Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is now an option within Google’s Chrome new tab page screens. Prior, if you changed your default search provider in Chrome, the new tab page would still show Google has the search option. It would change the search provider in the URL/omnibox area but it would not replace Google from the […]
Some ads will not work or may cause problems on your site, but this is not something to be overly worried about. Broken and dishonest ads aren’t nearly as common as they used to be due to standardisation. But with the near-infinite combination of web designers, ad designers, ad servers, computers and browsers at play […]
Now that the European Courts have given its citizens the “Right To Be Forgotten” in major search engines, the inevitable has happened — a brand new business model built on removal requests has taken shape. In response to the EU giving individuals the right to request Google remove URLs from its European search results, Reputation […]
The native UTM tagging solution was a top request for years.
Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, Pierre Far and Zineb Ait Bahajji, posted on the Google Webmaster blog today that they’ve updated their official guidelines for moving your web site and having Google in mind when doing so. They broke out the process based on two ways of moving your site: (1) Move a site with no […]
A few weeks ago, we reported on cases where Google was misattributing content for select news publishers. We showed examples of Google showing URLs of large news publishers but those URLs listed were not the source URLs and thus, redirecting from Google’s search results to a completely different URL. Yesterday, a few weeks after we […]
Google Head of Search Spam Matt Cutts posted a video today answering how Google goes about evaluating which new search algorithms they use and which they throw away or adapt. The question was posed by James Foster of Sydney, Australia who asked: What are some of the metrics that Google uses to evaluate whether one iteration […]
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 […]
A reader has sent us examples of Google misattributing content from dozens of large online news publications, with hundreds thousands of examples of Google indexing URLs and pages, but that content being pulled from a different source. For example, if you search for [hometownlocator site:post-gazette.com], the first result is local.post-gazette.com/boardman+florist.9.125954212p.home.html: If you look at the […]
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 […]
This week, Google added new reporting available for mobile app campaigns in Google Analytics. By linking AdWords and Google Analytics accounts and enabling auto-tagging, mobile app advertisers will be able to access more detailed performance reports about their campaigns in Google Analytics. New reports on mobile app campaign performance include day parts, destination URLs and […]
Last month we saw Google testing displaying the site name in place of the URL in the snippets of the search results. Now, Rubén reports Google testing a nicer approach, showing both the site name and the URL in the snippet. So when you search for this site, it will show “Search Engine Land – […]
In a video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, he said you don’t have to worry about there being a down side, related to SEO, when using a responsive design approach for mobile web sites. The question posed to him was: Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead […]
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 […]
Google is yet again experimenting with the snippet display in the search results. Google Operating System noticed Google bringing back a test from 2011, where they replaced the URL in the snippets with the site name. Here is a picture of how the Google search results look without the URL but with the site names: […]
Bing Ads launched two very handy tools today that make account analysis from within the web interface a reality. The Dimensions Tab provides a shortcut to performing campaign analysis and includes access the fantastic Distribution graph. If you’re not using the distribution graph already, do yourself a favor and start. The graph is hidden at […]
John Lincoln from Ignite Visibility spotted a Google Hangout where Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google will use URLs or domain names within content that are unlinked, i.e. without an a href attribute, to discover and index new pages of content. John went on to add that typically no PageRank or trust is flown from […]
Last year, home improvement company HomeAdvisor.com underwent a monumental rebranding effort that included switching more than 10 million URLS from their previous company name to their new brand. With over $200 million in revenue at risk and thirteen years worth of online brand equity, HomeAdvisor.com’s CEO Chris Terrill and CTO Brandon Ridenour understood switching the […]
Google released an update to AdWords Editor, version 10.2, that supports upgraded sitelink management and several other smaller feature updates. Apparently now dubbed upgraded sitelinks, these new sitelinks rolled out in June just prior to the enhanced campaign roll-out. They give advertisers the ability to include additional details for each sitelink. So far, they’ve been spotted […]
Google is testing yet another user interface change – this time by not showing the URL of the search results on the page. @tecnonetblog tweeted that he spotted this test and posted images of it on Twitter. In the images below, you won’t see the URL, which is now green followed by an arrow, under […]
Bing announced a new feature for Bing Webmaster Tools – the ability to inform Bing of a site move. The new Bing Site Move Tool allows you to not just move from one domain to another domain but also from within a site; URLs to URLs. Moving From Within The Same Domain Name If you […]
Bit.ly announced a new set of APIs named Social Data APIs. The new APIs allow you to search for top stories in real time over the Bit.ly URL network. You can quickly see the top URLs and stories for any specific query right now, in real time. The three types of functions include: (1) True […]
SEO site audits should all be at least a bit unique. Everyone has their own process for pricing and conducting SEO audits, but one of the important things to keep in mind is the different needs of different types of sites. The core issues and focuses in auditing a twenty page B2B lead gen site […]
Anyone who works in interactive advertising can testify to the tedium that often accompanies even the seemingly-simplest of campaign changes. That’s the problem Google is trying to address in its latest AdWords feature — bulk editing. The feature is being rolled out in a few accounts for final testing, before Google eventually rolls it out […]
It’s been almost two weeks since Google launched its link disavowal tool. Some have been busy diving in and using it, but others have had more detailed questions about it. We’ve got some answers, from the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts. Question: How do people know what links they should remove? Answer: When […]
Yesterday, Google webmaster tools launched Index Status (available under Health) that charts the number of indexed pages for your site over the last year. Total Indexed Count Google says that this count is accurate (unlike the site: search operator) and is post-canonicalization. In other words, if your site includes a lot of duplicate URLs (due […]
Back in March, Bing began sharing regular updates about changes that it’s made to search quality and the user search experience, much like Google has been doing since late last year. The latest Bing update was published earlier today and, rather than sharing surface-level information about dozens of changes like Google does, Bing has chosen […]
Google is aware of, and working on a fix, for a bug in how it displays business URLs from Google Maps. As SIM Partners reported yesterday, local business listings on Google.com are showing links to maps.google.com — the URL for the business’ old Place page — rather than showing links to the business’ website. Here’s […]
Microsoft has confirmed that they do discover and index URLs that they find through users surfing the Internet with the Bing Toolbar installed. This can be a concern for those who know certain URLs are only accessible if the individual knows about it and navigates to the URL with the Bing Toolbar installed. For example, […]
If the answer to this question is stunned silence, your website could lose long-term search engine visibility. Archiving has always been an important part of the SEO process.
Google’s introduction yesterday of Google+ Pages for businesses will likely have a dramatic impact on +1s in AdWords. When businesses create a Page on Google+, they can link the page to their web site URLs and also to their AdWords account. When that’s done, +1s for any of the linked URLs — on web sites […]
Duane Forrester announced on the Bing Search blog a major upgrade to Bing Webmaster Tools. He said this is their biggest update since the Honey Badger update from June. The key updates and changes include: Expanded Crawl Details: This includes showing inbound links for any URL including 300, 400 & 500 codes. Plus URLs listed […]
It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and so forth: Should we use dashes or underscores in our URLs? Google re-opened the discussion recently with a new YouTube video that highlights how Google currently handles dashes and underscores, and also reminds […]
Today, Google launched a new way for site owners to request that specific web pages be crawled. How is this different from the other ways available to let Google know about your pages and when should you use this feature vs. the others? Read on for more. This new method for submitting URLs to Google […]
After years of minimal change to the format of AdWords ads (some ad extensions are the only radical change), all paid search ads now have the +1 button right after the headline on their right side. How will this new social aspect impact paid search marketing? And what can in-house search marketers do now to […]
Google Operating System reports Google is testing a new search snippet, one that is displaying the site name as opposed to the destination URL under the search result’s description. Here is a screen shot from the blog: I personally cannot replicate the same behavior, what I see is the full destination URL in the search […]
Twitter announced a new feature allowing users to tweet easier and safer. The official t.co Twitter shortener will now automatically shorten URLs right from the Tweet box when using the web version of Twitter. The feature shortens links to 19 characters, and shows users a preview of the destination link. When a user’s link will […]
Is your website’s URL structure based on the perceived logic of your boss’ teenage son? Or even worse, a software engineer? Search-engine friendly labeling systems are critical for long-term search engine visibility.
Google has changed its AdWords interface to allow marketers to use a single negative keyword list across multiple campaigns. ” Negative keywords like [free or trial] don’t require granular management on the campaign level, and we’ve heard from many of you that you’d like a more scalable way to manage these broadly-applicable sets of terms,” […]
Solving the Big URL Issues Presentations from SMX East, October 2010 URLs continue to be a key technical obstacle to search engine optimization. Internal and external linking structure, URL formats, parameters, faceted navigation, breadcrumbs, tracking codes, pagination, canonicalization options, hyphens and underscores. What really matters? What should you rewrite and what should you leave alone? […]