Yahoo Adds Local Business Snapshots Next To Search Results

You’re gonna say to yourself, “That looks a lot like Google’s local search results.” I’m talking about the latest interface change that Yahoo has announced: the display of local business information alongside search results. The local business info includes basic…

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Google Search Redesigns Stock Quotes, Drops Competitor Links For First Time Since 2000

Google has launched a new stock card result that is a lot larger, is more interactive and has dropped the links to competing financial sites. Here is the new stock card you get when you search Google for [yhoo]: Compare that to the old one: As you can see, the links to the competing stock […]

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Try To Build Links Through Article Directories

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video answer encouraging webmasters not to use article directory web sites with the goal of building links. The question posed was: Links from relevant content in article directories — Seen as good or bad? eg. I link my beauty website from a…

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Report: Google Close (Again) To EU Antitrust Settlement

The third time may be the charm. According to Reuters Google is (once again) “close to settling a three-year antitrust probe by European regulators after it offered ‘much better’ concessions” to the European Commission (EC). However Google has been here before. Two previous…

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Google May Be Forced To Pay $1 Billion To Patent Troll

A New York-based “patent troll” called Vringo, through its subsidiary I/P engine, successfully sued Google, Microsoft, AOL and others using two patents related to search advertising. The plaintiff won approximately $30 million at trial in 2012. Google was asked to pay $15.8 million of…

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Google Takes Down Another Link Network, France’s Buzzea

Google’s head of search spam, announced on Twitter earlier this morning, that Google has taken action on another “link network” named Buzzea. Matt Cutts tweet read, “Today we’re taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines…

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5 PPC Tactics Super Bowl Advertisers Are Using To Boost Their Campaigns

In the weeks leading up to game day, several Super Bowl advertisers have been employing paid search to help ensure their campaigns are found by the legions of users searching for “Super Bowl ads”. While the majority of Super Bowl advertisers still aren’t taking to PPC, those that…

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DeepMind Buy Another Google “Moonshot” Of Sorts

Re/code offers some additional insight into the $400+ million acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepMind that was reported last week. The people at DeepMind will apparently work with the search team at Google but not exclusively: Or a…

Google Issues Subtle Warning To Affiliates That Have “Thin-Content”

Google’s Chris Nelson of the search quality team issued a warning on the Google Webmaster Blog to affiliates who produce thin-content. He said that affiliates that produce thin-content and have little-to-no value-add on their site may be penalized for going against Google’s guidelines….

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Google’s Matt Cutts Explains That Older Sites Won’t Always Keep Their Current Rankings

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video yesterday answering why some old sites may not have their rankings in Google last forever. Matt Cutts explained that there are many old sites that are in the range of about 15 years old and while that is a good thing, some of these…

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The Search Agency: CPC Increases Across The Board, Weaker Bing Ads Spend In Q4 2013

The Search Agency released its Quarterly State of Paid Search Report today with Q4 performance data among its client set that spans several industries with global spend. The report shows paid search spend rose 37.4 percent year-over-year. Mobile Growth…

Israel Wants To Tax Google To Support Local Content Publishers

A new bill making its way to Israel’s parliament (the Knesset) would assess a tax of 7 percent on search engine ad revenues to subsidize local content publishers. The story was reported in the Financial Times. While it’s not explicit or exclusive to any individual company, the bill has been…

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Google’s Latest Search Trick: “As The Crow Flies” Distance Calculation

Move over, pandas. Fly away, hummingbirds. Waddle away, penguins. Google has a new animal friend: crows. But unlike its past associations with the animal world, this one isn’t about SEO or algorithms — it’s a new search trick that adds distance calculation to Google’s OneBox…

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Apple Buys Ads On Google & Bing To Celebrate The Mac’s 30th Birthday

Leaving nothing to chance, Apple’s ensured that anyone searching for “Mac” on Google or Bing today, the 30th birthday of the Mac, will know about the anniversary. The company has purchased ads that lead to a special Mac birthday area of the Apple site. Above is an example of what…

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German Courts Follow French Ruling & Order Google To Block Max Mosley Images In Search Results

Google has lost another case in the Max Mosley lawsuit, this time in Germany. According to a Reuter’s report, a German court has ruled Google is responsible for distributing scandalous pictures of the former Formula One president, and is ordering the search engine to block links to the images…

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Google Loses Again In AdWords Patent Infringement Case

A judge has determined patent-holding company Vringo is entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords. The order stems from a case brought by Vringo subsidiary I/P Engine in 2011 that claimed filter…

Google To Replace Smartphone User-Agent To Improve Smart Phone Indexing

Google announced they are replacing the old smartphone crawler user-agent with a new one in order to make it possible for Google to index more smartphone content. Zhijian He, a smartphone search engineer at Google said that the previous user-agent “made it impossible for Google to index…

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An Easy Way To Check What Referrer Data Google, Bing Or Yahoo Pass To Your Secure Site

With the three major search engines migrating their default searches to secure search, over SSL/HTTPS, marketers and webmasters want to know what referrer and analytics data will be passed to them and what won’t. The majority of Google is secure search, Yahoo yesterday defaulted all searches…

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