Google is currently beta testing a new international targeting report within Google Webmaster Tools. The new International Targeting report is designed to help webmasters who have international sites and use lang markup understand common mistakes and learn what errors they need to fix, in order to better communicate the language settings across the webmaster’s internationalized […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Supreme Court Rules Street View “Wiretapping” Class Action Can Proceed Against Google According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Supreme Court will not review a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of […]
On Friday, Google’s John Mueller answered a question I proposed in a Webmaster/Search Helpdesk Hangout about the issues around a penalized site being redirected to an unpenalized site. The question was: What if a competitor takes a site that has a severe penalty and 301 redirects it to my penalty-free site — would it cause […]
Today is the 20th anniversary of the robots.txt directive being available for webmasters to block search engines from crawling their pages. The robots.txt was created by Martijn Koster in 1994 while he was working at Nexor after having issues with crawlers hitting his sites too hard. All major search engines back then, including WebCrawler, Lycos […]
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 Ups Its Twitter Game: Rolls Out Hashtag & Twitter Handle Search Features Starting this week, Bing users are going to see even more Twitter content in search results. As a […]
Starting this week, Bing users are going to see even more Twitter content in search results. As a result of an exclusive partnership between the two companies that started in 2009, tweets have been showing up in Bing search results for some time. With Bing’s latest round of new Twitter-related search features, users now 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 Analytics Now Separates Brand And Non-Brand PPC Traffic Brand and non-brand paid search terms typically perform very differently and most paid search teams analyze these sets of keywords separately. To […]
When Google released its most recent modification to the Panda algorithm, Panda 4.0, on May 20th, one of the sites reportedly hit hard by the update was the large press release distribution company, PR Newswire. The company’s answer to recover from the algorithmic penalty is to “take action” against press release spammers through new internal […]
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 Drops, Google+ Circle Count From Authorship In Search Results Google’s John Mueller announced they are making a major change in the search results around authorship. Specifically, Google is dropping the […]
Google’s John Mueller has announced that Google is making a major change in the search results around authorship. Specifically, Google is dropping the profile photo and circle count from the search listings where authorship is assigned to a web page. Mueller said that the “click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the […]
Among the numerous announcements at the Google I/O developer conference this morning, Google said it was expanding its app indexing program to all Android apps and developers. App indexing allows for deep linking of app content from mobile web search results. Previously, Google had only been indexing selected apps, although the program has been steadily […]
Even though Google needs SEOs and SEOs need Google, the search giant continues to make our jobs more challenging. The strategies and tactics that work for search and users has radically changed and yet there are still constants and will continue to be many opportunities for resourceful SEOs. In this presentation, veteran search marketer Marshall […]
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 […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Reputation VIP Launches Link Removal Service In Response To EU “Right To Be Forgotten” Ruling In response to the European Court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling last month, online management company […]
BrightEdge has released a report that observes, “over one in four mobile sites are misconfigured, leading to a massive loss of potential traffic. Twenty-seven percent of mobile sites are ranked lower than they should be because Google and other search engines do not recognize the mobile site as related to its desktop counterpart.” The report was inspired by panel […]
A newly released report from Shareaholic claims the top five search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL — have all experienced a decline in search traffic since December of 2013. Using data from December 2013 through May 2014, Shareaholic evaluated aggregate organic search traffic numbers from more than 300,000 publishers reaching an audience […]
Earlier this year, Google began offering much more detailed answers in the top Knowledge Graph box. Shortly after that was introduced, Google also began expanding those answers into a bulleted list format. We’ve been seeing these bulleted lists, especially in “how-to” like queries for months now and here are some interesting examples. In the example […]
SMX Advanced this June was, as usual, rich in forward-thinking strategy and tactical advice from experienced leaders in SEO, social media, PPC and mobile marketing. Expert marketers and industry insiders including Bing’s Anna Hughes, Bigdoor’s Joanna Lord, Disney’s Jeff Preston and even yours truly took the stage, each to share their unique experience and knowledge […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: eBay’s “Paid Search Is Ineffective” Study Gains Buzz And Skeptics, Again By claiming that paid search is largely “ineffective,” eBay has attracted a lot of attention and buzz with media outlets […]
By claiming that paid search is largely ineffective, eBay has attracted a lot of attention and buzz with media outlets repeating the findings. Anyone who isn’t familiar with eBay’s history of throw-it-at-the-wall-and-watch-what-happens paid search advertising strategy may be able to take the company’s final release of a report that first made the rounds last year […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Rather Than Opt-Out Of Google, German News Publishers Demand 11% Cut Of Revenue German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google […]
German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google for being included in its listings rather than choosing to opt-out. This time, the publishers want an 11% cut of Google’s revenue related to them being listed. The news comes from Jeff Jarvis, who writes that a […]
Google has introduced the ability to search for musicians on Android phones and then have apps with more information about them open up. The new feature is integrated into Google Search and works with the following apps: Google Play YouTube iHeart Radio Spotify TuneIn Rdio The feature only works for musicians. For example, a search for Katy […]
Cast your mind back to November 2011, only a few months after the launch of Google+. That’s when Google made one of its biggest Google+ification moves. It demoted a long-standing search feature involving the plus symbol so that searchers could instead more easily reach new “Google+ Pages” that had been launched. Today, this “Direct Connect” […]
You already read the live blog and news coverage. Or maybe you were one of the lucky ones who was in attendance last week for the annual Matt Cutts “You&A” AMA-style keynote conversation with Search Engine Land’s Founding Editor, Danny Sullivan, at SMX Advanced. Either way, you can now catch (or catch again) the full […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New Google Product Feed Specs Going Live Sept. 30, Including A Mobile Landing Page Attribute If you’re running Google Product Listing Ads, it’s time to revisit your feed. Google has updated […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Will Google & Bing Penalize Microsoft Over Their Sponsored Post Campaign For Internet Explorer? This morning, news broke that Microsoft Internet Explorer is getting help from SocialChorus to build more awareness […]
SearchMetrics released a study on the penetration of Universal Search results in the Google search results. By Universal Search we mean the way Google “blends” results from “vertical” search engines like Google Images, Google Videos, Google Maps or Google News into its web search listings. The study shows that for all searches, 85% of them […]
This morning, news broke that Microsoft Internet Explorer is getting help from SocialChorus to build more awareness for the aging browser by way of sponsored posts. Michael Arrington posted on his site an email from the company, soliciting him into this paid blog post campaign. The campaign instructs bloggers to write about their experience with […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Is The Mobile Migration Of Graph Search Upon Us? New Facebook Test Uncovers Mobile Web Integration We’ve been saying that it is just a matter of time for Facebook’s Graph Search […]
Link acquisition and auditing issues for the advanced SEO was probably one of the most popular sessions at SMX Advanced. The panelists framed the discussion around three areas: Preventative Link Building, Link Earning and Site Auditing. However, the tips — at least as far as I could tell — did not number the exact “25” described […]
We’ve been saying that it is just a matter of time for Facebook’s Graph Search to make its way to mobile devices. A test spotted yesterday by InsideFacebook shows that the launch may be close. The test shows an in-depth integration for mobile web users that contains the same bells and whistles as the desktop […]
A major datacenter project at Microsoft could lead to faster and more relevant search results on the company’s 5-year-old search engine, Bing. The Catapult project is a collaboration between Microsoft researchers and the Bing team that was presented Monday at an industry conference on computer architecture. A Microsoft blog post explains some of Catapult’s technical […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Russian Search Engine Yandex Now 100% “Not Provided,” Blocks Referrer Data Yandex announced (in Russian) today that they have now went 100% secure, encrypting all search queries, resulting in a huge […]
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 […]
At SMX Advanced last week, Google’s head of search quality, Matt Cutts, announced that they will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection notices with more detailed responses in some cases. We’ve now located an example of the new rejection notices, as shared by @johnedwarddoyle with me on Twitter. The new notice has a new section […]
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 Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0 Rolling Out Now Google is now rolling out the 3rd version of the PayDay Loan algorithm. Last night we reported that Google is going to be […]
Forget the idea that Pinterest is all about fashion photos, cute animals and inspirational messages. The company says it’s now hosting more than a billion Place Pins across four million Place Boards. Together, all this represents more than 300 unique countries and territories. That’s a lot of image and board geotagging going on. To make […]
This SEO ranking factors session has become a much-anticipated tradition at SMX Advanced, as the substantial early morning crowd in attendance this year testified. Each year, a panel of SEO data experts present their up-to-date findings, test results, and best guesses as to what factors are primary in Google’s ranking algorithm. There are always surprises, […]
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.