Google updates image SEO best practices and Google Discover docs
Written on January 24, 2023 at 9:18 am, by admin
Google has made a couple of tweaks to two of its SEO-related help documents. The changes include specifying that the title and link elements are most important for the RSS feed follow in Google Discover and that Google parses img elements even within other elements, such as the picture element.
Google Discover RSS Feed follow
Google added a new line to the Get On Discover documentation under the feed guidelines for the Follow feature in Google Discover. Google wrote:
“The most important content for the Follow feature is your feed
<title>element and your per item<link>elements. Make sure your feed includes these elements.”
Clearly, if you care about performing well in the follow feature on Chrome, you should include the <title> element and <link> elements in your RSS feed.
Google Image SEO best practices update
Google also updated the image SEO best practices document to clarify that Google parses <img> elements even when they’re enclosed in other elements (such as <picture> elements) when indexing images.
The document used to say “Google parses the HTML of your pages to index images, but doesn’t index CSS images.” It now reads:
“Using semantic HTML markup helps crawlers find and process images. Google parses the HTML <img> elements (even when they’re enclosed in other elements such as <picture> elements) in your pages to index images, but doesn’t index CSS images.”
Why we care
If you are looking to leverage more when it comes to either the Follow feature in Google Chrome powered by Google Discover, or you are looking to perform better with your image SEO, make sure to read the updated documentation that Google has provided. More importantly, if you make any changes to your site, make sure to test to see if there is a positive or negative impact to your search performance.
The post Google updates image SEO best practices and Google Discover docs appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Understanding quiet quitting in SEO – the silent exodus
Written on January 24, 2023 at 9:18 am, by admin
“I’m just gonna come in and do my job. Still doing all my deliverables, but not a day early, not doing anyone else’s job on top of mine, not coming in a minute before 9 a.m. and not staying a minute later than 5 p.m. I don’t care anymore.”
This is quiet quitting.
40% of the global workforce is looking to leave their jobs in the next 3 to 6 months, according to “To quit or not to quit” by Mckinsey and Company. The difference will be in how they will choose to leave, which will also have significant effects on businesses.
While the term “quiet quitting” has been trending recently, there is a misunderstanding that must be addressed regarding the concept.
Setting boundaries, such as declining to work excessive hours, weekends, or being on call for non-urgent requests outside of regular business hours, is not a form of quiet quitting. Rather, it is a matter of self-respect and taking care of one’s own well-being.
True quiet quitting occurs when an employee, unhappy with a situation at work and unable to find a satisfactory resolution, chooses to depart without causing a fuss.
This is not an act of cowardice, but a decision made in the interest of preserving one’s own peace of mind.
It is a common occurrence that when an employee is quietly quitting, they will focus solely on meeting the minimum requirements of their job, and no more. This is often done for fear of being terminated before securing a new position.
However, the employee will likely go to great lengths to conceal their job search and intent to leave, and their behavior and demeanor at work will not change. None will notice a thing.
It is only when they formally tender their resignation or depart that the full extent of their quiet quitting becomes apparent.
The costs of quiet quitting
An employee who has decided to quietly leave will only stay in a job until the role looks decent in their CV (one year tops if they are new) or only a few months more until they secure the next job.
Other costs associated with quiet quitting are:
Lost productivity
When an employee quits, the company may have to scramble to find a replacement, which can lead to lost productivity as the new hire gets up to speed.
Increased workload
In the meantime, remaining employees may have to take on additional responsibilities to cover the workload of the departed employee, leading to increased stress and burnout.
Training costs
The company may have to invest time and resources into training a new employee to replace the one who quit, which can be costly.
Negative impact on morale
Quiet quitting can also have a negative impact on morale among remaining employees, as it may create a sense of uncertainty and insecurity about the stability of the company.
Reputation damage
If quiet quitting becomes a common occurrence at a company, it may damage its reputation and make it difficult to attract top talent in the future.
Especially if the reason a valuable employee quietly leaves is a manager, once that employee leaves, he or she will start talking among those very close to them.
Let’s not forget the financial costs of recruitment and new equipment, too.
The root cause
Poor management is frequently the root cause of quiet quitting. In particular, a lack of effective communication and excessive micromanagement can contribute to this phenomenon.
When an employee’s attempts at communication with their manager are met with confrontation, misunderstanding or friction, they may feel disheartened and choose to silently depart rather than risk further conflict.
Similarly, a manager who constantly checks on the work of their employees, scrutinizes every detail and micromanages every aspect of their work is likely to drive even the most talented and dedicated staff to consider quietly quitting.
Such behavior fosters a toxic and oppressive work environment that ultimately proves unsustainable for those who value their own well-being and professional satisfaction.
At some point in our lives, we all have quietly quit a job, other reasons include:
Fear of retribution
Some employees may be afraid to speak up or voice their concerns to their manager for fear of retribution or negative consequences.
Lack of trust
Some might feel that their concerns will not be taken seriously, leading them to quit quietly rather than trying to address the issue through communication.
Feeling overwhelmed
Some employees may feel overwhelmed or stressed and may not know how to effectively communicate their concerns to their manager. They may therefore choose to quit quietly rather than to navigate a potentially difficult conversation.
Lack of confidence
Some employees may lack the confidence to speak up or communicate their concerns to their manager, leading them to quit instead quietly.
There’s also fear of damaging relationships in the workplace.
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Quiet quitting in SEO: 4 common reasons
In a recent Twitter poll, I asked SEOs what they think is the most important reason to push people to “quiet quit” and these were the results:
Burnout
In the fast-paced and high-stress world of agency work, burnout is all too common.
The constant pressure to be alert and responsive, the feeling of being chased by an ever-present deadline, and the constant demand to deliver can take a toll on one’s mental health.
It is a sad reality that burnout is often glamorized in some SEO agencies, particularly those that prioritize acquiring new clients and taking on unrealistic deliverables instead of investing in their teams and considering their capacity.
The result is an environment where new challenges are thrown at already overburdened teams, expected to be delivered, as vulgarly said, “by yesterday.”
The SEO sweatshop: The quiet quitting central
Characterized by large open offices where employees are expected to be onsite from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week, with no hybrid or remote work options, these places churn out jargon-laden SEO reports with no value at all, unhelpful content, “land” useless links on the media but all done at a rapid pace, sticking up to the philosophy of done “by yesterday.”
In the SEO sweatshop, the “perks” offered to employees are often little more than sweets, trinkets, and fast food, and the culture is one of unhealthy imbalanced lifestyles.
In such agencies, burnout, quiet quitting, and high staff turnover are all too common, as employees are subjected to long hours, low salaries, and immature, uneducated managers who prioritize profits over the well-being of their teams.
Signs of burnout include:
- Feelings of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion: The employee may feel drained and unable to keep up with their usual workload.
- Decreased productivity and quality of work: Burnout can also lead to a decrease in productivity, as the person may struggle to focus, make decisions, or complete tasks.
- Negative attitudes: Burnout can lead to negative attitudes, such as cynicism, detachment, or frustration. The person may be more critical of their work or colleagues or be the passive-aggressive SEO starting dramas on Twitter.
- Increased absenteeism: Burnout can also lead to increased absenteeism, as the individual may take more time off or call in sick more often.
At the same time, managers should keep a close eye on the following employee traits that lead to burnout:
- Eating lunch at their desk.
- Staying late.
- Timesheets showing over nine hours done a day.
- Sending and responding to emails over the weekend (which also creates a toxic work environment.)
The most significant issue with the SEO sweatshop model is that it is a problem that is evident to everyone in the company, with the exception of the manager.
In these places, there is a culture of disregard for the well-being and professional satisfaction of employees, leading to a cycle of burnout and turnover that ultimately harms the company as a whole.
Culture in the workplace
When the culture within a company is toxic or negative, employees may feel that they have no other option but to leave.
This can be particularly true in cases where the culture is characterized by excessive micromanagement, harassment, discrimination, and poor career progression.
When employees do not feel safe or supported in their work environment, they may opt to resign quietly rather than confront the issue or raise a complaint.
Additionally, if the culture of the company does not align with an employee’s values or goals, they may choose to depart in favor of a more harmonious and fulfilling work environment that aligns with their personal beliefs and aspirations.
Challenging manager
A challenging manager is someone who does not provide clear direction or support to their team, making it difficult for employees to do their job effectively. This can lead to feelings of frustration and insecurity and may cause employees to question their ability to succeed in their roles.
When an employee feels like their manager is not supportive of their career development or growth, they may choose to leave the company in search of a more supportive and nurturing work environment. This can be especially true if the employee has a long-term career goal in mind and feels like their current manager is not helping them to achieve it.
Salary
In a company where workload and responsibilities increase over time but salaries do not, it is not uncommon for employees to turn to quiet quitting as a means of seeking better opportunities elsewhere.
When career progression is hindered by a lack of pay increases and employees feel undervalued and unappreciated.
The post-COVID-19 landscape has further exacerbated this trend, as employees increasingly prioritize their well-being and seek work environments that align with their values and goals.
To prevent costly and damaging instances of quiet quitting, it is essential for managers to clearly communicate policies on pay and career progression from the outset.
By doing so, they can avoid losing valuable employees and ensure that the talent they have invested in is able to thrive and grow within the company.
Prioritizing well-being in SEO
When speaking up, it is important for a manager and an employee to be factual and avoid reacting at all costs.
To prioritize well-being in your SEO team, consider the following.
- Set clear expectations: Have structure as well as processes in place. There is nothing more unsettling than a manager that expects a new employee to immediately know how to do the job without the appropriate onboarding.
- Encourage work-life balance: Encourage employees to take breaks, use their vacation time, and disconnect from work outside office hours.
- Promote a positive work culture: Create an environment that is supportive, collaborative, and respectful. Encourage open communication and feedback. Positive culture is not equal to forced fun.
- Monitor workload carefully and do not micromanage: Make sure that employees are not taking on too much work and that they have the support they need to manage their workload effectively.
- Provide opportunities for growth and development: Offer training, mentorship, and other opportunities for employees to learn new skills and advance their careers.
Remember, it is all about taking notes, listening and following up by email with a plan.
Additionally, offering support resources such as counseling and health and wellness programs can help employees to manage stress and prevent burnout.
By prioritizing the needs and well-being of your team, you can create a work environment that is conducive to success and retention.
Anime art created by my 12-year-old son in his project Dekiru Art.The post Understanding quiet quitting in SEO – the silent exodus appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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This day in search marketing history: January 23
Written on January 23, 2023 at 5:13 am, by admin
Expedia buys Travelocity
In 2015, Expedia bought rival Travelocity for $280 million amid sluggish travel industry growth and pressure from insurgent travel providers.
Expedia had actually been powering Travelocity.com since 2013. So the acquisition seemed quite logical from both perspectives.
At the time, Expedia also owned several online travel brands: Hotels.com, Hotwire, eLong and Trivago.
Read all about it in Travel Search Consolidation: Expedia Buys Rival Travelocity For $280M
Also on this day
Neeva seeks to expand user base with free subscriptions
2022: The free basic subscription was an alternative to its full-featured subscription, which cost $4.95 per month.
Google removes ‘ads’ and ‘sponsored’ labels from flight search results
2020: There would be no more referral fees from partners in flight search, as Google sought to emphasize price and convenience in rankings.
Google Dataset Search is out of beta and adds new features
2020: Google added new features to Google Dataset Search with this rollout.
Video: Search pioneer Mike Grehan on everything from the early days of SEO to AI’s role in paid and organic search
2020: In this installment of Barry Schwartz’s vlog series, he chatted with Grehan about the early days of search, how technology like AI and machine learning are impacting search and who originally came up with term “search engine optimization.”
Amazon adds customer acquisition metrics for Sponsored Brands campaigns
2019: The “new-to-brand” set of metrics were also available for Amazon sellers’ display and video ad campaigns.
Searchmetrics wins important victory in patent infringement lawsuit
2018: A federal judge invalidated five patents SEO platform provider BrightEdge claimed in lawsuit against competitor Searchmetrics.
Bing Hotel Ads moving out of beta to general release with Koddi
2018: After running its Hotel Ads offering in beta in 2017, Bing Ads rolled them out widely.
Google mobile search adds book previews
2017: You could now read book previews directly on your smartphone from Google search.
Ed Roberts activist Google Doodle honors leader of the disability rights movement
2017: The Google Doodle paid tribute to Ed Roberts, co-founder of the World Institute on Disability.
Automatic AdWords Currency Conversion Now Enabled In Google Analytics
2015: Advertisers using a different currency in AdWords and Analytics would now be able to easily compare cost data in Analytics.
PLAs Drove 56% Of Non-Brand Google AdWords Clicks In Q4 [RKG]
2015: Click share also rose on Bing’s product ads, doubling from Q3.
Pinterest Search Is Now Customized By Gender
2015: Pinterest adjusted its Guided Search system to serve results that differed depending on whether the user was female or male.
News Aggregator SmartNews Shows Rapid Growth, Adds Local Channels
2015: Local news became available for 12 US cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle and Boston.
Search In Pics: Google Glass Mug, Google Pool Table & Gmail Paper
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.
An Easy Way To Check What Referrer Data Google, Bing Or Yahoo Pass To Your Secure Site
2014: There was no way to search for an HTTPS version of a “what is my referrer” site. So Barry Schwartz made one.
Google To Replace Smartphone User-Agent To Improve Smart Phone Indexing
2014: The new smartphone user-agent crawler would follow robots.txt, robots meta tag, and HTTP header directives for Googlebot instead of Googlebot-Mobile
MapQuest Transfers Local Listings Management To Yext
2014: MapQuest notified business users that its local business center and basic local listings product would be formally shutting down.
Google Loses Again In AdWords Patent Infringement Case
2014: A judge determined patent-holding company Vringo was entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords.
Google Launches Streamlined Image Search
2013: With the new system made it easier to quickly skim through multiple images, rather than the old system that requires a lot of clicking, then closing windows to go back and select a new image.
New Tumblr Blog Raises Privacy Concerns Over Facebook Graph Search
2013: Examples of searches that were a mix of comedy and creepiness.
“Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Shows Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Can Go Beyond Google+
2012: The companies behind the tool felt Google hadn’t focused on what was best for its users with Search Plus Your World.
Google Search Showing Results For Punctuation Marks
2012: In the past, Google ignored most punctuation marks and didn’t show any useful results for them.
Projecting 2012 Google Mobile Revenues: $4 or $6 Billion?
2012: The Google 2012 mobile revenue “run rate” range was projected to be between $4 billion and $6 billion (globally). In the US the figure would probably be just over half the number.
A Proposal For Social Network Détente
2012: Some suggestions for how a social-nuclear war between Google, Twitter and Facebook could be averted.
Searching For Old Versions of Web Sites? The Wayback Machine Is New and Improved
2011: The Wayback Machine was redesigned and relaunched with a nicer user interface and migrated to a new platform as a foundation for further improvements.
Google To Push Semantic Search In 2009?
2009: “Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt
No Surprise: Google Is No. 1 Internet Property Worldwide
2009: Google’s sites reached 77% of the online population, age 15 and up, in December 2008.
Google Maps: From “OneBox” To Ten Local Links
2008: Google appeared to be serious about showing as many as 10 local listings beside the map and phasing this into results around the world.
Google’s Mysterious Position Six Penalty
2008: Google’s Matt Cutts shrugged off discussion about a pattern of websites ranking in Position 1 or 2 falling to Position 6 in Google.
Google Best Place To Work, According To Fortune Magazine
2008: For the second year in a row.
Search Stocks & The Stock Crash: GOOG, YHOO, & MSFT
2008: Google had the greatest decline, down 19.5%. Yahoo was just behind at 18.5%, with Microsoft at about 12.5%. The NASDAQ overall was at 15.5%.
Google Health Close To Launching?
2008: The login page for Google Health was live, although the service itself was not.
Baidu Relaunches In Japan
2008: As part of this launch, Baidu revamped the Japanese home page and added blog search.
South Korea To Google: Return Our Cities From North Korea
2008: Google had labeled some of the regions in South Korea as being part of North Korea.
FTC Complaint Filed Over AskEraser: “Unfair & Deceptive”
2008: Multiple groups asked the US Federal Trade Commission to rule on whether Ask was using unfair and deceptive trade practices in marketing its tool.
Will The European Union Decide IP Addresses Are Personal?
2008: The head of an EU group looking into search privacy issues said that Internet Protocol addresses assigned to computers should be treated as personal information.
Anything Else? Vivisimo’s Remix Clustering Surfaces Subtler Results
2008: Remix clustering let you click a link to quickly answer the question, “What other, subtler topics are there?”
Google Adds RSS Snippets To Personalized Home Page
2007: Google added plus signs next to each RSS title that, if clicked, would open to show a snippet of the summary from the post.
Google’s Site Exclusion Tool Enables Unlimited Site Exclusions
2007: Google removed the cap on the number of sites you could exclude in the Site Exclusion Tool.
Google Takes Action To ‘Strip’ Confidential Information From Google Blacklist
2007: Google: “procedures have been put in place to strip login information from future submissions.”
Google To Test New Video Ads From BMG and Warner Music Group Over AdSense Network
2007: The ads were to be tested for four weeks.
Use Microsoft Live Search & Microsoft With Donate To Charity
2007: Microsoft said it would donate $1 per search to Team Seattle’s Seattle’s Children’s Hospital fund.
Google To Invest In Indian Companies Via Seedfund
2007: Google was reportedly giving an undisclosed amount to Seedfund, to indirectly invest in technology in India.
Yahoo’s Panama Migration: Mixed Reviews
2007: The reviews and opinions presented were generally positive but some smaller businesses had problems and frustrations.
TellMe To Launch New Mobile Local Search Product
2007: It was free, direct-to-consumer, voice-enabled directory assistance.
SEMPO Institute: Online School For SEMs Announced
2007: The fundamentals course went live and provide 15+ tracks.
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.
- 2020: Default Search in Chrome Switched to Bing for Office 365 ProPlus users by Detlef Johnson
- 2019: Don’t give up on Google Posts by Adam Dorfman
- 2018: Will AMP improve your rankings? How to set up an AMP test by Stephanie LeVonne
- 2018: How AI can uncover new insights and drive SEO performance by Jim Yu
- 2017: SEM continuity: The ROI-boosting digital marketing concept you’ve never heard of by Jeff Eckman & Paul Benson
- 2017: Attention search marketers: ALL keywords are branded keywords! by Larry Kim
- 2015: 2 Tales Of Clarity Using Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnel Reporting by Carrie Albright
- 2015: How To Dissect Your Organic Traffic By Intent & Funnel It Into Sales by Neil Patel
- 2014: Are PDFs Optimal For SEO? The Pros And Cons by Janet Driscoll Miller
- 2014: 3 Surprising Benefits Of Retargeting by Larry Kim
- 2013: 25 Questions To Ask When Executing B2B Content Marketing Campaigns by Derek Edmond
- 2013: What Is The Facebook Exchange Opportunity? by Dax Hamman
- 2013: 11 Simple Conversion Strategies Many Product Pages Fail To Incorporate by Stoney deGeyter
- 2012: Google Plus Connections Are The New Links by Andrew Shotland
- 2012: How To Achieve Mobile Search Ranking Clarity
- 2012: 10 Form Optimization Tips For Landing Pages by Mona Elesseily
- 2009: The Extended Brain, Search Marketing & User Experience Design by Kim Krause Berg
- 2008: Building Smarter Landing Pages For Stronger Leads by Julie Mason
- 2008: The Brutal Realities Of The B2B Lead Qualification Process by Patricia Hursh
- 2008: Building A Career In Search Marketing by Duane Forrester
- 2007: Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS by Neil Patel
< January 22 | Search Marketing History | January 24 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 23 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Category seo news | Tags:
Social Networks : Technorati, Stumble it!, Digg, de.licio.us, Yahoo, reddit, Blogmarks, Google, Magnolia.
This day in search marketing history: January 23
Written on January 23, 2023 at 5:13 am, by admin
Expedia buys Travelocity
In 2015, Expedia bought rival Travelocity for $280 million amid sluggish travel industry growth and pressure from insurgent travel providers.
Expedia had actually been powering Travelocity.com since 2013. So the acquisition seemed quite logical from both perspectives.
At the time, Expedia also owned several online travel brands: Hotels.com, Hotwire, eLong and Trivago.
Read all about it in Travel Search Consolidation: Expedia Buys Rival Travelocity For $280M
Also on this day
Neeva seeks to expand user base with free subscriptions
2022: The free basic subscription was an alternative to its full-featured subscription, which cost $4.95 per month.
Google removes ‘ads’ and ‘sponsored’ labels from flight search results
2020: There would be no more referral fees from partners in flight search, as Google sought to emphasize price and convenience in rankings.
Google Dataset Search is out of beta and adds new features
2020: Google added new features to Google Dataset Search with this rollout.
Video: Search pioneer Mike Grehan on everything from the early days of SEO to AI’s role in paid and organic search
2020: In this installment of Barry Schwartz’s vlog series, he chatted with Grehan about the early days of search, how technology like AI and machine learning are impacting search and who originally came up with term “search engine optimization.”
Amazon adds customer acquisition metrics for Sponsored Brands campaigns
2019: The “new-to-brand” set of metrics were also available for Amazon sellers’ display and video ad campaigns.
Searchmetrics wins important victory in patent infringement lawsuit
2018: A federal judge invalidated five patents SEO platform provider BrightEdge claimed in lawsuit against competitor Searchmetrics.
Bing Hotel Ads moving out of beta to general release with Koddi
2018: After running its Hotel Ads offering in beta in 2017, Bing Ads rolled them out widely.
Google mobile search adds book previews
2017: You could now read book previews directly on your smartphone from Google search.
Ed Roberts activist Google Doodle honors leader of the disability rights movement
2017: The Google Doodle paid tribute to Ed Roberts, co-founder of the World Institute on Disability.
Automatic AdWords Currency Conversion Now Enabled In Google Analytics
2015: Advertisers using a different currency in AdWords and Analytics would now be able to easily compare cost data in Analytics.
PLAs Drove 56% Of Non-Brand Google AdWords Clicks In Q4 [RKG]
2015: Click share also rose on Bing’s product ads, doubling from Q3.
Pinterest Search Is Now Customized By Gender
2015: Pinterest adjusted its Guided Search system to serve results that differed depending on whether the user was female or male.
News Aggregator SmartNews Shows Rapid Growth, Adds Local Channels
2015: Local news became available for 12 US cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle and Boston.
Search In Pics: Google Glass Mug, Google Pool Table & Gmail Paper
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.
An Easy Way To Check What Referrer Data Google, Bing Or Yahoo Pass To Your Secure Site
2014: There was no way to search for an HTTPS version of a “what is my referrer” site. So Barry Schwartz made one.
Google To Replace Smartphone User-Agent To Improve Smart Phone Indexing
2014: The new smartphone user-agent crawler would follow robots.txt, robots meta tag, and HTTP header directives for Googlebot instead of Googlebot-Mobile
MapQuest Transfers Local Listings Management To Yext
2014: MapQuest notified business users that its local business center and basic local listings product would be formally shutting down.
Google Loses Again In AdWords Patent Infringement Case
2014: A judge determined patent-holding company Vringo was entitled to additional royalties from Google in a patent infringement case involving Google AdWords.
Google Launches Streamlined Image Search
2013: With the new system made it easier to quickly skim through multiple images, rather than the old system that requires a lot of clicking, then closing windows to go back and select a new image.
New Tumblr Blog Raises Privacy Concerns Over Facebook Graph Search
2013: Examples of searches that were a mix of comedy and creepiness.
“Don’t Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Shows Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Can Go Beyond Google+
2012: The companies behind the tool felt Google hadn’t focused on what was best for its users with Search Plus Your World.
Google Search Showing Results For Punctuation Marks
2012: In the past, Google ignored most punctuation marks and didn’t show any useful results for them.
Projecting 2012 Google Mobile Revenues: $4 or $6 Billion?
2012: The Google 2012 mobile revenue “run rate” range was projected to be between $4 billion and $6 billion (globally). In the US the figure would probably be just over half the number.
A Proposal For Social Network Détente
2012: Some suggestions for how a social-nuclear war between Google, Twitter and Facebook could be averted.
Searching For Old Versions of Web Sites? The Wayback Machine Is New and Improved
2011: The Wayback Machine was redesigned and relaunched with a nicer user interface and migrated to a new platform as a foundation for further improvements.
Google To Push Semantic Search In 2009?
2009: “Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt
No Surprise: Google Is No. 1 Internet Property Worldwide
2009: Google’s sites reached 77% of the online population, age 15 and up, in December 2008.
Google Maps: From “OneBox” To Ten Local Links
2008: Google appeared to be serious about showing as many as 10 local listings beside the map and phasing this into results around the world.
Google’s Mysterious Position Six Penalty
2008: Google’s Matt Cutts shrugged off discussion about a pattern of websites ranking in Position 1 or 2 falling to Position 6 in Google.
Google Best Place To Work, According To Fortune Magazine
2008: For the second year in a row.
Search Stocks & The Stock Crash: GOOG, YHOO, & MSFT
2008: Google had the greatest decline, down 19.5%. Yahoo was just behind at 18.5%, with Microsoft at about 12.5%. The NASDAQ overall was at 15.5%.
Google Health Close To Launching?
2008: The login page for Google Health was live, although the service itself was not.
Baidu Relaunches In Japan
2008: As part of this launch, Baidu revamped the Japanese home page and added blog search.
South Korea To Google: Return Our Cities From North Korea
2008: Google had labeled some of the regions in South Korea as being part of North Korea.
FTC Complaint Filed Over AskEraser: “Unfair & Deceptive”
2008: Multiple groups asked the US Federal Trade Commission to rule on whether Ask was using unfair and deceptive trade practices in marketing its tool.
Will The European Union Decide IP Addresses Are Personal?
2008: The head of an EU group looking into search privacy issues said that Internet Protocol addresses assigned to computers should be treated as personal information.
Anything Else? Vivisimo’s Remix Clustering Surfaces Subtler Results
2008: Remix clustering let you click a link to quickly answer the question, “What other, subtler topics are there?”
Google Adds RSS Snippets To Personalized Home Page
2007: Google added plus signs next to each RSS title that, if clicked, would open to show a snippet of the summary from the post.
Google’s Site Exclusion Tool Enables Unlimited Site Exclusions
2007: Google removed the cap on the number of sites you could exclude in the Site Exclusion Tool.
Google Takes Action To ‘Strip’ Confidential Information From Google Blacklist
2007: Google: “procedures have been put in place to strip login information from future submissions.”
Google To Test New Video Ads From BMG and Warner Music Group Over AdSense Network
2007: The ads were to be tested for four weeks.
Use Microsoft Live Search & Microsoft With Donate To Charity
2007: Microsoft said it would donate $1 per search to Team Seattle’s Seattle’s Children’s Hospital fund.
Google To Invest In Indian Companies Via Seedfund
2007: Google was reportedly giving an undisclosed amount to Seedfund, to indirectly invest in technology in India.
Yahoo’s Panama Migration: Mixed Reviews
2007: The reviews and opinions presented were generally positive but some smaller businesses had problems and frustrations.
TellMe To Launch New Mobile Local Search Product
2007: It was free, direct-to-consumer, voice-enabled directory assistance.
SEMPO Institute: Online School For SEMs Announced
2007: The fundamentals course went live and provide 15+ tracks.
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.
- 2020: Default Search in Chrome Switched to Bing for Office 365 ProPlus users by Detlef Johnson
- 2019: Don’t give up on Google Posts by Adam Dorfman
- 2018: Will AMP improve your rankings? How to set up an AMP test by Stephanie LeVonne
- 2018: How AI can uncover new insights and drive SEO performance by Jim Yu
- 2017: SEM continuity: The ROI-boosting digital marketing concept you’ve never heard of by Jeff Eckman & Paul Benson
- 2017: Attention search marketers: ALL keywords are branded keywords! by Larry Kim
- 2015: 2 Tales Of Clarity Using Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnel Reporting by Carrie Albright
- 2015: How To Dissect Your Organic Traffic By Intent & Funnel It Into Sales by Neil Patel
- 2014: Are PDFs Optimal For SEO? The Pros And Cons by Janet Driscoll Miller
- 2014: 3 Surprising Benefits Of Retargeting by Larry Kim
- 2013: 25 Questions To Ask When Executing B2B Content Marketing Campaigns by Derek Edmond
- 2013: What Is The Facebook Exchange Opportunity? by Dax Hamman
- 2013: 11 Simple Conversion Strategies Many Product Pages Fail To Incorporate by Stoney deGeyter
- 2012: Google Plus Connections Are The New Links by Andrew Shotland
- 2012: How To Achieve Mobile Search Ranking Clarity
- 2012: 10 Form Optimization Tips For Landing Pages by Mona Elesseily
- 2009: The Extended Brain, Search Marketing & User Experience Design by Kim Krause Berg
- 2008: Building Smarter Landing Pages For Stronger Leads by Julie Mason
- 2008: The Brutal Realities Of The B2B Lead Qualification Process by Patricia Hursh
- 2008: Building A Career In Search Marketing by Duane Forrester
- 2007: Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS by Neil Patel
< January 22 | Search Marketing History | January 24 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 23 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
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SMX Master Class Early Bird rates expire this Saturday!
Written on January 23, 2023 at 5:13 am, by admin
Make 2023 the year you become a master of search marketing: Attend your choice of SMX Master Class online March 1-2, to learn actionable tactics that will help you drive more awareness, conversions, and sales.
Early Bird rates expire this Saturday, January 28… book now to save 20% off your Master Class!
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- Advanced SEO training with Bruce Clay –
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- Six hours of training and live Q&A will equip you with tactical insights, reliable next steps, and fresh inspiration without a major time investment.
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There’s only one catch: This $249 Early Bird rate expires on Saturday, January 28… and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Why pay more next week? Select your Master Class and secure your spot today!
Psst… Teams that train together, thrive together. Attend with your crew to score an additional 20% off with group discounts, depending on your party size. Email reg@thirddoormedia.atlassian.net for more details!
The post SMX Master Class Early Bird rates expire this Saturday! appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Category seo news | Tags:
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This day in search marketing history: January 22
Written on January 22, 2023 at 1:12 am, by admin
Google deduplicates featured snippets
In 2020, Google rolled out a global change to featured snippets that resulted in any URL only appearing once on the first page of search results, instead of twice.
Google said there would be no change to its overall set of web search results. There would still be 10 unique listings, as before. It’s just that Google would be deduplicating and no longer show any of those listings twice.
Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan announced the news via Twitter:
If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.
In November, Google was testing removing a site’s normal snippet when a featured snippet was displayed. Google even tested this back in 2017.
Read about it in Listings that earn featured snippets will not repeat on the first page of Google search.
Also on this day
Google Search launches updated mobile design and interface
2021: The updated interface aimed to make the search interface easier to read for searchers while providing a cleaner and more modern experience.
Google My Business updates flag review feature
2021: The new form asked the business owner, “Why are you reporting this review?” Then it offered multiple options.
Google might remove search in Australia if forced to pay to link to sites
2021: “The latest version of the Code requires Google to pay to link to news sites, breaking a fundamental principle of how the web works,” said Mel Silva, Google Australia’s managing director.
Contextual links in featured snippets may present new opportunities and risks
2021: The potential for more links to appear in this high-visibility search result feature had SEOs concerned about click-through rates, brand safety and how to optimize for it.
Google’s mobile-first indexing guide update emphasizes the same content across site versions
2020: New guidelines were added in several areas, including crawling, structured data, visual content, and best practices.
Video: Josef Sperzel talks technical SEO and using Python to pull data
2020: In this installment of Barry Schwartz’s vlog series, he chats with Sperzel about how he got into technical SEO, site architecture and spider crawling issues, and more.
Google offers improved GMB sign-up flow for service-area businesses
2019: Improved process would make it easier to set up service areas on GMB.
Small business scammer shut down by Google lawsuit
2019: Defendant firm had falsely represented that it was acting on behalf of Google.
New Google Search Console may be rolling out for everyone now
2018: Most users were able to see their properties in the new Search Console beta.
Sergei Eisenstein Google doodle honors Soviet film director known as the ‘Father of Montage’
2018: The animated image highlighted the director’s technique for creating montage film effects.
Court Documents Show Google Paid Apple $1 Billion For Safari Default Placement
2016: According to court documents and testimony in Oracle’s copyright suit against Google, “Apple received $1 billion from its rival in 2014.”
Google Down 1 Billion PC Searches From 2014, But Mobile Volumes Likely Way Up
2016: Including “powered by” search, Google controlled 64.8% of US search query volume, while Bing powered 32.2% of organic search.
Search In Pics: Google Dance Shirts, Google’s Micro Library & Revealing Screen Shot
2016: 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.
Wilbur Scoville Google Doodle Marks 151st Birthday Of Man Behind The Scoville Scale
2016: The interactive doodle included an animated Scoville, pepper facts and a game pitting an ice-cream cone against different pepper types.
Google Suggesting Firefox Users Change Their Search Engine & Home Page
2015: Yahoo won the deal to be the default search engine in Firefox in November; now after losing some search share, Google was fighting back.
Bing Ads New Bid Preview Tool Lets You See Effects Of Bid Changes In Real Time
2015: Advertisers could see how ads would display with bid increases before committing to new keyword bids.
Bing Also Testing Google’s Search Design Interface
2015: Days after Yahoo was caught testing a Google search design interface, Bing is also caught testing it.
YP Introduces Cross-Device Retargeting With Local Search Query Data
2015: It combined the company’s high-intent local query data with cross-screen behavior and ad exchange mobile display inventory.
Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors Reports Now Showing Errors On Final Redirect URL
2014: The crawl errors report showed errors on the final URL of the redirect, as opposed to the origin URL of the redirect.
Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages
2014: A video answered the question: “Are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” Short answer: no.
Google Adds A Knowledge Graph Popup To Search Results, But Is It Good For Site Owners?
2014: The data provided background on the website listed in the search result, and it appeared in a small popup window that’s accessible from a clickable link on the second line of the result.
Yahoo Search Goes Secure, Taking Referrer Data — An Indicator Of Yahoo’s Popularity — With It
2014: That meant more protection for searchers but what did the loss of referrer data mean for search marketers?
Google Now Changing The Top Search Filters Based On Query
2014: The options you saw at the top might differ or be in a different order based on the query you entered into Google’s search box.
Study: Display Ads Drive Search Clicks After Two Weeks
2014: Display advertising did generate more search volume, clicks and conversions.
Google Panda Update Version #24; 1.2% Of Search Queries Impacted
2013: A new Panda refresh.
Report: 25 Percent Of Search Clicks Now From Mobile Devices
2013: Desktop searches remained level from Q3 2012 to Q4 2012, while mobile experienced an increase in search share.
Google Earnings Show Halt Of CPC Decline, At Least Temporarily
2013: The cost-per-click across Google’s advertising business increased approximately 2% in the fourth quarter, as compared to the third quarter, after several consecutive quarters of decline.
Google To Replace Black Top Bar With Gray Colored Bar?
2013: Since June 2011, Google’s top bar had a black background color with white/gray text overlaid.
Bing Tags Expands, Makes Pages Linked To Your Profile Public
2013: You (or others) could tag pages to appear associated with you in Bing’s search results. This would be visible to those who had a Facebook account connected to Bing.
Are Search Engines Driving Libraries To Extinction? Not Quite Yet
2013: The traditional role played by libraries, including access to print works and professional librarians, was still important to most.
Google’s “Find Hotels By Travel Time” Offers Some Of That “Innovation” Google Was Talking About
2012: Transit time search was only available in cities where Google had partnered with local transit agencies to integrate their data into Google Maps.
Google May Let You Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam
2011: Matt Cutts confirmed that Google had discussed giving searchers the ability to remove domains from its search results.
Google’s Matt Cutts On 2010 & Looking Back At 2009
2010: Cutts answered a question about where he thought Google and search would be in 2010. In another video, he re-created his presentation on the “state of the index.”
comScore: US Has Most Searches; China Slowest Growth; Google Tops Worldwide In 2009
2010: Globally, searches grew overall by 46%.
Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results
2010: Google added an events hCalendar microformat and started highlighting answers in the snippets.
Google Founders To Sell 10 Million Shares Over Five Years
2010: This was part of a plan to diversify their portfolios over time.
Google 4th On Forbes’ Best Companies To Work For List
2010: Google also ranked fourth on the list in 2009, after being first in 2007 and 2008.
Ballmer Critical Of Google’s China Decision
2010: Ballmer called it an “irrational business decision” on Google’s part.
Satellite Images Of Haiti Earthquake From Google & Bing Maps
2010: How to see before and after images, taken by satellite, as well as 360-degree ground-level videos.
Bing Maps Challenge: Try Silverlight Version, Maybe Win $100
2010: Microsoft wanted people to download (or update Sliverlight) so they could use the new and improved Bing Maps.
Search In Pictures: Google China, Yahoo Character & Google Pillows
2010: 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 Revenues Beat Street, Economic Uncertainty Lingers
2009: Google reported revenues of $5.70 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, an increase of 18% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.
The Rise (And Fall?) Of Real-Time Search
2009: For all the effort to put value into real-time search, particularly where Twitter was concerned – Twitter itself may have put an end to those efforts by announcing new limits on its API.
Microsoft Announces Q2 Results, 5,000 Layoffs
2009: The layoff rumors were true, though the numbers were less than anticipated.
Google Wants To Help Marketers Do More With Less
2009: The Google AdWords team has launched a new mini-site to help advertisers reach their goals in light of the current economy.
Job Search Engines: The Hottest Thing Going
2009: Job search was the fastest-growing search category in the U.S. in 2008.
Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo
2009: President Obama inherited all the links containing anchor text with the words “miserable failure” in them, aimed at former president Bush.
Yahoo Search Update: First Update Of 2008
2008:Yahoo had been rolling out updates to their “crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms” over the past couple days.
Publicis & Google In Technology, Media-Planning Partnership
2008: “Google would exchange its technological know-how for Publicis’s analytical and media planning expertise.”
After A Month, Google Fails The One Hour Guaranteed Press Response Test
2008: The fast response was meant for “corporate policy issues.”
Google Walks Down Fashion Avenue: The Oogle Sari
2008: A design in Satya Paul’s collection was named “Oogle sari” that looked like a sari
made up of the Google web search results.
Chinese Kissing Couple Sues Subway Operator For Uploading Video To YouTube
2008: The video reportedly drew over 15,000 hits in just two days and apparently embarrassed the couple tremendously.
Yahoo Search Index Update – January 2007
2007: Yahoo officially confirmed recent speculations of an index update taking place.
Google’s Blacklist Of Phishing Sites Contained Bank Information & More Confidential Details
2007: Google has quietly removed the information, which included usernames and passwords of individuals, including credentials for accounts at banks and other financial institutions.
Wikipedia Nofollows Links Again – Due To SEOs Abusing Wikipedia
2007: This was due to a discussion of a new SEO contest, where editors were warned of an onslaught of spam.
BBC To Partner With Google On Video Content Deal
2007: Google would make some of BBC’s content available through Google Video and possibly YouTube.
Google Germany Gone Kaput?
2007: That time when Google Germany disappeared due to google.de domain registrations shenanigans.
Google Seeking To Place Ads In Video Games; In Talks To Buy Adscape Media
2007: Google was “always considering new ways to extend Google’s advertising program to benefit our users, advertisers and publishers” – including in-game advertising.
Google To Provide Downloadable E-Books
2007: They hoped to “allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry.”
Google Adds Sponsored Links To Your Search History
2007: Google added your sponsored link click activity to Google Search History.
SuggestLocal Offers Collaboration Tools For Local Search
2007: It sought to solve the problem of figuring out where to go and what to do with a group of colleagues or friends.
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.
- 2021: Chrome 88 adds to Core Web Vitals DevTools by Detlef Johnson
- 2020: Stop paying for clicks when you’ve hit conversion capacity with this script by Daniel Gilbert
- 2019: Amazon had a record-breaking holiday season, here’s how advertisers managed it by Melissa Reilly
- 2019: How reputation became a major ranking factor in SEO by Chris Silver Smith
- 2019: Accelerated mobile pages: Are they worth it? by Kristopher Jones
- 2018: 3 SEO tasks to start 2018 off with a bang by Jeremy Knauff
- 2018: 15 PPC pro tips for writing text ads by Pauline Jakober
- 2016: Create A PPC Strategy With This 3-Step Process by Jeff Baum
- 2016: Local SEO For WordPress Websites by Marcus Miller
- 2016: 3 Methods For Defining Your SEO Content Needs by Casie Gillette
- 2015: Stop Procrastinating: It’s Time To Address Mobile SEO by Janet Driscoll Miller
- 2015: Performance Marketing Benchmark Report Holiday 2014: Mobile Has Arrived by Matt Ackley
- 2014: Are You Using Your B2B Marketing Personas Effectively? by Jayson DeMers
- 2014: Buyer Beware: 5 Tips For Spotting SEO Charlatans by Stephan Spencer
- 2013: Keyword Research For Market Discovery: An Essential Tool For Export Marketers by Andy Atkins-Krüger
- 2013: Analytics For The New Social Media Manager by Carrie Hill
- 2010: Don’t Let Your Analytics Deceive by Evan LaPointe
- 2010: Know Where You Are…To See Where You’re Going by Carrie Hill
- 2010: Bing’s Stefan Weitz: Rethinking The Search Experience by Gord Hotchkiss
- 2010: The Pitfalls Of Budget-Constrained Bidding by Bradd Libby
- 2009: Optimizing A Large-Scale Web Site? Do The Two-Step by Stephan Spencer
- 2009: SMBs Claim Their Online Business Profiles by Hanan Lifshitz
- 2009: Tube Mogul Buys Video Analytics Firm by Bob Heyman
- 2008: RKG Duck: A Handy Open Source Tool For Search Marketers by Alan Rimm-Kaufman
- 2008: Catchy Linkbait Is Worthless Without Really Good Content by Cameron Olthuis
- 2007: Are You In The Circle Of Link Trust? by Eric Ward
- 2007: Google’s OneBox Patent Application by Bill Slawski
< January 21 | Search Marketing History | January 23 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 22 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Category seo news | Tags:
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This day in search marketing history: January 21
Written on January 22, 2023 at 1:12 am, by admin
Google explains the “core” algorithm
In 2016, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev explained the “core” algorithm.
This happened following the news about Panda becoming part of Google’s core algorithm. SEOs wanted to better understand what being part of Google’s core algorithm meant.
Put simply, it meant that an algorithm is consistent enough that Google doesn’t have to worry about it because it’s been tested, works the way it should, and won’t require many changes in the future. As Lipattsev explained:
It is less about the functionality, which means it probably doesn’t change that much over time, and it is more about how we perceive it, in the context of the algorithm. Do we still think this is an experimental thing, it is running for a while and we aren’t sure how long it will last? Or is it like PageRank, it is part of it, it will always be there, at least in the foreseeable future and then probably call it in certain context part of the core algorithm.
So now when you hear about the latest Google core updates, hopefully you better understand what Google’s core algorithm means.
Read all about it in: Google Explains What It Means To Be Part Of The “Core” Algorithm
Also on this day
Google adds new robots tag indexifembedded
2022: The tag let you define if you wanted your content indexed when it was embedded through iframes or other means.
Google updates product structured data for car review snippets
2022: Google added a note to the product structured data help documentation to explain how to specify car markup and still have Product review snippet feature eligibility.
Google Ads issue impacted some Discover and Performance Max campaigns between Jan. 18-21
2022: It was a temporary technical issue that affected serving on YouTube inventory.
Google will drop support for data-vocabulary.org structured data on April 6
2020: Site owners needed to convert to the schema.org markup if they wanted their pages to be eligible for Google rich results.
CallRail adds call analytics integration with Google My Business
2020: CallRail developed the solution partly as a response to the rise of “zero-click search” and the “cannibalization” of website traffic by GMB.
Google’s 2015 “Bad Ads” Report: 780 Million Ads, 25K App Accounts Shut Down
2016: One of Google’s efforts was to prevent accidental mobile clicks when app developers purposely placed ads too close to application buttons.
Bing Boasts Continuous Updates To Their Search Engine Daily
2016: Bing deploys multiple updates per day in an effort to constantly improve the search results and features.
Google Improves Weather Search Results On Android In Time For Winter Storm Jonas
2016: Weather-related search results would now include hourly sky conditions, air quality and severe weather alerts.
Google Ventures-Backed RetailMeNot Climbs Out Of Its Google Penalty
2015: It was unclear what changes RetailMeNot made to recover from the Google Panda algorithm, but their rankings did bounce back.
Bing Ads Rolls Out Enhanced Sitelinks Globally, Adds Sitelink Device Preference
2015: Additional copy below each Sitelink extension became available in most markets and languages supported by Bing Ads.
Right To Be Forgotten: Google Tells Europe It Won’t Scrub Google.com
2015: “It’s our strong view that there needs to be some way of limiting the concept, because it is a European concept,” said David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer.
Keep Writing Quality Content: SEO Bloggers React To Matt Cutts’ Claim “Guest Blogging Is Dead”
2014: A round-up of industry reactions, summarizing comments from a selection of popular bloggers.
Expedia & Google: No Comment From Both About Possible Expedia Penalty
2014: Expedia appeared to have been hit by a Google penalty related to unnatural links.
Marin: 40% Of Google PLA Clicks To Come From Smartphones By Dec 2014
2014: Marin expected retailers to allocate roughly a third of their PPC budgets to PLAs.
Pinterest Adds Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-Free & Paleo Filters For Recipe Related Searches
2014: Pinterest also added an “Indulge Me” button to perform searches for “not so healthy” dessert recipes.
As Google Evolves To Satisfy User Demands, Others Are Necessarily Marginalized
2013: “People no longer have patience for traditional search results … They mostly just want quick (and reliable) answers, which is exactly what Google is increasingly giving them.”
Google’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Logo
2013: The Doodle was in shades of blue, green and yellow. With Dr. King’s face as one of the “O”s in the Google logo.
A To Do List For Google’s New CEO Larry Page
2011: How well would the leadership shuffling tackle Google’s many challenges?
Google Turns To Page: The Day Two Narrative
2011: The desire to get some of its old startup fire back was one of the driving forces behind Page’s ascension.
Google Sets Sights On Content Farms In 2011
2011: Matt Cutts promises a renewed effort to take action against content farms (which he defined as “sites with shallow or low-quality content”).
Google Says Search Quality Improved With New Spam Detection
2011: A redesigned document-level classifier made it harder for on-page spam to impact Google’s search index.
First Google Toolbar PageRank Update Of 2011
2011: It was arguably the first update in almost 9 months – though Toolbar PageRank was very out of date and didn’t have a direct impact on ranking.
AdWords Preview Tool Gets Mobile-Focused Facelift
2011: The tool let advertisers see how their ads looked on different devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) on multiple carriers.
Small Google Navigation Element Changes
2011: The first was making the Google search left-side bar more compact and the second was changing the menu choices in the top menu while in Gmail.
Search In Pictures: GoogleBot T-Shirt, Yahoo Rodeo & Yahoo Rubber Duckies
2011: 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 Beats Estimates With Very Strong Q4: $6.67 Billion
2010: Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion.
Another Person No One’s Heard Of Tries To Trademark SEO
2010: This was the second time in about two years that someone with no general stature, reputation or well-known and documented history had tried to claim a trademark on SEO.
Bing As iPhone Default Search Engine Part Deux
2010: Some additional information asserted default search status on the iPhone was a real possibility for Bing.
44% Of Google News Readers Only Scan Headlines? Maybe Not!
2010: Google really wasn’t the content vampire that some news publishers accused it of being.
Facebook To Cut Some Microsoft Ads
2010: Facebook and Microsoft scaled back their display ad relationship.
The YouTube Music Discovery Project
2010: The tool helped you search for music and create YouTube playlists based on that query.
What’s For Dinner? Bing Mixes Recipes Into Search Results
2010: Bing pulled the recipes from popular websites and let you filter by holiday, meals, ratings and convenience.
Google’s Sergey Brin Writes About His Relief Mission Visit To Haiti
2010: Brin said the people of Haiti were “the real heroes.”
A Quick January 2009 SEO Update
2009: Updates many SEOs and SEMs noticed at Google, Yahoo and Ask.com in the past week.
Layoffs At Microsoft Widely Expected To Be Announced This Week
2009: This was expected to impact around 6,000 to 8,000 employees of its 95,000 workforce.
Microsoft Offers SearchPerks Incentive
2009: It was a three-day incentive to encourage participants to do more searches on Live Search.
The Obama Effect: Google Says President Changed Search Activity
2009: Google shared some interesting facts and figures about inauguration-related search activity.
Google: All Your NYC Tourists Are Belong To Us
2009: NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a partnership with Google to use Google Maps on a new tourism website and information center.
Comparing Mobile Search Surveys: Early Adopters Vs. Mainstream Users
2008: An informal, online reader survey, of two different audiences, on a range of high-level topics pertaining to mobile search yields different results.
The Google Webmaster Tools Quick Start Guide
2008: Google created the guide to help webmasters learn the features and reasons to use the tool.
Project Palimpsest: Google To Host Open-Source Science Data
2008: The data Google would be hosting would be available for scientists and also for free for anyone.
Yahoo Planning Big Job Cuts?
2008: Perhaps as many as 2,500.
Yahoo Tests Delicious Integration In Search Results
2008: For some users, a search would show whether a page listed in Yahoo results was also on Delicious and how it had been tagged.
Google-DoubleClick Drama Moves To European Stage
2008: The Europeans appeared poised to be more aggressive than their American counterparts in holding Google’s feet to the fire.
Search Engines Commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day
2008: Google had an artistic logo, with children drawing the face of Martin Luther King Jr. on a sidewalk.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
- How AI can automate SEO tasks at scale
- Content consolidation among winning SEO strategies, award winners say
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.
- 2020: Get ready for an even stronger Google in 2020 by Adam Dorfman
- 2016: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, But Sometimes It’s the Right Thing For Your Agency by Janet Driscoll Miller
- 2016: Not Another Post About The Future Of SEO In 2016 by Patrick Stox
- 2015: The Secret To AdWords Success, Told By A Former Googler by Frederick Vallaeys
- 2014: Will Link Building Soon Be A Thing Of The Past? by Casie Gillette
- 2013: Google Patents The Mobile Search Blend
- 2013: How To Create Your Local SEO Roadmap Through Research, Benchmarking & Tracking by Myles Anderson
- 2013: 5 Whopping Lies That Keep SEO At Status Quo by Ian Lurie
- 2013: The Power Of Headlines: The LA Times Gets It Right With Their Piece On The Inauguration by Vanessa Fox
- 2011: Findability, SEO, And The Searcher Experience by Shari Thurow
- 2011: A Day In The Life Of A Paid Search Marketer by Josh Dreller
- 2011: Are You Minivan Racing? by Evan LaPointe
- 2010: A Brief History Of Paid Search Advertising by Josh Dreller
- 2010: How To Get Customers And Keep Them Coming Back by Debra Northart
- 2010: In The SEO Game, It’s All About Strategies And Systems by Stephan Spencer
- 2010: Why Facebook PPC Is Crucial For Branding & How To Sell Your Boss by Marty Weintraub
- 2010: Things To Consider Before Starting Your Next Conversion Rate Optimization Project by Khalid Saleh
- 2010: PageRank Sculpting Leaves NoFollowed Tags Behind by Scott Smigler
- 2009: Finding The Optimal Cost-Per-Lead by Patricia Hursh
- 2008: Welcome To The Local Search Jungle by Stephanie Hobbs
< January 20 | Search Marketing History | January 22 >
The post This day in search marketing history: January 21 appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Category seo news | Tags:
Social Networks : Technorati, Stumble it!, Digg, de.licio.us, Yahoo, reddit, Blogmarks, Google, Magnolia.
TikTok has a secret “Heating” (cheating?) button
Written on January 20, 2023 at 9:08 pm, by admin
According to six sources and documents reviewed by Forbes, TikTok and ByteDance employees frequently engage in “heating,” which is a manual process that guarantees certain videos receive a specific amount of views.
Heating is cheating. Six current and former employees of TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, as well as internal documents and communications reviewed by Forbes, TikTok and ByteDance staff use a practice called “heating” to artificially boost the distribution of certain videos in addition to relying on the algorithm to determine what becomes popular.
According to one of those sources:
“The heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views,” an internal TikTok document titled MINT Heating Playbook explains. “The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics.”
TikTok doesn’t publicly disclose this, of course. Sources stated to Forbes that TikTok has used “heating” to attract influencers and brands by artificially increasing the view count of their videos, indicating that this practice may have benefited some influencers and brands that TikTok has business relationships with at the expense of others it does not have partnerships with.
“Heating” suggests that some videos on the For You page may not be based on personal preference but rather intended to increase views for specific brands or creators. Without labeling, it isn’t easy to distinguish these videos from regular content.
Potential abuse cases. Sources have informed Forbes that employees have misused “heating” by using it to boost the view count of their own or their loved ones’ accounts in violation of company policies. Documents reviewed by Forbes also support this, showing that employees have used “heating” on their own accounts and the accounts of people they have personal relationships with. One document revealed that an account had received over 3 million views due to this type of “heating” incident.
How TikTok has responded. “We promote some videos to help diversify the content experience and introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community. Only a few people, based in the U.S., have the ability to approve content for promotion in the U.S., and that content makes up approximately .002% of videos in For You feeds.” TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza wrote.
Dig deeper. You can read the full article from Forbes here.
Why we care. If TikTok is artificially inflating the view count of some videos through “heating,” it could skew the metrics that marketers use to evaluate the success of their campaigns. This could lead to brands investing in partnerships or collaborations with influencers or channels that may not have as large of an audience as they appear to have, ultimately reducing the ROI of their marketing efforts.
Additionally, artificially inflating view counts could also lead to misleading metrics and data, which could cause issues with transparency, trust and reputation of the platform and brands on it.
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Is AI-written content replacing cheap old content farms?
Written on January 20, 2023 at 9:08 pm, by admin
The Verge has a piece up today named Inside CNET’s AI-powered SEO money machine. It covers much of what we reported in Google search responds to BankRate, more brands using AI to write content last week. It also dives more into how the company has been using machines to replace low-cost humans to generate low-quality content designed to rank well in search.
Google’s algorithms. All of this reminds me of the Google Panda update days, where Google built algorithms to detect content farms and content written with the purpose of generating search traffic. Now, with the helpful content update, that specifically aims to discount content written for search rankings (and not for users) – this strategy deployed by the Red Ventures websites seems like it is set up to fail ultimately – that is, if Google’s algorithms do what they say they will do.
Red Ventures goal. According to The Verge:
“Red Ventures’ business model is straightforward and explicit: it publishes content designed to rank highly in Google search for “high-intent” queries and then monetizes that traffic with lucrative affiliate links.”
That specifically goes against Google’s latest helpful content update algorithm, which aims to downgrade sites where content is written for search engines first (i.e. content written to rank in search and not help people).
The article goes on to explain how these sites are trying to rank well in the credit card space, and turn that traffic into clicks to affiliate revenue. “Red Ventures has found a major niche in credit cards and other finance products,” the article explains.
This goes beyond just CNET. Red Ventures also owns The Points Guy, Bankrate, and CreditCards.com, “all of which monetize through credit card affiliate fees,” they add.
“The CNET AI stories at the center of the controversy are straightforward examples of this strategy: ‘Can You Buy a Gift Card With a Credit Card?’ and ‘What Is Zelle and How Does It Work?’ are obviously designed to rank highly in searches for those topics. Like CNET, Bankrate and CreditCards.com have also published AI-written articles about credit cards with ads for opening cards nestled within.”
Sound familiar?
Content farms. Replace humans with AI to build content farms, content that is aimed to rank well in search, generate traffic, clicks on ads, revenue from affiliates and other publishing goals.
The article goes on to say:
“Viewed cynically, it makes perfect sense for Red Ventures to deploy AI: it is flooding the Google search algorithm with content, attempting to rank highly for various valuable searches, and then collecting fees when visitors click through to a credit card or mortgage application. AI lowers the cost of content creation, increasing the profit for each click. There is not a private equity company in the world that can resist this temptation.”
Didn’t Google already tackle such efforts with Panda with the downfall of content farms? I guess not. Not yet.
Wordsmith. The tool being used to generate this content is Wordsmith, something they have been using for well over a year now, and something other companies have been using as well.
“A former CNET employee says that Red Ventures was using automated technology for content long before the AI byline began cropping up in November. They say a tool called Wordsmith — nicknamed “Mortgotron” internally because of its use in mortgage stories — has been used for at least a year and a half.”
Not new. Yes, for a year and a half, this has been going on. But it has been going on longer.
You see it a lot with financial earnings news analysis, sports scores news stories and anything that can be somewhat templated. Machines can pull out the metrics and then write up a sensible article using the revised data.
It is cheap and serves the purpose. But is this the type of content that Google wants to rank?
Here is a tweet from Glenn Gabe showing how it worked years ago:
I know a lot of people have focused on AI content recently based on ChatGPT, but many forget that Wordsmith, and others like Heliograf, have been doing this forever. Here's a tweet of mine from 2017 showing AI articles ranking well at the time
https://t.co/qFgZknMEgX
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 20, 2023
Good enough to rank. So with the layoffs at these publishing companies, they came up with more and more ways to have machines write content that ranks in search. The Verge wrote that it just needs to be good enough to rank,
“But the robot articles published on CNET don’t need to be ‘good’ — they need to rank highly in Google searches so lots of people open them and click the lucrative affiliate marketing links they contain.”
It can’t last. I mean, it can’t last, it can’t continue to work in the long run, right?
If Google has their say, and they do, Google wants content written in a way that is designed to help users. If The Verge is accurate in saying the intent of this content that AI writes is to just rank well in search, then Google’s new helpful content update should tackle that. It might not tackle it today but it should in the future.
Why we care. It is tempting to find low-cost ways to generate endless content that can rank well in Google Search. I mean, who doesn’t want to make a lot of money fast, for very little cost? But how long will those efforts last? Is this a long-term strategy? Will we look back at these efforts and say this is why Google rolled out the helpful content update?
Time will tell, but it is super interesting to watch this all play out, just like we did with the Panda, Penguin and other Google Search algorithm updates over the years.
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Report: Google search will debut chatbot features this year
Written on January 20, 2023 at 9:08 pm, by admin
Google will demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year, according to a New York Times report.
Why we care. AI – and OpenAI’s ChatGPT in particular – has been discussed ad nauseum over the past two months. Microsoft already is reportedly working on adding ChatGPT features to Microsoft Bing search. This has the potential to reshape SEO significantly. If you thought featured snippets were stealing your traffic, just wait until Google starts being able to accurately answer some even more complex questions which your existing content is designed to answer.
Code Red at Google. In December, following the launch of and reaction to ChatGPT, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly issued a “code red,” realizing the technology was an urgent and significant threat to Google’s search business.
Founders return. Google executives reportedly called in Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stepped down in December 2019, for several meetings about the company’s A.I. product strategy. Prior to this, neither had been involved with Google search since leaving Google, according to the Times.
What’s coming? According to the Times:
Google now intends to unveil more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times and two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them.
Three priorities were discussed in that chatbot search presentation:
- Getting facts right.
- Ensuring safety.
- Getting rid of misinformation.
Google may block certain words to avoid hate speech and will try to minimize other potential issues relating to hate and toxicity, danger and misinformation, according to the report.
Dig deeper. The New York Times has all the details in Google Calls In Help From Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. Fight (registration required).
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