Google’s Matt Cutts: Determining If Your Site Ranking Is Result Of A Penalty Is “Tricky”
Today’s video from Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts tackles the question, “How can you tell if your site is suffering from an algorithmic penalty, or you are simply being outgunned by better content?” According to Cutts: It’s kind of tricky because we have a large…
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Nearly A Year Later, Google’s Penalty Notices Remain Confusing
Nearly a year after Google’s Matt Cutts told us penalty notifications will get clearer it seems as if the notifications, in many cases, have gotten harder to understand. I spend a lot of time following penalties issued by Google through examples given to me via email, penalties publicizes on…
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Google Slaps Greece Sites With Penalties
It appears that Google has taken action on spammers, potentially link spammers, in Greece recently. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, responded on Twitter to a webmaster noticing that many websites in Greece received penalties. Matt responded saying “ah, you noticed the action…
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Agnes Martin Google Logo Celebrates Abstract Painter’s 102nd Birthday
Today’s Google logo marks what would have been the 102nd birthday of abstract painter Agnes Martin, adding another female to the list of women Google has honored on its homepage this year. Born in Canada, Martin spent much of her career first in New York City, and then New Mexico. She is best…
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What Do Users Really Think Of The New Google Design?
When Google started testing the new look for its search results pages which ditches the shading behind the ads and replaces it with yellow “ad” icons, contradictory outcries of this sort began popping up, “Ad click-through rates are going to plummet because the ads are too obvious…
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Google Alerts Adds Filters For Regions & Languages
Google has added two more filter and delivery options to Google Alerts. Google Alerts informs you of updates within Google results via email or RSS feed. The two new filters let you refine those alerts by language or region. You can tell Google you onl…
Yelp and YP Enter Into “Strategic” Content, Distribution Partership
YP and Yelp have announced a strategic partnership that will in the near future provide YP advertisers with an enhanced presence on Yelp and effectively bring Yelp into the YP Local Ad Network. There is probably a revenue sharing deal in the background…
Selling Links To A Big Brand? Here’s Why You Don’t Tweet About It
Here’s a lesson in how not to sell links. As Search Engine Roundtable pointed out this morning, someone named “Vince” from WebDesign.org is using Twitter to contact companies about renewing paid links that are about to expire. You can look at the @vitaliykoloswdl account and see…
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Google Search Share Stable, Bing Growth Continues At Yahoo’s Expense
In February Google controlled 67.5 percent of US search query volume, according to comScore. Bing had 18.4 percent and Yahoo 10.3 percent. These numbers were essentially unchanged from last month. Compared with a year ago, Bing’s share has grown and Yahoo’s declined. In February 2013…
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Google’s Matt Cutts Implies MyBlogGuest Publishers Will Receive Penalties, While Many Begin Receiving Manual Action Notifications
Google has taken action on a large guest blog network that we believe is MyBlogGuest.com. In fact, the owner of MyBlogGuest.com, Ann Smarty confirmed last night she received a penalty. Yesterday, there as confusion over if those publishers who particip…
Smartphones To Drive 50 Percent Of Google Paid Search Clicks By End Of 2015 [Study]
Mobile paid search saw rapid growth last year, owing to the both the rise in smartphone and tablet use as well as to the introduction of enhanced campaigns, which largely bakes mobile targeting into advertisers’ campaigns. In 2013, 19 percent of Google’s ad revenue came from mobile search…
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Google’s Matt Cutts: We’ve Taken Action On A Large Guest Blog Network
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced really early this morning on Twitter that Google has taken action on “a large guest blog network.” Google’s Matt Cutts warned the webmaster and SEO community that guest blogging is done, at least for SEO and link building…
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Bing Ads Starts Allowing Keyword Variations Once Flagged As Duplicate
Just about anyone who has imported a campaign from Google AdWords or uploaded a new keyword set into Bing Ads has experienced the “duplicate keyword” error that occurs when two keywords in an ad group have subtle differences like hyphens or accents. That’s because Bing Ads removes…
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EU Antitrust Chief Says Google Settlement Essentially Done
Amid criticism from politicians and Google’s critics, EU antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia has essentially said that the current version of Google’s antitrust settlement proposal is a done deal. While he didn’t rule out changes definitively he seems to think complainants’…
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Yandex Buys Israeli Geo-Location Platform KitLocate
Yandex announced this morning that it has acquired Israeli startup KitLocate. According to third party sources the deal was worth “several million euros.” Yandex will gain and maintain a presence in Tel Aviv though the acquisition. The chief virtue of KitLocate is that it can provide location…
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Bing Ads Now Shows Zero-Click Search Queries, Offers 20 To 40X More Data Than Before
Formerly dubbed the Search Query Report, Bing Ads has updated what’s now called the Search Term Report, which houses the data on the terms users actually typed before clicking on an ad. Included in the new release are results on zero-click search queries. These terms had been excluded from…
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Google Testing New Sponsored Shopping Boxes, With 3D View
Google continues to experiment with Google Shopping displays beyond the traditional thumbnail box panel of Product Listing Ads. This latest version is larger than the sponsored result spotted earlier this month for the book “Don’t Make Me Think”. Found by Twitter user Brittney…
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Study: Researchers Blame Google Flu Trends Inaccuracies On Ongoing Algorithm Updates
Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston claim the regular overestimation of flu cases by Google Flu Trends can be blamed on Google’s ever-evolving algorithms and the inaccurate analysis of big data. Google Flu Trends often has been cited for incorrectly projecting the number of flu…
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Matt Cutts: Google Mobile Queries May Surpass PC Search This Year
Speaking at SMX West last week Google’s Matt Cutts said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if mobile search exceeded desktop queries this year. A similar comment was made by a Google speaker informally during a roundtable discussion at the International Franchising Association…
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Ranking Benefit To Making Your Site SSL? Not Yet But Google’s Cutts Would Like To Make It Happen.
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 […]
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