Judging from the tweets I’ve seen, people are loving Google’s version of Pac-Man that’s playable on the Google home page today and tomorrow. They also have questions about it. Has anyone reached the end? Will you be able to play it in the future? Answers to these and more, below. Why’s Google Doing This? To […]
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 Launches Encrypted Web Search Want to keep your searches from being seen when using open WiFi or other networks? Google’s introduced a new “secure” encrypted version of its search. Anyone […]
It’s Google I/O, Google’s annual developers conference. The morning keynote gets underway at 9AM Pacific. Let’s see what surprises Google has in store for today. My liveblogging begins, below. For those at home, you can also watch along live — I/O sessions are being broadcast here on YouTube. Due to traffic, I arrived 15 minutes […]
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 May Finally Disclose AdSense Split … If You’re An Italian Newspaper, That Is How much money does Google keep for itself from AdSense ads that publishers carry? Unless you’re a […]
“Download time” and “speed” are terms that often confuse SEO professionals, web designers/developers, information architects and usability professionals alike because of various interpretations. A number of items influence download time, including but not limited to:
With privacy concerns over various Google products seemingly cropping up every week, the company said today that it will soon let web users opt-out of being tracked by its popular Google Analytics software. The news comes in a blog post today that says a browser-based plugin will be available “globally … in the coming weeks.” […]
You may have caught this in Danny Sullivan’s liveblogging of Ev William’s keynote at SXSW today, but just in case … Twitter has introduced a new platform called @anywhere that will allow web sites to integrate Twitter features more easily. The details seem a bit foggy to me, but it sounds like @anywhere takes many […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SEO Industry Cries Foul Over Google SEO ‘Services’ A vocal contingent of search engine optimizers is up in arms today, saying Google is “offering SEO consulting services.” There are posts on […]
Last year, I took a look at the spiking searches leading up to the Superbowl to see how the search engines, and those who want to be found in them, satisfied those queries. This morning, I took another look, and while things are a bit better from a searcher satisfaction perspective (primarily due to increased blended 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: “Inkbait”: A Case Study In Linkability In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), the tactic known as “linkbait” is one of the few link building tactics the search engines embrace, […]
In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content. Now, there’s evidence this proposal is either live or is about to be. Read on for more details on the proposal, how it works, and why it might be past the proposal stage. […]
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 Docs Adds Files Storage, AKA GDrive The Google Docs blog announced a new feature that allows you to upload files and share those files with friends, co-workers and colleagues. Google […]
VigLink is a new service with venture capital backing from Google that aims to make it easy for publishers to earn through affiliate programs. It promises to turn any outbound link on a web site into an affiliate link after the installation of a small bit of JavaScript code. VigLink is in the news today […]
Those who visit Google.com today will be reminded that it is Issac Newton’s birthday today. Issac Newton came up with the theory of gravitation and the story behind it. In short, the story was that Newton was sitting by or under an apple tree, when an apple fell from the tree. That is what sparked […]
I said from time to time, I’d highlight some bad search results I come across. Here’s a killer — a top ranking for us national anthem on Google that when you click on it brings up random web sites that have nothing to do with the song. Behind the scenes, there’s an Ask.com connection. Let’s […]
Something’s up with Google’s Chrome operating system. Don’t know what, but we’ll all know soon as a press conference begins at 10AM Pacific. I’m coming at your live from the Googleplex. Buckle up, and we’ll see what’s happening. You can also watch from home. Webcast info is here. There will also be related coverage developing […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Build Your Own Google News Home Page With Custom Sections Google News has made it easier to customize its home page with the creation of a Custom Sections Directory that includes […]
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 Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted “Social Circle” Google Social Search is rolling out, a new service from Google that allows you to easily find material written by […]
Google has just announced a number of new features for Google Analytics, including more powerful reporting capabilities, greater customization options and a new “intelligence engine” that Google says can help search marketers drive smarter data insights. Here’s a rundown of the new features, and why they’re important.
Google Webmaster Tools has just launched a “labs” section, where you’ll find new features that may be early in the development cycle and not quite as robust as the rest of the tools. The features available so far are Fetch as Googlebot, which lets you see exactly what Googlebot is served when it requests a […]
The Google AdSense blog announced that sites designed specifically for full-rich mobile phones, such as the iPhone, Android or Palm Pre can now show high-end contextual ads. The blog said: Today we’re launching a new feature for AdSense mobile publishers that will allow you to take advantage of the high-end mobile phone browsing experience. This […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Schmidt: Someday, AdSense Publishers May Know Google’s Cut Of Ad Revenues How much money does Google keep back for itself from the AdSense ads it places on third party sites across […]
A new feature has appeared in the Site Configuration Settings Sections of Google Webmaster Tools. The setting, called Parameter Handling, enables site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site. Google lists the parameters they’ve found in the URLs on your site, and indicates whether or […]
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 Maximize The Impact Of Your Top Performing Keywords Behavior is unique for these high volume/value keywords and as a result, steps need to be taken to make these terms […]
It seems like Google has changed the way they handle the “show more results from” feature, by removing the simple HTML link to a site command feature and by dynamically opening up several more results, within the same search results page. They are using an AJAX (JavaScript) driven plus sign box that adds an additional […]
The “Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Governor Official Website” put up by “Texans for Kay Bailey Hutchison, Allan Shivers, Jr., Treasurer” over the weekend in support of Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Texas governor was briefly in Google but now appears to be completely missing. Huh. Odd since Bing seems to have indexed it just fine, although […]
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 Seeks Privacy Counsel With Gov’t Ties Google Watch points out a job posting on the Google site for “Privacy Policy Counsel” based in Washington, DC. Given that Google is under […]
Earlier I posted that Google Analytics and other JavaScript-based tracking tools might be undercounting visits from Twitter. I’ve done some more digging, which supports the case. In my test, Twitter seems to have sent 500% to 1600% more traffic than log files or hosted stats packages like Google Analytics might show. How Twitter Might Send […]
Over the past year, I’ve seen many people report that Twitter can send tons of traffic to a web site. Certainly I’ve seen first-hand how Twitter has become one of the top non-search referrer sources for Search Engine Land and for some other sites I oversee. But as much as you think Twitter is driving […]
The Google Webmaster Central blog finally blogged Google is now indexing the content of files that some SWF files load externally, technically from “external resource loading”. Flash often loads external files to generate what you see in the SWF, so if the SWF is calling an external HTML, XML, another SWF, etc files, Google will […]
Imagine that you fired up your computer and found that a bunch of your programs no longer worked, because behind the scenes, the operating system had been upgraded without any backwards compatibility. That’s what happened this week with Google. Some things that were working just fine now are broken, because Google isn’t being backwards compatible. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Internet Explorer 6 Forces Bing As Default Search Provider It appears that Bing is overriding the default search provider set by users of Internet Explorer 6. Several IE6 users have complained […]
This week at Google I/O, Google talked a lot about the evolution of the technological capabilities of the web. HTML 5 is ushering in new era of browser-based development and applications. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, kicked things off with, “My message to you is that this is the beginning of the real win of cloud […]
Google cofounder Sergey Brin turned up at a session for the press at the Google I/O event today and took questions on Google’s relations with newspapers, cited hopes of breaking “Page’s Law” of software sluggishness and even one about what he thought about the expected name of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Below, a summary […]
I’m at the Google I/O conference, where it is being opened by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He’s welcoming the audience and saying it’s great to be in front of programmers and saying, “it’s time. it’s time for us to take advantage of the amazing opportunity before us … it has been 20 years trying to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Gives A Sneak-Peek At Its New Home Page Yahoo continues to develop a new home page, and today has shared a sneak-peek at the latest design that’s being tested internally. […]
I reported Google appears to be testing a new click tracking method in the search results. In the past, Google selectively tracked clicks by appending tracking URLs to the search results. Now, it appears that those tracking URLs are done through JavaScript and are virtually invisible to the end user. Here is a sample of […]
Another publisher is complaining that Google isn’t giving them their “fair share” — this time Forbes CEO Jim Spanfeller. Google makes $60 million off the Forbes brand, he claims (with no proof), and boosting “quality publishers” like Forbes would help Eric Schmidt’s web sewage problem. This is from the publication that sells paid links that […]
Google Analytics announced the public availability of the new Google Analytics API. The API gives developers, webmasters, and SEMs the ability to pull data from Google Analytics to use as they wish. Clearly this can be useful for SEMs who want to integrate analytics data with their SEM systems, plus developers or webmasters who have […]
The DiggBar has been out for about a week now. Since then, there continues to be concerns over twin issues of whether it robs sites of link love and frames their contents in a way that’s unfair to publishers. I had a good conversation with Digg cofounder Kevin Rose today about these issues and how […]