Matt McGee on the Wild West days of SEO
Matt was also the former Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land, so this interview is full of great SEO topics.
Topic: Excite
The push layer returns: Why ‘publish and wait’ is half a strategy
See how AI systems process content through five entry modes — and why relying on crawling alone limits visibility, speed, and revenue
Is Google biased? An SEO veteran’s perspective
This deep dive uses SEO tools and data analysis to explore the claims, controversies, and facts behind political search results.
Goodbye Search Engine Land, SMX and Third Door Media
After more than two decades of writing about search and online marketing, as well as speaking at and organizing dozens of conferences, it's time to hang up my e-spurs and move on to other adventures.
On Google’s 21st birthday, a look back in time
Revisit a 1999 interview with Google co-founder Larry Page by Search Engine Land's Chris Sherman.
Google marks 14 years as a public company
Today the search giant ranks as the world's third most valuable company.
10 big changes with search engines over my 20 years of covering them
Search Engine Land founding editor Danny Sullivan looks at how search has changed over the two decades he's been writing about it.
The Yahoo Directory — Once The Internet’s Most Important Search Engine — Is To Close
For some, it may seem like there has always been Google, and it’s always been the main way people have found things on the web. But before Google, there was the Yahoo Directory and its hand-compiled list of websites, organized into topics. Now, the venerable Yahoo Directory is closing. Yahoo shared the news today, a […]
Search In Pics: Google Star Wars, Legacy Excite Swag & Glass Cake
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the Web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
A Eulogy For AltaVista, The Google Of Its Time
Goodbye AltaVista. You deserved better than this. Better than the one-sentence send-off Yahoo gave you today, when announcing your July 8 closure date. But then again, you always were the bright child neglected by your parents. The Amazing AltaVista You appeared on the search engine scene in December 1995. You made us go “woah” when you […]
SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone
Ah, another SEO is dead post from a non-SEO to get the blood rushing on an otherwise calm weekend. I’ve been ignoring these more and more lately, but in the wake of Google’s Farmer Update, it looks like everyone could use some history lessons. Don’t depend solely on SEO, but don’t neglect it, either.
Once The Most Powerful Person In Search, Srinija Srinivasan Leaves Yahoo
Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, the most powerful person in search was arguably Yahoo’s Srinija Srinivasan. If Yahoo’s was the “gateway” to the web in the way some think Google is today, Srinivasan was the chief gatekeeper. And now after 15 years, she’s leaving Yahoo. Srinivasan was Yahoo’s “Ontological Yahoo,” among other titles including being […]
A guide to Google: Origins, history and key moments in search
Google, founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is the most popular search engine in the world, with a commanding market share of over 80% globally and just under 80% in the U.S. While we don’t have any figures direct from the company, it’s estimated that billions of searches – or trillions per […]
The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009
The 2000s were notable as the first full decade of consumer search. The first decade ever where you could try to sum up what happened in search, as a consumer product. And what happened, in a word, was Google. In the 1990s, Google barely existed. If search were a religion, it was polytheistic. There were […]
10 Year Retrospective: Search Engine Strategies To SMX: Search Marketing Expo
Ten years ago today, I had the privilege of organizing the first ever search marketing conference. On this anniversary, a look back at how things were then and have they’ve changed in a decade. In 1999, search marketing itself was about five years old. People had been doing search engine optimization to generate traffic from […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 14, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing 2.0 “Visual Search” Launches, Allows Search By Pictures Microsoft has unveiled Bing 2.0 at TechCrunch50 today, also known as Bing Visual Search, which allows people to “search by picture.” After […]
A Look Back At The Old Search Engines
The Six Revisions blog complied an excellent list of the classic search engines, some dating back to the 1990s. His list includes screen shots of both the old and current (if available) versions of HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Ask.com, Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, MSN Search, Bing, AOL Search, Infoseek, Go.com, Netscape, MetaCrawler, and […]
Ballmer: Do Yahoo Deal Sooner, Not Later
Sick of hearing about Microsoft being interested in buying Yahoo’s search business? So am I. Just buy it already. The saga — now nearly a year old — is back in the news. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is now saying that a deal should happen within the next few months, due to Microsoft and Yahoo […]
Tough Love For Microsoft Search
Back in June, I spoke at Microsoft as part of a regular series for those involved with its webmaster tools group and anyone generally interested in search. My talk was called “Tough Love For Microsoft Search,” and I covered various reasons why I felt the company has generally failed to make headway in the space. […]
SearchBiz: Mehdi Moves Up At Microsoft; Should MSFT learn from Ask?; Top 25 People On The Web; Google & The NSA
With Microsoft’s current advertising campaign still leaving many people shaking their heads in wonder, TechCrunch has an idea: follow the lead of Ask.com. Jason Kincaid confesses that Ask’s ad — the one that shows a young woman “exercising” (ahem) on a stripper pole in her house — actually made him curious enough to click through […]
Cuil Launches — Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?
Can any start-up search engine “be the next Google?” Many have wondered this, and today’s launch of Cuil (pronounced “cool”) may provide the best test case since Google itself overtook more established search engines. Cuil provides what appears to be a comprehensive index of the web, offers a unique display presentation, and emerges at a […]
Human Hardware: The Subconscious Side of Search
In the last column, we explored some studies that indicate that conscious will might not be the cause of our actions, but instead might be just one of the effects of a motivator still undefined. Conscious will could simply be a feedback mechanism that helps us keep track of our actions and hides the degree […]
Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com
Goodbye, Ask.com. You caught my eye back in 1997 as an unusual meta search engine that asked questions to get answers. By 1998, I counted you alongside Google and Direct Hit as shining examples of what to watch in search. You’d dumped depending on others for search results and started providing answers using your own […]
Google Takes Top Prize At SMX Search Bowl
Last night was the first ever SMX Search Bowl. Basically, the Search Engine Land team created fifty questions that were asked to the various teams. The teams consisted of two players from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Live Search, and the SEM All Star team. Danny displayed the questions on the screen and the first team to […]
Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution
This has been a remarkable year. After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation finally arrived. Google calls it Universal Search, and I’ve been tending to say “blended search” as a generic name for the change that’s now hit all the major search engines. But in doing the agenda for our upcoming SMX West conference, a […]
IAC To Split Up, Extends Google Ad Deal Worth $3.5+ Billion
Today is a big day for IAC, Ask.com’s parent company. First they announce they are breaking the company into five publicly traded entities, and then they announce they have extended their search ad deal with Google.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 31, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
History Of AOL Search
In preparation for those trying AOL tomorrow as part of our first Google-Free Friday, I thought it would be helpful to give some background on AOL in search. AOL has long offered search — and even owned several web crawling technologies — over the years. Don’t forget to read AOL: Tomorrow’s Google Free Friday Alternative […]
Autonomy To Reclaim Blinkx, Then Spin It Off
The relationship between enterprise search company Autonomy and video search company Blinkx has always been confusing. PaidContent.org now reports that the "weirdly secretive relationship" (I agree) is getting clearer. Autonomy is to exercise an option to take over Blinkx, then appears to be spinning some consumer-facing search technology that its owns (and I believe Blinkx […]
Ask.com To Launch Contextual Advertising Product
Ask.com is launching a new sponsored listings contextual product and will go live the week of May 21st. The Ask contextual product will initially launch within IAC’s own network of sites including Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch and will then expand to trusted third party publishers. Individual publishers will most likely have to wait until […]
comScore: Google Wins Again & IE7 Doesn’t Stop Microsoft’s Slide
It’s that time again — search popular stats for last month are coming out. Actually, Hitwise sent me their figures earlier this month but I’m diving in with the comScore figures that just came out. The main real news is despite the Internet Explorer 7 launch, Microsoft’s Live continues to show a drop in usage.