Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Tuesday, January 31st, 2023
Google releases URL Inspection Tool API
In 2022, Google released a new API under the Search Console APIs for the URL Inspection Tool. The new URL Inspection API let you programmatically access the data and reporting you’d get from the URL Inspection Tool but through software.
Google’s URL Inspection Tool API had a limit of 2,000 queries per day and 600 queries per minute.
Google provided some use cases for the API:
- SEO tools and agencies can provide ongoing monitoring for important pages and single page debugging options. For example, checking if there are differences between user-declared and Google-selected canonicals, or debugging structured data issues from a group of pages.
- CMS and plugin developers can add page or template-level insights and ongoing checks for existing pages. For example, monitoring changes over time for key pages to diagnose issues and help prioritize fixes.
Within a week, several SEO professionals developed free new tools and shared scripts, and established SEO crawlers integrated this data with their own insights, as Aleyda Solis rounded up in 8 SEO tools to get Google Search Console URL Inspection API insights.
Also on this day
2022: This change may have resulted in seeing more or less errors in your Breadcrumbs and HowTo structured data Search Console enhancement and error reports.
2022: Google Ads also launched auto-applied recommendations for manager accounts and more recommendations for Video campaigns.
2022: Google would combine its advertiser identity and business operations verification programs under a unified Advertiser verification program.
2022: Designed for small and mid-sized enterprises, the app automated weekly site crawls and detects issues ranging from broken pages to content that doesn’t meet best-practice guidelines for SEO.
2022: The augmented reality feature, called “Try On for Home Decor,” let users see what furniture looked like in their home before buying.
2020: The majority of participants also agreed that rich results improved Google search.
2020: LinkedIn sessions grew faster than the previous three quarters, though revenue growth slowed slightly in the second quarter of its fiscal 2020.
2019: Previously you were able to submit up to 10 URLs per day and maximum of 50 URLs per month. Bing increased these limits by 1000x and removed the monthly quota.
2019: Marketing Land’s Digital Agency Survey found the sector was weathering digital transformation well, but the growth of data-driven marketing made it clear where they needed to hire.
2019: Quora introduced three new metrics (Auctions Lost to Competition, Impression Share, Absolute Impression Share) to help advertisers understand how they performed in the ad auctions.
2018: Indexing and ranking are two separate processes – and this specific algorithm had no impact on indexing.
2018: Advertisers had to enable auto-tagging of the Microsoft Click ID in their accounts to get consistent ad conversion tracking from Safari.
2018: They demanded more changes, saying their problems have intensified rather than improved since the EC ruling in June 2017.
2017: Developers could now build their own tools around the mobile-friendly testing tool to see if pages are mobile-friendly.
2017: IF functions arrived to let advertisers customize ads based on device and retargeting list membership.
2017: Ads based on existing ad and landing page content were added to ad groups by Google.
2017: It would roll out to even more AdWords accounts in the next few months.
2017: The 3D printer worked in outer space, and the Majestic Landscape was printed at the International Space Station.
2014: For the prior three years Nadella had run Microsoft’s Server & Tools business. Before that he was in charge of Bing and online advertising.
2014: The sync window showed the total number of changes and the number of those that had been successfully downloaded from or posted to the account.
2014: Google showed the start time at the top of its results.
2014: Volkswagen garnered the top spot with the most ad impressions on Google.
2014: 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.
2013: Google added three new measurement features to the AdWords for video reporting interface (Reach & Frequency, Column Sets Tailored to Marketing Goals, Geographic Visualization).
2013: The Doodle honored Robinson for his 94th birthday.
2012: A program that guaranteed top listings for local searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing? An “officially approved” one in “cooperation” with those search engines? Not true, said Google and Bing.
2012: Search ad spend was expected to grow 27% from 2011 to 2012, up from $15.36 billion to $19.51 billion. And by 2016, it was expected to reach almost $30 billion annually.
2012: Cutts managed to singlehandedly convince some government reps to let Googlebot crawl and index their websites.
2011: FairSearch.org opposed any such potential licensing deal.
2011: Google’s relationship with review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp was as complicated as ever.
2011: More Android handsets were shipped in Q4 2010 than other platforms.
2011: Slashtags and the personalization that Blekko offered were even better suited to the mobile search use case in some respects.
2011: You could analyze domains, Twitter usernames, or keywords — and they can be compared over four timeframes: one day, a week, two weeks or a month.
2011: Wael Ghonim went missing not long after tweeting about being “very worried” and “ready to die.”
2010: “We did not enter the search business,” Jobs said. “They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”
2009: Due to a human error, Google told users “This site may harm your computer” for every website listed in search results.
2008: Google’s Q4, 2007 revenues were $4.83 billion, compared with $3.21 billion the year before.
2008: How the search engine was considering using social data to improve its search results.
2008: The overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6% for Q4 2007. That was up from 14.2% for the same quarter in 2006, and 16.2% in Q3 2007.
2008: A pull-down menu allowed users to narrow or expand results for the same query and more easily discover non-traditional content in Google Maps.
2008: Spoiler alert: Schmidt left Google’s parent company Alphabet for good in February 2020.
2007: Google reported revenues of $3.21 billion for Q4 2006, representing a 67% increase over Q4 2005 revenues of $1.92 billion
2007: Google’s Shuman Ghosemajumdersome said third-party auditing firms don’t appear to be
matching up estimated fraud figures with refunds or even actual clicks registered by advertisers.
2007: The search engines had to make “moral judgments” about international authorities’ requests for information when they do not have to do the same for US requests.
2007: YSM’s public keyword research tool was sporadically offline, but Yahoo had plans to offer a new public keyword research tool.
2007: The account was disabled for 24 hours due to “unusual usage.”
2007: Brand Universe would create about 100 websites built around entertainment brands and pull together content from various Yahoo properties.
2007: Due to a trademark of the term.
2007: Boorah collected reviews from existing local search and content sites, summarized and enhanced the data and built additional features on top.
2007: What was new with Zibb, a B2B search engines, and the opportunities he saw going forward in B2B search.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
< January 30 | Search Marketing History | February 1 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 31 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, January 30th, 2023
Analytics firm Jumpshot shuts down
In 2020, following critical articles about its data collection and sales practices, analytics firm Jumpshot was shut down by its parent company Avast.
Jumpshot was made famous within the SEO industry by SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin’s (heavily criticized and widely circulated) zero-click analysis and presentations.
Articles from Vice, PC Mag and Motherboard claimed that Avast and Jumpshot were “secretly harvesting” users’ browsing behavior, packaging it and reselling without their full knowledge.
Fishkin defended the company and faulted the publications for what he said was incomplete and biased reporting.
Read all about it in With Jumpshot shuttered, where will SEOs get their ‘zero-click’ fix now?
Dig deeper:
Also on this day
2022: This document explained how SafeSearch works and added some troubleshooting.
2020: The new-ish Apple Maps has a range of improved features and content
2020: Early looks at the new campaign type and native ad formats that have had little fanfare since launching in beta.
2019: In anticipation of the old Google Search Console going away, Google moved the security issues into the new version.
2019: Google began incorporating YouTube into its Search Partners network.
2019: While Amazon and LinkedIn cracked the top five, Marketing Land’s Digital Agency Survey found second-tier platforms were much less likely to see spending increases in the coming year.
2019: Microsoft released three location APIs: Bing Maps Location Recognition, Bing Maps Local Search API and Bing Maps Local Insights API.
2018: Google explained what featured snippets are, the various user interfaces and treatments you can get from these featured snippets and how they interact with desktop, mobile and voice search results.
2018: Advertisers could quickly see performance by audience and benchmark against non-targeted users.
2017: A report found that AMP results shown in the Google News section for mobile users had more than doubled in the past several days.
2017: The Doodle featured Korematsu with his Presidential Medal of Freedom.
2015: A new Word Count Query dimension in Analytics let advertisers quickly compare head terms and long-tail queries.
2015: Google Now could now be integrated with 30+ developer apps.
2015: Bing’s search results included original content and almost anything a fan would need to know before the game starts.
2015: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
2014: That was an increase of 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012.
2014: It had been over a year since Graph Search launched.
2014: After attention was drawn to the fact it dropped links to competing financial websites, Google quietly restored the links.
2014: The local business info included basic business information, photos, hours of operation and some data specific to the business type.
2013: The beta was open only to electrical and electronics industries.
2013: 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick had 50% more searches than Raven’s quarterback Joe Flacco.
2013: Some people on Google+ have added satirical, fake reviews to locations in North Korea.
2012: Yandex licensed data from Nokia-owned Navteq to offer better and more comprehensive maps coverage around the world.
2012: FAA Mobile Web App, USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, National Archives Transcription Pilot Project and more.
2011: Many iOS users on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices reported seeing the instant previews button on the right side of the search result.
2011: Google showed live snow results on the search results for ski resorts. The weather results had a slider and larger real estate for interacting with the weather.
2010: Google Street View was terribly unintuitive on the iPhone.
2009: Rather than fixing its problems and earning more revenue by doing something advertisers actually want, Yahoo seemed more interested in doing manual tweaks to advertiser accounts – without explicit permission – to generate more money.
2009: It enabled search marketers to define various kinds of actions or “conversions” (e.g., newsletter sign-up, ecommerce transactions, email capture).
2008: In particular, Google Universal Search filled more than just 10 spots on the page, while shopping and blog search results were among the new resources being included.
2008: Total revenue in Q4 was $1.83 billion, which represented 8% growth year-over-year ($1.7 billion). Full year 2007 revenues for Yahoo were $6.97 billion.
2008: Searching for [dangerous cult] returned the Scientology website in Position 1.
2008: The US Geological Survey and Google made global earthquake data available in Google Earth as one of the layers under “Places of Interest.”
2007: Conducting searches on Google.com for local-specific information could now return local reviews and business comparisons.
2007: You could now delete URLs from Yahoo’s index with a click of a button.
2007: Anyone could place code on their website to show off the number of links they have to a specific page or to their site.
2007: The industry average click fraud rate in Q4 2006 was 14.2% versus 13.8% for Q3, 14.1% for Q2 and 13.7% for Q1.
2007: The Google Mini would “enable companies to perform searches on intranets as well as internal business applications.”
2007: The feature would let users send SMS messages to their Orkut friends from their mobile phones.
2007: When you received an email in your Gmail account, and it contained a Google Docs or Spreadsheet file, the file would have a link to “Open as a Google Document.”
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
< January 29 | Search Marketing History | January 31 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 30 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, January 30th, 2023
Yahoo Search seems like it will be making a comeback in the future. Yahoo has been dropping hints over the past couple of weeks related to this return and is also hiring a Principal Product Manager for the Yahoo Search platform to help lead these initiatives.
The job posting. Yahoo posted a job listing for a “Principal Product Manager, Yahoo Search” a few weeks ago. The job posting, in part, reads, “We’re looking for a Product Manager for Search at Yahoo. We are looking for folks that are interested in pushing beyond the status quo to change the way folks interact and use search.”
“As a Product Manager for Search, you will help develop our search strategy and roadmap and lead its execution. The ideal candidate will leverage strong organizational skills and deep subject matter expertise to partner with design, science, engineering, and other key cross-functional teams. You will determine what we prioritize for our customers in our search experiences and bring the vision to life. You will also lead the effort to discover and amplify content from across the vast Yahoo ecosystem to create new and innovative search experiences across surfaces and for our Search App. The role is also responsible for identifying and documenting product and business requirements and taking them from concept to production, while working with a broad set of stakeholders that include marketing, sales, legal, editorial, design, UXR, and other teams,” it continues to read.
Twitter hints. Yahoo has reactivated its Twitter account for Yahoo Search, posting teasers throughout the past couple of weeks. Here are some of those:
Just popping in to remind everyone that we did search before it was cool.
BRB making it cool again.
— Yahoo Search (@YahooSearch) January 20, 2023
The year of the 
is said to bring tranquil energy and opportunity for prosperity. 
Love that for us.
— Yahoo Search (@YahooSearch) January 22, 2023
Your last Yahoo Search. No cheating.
— Yahoo Search (@YahooSearch) January 27, 2023
Yahoo executives. Brian Provost, SVP & GM, Yahoo, posted on LinkedIn about this job listing and wrote, “There’s going to be so much innovation in Search in the coming years and there aren’t many places where you can immediately have an impact this big. Would love to hear from you if you have a passion for Search and building product experiences.”
Karen Chin, Sr. Director of Product Management, Yahoo, also posted on LinkedIn, saying, “Looking to drive meaningful and innovative experiences for millions of users? We are looking for a seasoned Search Product Manager to take search into the next phase! Share and join us.”
Jim Lanzone, Chief Executive Officer at Yahoo, took the helm of Yahoo in September 2021. Jim has a lot of deep roots in search. He worked at Ask.com for seven years, starting in 2001 as an SVP, Product Management, then in 2004 as the SVP and GM of Ask Jeeves and then taking over as CEO in 2006. After Ask.com, he became the President and CEO of CBS Interactive, then the CEO at Tinder and now at Yahoo as their CEO. It will be exciting to see what Yahoo Search does under Jim’s leadership. He is a creative mind that produced a lot of search innovation at Ask.
Why we care. Personally, I cannot wait to see what Jim and his team come up with for Yahoo Search. I am excited to see what new ideas, interfaces, and concepts the team brings to Yahoo Search. Yahoo was a pretty big player in search in the early days, then the company continued to decline and even Google veteran Marissa Mayer could not save the company.
But now Yahoo has a blank slate, and it will be very exciting to see if Yahoo can compete again.
The post Yahoo is making a return to search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Sunday, January 29th, 2023
Google begins experimenting with featured snippets
in 2014, Google started answering complex questions at the top of its search results with detailed responses (or answers) taken from websites.
Does that sound like featured snippets? It should. Because it was.
We know from Google that featured snippets were introduced in January 2014. We don’t know the official date Google began testing it, but this was the day Search Engine Land first reported on the new search feature.
We didn’t yet know these answers were called “featured snippets” – Google’s Gary Illyes revealed the name in June 2015 – but clearly that’s what we were seeing. All Google would say at the time was: “we’re always experimenting with different types of answers, but we don’t have more details to share at this point.”
Read our coverage of what was then an experimental feature: Google Search OneBox Answers Are Getting More Detailed
Also on this day
2022: Google’s Danny Sullivan said it was “something our systems normally would typically catch, so we’re checking on it to improve.”
2021: Those who knew him, admired him, learned from him and loved him, were left reeling from the loss.
2020: The tool temporarily blocked URLs from showing in Google and showed outdated content and content filtered by SafeSearch.
2020: A look back at how Google had treated ads in search results, from blue shading to the latest version of today.
2020: Immediate indexing and more control over content were the benefits for publishers and site owners.
2020: The changes included more search engine options and an introductory screen aimed at reducing bias.
2019: This was a Google issue and would be resolved.
2019: The search engine’s share was small but some of its metrics were better than Bing’s, according to a third-party analysis.
2016: It expanded on examples about how to help Google find your webpages, how to give them better ideas on what those pages were about and how to make webpages that are good for visitors.
2016: You could check AdWords campaign performance, change bids and adjust budgets from your phone.
2016: They added little value in return for Google giving up its valuable search results space.
2016: With its nearly infinite news stream, Yahoo users no longer needed to open news articles in multiple browser tabs.
2015: Google added support for webpages that dynamically changed their content based on IP origin or language settings.
2015: The updates involved new satellite and ground-level imagery, and a detailed seat map of the stadium itself.
2014: Cutts answers the question, “How can an older site maintain its ranking over time?”
2014: The warning was mostly directed at affiliate sites in the “adult” industry.
2014: 68.8% of participants planned to focus on conversion rates and performance metrics in response to Google’s elimination of keyword data.
2014: You could click on the start and/or end date and a calendar pop up would show up to change your check in and check out dates.
2014: The report showed paid search spend rose 37.4% year-over-year.
2014: “It’s not hard to imagine that machine learning and AI would have broad application across Google, from search and mobile … to advertising, robots, autonomous cars, security and the connected home.”
2014: Five trends from the Super Bowl advertiser ads that ran on Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.
2013: Governments routinely ask search engines like Google for access to user data for various reasons. Google said they take each request incredibly seriously.
2013: Google was apparently trying to cross-promote AdWords Express and Google+.
2013: Over the previous 18 months, ChaCha had seen 2 billion questions and organized 129 million Q&A pairs.
2012: Amit Singhal told Search Engine Land: “… People are judging a product and an overall direction that we have in the first two weeks of a launch … We’re clearly not done. The product is not complete. It will improve.”
2012: It happened 125 years earlier, in Fort Keogh, Montana.
2011: The change to their algorithm was to prevent low quality scraper content in Google’s index. It impacted slightly over 2% of queries.
2011: Online Services, which houses all Microsoft’s online operations including MSN and Bing, posted a $543 million loss. That was up from $463 million in 2010.
2011: Google redesigned the homepage for its AdWords advertiser interface in an effort to bring more relevant, customized information up front for marketers.
2011: Bing’s destination pages let searchers compare several destinations at once in a side-by-side layout.
2011: Did scandals or an antitrust investigation make people less trusting of Google or tarnish its brand? Not at all.
2011: Google and the Connecticut-led coalition of 40 US states would begin negotiations aimed at settling issues related to Google’s collection of personal data over unsecured WiFi networks.
2011: Demos of several tablets were expected
2011: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
2010: Google tarted personalizing search suggestions that appeared on Google Maps.
2010: That was slightly higher than the 36% of UK consumers who had done so, but far less than in Germany (59%) and France (56%).
2010: Less than 24 hours after Apple announced the Apple iPad, Google announced improvements to the Google Books home page.
2010: It was a call for the price of a click on mobile handsets.
2010: Bing’s “Stocks and Funds page” offered in-depth information for users following or doing research related to stocks and finances.
2010: “We have done business in China for more than 20 years and we intend to stay engaged, which means our business must respect the laws of China.”
2009: Click Forensics estimated the overall average click fraud rate for Q4 2008 at 17.1%, the highest level since they began tracking it in 2006.
2009: The purpose: to help small- and mid-sized advertisers suffering from “performance issues.”
2009: Search was almost equally used by all groups across the board.
2008: Users could get directions or locations of businesses without inputting a destination address.
2008: Google added map view and a new info view that allows you to show different results on the page.
2008: “It’s like dealing with the CIA.”
2008: Google added a new video to its existing series of privacy videos, plus it developed a privacy booklet (PDF) to educate consumers and parents about online data privacy.
2008: DotHomes sought to become “the Google of property search” and was crawling for listings.
2008: The Google logo was made up of legos.
2007: This would give original video creators the ability to earn revenue each time their videos were watched on YouTube.
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
< January 27 | Search Marketing History | January 29 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 28 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Sunday, January 29th, 2023
Google penalizes French link network
In 2014, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted, “Today we’re taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea).”
Buzzea was less than thrilled about being called a link network, saying they “oppose this assertion since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created.” As a result of the penalty, Buzzea officially called it quits.
Read all about it in Google Takes Down Another Link Network, France’s Buzzea.
This was hardly the first link network Google had gone after:
Buzzea would be just the first of several link networks Google identified and took action against later in 2014:
Also on this day
2021: Citing advertisers’ brand safety concerns, Facebook said the feature would allow marketers to choose whether to show their ads alongside potentially sensitive content.
2020: URLs shown in featured snippets that appeared in the right rail of Google desktop results would continue to be included in the main organic listings.
2020: In this installment of Barry Schwartz’s vlog series, he chatted with Barone about the older days of SEO and then moved on to how her career has changed over the years.
2019: Search marketing experts offered feedback on when to pay for search analytics tools, factors to consider and making the most out of what you buy.
2019: Google added a microphone to the Google.com search field on Android phones to enable mobile web voice search.
2018: A button in the beta Search Console explained why all of the old reports had not been migrated.
2018: Bing and Yahoo saw search ad spend jump 32% year-over-year. Google spend slowed slightly from Q3.
2016: Retail advertising spend on mobile Shopping ads nearly doubled year-over-year in Q4.
2016: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.
2014: That was Cutts’ answer to “Should I build links using article directories?”
2014: Two previous antitrust settlements were strenuously opposed and thus defeated by Google critics and competitors.
2014: Google was asked to pay $15.8 million in 2012. The plaintiffs were also seeking ongoing royalties, which the court awarded.
2014: There were also “photos,” “people you follow” and “near you” filters to further refine results.
2014: Bing also measured player searches, with Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning winning 72% of the searches over Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson.
2014: iOS and Android users could earn Bing Rewards credits (toward gift cards for brands like Amazon, Xbox and Dominos) by performing searches on their phone.
2013: Those advertisers were rewarded with higher click-through rates and lower cost-per-click than text ads.
2012: Images and reviews were very important in capturing users’ eye movements and clicks.
2011: Google was seeing millions of calls every month and it had become a core part of a large number of mobile search ad campaigns.
2010: When you visited Google Images on a smartphone, you would see “popular images” and a link to browse more popular images.
2010: Google confirmed it was “testing a feature in which text ads on Google search results pages may include star ratings and links to third party sites that have reviewed the advertiser’s business.”
2010: Online Services, which housed online advertising and Bing, reported $581 million in revenue vs. $609 million the prior year ago.
2010: It is a basic search engine, playing on the Google name and Google logo.
2009: The new interface looked similar to the charting/graphing system that Google Analytics used.
2009: The sites you visited most often were listed when you opened a new blank tab in Firefox.
2009: Hitwise research suggested that 72% of the site’s Top 50 search terms from December 2008 were music-related.
2009: You could add it to your Firefox search box manually via the add-on from Live Search.
2009: Google’s TV Ads team announced the addition of new metrics detailing time-shifted ad viewings.
2009: Known widely by his online handle lazerzubb, he was a fixture at various events.
2009: Google said the image was removed because of several requests from users using the Street View image removal option.
2008: Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed the behavior and said Google had already begun reversing it.
2008: This was a huge deal for Microsoft, giving their ad program exposure to 20 million unique users and over 330 million page views per month.
2008: It was “open warfare” between IAC CEO Barry Diller and Liberty Media, one of its largest backers and investors.
2008: A UK woman was convicted of trying to murder her husband after researching methods on Google.
2007: Brin was arguing that some information is better than no information.
2007: ‘Twas a hoax.
2007: Just lots of rumors.
2007: Tribune had struck a deal that had Topix providing content and a back-end platform for general merchandise classifieds on their newspaper sites.
2007: Wikio blended articles from major news web sites and blogs with commentary and tags from Wikio users.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
< January 28 | Search Marketing History | January 30 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 29 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Friday, January 27th, 2023
A former employee allegedly leaked a Yandex source code repository, part of which contained more than 1,900 factors the search engines uses for ranking search results.
Why we care. This leak has revealed 1,922 ranking factors Yandex used in its search algorithm, at least as of July 2022. Perhaps Martin MacDonald put it best on Twitter today: “The Yandex hack is probably the most interesting thing to have happened in SEO in years.”
Yandex is not Google. If you plan to read the full list of Yandex ranking factors, remember that Yandex is not Google. If you see a ranking factor listed by Yandex, that doesn’t mean Google gives that signal that same amount of weight. In fact, Google may not use all of the 1,922 factors listed.
That said, a lof of these ranking factors may be quite similar. So reviewing this document may provide some useful insights to better help you understand how search engines, such as Google, work from a technological standpoint.
The bigger picture. The code appeared as a Torrent on a popular hacking forum, as reported by Bleeping Computer:
…the leaker posted a magnet link that they claim are ‘Yandex git sources’ consisting of 44.7 GB of files stolen from the company in July 2022. These code repositories allegedly contain all of the company’s source code besides anti-spam rules.
Yandex calls it a leak. Because the code appeared on a popular hacking forum, it was first thought that Yandex was hacked. Yandex has denied this, and provided the following statement:
“Yandex was not hacked. Our security service found code fragments from an internal repository in the public domain, but the content differs from the current version of the repository used in Yandex services.
A repository is a tool for storing and working with code. Code is used in this way internally by most companies.
Repositories are needed to work with code and are not intended for the storage of personal user data. We are conducting an internal investigation into the reasons for the release of source code fragments to the public, but we do not see any threat to user data or platform performance.”
Dig deeper. You can find more coverage of the leak on Techmeme.
Yandex ranking factors list. MacDonald shared the full list of 1,922 factors here on Web Marketing School. I highly recommend downloading it, as I fully expect Yandex will try to scrub this information from the internet. There is also a translated version on Dropbox.
Alex Buraks also has an ongoing Twitter thread analyzing the various ranking factors. Many are what you’d expect to see – PageRank, text relevancy, content age and freshness, lots of end-user behavior factors, host reliability and many link-related factors (e.g., age, relevancy, etc.)
Some of the ranking factors SEOs are finding surprising: number of unique visitors, percent of organic traffic and average domain ranking across queries.
The post Yandex ‘leak’ reveals 1,922 search ranking factors appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Interest in AI technology and, more specifically, OpenAI’s ChatGPT product has skyrocketed in recent weeks.
People are looking for information about both topics.
Source: Google Trends
Thousands are writing about ChatGPT across the web…
Source: Google Search
…and talking about it in various communities.
And as you can tell from the graphs, all of this happened quickly.
Whether your Twitter and LinkedIn feeds have been inundated with threads and posts about ChatGPT (like mine) or you’re just stumbling on the topic, you may want answers to two questions before investing your time and energy into learning ChatGPT:
- Is ChatGPT specifically likely to be an enduring product?
- What does it actually do and what can you personally use it for?
In this article, I’ll help you answer these questions by telling you:
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot created by OpenAI that can be accessed at https://chat.openai.com/.
As of this writing, ChatGPT offers a free version of the tool that users can access, but there have been indications that they will be charging $42/month for a pro version. OpenAI has also indicated that they’ll make an API for the tool available soon.
The interface is simple, with an empty dialog to enter a prompt. The tool can perform various tasks and return text in response. Some examples of tasks ChatGPT can execute include:
- Answering questions.
- Writing things like ads, emails, paragraphs, whole blog posts, or even college papers.
- Writing, commenting or marking up code.
- Changing the formatting on a block of text for you.
ChatGPT launched in late November 2022, on the heels of AI Content Generator Jasper.ai receiving $125 million in funding at a $1.5 billion valuation earlier the same month. The tool reached a million users in less than a week.
ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users!
— Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022
But each session has a specific cost associated with it:
average is probably single-digits cents per chat; trying to figure out more precisely and also how we can optimize it
— Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022
In the interest of helping fund those costs (and further growth) Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI at a $29 billion valuation. A move which, combined with ChatGPT’s growth and word of mouth, might be fueling Google’s reported concerns about ChatGPT as a possible threat.
OpenAI has also indicated that there will be a “professional” version of the tool and Greg Brockman the President & Co-Founder of OpenAI shared a link to a Google Form to get on the waitlist:
Working on a professional version of ChatGPT; will offer higher limits & faster performance. If interested, please join our waitlist here: https://t.co/Eh87OViRie
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) January 11, 2023
Some users have reported seeing an option to upgrade to a $42 free version when logged into their account.
Even with the Microsoft investment, ChatGPT has continued to experience outages and even had to limit new users on the platform:
And ChatGPT is starting to face criticisms over the accuracy of some of the output of the tool, while also staring down competition from rivals (which one would have to assume will only increase and intensify in the wake of the platform’s early success).
Now that you know what ChatGPT is, it’s also helpful to understand a bit more about how it works and who built it (and what their goals and motivations may be).
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How does it work and how was it trained?
If you’re an SEO looking for ways to leverage AI in your everyday work, you don’t need to know how to build your own chatbot.
That said, when using tools like ChatGPT, you will want to know where the information it generates comes from, how it determines what to return as an answer, and how that might change over time.
That way you can understand what level of trust to put in the output of ChatGPT chats, how to better craft your prompts, and what tasks you may want to use it for (or not use it for).
Before you start to use ChatGPT for anything, I’d strongly recommend you check out OpenAI’s own blog post about ChatGPT. There they have a nice graphic explaining how it works, along with a more in-depth explanation.
AssemblyAI also has a detailed third-party breakdown of how ChatGPT works, some of its strengths and weaknesses, and a number of additional sources if you’re looking to dive deeper.
One of the most important things to remember about how ChatGPT works is its limitations. In OpenAI’s own words:
“ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Fixing this issue is challenging, as: (1) during RL training, there’s currently no source of truth; (2) training the model to be more cautious causes it to decline questions that it can answer correctly; and (3) supervised training misleads the model because the ideal answer depends on what the model knows, rather than what the human demonstrator knows.”
Another that’s important to highlight:
“While we’ve made efforts to make the model refuse inappropriate requests, it will sometimes respond to harmful instructions or exhibit biased behavior. We’re using the Moderation API to warn or block certain types of unsafe content, but we expect it to have some false negatives and positives for now. We’re eager to collect user feedback to aid our ongoing work to improve this system.”
As many people know, the ChatGPT was fine-tuned on a GPT model which finished training in early 2022 – meaning it won’t have knowledge of more current events.
It is also trained on a “vast amount” of text from the web, so of course answers can be incorrect. From ChatGPT’s own FAQs:
“Can I trust that the AI is telling me the truth?
ChatGPT is not connected to the internet, and it can occasionally produce incorrect answers. It has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content.
We’d recommend checking whether responses from the model are accurate or not. If you find an answer is incorrect, please provide that feedback by using the “Thumbs Down” button.”
Who built ChatGPT?
Similarly, understanding who built the application and why is an important background if you hope to use it in your day-to-day work.
Again, ChatGPT is an OpenAI product. Here’s some background on the company and their stated goals:
- OpenAI has a non-profit parent organization (OpenAI Inc.) and a for-profit corporation called OpenAI LP (which has a “capped profit” model with a 100x profit cap, at which point the rest of the money flows up to the non-profit entity).
- The biggest investor is Microsoft. OpenAI employees also own equity.
- Former Y Combinator President Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI and was one of the original founders (along with prominent Silicon Valley personalities such as Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and others). Many people ask about Musk’s involvement in the company and ChatGPT. He stepped down as a board member in 2018 and wouldn’t have had any meaningful involvement in the development of ChatGPT (which obviously didn’t launch until November 2022).
Notable elements here if you’re interested in ChatGPT either as an SEO or as a viable alternative to Google are obviously:
- Microsoft’s involvement (with Microsoft Bing being the number 2 search engine – a distant second behind Google).
- ChatGPT obviously isn’t designed to specifically be either an SEO or a content tool (unlike tools like Jasper.ai, Copy.ai and other competitors – many of which are built on top of the GPT-3 framework).
Why should SEOs care about ChatGPT?
While it’s possible that ChatGPT or another AI-powered chatbot could become a viable alternative to Google and traditional search, that’s likely at least far enough away that most SEOs won’t be primarily concerned with the tool for that reason. So why should SEOs care?
ChatGPT has a variety of functionality that can be helpful for SEOs. Additionally, given the platform’s ability to generate AI content, it’s important to understand both what the tool is capable of on that front, and how Google talks and thinks about AI content generally.
What follows are ChatGPT’s use cases for SEO.
AI content generation
By far the “buzziest” early 2023 SEO topic has been AI content broadly, and ChatGPT has been at the center of that discussion since it launched.
From creating blog posts whole cloth to selecting images, generating meta descriptions or rewriting content, there are a number of specific functions ChatGPT can serve when it comes to content creation generally and SEO-focused content creation specifically.
But, of course, an important concern here is how Google thinks about AI content in general.
SEOs need to identify the specific instances where ChatGPT can make them more efficient or enhance their content. At the same time, it’s crucial to understand the potential risks to rankings and organic traffic when using ChatGPT-generated content in different ways (particularly if you’re relying on content created by writers you don’t have a relationship with).
Keyword research and organization
Similarly, there are a number of specific tasks ChatGPT can execute related to keyword research and optimization, such as:
- Suggestions for keywords to target or blog topics.
- Keyword clustering or categorization.
A key consideration for SEOs is how this relates to your current and optimal processes for these tasks.
ChatGPT isn’t designed to be an “SEO tool,” so won’t have the emphasis on search volume, competition, or relevance and co-occurrence that more focused keyword research or organization tools will.
Code generation and technical SEO
ChatGPT is helping people generate code and build things, and it’s no different for specific technical SEO tasks.
Depending on the prompts, ChatGPT can help with things like schema markups, robots.txt directives, redirect codes, and building widgets and free tools to promote via link outreach, among others.
As with any type of content creation, you must QA the code that ChatGPT generates. Your site’s template, hosting environment, CMS, and more can break if the code ChatGPT generates is incorrect.
Link building
ChatGPT can generate lists of outreach targets, emails, free tool ideas, and more that may assist with link building work.
Here again (you may be sensing a theme) two things to keep in mind:
- Since ChatGPT was not built to be a link building tool, it may not prioritize opportunities or generate ideas that will specifically help with SEO success.
- GPT-3 is trained on old data, so the information you’re getting may be wrong or outdated.
How to think about ChatGPT as an SEO
Ultimately, given its early functionality and reception along with OpenAI’s founding team and investors (and level of investment), ChatGPT is likely to have longevity as a tool.
It’s highly useful, with a high potential for getting folks who misuse it into trouble.
I would encourage SEOs to become familiar with ChatGPT (and tools like it) and get used to carefully checking its output.
The post What is ChatGPT and why SEOs should care appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Twitter just launched a beta program that’s available to all advertisers called Search Keyword Ads. The announcement was made on Twitter.
How it works. Twitter says “Now advertisers can bid to insert Promoted Tweets solely among specific search results, reaching people with high real-time intent & improving ad relevance.”
“Search Keywords Ads differ from other Twitter Keywords campaigns in that they only reach people who are searching for targeted terms when they are searching, offering a stronger signal of intent.”
Why we care. If you’re one of the remaining few advertisers left on Twitter, give Search Keyword Ads a try. The new ads can be an effective way for marketers to reach their target audience at the right time and with the right message, potentially leading to better conversion rates and ROI.
Additionally, this feature provides more specific targeting options to reach audiences, it can help to improve the effectiveness of campaigns and lower the cost of reaching targeted audiences.
Today we are rolling out Search Keywords Ads to all advertisers as a beta test 
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
Millions of people on Twitter search for what's happening every day.
Now advertisers can bid to insert Promoted Tweets solely among specific search results, reaching people with high real-time intent & improving ad relevance.
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
Search Keywords Ads are a new Conversion 'campaign objective' in the Twitter Ads interface.
For now, these campaigns will optimize only for conversions to advertiser websites, and they require the integration of the Twitter Pixel or Conversion API (CAPI) to maximize relevance. pic.twitter.com/xCowp8yvfL
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
Existing Keywords targeting will still function as before for all other objectives.
Search Keywords Ads differ from other Twitter Keywords campaigns in that they only reach people who are searching for targeted terms when they are searching, offering a stronger signal of intent.
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
We’ll expand this capability to support other campaign objectives soon.
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 25, 2023
The post Twitter has launched a Search Keyword Ads beta test to all advertisers appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Google strong-armed ecommerce marketers into Performance Max campaigns in 2022 by deprecating Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in favor of fewer levers and more AI-driven results.
As I wrote in a column looking back on Google’s biggest 2022 moves, most advanced search marketers begrudged this direction since more controls provide good marketers more room to outpace their peers, giving their brands a competitive edge.
B2B marketers weren’t nearly as broadly impacted by the move to Performance Max, since their old campaign structures remained unchanged by Google.
There’s no denying, however, that the writing is on the wall. Google is moving hard toward machine learning and AI, which means Performance Max may well be the lay of the entire Google search land in the near future.
So as we get into the teeth of 2023, how should B2B marketers approach Performance Max?
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Failing to plan might be planning to fail
If I were a betting person, I’d put down some money on the idea that Google will begin steering B2B campaigns toward Performance Max this year.
If that happens, marketers who are more aggressive in familiarizing themselves with the ins and outs will have a leg up when Google takes away other campaign options.
If your search campaigns are in a position to do so, I’d suggest you begin to test Performance Max ASAP.
That said, here are some conditions I strongly recommend you meet before you devote any budget to testing:
- You must have fully funded search campaigns to justify moving some discretionary budget to Performance Max. This means that you’ve built out all the keyword themes that make sense and have achieved solid market share for them. In other words, if you have a small budget, don’t compromise the pursuit of your full search opportunity at hand by testing Performance Max campaigns.
- Your account has a healthy volume of conversion data through search.
- For reasons we’ll get into in a minute, you must have reliable offline conversion data syncing to your account.
- To engage the right people, you must have good, rich audience lists and a solid definition of your ICP.
If you meet all these conditions, you’re good to go – with some additional caveats and best practices I’ll spell out now.
1. Stay skeptical
The idea behind Performance Max is that it delivers your ads to the right people wherever they are – Discover, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Display Network, etc.
You’re using automatic bidding and trusting that Google’s algorithm can discern valuable levels of intent.
That said, Google’s algorithm is still learning, and it has built a history of optimizing for spend over efficiency.
As you approach Performance Max, look for ways to strong-arm the algorithm into doing what you want it to.
2. Get your first-party data ready
CRM data is vital for Performance Max campaigns in general for a couple of reasons, both of which apply in force for B2B – audience quality and offline conversions.
Let’s tackle offline conversions first. If we simply rely on pixels that fire for leads as signals for Performance Max, we’ll set ourselves up for failure.
Consider the lead spam most B2B campaigns have to sift through, then understand that Performance Max will take the path of least resistance to get the “desired” action.
Without integrating a layer of CRM data and telling Performance Max to optimize toward MQLs, SQLs or opportunities (essentially, whatever your most valuable stage is that also carries enough data volume for PMax to use effectively), the system will optimize toward leads, using up your budget to keep bringing in ROI-unfriendly amounts of spam.
On the audience side, remember, Performance Max uses the signals you give to find the right users. Signals might incorporate audience lists like current customers, closed/won opportunities, etc.
Performance Max, like Similar Audiences, isn’t constrained to the audience lists you give Google. It might even be a little broader than Similar Audiences, given that it extends across GDN, Gmail, and YouTube.
So, button up your lists and make sure the common attributes are clear enough for Performance Max to read and react to in its targeting.
The upshot? Google doesn’t have great built-in B2B targeting, so stay away from using their audiences and give it enough volume and clarity to work with.
3. Experiment
When approaching Performance Max setup, keep in mind that you can do experiments.
But there’s a caveat – you only have visibility into results at the campaign level. Thus, I recommend testing at least two Performance Max campaigns, each relying on different audience signals, to see which is more effective.
Note: To make the two-experiment setup work, you’ll have to be able to carve out enough budget to make the findings clear and actionable.
4. Get familiar with reporting – and act on results quickly
One of Google’s better releases in 2022, Custom Columns, allows advertisers to see offline conversions at the campaign level, even for Performance Max campaigns:
Beyond that, Performance Max reporting diverges from familiar ad group-level reporting and breaks everything into asset groups, providing a view of all provided assets and possible combinations.
We’ve found the campaign-level view to be most helpful, which is why I recommend starting with at least two campaign-level experiments.
Once you’re relatively fluent with the reporting structure, keep a close eye on quality and opportunities to add negatives, whether keywords or placement exclusions, to shore up efficiency.
Making Performance Max work for B2B
My overall take on Performance Max is that Google hasn’t yet put much effort into making the product work for B2B or lead gen.
Make sure to keep a close eye on results and quality, using any levers in your control to keep Google focused on your best potential user. Establish clear goalposts and standards for when to pull the plug.
In a best-case scenario, Performance Max will be a pleasant surprise and enable you to access a larger pool of valuable users at reasonable CPLs.
But if you take my advice, even a worst-case scenario with some fruitless spend will give you valuable insights into the future of Google for B2B.
The post Performance Max for B2B: 4 best practices appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Google is opening access to the local car inventory beta feature to all US dealerships using the cars for sale feature in Google Business Profiles. Greg Gifford reports that Google has opened this beta feature now to all US-based dealerships.
Cars for Sale open. Google has opened up the “Cars for Sale” feature in Google Business Profiles to any product with a vehicle identification number (VIN). “Until this week, only US-based car dealers could list their inventory on their Google Business Profiles. Now, anything that has a Vehicle Identification Number is eligible to be listed. That means motorcycles, RVs, powersports, and Commercial vehicles are all allowed now,” Gifford explained.
What it looks like. Here is a GIF of this cars for sale feature in action while in beta:
More details. Google has a dedicated section about this feature over here, where it is called “vehicle listings.” Google wrote, “Vehicle listings on Google allows businesses to display their for sale vehicle inventory on various Google surfaces, including dealerships’ Business Profiles and Google Search. Google users can then search, filter, and easily learn more about vehicles for sale such as availability, pricing, and key information about the vehicles for sale, potentially directing customers to your business.”
To manage vehicle listings through your Business Profile account, perform the following steps:
- Access your web Business Profile account at business.google.com/locations.
- Select See your profile for the business that you want to change settings for.
- Click Edit profile, and then click Vehicle listings.
To manage your vehicle listings through a Google Search, perform the following steps:
- Search for your business’s name or “my business” on Google Search.
- Click Edit profile, and then click Vehicle listings.
Why we care. You probably want to jump on this feature if you work for an auto dealership. Listing your vehicles in Google Search and the local search results may help you get more customers in your showroom and potentially lead to more sales.
The post Google rolling out cars for sale in Google Business Profiles appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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