Category: Search Engine Watch

Google has filed a legal challenge to the U.S. government, demanding the right to reveal more information on the data requests it receives. It wants to publish how many FISA requests it receives and users or accounts encompassed within such requests.

When a user searches for a local results on Google, such as a restaurant or hotel, there is now a horizontal carousel which features thumbnails, ratings, as well as the number of Google+ reviews. Users can then scroll sideways to see more results.

According to new data from the comScore Video Metrix service, 182 million Americans watched nearly 41 billion online content videos in May 2013. That’s up from 181.9 million Americans, who watched 38.8 billion online content videos in April 2013.

Google plans to give Internet access to the entire world by sending network-enabled balloons into the stratosphere. Dubbed Project Loon, the new Google venture aims to liberate those 5 billion or so people on Earth without Internet access.

The new product, which Yahoo is launching in connection with location software company Yext, is designed to help companies easily update their online listings across more than 40 online platforms designed to reach 150 million local searchers.

A public relations strategy is a big part of successful search campaigns. Getting your company’s brand and employees exposed through media and social channels is incredibly important and can have a profound impact on links, rankings, and traffic.

As we move toward a content-centric approach to marketing, search, and social media, new influence-based metrics become more important. As Google evolves, people and the content they produce are beginning to be prioritized by the search engines.

Summary: If you know little or nothing about video production, where do you start and how difficult is it likely to be? Let’s take a quick look at seven useful video sites that can really help – and even have you making animated videos in hours.

Since the PRISM news broke, nearly every day has been a record search day for DuckDuckGo, including Monday, June 17, where it broke 3 million searches for the first time. That is nearly double its pre-PRISM daily search totals.

Facebook will soon begin streamlining its advertising options, and sponsored search results are among those that will be cut starting in July. Some wonder why sponsored results are targeted because advertisers experience good ROI.

Not surprisingly, Google led the way for search share in May, and grew its U.S. search market share to 66.7 percent. Bing grew to 17.4 percent in May, a significant increase from its 15.4 percent search market share in May 2012.

Using stock photography versus original photography won’t cause any negative impact on your site’s search engine rankings. However, one caveat Matt Cutts does ponder if Google could somehow used this as a signal in future search quality rankings.

Adobe released their findings today on the impact of Google AdWords enhanced campaigns on advertising click costs. To arrive at their conclusions they examined 100 U.S. advertisers spending more than $100 million between March and May of this year.

Google has announced that failure to fix annoying mobile experiences will now actively hinder your efforts to rank well within search results. This warning from Google makes the case for brands to look again at mobile SEO even more compelling.

Here’s why a long-term content strategy rooted in “how do I create content that I myself would genuinely want to consume?” rather than “how do I get people to my website?” will raise the quality of your content and help build an audience.

Both paid and organic search listings are fighting for the same customer and keyword term. This ability to maximize share of voice is critical, especially when you start to understand the multiplication power of having multiple listings.

Google will take home more than half of all mobile advertising dollars this year as the company is poised to see record revenues for 2013. EMarketer said Google is on pace to set a new record after more than tripling its mobile revenues in 2012.

Google Analytics announced a redesign of the administration panel. Not only does the new design have a more consistent look and feel, but it should also go a long way to helping users visualize the settings for an account, property and profile.

Facebook announced hashtags last week, giving validation to everyone who used the original Twitter function to drive home their point in a Facebook status update. What was once unnecessary is now helpful in discovering new content in Facebook.

Good news for webmasters who have been struggling to identify links and pages that have been trigger warnings in Google Webmaster Tools. Google will now include example URLs in their emails warning webmasters about manual spam actions.