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Topic: Search engine optimization
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 28, 2012
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: Bing And Yahoo Search Share Largest On Internet Explorer Browser Internet Explorer (IE) is the browser where the most “non-Google” searches happen, according to data from ad network Chitika. The […]
Patent: How Google May Trick Search Spammers
The SEO community has been buzzing about a newly discovered Google Patent document named Ranking documents. The patent describes how Google may detect certain “rank modifying” techniques and then adjust the ranking of those documents using those techniques in a manner that will confuse the webmaster into thinking that technique did not work. The purpose […]
Google Reminds Webmasters: Selling Links Can Lead To PageRank Penalty
Matt Cutts, Google’s lead of search spam, wrote a blog post named “Why did our PageRank go down?” The post is a reminder to webmasters that selling links that pass PageRank can lead to a Google penalty. Back in October 2007, Google officially came out saying selling paid links can hurt your PageRank and then […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 27, 2012
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 Google’s Synonym Matching Increasing? How Searchers & Brands Can Be Both Helped & Hurt By Evolving Understanding Of Intent In the beginning, Google matched the words in a searcher’s query […]
Is Google’s Synonym Matching Increasing? How Searchers & Brands Can Be Both Helped & Hurt By Evolving Understanding Of Intent
In the beginning, Google matched the words in a searcher’s query to the words on a web page and ranks those pages (roughly) based on how many external links each had. Over the years, Google’s algorithms have evolved in numerous ways, including with how Google figures out what the searcher is really looking for. Now, […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 24, 2012
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 In Pics: Android Noogler, Google Paper Towels & Big Yahoo Ball In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 23, 2012
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 Webmaster Tools Reports Adds Percentage Changes Bing has added percent changes, deltas, to some of the various reports within Bing Webmaster Tools. The percent changes show the difference from the […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Reports Adds Percentage Changes
Bing has added percent changes, deltas, to some of the various reports within Bing Webmaster Tools. The percent changes show the difference from the period selected to the same time period before that. So if you selected the past 30-days, Bing will show the percent change from the previous 30-day period. This applies for Clicks […]
3 Ways Time Can Warp Your View
The time delay between marketing exposure and marketing success creates tremendous opportunity for consternation for all paid search managers, but particularly for enterprise programs. Let’s look at three ways that time can distort one’s perspective, and consider a solution that can be helpful. In most paid search reporting platforms, the default setting (often the only […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 22, 2012
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 Brings Quora Content Into Its Social Sidebar Bing continues to expand the content that may show up in its social sidebar, with news today that its Quora integration is complete. […]
Google Panda Refresh On August 20: Version 3.9.1
Google has confirmed they have pushed out a Panda refresh this past Monday. This updated affected less than 1% of search queries and is a “minor” Panda refresh. We emailed Google, after hearing speculation of a Panda update and Google confirmed it by tweeting it. Here is that tweet: Panda data refresh this past Monday. […]
A Hiring Checklist To Find The Right B2B Search Marketing Agency
All search marketing programs are not created equally. This rings true most profoundly in the B2B marketing arena where shifting corporate demands, streamlined staffs and reduced budgets produce unique challenges for both B2B companies and the search marketing agencies they hire. Follow this B2B search marketing agency hiring checklist to find a long-term partner that […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 21, 2012
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 Webmaster Tools Adds Clarity to Traffic Alerts: What To Do If You Receive One For some time (since at least March), Google webmaster tools has been sending messages to site […]
Google Webmaster Tools Adds Clarity to Traffic Alerts: What To Do If You Receive One
For some time (since at least March), Google webmaster tools has been sending messages to site owners about substantial traffic changes (increases or decreases) to pages of a site. Some site owners found these messages perplexing as they weren’t sure exactly what was actionable about the messages. Were the messages just informational, intended to help […]
Industry Survey Underscores How The SEO Industry Relies On Google’s Free Tools
If there’s one thing that stands out in the 2012 SEO Industry Survey, it’s that the SEO industry relies heavily on the free SEO-related tools that Google provides. SEOmoz released the results of its semi-annual survey today — a survey conducted between March and May that drew responses from almost 6,500 people in more than […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 20, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: What Is In Your Enterprise SEO Toolkit? Enterprise SEO ain’t like the others. As I’ve said before, simply saying “I’m an enterprise SEO!!!” doesn’t make you one. You need different tools, […]
7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain
It looks as if Google is testing a move away from showing the traditional 10 listings to only displaying seven, and it also appears that it’s even easier than ever for one site to dominates all those results. 7 Blue Links We started getting reports last week about the 7-results change last week. Here’s an […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 17, 2012
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 In Pics: Domo At GooglePlex, Google Subway Bench & Google Fiber Van In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 16, 2012
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: Further Penguin Update “Jolts” To Come; Panda Is Smoother & Monthly Fasten your seat belt, if you’ve been spamming Google. The anti-spam “Penguin Update” will have more jolts in the […]
Google: Further Penguin Update “Jolts” To Come; Panda Is Smoother & Monthly
Fasten your seat belt, if you’ve been spamming Google. The anti-spam “Penguin Update” will have more jolts in the coming months, as Google continues to adjust it. In contrast, updates to the Panda algorithm aimed at low-quality pages are now so minor as not to be noticed, when they roll out monthly. Speaking yesterday at […]
Google Search Descriptions Now Say If GoogleBot Is Blocked
When you block GoogleBot, Google’s web crawler, the page that is blocked can still show up in the Google search results because of links pointing to the page. When that happens, the search listing looks awkward, because Google isn’t able to crawl the page and make a title and description. Instead, Google will make a […]
Free No More: Blekko’s SEO Tools Are Now A Paid Product
Blekko has changed its previously free SEO tools into a paid service, putting it in competition with the likes of SEOmoz.org, Ahrefs.com, MajesticSEO.com, SEMrush.com and other SEO data/tool providers. There’s been no official announcement of the change, but Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta confirmed to us that the company’s SEO tools and data now require a […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 15, 2012
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 It Has A Million Public Transit Schedules, Adds Transit Features In Android Maps Google Maps (and related data) continues to be strategic for the company. On Android Google Maps […]
Search Convergence In SF: Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, Mike Grehan & Brett Tabke
It might be more than foggy in San Francisco this morning, as Brett Tabke of webmasterworld.com said after I took this picture, “that was a twilight zone moment for me”. It must have been interesting feeling for him then about 10 minutes later when Mike Grehan invited him and Danny Sullivan on stage to have […]
Say A Prayer; Google Kills Prayer Times
About a year ago, Google introduced a new rich snippets for prayer times. That rich snippet has now been decommissioned due to lack of webmaster implementation. The purpose was to show useful prayer times for those who are searching Google for Islamic, Jewish or other prayer times in the Google search results. Here is a […]
Yes, Bing Has Human Search Quality Raters & Here’s How They Judge Web Pages
A web page that definitively satisfies a searcher’s intent is “Perfect,” and should appear at the top of Bing’s search results. On the other end of the scale, spammy web pages and pages that almost no searcher would find useful are deemed “Bad.” That’s a bit of how Bing instructs the people in its Human […]
July Search Share: Google At All-Time High, Bing Continues Slow Gains
We’re starting to see financial analysts expose July search market share figures from comScore, ahead of their formal release tomorrow. Bing grew slightly and Google remained where it was last month but ahead of its position last year. While Yahoo was also flat, the good news is that the company didn’t lose additional share, as […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 14, 2012
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-hoo Search Down 4 Percent In Past Year, Hitwise Says June and July haven’t been very kind months for Bing and Yahoo. What Hitwise calls “Bing-powered search” had about 28.1 percent […]
Bing-hoo Search Down 4 Percent In Past Year, Hitwise Says
June and July haven’t been very kind months for Bing and Yahoo. What Hitwise calls “Bing-powered search” had about 28.1 percent of all U.S. searches in May, but that dropped to less than 27 percent for July. And what was a five percent year-over-year gain back in May, has now become a four percent Y-o-Y […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 13, 2012
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 June-July Updates: Site Clustering, Sitelinks Changes & Focus On Page Quality It’s back. And it’s bigger than ever. I’m talking about Google’s monthly announcement of search quality/algorithm changes — an […]
Google’s June-July Updates: Site Clustering, Sitelinks Changes & Focus On Page Quality
It’s back. And it’s bigger than ever. I’m talking about Google’s monthly announcement of search quality/algorithm changes — an announcement that the company skipped in July, making the one that they posted late Friday afternoon the biggest ever, with a reported 86 changes covering June and July. As I’m wont to do, below is a […]
Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not Just YouTube
Google says that YouTube isn’t going to somehow solely escape its new “pirate penalty.” Any popular site may be OK, as the penalty works off of more than pure copyright infringement reports. Nuances in calculating the penalty should save popular user-generated content sites, the company said. The Pirate Penalty Initially, it sounded as if sites […]
How YouTube Will Escape Google’s New Pirate Penalty
Google has announced that it will soon penalize sites that are repeatedly accused of copyright infringement. But one site in particular doesn’t need to worry: Google’s own YouTube. It has a unique immunity against the forthcoming penalty. POSTSCRIPT: Please also be sure to read our follow-up article, Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 10, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Ari Emanuel Update: DMCA Requests Now Used In Google’s Ranking Algorithm Has someone filed a large number of DMCA “takedown” requests against your site? If so, look out. That’s the […]
The Pirate Update: Google Will Penalize Sites Repeatedly Accused Of Copyright Infringement
Has someone filed a large number of DMCA “takedown” requests against your site? If so, look out. There’s a new penalty that may cause you to rank lower in Google’s search results. It joins other penalties (also called “filters” or “updates”) such as “Panda” and “Penguin.” We’re dubbing this one the “Pirate Update” as it’s aimed […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 9, 2012
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 SEO Guide On A/B & Multivariate Testing Google posted their official word on how you can conducting web site testing using A/B testing or multivariate testing and stay clear of […]
Google’s SEO Guide On A/B & Multivariate Testing
Google posted some guidelines on how you can conduct A/B or multivariate testing and stay clear of any issues with being listed in its search engine, such as avoiding penalties. No Cloaking Google says you shouldn’t cloak, show its crawlers something that humans wouldn’t see. From its post: Make sure that you’re not deciding whether to […]