Local Search

Teenagers have been grappling with a tough question lately: What do I do when mom tries to friend me on Facebook? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet, whippersnappers. There’s a new dilemma you better start thinking about: What do you do when grandma sends a friend request? That’s more and more likely according to a new report [...]

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Do your web pages, graphic images, and videos effectively communicate aboutness to both web searchers and search engines? How do search engines and searchers determine aboutness?

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yelp Unlikely To Come Back To Google Places Earlier today it was reported that Yelp’s content had been removed from Google Places — though not from Google.com results. What’s going on exactly? Here’s Google’s [...]

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Earlier today it was reported that Yelp’s content had been removed from Google Places — though not from Google.com results. What’s going on exactly? Here’s Google’s  public statement about it: “Place pages organize relevant information about a wide range of places and locations, and they surface great sources of information like reviews [...]

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Google Realtime Search has finally gained its own home page, as well as some new tools including “conversations view,” Google Alerts for real time content and the ability to see tweets filtered by geography. New Home Page Back in June, my Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now? covered how frustrating it has [...]

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Blekko is a stealth search engine which aims to change the search game by being fairly transparent with ranking data. Since they will start out with limited search marketshare, they aren’t risking much in sharing data that other search engines have traditionally been rather secretive about. Further, they allow customization of results via what they [...]

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One of the most important factors in one’s ranking on Google is your volume of citations (i.e. mentions of your business name and address, not just links to your site.) The challenge lies not in obtaining hundreds of citations from any site, but by getting the right citations from the right places. That is, the [...]

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I noticed this morning that Google News has added a toggle for the right side column on the home page, allowing it to have a “two column” format that the old version of Google News had. It’s the second change now that allows people to make Google News like the old version, something many people [...]

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The Google Maps Blog announced they have updated the maps review policy on how to write reviews and what reviews Google has the right to remove. In addition, TechCrunch reports that Google has dropped Yelp’s syndicated reviews from Google Maps. The new Google Maps review guidelines share tips on how to write constructive reviews. [...]

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Reporting is a very integral part of search engine marketing (and digital marketing in general). Of course, it’s important to be able to show the return on investment (ROI) of the digital budget. However, by using reports to analyze performance, search engine marketers can optimize their accounts by changing bids, adding or pausing keywords, [...]

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Bing’s search engine market share has risen 51% in the U.S. over the past 12 months according to Nielsen stats announced today. According to Nielsen, Bing’s market share in July 2010 was up to 13.6%, a 51% jump from its 9% market share in July 2009 — which was basically Bing’s second month of existence. Google [...]

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After a couple months of beta testing with invited Digg members, the new version of Digg — they’re calling it “v4″ for Version 4 — is now live and open to all. Digg founder Kevin Rose announced it here, but that blog post is down as I write this. In that announcement, Rose says the new [...]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Inside The Google Voice Phone Booths Over the coming weeks, UK-style phone booths will pop-up around the US in airports and at universities, allowing anyone to make free calls to anywhere in the world. [...]

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Over the coming weeks, UK-style phone booths will pop-up around the US in airports and at universities, allowing anyone to make free calls to anywhere in the world. The promotion is designed to spread awareness of the Google Voice service. Below, a look inside the booth, including a video of it in action. Google’s actually had [...]

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Google’s holding a small press gathering today at 9:30am in its San Francisco offices. Topic? The ability to place phone calls using Google Voice integrated within Gmail. Anyone with a US Gmail account will get this rolling out today and over the next few days, along with the ability to make free calls to [...]

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SphinnCon Israel is coming back for another year! The event takes place on Sunday, January 9, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel at the Inbal Hotel. It is a full day SEO/SEM event that is a little more laid back than the Search Marketing Expo events and currently costs only $75. They sell out [...]

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Just when I thought I was in-house, I pulled myself out. After five years working continuously and exclusively as an in-house SEO, I have decided to cast my lot with the hoards of independent consultants and contractors out there. This decision has caused me to reflect on the relative benefits and drawbacks of life as [...]

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In a previous article, I discussed why every business should embrace blogging. I mentioned the concept of a “Social Media Boomerang” and now would like to expand on this topic and explain why it’s the secret sauce to every successful B2B blog. Consider your business’s website for a moment. In your effort to optimize [...]

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A new eye tracking study done in Spanish by Mari-Carmen Marcos and Cristina González-Caro at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and published July 2010 (Spanish PDF over here) was translated by Ani López reveals some new insights into searcher behavior. The study shows that the search snippet, often the meta description from the site, is an [...]

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StreetSpace is a company you probably haven’t heard of, but it’s not a so-called “patent troll” seeking to cash in on unimplemented intellectual property. Rather StreetSpace is a company that has been around since 1999 and installs internet kioks in public spaces, such as airports, retail locations and restaurants. Here’s a description of its main [...]

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It's possible to automate and centralize the measurement of social media marketing efforts, in part thanks to a wireless tracking device that we attach to each status update, tweet and email that ties conversions to specific social conversations. Here's how.

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Having a well known brand can be a wonderful thing—you have a base of customers who know and trust your offerings. However, marketers often ignore this brand loyal segment, and chase after new customers instead. While developing new business is a necessity, marketers shouldn’t let existing customers get left behind. Why you should care The average consumer [...]

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While the wait continues for a decision in the long-running Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement proposal, a new study throws cold water on the idea that Google Book Search is bad for the publishing industry. And the study suggests that Google’s scanning and digital previews of books may be helping publishers sell more books. The [...]

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On Thursday at Search Marketing Now, Matt Van Wagner will present “Adding Laser Focus Your Ad Groups to Target Searcher Intent” on a free webcast. He’ll look at what makes up the ‘perfect’ ad group, what keeps us from achieving that perfection, and what we can do about it to improve. He’ll talk about how to [...]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Official: Yahoo’s Results Now Come From Bing Yahoo just announced the transition from Yahoo Search powered results to Bing powered organic Yahoo search results is now complete. The search ads are still from [...]

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Social TV guide Clicker, also sometimes called “TV Guide for the internet,” launched its iPhone app this morning. An iPad app is on the way. It’s cool and useful and it contains some, but not all content, available on the Clicker.com site. Here’s the list of the app’s content and features per the Clicker Blog: Search Clicker’s [...]

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About 3 years ago while I was an SEO infant, an especially slick, Canadian-born, industry veteran introduced me to the people at LinkExperts. “You’ve got to use these guys.  They are the only way to get some killer links, it’s expensive but it’s totally worth it.” I eagerly called LinkExperts, went through a Powerpoint dog [...]

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Yahoo just announced the transition from Yahoo Search powered results to Bing powered organic Yahoo search results is now complete. The search ads are still from Yahoo but the free, organic results are now powered by Bing in the U.S. and Canada. Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Search Products, said ” I [...]

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While ‘social media’ may not be a completely new term (see the recent Forbes Magazine article for examples of great social media campaigns that began in the 1990s), the fast development of what social media has now become in the past years is staggering. The Influence of Twitter and Facebook There are more people on Facebook worldwide [...]

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Looking for old tweets? Look to Topsy. The service has just expanded to have what it claims to be the largest searchable collection of past tweets, over 5 billion of them, stretching back to at least May 2008. That makes it more comprehensive than Google’s Twitter search or even Twitter’s own Twitter Search. Topsy will be [...]

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The iPhone may have been outsold last quarter by Android, but Apple’s phone remains at least for the time being the “it device” in the smartphone market. Google and Microsoft are both, let’s say, “ambivalent” about the iPhone. And, in some ways, Google and Microsoft/Bing have changed places vis-a-vis the handset. Of the three major search [...]

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The adCenter blog announced they will be temporarily increasing the standard crawl rate they use for detecting ad relevance on adCenter ads. The increase will show a crawl rate of up to 20 to 30qps, which they say is “accepted standards for crawl rates.” Here is the full message from adCenter: Along with our consistent [...]

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Malcolm Coles spotted that the Daily Mail, one of the UK’s largest papers, changed their robots.txt file to include a line which reads: # August 12th, MailOnline are looking for a talented SEO Manager so if you found this then you’re the kind of techie we need!# Send your CV to holly dot ward at mailonline [...]

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Hunch has launched what its co-founder, Chris Dixon, calls an alpha version of a new local recommendation engine. You can access it at hunch.com/local. It’s not to be confused with Hunch’s existing Local category on the main Hunch.com site, and no one would confuse the two, anyway. The new Hunch Local is map-based (using Google Maps) [...]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Back to School Time: A Refresher Course on Writing Great Ads In this month’s column, we’ll take a quick refresher course on what goes into writing great ads and then we’ll evaluate a [...]

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In this month's column, we'll take a quick refresher course on what goes into writing great ads and then we'll evaluate a few recent ads to see if they make the grade. Well-written ads define your brand, differentiate your products from competitors, give searchers important information about your features and benefits and create long-lasting competitive advantages for your campaigns.

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Even with all the buzz about social media, many people have questions about how to value social media marketing efforts. It’s not uncommon to hear (very legitimate) questions such as: “How much is it worth for a user to become a fan of ours on Facebook, or to follow us on Twitter?“ “How much revenue is social [...]

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Where does Facebook Places fit into the local ecosystem? If local search was the game of Risk, David Mihm says Facebook Places is instantly one of the major countries. Does the SEO industry need a (stronger) advocacy group to improve its reputation? Matthew Diehl says such a group could help consumers make better choices when [...]

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Shared knowledge, experiences, vocabulary…they’re all part of building an effective internet and search engine marketing team. And Search Marketing Expo – SMX East provides an exceptional opportunity for teams to learn and network. Choose from more than 60 sessions on the SMX East agenda covering topics including SEO, PPC, social media marketing, local/mobile, analytics and [...]

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Rob Ousbey documented on video how Google is testing a feature where the search results on the page are updating as you type your search query. This is a form of search query refinement and Google Suggest that dynamically modifies the search results on the page as you type. Here is his video: The internet [...]

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If you search for an image on Google Image Search and then mouse over the result, Google will let you find “more sizes” of that image. For example, I searched for [cow] and hovered my mouse over the first result. As you can see, there is a link to “more sizes” for that [...]

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This summer Microsoft held a competition to promote and popularize its Bing Maps developer SDK and Map Apps. I was privileged to be one of the three judges who reviewed the finalists and voted on them across a range of criteria. The other two judges were Josh Lowensohn from CNET and Joe [...]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: De-Mystifying Cost Per Action and Its Impact On Search Marketing: Webcast next Tuesday Next Tuesday at Search Marketing Now, Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager at Logitech will discuss Cost Per Acquisition (CPA — [...]

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Next Tuesday at Search Marketing Now, Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager at Logitech will discuss Cost Per Acquisition (CPA — what it is, how to calculate it, and how it affects search marketing. This webcast will cover the relationship between CPA, SEO, PPC as well as how to calculate your CPA and how [...]

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Prior to this week, Google would only show up to two results from the same domain on a single search result page. Now, Google has confirmed what many are seeing, where a single brand dominates a single page of Google’s search results. This is not a bug, this is not an anomaly, it is an [...]

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It seems every few months a new feature of Google AdWords rolls out destined to make it easier for the do-it-yourselfer to compete with the big-wigs in Google Sponsored Results. Earlier this year, Google made it easier for small-to-medium size business owners to compete with larger international competitors within the display advertising arena. What changed? [...]

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Now that the iPad has made the world safe for tablets, it would appear the tablet invasion is beginning in earnest. Google is reportedly working with Verizon and HTC on an iPad competitor and LG is preparing to release an Android tablet in Q4 this year, the same time frame as the rumored Verizon-sponsored Android [...]

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Deadline New York reports Google might make it to the movie screen. Deadline said Groundswell Productions and producer John Morris are attempting to acquire movie rights to the book “Googled: The End of the World As We Know it.” The film will be about Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, rise to [...]

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Google has introduced a new method of verifying your web site in Google Webmaster Tools. The new method is to use the Google Analytics asynchronous code to verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools. It must be the newer asynchronous code, but if you use that code, you can quickly gain access to the site [...]

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