 billion, up 1 percent year-over-year (YoY). Net earnings were $286 million, representing 28 percent YoY growth. Total search revenue was $470 million, up 3 percent vs. last year. Search revenues (ex-TAC) were up 8 percent to $384 […]

Advertising

New adCenter Metric Launched: Share of Voice

adCenter recently launched Share of Voice (SOV) metrics to their standard reports. SOV reporting helps advertisers optimize PPC campaigns by providing information about how often they are earning impressions; for example, when the ad is placed on the first page in the auction. In general, if you have a high SOV, you have an opportunity […]

Google algorithm updates

Social Search: Dead On Arrival? Or On Life Support?

It’s the uber-powerful search marketing signal…  and marketers sabotaging it even before it’s had a chance to find a toe-hold. I’m talking about ‘Social Search’, the rising trend of social media-driven local search signals and the callous, narrow-minded and (in some eyes) borderline unethical way in which this potentially useful tool is being perverted by […]

Link building

Will Pitching Guest Posts Be The Death of Marketers?

Nothing kills my link building buzz more than receiving this email after (what I consider) a top-notch pitch: I don’t know the exact moment when marketers started getting this bad reputation, but I’m seeing it a lot. Frankly, if you’re getting good content or getting more value for your website, it shouldn’t matter if I’m a […]

SEO

9 More Content Development Ideas For Increased Visibility

In the first article in this series, I outlined 10 ideas for adding content to a website and other venues to help improve organic visibility. In the last article, we covered 10 more ideas. With today’s piece, you’ll have a grand total of 29 content development ideas to get working on. These additional content ideas […]

Google

Does Booming International Search Mask A Google Decline?

Google’s recent quarterly financial statements sounded pretty rosy overall. Many have much to celebrate in the figures. Stockbrokers and city analysts were much more worried about Google’s cunning share split. I haven’t seen a single commentator consider the US versus the rest of the world. Well, here it is! Let’s take the raw sales performance […]

Bing

Microsoft Makes Venue Maps More Visible On Bing

Microsoft has introduced a number of improvements to Bing Maps, chief among which is making “venue maps” more obvious. Microsoft says there are roughly 900 venue/interior maps on Bing focused primarily on “malls, airports, casinos and shopping districts.” Google has a similar initiative but it’s focused on Google Maps for Android for the time being. […]

Google News

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 16, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Foursquare Hits 2 Billion Check-ins, 20 Million Users It’s April 16th … otherwise known in some circles as Foursquare Day. (Get it? 16 is four squared. And April is the fourth […]

Local

Foursquare Hits 2 Billion Check-ins, 20 Million Users

It’s April 16th … otherwise known in some circles as Foursquare Day. (Get it? 16 is four squared. And April is the fourth month of the year.) In honor of its own unofficial holiday, Foursquare has confirmed the latest numbers related to its continuing growth: more than two billion check-ins more than 20 million users […]

Google

Google Sent 20,000+ Hacked Notification Messages To Webmasters Today

Google’s head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced on Twitter that they have sent out new message notifications to 20,000 web sites that are hacked. Specifically, Google sent these messages to sites doing “weird redirects.” I’ve personally seen a spike in the number of sites redirecting from their web site to a non-authorized site […]

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