WordPress

Search Engine Land is your source for WordPress news and content. You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you work smarter and make better decisions.

What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading brands and agencies.

Don’t miss out! Get the Search Engine Land newsletter delivered daily to your inbox. Subscribe for free!

Google Fixing Reverse DNS GoogleBot Verification

Google has confirmed that there are some GoogleBot useragent spiders not properly passing verification protocol. Savvy webmasters noticed that GoogleBot over the .249.70.0 /24 IP range was not returning the proper reverse DNS verification details. The response given was “no such host is known,” but the activity webmasters noticed was that it did appear to […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 11, 2014

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 Search App Gets iOS 7 Design Upgrade & More Yahoo has pushed out a new update to their iOS Yahoo Search app in the Apple App Store. The new update […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 5, 2014

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics Oh no they didn’t: BrightEdge has sued rival Searchmetrics using multiple SEO patents, which were granted last year. The concern being expressed by […]

SEO

Yahoo Gives $10 Million To Help Develop Next-Gen Siri And Better “Contextual Search”

Several years ago, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, as a then Google employee, spoke about the perfect search engine that could anticipate your needs and which wouldn’t require any keywords to deliver results. We’re rapidly moving toward searchless content discovery with Siri, Google Now, IBM’s Watson, Nuance’s Nina, Expect Labs and other “intelligent assistants.” Artificial intelligence-powered intelligent assistants […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 7, 2014

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: YP Wants To Compete Directly With Google And Yelp In Local When one looks across the local digital landscape there are many companies and apps but few consumer “brands.” In specific […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 22, 2014

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 Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 16, 2014

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Covario: Global PPC Click-Through Rates Hit New Highs, Spend Up 17 Percent YoY In Q4 Though the numbers vary, the Q4 reports we’ve covered all point to solid year-over-year increases in […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 24, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Don’t miss out on learning from the pros. Attend an SMX West workshop! Sharpen your marketing skill set by attending one of six in-depth workshops offered on March 10. Choose from […]

Google Launches Improved URL Removal Tool For Third-Party Content

Google has released an improved URL removal tool that the company says was specifically designed to improve the ability to remove third-party content from its search engine. John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced the change on the Google Webmaster Central blog. Google’s long had this tool, so what’s new? We checked with Google directly and were […]

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Smartphone Specific Crawl Errors

Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced a new feature within Google Webmaster Tools that shows webmasters crawl errors specific to smartphone devices. The issue is: it is often hard for webmasters to detect and thus fix errors that happen on smartphone devices. Google decided to add a section to the crawl errors report that […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 12, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Social Media Marketing Tactics that Work – Next Week in Las Vegas Learn the latest tactics and best-practices for Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Whether you’re managing your brand’s communities, […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 9, 2013

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 Adds Automatic Authorship With Google+ Sign In Google announced an even easier way to get your picture into the Google search results by adding automatic author attribution through Google+ signin. […]

Google Adds Automatic Authorship With Google+ Sign In

Google announced an even easier way to get your picture into the Google search results by adding automatic author attribution through Google+ signin. Google has integrated Google+ Sign-In with Google’s authorship program. Now if you sign in to WordPress.com with Google, the articles you publish with that sign in will now be associated with your […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 26, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: How One Brand Switched A Million URLs & Lived To Tell About It: 5 Questions With HomeAdvisor.com Last year, home improvement company HomeAdvisor.com underwent a monumental rebranding effort that included switching […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 23, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Says Goodbye to Bing Shopping, Hello Product Search With Rich Captions & Product Ads Today, Bing announced that Bing Shopping is being replaced by Product Search, which simply integrates product […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 12, 2013

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 Matt Cutts: I Recommend NoFollowing Links On Widgets Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video answer this morning strongly recommending that those who place widgets on their […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 8, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Two Local & Voice Search Improvements In Latest Google Glass Update Two search-related improvements made their way into the latest Google Glass software update. Google announced the XE7 software update last […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 5, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Search In Pics: Xoogley Tesla, Google Lite Brite & Running Of The Non-Newtonian Fluids In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the Web, showing what […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 12, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: George Bush “Miserable Failure” Google Bomb Back, This Time In Knowledge Graph The Google Bomb is back! Searching for [miserable failure] in Google now returns George W. Bush’s knowledge graph in […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 8, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Ad Group Mobile Bid Adjustments Roll-Out Starts Today Google announced that ad group-level mobile bid adjustments will start rolling out today and continue over the next couple of weeks in […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 3, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Ads To Launch Ad Diagnostics Tool: Learn Why Your Ad Isn’t Running And How to Fix It Bing Ads has made several announcements about upcoming feature updates over the past […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 26, 2013

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 […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 8, 2013

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 Explains Why Your New Page’s Number One Ranking May Drop Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why it is not uncommon to see a new […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 5, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: If Search Results Were NCAA Championships, Then All Bets Would Be On Louisville The data analytics firm Chitika has created an infographic showing search volume for the final four teams in […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 1, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: WATCH: Google Now Shows Live Examples Of Spam Removed From Its Search Results In Google’s new How Search Works, Google is showing real live examples of spam that was recently removed […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 28, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Maps Adds Variety Of Hi-Res Image Improvements Bing Maps has announced a series of updates to its high-resolution imagery, including expanded coverage, better mapping of ocean floors, cloud filtering and […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 26, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: How To Stop The Panic Before Asking “Have I Been Panda Slapped?” You may see a drop in rankings or traffic and immediately panic. Have I been Panda-slapped? Even now, as […]

Will Google Penalize Chromebooks, Google Analytics, AdWords & Google+ For Using Advertorials?

A day after warning publishers against advertorials, will Google’s search team now have to penalize parts of its own company for running advertorials? Perhaps, and if so, it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s also another absurd chapter in Google’s war on paid links. Google Says: Advertorials, Beware! After news came out yesterday that Google […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 21, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: How Account Quality Score Can Guide AdWords Optimization Last month, I covered four ways to use AdWords Scripts to improve AdWords account management. I didn’t share any actual code for fear […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 13, 2013

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 Hits 67 Percent Market Share Again, Bing Hits Another All-Time High [comScore] Core search activity was up pretty substantially in January, and Google’s US market share returned to the 67 […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 25, 2013

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: A Year Later, Google’s Block Sites Feature Remains BlockedIn 2011, Google rolled out a feature allowing searchers to block web sites they don’t like from appearing in its search results, which […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 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: Google Maps iPhone App Gets 10 Million Downloads In Two Days Just about a week ago Google’s new Google Maps iPhone app was released and oh boy were people waiting for […]

SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 12, 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 Updates SafeSearch Filter In Image Search Google has changed the default behavior of their image search to work similarly to how web search works. Now when you search for less […]