At Search Marketing Expo, Bing’s Vincent Wehren, the Lead Program Manager for Bing Webmaster Tools, said they have no plans on ever giving a ranking boost to websites that switch to HTTPS. In August, Google began giving sites that use HTTPS a ranking boost as a bit of an incentive to webmasters for helping secure […]
Thinking about moving your site to HTTPS, in order to tap into the promised chance to rank better in Google? Buffer recently discovered that the technicalities of doing it could cause you to plunge in traffic. In August, Google announced that sites moving to secure servers would get a minor ranking boost in search results. […]
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 Quick Answer Fail: NSFW Advice On “How To Eat Sushi” Google continues to expand the number of quick answers it offers in its results, as well as the size of […]
In August 2014, Google announced that they would give a small ranking boost to HTTPS with the new HTTPS ranking factor. Now that it is a few weeks later, many are wondering how much of an impact does HTTPS URLs actually have on rankings. The answer according to SearchMetrics is none currently. Marcus Tober of […]
Bing has a new feature that allows you to embed images from a Bing Image Search query as a collage or slideshow directly on your web pages. This is called the Bing Image Widget and you specify what type of image widget you want on your site and then simply copy and paste the given […]
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’s Search App Is Now Truly Multilingual Around the world millions of people are multilingual or partly so. In the US, census data reflect that 20 percent of the population speaks […]
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 Maps Adds Hundreds Of Streetside & 3D City Images; Plus New HD Aerial Images Bing announced a large maps update today, where they have added hundreds of Streetside images, 3D […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: BrightLocal Opens Its 2014 Local SEO Industry Survey Local SEO firm BrightLocal has posted its third annual local SEO industry survey, asking SEO professionals to answer 20 questions on SEO business […]
Last Thursday, Google launched a new ranking signal to give HTTPS sites a ranking boost, a small ranking boost, to encourage webmasters to migrate their sites from HTTP to HTTPS. In our story from Thursday, we covered why Google is doing this and the concerns some SEOs had with the migration, as well as 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 Starts Giving A Ranking Boost To Secure HTTPS/SSL Sites Google To Give Secure Sites A Ranking Boost Google has announced that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate […]
The SEO industry is abuzz today with the news of Google’s latest ranking signal: Using SSL certificates will provide a boost in Google’s search rankings. (The web hosting industry is all abuzz, too, if you’re curious.) Google says it’s a “very lightweight signal” for now, but one that may become stronger over time because Google […]
Google To Give Secure Sites A Ranking Boost Google has announced that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give you a minor ranking boost. Google says this gives websites a small ranking benefit, only counting as a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm. In fact, Google […]
Yandex announced (in Russian) today that they have now went 100% secure, encrypting all search queries, resulting in a huge jump in the [not provided] count. This was first reported by Anna Oshkalo who shared a screen shot of her analytics detailed the bulk of her Yandex keyword data now shows [not set] or [not […]
Rolfe Winkler on the Wall Street Journal blog reports on “private conversations” that Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts has within Google about rewarding sites with higher rankings in the search results that have better security. This is news that has come out of SMX West, as we covered just about a month ago […]
Yesterday, Google announced it is expanding secure search to clicks on paid ads. The change means that the search query a user typed in before clicking on an ad will be dropped from the referrer string in the URL and won’t be passed to analytics or other software other than AdWords. The move is aimed […]
As suspected, Google is moving to secure search for clicks on paid search ads. In an announcement posted by Paul Feng, Product Management Director, AdWords on the Ads Developer Blog, the company states, “Today, we are extending our efforts to keep search secure by removing the query from the referrer on ad clicks originating from […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Marin Launches Context Connect, Says Retailer Impressions Surged During Polar Vortex As the brutal Polar Vortex weather system bore down on much of the U.S. this winter, consumers apparently hunkered down […]
Google has announced they’ve added “more precise” data for the Index Status reports in Google Webmaster Tools. Specifically, Google is now reporting each indexed URLs for each protocol, specifically both for HTTP and HTTPS, as well as for verified subdirectories. Google said this change “makes it easy for you to monitor different sections of your […]
At the moment, users of IE8, still the most popular version of the Internet Explorer browser worldwide, are being sent to unsecure search on Google. The move to send users to Google regular servers instead of secure servers is related to Google seeming to work through how it deals with people still using the older […]
Google has been migrating all their properties to work over SSL over the past years and they are still working on that migration process. Google would like to see you make your site work over SSL as well. So much so that Matt Cutts said at SMX West that he would personally love to make […]
When Google moved to secure search in October 2011, it was a blow to publishers, who began losing data about the search terms used to reach their sites. It also opened Google up to claims of hypocrisy, in that advertisers continued to receive the terms. Now, Google says it’s reexamining the issue and seeking a […]
Yahoo has pushed out a new update to their iOS Yahoo Search app in the Apple App Store. The new update is version 3.0 and touts a new minimalistic design to match the iOS 7 design themes. Yahoo said in the release notes: New minimalist design puts the focus on your results so you can […]
With the three major search engines migrating their default searches to secure search, over SSL/HTTPS, marketers and webmasters want to know what referrer and analytics data will be passed to them and what won’t. The majority of Google is secure search, Yahoo yesterday defaulted all searches to be conducted over SSL, and Bing is currently […]
By default, searches on Yahoo.com are now done through a secure server. That means more protection for searchers but less data for search marketers about how they are receiving traffic. Most visits from Yahoo done via search will appear as if someone came to a site directly. As a result, Yahoo’s apparent popularity as 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: Ryanair CEO Claims Airline Is Working With Google On A Flight Search & Comparison Tool In an interview published by Irish Independent, Irish airlines Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary claims his airline […]
Bing now appears to be supporting secure search through the https://www.bing.com address. Previously, trying to use this address generated an error. If you conduct a search on Bing, while on the HTTPS URL, it will remain HTTPS and keep your searches secure. This is a new feature Bing quietly started supporting over the weekend. Cyrus Shepard […]
Not interested in having Google encrypt and secure your searches for some reason? Well, now there is a way to stop Google from forcing you to search using Google SSL search, as it made everyone use last month. All you need to do is add ?nord=1 to the Google URL parameter. For example, searching Google […]
Last week, Google moved to send all searches through Google SSL Search, setting up the ultimate end of keyword data passed along via referrers non-advertisers. Now, Google’s official alternative channel for this information — Google Webmaster Tools — has also stopped sharing the data, most likely due to a bug. A Bug Or An Intentional […]
In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads. Google says this has been done to provide “extra protection” for searchers, and the company may be aiming to block NSA spying activity. Possibly, it’s a move to increase ad sales. Or both. Welcome […]
Since September, people using Safari in iOS 6 and searching on Google have appeared to publishers as if they’ve come directly to their sites, as opposed to having been driving by search. At last, the reason behind the Dark Google cut-off of data has been found: mobile Safari doesn’t support the “meta referrer” tag. I […]
With the news today that Chrome is moving to secure search, marketers may be wondering about the larger picture of using search data in Web analytics. The searches people do that lead them to a site is valuable data to an organization. What other data source do we have that gives us direct access to […]
Google is hiring a new product marketing manager for search with one of the key goals being to find ways to get people to sign-in while they search. The job description says: As Product Marketing Manager within the search growth team, you will be responsible to developing plans, creatives, campaigns and programs to increase the […]
Google’s Matt Cutts said on a Hacker News comment that those who are interested in switching their whole web site from http to https should go ahead and do that. I spotted this comment in response to Facebook going HTTPS by default, where someone mentioned that Google may have an issue indexing HTTPS content. Matt […]
It is just over a year since Google began encrypting search by default for signed-in users. A new study finds that as a result, 39% search-related traffic from Google to web sites now has search terms withheld. Optify conducted a study over eleven months with 424 web sites, involving 17,143,603 visits and 7,241,093 referring keywords, to see […]
A change in iOS 6 made by Apple and not anticipated by Google means that for the past week or so — and likely for some weeks to come — those reaching web sites from Google’s search engine after doing searches from within Safari will be counted as “direct” traffic rather than “search” traffic. As […]
Another source of Google search referrer data appears lost. Searches through Google that happen in Apple’s Safari browser search box in iOS 6, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, no longer pass along search terms to publishers. For those unfamiliar, “referrer” data is information a browser passes along to a publisher about the last page you were […]
Firefox 14 has officially launched today, which means all Google searches are encrypted by default. However, due to a Google loophole, the encryption will not prevent things you search for from “leaking” out to Google’s advertisers nor potentially showing up as search suggestions or in data reported to web sites through Google Webmaster Central. The Firefox […]
Think that (not provided) is only impacting SEO-related websites? Think again. The Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism school that’s well known in media circles, wrote Wednesday about the growing impact that (not provided) is having on publisher websites. Author Steve Myers shared what he found after checking Poynter.org’s analytics: Keywords were hidden in 29 percent […]
The popular Firefox browser is on track to use a secure method of searching Google by default, a change that will help prevent potential “eavesdropping” of what people are searching for. It will also further reduce the ability for publishers to know how people find their sites in Google — except for Google advertisers. A […]
Google has announced that by default, it will begin encrypting search beyond Google.com in the coming weeks. Since the reason Google uses secure search is primarily to enable its “Search Plus Your World” personalized results, this means SPYW is likely to expand beyond the US. It also means that search marketers can expect the percentage […]