Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Basic Econometric Modeling: Measuring The Offline-Online Effect Of TV Advertising On Search Spend Multi-channel advertisers often ask me how to measure the effect of their TV ads on their online marketing […]
Google has confirmed they have pushed out a refresh on the Panda algorithm on Friday, April 27th. I noticed an uptick in Webmaster discussion around Google changes over the weekend, mostly at WebmasterWorld and asked Google to confirm if there was an update. Google confirmed they refreshed the Panda update on the 27th, but it […]
Think that (not provided) is only impacting SEO-related websites? Think again. The Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism school that’s well known in media circles, wrote Wednesday about the growing impact that (not provided) is having on publisher websites. Author Steve Myers shared what he found after checking Poynter.org’s analytics: Keywords were hidden in 29 percent […]
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 Goes Search-Retro With Cleaner Look For Results Microsoft has started to roll out a new, simpler look for the Bing SERP. It looks very much like the “old Google.” It’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: Video: Google Speaks About Search Quality Raters Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has published a video talking about a topic that Google has never really talked about publicly before […]
Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has published a video talking about a topic that Google has never really talked about publicly before – Google Quality Raters. The video goes through the process used by Google with these Quality Raters. Matt Cutts specifically says these quality raters have no direct impact on the Google […]
I had a chance recently to speak to DataPop CEO Jason Lehmbeck. Before DataPop Lehmbeck was at Overture/Yahoo. DataPop is an agency/platform that specializes in “offer driven” search campaigns. I was talking to Lehmbeck about mobile search trends and what kinds of consumer response he was seeing to various campaigns. Lehmbeck gave me some unpublished, […]
SEOmoz, the SEO toolset company, has announced they have successfully raised another $18 million in venture capital from Foundry Group and Ignition Partners. Foundry Group put in $15 million and Ignition Partners put in $3 million. Co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin detailed the financials, growth, future plans and management changes of SEOmoz. One […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Five Key Learnings From A Local Marketing Success Story One of our most compelling speakers at the 2012 Local Search Association annual conference was Mary Boysman, VP Brand Marketing and Advertising […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: StarCraft Themed Google Easter Egg “Zerg Rush” Calls An Attack On Your Search Results Google’s newest Easter egg, a search for “zerg rush,” forces to to fight an onslaught of invaders […]
What began as an experiment 10 months ago is now showing up in nearly one of every five Google search results. I’m talking about authorship — Google’s use of the rel=author markup to identify content creators next to their content. A new SearchMetrics study published this week says that about 17 percent of queries included […]
Was your site hit by Google’s new Penguin Update that targets spam? Are you not guilty as charged? Google’s got a new feedback form for that, as well as a method to report spam that should have been caught. I’m Innocent! The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the information on Twitter […]
Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else 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: Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. […]
Struggling to know what to do in the wake of Google’s Penguin Update? Judging from all the comments and forum discussions we’ve seen, plenty are. We’ve got a little initial advice from Google on the topic, mixed with our own. What Was Penguin? The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to […]
Move over Panda, there’s a new Google update in town: Penguin. That’s the official name Google has given to the webspam algorithm that it released on Tuesday. What’s An Update? For those unfamiliar with Google updates, I’d recommend reading my Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update post from last year. It explains […]
Google’s latest search algorithm change designed to fight spam and improve its search results went live yesterday. Plenty of people are seeing its impact already. Better or worse? It’s easy to find some examples of things being bad; it’s hard to say overall if there’s been a net improvement or not. Judging Relevancy Is Tricky […]
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 Update Targeting Webspam In Search Results Google has announced that it is releasing a new search algorithm that it hopes will better catch people who spam its search results […]
Last week, Google released a new update to its Panda algorithm that targets low-quality content. Who won and who lost? Searchmetrics has posted an analysis of that. Our original story here reported the winners/losers list, as Searchmetrics did, showing who was estimated to have gained and lost in the new Penguin Update that was released this […]
Ad network Chitika, which regularly publishes findings from activity on its network, has released some data that show owners of iPhones and iPads search more than Android owners. This is a bit counter-intuitive and unexpected, given how prominent search and the search box are on the homescreen of most Android handsets and how deeply integrated […]
Google announced they are removing three features from Google Webmaster Tools. Google made the announcement on the Google Webmaster Central blog saying the three features going away include the site performance report, the subscriber stats and the robots.txt creation tool. Google placed reversed the order of these features when they wrote about it, trying to […]
Google has announced that it is releasing a new search algorithm that it hopes will better catch people who spam its search results or purposely do things to rank better that are against Google’s publishers guidelines. Going live today, Google says the “Penguin Update” will impact about 3% of search queries. From the company’s posts […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Breadcrumb Trails Come To AdWords Display URLs on AdWords search ads are getting another element — breadcrumb trails, a set of links next to the URL that lets users navigate directly […]
Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of being part of a Search Marketing Now (SMN) webinar, it was sponsored by Optify and focused on B2B link building tactics. Scott Fasser, Director of Customer Experience at Optify and I shared a number of B2B linking tactics and then hosted a lively Q&A session. We ran out of time 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: Google’s Cutts Explains How Google Search Works Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a 8 minute video on how Google search works. From crawling, indexing to ranking, he gets […]
Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a 8 minute video on how Google search works. From crawling, indexing to ranking, he gets into a brief overview of how Google’s search engine does its job. Matt explains how PageRank is used, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases. Here is […]
Google Rich Snippets are an outstanding way for webmasters to get more exposure for their pages in the Google search results. Using them, you can add add images, review stars and more to your listings. But for some webmasters, that is not enough. Back in November I noticed HTML entities working in Google’s breadcrumb rich […]
Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs in the US. It’s a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on […]
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 Shuts Down Patent Search, Google Related Toolbar, One Pass & Vaccine Finder After only eight months, the Google Related toolbar is headed to the dead pool. That’s one of several […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Home Depot To Correct Misleading Link Request It read like one of those bad link requests you get. Link to me, and you’ll rank better. It even suggested hiding the link. […]
It read like one of those bad link requests you get. Link to me, and you’ll rank better. It even suggested hiding the link. But the request was from Home Depot, to its network of nearly 2,000 service providers. Now that it’s come to light, the home improvement store chain says it is correcting the […]
Search rankings got you down on Google recently? It’s not the expected over-optimization penalty, as some have been guessing at. Rather, Google may have thought your site was a “parked domain,” when it wasn’t. Search forums like Webmaster World and Google’s own search discussion areas have had much discussion about recent drops in ranking, such as here, here and […]
AT&T Interactive released its Q1 2012 “Local Insights Report” (.pdf) earlier today. The report covers search activity on AT&T Interactive’s various properties (online, mobile and IPTV), which together comprise its YP Local Ad Network. The data in the report are gleaned from more than 190 million monthly searches across the network. Below are the overall […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 8 Products That Might Be On Yahoo’s Chopping Block Yahoo’s product teams are officially on notice. Shortly after announcing Q1 earnings yesterday, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson dropped a bomb during […]
The biggest lie in search marketing is that paid and organic search are separate channels. From the customer’s perspective, paid and natural search are nearly identical. In fact, according to this study done by Performics last year, around a third of all searchers don’t even know the difference between a paid and a natural search listing. This […]
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 Q1: Revenue Beats Expectations, Search Up 8 Percent A short while ago Yahoo released Q1 earnings, which exceeded financial analysts’ consensus estimates. Total revenue was $1.22 billion, up 1 percent […]
By the end of April, traffic to Blekko will likely have quadrupled since January 1st, and the company has a handful of reasons why it thinks that’s happening. More on the explanation later; first, the numbers. The “slashtags” search engine has already seen a 337 percent gain in unique visitors this year. That’s as 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: Foursquare Hits 2 Billion Check-ins, 20 Million Users It’s April 16th … otherwise known in some circles as Foursquare Day. (Get it? 16 is four squared. And April is the fourth […]
Google’s head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced on Twitter that they have sent out new message notifications to 20,000 web sites that are hacked. Specifically, Google sent these messages to sites doing “weird redirects.” I’ve personally seen a spike in the number of sites redirecting from their web site to a non-authorized site […]
In the brave new world of “SoLoMo” there are an increasing number of sites and mobile apps competing to help you choose a local business or lead you there. In addition to Google Maps, Yelp and Foursquare there are the venerable yellow pages’ sites and many others. They all get their local data from generally […]