I really hate arguments over cloaking. Like really hate them. But Rand Fishkin recently did a chart outlining the degrees of "safeness" to cloaking that in turn riled up Google’s Matt Cutts in comments there. No doubt others at search engines also dislike the idea that any cloaking is "white hat." So I wanted to […]
About two years ago, I wrote an article called Why Search Sucks & You Won’t Fix It The Way You Think. In it, I explained various ways people have tried to make search "visual" and why those have largely failed. That’s mainly because "list view" or "10 blue links" still works for lots of search […]
So Firefox 3 has a new release candidate making news, suggesting that the browser is nearly done. May I suggest that the browser is nowhere near being done until the Mozilla Foundation drops its favoritism to Google and allow users to pick their own default search engine? And that Microsoft ought to be among those […]
Previously I’ve covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into “regular” web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results.
Yahoo has acquired my favorite search browser plugin for Apple Safari, Inquisitor. Inquisitor is an extremely useful search refinement and search aid tool for the Apple browser market. Inquisitor offers autocomplete, refinements, suggestions, and also allows you to add any search engine you like, plus create your own personalized and advanced query operators, much like […]
The most important thing you can do when talking to an SEO client (be it your boss in your company, or a different company you consult for) is to learn how to explain SEO in the simplest terms possible. When you are dealing with a non-SEO type, use the 30 second rule: explain it clearly […]
height=”100″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”3″ width=”100″> If you buy search ads to drive sales, you are a direct response advertiser. Welcome, today’s short column is for you. If you buy search to increase awareness of your brand, you’re a brand advertiser. Sorry, but this column is for the direct response gang, us red-headed step-kids of the advertising […]
Just in case you hadn’t gotten enough news and speculation about the various potential deals surrounding MicroHoo, AOL, and News Corp. there are a flurry of articles (as one might expect) today about all this. The most interesting is probably the one in the Wall Street Journal that interviews ad executives about their thoughts regarding […]
Last night, at Campfire One, Google launched an Amazon S3/EC2-like product named Google App Engine. For non-techies, Google App Engine will allow you to host your web sites and applications on their infrastructure. Not only that, this service will automatically grow in resources and capacity, as your application or web site requires. If you launch […]
Tamar tipped me off to people seeing secondary search boxes in the Google search results. I see them myself now. For example, a search on amazon returns this search box directly under the snippet but above the URL; here is a picture:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Eytan Seidman, Program Management Director over core relevance for Microsoft Live Search, is leaving Microsoft (and Seattle) after six and a half years and heading to New York to work on a start up with his brother. I talked to him about life at Microsoft, the birth of Live Search, and singing karaoke in New […]
I’ve said a number of times that the holy grail of search is to disambiguate intent. A two or three word query, given the complexity of the English language, is just not enough to confidently provide results that will always be relevant and useful. But up to now, it’s been all we’ve had. Today, however, […]
VentureBeat has a nice Q&A with Google’s Marissa Mayer on how the search engine is considering using social data to improve its search results — what I’ve described as "Search 4.0" as a generational jump in my Search 3.0 article from earlier this year. Some highlights below:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
There are three surveys underway right now for the search engine marketing industry looking for participation. SEMPO and SEOmoz are both running surveys to collect data on the search marketing industry, while the SEMMYS are a more fun look at search marketing articles up for awards.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Each month, I compile Search Month — a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Some time ago, I did a blog post called the “Other Long Tail of Search“. When Chris Anderson’s book came out, several smart search marketers realized that the long tail phenomenon applied to our industry as well. If you look at the keywords that drive traffic to your site and plot them according to traffic […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
With all the talk of Amazon’s new $399 ebook reader (and blog, newspaper, magazine) Kindle, it made me think: What if Google had developed this or a similar device (the Gindle? Goodle?) instead of putting out Android? Of course, there’s nothing that precludes Google from doing such a thing in the future, but for now […]
A TMCnet blog repeats a rumor that Google might buy US wireless carrier Sprint. This is based in part of Google’s aggressive push into mobile with Android, its willingness to bid on wireless spectrum licenses, and its efforts to gain access to unused parts of the television spectrum, so-called “white space.” It’s also based on […]
According to the Google blog “Inside Google Book Search“, some changes have been made recently to Google Book Search, so I took this as my cue to go and visit to check these out. To say that I was disappointed is to put it mildly, and if you don’t have time to read my entire […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google Maps is global, so why not Google StreetView as well? A London expansion is suggested by this image of one of the vehicles that takes the 360 degree street images. (Google has done some of the photography itself, but also uses partner Immersive Media in the U.S.). StreetView image collection is apparently underway in […]
Often when people discuss local search they’re referring to finding restaurants or plumbers. But the concept of “local search” should include goods and product purchases as well. Whenever I discuss products and retail as part of the definition of local search people are often a little skeptical. Yet again and again studies show that consumers […]
Several weeks ago (seemingly years) Just Behave featured Part One of the summarized interviews with my personal dream team of search usability: Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability guru Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of user experience and interface design Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask’s unique user experience Larry Cornett, the VP of […]
A US district court judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the US government to send secret letters demanding search records from search engines. A provision of the Patriot Act has allowed for such letters to be sent to search engines, ISPs and others by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation — and made it […]
I’m having a bad day. Aside from my desktop crashing, we get another spate of “let’s blame SEO” to start my morning off. Robert Scoble uses that theme as a launching pad for a series of videos on how Facebook potentially could be a killer search engine — regardless of the fact he seems to […]
The analytics firm comScore is expanding its core search metrics product, qSearch, in a number of ways that the company says will make the measurement of search volumes and market share more accurate than it was previously. According to James Lamberti, SVP Search and Media at comScore, the expansion of the company’s methodology and measurement […]
If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely, the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these […]
Following the Harris and BusinessWeek/Interbrand brand surveys, which put Coca-Cola at the top of the list, JupiterResearch asked Internet users about their favorite brands and dissected the audiences.
To spot popular search trends, you can always use our list of search research resources. But want to look across a range of various “What’s Hot” reports? Try SEOmoz’s new Popular Searches tool. As SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin explains, explains the new tool aggregates data from several places that document “rising trends and consistently buzz-worthy terms […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Compete is out with its latest search marketshare report for June 2007, showing that MSN/Windows Live Search has posted a dramatic rise since last month. This appears to be do to the Live Search Club promotion that’s going on. Below, a look at the trend, a history of how giveaways for search have and haven’t […]
I shouldn’t — but I couldn’t resist doing a quick poke at Facebook’s pronouncement that it is the "most used people search engine on the web." Really? According to? Facebook gives some stats that perhaps back up this claim, but only if you consider Facebook a people search engine. I don’t. Not yet. It’s hard […]
Tomorrow is the first of the Google Free Fridays that Search Engine Land is promoting in July. As our previous This July: Try Google-Free Fridays! post explains, the point is to encourage people to open their eyes to some of the other major search engines, whether it to be to discover something great and new […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.