Bing: We Added A Border To Our Ads To Make Them More Visible

In response to our post yesterday about the often-invisible background shading on ads in the search engine results, Derrick Connel, Corporate Vice President of Bing Program Management at Microsoft, followed up with Danny Sullivan on Facebook to say: As a small comment on Bing — the ads have 2…

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Google’s Cutts: Got Bad Links To Your Site? Don’t Fret It, Disavow It!

In a recent video answer from Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, Matt said if you have bad links pointing to your site, don’t worry about it, all you need to do is disavow those links. Matt Cutts said, “just go ahead and disavow those links,” even if they those…

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Can Users Really Tell AdWords Ads from Organic Results?

123-reg Adwords takeoverGoogle results are full of ads. But a recent survey showed that over 50% of users don’t recognise paid results.

Post from on State of Search
Can Users Really Tell AdWords Ads from Organic Results?

The Birth of Influence Engine Optimization?

4(1)This month I’ve been looking at the newly emerged term – influence engine optimization. In this post I will provide you with a brief outline of the history of SEO as well as the consequences of tricking the algorithms and what Google implemented in return. We will then move on and take a look at read more »

Post from on State of Search
The Birth of Influence Engine Optimization?

Google’s Matt Cutts: We Fight Search Spam In 40+ Countries & Internationalize Our Spam Algorithms

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts announced in a video that Google fights search spam at an international level but does tend to have a stronger spam fighting sense in the Google.com, English search results. Matt Cutts explained that with most of Google’s spam fighting…

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Rejoice! Safari Is Once Again Providing Google Referral Information In iOS

Since last September, people using Safari on iOS devices and searching on Google have appeared to publishers as if they came directly to their sites, not via Google. Now, the problem has ended, with iOS now apparently having been upgraded to support the “meta referrer” tag. No, this…

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Google Reportedly Testing Local News Card For Google Now

Google is reportedly testing a local news “card” for its Google Now predictive search product. Quartz first reported on the project, and says it’s currently only being tested internally by Google employees. The revelation came from an interview last week that Quartz did with…

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No Reviews? The New Google+ Local Reviews Pop-Up Doesn’t Pop

East Bay Floor CoveringBased on the comments I am seeing on yesterday’s post, it appears that the new Google+ Local Reviews Pop-Up has gone global. Since it seems like this is a real thing and not a test, I started looking at it a bit more to figure out the implications. One question that popped up: @localseoguide What […]

The post No Reviews? The New Google+ Local Reviews Pop-Up Doesn’t Pop appeared first on Local SEO Guide.

Google+ Local Reviews Now Showing as SERP Pop-Ups – Goodbye Google+ Local Pages?

Google Plus Local SERPNot sure if I am seeing a test or if this is rolling out everywhere but now when I click on the “[#] Google reviews” link for a business from the SERPs, I am seeing a lightbox type of pop up display instead of being sent to the Google Plus Page for the business. Check […]

The post Google+ Local Reviews Now Showing as SERP Pop-Ups – Goodbye Google+ Local Pages? appeared first on Local SEO Guide.

Google: Links In Press Releases Should Use Nofollow Like Paid Links

Friday we broke the news that Google updated their link schemes webmaster guidelines. Now that the dust as settled, I aimed at getting more clarification on what Google meant by the new example around keyword rich anchor text links within articles or p…

Google Changes How AdWords Quality Score Is Reported

In a post today, Google announced it is updating the way AdWords quality scores are reported. The changes will roll-out globally over the next few days. The updates are designed to “tie your 1-10 numeric Quality Score more closely to its three key sub factors – expected clickthrough…

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Google Warns Against Large-Scale Guest Posting, Advertorials & “Optimized Anchor Text” In Press Releases

Google has quietly updated the link schemes document under their Webmaster guidelines to add large-scale guest posting, advertorials and optimized anchor text in articles or press releases to the list of types of links that violate their guidelines. Th…

Google To Shutter Its Google+ Local iOS App Next Month

With the newly updated Google Maps app for iOS out, Google has announced its plans to shut down the Google+ Local app for iOS on August 7th. There’s been no official announcement that I’m aware of yet, but both 9to5 Mac and Mark Traphagen posted a Google email detailing the shut down…

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Report: Google PLAs Dominate CSE Channel Like Never Before [CPC Strategy]

CPC Strategy’s latest Shopping Comparison Engine report shows Google’s grip on the market only tightened in Q2. Across performance metrics, Google PLAs (product listing ads) continue to outperform other CSEs by wide margins. For example, in Q1, Shopping.com, Pricegrabber and Amazon…

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