Google doesn’t always use the HTML title tag of a web page, choosing instead to make its own title for a page, if it thinks it can do a better job. Here’s an example of it getting this completely wrong. I was searching for Dana Point Jet Ski, which is a real business in Dana […]
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 News Sources Grow 15% In 2012 & Continue To Climb With Patch.com In The Lead After seeing a 15 percent increase in Google News sources last year, a recent study […]
After seeing a 15 percent increase in Google News sources last year, a recent study conducted by SearchMetrics discovered that a majority of the News integrations displayed in Google Universal Search results are coming from AOL-owned Patch.com. Analyzing several hundred thousand keywords, the study found that Patch.com made an appearance in the News integration results […]
What are the most popular activities done or content consumed by apps? Google’s now bringing that information to its search results, assuming the app developer makes use of Google+ Sign-In, that is. Google+ Sign-in was launched in February as an easy way to let anyone sign into a site or app using a Google+ account. […]
Expect Labs, which is a small startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a very impressive list of investors. Today the company announced a new funding round, though the figures weren’t disclosed. Investors are the venture or investment arms of Intel, Samsung and Telefonica. Telefonica is the world’s fourth largest telco and owns mobile […]
People usually love talking about themselves, and most people are naturally interested in the intricacies of others, whether it’s business or personal. When you do an interview or put together a crowdsourced piece (and yes, I know many of you hate that term!) you’re linking to the people involved. At first, this may seem counter-intuitive […]
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the term “SEO” and what it really means today. After a record run of attending conferences ranging from San Jose, Toronto, London and Leeds (soon to be joined by Seattle and Riga), I’ve become very conscious of a cloud of what can only be described as “SEO Depression” unfolding over conference […]
Chasing after one specific keyword set can not only be frustrating, but also inefficient. The marriage of keyword research and content can result in strong, targeted pages that perform, reach the ideal demographic, and result in conversions — if you’re willing to test and think “outside the box.” Targeting keywords solely because they have a high […]
The only constant in search is change. The Periodic Table of SEO was created in 2011 to summarize the major factors that comprise search engine optimization. But, it’s time to update the table to review those ranking factors and make sure we’ve got the right combination. This year, we’re asking the SEO community to provide their […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Potential iOS Market For Google Now Is 2.5X Larger Than Android “Now” Base Google Now for iOS and Android are almost identical in their look at feel. And aside from a […]
Google Now for iOS and Android are almost identical in their look at feel. And aside from a few “cards,” the same is true of their content. But, there are some differences behind the scenes worth noting: one of them is the fact that with its launch on iOS this morning, Google Now is available […]
In a recently published video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, listed off the top five SEO mistakes webmasters make. Matt said these are not the most devastating mistakes, but rather, the most common mistakes. (1) Not having a website or having a website that is not crawlable is the biggest mistake he sees. […]
Since its launch in January of this year, Facebook has been rolling out their Graph Search, allowing a limited number of users to perform queries with the natural language interface. In a post on their engineering blog today, Facebook explains how their natural language interface works, providing an in-depth look into the mechanics behind it. […]
Previously Android-only, Google’s “predictive search” tool Google Now is now available for the iPhone and iPad. It’s part of an updated Google Search App for iOS. Google Now for iOS had been anticipated since March, when Engadget discovered a promotional video suggesting it would make the leap. Until its release this morning, Google Now had been […]
With Google Now coming to iOS, a whole new audience using iPhones and iPads are about to meet Google’s predictive search service. It’s a feature that’s gone from interesting novelty to being downright amazing, in less than a year. Here’s a look at how the “predictive search” service has evolved and where it may head […]
Clearly I’ve broken my own resolution when it comes to not talking about responsive Web design, as I’ve done so for the past two months. This month, I’m taking a break so I can focus on resolution #1: giving more tactical advice on how to do mobile SEO well. Today’s column will focus on mobile SEO tips for […]
Bing announced two new features for Bing Webmaster Tools. First, you can now see more details on malware issues impacting your site and be able to submit a malware re-evaluation request. Second, you can now geo-target specific pages, directories or your whole site within Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing Malware Re-Evaluation Bing always had a notification […]
Like many of my fellow PPC colleagues, I feel uneasy about the impending move to Enhanced Campaigns and the lurking cutover deadline of July 22nd. Should we convert now and get it over with? Should we run a few tests with our smaller, simpler accounts? Should we abandon tightly-crafted, geo-segmented campaigns in favor of the new geo-bidding […]
I spoke recently with John Shehata, the director of search for ABC News. Since he owns the SEO responsibility for a number of large media properties, I leapt at the chance to explore some of the things he has learned along the way. We dug in and explored the challenges of educating a large media […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Coming: Bing Ads Keyword Distribution Graph To Visualize Your KPI Performance It’s not live yet, but Bing Ads is teeing up a new keyword visualization tool designed to help PPC managers […]
It’s not live yet, but Bing Ads is teeing up a new keyword visualization tool designed to help PPC managers analyze and identify optimization opportunities faster. Young Shi, a program manager at Microsoft who is responsible for Reporting and BI data visualization for Bing Ads, posted a sneak peek on the Bing Ads blog today. The new […]
What to do if Google sends you a penalty notice, and you can’t figure out exactly what it’s for? Turn to Google’s webmaster help forum, says the head of Google’s Web spam team, Matt Cutts. If you’re still confused after that, you can file a reconsideration request where you might be given more details. The […]
AdWords users can now share their screens with AdWords support staff. Yesterday, AdWords Community manager, Zee announced the launch of Google Screensharing. Now an AdWords support team member can invite you to share your screen while you’re on the phone with them and signed into your AdWords account. There are set-up instructions here. Once you […]
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.
One of the steps in my last post on finding 404 pages worth saving involved determining if any of your404 pages received traffic in the past year. This can be accomplished by pulling a landing page report and using VLOOKUPs in Excel to see any of your broken pages used to receive traffic. However, Google […]
In a recent Matt Cutts video, where the head of Google’s search spam team answered the question “Does linking my two sites together violate the quality guidelines?” The short answer is no; but, there is always a but. If you link hundreds of unrelated sites together, then it would violate Google’s guidelines. Matt Cutts explained […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Enterprise SEO Tools 2013: A Buyer’s Guide Are you responsible for SEO in your large organization? Wondering about tools that can help automate and cut the time it takes to manage […]
Bing is appealing to fans of daily deal sites with the launch of Bing Offers, a one-stop shop for online deals and coupons. Boasting one of the largest collections of local deals on the web, Bing Offers pulls deals from various partner sites. Users can search by business name, category or keyword to locate specific […]
According to a new Transparency Report released today, Google received 4,096 government requests to remove 42,249 pieces of content during 2012. The purpose of Google’s Transparency Reports is to record the number of worldwide government requests to censor content on Google services, and offer insight into the amount of censorship happening across the globe. The […]
I’ve found documents associated with the Google-EU settlement proposal that offer mock-ups of how the new, regulated SERPs will look. It’s very interesting and greatly clarifies the settlement terms and how they will be implemented practically. These mockups look quite different (and less “disruptive”) than what I imagined. There are three basic scenarios: where Google […]
Bing announced they have relaunched the Bing Business Portal under a new name, “Bing Places For Business.” The change doesn’t currently do much with your listings, outside of move the location of where you manage your business Bing Maps listing to bing.com/places. It also removes some features that were available in Bing Business Portal including: […]
Google is introducing “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” analytics report today, a new benchmarking tool that provides insight into the various elements impacting a single campaign. You can learn more about it in a short write-up at our sister site, Marketing Land: New Google Analytics Path To Purchase Report Provides Benchmark Data On 11 Different […]
The EU released documents this morning that detail Google’s antitrust settlement proposals and explain the Competition Commission’s position on various aspects of the investigation. First here’s what the EU says Google has proposed: Google offers for a period of 5 years to: (i) – label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that […]
It’s April, which means that spring is here and the first quarter of 2013 is in the books! The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and the ads are clicking. Aren’t the landing pages pretty at this time of year? At Kenshoo, we sit on some massive data sets that we share each quarter […]
Google has quietly changed the user interface for how they display the authorship snippet in the search results. The largest difference is that they removed the “more by” link that linked to additional stories written by that author. The other changes include that now clicking on the author’s image and name will take you to […]
When conducting research, it’s not uncommon to perform repetitive tasks like downloading a group of webpages. A favorite tool I use to automate this is iMacros — it’s free and powerful. Just be sure to use the Firefox version, as its capabilities are limited in other browsers. Say you want a list of the Fortune […]
Yesterday we reported that Google changed how you access the cached, similar and share links within the search results by adding a new green down arrow next to the search snippet’s URL. We asked, where did the Instant Previews go that launched on November 9, 2010 with a huge amount of excitement from Google. Google […]
In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!’s research division gave a presentation entitled, “The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!” As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand […]
Today’s Google logo is a tribute to Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald who was born in Newport News, Virginia on this day in 1917. After taking the stage at Apollo Theater’s amateur night in 1934, Fitzgerald went on to become one of the most famous Jazz singers in the world, winning 18 Grammy Awards and selling […]
The value of ranking first on a search results page is no secret, but today Bing is putting some hard numbers on it: More than 50 percent of Bing users click the first result, and more than 75 percent click there if the first result includes Bing’s deep links. In a blog post today, Dr. […]