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, […]
Google announced you can now hide or block certain sites from showing up in the Google search results. When you do a search in Google, the search results will show a new link near the “Cache” link when you click a result and then return to Google. The link that Google adds to the search […]
Search engine Blekko has announced that it has now blocked 1.1 million web sites from its search results using a new system it calls “AdSpam,” and new pages from any web site won’t be added if they don’t pass muster. Blocking Spam Before It Gets In From the Blekko press release: “This new technology will […]
As search industry analysts continue to review the fallout from last week’s Google Farmer update, we’re getting new snapshots of what sites were hurt and which ones have survived the crosshairs of Google’s latest algorithm change. One such analysis from SearchMetrics confirms much of what’s already been reported, but also adds several new names 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: Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top […]
On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top search results. Content farms were seen by many as the target. Were they hit? Who was hit? Some figures are coming out.
Last night, Google released the Farmer Update, which was Google’s response to improving the quality of the search results, particularly removing sites “which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.” Many suspect that this was aimed at “content farms” and some labeled properties from […]
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material. New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to […]
Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from January 2011:
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.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Demand Media & Being “The Best Click” On Google Demand Media’s success? Listening to what people want and generating great content to show up at Google. At least that’s part of […]
Demand Media’s success? Listening to what people want and generating great content to show up at Google. At least that’s part of it, said Demand’s chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford — and she came armed with screenshots and examples to prove it.
Embargoed news for this morning was published last week. That news was that Blekko had 30 million search queries in January and “users have created more than 110,000 slashtags since the company’s launch in November, an indication the search market is thirsty for innovation.” Blekko has recently gained attention for banning the “top 20 spam […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Did A Google Employee Just Register Hiybbprqag.com To Help Recruit New Employees? That’s a screenshot of Google’s “Jobs” page, which can be found at https://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html. But it can also be reached […]
TechCrunch reports Blekko, the SlashTag search engine, has made the bold move of banning some “content farms” from their index completely. Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s CEO confirmed the ban with us today. He told us Blekko has decided to ban the “top 20 spam sites from blekko’s index entirely, based on our users click /spam on […]
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 Executive Believed Missing After Egypt Protests There are several reports that a Google executive based in the Middle East is missing after taking part in the protests in Egypt last […]
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 […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Homepage Gets More Modular, Customizable Google has redesigned the homepage for its AdWords advertiser interface in an effort to bring more relevant, customized information up front for marketers. The main […]
Earlier this week, Google’s Matt Cutts announced the company would be releasing a new on-page spam detection technique to reduce the amount of content spam we see in Google. Cutts just confirmed the rumors that this algorithm is indeed live. Matt said the change to their algorithm to prevent low-quality scraper content in Google’s index […]
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 […]
Demand Media — widely described as a “content farm” — went public yesterday and quickly racked up a valuation higher than the New York Times. I figured the news might cause some at the New York Times to wonder if they needed to be more Demand Media-like. Would every story be turned into a question? […]
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 fired a warning toward “content farms” — you’re in our anti-spam sights in 2011. That message was made loud and clear in Matt Cutts’ blog post today, a post in which Google also says its search quality has improved due to new spam fighting techniques. Cutts points out that Google has already taken […]
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 New China Plan: Target Display Advertisers, Report Says Despite its ongoing struggles in China, Google reportedly has a new plan for its business there: targeting display advertising, particularly amongst 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 Vows To Look At Deceptive Cloaking Techniques Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted that Google will be looking more at Cloaking in the first quarter of 2011. Cloaking, as defined by Google, […]
Every content-driven SEO strategy targets a tiny sliver of a giant Venn Diagram, with content that is either a) valuable enough that someone out there will search for it, and b) unique enough that it can rank. There’s one company that has turned that from a guideline to a credo: Demand Media. Demand Media’s financials may be […]
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will be speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I’m here and will be live blogging her remarks, when the session begins. Bartz is set to speak at 2pm Pacific, and she’ll be interviewed on stage by John Battelle. Live blogging to start shortly. There’s also a live […]
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 Making Location More Obvious, Prominent I’m not seeing it exactly but Google has said the company is making location more “transparent” or more obvious to users so that they can […]
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 Pulls Dead Body Images From Street View Brazil Google has removed Street View images in Brazil that showed dead bodies on local streets. One image showed a partly-covered body lying […]
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 Turns 12 Years Old Today Today is Google’s 12th birthday and to celebrate, Google has posted a special Google birthday logo cake. The birthday cake was designed by Wayne Thiebaud, […]
People love lists. Publishers love lists too because they sell copies of traditional print newspapers and magazines and, online, they generate lots of clicks and page views. For example, the HuffingtonPost has become a veritable archive of slideshows: “the 10 best places to live,” the “hottest beach bods of the summer” and so on. US […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Oracle Sued Google Over Patent Infringement Of Java Within Android Oracle has filed suit against Google for allegedly infringing on patents they hold for Java, which Oracle acquired last year. Karen […]
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 AdSense Updates Ad Layouts The Google AdSense blog announced they have updated the layout of some AdSense units. The main changes were to make the ads “more space-efficient and visually […]
Demand Media has filed for an IPO. The company, known as a content farm to some, produces much of its content on sites like eHow and others in direct response to what it determines people are searching for on the web. Its filing shed new light on how much it depends on SEO and Google, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Street Slide: Microsoft’s Next Killer Maps App? At the SIGGRAPH 2010 event this week in Los Angeles, Microsoft researchers showed off a next-generation tool for browsing street-level imagery. It’s called Street […]
At the beginning of Google’s “Searchology” event in early 2007 original Google employee Craig Silverstein opined, “If Google had started a year or two earlier, it wouldn’t have worked.” That’s because prior to that time (1998) the internet wasn’t yet large enough to require Google or enable people to see the value of its approach. […]
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: Bing To Rollout Red Carpet In Hollywood Along With New Features What’s the hottest trend in Hollywood right now? Ding, ding, it’s Bing. Google’s so 2009. As previously reported by CNET, […]
SEO focused videos, slide presentations, and podcasts recorded at various Search Marketing Expo conferences. To see the full presentation, click on either the screenshot, or the session’s title. SMX Advanced – June 11-12, 2013 – Seattle, WA Slides & Speaker Audio: From Microdata & Schema To Rich Snippets: Markup For The Advanced SEO Get your […]
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-Viacom Court Documents Out; Google Says Viacom ‘Secretly’ Uploaded Videos The three-year-old lawsuit in which Viacom is seeking $1 billion from Google over copyrighted videos on YouTube moved a step forward […]