Search Engine Land’s Top 10 Columns Of 2014

New Year’s Eve is typically regarded as a time of reflection — and so, in the spirit of being appropriately festive, we here at Search Engine Land would like to take a moment to reflect back upon the industry’s most significant moments of 2014.

Animals whose names begin with “P” were popular this year. We saw a refresh of Google’s spam-fighting Penguin algorithm and two updates to the Panda algorithm, which targets sites with thin and low-quality content. We also witnessed the release of a new search algorithm, Pigeon, which sought to improve Google’s local search results.

Google Shopping was rolled out to all users. HTTPS became a ranking signal. Quality Score documentation was updated. Mobile-friendliness grew ever more crucial to visibility within search results.

And let us not forget those we lost this year. Guest Blogging. Authorship. Product Listing Ads. Exact Match Targeting. Duane Forrester (temporarily).

Search Engine Land’s staff writers covered these breaking news stories in depth, while our incredible team of guest columnists supplemented this coverage by offering up their insights, tips, opinions, advice and predictions.

What follows are our most popular columns of 2014. If you missed them the first time around, take a moment to give them a read!

1. It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results by Eric Enge. Published on 8/28/14. 13.6K shares across all platforms.
2. Does Google Have A Secret “Translate” Service & Why Should Search Marketers Care? by Ariel Hochstadt. Published on 4/29/14. 1.2K shares across all platforms.
3. Experiment Shows Up To 60% Of “Direct” Traffic Is Actually Organic Search by Gene McKenna. Published on 5/8/14. 5.3K shares across all platforms.
4. Single Page Websites & SEO by Tom Schmitz. Published on 1/31/14. 1.2K shares across all platforms.
5. Prioritizing SEO Strategies In 2014: Where To Focus by Warren Lee. Published on 2/14/14. 2K shares across all platforms.
6. Why Did Google’s Pigeon Poop All Over Big Local Brands? by Andrew Shotland. Published on 10/27/14. 1.1K shares across all platforms.
7. A Former Googler’s Routine For AdWords Management by Frederick Vallaeys. Published on 1/24/14. 892 shares across all platforms.
8. 37 Awesome Tools To Get The Most From Your SEO Campaigns by Matthew Barby. Published on 11/5/14. 3.1 shares across all platforms.
9. Advanced SEO Experiments: Google’s Title Tag Changes by Tom Schmitz. Published on 4/25/14. 2.4K shares across all platforms.
10. These 10 Analytics Reports Will Improve Your AdWords Results by Frederick Vallaeys. Published on 8/13/14. 2.3K shares across all platforms.

Happy New Year, readers! We hope to see you all back in 2015.

Methodology: Columns published in 2014 are ranked in order of pageviews measured by Google Analytics. Data were gathered on December 4 and include all columns published through December 3, 2014.