Twitter continues to expand its collection of search filters with the recent addition of search for Timelines and Lists. I’m not aware of any announcement about this, but it’s showing up as a search filter on Twitter.com and in the official Twitter apps (both iOS and Android). The option in the left-side navigation says “Timelines,” […]
The recent Yelp/Yahoo partnership has angered some local business owners who say years of positive reviews are now gone from their Yahoo Local business listings. Some of their stories were told this week in the Wall Street Journal, including Colonial Hardwood Flooring of Lexington, Mass. The company says it had built up “six years of […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 10 Surprising Facts About “Keyword (Not Provided)” For Paid Search Earlier this week, everyone went bananas over a rumor that paid search query data was disappearing and that third party tools […]
For the longest time, videos found within Google’s search results contained thumbnail images of a frame within the video. That is how Google has displayed richer search results, ever since the days of Universal Search. It seems like Google is testing making those video results a bit less rich by removing the video thumbnail image […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Official: Google Brings “Not Provided” To Ads, Will Withhold Search Query Data From Paid Clicks As suspected, Google is moving to secure search for clicks on paid search ads. In an […]
Covario released its Global Paid Search Spend Analysis for the first quarter of 2014 today. Its client set — made up of enterprise technology, consumer electronics, and retail advertisers –increased paid search spend on mobile devices by 135 percent year-over-year and 35 percent over the previous quarter. Mobile now accounts for 25 percent of paid […]
Today comScore, Neustar Localeze and agency 15 Miles released the findings from their latest Local Search Study. Now in its seventh year, the survey of nearly 5,000 US adults was conducted in December 2013. Respondents “were individuals who [had] conducted a local business search in the last twelve months.” There were also behavioral data captured […]
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 […]
There are reports we are receiving from a few sources, including AJ Ghergich who posted it on his blog, that Google will soon stop passing keyword data to analytics software, even for AdWords advertisers. We expected changes to not provided in the near future, and based on these reports, the likelihood of advertisers being stripped […]
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: News Sites May Have Seen A Decline In GoogleBot Crawling In March Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted that news related sites, such as this one, may have noticed a drop in […]
Googler Jade Wang announced yesterday Google Places is rolling out new features to its bulk location management tool. According to the announcement, the new features will include a “Status” column that lets users know if a Map location is live, unverified, has errors, data conflicts, is a duplicate, or if it is pending review. The […]
It may be the case that some sites impacted by Google’s Penguin update may not be as impacted as the next. Meaning, Google’s algorithms may apply a different degree of the Penguin update (which may feel like a penalty) to one site over another. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted on Twitter a […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced on Twitter this morning that Google has “taken action” on seven different link networks in Japan. Over the past several months, Google has not only been manual taking action against link networks or link schemes in the US, but they have been widening their efforts across the […]
Google announced they now support improved schema markup, rich snippets, for location pages. Business Phone Support Schema Google said they now support showing business telephone numbers for customer service, technical support, billing support, and bill payment. For each phone number you markup, you can specify if it is toll-free, suitable for the hearing-impaired, and whether […]
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 Updates Its Privacy Policy You may have noticed Google’s Privacy Policy has been updated as of March 31, with a red letter “Updated” call-out the site’s home page preceding Google’s […]
RetailMeNot is having remarkable SEO success. According to an analysis by Priceonomics, RetailMeNot is first for numerous coupon-related and “promo code” searches — an amazing 71 percent of the time. This is what the company said based on an analysis of nearly 300 coupon-related keywords: RetailMeNot ranks first in Google search results for an astounding […]
Managing reviews and reputation isn’t a new discipline for search consultants and agencies to focus on, but it is gaining prominence as reviews take on more significance in the world of local search. Consumers consult online reviews more regularly in their research process and put an increasing amount of trust in ratings and review sentiment […]
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 Testing New Search Results Design Bing is testing a new search results layout that changes the color of the logo from gray to the yellow/orange, changes the color of the […]
Bing is testing a new search results layout that changes the color of the logo from gray to the yellow/orange, changes the color of the search button and removes the gray background color from the right side rail. Bing has also cleaned up the interface, giving it a tighter but more open look, while keeping […]
On October 31st, Google announced they are now supporting a new feature named app indexing, which allows publishers to create links from Google’s search results directly into the deep content within their Android apps. So if you search for something on your Android device and happen to see a result from a publisher where you […]
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 Fixing Reverse DNS GoogleBot Verification Google has confirmed that there are some GoogleBot useragent spiders not properly passing verification protocol. Savvy webmasters noticed that GoogleBot over the .249.70.0 /24 IP […]
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 Matt Cutts: We Can Improve Our Algorithms For Authorities On Topics In an interesting video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, Matt answers the question on how Google […]
In an interesting video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, Matt answers the question on how Google separates the concept of popularity from authority. The truth is, he answered that question quickly by saying popularity and authority are two different things. The example he gave was that porn sites are often way more […]
It seems Google is testing showing product images in the organic, free search result listings, for certain e-commerce sites. This was first spotted in a Moz thread for a site that sells ski equipment named evo.com. Here is a picture of the organic listing that shows not just rich snippet data for pricing and stock […]
Last month, I attended the Long-Term SEO: How To Win For Years, Not Days session at SMX West. I have worked in the search industry since 1995. I have seen search engine optimization (SEO) trends and tactics come and go… and I’ve also seen fundamental, universal concepts get stronger and stronger over time. So what […]
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 Ads Releases Targeting Updates For Bing Ads Express Bing Ads today announced several updates for its small business solution, Bing Ads Express. This is the first big series of updates […]
Yesterday, our editor in chief Matt McGee found a number of Google April Fools jokes already in play, including a Google Maps Pokemon challenge and Google+ David Hasselhoff photobombs. Not wanting Google to be the only one having all the April Fools fun, a number of other companies have released their own April 1st shenanigans. […]
Dr. Richard Qian from the Bing Index and Knowledge Team announced that they’ve added an “additional 150 million entities” to power Bing’s Snapshot results. This is part of Microsoft Bing’s efforts to improve and grow their knowledge engine they named Satori. Most recently, they added tax help and famous people data to the engine. Now, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Marin Launches Context Connect, Says Retailer Impressions Surged During Polar Vortex As the brutal Polar Vortex weather system bore down on much of the U.S. this winter, consumers apparently hunkered down […]
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 […]
Content marketing is all the rage these days and, if you are pursuing guest posts as part of your link-building strategy, it is critical to target the highest authority sites possible. You want to find the sites where your presence builds your visibility and reputation (regardless of SEO) and where the links might get clicked […]
We’ve seen how Google may display competitive search engines in their search results, based on an EU antitrust settlement. But how will it look for Bing if they did the same thing? Aaron Wall at SEO Book posted a screen shot of what he saw Bing testing around displaying “alternative” results in the Bing search […]
Last week, Local Corporation released survey results from its latest round of consumer mobile shopping research. The company is promoting a new version of its local-mobile shopping app Havvit. The survey was conducted in March and carried out by the Chicago-based e-tailing group and consisted of nearly 1,300 US smartphone owners. Among other questions 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: IE8 Users Don’t Get Forwarded To Google Secure Search At the moment, users of IE8, still the most popular version of the Internet Explorer browser worldwide, are being sent to unsecure […]
At the moment, users of IE8, still the most popular version of the Internet Explorer browser worldwide, are being sent to unsecure search on Google. The move to send users to Google regular servers instead of secure servers is related to Google seeming to work through how it deals with people still using the older […]
We all know that Google frowns upon trying — in any way, shape or form — to get links (they’re serious, guys). Yet, links still play a very large role in determining SERP rankings. If you can’t ask for or chase down high-quality, authoritative links, what’s a marketer to do? You have to earn them. […]
The new link building is link removal as some would say. Especially with all the craze around links and how they can get you penalized, link removal requests have become a thing all too familiar to anyone who runs a web site. The challenge, like with link building requests, is to get the webmaster you […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Car Makers Drove 14.4 Million Clicks From Google Ads In 2 Months (And That Doesn’t Include Mobile) A whopping 177 automotive manufacture sites drove 14.4 million paid search clicks from Google […]
A whopping 177 automotive manufacture sites drove 14.4 million paid search clicks from Google ads on desktops and tablets this January and February. Of those 177 advertisers, the top 20 advertisers (roughly 11 percent) accounted for 81 percent of the paid search clicks in the two month period, according to new data from search marketing intelligence […]
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 A Single Guest Post May Have Gotten An Entire Site Penalized By Google Google made it clear earlier this year that those doing guest posts “for SEO purposes” might be […]