Combining maps, business listings, reviews and other content aggregated from 70 partners, Yandex has introduced a cityguide app for iOS and Android. There’s also a PC site as well. Called Yandex City, it’s a straight-up map-centric local search site. It’s only available for Russia currently but will likely expand to other geographies that Yandex serves: […]
This morning, news broke that Microsoft Internet Explorer is getting help from SocialChorus to build more awareness for the aging browser by way of sponsored posts. Michael Arrington posted on his site an email from the company, soliciting him into this paid blog post campaign. The campaign instructs bloggers to write about their experience with […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Is The Mobile Migration Of Graph Search Upon Us? New Facebook Test Uncovers Mobile Web Integration We’ve been saying that it is just a matter of time for Facebook’s Graph Search […]
Link acquisition and auditing issues for the advanced SEO was probably one of the most popular sessions at SMX Advanced. The panelists framed the discussion around three areas: Preventative Link Building, Link Earning and Site Auditing. However, the tips — at least as far as I could tell — did not number the exact “25” described […]
Ask any SEO what the most difficult, confounding and valuable part of optimization is, and you’ll invariably get a consensus: link building. Even the term “link building” has become so controversial that many marketers are shying away from it in favor of “content marketing” or “online PR.” Marketers know to log, track and report on […]
Most marketers would agree that to be competitive, we do not operate in an either/or environment. It’s not a choice between either SEO or social, or SEO and PPC. It’s a requirement that we understand how these channels work together to impact one another, and a website’s ability to stay afloat in the growing search […]
We’ve been saying that it is just a matter of time for Facebook’s Graph Search to make its way to mobile devices. A test spotted yesterday by InsideFacebook shows that the launch may be close. The test shows an in-depth integration for mobile web users that contains the same bells and whistles as the desktop […]
Bing Ads Express, Microsoft’s program to encourage small businesses to adopt the paid search platform, will be sunsetted this summer. Launched just last October and modeled on Google’s own AdWords Express, the program was designed to simplify and automate paid search advertising across the Yahoo Bing Network. Small and local businesses could use their Facebook […]
A major datacenter project at Microsoft could lead to faster and more relevant search results on the company’s 5-year-old search engine, Bing. The Catapult project is a collaboration between Microsoft researchers and the Bing team that was presented Monday at an industry conference on computer architecture. A Microsoft blog post explains some of Catapult’s technical […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Russian Search Engine Yandex Now 100% “Not Provided,” Blocks Referrer Data Yandex announced (in Russian) today that they have now went 100% secure, encrypting all search queries, resulting in a huge […]
Yandex announced (in Russian) today that they have now went 100% secure, encrypting all search queries, resulting in a huge jump in the [not provided] count. This was first reported by Anna Oshkalo who shared a screen shot of her analytics detailed the bulk of her Yandex keyword data now shows [not set] or [not […]
Paid search continues to get exceedingly complicated, but the expert panel, the last session of this year’s SMX Advanced, blew the audience away with understandable and valuable tips. Amazing Paid Search Tactics & Tools featured four expert speakers, and it was the first time I’ve ever heard cheers and whistles after a PPC session. “I’m A Freakin’ Google […]
Every year is the year of mobile, and 2014 hasn’t been a disappointment. Mobile screen time now exceeds TV in the United States. Fifty percent of paid-search clicks on Google will come from mobile devices in 2015, according to one forecast. So what do advanced SEMs need to know about mobile, and what should they be […]
Sometimes you can move the needle — and dramatically — outside of obsessing and laboring over obtaining improving rankings in search engines. Simply increasing your click-through rates on the organic rankings you’ve already achieved can increase sales and revenue, even without having to do some of the difficult things that could be necessary to inch […]
A new Policy Center will be coming to AdWords this September. Google says that policies will be streamlined and that there will be more transparency into why policies exist and what advertisers should do to comply. A preview of the updated Policy Center is live now. While most advertisers likely won’t be affected by the […]
At SMX Advanced last week, Google’s head of search quality, Matt Cutts, announced that they will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection notices with more detailed responses in some cases. We’ve now located an example of the new rejection notices, as shared by @johnedwarddoyle with me on Twitter. The new notice has a new section […]
Today’s Google logo is another to celebrate the FIFA 2014 World Cup. It is the fifth in a series of World Cup logos Google has posted since the first one last week to mark the tournament’s kick-off. “The football/soccer craze is making waves for…just about everyone,” writes Google on its Google Doodle website to explain […]
Today’s Google logo continues the site’s celebration of the World Cup with a Father’s Day themed animated illustration as the tournament enters day four. The Google Doodle team has turned the two “Os” in Google into a father-son pair, each wearing matching green toboggan styled beanies. The father figure is sporting a mustache, while the […]
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 Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0 Rolling Out Now Google is now rolling out the 3rd version of the PayDay Loan algorithm. Last night we reported that Google is going to be […]
Google scored a goal against itself by mixing up the flags of Cameroon and Ghana in a special logo highlighting the Mexico versus Cameroon match happening today in the World Cup. Well, it is Friday the 13th. Google’s already fixed the logo and tweeted an apology with a pun: p.s. thanks to followers for calling […]
Forget the idea that Pinterest is all about fashion photos, cute animals and inspirational messages. The company says it’s now hosting more than a billion Place Pins across four million Place Boards. Together, all this represents more than 300 unique countries and territories. That’s a lot of image and board geotagging going on. To make […]
Google has partnered with ESPN to deliver video highlights for World Cup related searches. Those searching for World Cup information may see links to ESPN clips within special informational boxes that now show up at the top of Google’s search results, as Google shared today. For example, a search for World Cup brings up a […]
This SEO ranking factors session has become a much-anticipated tradition at SMX Advanced, as the substantial early morning crowd in attendance this year testified. Each year, a panel of SEO data experts present their up-to-date findings, test results, and best guesses as to what factors are primary in Google’s ranking algorithm. There are always surprises, […]
And the winner of this year’s European Search Personality award is… Kristjan Mar Hauksson! With Kristjan being from Iceland, it seems the time is due for a focus on the Nordics. Those who know the region may be thinking fjords, mountains, forests, lakes, volcanoes, kings and castles. Or perhaps you’re thinking about small search volumes, […]
Everyone in SEO talks about it: authority. It’s the key measurement for ranking, right? But what defines authority in the eyes of each search engine? We all have our theories and correlations, and authority measurement has certainly changed over the years as new signals emerge that may give engines a better idea of a website’s true […]
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.
When you think about the job the search engines have to do it’s pretty daunting. Given a collection of mostly wildly unstructured data from an endless number of sources, Bing, Google and the others have to somehow make sense of all that information and then give it back to us on demand in a way […]
Local SEO is a tough beast to tame, so it wasn’t surprising that the room was packed for the Let’s Talk Local Search: Super Therapy Session For Advanced Local Marketers session that kicked off SMX Advanced 2014. Moderator Matt McGee, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, decided to make the session a slide-free discussion panel, […]
Continuing its commitment to gay rights, Google has designed a rainbow colored banner to accompany LGBT related searches throughout June to show its support for gay pride month. Search terms like “same-sex marriage”, “gay rights” and “LGBT” will return a search results page that includes the rainbow banner. Google has never shied away from its […]
Today’s Google logo continues the FIFA 2014 World Cup celebrations with a dancing tree and drum-playing letter “e” to mimic Brazil’s World Cup opening ceremony. From the Google Doodle homepage: The World Cup opening ceremony was so inspiring–and what an unbeleafable coincidence–our next doodle has a dancing tree person too. Congrats Brazil! Same as yesterday’s […]
It’s far too early to consider monetizing Cortana, Microsoft’s new virtual personal assistant, but the company is already thinking about how to scale her across different devices, platforms and around the world. Those were two of the key points from Microsoft’s keynote conversation Thursday morning at our SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. Marcus Ash, a […]
Google is now rolling out the 3rd version of the PayDay Loan algorithm. Last night we reported that Google is going to be launching PayDay Loan 3.0 and Google’s Matt Cutts posted on Twitter moments ago that it is now rolling out. Cutts, Google’s head of search quality said, “it’s rolling out now!” To catch […]
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 Launching Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0 Targeting Spammy Queries This Week Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, announced at SMX Advanced tonight that the third version of PayDay Loan algorithm […]
Google is introducing a revamped flight and hotel travel search experience. To date both products have been mostly underwhelming. The big promises of Google’s ITA acquisition have yet to bear fruit but that may change with the new Google Flight and travel search experience. Previously the best feature of Google Travel was Flight Explorer (immediately […]
We are pleased to announce the new Google-sponsored AdWords Best Practices Center on Search Engine Land. This page provides best practices that are authored and curated by the search company – including checklists, guides, white papers, and webinars – all geared toward improving proficiency with AdWords. In addition to best practices that have been extensively […]
The native UTM tagging solution was a top request for years.
We’re ready to get started on day two of SMX Advanced, and today’s opening keynote promises to talk about the future of search. Microsoft’s Marcus Ash (Group Program Manager for Windows Phone) and Rob Chambers (Group Program Manager, Applications and Services Group) will be here to talk about Cortana, the company’s recently launched virtual assistant […]
To kick-off today’s 2014 FIFA World Cup, Bing has launched a number of features around the tournament, including using its Bing Predictions technology to forecast World Cup winners. “On the heels of our recent foray into predictions, where we forecasted which contestants were most likely to get voted off or win The Voice, Dancing with […]
Last month, MetaFilter, a news and discussion site from back in the old days, told us they got hit by a Google penalty years ago that had a major impact on their business. We posted our theories and details on this penalty in our post named On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer. Last […]
There are a hundred and one tasks in today’s marketing world designed to improve your online visibility: social media, PPC, content marketing, retargeting, blogging, email marketing, on-site and on-page optimization, content strategy, contests, partnerships, etc. etc. Why bother with link building? Isn’t link building dead? The fact of the matter is, if you’re working to […]