Google Adds A Knowledge Graph Popup To Search Results, But Is It Good For Site Owners?
Google has announced the formal rollout of a test that some searchers have been seeing for a few days now — a test that associates a Knowledge Graph popup with certain web pages in desktop search results. The popup adds more information about certain search results, which sounds like it…
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Google’s Matt Cutts: Facebook & Twitter Pages Are Treated Like Any Other Web Page On The Internet
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” The short answer was no. Matt said that Google does not give any special treatment to Facebook or Twitter pages. They are in…
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Yahoo Search Goes Secure, Taking Referrer Data — An Indicator Of Yahoo’s Popularity — With It
By default, searches on Yahoo.com are now done through a secure server. That means more protection for searchers but less data for search marketers about how they are receiving traffic. Any visits from Yahoo done via search will appear as if someone ca…
Google Now Changing The Top Search Filters Based On Query
Google is now dynamically changing the top search menu/filters based on the search query entered by the searcher. So now, what options you see at the top might differ or be in a different order based on the query you enter into Google’s search box. A Google spokesperson told us this based on…
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Study: Display Ads Drive Search Clicks After Two Weeks
Though there have been several studies on the impact of display ads on search queries, researchers from Harvard and Ozyegin University in Turkey sought to bring academic rigor to this discussion. Their findings are contained in a Harvard Business School paper entitled, “Do Display Ads…
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Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors Reports Now Showing Errors On Final Redirect URL
Google’s John Mueller announced on the Google Webmaster blog this morning that the Google Webmaster Tools team has updated the crawl errors report to show errors on the final URL of the redirect, as opposed to the origin URL of the redirect. What this means is that Google is now showing the…
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Expedia & Google: No Comment From Both About Possible Expedia Penalty
Expedia appears to have been hit by a Google penalty related to unnatural links. So what do Google and Expedia have to say about the situation? No comment. As covered yesterday, the visibility of Expedia listings in Google appears to have recently plun…
Keep Writing Quality Content: SEO Bloggers React To Matt Cutts’ Claim “Guest Blogging Is Dead”
Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, caused an uproar in the SEO community yesterday when he published a blog post on his personal blog claiming guest blogging for SEO purposes is dead. In his post, Cutts offered a history of how guest blogging has moved from being a reliable source of…
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Marin: 40 Percent Of Google PLA Clicks To Come From Smartphones By Dec 2014
By now it’s clear that retailers made record investments in Google product listing ads (PLAs) in Q4 2013, as reports from Covario, RKG and IgnitionOne have each shown. Today, Marin Software released its own findings which reinforce the general consensus that PLA performance this past holiday…
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Matt Cutts: “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done”
Google and Matt Cutts, in particular, has made a number of statements about guest blogging over the past year as the tactic has grown as a link building tactic. None of those statements are as clear as the one Cutts wrote today on his personal blog. Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team,…
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Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over Unnatural Links
The major travel web site, Expedia, seems to have lost 25% of their search visibility in Google according to Search Metrics. It appears that drop was due to an unnatural link penalty, where Nenad called out Expedia over a month ago for paid links on article sites. Expedia.com’s Google Traffic…
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Google Remarketing Ads Found To Violate Canadian Privacy Law; To Revamp Ad Review System By June
Google has agreed to several concessions after an investigation by Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner found Google in violation of Canada’s privacy rights for the use of sensitive health history in remarketing campaigns. The investigation began last January, when a man…
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Searching For Gmail In Google Links You To Compose A Message To A Google Apps User
If you search for [gmail] in Google and if you click on the sitelink that reads “Google mail” – Google may push you to a page that composes an email to a Google Apps user. Here is the search result you may see when you search for [gmail]: Clicking on that sitelink below the main…
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Google Logo Marks Holiday Honoring Civil Rights Hero
Today’s Google logo marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday recognizing the civil rights leader. The illustrated logo includes a profile of Martin Luther King, Jr., images of doves to represent King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Lincoln Memorial where King made his…
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Google Alerts Get A Shiny New Redesign
Google flipped the switch this morning on a new design for its Google Alerts emails. The change brings Google Alerts closer in line with Google’s general aesthetic. The emails now have a similarly clean look-and-feel to the card-style layout that’s becoming so prevalent in Google search…
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AdWords Cross-Device Conversions: How 1-800-FLOWERS Is Using The Data To Be More Customer Centric
Yesterday, we got an early preview of the first case study Google will publish on the use of estimated cross-device conversions in AdWords. It features 1-800-Flowers and also addresses the company’s use of click-t0-call. When Google first announced the release of estimated cross-device…
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Google Issues Bad Ads Report: 59 Percent More Ads Pulled, But Fewer Bad Advertisers in 2013
In the ongoing battle to keep its ads ecosystem free of scammers and malware, Google says it pulled more than 350 million bad ads from its systems last year, up 59 percent from the 224 million it struck down in 2012. Looking back at last year’s bad ads report, it appears that for the first…
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Local SEOs Sound Off On Google+ Local Hijackings
Earlier this week Danny Sullivan reported on the hijacking of thousands of local hotel listings within Google+ Local. Those listings had been replaced by third-party hotel booking services. And while it’s unclear how long those third party links were in place, several knowledgable people have…
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RKG Report: PLAs Fuel AdWords Growth, Bing Ads Spend Rises Sharply In Q4
RKG has released its Q4 2013 Digital Marketing Report, and as other reports have indicated, paid search saw solid year-over-year growth in the holiday quarter. Paid search spend among RKG’s retail-heavy client set rose 23 percent year-over-year. Overall click volume increased 19 percent, and…
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Bing: It’s A Myth That Keyword Rich Domain Names Improve Search Rankings
Microsoft Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, wrote last night at the Bing Webmaster Blog that it is only a myth that in today’s ranking algorithms that a keyword rich domain name will make enough of an impact on your rankings to give you a major boost above your…
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