Are US small businesses (SMBs) abandoning Google AdWords in droves because of rising CPC prices? That’s the implication of a recent story in the New York Times: [Concern over the rising cost of keywords] has become increasingly common as online advertising has become a standard channel for large companies. Attracting those additional advertisers has been […]
Google has added explanations in the “people also search for” section of the knowledge graph results. The explanations shows why Google added a specific person or thing in the related area under a specific knowledge graph. Google associates this with the bacon number easter egg they ran earlier this year but in a much more […]
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 Gives Update On Shopping Going Full Paid Inclusion, Hints At AdWords’ Future On Q3 Call Now that Google’s new pay-for-play Shopping is in full swing (the changeover took place October […]
A year ago (and a day), Google began encrypting searches for signed-in users, so that the terms they searched for were no longer passed to publishers, except for advertisers. The “single digit” withholding predicted by Google at launch has turned into more than 50% of terms being withheld, in some cases. I explore how things […]
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 Q3 Earnings Leak: $14.1 Billion, Disappoint Surprised Investors Google’s Q3 “consolidated earnings” leaked early and are below analysts’ expectations. Search clicks were up 33 percent vs. a year go but […]
Last week there was a report that “four out of five FTC commissioners” favored going forward with an antitrust case against Google. The Reuters article in which the claim appeared mentions but doesn’t emphasize the litany of “vertical search” complaints against Google raised by competitors. Those “Google favors its own results” claims have been at […]
Wondering if some human at Google has reviewed your web site and decided it deserves to be penalized in Google’s search results? Google’s now reporting such cases nearly 100% of the time. “We’ve actually started to send messages for pretty much every manual action that we do that will directly impact the ranking of your site,” […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 6 Underrated Content Marketing Assets For B2B SEO One of the biggest obstacles to B2B search engine optimization is developing new content marketing assets for targeting important keywords and acquiring link […]
I don’t know what images were showing up for a “binders full of women” search on Google Images before last night’s US presidential debate. But today, they’re dominated by a meme started from a comment last night by Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Romney was commenting that he sought to increase the number of women in […]
One of the more popular Webmaster and SEO forums, WebmasterWorld, has been sold today to Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Ninjas. Jim Boykin has been acquiring several forums this year, including all of the Developer Shed network including SEO Chat forums and Cre8asite Forums from Kim Krause Berg. Cre8asite Forums has been around since 1998 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: Google Launches Disavow Links Tool Google has launched a new and widely anticipated “disavow links” tool. The tool was announced by the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts, when […]
Google has launched a new and widely anticipated “disavow links” tool. The tool was announced by the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts, when speaking during a keynote at the Pubcon conference today. The tool is live and can be found here. It has been beta tested by some selected SEOs already for […]
It’s not everyday you get to hear from someone that’s worked on Google’s Search Quality/Webspam team and isn’t named Matt Cutts. But Andre Weyher, whose LinkedIn profile lists a two-year stint as a member of the search quality team, recently spoke with James Norquay, a search/digital marketer based in Australia, and shared some interesting comments […]
It all makes sense. According to comScore, map-based search on the PC has now peaked and is starting to erode. By contrast mobile usage of mapping applications is growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Apple Maps’ problems notwithstanding, smartphone mapping apps offer a better overall experience than online maps. Because […]
Last week, someone accused me of being too technical when describing geo-targeting settings — it followed a conversation where I was told that one of my discussions was not “advanced” enough! So, I apologise in advance, as this post is going to be too technical for some and not for others! It’s also a little […]
Majestic SEO, one of the advanced SEO third party link reporting services, announced they are now updating their linkage data to be as fresh as within hours or minutes. Instead of waiting 24 hours for the link reports to update, Majestic SEO is pushing updates throughout the day, almost hourly, so webmasters can see new […]
Here’s another small step in Google’s effort to centralize your Google search activity: The company is expanding a field trial to include Google Drive documents in search results. At the same time, the existing trial that includes Gmail information in search results is being expanded to work not only from Google.com, but also within Gmail […]
According to SEMPO, a search marketing industry association, the US Federal Trade Commission is “strongly considering” a review of how well — or poorly — search engines are compliance with its 2002 guidelines on disclosing paid listings to consumers. The news comes in a letter that SEMPO — the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization — sent 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: DuckDuckGo’s New Video Targets Google’s “Filter Bubble” Of Personalized Results DuckDuckGo’s ongoing mission to challenge Google (and other search engines, but mainly Google) on privacy issues has taken another turn with […]
Google’s head of search spam, answered some questions in the Power Searching with Google Hangout on Air #2 on October 2nd. In that video, he was asked by fellow Googler, Dan Russell a Search research scientist at Google, will search spam go on forever? This question was asked about 36 minutes into the video, where […]
Perhaps it was always inevitable that Foursquare would shift its emphasis from location-based social networking to local search. Indeed, the site has been moving in this direction for quite some time, and very self-consciously for the better part of the past year. This afternoon the company is rolling out a new PC homepage for users […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: VP Debate Spurs Searches Like “Shirtless” (Ryan), “Laughing” (Biden) & Other “Malarkey” There’s a kind of Pavlovian response that happens with major national events in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere): internet […]
There’s a kind of Pavlovian response that happens with major national events in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere): internet users taking to the web to comment on and/or learn more about what they’re experiencing. As expected, conversation spiked on social networking sites during the Vice Presidential debate last night. Twitter says there were 3.5 million […]
The YouTube Blog announced they have adjusted their ranking algorithm to include the time a video was watched. YouTube said they experimented with this ranking factor with suggested videos and it lead to “less clicking” and “more watching” and thus feels it is a good idea to add to the overall YouTube Search ranking algorithm. […]
Vice President Joe Biden and vice-presidential hopeful Paul Ryan are a little more than an hour away from their first and only debate of this election year, and search activity around the debate is heating up — largely surrounding Ryan, the Republican nominee. We’ll begin with this tweet from Yahoo Search, which reports that there’s […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask CEO Doug Leeds Proclaims Search Wars “Over,” Says Yahoo Can Be Great Again Ask.com has 3.5 percent of the search market according to comScore. Ask.com CEO Doug Leeds told Bloomberg […]
We’re getting the usual sneak peek at comScore data from financial analysts ahead of the official release tomorrow. In terms of the market-share horse race, Google gained ground vs. last month. Bing was flat; AOL and especially Ask gained as well. Sadly, Yahoo experienced another month of decline — to its lowest market share in […]
It’s not a Google Bomb, but that doesn’t make it less embarrassing for US presidential candidate Mitt Romney or Google, that a search on Google Images for “completely wrong” brings up results that are dominated by Romney’s picture. Completely Wrong & Google Images Here’s an example of what you currently see in a search for “completely […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Tracking Changes To Google’s 50 Webmaster Guidelines Pages Shaun Anderson created a tool to keep track of changes made to 50 of the top Google webmaster guidelines. The tool shows you […]
Shaun Anderson created a tool to keep track of changes made to 50 of the top Google webmaster guidelines. The tool shows you how recently a specific Google webmaster guidelines document was updated. SEOs and webmasters must stay on top of these changes and this tool helps them do just that. The tool is run […]
Last week I wrote an article with the headline: Study: 43 Percent Of Total Google Search Queries Are Local. This was based on Chitika network data. The article was widely cited and linked to. Unfortunately it was wrong. Earlier today Chitika contacted me with the correction. The original methodology used to determine the percentage of local […]
The Financial Times (FT) is reporting that the thrust of Google’s antitrust settlement proposal to European Competition Czar Joaquín Almunia primarily involves “labeling” its own services to distinguish them from other organic search results. According to the FT, citing “people familiar with the search giant’s submission”: Under the proposal, Google would put its brand on any […]
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 Develop Helpful Content To Improve Visibility & Conversion In this article, we’ll look at another website that was submitted for review from a “Keywords and Content” point of view. […]
Another week, another update to part of Google’s search algorithm. This time, Google announced a refresh of its Page Layout filter that it first announced back in January, or what’s often called the “Top Heavy” update. Updates, Updates It’s the fourth Google update in the past two weeks. The rundown so far: Panda Update 20: Sept. 27, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Study: Malicious Search Results More Common In Bing & Image Search Almost two of every three malicious redirects in major search engines are found on Bing, according to a new report […]
Many large enterprises face the challenge of dealing with a diverse portfolio of sites. This by itself is very complex, but that complexity is multiplied when those sites are operated by different teams of people. Some common scenarios where this happens are: Different product lines which are owned and operated by different business units. International […]
Twitter has quietly launched a user profile directory that it hopes will bring it more search engine traffic. It’s Twitter’s second SEO play in recent weeks, coming on the heels of a change in its robots.txt file. With that change, Twitter made its content-based search results — i.e., search results for tweets and hashtags, but […]
Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages. Including the original Penguin algorithm launch in late April, this is the third update, so we’re calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding 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: Bing Now Handpicks News Writers For Its Social Sidebar Bing is dipping its toes into a form of what Google calls “authorship” with today’s announcement that news writers are now being […]
Bing is dipping its toes into a form of what Google calls “authorship” with today’s announcement that news writers are now being featured in Bing’s Social Sidebar. U.S.-based searchers can now see journalists appearing in the “People Who Know” section of the Bing sidebar. These authors are often mixed in with those who appeared in […]