SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 19, 2011
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 Testing URLs Above Descriptions In AdWords Google is testing a variation on AdWords display that has the URLs shown above the two lines of description, but under the headline. Representatives […]
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 Testing URLs Above Descriptions In AdWords
Google is testing a variation on AdWords display that has the URLs shown above the two lines of description, but under the headline. Representatives from the search giant would only say that they’re always experimenting with different ways of displaying information, but multiple members of Search Engine Land editorial team saw the experiment on Google.com […]
- Google Disables URL Removals After Bug Allows Anyone To Remove Any Site
This morning, James Breckenridge discovered a loophole within Google’s Webmaster Tools that allowed anyone to remove any site from Google. Both James and I sent this information to Google as soon as we heard of it. After several hours, Google has told us, “we’re still investigating this report, and to be cautious we disabled all […]
- Google’s Got Logos, But Bing’s Home Page Images Attract Too
Fast Company has a fascinating article on Bing’s background images and how they are used to market the Bing service. While Google updates their logos to be fun and creative on special birthdays or occasions, Bing revamps their background with an image that stands out and leaves users asking for more. If you haven’t noticed, […]
- Google Gets Chance To Appeal In Street View Lawsuit
Just a couple weeks after the latest setback, Google picked up a small but potentially important victory today in its defense against charges that the company violated federal wiretap laws when its Street View cars intercepted personal data over unencrypted WiFi networks. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Judge James Ware has put the case […]
- How Twitter’s Technical Infrastructure Issues Are Impacting Google Search Results
In the last few days, several noticed that the Google Toolbar PageRank value for www.twitter.com had plummeted to 0 (it’s now back to its previous 9). Was Google punishing Twitter for how things went down with the feed expiration that temporarily derailed Google’s Realtime search efforts? Nah, Twitter’s website has just been suffering from technical […]
- Google+ iPhone App Now Available
Just under 30 minutes ago Google’s Vic Gundotra announced on Google+, appropriately, that the site’s promised iPhone app is now available. Google said on its Q2 earnings call last week that there were more than 10 million users of Google+ so far. It didn’t announce how many were using the site on mobile devices or […]
- Intervention & Rehab Time: How To Break The Paid Link Habit
So you have finally made the decision to get off of the paid links crack and go straight. Do you go cold turkey? Do you take this in stages? There are great questions and the ones I will take on in today’s post. There are two major reasons why you should make this switch, one […]
- Google Opens Up Call Metrics, Plans Bid-For-Calls Marketplace
This morning Google is announcing that its Call Metrics call-tracking capability is going to be generally available to all US and Canadian AdWords advertisers. Call Metrics is not to be confused with mobile Click to Call ads, though Call Metrics is available to Click to Call mobile advertisers as well. Below is an example ad […]
- Eli Pariser, Danny Sullivan Headline at SMX East, September 13-15 in NYC
A benefit of attending Search Marketing Expo – SMX conferences is the luxury of participating in horizon-expanding presentations. You’ll be a more inspired, creative and well-rounded internet marketer after these two SMX East keynotes: Marketers strive to deliver action-stimulating messages at the most opportune time. But is there any danger that search personalization will spiral […]
- Bing Gains In Customer Satisfaction, Facebook “Near The Bottom” — Report
The 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) “e-business report is out. Google, Bing and the entire “Internet Search Engines & Portals” category seems to have done well. In particular Bing and Ask improved significantly over last year. Facebook’s report card, on the other hand, is not as likely to make mom and dad happy. The […]
- How To Maximise SERP CTRs With Google Sitemaps & Schemas
Resolving indexing or duplication issues are usually top of the list when working with a new domain, but how can you achieve the same level of performance once the obvious SEO wins are in place?
- Mobile Now 12 Percent Of All Paid Search Impressions
Earlier today Performics reported another mobile search milestone: “mobile paid search traffic is now 12% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), while mobile clicks are about to cross the 12% threshold.” The search-marketing firm based this report on aggregated client data from 1H 2011. Mobile by itself, excluding tablets, is about 10 percent […]
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- A new and improved Gmail gadget for iGoogle, Official Gmail Blog
- A New Look for Google Translate, Google Operating System
Business Issues
- American Express Friends Facebook, Checks In With Foursquare: Does Your Social Graph Have Good Credit?, Fast Company
- Baidu, China’s Search Giant, Announces Music Licensing Deal, New York Times
- GBS Status Conference: Opt-in Settlement in the Works?, The Laboratorium
- Google CEO Page Adds About $1.9 Billion in Personal Wealth After Earnings, Bloomberg
- Google’s Eric Schmidt slams Apple iPhone lawsuits, Perth Now
- Google-funded Berlin internet institute to launch in October, The Local
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Pending in Places – A new manual review or a new bug?, Mike Blumenthal
- 3D buildings in Google Maps for Android arise in London, Paris, Barcelona, and more, Official Google Mobile Blog
- Evolving the look of Google Maps, redux, Google LatLong
- Google Places Pending Review Bug, Search Engine Roundtable
- Google Rushes To Redo Maps Of Sudan After Statehood, Search Engine Roundtable
- London Gets 3D Buildings On Google Maps, periscopix.co.uk
- South Sudan is on the map, and now it’s in Google Earth too, Google Earth Blog
- TripAdvisor Sends Conflicted Message: We Can Incent Reviews but Business Can’t, Mike Blumenthal
Searching
- Rich results templates out-of-the-box, Google Custom Search
- Find Figurate Numbers in Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram|Alpha Blog
- Multiple "Did You Mean" Suggestions, Google Operating System
SEO & SEM
- Validation: measuring and tracking code quality, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
- 10 Simple Techniques for Google Profile Optimisation for Google and Beyond, SEOptimise
- Big Google Places Feet on the Street Campaign hits Big Texas with a Big Push for Small Businesses, Google Places Optimization Blog
- Bing Quality Scores: Match-Types & Magic Wands, SEOmoz
- Don’t Let Your SEO Firm Get Back At Firing Them, Search Engine Roundtable
- How SEO Can Work With Content Strategy, Online Marketing Blog
- How to apply some basic usability to improve our SEO work, Bruce Clay Australia
- Identifying Quick Wins, Search Engine Journal
- SEO to do in Half an Hour, Daily SEO Tip
- The Commoditization of SEO, The Milwaukee SEO
- The God Complex in SEO, SEO Book
- The One Minute AdWords Account Diagnosis, Certified Knowledge
- Words with two meanings and tricky negative keyword lists, Search Engine People
Social Media
- Facebook Opens Viral Growth Channel for Pages, Delivering Invites to Like as Notifications, Inside Facebook
- Google fails contacts data portability test, unfortunatly, antezeta.com
- How Google Can Grow Without Killing Itself, outspokenmedia.com
- How to Be Involved on Twitter in Less Than an Hour a Day, Michael Gray
- Infographic: Social Sharing on Yahoo!, Yahoo! Advertising Blog
- LIST OF FACEBOOK EMPLOYEES ON GOOGLE , Post by Craig Kanalley
Video, Music & Image Search
- Auto-Captions now available in Japanese, YouTube Blog
- Using Image search to determine gender, SearchReSearch
Web Analytics
- Creating Useful Advanced Segments In Google Analytics – Part 1, Search Engine Journal
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- Google Disables URL Removals After Bug Allows Anyone To Remove Any Site – This morning, James Breckenridge discovered a loophole within Google’s Webmaster Tools that allowed anyone to remove any site from Google.
- How to Grow Social Media Leads: New Research – Very comprehensive collection of data/charts showing lead-gen results from various social media activities, including blogging, Facebook and Twitter (and more).
- What to Do When Your AdWords CPCs Are Too High – Five no nonsense actions to take if your Google AdWords CPCs go through the roof.
- 10 Site Tweaks to Make Your Customers Actually Click – Good ecommerce optimization post with actionable suggestions.
- ECommerce Website Content For SEO – What is it and are you wasting your time? – A phrase that you often hear being thrown about by SEOs is “content is king”, Although this is (arguably) true, I think that in many cases this just leads to commercial webmasters blindly adding low-quality content to their websites for the sake of it without really considering if it is beneficial to them in any way.
- Email Marketing: Campaign Analysis, Metrics, Best Practices – Awesome overview of the important analytics of email marketing.
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