Category: Search Engine Watch

Nearly two years after making one of the biggest changes to secure search that resulted in a steady rise in “(not provided)” data, Google has made all searches encrypted using HTTPS. This means no more keyword data will be passed to site owners.

These are the core concepts of modern search – ranking factors, signals, graphs, and personalization. This is neither a guide to Google nor Bing. It is a starting point to better understand the landscape of how search engines rank web pages.

Regardless of whether you’re in-house or agency-side, there are huge profits to be gained from SEO and social media teams strategically working together. Here are the top three ways to set up and benefit from this powerful collaboration.

Move over Carson Daly and “The Today Show”. Meet the new social media talk shows: Google+ Hangouts and TwitterChats. Brands of all sizes can now gain influence and publicity channeled through today’s largest social media news networks. Here’s how.

The way to be perceived by Google as the best is, in fact, to be the best. You have to do that consistently, and often over a long period of time to get there, but you should be able to build your traffic, reputation, and business along the way.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed many subjects including logos, growing users, smart investments, mobile, PRISM, and even superpowers. Here are six interesting topics Mayer and Zuckerberg discussed at Disrupt.

The report found that three-quarters of respondents admitted using search engines as a route to their plundered content and that 58% of searches were generic hunts without any pirate tinged keywords. The majority of queries (82%) came from Google.

At the moment to view videos on YouTube on a mobile device, you have to be connected to some sort of internet connection. That will change in November however, with Youtube revealing plans to add a new offline mode to its applications.

Advertising is on the way to Pinterest, in the form of promoted pins in its search results. While Pinterest said it’s just a test for now, it assured users that the promoted pins will be tasteful, transparent, and offer a good user experience.

Yelp is no stranger to the court system; it has been sued many times by disgruntled small business owners upset over its business practices and authenticity of reviews. However, in an unusual turn of events, Yelp is the claimant this time around.

In what could have a significant impact for advertisers, Google is reportedly considering a change to how they track users online. Google might no longer use traditional cookies to track users, instead using an anonymous identifier called “AdID”.

The Google Analytics Visitors Flow report is truly a handy way to visualize what’s happening on a website. Today’s the day you turn it into your secret conversion rate optimization weapon and glean big insights from it before your next test.

Search marketers have a new set of screens to contend with. What are the rules of content strategy and SEO in this new ecosystem? What techniques will help you get found? And, more important, what kind of content will make you worth looking for?

Knowing how to promote yourself, your client, your business, or your employers takes a whole new level of skill and expertise. The challenge is finding the right balance of promotional strategies that will yield the most effective results.

Local search is broken. To improve your local search strategy for both now and the future, you need to understand the growing importance of local data, personalization, emerging technologies, new transaction methods, and delivery.

Negative SEO is a large concern for webmasters, especially those in competitive niches. Here are some distinctions about types of link-based negative SEO, and some insights and tips on how to protect your site, based on several real world examples.

Google’s Product Listing Adds have posed serious challenges for retailers of all sizes. Here are 10 of the most common mistakes that search marketers make, as well as some advice on how to address them to improve your own PLA campaigns.

Even if you offer your services nationwide, being local has become an important ranking factor for Google. Try to cover the most important cities before a smaller local player takes your place. Here’s how to prepare for the increasing role of local.

While many B2Bs focus on Facebook for organic interaction with customers, B2Cs often look to advertising on Facebook to drive sales. But a new case study from Facebook’s advertising unit shows positive lead gen results in a B2B social environment.

The FTC has announced they will hold a workshop on the subject of native advertising in December. While the fact that holding a workshop isn’t necessarily that big of news, the fact of the FTC is looking into native advertising at all is big news.