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Archive for the ‘Search Engine Academy’ Category

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 18, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Search In Pics: LinkedIn Bike, Chrome Watch & Facebook @ Google

    In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. LinkedIn Bike Parked At Google: Source: Google+ Google Chrome Watch: Source: Google+ Facebook Engineers At Google: [...]

  • Dylan Hoffman’s Pirate Times Doodle 4 Google Wins Pirate Booty

    Google announced the winner of the Doodle 4 Google competition and today that winner’s logo is on Google home pages around the world. The Winner is Dylan Hoffman of Caledonia, Wisconsin for his Doodle named “Pirate Times.” The Doodle won him a $30,000 college scholarship, a Chromebook computer and a $50,000 technology grant for his [...]

  • adCenter Updates Microsoft Advertiser Intelligence With Templates & Mobile Data

    Microsoft adCenter recently launched an improved version of Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI). MAI is a keyword research tool that helps Advertisers find related keywords and their historical and projected traffic and performance data from the available adCenter traffic. As an Excel add-in, it offers powerful API-based access to data, right in the familiar Excel environment. [...]

  • Google Improves AdSense Reporting And Bolsters Smart Pricing With New Research

    Google has introduced several new reporting improvements for AdSense publishers, and it has released new research that shows publishers make more money with “smart pricing” — even though their revenue-per-click is discounted as compared with search ads — than they would without it. One reporting improvement is that AdSense publishers can now view “all time” [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 18th, 2012 at 8:35 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

Making more pages load instantly

Webmaster level: All


At Google we're obsessed with speed. We've long known that even seemingly minor speed increases can have surprisingly large impacts on user engagement and happiness. About a year ago we rolled out Instant Pages in pursuit of that goal. Instant Pages makes use of prerendering technology in Chrome to make your site appear to load instantly in some cases, with no need for any extra work on your part. Here's a video of it in action:



We've been closely watching performance and listening to webmaster feedback. Since Instant Pages rolled out we've saved more than a thousand years of ours users' time. We're very happy with the results so far, and we'll be gradually increasing how often we trigger the feature.

In the vast majority of cases, webmasters don't have to do anything for their sites to work correctly with prerendering. As we mentioned in our initial announcement of Instant Pages, search traffic will be measured in Webmaster Tools just like before this feature: only results the user visits will be counted. If your site keeps track of pageviews on its own, you might be interested in the Page Visibility API, which allows you to detect when prerendering is occurring and factor those out of your statistics. If you use an ads or analytics package, check with them to see if their solution is already prerender-aware; if it is, in many cases you won't need to make any changes at all. If you're interested in triggering Chrome's prerendering within your own site, see the Prerendering in Chrome article.

Instant Pages means that users arrive at your site happier and more engaged, which is great for everyone.


Posted by Ziga Mahkovec - Software Engineer, Instant Pages

Written by Gary Illyes

May 17th, 2012 at 10:00 pm

Posted in Advice From Google

Making more pages load instantly

Webmaster level: All


At Google we're obsessed with speed. We've long known that even seemingly minor speed increases can have surprisingly large impacts on user engagement and happiness. About a year ago we rolled out Instant Pages in pursuit of that goal. Instant Pages makes use of prerendering technology in Chrome to make your site appear to load instantly in some cases, with no need for any extra work on your part. Here's a video of it in action:



We've been closely watching performance and listening to webmaster feedback. Since Instant Pages rolled out we've saved more than a thousand years of ours users' time. We're very happy with the results so far, and we'll be gradually increasing how often we trigger the feature.

In the vast majority of cases, webmasters don't have to do anything for their sites to work correctly with prerendering. As we mentioned in our initial announcement of Instant Pages, search traffic will be measured in Webmaster Tools just like before this feature: only results the user visits will be counted. If your site keeps track of pageviews on its own, you might be interested in the Page Visibility API, which allows you to detect when prerendering is occurring and factor those out of your statistics. If you use an ads or analytics package, check with them to see if their solution is already prerender-aware; if it is, in many cases you won't need to make any changes at all. If you're interested in triggering Chrome's prerendering within your own site, see the Prerendering in Chrome article.

Instant Pages means that users arrive at your site happier and more engaged, which is great for everyone.


Posted by Ziga Mahkovec - Software Engineer, Instant Pages

Written by Gary Illyes

May 17th, 2012 at 10:00 pm

Posted in Advice From Google

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 17, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Bing Search API Now On Paid Platform

    About a month ago, Microsoft informed us the Bing API would no longer be free and today is the day they migrated the Bing Search API to the paid platform. Microsoft said for the time being, the Bing API will still be free – to try out. But those with over 5,000 queries per month [...]

  • The Ultimate List of Reasons Why You Need Search Engine Optimization

    You’ve heard about SEO. You’re convinced SEO works very well for different kinds of online business. What you probably wonder is why it’s so powerful. That’s why I wrote this report – to show you not one, not five, not ten… but twenty-eight different reasons to buy SEO. To see why SEO is so powerful. To [...]

  • Accelerating Revenue Growth With Keyword Parity

    As campaigns mature, keywords evolve from experiments to proven revenue drivers. Remembering to add a keyword to Bing after a successful trial in Google or remembering to expand a new top performing keyword across its other match types is easier said than done. With so much focus these days on the next best thing — [...]

  • Google’s Penguin Update Makes The Wall Street Journal

    The Google Penguin Update is now mainstream after The Wall Street Journal covered it in a feature story named As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web. The story interviews a few small business owners who were hit hard by the update. One business owner saw his sales drop to $25,000 this month, [...]

  • Peeking Into the World Of Google’s Algorithm Changes With Google Search Quality Head Amit Singhal

    Earlier this week, Google Fellow Amit Singhal gave the opening keynote at SMX London. Although Matt Cutts has always been the public face of all parts of Google’s unpaid search, his realm is primarily web spam. Singhal has been speaking publicly more often (notably when Panda launched) and oversees search quality. Or, as he described [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEO & SEM


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 17th, 2012 at 9:02 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 16, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links

    Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today. The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results. It also allows Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match query terms but for “entities” or concepts that [...]

  • With Fix In Place, Wolfram Alpha Explains How Siri “Recommended” The Lumia By Mistake

    It wasn’t Siri that was recommending the Lumia as the best smartphone to some last week; it was Wolfram Alpha. That won’t happen again, now that Wolfram Alpha has made changes to to fix problems it had dealing with customer reviews. Reviews Weren’t Weighted To Account For Number When I looked into the Siri-Lumia issue last [...]

  • 3 Guidelines To Scale Your SEM Team

    There is a phenomenon within organizations that causes productivity to decline as teams grow larger. This phenomenon is described in economics as a diseconomy of scale and is caused by at least three factors including increased communication costs, duplication of effort, and top-heavy management. These three components can cripple an SEM team that grows larger than four [...]

  • Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories

    Yesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ [...]

  • Do Search & Display Really Belong Together?

    The premise is simple – PPC and display are both media buys trying to achieve similar outcomes; both are forms of ‘bought media’ and now with display moving to a biddable environment both now require quantitative skill sets to manage them. It’s not a tough sell to convince a budget holder that a single agency [...]

  • Early Stage Landing Pages At The Top Of The Funnel

    For many B2B and considered purchases, buyers go through several stages of evaluating the market and choosing a seller. Different stages naturally benefit from different kinds of landing pages and conversion strategies. Here, we’ll take a look at the very top of the funnel, to see how three different companies are handling early-stage interest on [...]

  • Bing’s New Social-Friendly Search Interface Now Live

    The new Bing interface, with a healthy dose of social connections and discovery, is now live for all users. Bing’s announcement today says that anyone can access the new interface at www.bing.com/new, but you should also see a new message atop the Bing home page that invites you to try “the best search, now with [...]

  • How To Use The Keyword Funnel To Understand Searcher Intent

    Keyword research can give you great insight into customer problems, needs, desires, and intent.I like to categorize keyword categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages. After performing my initial keyword categorization (sort of into micro-categories), I like to categorize the categories themselves into a total of *ten* funnel stages I’ve developed, which are organized around a “problem/solution” mental model.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 16th, 2012 at 9:04 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 15, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • A Glossary Of 15 Really Useful International Search Marketing Terms

    A conversation with a number of international search marketers recently showed that their range of experience ranged from expert to beginner, despite their influential career positions. By the way, this doesn’t mean they weren’t all highly talented people – their routes to their positions were just very different. The discussion did make me realise the [...]

  • The Social Funnel: What You Lose When You Ignore It

    I’ve written often about the dangers of ignoring social media in SEO (and vice versa), but I’m here today to write about another danger: ignoring social benefits in the traditional sales funnel. It’s frustrating that people continue to treat social media as an individual entity, a separate department, instead of a versatile tool. We shutter [...]

  • What Tim Tebow Can Teach You About Link Building

    If I learned one thing during my years as journalist, it was that headlines will make or break you. There’s probably a good number of you reading this solely because of this headline, but stay with me, people: There is a connection to link building. Earlier this month, I went to the Chick-fi-la Leadercast where Tim [...]

  • Funny Google Matt Cutts Mashup Video

    It has been a long couple months for the search marketing community between the Penguin update, a Panda refresh, the link notifications and the parked domain bug – you guys need a laugh. Sam Applegate put together a hysterical parody video of Matt Cutts talking about how to achieve number one ranking in Google. The [...]

  • In Wake Of Penguin, Could You Be Sued For Linking To Others?

    Many webmasters have been desperately trying to fix poor SEO work done to a site thanks to the recent Penguin update targeting webspam and the bad link warnings sent from Google. The only current way to discredit a link is to have it removed as reverse nofollow functionality for webmasters simply doesn’t exist. One recent example of a link removal request was particularly [...]

  • Live Blogging: Interview with Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

    Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman are on the stage at SMX London to interview Amit Singhal. Amit is a Google Fellow, a honorary title reserved for Google’s most accomplished engineers, and he has spearheaded Google’s core ranking team since 2000. He’s also a key influencer of Search Plus Your World, Google’s search experience centered around [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 15th, 2012 at 9:05 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 14, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Smartphone Bot Case Study: The Google Smartphone Bot On Holiday In Australia

    While Google’s new smartphone bot has been announced, it does not appear to be widely deployed yet; at least that is what I said during a recent presentation in Sydney, where I had the pleasure of meeting Alistair Lattimore (Al). Al does CRO, SEO and agency management for Mantra Group, which is the second largest [...]

  • 5 Local Linkbuilding Ideas For The Post-Penguin/Panda Era

    I have been fielding a lot of calls from sites big and small that believe they got hit by Penguin, Google’s “over-optimization” algorithm. Or maybe it was Panda? Who knows? Traffic is down and everybody is freaking out. I have a particular soft spot in my heart for the small, local businesses that have been [...]

  • Second Google-Sponsored Legal Report Argues Government Would Lose Antitrust Case

    Google is playing a sophisticated form of “head games” with antitrust regulators. A second legal report-cum-brief (embedded below) has appeared. It argues that antitrust challenges against Google are likely to fail because Google’s critics’ arguments lack legal merit and/or make little sense from a policy perspective. The report was written by lawyers from the Ammori [...]

  • 4 Alternatives You Need To Consider Beyond AdWords

    While there’s no arguing with the fact that Google’s Adwords program is the dominant player in the PPC industry, it’s by no means the only option when it comes to paying for website traffic. In fact, the size of the Google Adwords program creates a number of challenges for “small-time” webmasters. The service’s immense popularity [...]

  • Majestic SEO Announces New Link Metrics: Trust Flow & Citation Flow

    Majestic SEO announced a new set of link metrics they came up with that should give Google’s PageRank metric and SEOmoz’s MozRank a run for their money. Majestic SEO’s new metrics are named Flow Metrics and are grouped into two categories; trust flow and citation flow. Citation Flow is a number of predicting how influential [...]

  • Report: Scott Thompson To Step Down As Yahoo CEO, Ross Levinsohn To Step In

    Kara Swisher at AllThingsD is reporting that embattled Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is going to step down for “personal reasons.” Swisher has one or more “moles” inside the company and consistently gets inside information — which generally turns out to be correct. Thompson’s “personal reasons,” as we all know, are: misrepresenting that he had a [...]

  • Google’s Happy Mother’s Day Logo (2012 Edition)

    Google has a special animated logo on their home pages worldwide to celebrate Mother’s Day. Below is both the animated and static version of the Mother’s Day logo. A special Happy Mother’s Day to all the search geek Mother’s out there! Google is not the only search engine with a logo, Bing, Yahoo and others [...]

  • Apple Siri’s Recommending Nokia? Then Nokia’s Recommending Android & iPhone, I Guess

    Apple’s Siri search feature for the iPhone 4S thinks the Nokia Lumia 900 is the best phone ever? Actually, it’s Wolfram Alpha that thinks this, based on all of four user reviews. While it’s a chuckle that Siri seemed to be recommending the Nokia, it’s a better reminder that Siri itself doesn’t answer questions but [...]

  • Google Expands AdWords Bid Simulator To The Campaign Level

    Advertisers have long been able to simulate the results of bid changes at the keyword and ad group level, and, now, they can do so at the campaign level, as well, Google has announced. The change will allow advertisers to model changes even when there’s not enough data to do so at the keyword or [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEO & SEM

Web Analytics


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 14th, 2012 at 8:58 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 11, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • How Big Data Changed Crime Fighting & Is Changing The Practice Of SEO

    In the mid 1990’s, New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani introduced a technology-based crime measurement system called CompStat. The system enabled Police leadership, for the first time, to discern crime trends and respond to crime fluctuations on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis rather than the limited incident-by-incident view they previously had. The system is credited with a [...]

  • Zenya’s Next Gen Keyword & Categorization Platform

    The case could easily be made that keyword list construction is the most vital part of the paid search marketing process. Yes, optimization is clearly a crucial component to profitable SEM, yet without the right keywords (and campaign/ad group structure), the chance for success drops dramatically. So, wouldn’t you think that after more than a [...]

  • Search In Pics: Yahoo! MAD Logo, Google Glass View & Office Jousting At Google

    In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Google HVAC Logo: Source: Flickr Yahoo MAD logo: Source: startupgrind.com View From Google Glasses: Source: Google+ [...]

  • The Ties Between Emotional Design & SEO

    Shari, are you crazy? Search engines don’t have emotions! What does emotional design have to do with SEO? A lot more than you might think.

  • Yahoo Search Sees 8th Monthly Share Decline — comScore

    It’s that time again: April comScore qSearch data are coming out tomorrow. But the financial analysts are releasing it first to their clients and others who’ve subscribed to their missives. According to our source, comScore will report that both Google and Bing have made small, incremental gains since last month and seen modest growth since last [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 11th, 2012 at 8:50 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 11, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • How Big Data Changed Crime Fighting & Is Changing The Practice Of SEO

    In the mid 1990’s, New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani introduced a technology-based crime measurement system called CompStat. The system enabled Police leadership, for the first time, to discern crime trends and respond to crime fluctuations on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis rather than the limited incident-by-incident view they previously had. The system is credited with a [...]

  • Zenya’s Next Gen Keyword & Categorization Platform

    The case could easily be made that keyword list construction is the most vital part of the paid search marketing process. Yes, optimization is clearly a crucial component to profitable SEM, yet without the right keywords (and campaign/ad group structure), the chance for success drops dramatically. So, wouldn’t you think that after more than a [...]

  • Search In Pics: Yahoo! MAD Logo, Google Glass View & Office Jousting At Google

    In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Google HVAC Logo: Source: Flickr Yahoo MAD logo: Source: startupgrind.com View From Google Glasses: Source: Google+ [...]

  • The Ties Between Emotional Design & SEO

    Shari, are you crazy? Search engines don’t have emotions! What does emotional design have to do with SEO? A lot more than you might think.

  • Yahoo Search Sees 8th Monthly Share Decline — comScore

    It’s that time again: April comScore qSearch data are coming out tomorrow. But the financial analysts are releasing it first to their clients and others who’ve subscribed to their missives. According to our source, comScore will report that both Google and Bing have made small, incremental gains since last month and seen modest growth since last [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 11th, 2012 at 8:50 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 10, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Snapshot, Sidebar Oh My: Live Blogging the Bing Search Summit

    Danny and I are here at the Bing Search Summit in San Francisco. For a comprehensive overview of the new Bing features, see Danny’s article on the “new Bing.” Microsoft’s Qi Lu has just taken the stage and is talking about the launch of the new Bing. He’s discussing the need to “reorganize the web [...]

  • Head-To-Head: Bing’s Social Search Vs. Google’s Search Plus Your World

    Earlier this year, Google made its results more social with Search Plus Your World. Now Bing has reshaped how it handles social information as part of its “The New Bing” launch. Which does better, Google’s blended search+search model or Bing’s more segregated approach. Let’s look at some examples. Hey Google, How’s New Girl? I thought I’d start [...]

  • The New Bing: Relaunch Features With Social Sidebar

    Bing announced a relaunch of its search engine today, with a big emphasis on bringing social into search. But wait! Didn’t Bing already have social as part of its search experience? Yes, but now the search engine hopes to do it better, especially by largely off-loading social elements into a new sidebar area. The new [...]

  • What Is Search Engine Ranking Authority?

    Next month, I will speak at SMX Advanced as a member of the authority panel, so it makes sense to discuss authority in my column this month. Authority is a term that has been around as long as I can remember, probably longer than the term search engine optimization itself. That is because classic SEO [...]

  • Confirmed: Bing 411 Closing June 1st

    Microsoft is closing down their toll-free voice search program named Bing 411. I have confirmed the Bing 411 service is closing by calling the service and hearing immediately the message: Bing 411: On June 1st, we are discontinuing the Bing 411 service. There were reports of this via LiveSide where they said they “received a [...]

  • 4 PPC Tactics To Ensure You Meet & Exceed Your Plan

    In this column, we routinely write about some fairly advanced topics: Next-level optimization, automated bidding algorithms, hyper-targeted search campaigns, paid vs. organic search, etc. Lost in all this is the underlying discussion around the need to hit your financial goals. The majority of large enterprises engage in annual planning, which means that as SEM managers, [...]

  • Don’t Just Pin Images, Optimize For Pinterest Search With Purpose

    If you’re a retailer and want to boost traffic and conversions, an image SEO strategy using Pinterest can provide great results fairly quickly. Pinterest activity will not only increase your referral traffic, it can help you connect with your customers and prospects in a mutually beneficial way. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the age [...]

  • Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

    It’s been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google’s happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about “negative SEO” as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

Web Analytics


Written by Barry Schwartz

May 10th, 2012 at 8:59 pm

Posted in Search Engine Academy

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