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 thrive within the fast-paced SEO environment Oct 1, 2018 by Casie Gillette There will always be new mistakes and new challenges. The key is to learn and evolve and […]
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is not some complicated form of digital marketing witchcraft. SEO means making Search Engines such as Google like your webpage the most for a search. The reason we include a guide to SEO on a website about Online Advertising is twofold. If you are running paid search ads, then studies have shown that they perform […]
A new report shows that there's little correlation between ranking well in YouTube search and doing the same in Google video carousels.
A recent interview with a Bing representative suggested links will be downplayed for rankings in the near future. But that is not currently the case.
Google's document on ranking in the local search results has been expanded to include factors like links, articles and directories.
Overstock.com says it was hit by a change in Google's search ranking algorithm, hurting growth. Its stock dropped 18% based on the earnings report news.
Google hints it may decide to use structured data in its ranking algorithm some day, though the company has previously denied it.
While Google has been quiet on the link penalty side, Yandex -- the largest Russian search engine -- has issued widespread link penalties on several hundred sites.
There are many questions about the latest Google Panda update, Panda 4.2. Here are some answers for you from our talk with Google.
Did you notice the iOS app store search results have changed? Some have.
After dropping links from their ranking algorithm for specific niches, Yandex brings back links as a positive and negative ranking factor.
Google says that last update the SEO community noticed was not related to the Penguin or Panda algorithms.
We begin two weeks of year-in-review articles with a look at the most popular news stories we covered in 2014.
Google's new local ranking algorithm that launched in the US earlier this year has rolled out to the UK, Canada and Australia.
Michael Basilyan, Senior Program Manager from the Bing Content Quality Team, shared a nice set of details on the Bing blog about how Bing’s algorithms determine what makes for content quality. Michael Basilyan explained that content quality is a primary factor in their ranking algorithm, along with topical relevance and context. Michael then went on […]
At Search Marketing Expo East, Google engineer Gary Illyes talked a lot about user experience and how webmasters really need to focus on that. Over the past week or so, I asked Google about this and tried to understand why Google stressed this point so much at the event. Google told us in a statement: […]
The Wall Street Journal added more color to the unfolding story of the collapse of the Google-European Commission antitrust settlement. Notwithstanding denials by outgoing competition czar Joaquín Almunia, it’s clear that pressure from major European publishers, rivals and politicians undermined the deal. We’re in something of a “now what?” moment. If a settlement cannot be […]
One of the unanswered questions in the ongoing European-Google antitrust saga is what concrete changes or concessions critics want (or will accept) from Google. One of those things may have just come to light in a Financial Times interview with German justice minister Heiko Maas. Maas asserts in the interview that Google needs to become more “transparent” about its algorithm and […]
As the analysis continues on yesterday’s Google local search algorithm changes — that we’re calling the Pigeon update — one thing appears to be clear: Local directory sites are getting better visibility in Google’s search results. More specifically, it looks like Google has fixed its “Yelp problem” and is now showing Yelp pages at the […]
SEOs and Social Marketers speculate on the impact that Social Media marketing has on how well their websites perform in search results. There has been much conjecture with many people interpreting an array of correlations as causation. Both Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester have come out (on more than one occasion) to emphatically […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a video that backlinks, over time, will become a little less important. Matt did say that backlinks in the Google ranking algorithm still have many years left in them. Matt explained that Google is focusing a lot now on working on ways to determine if a […]
Google’s Panda update has been one of the most talked about algorithmic updates by SEOs and webmasters since it launched in February 2011. Today is the day the patent document describing Panda was granted. It was written by Navneet Panda, which is why it was named Panda, and Vladimir Ofitserov of Google. The patent application […]
Today’s video from Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts tackles the question, “How can you tell if your site is suffering from an algorithmic penalty, or you are simply being outgunned by better content?” According to Cutts: It’s kind of tricky because we have a large amount of algorithms that all interact, and whether you […]
Yandex chose the Bynet Week conference in the city of Minsk in Belarus to announce that they have “Started to remove links gradually” from the Yandex MatrixNet algorithm for commercial queries in just the Moscow region. Alexander Sadovsky, Head of Web Search at Yandex, made the announcement yesterday following on from his original explanation in […]
Duane Forrester from Bing wrote a blog post on the Bing Webmaster Blog suggesting that Bing’s search ranking algorithms do in fact consider poor grammar, typos and poor language to be part of their ranking factors. Duane said, “just as you’re judging others’ writing, so the engines judge yours.” Meaning, Bing does look at how […]
Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts posted a longer video today answering what it is like to fight webspam at Google. The questions posed by Brian Harnish of Westminster, California were: What is a day in the life of a search spam team member like? What is the evolution of decisions in terms of […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video answering another webmaster question. The question was, “Are results in different positions ranked by different algorithms?” The answer is no, Google does not have reserve web search results slots or positions for ranking for specific algorithms. For example, slots 3-5 in the results are not […]
On Friday night, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts tweeted a link to a Gawker story named Shady Marketing Firms Are Still Quietly Bribing Bloggers. Matt said, “we’re taking action on hundreds of buyers, dozens of sites, & dozens of spammy writers,” in reference to that story. It is hard to say if Google […]
Google has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called “Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far. What’s a “search algorithm?” That’s a technical term for what you can think of as a recipe […]
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced at SMX West today that their Panda algorithm will soon be more integrated into their overall continuous algorithm updates. Meaning, the Panda refreshes that we have been tracking in detail will start to be less severe and noticeable to webmasters and SEOs. The Panda updates will be […]
Do a search on Google Finance for the word “sell,” and Google returns the stock chart for Apple. Why? Some thought Google had rigged this as an “Easter Egg” or joke. However, Google says this isn’t so. In the first edition of this story, I could see no good reason why this was happening, something […]
It’s back. And it’s bigger than ever. I’m talking about Google’s monthly announcement of search quality/algorithm changes — an announcement that the company skipped in July, making the one that they posted late Friday afternoon the biggest ever, with a reported 86 changes covering June and July. As I’m wont to do, below is a […]
It’s been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google’s happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about “negative SEO” as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam […]
Search rankings got you down on Google recently? It’s not the expected over-optimization penalty, as some have been guessing at. Rather, Google may have thought your site was a “parked domain,” when it wasn’t. Search forums like Webmaster World and Google’s own search discussion areas have had much discussion about recent drops in ranking, such as here, here and […]
Holiday deal sites that Bing banned from its search listings just before the busy shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have now been allowed to return. They include a site run by the group that created the entire Cyber Monday concept. Banned: Not Your Usual Suspects We reported previously how the sites had […]
Precision evaluations. Side-by-side experiments with human focus groups. Click evaluations. All of it led to more than 500 algorithm changes in 2010. Eric Schmidt is speaking today at a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, about Google’s business practices, and answering claims that Google’s business practices are anti-competitive. As part of his appearance, Schmidt (as […]
Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that late last week it pushed out a small update to the Panda filter. “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users,” a Google spokesperson told us. “This most recent update is one of the roughly […]
More than 130 search engine optimizers around the world have shared their opinions on the most important (and least important) factors that influence natural search engine rankings. Those opinions are included in SEOmoz’s just-published 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. Due to changes in how SEOmoz conducted the survey and presents the results, it’s quite […]
There have been rumblings that Google has unveiled another huge algorithm change being dubbed “Panda 3.0” in some quarters. Officially, Google says it’s not so. Only a minor update, “far smaller” than Panda 2, has happened. Changes have been spotted by some sharp-eyed SEOs over the past few days, and Google agrees that there were […]
A story on TechCrunch today notes that a Sequoia-backed shopping site called Milanoo appears to be spamming Google with hoards of paid links that are helping them rank for things like [cheap dresses] and [evening gown]. They got news of the situation by way of a site called Digital Due Diligence that checked Milanoo’s backlink profile […]