When Google moved to secure search in October 2011, it was a blow to publishers, who began losing data about the search terms used to reach their sites. It also opened Google up to claims of hypocrisy, in that advertisers continued to receive the terms. Now, Google says it’s reexamining the issue and seeking a […]
More and more searchers, SEOs, webmasters and advertisers are seeing the new Google design test we’ve covered here a couple times where the ads blend in more to the search results and the font size is larger and the underlined links are gone. Last night, at Search Marketing Expo West, Google’s head of search, Amit […]
In the keynote session last night at Search Marketing Expo West, Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal tried to address the concern of publishers that their content is being scraped and used by Google’s Knowledge Graph, ending with the user not having to click on the search results to get the answer. Danny Sullivan, in […]
In February, comScore released their monthly analysis of the US search marketplace, reporting Google with a 67.6% share of the search market and Bing, which powers Yahoo! search, a 28.7% share. Though these findings continue to confirm Google’s dominance in the search landscape, it’s important to highlight that Bing’s share of the market has continued […]
Good evening/afternoon (or early morning for our European readers!) from sunny San Jose, Calif., where day one of our SMX West conference is almost finished. We’re wrapping up the Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit with a keynote conversation between Google’s Amit Singhal and Danny Sullivan, founding editor of both Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Search App Gets iOS 7 Design Upgrade & More Yahoo has pushed out a new update to their iOS Yahoo Search app in the Apple App Store. The new update […]
Less than a month after Google targeted Polish link spammers and German link spammers, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts announced that the company is targeting more countries. Cutts announced warnings to Spanish and Italian webmasters and SEOs not to use unnatural links to promote their sites. He posted both announcements on Twitter and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Using First-Party Data For SEM On Google & Way Beyond! As a general rule, the marketer with the most actionable data wins. There are many types of data but the most […]
Google is the dominant mobile search engine with nearly 90 percent of the market in the US and an even greater share internationally. The problem is that search engines aren’t used as often in mobile. Large volumes of content are consumed in apps. Google is trying to address that challenge by indexing more app-based content, including […]
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 Posts Women’s Day 2014 Logo After Agreeing Its Logos Are Male-Dominated Tomorrow, March 8th is International Women’s Day and Google has a special Google logo, aka Google Doodle, for 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: Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (via Nokia) Yahoo has started to integrate indoor maps into its newly upgraded mapping product. Even though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer didn’t want to go head […]
Yahoo has started to integrate indoor maps into its newly upgraded mapping product. Even though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer didn’t want to go head to head with Google in “local” (read: maps), Yahoo has been improving its mapping and local search user experiences of late. The inclusion of venue maps comes courtesy of Nokia’s Here […]
Both Google and Bing are generous when it comes to offering advice to SEOs and search marketers. Google’s Webmaster Tools section offers tons of helpful information, such as how to create Google-friendly sites, how to utilize Rich snippets (microdata, microformats, and RDFa) – even a Webmaster Academy. Microsoft also offers a plethora of great advice […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: BrightEdge Uses SEO Patents As “Sword,” Sues Searchmetrics Oh no they didn’t: BrightEdge has sued rival Searchmetrics using multiple SEO patents, which were granted last year. The concern being expressed by […]
Oh no they didn’t: BrightEdge has sued rival Searchmetrics using multiple SEO patents, which were granted last year. The concern being expressed by some today is that this could be the beginning of a wave of litigation as BrightEdge seeks to capitalize on its newly granted IP or goes after competitors that it perceives to […]
Microsoft announced on the Bing Search Blog that the Xbox One now supports full web search with the latest system wide update to the Xbox One. Microsoft said with this update they are “expanding search to include web results.” Now when you search with “Xbox Bing,” you will receive results from the Bing marketplace as […]
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 Video Shows Microsoft “Assistant” Cortana In Action Microsoft will be introducing its Siri and Google Now/Voice competitor Cortana with Windows 8.1 in April. The new “intelligent assistant” will eventually be […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Matt Cutts Video: How Google Determines What’s A Paid Link Google head of search spam Matt Cutts released a pretty detailed video discussing the Google webspam team’s criteria for determining whether […]
Google head of search spam Matt Cutts released a pretty detailed video discussing the Google webspam team’s criteria for determining whether a link is considered a paid link or not. There are five basic criteria Google uses in this determination. The first is the most obvious, is the link an explicit link for sale; then, […]
On June 7, 2011, Google announced support for a new type of markup called the Authorship Tag. This was the rel=”author” tag. It did not take long before the speculation started — when would Google start using data from this new tag to impact rankings? The industry took to referring to this concept as AuthorRank. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Tweet Showing How Google Itself Is A “Scraper Site” Goes Massively Viral Perhaps it’s SEOs’ “Oreo” moment, a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much attention as […]
Perhaps it’s SEO’s “Oreo moment,” a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much attention as Oreo’s famous Super Bowl blackout tweet. But the subject was a perfect storm of goodness — a real-life example of Google doing the type of thing in search it seems to be telling others not 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: Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West Begins In 2 Weeks – Register Now! Join the most accomplished internet marketers in the world at SMX West, March 11-13 in San Jose, CA. Check […]
One of the most frustrating experiences for any publisher is discovering that someone not only has copied your content but outranks you on Google for searches related to that content. Now, Google seems to have heard the complaints and has launched a tool to help. Called the Google Scraper Report, it was announced by 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: AdWords Flexible Conversion Counting Officially Lauched, Welcome “Converted Clicks” and “Conversions” Earlier this month, we covered Google’s news to select advertisers that it would be rolling out new options for tracking […]
Did you know that even if you try to run away from your Google penalty, it might end up finding you anyway? In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout, hosted by Google’s John Mueller, John said that even if you move your penalized site to a new domain name and don’t redirect the penalized site, Google […]
In today’s video from Google’s Matt Cutts, Matt answers a question asking if Google prefers ranking content that is more scientific in nature or content that is “easier to read” with greater clarity. First off, Matt said it was a question that made him think, which implies that there is no exact answer. If you […]
A couple days ago, we reported that Google was investigating an issue where several movie blogs lost their rankings in Google. The head of search spam Matt Cutts himself said, “I hope to dig into this soon.” Well, he did and he restored the rankings for those movie blogs calling the ranking problem a “transient […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: McDonald’s & Cadillac’s Sochi Olympics TV Ads Spark Nearly 500K Online Searches Television advertising analytics firm iSpot.tv evaluated a number of key metrics for this year’s Olympic advertisers and found ads […]
Microsoft Bing has added new features to the Bing search results when you search for tax related queries. This is being done because Bing and other search engines see a huge increase in the number of tax related queries between January and April, i.e. before your taxes are due on April 15th. Bing now shows […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: DoubleClick Search Adds Integration With Channel Intelligence For Product Feed Management Google announced Monday that Channel Intelligence’s feed management and optimization capabilities will integrate with the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite. Performics […]
Google lead of search spam Matt Cutts posted on Twitter that Google has taken action on two link networks operated in Poland this week. Matt wrote that Google is “not done with Germany yet, but we just took action on two Polish link networks.” The Google Poland Webmaster Blog posted a reminder today about unnatural […]
Within a week of releasing three new Windows phone apps, Bing announced a series of updates for its iPhone app, including a search widget to help with navigation, new image tiles, and a shake feature to see what stories are trending. According to the announcement, the new Bing iPhone app search widget has four buttons, […]
Bing Tags, which launched two years ago as Bing Linked Pages and then renamed and did an expansion about a year ago, has hung up the project and shut down the feature. Bing closed down Bing Tags on June 14, 2013. A Microsoft spokesperson told us: We can confirm that beginning on June 14, 2013, […]
About eight different movie blog sites, including Slashfilm.com, have apparently lost traffic in Google — and the issue is big enough that Google is looking into it. The owner and editor of /Film called out to Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, about this issue on Saturday: @mattcutts any ideas why so many movie blogs […]
Google’s head of search spam posted a video today reconfirming that while Google may not be using EXIF, exchangeable image file format, data for ranking images today, they do reserve the right to use the data in the future within their ranking algorithm. Google does recommend you use the EXIF data, if it is readily […]
It’s definitely not what you expect to make the top of a Google News section, a crappy article promising that you can watch The Lego Movie online for free, not when the film is still in theaters. But that’s what Google is delivering up. The screenshot above shows the situation, which reader Vishvesh Agrawal 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: Google Says (Some) Missing Features Will Be Added To New Google Maps Google took its new Maps site out of beta this week, but many users noticed that some of their […]
Google quietly announced within the Google Help forums that they have made a clarification update to their Place quality guidelines to help business owners know what they can name their business within Google Local and what they can not. In short, Google is allowing a single descriptor within the business name, if and only if […]
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 […]