Five years ago, Search Engine Land was officially born. On the occasion of our fifth birthday, we’re proud of how much the site has accomplished and excited to officially welcome our new sibling-site MarTech. Some Statistics Since we opened, Search Engine Land has grown to doing between 1.5 million and 2 million pageviews per month. From our Google Analytics […]
Perhaps the lesson is: be careful what you sue for. The French and German-language Belgian newspaper consortium that successfully sued Google for copyright infringement got more than it bargained for this week. The newspapers’ content has been removed not only from Google News (as desired) but the entire Google index. Now the newspapers are crying […]
Search Engine Land has a new look and features! For our regular readers, as well as new visitors, here’s a guide to what you’ll find on the redesigned site and how everything works.
How did we go from the New York Times seeming to single out visitors from Google with a “5 free visit per day” policy to supposedly all search engines being limited in such a way? And what’s up with there being no limit for visitors coming from anything that’s not a search engine, including Twitter […]
Of the 24 percent of Americans who get most of their political news from the Internet, 20 percent cite Yahoo.com as their main source of news, and Google comes in next at 13 percent. Only CNN.com, at 22 percent, came in higher than the two search-centric destinations in the latest study from the Pew Research […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Twitter Says Activity Levels Are Soaring With the five-year anniversary of the first tweet approaching, Twitter says user activity is soaring. In a blog post that details tweet and account activity, […]
Everyone knows that print newspaper circulation is declining and consumers are increasing accessing news online. Some may wonder why newspapers are slow to move way from print, but the truth is that print still provides the bulk of newspaper revenue and at this point, print heavily subsidizes online efforts. Print, then, enables newspapers to experiment […]
The Google Blog announced a new tool to help news publishers earn money online with their content. The system is called Google One Pass and it enables publishers to use Google to charge for content and subscriptions to their content. Google said, “publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to […]
No stranger to controversy, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis threw down a gauntlet at his “content farm” competitors, arguing they’re polluting the web and angering Google, to the detriment of searchers and their own companies.
With Demand Media having gone public last week, it is worth taking some time to discuss the future of content farms. Clearly, lots of people are seeing value in the business model, as shown by the street’s willingness to accept the IPO, and the acquistion of Associated Content by Yahoo! last May. But what is […]
While many news organizations chase traffic by matching their news coverage to what’s listed as “hot” on Google Trends, Twitter, and elsewhere, a new report says hard news coverage actually makes the most money for major news publishers. Perfect Market, a company that works with publishers to help them make more money from search engine […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: French Newspapers Partner To Sidestep Google News A group of six French newspapers is partnering to create an online news site that they hope will be an alternative to Google News. […]
A group of six French newspapers is partnering to create an online news site that they hope will be an alternative to Google News. France’s National Daily Press Union announced the plan yesterday and said the virtual newsstand will be launched in September. According to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog, the French […]
Last year, there was a seemingly endless parade of stories on how aggregators, search engines and news blogs were apparently killing newspapers that publish original content. This year, add the rise of “content farms” to the list. Riding to the rescue, or so it hopes, comes Perfect Market and its new search marketing tool, “The […]
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 Display Network Is New Name For Google’s Display Initiatives The Google AdWords Blog announced that to make things simpler they have created a new “umbrella name” for Google display ads […]
Major news portals — like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL, and Topix — are the most commonly used online news sources, beating out the web sites of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times. That’s according to the the State of the Media report issued tonight by the Pew Research Center’s […]
Techmeme is one of my favorite sites. It’s my morning “newspaper” that covers technology headlines from across the web. And now it’s joined by a new site just for media news, Mediagazer. I’m thrilled to see the new site arrive, even if it means more reading for me. Much of the “tech” news on Techmeme […]
The Pew Internet project has just released a lengthy report on online news consumption entitled Understanding the Participatory News Consumer. There are no search-specific findings; however it appears from the survey data that “portal websites like Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources, visited by over half of online news users on a typical day.” Here are some of the high-level findings […]
Yesterday, Mark Cuban warned media owners in a keynote speech that Google is a vampire trying to suck them dry, giving them nothing back and daring owners to block it. This is the same Mark Cuban who is an investor in Mahalo, which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: From NORAD Santa Tracker To Twitter: Santa Tracking For Christmas Eve 2009 Merry Christmas! Christmas Eve, that is, and you know what that means. Santa Claus is coming to town! How […]
According to November comScore data (published by TechCrunch) Google News is the second largest online news property in the world in terms of traffic. Yahoo ranks as the top global news site. Here’s the partial comScore list: Yahoo News Google News New York Times sites CNN China’s QQ.com BBC MSN In the US Yahoo still […]
Fast Flip, the Google experiment that aims to make reading news online more like reading a newspaper or magazine, has expanded its list of sources. When Fast Flip launched in September, it had three dozen publishers on board. With today’s announcement, the number and variety of sources has grown: Today, we’re excited to be adding […]
Google has unveiled a new Living Stories are, where the New York Times and the Washington Post are experimenting with how coverage of a particular news story would look if content was all centralized within a single page. The experiment puts into practice a vision that Google has long expressed previously as “Living URLs,” a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Roundup Of 2009’s Best SEO Books Time was when someone asked me to recommend a good book on search marketing, there were only a few available—Search Engine Visibility, by Shari […]
Bloomberg has a story out suggesting that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News may be joining Rupert Murdoch’s coalition of the willing to block Google. But I don’t think that’s what going on at all, and I’m trying to clarify things. Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, which publishes the […]
Forget PageRank, at least if you’re a news publisher looking to do well in Google News. Google’s news service doesn’t rely on the same algorithm used by “regular” Google, of which PageRank is a part of. Instead, Google News taps into its own unique ranking signals, which include user clicks, the estimated authority of a […]
I’ve just had a rather surreal afternoon, having been asked (at very short notice) to appear on Channel 4 News (the main news show on one of the UK’s 5 terrestrial broadcasters.) I was invited on the program to to discuss Rupert Murdoch’s reported plans to link up with Bing at the same time as […]
Hey news publishers. Stop acting as if your content only appears printed on dead trees and tap into the dynamics that the web offers. That’s a blunt summary of advice from Josh Cohen of Google News, from a wide-ranging interview with him on Google’s experiments with new ways of delivering news. Cohen, business product manager […]
Many publishers have complained repeatedly that Google and Google News (not the leading online news site) reduces their content to “commodity” status or otherwise adversely impacts their brands. Google’s Fast Flip is a response to this in part. It offers a more “branded” and visual way to consume news and magazine content from major publishers. […]
Want to do a paywall with no “first click free?” That’s fine with Google, says business product manager Josh Cohen. Want to do micropayments? Google will be “flexible” in considering support of new business models like this. But if you charge, expect less traffic, and also expect that your competitors will be “ecstatic” to pick […]
Yet another News Corporation executive is talking about Google, and yet again, I feel like they have no concept about how Google interacts with their web pages. Which is frightening, since they’re being very vocal about how they’re supposedly wronged by Google. Please, someone, give them a search marketing 101 course. In the latest volley, […]
Associated Press president Tom Curley and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch both made speeches yesterday in China that are being widely reported as an attack on Google. Having read through the actual speeches, I was surprised they weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. Below, I’ve highlighted key portions along with my own commentary. […]
The previously rumored Google news site “Flipper” is in fact launching today as “Fast Flip” in Google Labs. But maybe it should be called Google Skimmer because it permits people to move very quickly through lots of visually rich news pages from dozens of partner publications. According to the Google Blog Post: Fast Flip is […]
Ambivalent is word that best describes newspaper publishers’ relationship with Google and Google News in particular. Some publishers see Google as a partner or potential partner and some consider Google to be the devil incarnate, responsible for virtually all their woes. For its part Google sees itself as a supporter of newspapers, helping them by […]
Despite their frosty relationship, Google is proposing a micropayment system that could give the newspaper industry a way to charge for its online content. According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the micropayment system will be based on Google Checkout and be available within a year “to both Google and non-Google properties.” The NJL has posted […]
If Google News is analogous to the print daily newspapers then the new “spotlight” feature is more like a weekly news magazine. Spotlight is an outgrowth of a test of “interesting reads” that a select group of users were exposed to. Here’s what Google says about Spotlight’s function and role: The Spotlight section of Google […]
Yahoo News was the web’s number one choice last week for information about the death of entertainer Michael Jackson. In a post on the Hitwise blog, Heather Dougherty shows a chart detailing how the major online News & Media sites fared: Late last week I wrote about how each of the major search engines handled […]
TechCrunch is reporting that “Flipper” is a visual version of Google News, enabling people to see images of publications — and presumably “flip” through the pages accordingly. Immediately I was struck by two thoughts, this is somewhat like Google’s News Timeline, which offers a more visual presentation than the current News, and that it bears a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Optimize Feeds To Maximize Your Exposure In Shopping Engine Results Each day millions of online shoppers turn to comparison shopping engines (CSEs) to compare prices, read reviews, research products […]
Apparently talks between Google and the Associated Press aren’t going well, or so says Forbes today, with AP chief executive Tom Curley threatening to take his content and play elsewhere. Where that will be is hard to say. Part of the AP’s original issue with Google was that AP’s own member publications would reprint AP […]