This day in search marketing history: February 25

SEOs upset over Google dropping attribution in featured snippets

In 2019, SEOs were not happy about a Google featured snippet format that didn’t immediately show the source of the content.

For the Found on the web card, searchers had to click to expand the featured snippet and then scroll through various sources to see the publisher.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison said Google’s support of the overall ecosystem (searchers, advertisers and publishers) is important. “We don’t thrive & users don’t thrive unless the ecosystem thrives.”

The future of Google search, indeed! Amazingly, you could write a very similar tweet in 2023.

Google’s recent preview of its generative AI search results featured answers to complex questions that were made possible after being trained on content created by third-party publishers, with a grand total of zero links to publishers. Déjà vu!

Read all about it in Controversy over Google Featured Snippets stealing publisher traffic reignites.

Also on this day

IndexNow integrations grow as Bing says ‘millions’ of sites are using it

2022: Duda, All in One WordPress SEO plugin and Rank Math SEO plugin gained IndexNow support.

LinkedIn launches podcast network aimed at professional audiences

2022: The pilot program included shows about topics such as technology, recruiting and mental health, from external experts as well as its own in-house news team.

Google Images to replace dimensions overlay on image thumbnails

2020: Google would instead show product, recipe, video, and soon, licensable labels in place of that dimensions information.

How to use the AMP status report to identify page errors, validate fixes

2020: Google posted an explainer for its AMP (accelerated mobile pages) status report.

‘Made in USA’ ad extensions spotted on Bing

2020: A “Made in USA” label accompanied by a flag icon appeared to be the latest automated ad extension test by Microsoft Advertising.

Google revamps Test My Site mobile site speed tool

2019: Test My Site (which launched in 2016) was rebuilt with more features details on a site’s mobile site speed.

Nearly half of users have a bad reaction to ‘not secure’ browser warning, survey finds

2019: Survey found the flag affected user behavior and brand perceptions.

Google Assistant everywhere: more dedicated buttons, expansion on lower-end phones

2019: The company also was adding local search suggestions in Messages.

Google Explains How Search Console Reports Work

2016: Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller explained how the Search Console reporting works and why it may seem delayed for some of the reports.

Google Testing A Red “Slow” Label In The Search Results For Slower Sites

2015: The slow label would indicate if a particular webpage was slow and warn the user before clicking over to the site that it may load slowly.

Yes, Google Is Testing Green Star Reviews In The Search Results

2015: Google said expect more experiments with the colors of the stars in the search results over the next few months.

Study: Google Now Displays Rich Answers For 19.45% Of Queries

2015: 19.45% of the 850,000 search queries looked at in the study triggered rich answers.

Yahoo Gains Share And Query Volume In Latest comScore Search Report

2015: Firefox deal powered the second straight month of growth for Yahoo search.

Ray Kurzweil’s Job At Google: Beat IBM’s Watson At Natural Language Search

2014: His sole job at Google was to make the company’s computers as smart as humans – smarter, actually – when it came to natural language understanding.

The Marquee HTML Google Easter Egg

2014: When you searched for [marquee html], the results count would scroll from right to left on the page.

Bing Improves Tax Related Search Results Before April 15th

2014: Bing showed smarter results when you searched for [tax forms], [IRS forms], or even specific forms like [irs form 1040].

Quixey Offering Deeper Search Results Inside Mobile Apps

2014: Quixey, which described itself as a search engine for apps rather than an alternative app store, announced deeper “functional search” within apps.

Google Panda Two Years Later: The Real Impact Beyond Rankings & SEO Visibility

2013: A look at what happened to some Panda’s losers.

Google: PageRank Dilution Through A 301 Redirect Is A Myth

2013: There was no more dilution of PageRank with a 301 redirect when compared to using a normal link.

Europeans Taking Sweet Time In Resolving Antitrust Case With Google

2013: Any possibility of swift action in Europe appeared to be fading.

YP: Our Mobile Ad Network Second Only To Google

2013: YP said it had “over $350 million in advertising revenue [in 2012] attributable to mobile, making it the number two company in the US mobile advertising industry.” 

WSJ Pulls Back On What Google Searchers Can Read For Free

2012: The Wall Street Journal has been keeping some stories out of First Click Free for over half-a-year.

Demand: Google Changes Have Produced “No Material Impact” Yet

2011: Demand Media said its properties were not negatively impacted by the newest Google algorithm change (which would eventually become known as the Panda Update).

Google’s Mobile Search Adds “Open Now” Filter

2011: After doing a Google search, the “Show only businesses open now” filter appeared above the search results.

Report: Google Negotiating With DOJ To Prevent Suit To Block ITA Deal

2011: Negotiations intensified in the waning days of the Justice Department’s investigation into the antitrust implications of Google’s potential acquisition of travel software company ITA.

OneRiot Brings Social Targeting to Mobile Devices

2011: Social ad network OneRiot introded the ability to target mobile audiences by interests, demographics and influence on its ad network of Twitter clients.

Google Caffeine May Be Months Away & You Can’t See It

2010: Google said Caffeine wasn’t live on Google.com, was only at one data center and you couldn’t easily see it for yourself. 

Google Advertises Chrome … On Bing!

2010: Google confirmed that they placed these ads and that they were always looking for ways to promote their products. 

Companies Ask Courts, Regulators To Restrain Google To Compensate For Own Competitive Failures

2010: A Foundem complaint/brief with the FCC argued that Google favored its own products and thus “search neutrality” was required to prevent Google from harming competitors.

Losing Google? Chinese Scientists Say It’s Like Going Blind, Life Without Electricity

2010: 84% of Chinese scientists surveyed said that losing Google would “somewhat or significantly” hamper their research; 78% said that international collaborations would be impacted in the same way.

Opera Says Google Dominating Search On Mobile Web

2010: Google had a lead comparable, almost exactly, to its market share on the PC in the U.S.

Yahoo Answers Gets A New Look

2010: Yahoo announced a fairly substantial overhaul of how Yahoo Answers looked and worked.

Google Toolbar 6 For IE Adds Search To Windows Task Bar

2009: This toolbar, when installed, added the Google Quick Search Box to the task bar of Windows computers.

Google Joins EU Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft Browser

2009: Google’s move to some degree reflected how important it considered Chrome and its adoption to be in the long term for the company.

Microsoft’s TechFest 2009 Is A Search Playground

2009: Hundreds of Microsoft researchers from around the world gathered at company headquarters to share ideas and show off their latest creations.

Yahoo Mobile Head Boerries To Leave, How Will It Affect Yahoo Mobile?

2009: Yahoo had seen the mobile space as strategic and made a massive global business development effort with carriers and device makers to embed Yahoo services and search on millions of handsets.

Penn State Study: Paid + Organic Listing = 15% Clickthrough Rate

2009: Study also found that 35% of queries did not result in any ad clicks ad all.

SEOs Want The NOINDEX Tag To Not Show A Page In The Index

2008: When asked “How should Google treat the NOINDEX meta tag?” 240 chose “Don’t show a page at all.”

Survey Says: Google Top Brand In UK

2008: Microsoft was second in this survey.

Hackers Launch Goolag: A Google Vulnerability Scanner

2008: A group of hackers launched a search tool powered by Google to help see if your sites were vulnerable to a hacking attempt.

Pakistan YouTube Ban Propagates Worldwide, Causing Major YouTube Outage

2008: The Pakistan ban of YouTube not only caused Pakistan ISPs to block YouTube, but also spread worldwide and stopped users even in the U.S. from accessing YouTube.

Yahoo, You’re Not Off The Hook Over The Chinese Dissidents Case Says New Lawsuit

2008: Yahoo was being sued again for allegedly leaking personal information and aiding the Chinese Communist Party in Internet censorship and the persecution of dissidents.

Ask.com Adds More Sponsored Ads, Pushing Organic Results Below Fold

2008: Ask.com was displaying five sponsored results for many keyword searches.

Andy Beal Launches Trackur For Monitoring Online Reputation

2008: You coud set up monitoring across a variety of sites on a set of keywords at a much lower price than reputation management firms generally charged.

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

• SEO dos and don’ts of website migration (SMX Next 2021)
• Smart Shopping campaigns: How to test and extract more value from automated campaigns (SMX West 2020)

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

• 2020: Competition forces retailers to rethink the role of branded, non-branded and trademark traffic by Chris Corrado
• 2019: Content structure and structured data: Will they impact featured snippets? by Brodie Clark
• 2019: Think like a search marketer to drive growth with YouTube by Matt Lawson
• 2016: Setting Local SEO Expectations: 3 Points To Hit Early And Often by Jenny Foster
• 2016: Google Is Fixing The “Permanently Closed” Problem by Joy Hawkins
• 2016: The Death Of Search Marketing Expertise by Andrew Goodman
• 2015: How To Use Fetch As Googlebot Like An SEO Samurai by John Lincoln
• 2015: How Travel Advertisers Should Actually Be Using Search Marketing Benchmarks by Lori Weiman
• 2014: The Secret To Staying Relevant With Authorship by Jim Yu
• 2014: When The Best SEO Move Is To Kill The Site by Eric Ward
• 2013: Is Social Media Worthwhile For Local Businesses? by Chris Silver Smith
• 2013: 3 Neuromarketing Considerations For Landing Page Optimization by Mona Elesseily
• 2013: Why Do Brands Overlook The SEO Opportunity For Non-Branded Keywords? by Eric Enge
• 2011: Interview With Hampus Jakobbson Part II: Plugging Into The Grid by Gord Hotchkiss
• 2011: How To & When To Use Google Ad Extensions: Phone & Local Extensions by Carrie Hill
• 2011: Designed To Fail: Why Many Tests Give You Meaningless Results by Siddharth Shah
• 2010: Extending The Lifecycle Of Super Bowl Ads Through Online Video by Eric Papczun
• 2010: The Advertiser Interview: How To Surface Key Goals by Josh Dreller
• 2010: Local Search Complexity = SMB Frustration by David Mihm
• 2009: B2B & Social Marketing: Discovering Its Hidden Value by Michelle Stern
• 2008: The Secret Of Large Term Lists (It’s All In The Bidding) by Alan Rimm-Kaufman

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