For Google’s 15th Birthday, Search “Google In 1998″ For A Flashback

Google turns 15 this week — celebrating its official birthday on Friday. But it already is gearing up for the celebrations with a special easter egg. Search for “google in 1998,” and you’ll see how Google used to look back then, in the year of its birth. The head of…

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Google Does Not Penalize For Broken HTML

In a video published today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts – Google confirmed that they do not penalize sites that have broken or invalid HTML. Matt Cutts said, “so Google does not penalize you if you have invalid HTML, because there would be a huge number of web pages…

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Google: BitTorrent Back In Auto Complete To Make Search “More Useful to People”

Yesterday we reported that after over two years of being missing, BitTorrent is back in Google’s auto completion results. That means, when you start typing the letters [bit] into Google’s search box, Google will offer an instant search suggestion of the term BitTorrent. Before…

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Google May Have Penalized Another Major Link Network: Ghost Rank 2.0

Google has significantly penalized another underground link network over the weekend and we believe that one of the link networks targeted by Google is named Ghost Rank 2.0. A few weeks ago, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, tweeted “Thinking of ghost-related puns for a spam…

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Post-PRISM, Google Confirms Quietly Moving To Make All Searches Secure, Except For Ad Clicks

In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads. Google says this has done to provide “extra protection” for searchers, and the company may be aiming to block NSA spying activity. Or possibly, it’s a move to…

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When It Comes To Google, Microsoft’s Ballmer Is Still Fighting Old Battles With Old Tactics

I’ve watched Microsoft fight Google in search for a very long time. Bing has come a long way, and I’ve been pleased to see a strong competitor emerge. But Microsoft hasn’t actually hurt Google’s share. It’s only robbed from its partner, Yahoo. So how’s Microsoft…

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Study: Google Reviews Determine Local Carousel Rankings

Since the the launch of the Google “Local Carousel” in June, SEOs and marketers have been trying to reverse engineer the ranking variables that elevate listings into that hallowed ground. Mike Blumenthal offered a good early roundup of stories and analysis. Now Digital Marketing Works…

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MPAA: 82 Percent Of Searches Leading To Pirated Content Come From Google

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) today accused Google and other search engines of playing “a significant role” in directing consumers to pirated movies and TV shows, with a special callout for the amount of Google searches that lead to infringing material. It’s the…

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With iOS 7, Siri Drops Google For Bing, Also Gains Twitter Search

Apple’s new iOS 7 mobile operating system officially rolled out today, and with it, the Siri assistant is finally out of beta. The most significant change to Siri is arguably that it no longer taps into Google for searches. As expected, a deal with Microsoft now makes Bing the default in…

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Part Two: Four AdWords Paid & Organic Report Questions Answered

Many good things come in four.  My favorite four things that come in fours may be the weather seasons, the NCAA Final Four, FDR’s Four Freedoms and the A-Team. Source – http://www.universalstudiosentertainment.com/assets_c/2010/05/Ateam_1-thumb-497xauto-890.jpg Last week, I wrote about initial AdWords paid and organic report data.  The paid and organic report links Google Webmaster tool data with […]

Study Shows No Clear Evidence That Google Plus Drives Ranking

At SMX Advanced, I presented results from a study we had done that convinced me that links in shares from Google Plus and Facebook behave like traditional web-based links. My statements at SMX Advanced were later disputed by Matt Cutts during his keyno…

Can we trust Google Keyword Planner?

While we mourn the loss of the Google Keyword Tool, we need to ask ourselves if the new Keyword Planner is trustworthy or not…

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Can we trust Google Keyword Planner?

Google’s Matt Cutts: Spammers Rarely Spam Using Multiple ccTLDs

In a recent video answer by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, Google said that spammers rarely use multiple or mass number of ccTLDs in an effort to spam. This comment came from Matt Cutts when he answered a question on if it is duplicate content to have the same content on an IPv4…

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How Search Engines Work — Really!

For those of us in SEO (or aspiring to be), there are a lot of little details that fill our days. Server architecture, 301 redirects, 404 errors, title tags, and various other things. Sometimes, we forget to sit back and figure out what it all means. A…