The irony here is almost too obvious to mention: an entity dedicated to monitoring the potential “chilling effects” of DMCA takedown notices is censoring itself. Chillingeffects.org has now removed itself from search results, making those notices harder to find. Chillingeffects.org was created in roughly 2001 as an academic and public resource to monitor and record potentially improper DMCA requests. […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 4 Predictions for Mobile Marketing and Call Tracking in 2015 – December 9 Webcast Mobile search exploded in 2014, and next year it is promising to be even bigger. So what’s […]
Yahoo appears to be running a new test on search ads in which the display URL isn’t displayed in the ads. What’s interesting, though, is that the display URLs aren’t removed on all the ads within a SERP — some ads do have a display URL showing. Above is a screenshot captured by paid search […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Agencies Take Note: Google Third-Party Policy Changes Coming Nov. 2014 Last month, Google rolled out an updated policy center for all advertisers. Starting in November, agencies and other third-party firms and […]
Google is notifying publishers when it de-indexes their links under the controversial “Right to Be Forgotten” (RTBF). What this does is often trigger republication of a version of the story by the media outlet or a page that indicates what URLs are being removed from the search index. Among others, that’s what the BBC has […]
When it comes to telling search engines about the content on a website, webmasters might be wondering if they should submit sitemaps or just setup RSS or Atom feeds. Google’s answer? Use both. In a new blog post sharing advice on XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds, Google says it’s not an either/or question. For optimal […]
Google is now sharing details about Right To Be Forgotten removals in a new section of its pre-existing Google Transparency Report area. The latest numbers show that Facebook, ProfileEngine.com and Google’s own YouTube are the top three sites to have content taken down through the new European system. In the new section, Google breaks out the requests […]
SearchMetrics announced their 2014 SEO ranking factors study is now ready for download. Every year, SearchMetrics releases the study but this is the largest study they’ve done, with almost 100 pages and by adding dozens of new factors like time of site, bounce rate, fresh links and others. The key take away from here is […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft Bing Now Added To Google Chrome New Tab Page Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is now an option within Google’s Chrome new tab page screens. Prior, if you changed your default […]
Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is now an option within Google’s Chrome new tab page screens. Prior, if you changed your default search provider in Chrome, the new tab page would still show Google has the search option. It would change the search provider in the URL/omnibox area but it would not replace Google from the […]
It’s been a big year so far for product listing ads on both Google and Bing. Google started putting more ads in the Knowledge Graph. Bing followed Google’s lead on combining tablet and desktop traffic. And Google said it would begin stripping paid search queries from referrer strings. Now that we’re halfway through the year, […]
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 Drops, Google+ Circle Count From Authorship In Search Results Google’s John Mueller announced they are making a major change in the search results around authorship. Specifically, Google is dropping the […]
Now that the European Courts have given its citizens the “Right To Be Forgotten” in major search engines, the inevitable has happened — a brand new business model built on removal requests has taken shape. In response to the EU giving individuals the right to request Google remove URLs from its European search results, Reputation […]
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 Launching Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0 Targeting Spammy Queries This Week Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, announced at SMX Advanced tonight that the third version of PayDay Loan algorithm […]
The native UTM tagging solution was a top request for years.
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 My Business: A Visual Tour Of Google’s New Tool For Local Businesses & Brands Google My Business is Google’s new unified interface designed to make life easier for local businesses […]
Bing has posted on the Bing Webmaster blog their best practices on how to implement XML Sitemaps files for your site. The post includes a large topic on how the best practices apply to really large web sites, with many URLs. Bing’s Six Best Practices For Sitemaps: Follow the sitemaps reference at www.sitemaps.org. Common mistakes […]
Many searchers and Google users are asking, will the Right To Be Forgotten form be a feature and option coming to the U.S. on Google.com. The answer is no! A few weeks ago, Google told us the removals will only be available in the European Union, that is until the U.S. government and court finds […]
The Guardian reports that Google may add a indication in the search results that content has been removed due to the Right To Be Forgotten European Union requirements issued last month. Google told us a couple weeks ago that they will indeed add disclosure in the search results when something is removed from their search […]
Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, Pierre Far and Zineb Ait Bahajji, posted on the Google Webmaster blog today that they’ve updated their official guidelines for moving your web site and having Google in mind when doing so. They broke out the process based on two ways of moving your site: (1) Move a site with no […]
Google has taken a big step forward in complying with the European Union’s new “Right To Be Forgotten” that was established after a court ruling earlier this month. The company has created a new form allowing those in the EU to request takedown of URLs they dislike. Removals will only happen for EU-versions of Google, […]
What really happened to eBay dropping in Google’s search results this week? A source familiar with the situation tells Search Engine Land that Google hit eBay with a manual penalty this week. A manual penalty is when a human being at Google reviews a site and decides that it deserves some type of slap. Previously, […]
After what we think was about a week of being de-indexed, the controversial Ripoff Report website is showing up again in search results on Yahoo’s Australian website. But a company spokesperson tells us that some URLs are still blocked. Late Wednesday night (May 21), we noticed that a site:ripoffreport.com search on Yahoo7 — the Australian […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Enterprise SEO in 2014 – Webcast this Thursday This Thursday, May 1, at 1 PM EDT, our sister site, Digital Marketing Depot will host a webcast to help you better understand […]
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 Slaps Another Guest Blog Network: PostJoint Google’s Matt Cutts somewhat confirmed on Twitter that Google has taken action on another guest blogging network. This network is named PostJoint and claims […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Official: Google Brings “Not Provided” To Ads, Will Withhold Search Query Data From Paid Clicks As suspected, Google is moving to secure search for clicks on paid search ads. In an […]
As suspected, Google is moving to secure search for clicks on paid search ads. In an announcement posted by Paul Feng, Product Management Director, AdWords on the Ads Developer Blog, the company states, “Today, we are extending our efforts to keep search secure by removing the query from the referrer on ad clicks originating from […]
A few weeks ago, we reported on cases where Google was misattributing content for select news publishers. We showed examples of Google showing URLs of large news publishers but those URLs listed were not the source URLs and thus, redirecting from Google’s search results to a completely different URL. Yesterday, a few weeks after we […]
The PPC Twittersphere lit up today with word that Google dropped the latest version of AdWords Editor today. Here’s the lowdown on what’s new in Version 10.4. Bids and Bid Strategies: Much awaited, AdWords Editor now supports flexible bidding strategies. Users can update bid strategies down to the keyword level, apply flexible bid strategies from […]
Google Head of Search Spam Matt Cutts posted a video today answering how Google goes about evaluating which new search algorithms they use and which they throw away or adapt. The question was posed by James Foster of Sydney, Australia who asked: What are some of the metrics that Google uses to evaluate whether one iteration […]
Google has announced they’ve added “more precise” data for the Index Status reports in Google Webmaster Tools. Specifically, Google is now reporting each indexed URLs for each protocol, specifically both for HTTP and HTTPS, as well as for verified subdirectories. Google said this change “makes it easy for you to monitor different sections of your […]
A reader has sent us examples of Google misattributing content from dozens of large online news publications, with hundreds thousands of examples of Google indexing URLs and pages, but that content being pulled from a different source. For example, if you search for [hometownlocator site:post-gazette.com], the first result is local.post-gazette.com/boardman+florist.9.125954212p.home.html: If you look at the […]
Another SMX is in the books! This show definitely had one of the most engaged attendee groups I have ever seen at any conference in recent memory. The polite, attentive search engine marketers weren’t there to just network and enjoy the San Jose sun. They were interested and looking for answers. And on day three […]
Google has been migrating all their properties to work over SSL over the past years and they are still working on that migration process. Google would like to see you make your site work over SSL as well. So much so that Matt Cutts said at SMX West that he would personally love to make […]
This week, Google added new reporting available for mobile app campaigns in Google Analytics. By linking AdWords and Google Analytics accounts and enabling auto-tagging, mobile app advertisers will be able to access more detailed performance reports about their campaigns in Google Analytics. New reports on mobile app campaign performance include day parts, destination URLs and […]
Microsoft appears to be testing a new feature for Bing: Bing Saves. According to a Neowin community member who saw the beta, it’s a way to click and bookmark a search result for later retrieval from a personal Microsoft account. Below is a screenshot of the feature from Neowin. The utility of such a feature is […]
Thousands of hotels listed within Google+ Local appear to have had links leading to their official sites “hijacked” and replaced with ones leading to third-party booking services. Google+ Local listings are what Google depends on to provide results in Google Maps or Google Search, when people look for local businesses. A Hijacked URL For example, […]
By now, you are likely aware of the Rap Genius “Tweet In Exchange For Anchor Text” link scheme, hencefore to be known as TieFating. Barry Schwartz reported last week on John Marbach’s exposé of the popular music site, Rap Genius, which had started an “affiliate” program in order to get links pointing to their website. After it was exposed, […]
In a video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, he said you don’t have to worry about there being a down side, related to SEO, when using a responsive design approach for mobile web sites. The question posed to him was: Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead […]
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 Changes AdWords Ad Rank Calculation, Now Factors In Ad Extensions And Formats Today, Google announced a change to Ad Rank, its ad serving calculation in AdWords that determines where your […]