Google News Publishers No Longer Require Three-Digit Numbers In URLs
After years of Google News requiring URLs to contain 3-digits, Google has finally dropped that requirement.
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Google News Editors’ Picks To Get App Links
The Google News Publisher Center added a way for publishers to add links to their apps. This will be used to show apps in the Editors' Pick section in Google News.
SearchCap: Google Home Service Search Ads, Right To Be Forgotten Challenged & Bing Emoji Keyboard
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 Fights France To Prevent Globalization Of The Right-to-Be-Forgotten Google has formally appealed France’s data protection authority’s order that Google apply Right-to-Be-Forgotten (RTBF) removals to its global index. The Commission Nationale […]
Report: Spain’s Google Tax A Disaster For Newspapers, Internet Innovation
Call it one of the most egregious examples of unintended consequences. The effort of the Spanish newspaper association and Spanish government to get Google to subsidize Spanish news publishers with a mandatory link tax (under the the guise of copyright fees) is a massive disaster — for publishers, for the Spanish internet and for innovation in […]
SearchCap: Google PDF Spam, Paid Search Up & Mobile Movie Times
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: What Does It Mean To Be “Search Marketer of the Year”? Learn more about the two awards to be presented for Male and Female Search Marketer of the Year at the […]
Is It Time For Google To Rank News Content Behind Paywalls Better?
If Hollywood's paid content can be shown without fear of upsetting searchers, why not news? But with more visibility, all access subscription may be needed.
SearchCap: Google Mobile Algorithm Done, Cortana App Integration & Google Voice Actions
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 Custom Voice Actions For Third Party Apps Voice Actions will allow users to not only launch but explore content in apps. For Task Completion, Cortana Now Integrates More Deeply […]
Google News Ranking Won’t Be Impacted By The New Mobile-Friendly Algorithm
Google News ranking algorithm won't factor in if a publisher is mobile-friendly or not, at least not yet.
SearchCap: Judge Tosses Android “Default Search” Class Action Against Google, Hiring A Paid Search Agency & More
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 Engine Land’s SMX West Is Next Week – Here’s How to Attend Search Engine Land’s SMX West conference kicks off next Tuesday. With over 60 educational sessions and keynotes, networking […]
SearchCap: Google Search Queries, Mobile Snippets & Bing Ads Lag
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 Reduces Campaign Reporting Lag To 1 Hour Impression and click performance data is now delivered much faster. Thanksgiving Drove Retailers’ Highest Paid Search Revenue Gains Of The Holiday Season […]
SearchCap: Pinterest Search Customized By Gender, Dissecting Organic Traffic & Expedia Buys Travelocity
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: PLAs Drove 56 Percent Of Non-Brand Google AdWords Clicks In Q4 [RKG] Click share also rose on Bing’s product ads, doubling from Q3. Pinterest Search Is Now Customized By Gender Aiming […]
SearchCap: Google Maps App Revised, Social Links In Knowledge Graph, Google Structured Data Updated
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 Events Knowledge Graph Adds Ticket Links, Delegated Events, Comedian Events & Venue Events Google makes four updates to the events knowledge graph after launching the markup back in March 2014. […]
Google News Now Will Crawl & Index Images Hosted Off Your Domain Name
Google News updated their image crawl process to include images hosted off the publishers domain.
SearchCap: Brands Still Confounded By Local Search, Bing Adds Amber Alerts & Local SEO In 2015
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Despite Documented Performance Lift Brands Still Confounded By Local Search Remarkably there are still marketers out there that don’t “get” local search or why marketing campaigns should be localized. There are […]
How Google News Lives On In Spain Despite Being Closed
Did Google News really close in Spain? If you consider Google News to be the ability to browse stories by topic, especially from a dedicated home page, yes. But if it’s the ability to search for and find news stories, then arguably, Google News still lives. Anyone trying to reach the Google News Spain home page […]
Google News Still Available In Spain Despite Closure Deadline
News outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and AP are reporting that Google News España has shut down. However it appears to still be up and available on the site. As Barry Schwartz points out, if you visit news.google.es you’re directed to the following help page. The page offers an explanation and apology: As […]
Spanish Newspapers Want Government To Force Google To Keep News Open In Spain
A new effort by the Spanish Newspaper Publishers Association (AEDE) to prevent Google from shutting down its News site in Spain is an amazing example of industry chutzpah or hubris. The action shows so much chutzpah in fact that it enters the realm of unintentional political satire. First the background if you don’t already know […]
Strict New Copyright Law Forces End Of Google News In Spain
Google has decided to shut down Google News in Spain. This drastic step will occur next week (December 16) and is the result of a recently passed Spanish law that would have compelled Google to pay licensing revenues to Spanish publishers if their content appeared in Google News — even headlines. Some Spanish publishers, including newspaper group AEDE, […]
Another Court Affirms Google’s First Amendment Control Of Search Results
Europe and the U.S. continue to drift further apart on Google. Even as European parliamentarians and regulators seek ways to restrain Google’s discretion over search results, U.S. courts continue to affirm Google’s right to do whatever it wants with search results — paid and organic. A California state court in San Francisco recently granted Google’s […]
Following Germany’s Lead Spain Passes Misguided “Google Tax” Anti-Piracy Law
Given the saga of Germany’s ill-conceived and poorly implemented “ancillary copyright law” one would have thought that another European government wouldn’t immediately duplicate the mistake. But that’s exactly what’s happened in Spain. Spanish newspaper publishers, hoping to turn Google into a source of compulsory licensing revenue, worked to pass a new law that imposes strict fines for the […]
SearchCap: Google Mobile Usability Reporting, Flash Warnings Expand & Groupon Pages
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Groupon Pages Part Of Company Evolution Into Local Search Site Depending on your viewpoint, Groupon’s new Pages offering is either a helpful new tool for local business owners or a bid […]
SearchCap: Apple Maps Connect, Foursquare Data & Yahoo Search Personalized
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 Now Shows Your Flights, Events & Packages In The Search Results Yahoo announced that Yahoo Search, as well as Yahoo Mail‘s Today section will now show you your upcoming […]
SearchCap: Google’s Advice On XML vs. RSS, Q3 Paid Search Spend Surges & More
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Tune Your Paid Search Campaigns To Account For Holiday Volatility The relationship between bids and conversions is like that between ice cream sundaes and maraschino cherries. It’s theoretically possible to have […]
SearchCap: Google+ In Search, Bing Image Update, RTBF & Mistaken Google Penalties
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 Image Search Updates Include Touch Friendly Result Pages That Adapt To Screen Size & Resolution Over the next few weeks, Bing is rolling out new updates to its image search […]
SearchCap: Google Webmaster Tools API, Local Search On Apple Watch & The First Click Free Failure
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Apple Watch Brings Local Search To Your Wrist We don’t yet know how popular the Apple Watch will be when it goes on sale early next year. A “flash survey” conducted […]
How Google Fails To Enforce “First Click Free” — An Eric Schmidt Case Study
News publishers often want to be listed in Google. News publishers also often want to have paywalls or registration barriers. The good news is Google has rules that allow for this. The bad news is that Google routinely fails to enforce these rules. Below, a case study involving content in a major publication authored by […]
SearchCap: Google News Publisher Center, Google Pigeon Droppings & New Bing Ads Interface
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 Google News Publisher Center Google announced on the Google News blog a new portal for Google News publishers to use to help manage their news sites within Google News. […]
Google Launches Google News Publisher Center
Google announced on the Google News blog a new portal for Google News publishers to use to help manage their news sites within Google News. The new portal is named Google News Publisher Center. As long as your news site is verified within Google Webmaster Tools and already included in Google News, you should see […]
Spanish Law To Force Google To Index And Pay For Local News
There’s a basic feeling among traditional news publishers throughout Europe, and among some in the U.S., that Google has benefited enormously from their content but failed to offer anything in return. Furthermore, many publishers see Google as directly responsible for the decline of their traditional advertising and circulation revenues. The counter-argument that Google sends traffic […]
Google Speaks About Difficult Decisions In Implementing “Vague & Subjective” Right To Be Forgotten
Writing today in the Guardian, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond spoke to mistakes Google made in removing some links last week under the EU’s new Right To Be Forgotten mandate, as well as the difficulties in implementing the law, including naming some criteria where removals are less likely to happen. Some Links Restored; Removal […]
The EU’s Right To Be Forgotten Is A Mess & How Google’s Making It Worse
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” the saying goes. There are plenty of good intentions with the EU’s Right To Be Forgotten mandate, as well as Google’s attempt to meet new obligations under it. Things are still going to hell regardless. Thanks to the new right, the EU has helped enable convicted […]
SearchCap: German Publishers Against Google, iOS City Tours & Google Music Search In Apps
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Rather Than Opt-Out Of Google, German News Publishers Demand 11% Cut Of Revenue German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google […]
Rather Than Opt-Out Of Google, German News Publishers Demand 11% Cut Of Revenue
German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google for being included in its listings rather than choosing to opt-out. This time, the publishers want an 11% cut of Google’s revenue related to them being listed. The news comes from Jeff Jarvis, who writes that a […]
Google: News Sites May Have Seen A Decline In GoogleBot Crawling In March
Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted that news related sites, such as this one, may have noticed a drop in the crawl statistics within Google Webmaster Tools. If you did notice that drop, Matt says you do not need to worry. Google News added if-modified-since support in March, which would be the reason for the crawl changes. […]
Google Misattributing Content From Major News Publishers
A reader has sent us examples of Google misattributing content from dozens of large online news publications, with hundreds thousands of examples of Google indexing URLs and pages, but that content being pulled from a different source. For example, if you search for [hometownlocator site:post-gazette.com], the first result is local.post-gazette.com/boardman+florist.9.125954212p.home.html: If you look at the […]
9 Tips For Getting Free Clicks Through Google News
“News is anything that’s interesting, that relates to what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.” Kurt Loder, American journalist. Consider this: does the above quote describe the content of your website? Does your website publish a continuous flow of fresh content about […]
Google’s [Not Provided] At 87% Of Google Search Traffic To Major News Sites [Report]
If you’ve been hoping that the hypocrisy of Google hiding keyword referral data from natural search traffic but still sharing it with advertisers would get some attention from the mainstream press, this might help: New data from Parse.ly shows that 87 percent of all Google organic traffic to some of the biggest news sites on […]
Google News Showing Old Stories As New: A Google Bug Or Publisher Hack?
Last week, I reported on the Search Engine Roundtable, a huge array of complaints from Google News publishers and searchers that some news outlets are showing old stories in Google News, but they are appearing as breaking new stories. The example I gave was a story from USA Today showing as being 14 minutes old […]
Google News OneBox Card Style
Aaron Bradley spotted a new look for the Google News OneBox results, as you would see them in the Google web search results. The new design for the news results in the web search results look more like “Cards” that Google has been using within their Google Now and mobile views. Here is a screen […]