Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video today on YouTube clarifying Google’s stance on Advertorials and “native advertising.” Advertorials are editorial-like content that is published because an advertiser has paid the publication to publish the story or the content. Recently, we covered a story on how a major U.K. floral company […]
I was pleased to be part of a great panel at SMX London on prioritizing your search marketing efforts. It included SEO veterans Mikkel deMib Svendsen of deMib.com, Julia Longdon of ContentMango and Dave Davies of Beanstalk. For me, this was an extremely useful session with a huge hidden ROI benefit for search marketers not […]
In January, upstart search engine Blekko launched a specialized tablet app called Izik. The UI and overall experience were optimized for the touch-screen devices. Search results were more visual and finger friendly. Most of all, CEO Rich Skrenta stressed that Izik was leaving behind the familiar “10 blue links.” As part of the Izik launch, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Getting Away From Our PPC Campaigns This Summer Having just finished marching in three parades and playing Taps at Memorial Day observances to honor our deceased veterans, I find myself looking […]
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 Glass Diary, Part 4: Local Search & Navigation Remember that first Google Glass video? It was published a little more than a year ago and gave the world its first […]
Remember that first Google Glass video? It was published a little more than a year ago and gave the world its first glimpse at what Google had in mind for Glass. Even though Google described it as “an early concept video,” you can clearly see that local search and navigation was a key aspect of […]
After releasing a preview of the Bing sitemap plugin a few months ago, Bing is ready to officially launch the Bing XML Sitemap Plugin 1.0 to the public. This sitemap plugin allows webmasters to easily create XML sitemap files for their websites that can be submitted to Bing Webmaster Tools or other search engines. It […]
Foursquare has added new search filters that allow Android and iOS users to make “super-specific” searches, filtering by price, locations where users have or haven’t checked in before, locations ‘friends have checked in’, if a location is ‘open now’, and if a location is ‘offering specials’. To demonstrate how specific users can be when searching for […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live The fourth release of Google’s spam-fighting “Penguin Update” is now live. But, Penguin 4 has a twist. It contains Penguin 2.0 […]
Google’s fourth Penguin update — what the company is calling Penguin 2.0 — hit last night, and less than 24 hours later we’re already getting a first chance to look at what sites might be considered “losers” in terms of search visibility. In a nutshell, the list includes: porn sites, game sites and big brands […]
Google’s next generation Penguin update is now live, and webmasters and SEOs are carefully assessing how this update has impacted their websites. Google is assessing things as well — how this has impacted the search results, search quality and searcher satisfaction. Google’s head of search spam tweeted, asking that if you still see spammy websites […]
The fourth release of Google’s spam-fighting “Penguin Update” is now live. But, Penguin 4 has a twist. It contains Penguin 2.0 technology under the hood, which Google says is a new generation of tech that should better stop spam. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Web spam team, announced the new Penguin 2.0 update during […]
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 Tools To Migrate To Enhanced Campaigns Now Out Of Beta The custom toolset Google designed to help DoubleClick search users migrate to enhanced campaigns has come out of beta. […]
Over the past day or so, we’ve been seeing reports that some of us can replicate ourselves, where the site command (i.e., site:www.domain.com) in Google was limited to only showing 30 results. The rumors were that with the recent domain clustering change Google pushed out this week has severely impacted the site command. Those rumors […]
On the cusp of the summer travel season, AdGooroo has taken a look at the state of paid search in the travel sector in the U.S. The company has found that, on the whole, paid search expenditures have been trending down since 2011. Spend fell 19% from January through April of this year compared to last […]
Google Trends has started a new monthly “spirit of the times” Top Charts feature with more than 40 categories of Top 10 lists that include people, places and things ranked by search interest. According to today’s post from Google’s Official Blog, the Top Charts go back to 2004 and will continue to be updated monthly. […]
After evaluating the organic search performance of America’s most popular television networks, SEO research firm RankAbove discovered a majority of the networks are missing out on significant search and traffic opportunities. The study examined four key areas of search including keywords, rankings, traffic potential and Universal SERPs. According to the findings, not only are a […]
The “conversational search” that Google demonstrated at last week’s Google I/O conference is now available to users of its Chrome browser, and it’s a significant leap in how we use search engines. I’m 17 years now into writing about search, and I’ve seen all types of things that have promised to revolutionize the space, especially […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Where Have All The Linkers Gone? A unique combination of factors is having a profound effect on the “link graph” being created today, with many implications for those of us in […]
The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay – Away from Keyboard, a documentary that sympathizes with the founders of the infamous file sharing website The Pirate Bay, has become the target of fraudulent link takedown requests from major Hollywood Studios, including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate. After its February release on The Pirate Bay […]
Google has quietly added support for six additional data types to the data highlighter rich snippet markup tool they introduced back in December. Google initially launched a visual rich snippet markup tool in December to allow less tech-savvy webmasters to markup their event based data. The tool only worked with event data and nothing else. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Enhanced Campaigns: “Flexible Bid Strategies” Launching Soon Google will be rolling out “flexible bid strategies” in enhanced campaigns in the next couple of weeks. Flexible bid strategies will allow advertisers to […]
As of today, all users will see the Keyword Planner available in their AdWords accounts. Keyword Planner combines data from the Keyword Tool and Traffic estimator, both of which will be sunsetted in about 60 days. Users will need to log in to their AdWords accounts to access Keyword Planner. The external version of Keyword […]
Last week at the Google I/O developer conference, a newly redesigned Google Maps design was introduced. While a number of online commentators have virtually gushed about the new interfacing from an end user perspective, there may be a less-than-rosy view for many local businesses. Thus far, the new version of Google Maps is pretty much […]
The latest large brand to be hit with a user-generated content spam penalty notification is Sprint, the large US wireless communications company. Similar to Mozilla’s penalty and BBC’s penalty, Sprint was penalized for user-generated content spam on a portion of their site that was open to anyone to post links and content. Also similar 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: Google’s Matt Cutts: Domain Clustering To Change Again; Less Results From Same Domain Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google’s […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google’s search results related to the diversity of the results being displayed. Matt said that Google is launching “soon” a new change that will make it less likely to see results from the same domain name, if you […]
Yandex has presented what it claims is a new concept in search engine results pages to a Russian audience at an online industry conference in Moscow. They’ve nicknamed the new concept “Islands,” but are describing it functionally as “Interactive Snippets” and the next step on from rich snippets. To be launched in a few weeks […]
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 Gets New Filter Options, Search Query Reports, Appealable Ad Visiblity & Keyword Competition Values Bing Ads announced a number of updates last month, including new campaign filter options, improved […]
Want to have your company logo appear in Google search results, similar to the way authors get to have their pictures displayed? Keep waiting. New “organization markup” support that Google has announced won’t do that, but it might be useful for putting your logo in Google Knowledge Graph boxes. Author Images Many are familiar 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: Google Knowledge Graph Gets More Stats and 4 New Languages At Google I/O today, Amit Singhal, Google VP of Search, announced that statistics and four new languages are being added to […]
What a week it’s been where Google and SEO are concerned. The company, via Matt Cutts, has issued several warnings about things to come — and, late Tuesday night, also revealed that it’s just acted against another link network. In a pair of tweets, Cutts — the head of Google’s webspam team — said that […]
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 Authority Boost: Google’s Algorithm To Determine Which Site Is A Subject Authority Yesterday, we covered and summarized the ten future Google SEO changes coming to Google’s search results by the […]
Microsoft announced that Bing, the search engine, can now speak Klingon and gives you snapshot answers to your Star Trek questions. Search on Bing for [Who is Spock’s father] and at the top right section of the page, a “Snapshot Answer” will come back telling you it is Sarek. You can technically search for many […]
Last week, I was lucky to join a number of great speakers at the iLive conference in Riga, Latvia. As with all conferences, I learned a lot. (I simply can’t relate to those who go to a conference and say they’ve heard it all before.) I learned at least as much from the people I met […]
Yesterday, we covered and summarized the ten future Google SEO changes coming to Google’s search results by the end of this summer. But today, I wanted to pull out one point where Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said Google is working on an algorithm to give authorities in a particular subject a ranking […]
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: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away In March, Google’s chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would […]
A video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, today answers some of the questions about what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the near future in regards to SEO. The primary question Matt asked and answered was, “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?” Matt […]
Google’s head of search spam, has decided to publish a bunch of blog posts that were sitting in draft mode on his personal blog. He said his blog needs to cough up a hairball – hence the animated GIF used here. But, we can learn a few things when Matt Cutts coughs up hairballs. A […]
In March, Google’s chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update — keep waiting. It’s still a few weeks off. Along the way, there’s some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin […]