Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Building Empathy For Googlebot With one persona, copywriters and designers will gain a better understanding of Googlebot and do a better job of creating a site that will appeal to him. […]
The SMX West conference is underway and day one is now over. SMX West is taking place in San Jose, California at the San Jose Convention Center. Below you will find links to the “live blog” coverage of the event that I found throughout the day. “Content Farms” Or The Smartest SEOs In the World? […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: Google’s Farmer Update, How It Should’ve Worked & SEO Help For Affected Sites It should be no surprise that Google’s Farmer update (AKA “Panda” update) dominated the conversation […]
Google Navigation is now going to automatically select routes that avoid traffic, according to the Google Mobile Blog. The company says that real-time traffic conditions as well as historical traffic patterns are now factored into the routing: You don’t have to do anything to be routed around traffic; just start Navigation like you normally would, […]
If all goes according to plan, Google’s Street View service should be driving through select cities in Israel soon and the photos could be online later this year. It’ll be Street View’s first move into the Middle East but, despite the obvious security concerns, the Israeli government says the service will be good for tourism […]
Google’s on-the-streets promotional blitz for its Hotpot ratings and recommendations service has landed a new home: Las Vegas. The company has just announced a local marketing campaign in “sin city” that’s aimed at upping usage of Google Places and Hotpot. As part of the launch, Google is giving away 10,000 free Las Vegas Monorail tickets […]
It’s reasonable to say that the world of technology patents is screwed up and headed for some major reform. One area in which this is very apparent is location/mapping/geo. There are a number of seemingly conflicting or contradictory local and local-mobile patents that have been issued over the past several years. Some of these patents […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according […]
Bing is introducing deals for mobile (m.bing.com) and the PC. Mobile deals are available for the HTML5 sites for the iPhone and Android. They aren’t yet in Bing’s mobile apps but will be integrated soon according to Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz. The source of deals here is The Dealmap, which is also the principal source of […]
In preparation for my upcoming appearance at SMX West as a PPC pro in the Paid Search Tune-up Clinic with the SMX Mechanics session, I’ve been thinking more about quick fixes for paid search marketing accounts. Next time you are waiting to get your oil changed, login on your laptop and consider these three 5 […]
If you wanted to see Yelp reviews for a particular restaurant you could either go to Yelp.com or you could go to Google’s Place Page for that same location — and that’s what Yelp is worried about. For the past year or so Yelp and Google have been a little like the two Koreas, not […]
Google announced they have added trike-view imagery to the Google Street Views. In 2009, Google introduced Google Bikes to pedal around the world capturing pictures of streets where cars could not venture. It has been over a year now and Google has added many of these “trike views” to the Google Maps Street View database. […]
When you’re on the move, there’s often no sense finding local businesses that are closed. That’s the impetus behind a new feature that Google has added to the iPhone and Android-powered devices: a tool to filter results that are open now. After doing a search, the new “Show only businesses open now” filter shows up […]
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 Simplifies Site-Specific Bidding on Display Network Google is eliminating managed placement default bids in an effort to simplify bidding on its Display Network. Now Display Network advertisers who use managed […]
There have been a number of comments in forums and tweets that people aren’t seeing the Google Maps’ “send to car” option any longer. The following comment is representative: The send to car option is gone from the Google Maps Beta: there is only a send to email and send to phone option. Is it […]
Following the success of its iPhone app, Mapquest has released a free, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation app for Android handsets. The new app differs in a couple ways from its older iPhone sibling. Most significantly it takes advantage of Android’s speech capabilities and includes OpenStreetMap data, which allows the app to be used outside the US […]
Search Engine Land’s SMX West search marketing conference in San Jose March 8-10 has Foursquare kicking off the first of a series of keynotes at our event.
SearchReviews has just launched a search engine with more than 40 million reviews in its system, and plans to hit 100 million reviews by the end of 2011. Those 40 million reviews cover about four million products and come from more than a thousand sites such as TripAdvisor, Amazon, Zappos and others. Those are impressive […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New: Block Sites From Google Results Using Chrome’s “Personal Blocklist” Google has announced that a new way to block certain sites from appearing in Google’s search results, though a special Google-made […]
Today at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, deCarta announced a set of free developer tools intended to challenge Google Maps and Places. I received a briefing last week and was impressed by the suite of products and tools, which include the following: White Label Maps Application White Label Local Search Engine Maps APIs […]
Google’s weekend update includes two new recent updates for Google Search and Image Search. (1) Google Image Search added an SVG image search filter. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) graphics are scalable graphics that can be used in many ways. Google began indexing and crawling SVG files in September 2010. Then Google began ranking those file […]
Google has created a little site called “Map Your Valentine” in honor of today (thanks Mike Blumenthal). It uses Google Maps and enables you to send a email card to your spouse/partner/lover/friend/stalkee. At the end of the sequence it allows you to search for local florists, chocolatiers or even “find a date” (not exactly). You […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: US Lawmakers Voice Concerns Over Google-ITA Deal Add a few US legislators to the list of parties that are airing concerns over Google’s plan to purchase air travel software provider ITA. […]
When the digirati descend on Austin for the SXSW interactive conference next month, Google is hoping their smartphones will brim with local listings and reviews on Places and Hotpot. To that end, the company today began a promotion to get local businesses, along with Austin visitors and residents, on board with the search giant’s local […]
The idea of “normal” search results died a little more today, as Bing has begun delivering personalized listings depending on a searcher’s location or past search history. Google has already been doing the same for several years.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Super Bowl Sparks Twitter Record For Sporting Event Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: […]
Do you recall the merger of AT&T and Cingular Wireless back in 2007? At the time, experts questioned AT&T’s decision to retire Cingular’s brand name. After all, it was very popular. But now the AT&T brand is stronger than ever, and hardly anyone remembers the brand they cut. When faced with a merger today, marketers […]
Talk of the 2010 U.S. Census is heating up on the web – as local information starts to trickle out – with discussion about what national and local census figures mean for everything from politics to the Superbowl. For local search companies and marketers, the U.S. Census delivers valuable information that helps us understand who […]
This morning Google showcased the features of its new tablet-optimized version of Android: Honeycomb. Danny live-blogged the press event, Honeycomb represents a dramatic improvement over Gingerbread for tablets in several respects. The UI is the most obvious example, as well as developer tools on the back end. There are some distinct UI differences between Android […]
It’s all starting to come together. Yesterday Google announced that it was adding check-ins (and loyalty categories) to Latitude. It also announced the global expansion of HotPot, its recommendations tool. Google Places apps for both iPhone and Android allow people to rate and review businesses (HotPot’s objective). And on Places Pages, in Android, you can […]
Google has finally added full check-in capabilities to its Latitude product, following in the footsteps of Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Facebook, and others that have been doing check-ins for some time now. Latitude has been a tool that lets one user share his/her location with friends, but now it goes further and allows users to check-in […]
Attention AdWords resellers falsely trumpeting your “special” relationship with Google and the discounted pricing you can offer as a result: Google is coming after you. The company today rolled out new policies for third parties, such as agencies, who offer their clients AdWords as part of their services. Under the terms, agencies must provide their […]
Friends or enemies? Partners or competitors? Google’s relationship with review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp is as complicated as ever, and the disputes are likely to increase as the search giant pursues mobile and local ambitions that center around its controversial Place pages. The rancor stems from the way Google aggregates content from various review […]
There’s a lot of discouraging news for the yellow pages industry these days. A combo of unhappy financial numbers mixed with reorganization and layoffs has demoralized many in the industry. Is it “game over” for yellow pages companies? Not necessarily. Not if leadership works on future strategy. A few years ago, I warned the industry […]
Google and the Connecticut-led coalition of 40 US states will avoid court and begin negotiations that are aimed at settling issues related to Google’s collection of personal data over unsecured WiFi networks. In a press release issued today (PDF), newly-elected Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen says the coalition will not pursue a demand issued last […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The New York Times, Demand Media Edition Demand Media — widely described as a “content farm” — went public yesterday and quickly racked up a valuation higher than the New York […]
Google appears to be testing display ads in Gmail. I discovered the following image ad in my own Gmail account this morning, and Google has since confirmed a test. Image ads have made their way into paid search on Google.com and various other properties on Google. But this was really jarring for me to encounter. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Upstart DuckDuckGo Challenges Google With Strong Privacy, Cool Tools & Quackpot Name Here at Search Engine Land we regularly hear from people who have created “radical,” innovative,” “next generation” search technology, […]
Google has just made a surprising announcement: Google Maps will drop its real estate listings search option on February 10th. Real estate was one of the options available inside Google Maps since July 2009, when it added a similar search form like the ones available on many real estate-specific websites. Google’s real estate search wasn’t […]
Google’s simpler AdWords program, Boost, is getting its national roll-out, after a three-month test period in certain cities and states, the company is set to announce. The search giant also said it will begin displaying Boost ads for searches done on iPhone and Android devices. Google spokesperson Jim Prosser wouldn’t say what kind of usage […]