Google Testing Smartphone Friendly Icon In Search Results, Again
Google is once again showing mobile smartphone icons on smartphone friendly search results, while searching on your smartphone. Many searchers are noticing it and Brent Payne sent us a screen shot. Here is what the smartphone icon looks like on an iPho…
Are Games & Lyrics Sites Google Panda 4.1′s Biggest Losers?
Google began rolling out Panda 4.1 last week into this week but we already have the winners and losers report from SearchMetrics. The biggest winners for Panda 4.1 based on this early report are sites in the news, content and download portal realm. Whi…
Marin Software, Kenshoo Named As Facebook’s Atlas Paid Search Partners
This morning, Facebook announced the expected relaunch of Atlas, the ad serving and measurement challenger to Google’s DoubleClick. Both Marin Software and Kenshoo have been named as Atlas’ paid search partners. Facebook describes the partnerships working this way: Using a Search Engine…
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World War II, Communisim Subtext In Right To Be Forgotten
From an American legal perspective the recently established European Right to Be Forgotten (RTBF) is a disaster. It’s a confusing, vague, impractical and possibly even dangerous decision. But from a European historical perspective it makes considerable sense. The different histories of the US…
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The Yahoo Directory — Once The Internet’s Most Important Search Engine — Is To Close
For some, it may seem like there has always been Google, and it’s always been the main way people have found things on the web. But before Google, there was the Yahoo Directory and its hand-compiled list of websites, organized into topics. Now, the venerable Yahoo Directory is closing. Yahoo…
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Panda 4.1 — Google’s 27th Panda Update — Is Rolling Out
Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released. Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into…
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Google AdWords Ad Customizers Rolling Out: Dynamic Insertion On Steroids
To those arguing that Google has been steadily dumbing-down AdWords and taking controls away, the company is responding with what it’s calling Tools for the Power User. The first tool to come out of the box are ad customizers, designed to help advertisers optimize ad creatives at scale. Ad…
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MapQuest’s New Commute App Helps Optimize Drive Times
MapQuest has introduced a new app for Google Play and iOS: “Commute.” Just as the name suggests, it’s a stand-alone app intended to help drivers manage and optimize their daily driving to and from work. Commute is the third stand-alone mobile app produced by MapQuest. The others…
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EU Antitrust Endgame Looking More Murky, Risky For Google
The Wall Street Journal added more color to the unfolding story of the collapse of the Google-European Commission antitrust settlement. Notwithstanding denials by outgoing competition czar Joaquín Almunia, it’s clear that pressure from major European publishers, rivals and politicians…
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Google Targets Sites Using Private Blog Networks With Manual Action Ranking Penalties
Google has reportedly taken action on sites participating in private blog networks, also known as PBNs. On September 18th, Google sent out widespread manual action notices via Google Webmaster Tools to these sites for “thin content” spam. Google considers thin content to be search spam…
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Where You’ll Find Google Structured Snippets: From Superheroes To Product Specifications
The other day, Google officially announced structured snippets, basically knowledge graph snippets directly embedded in the search results snippets. But what type of queries trigger the structured snippets from showing up in the search results? Based o…
Google Market Share: 67 Percent On PC, 83 Percent In Mobile
Last week comScore released its August US search market share rankings report. It appears Google has permanently plateaued at 67 percent (or so). In Europe Google’s share is above 90 percent, which is why all the antitrust activity. Back in the US, Microsoft and Yahoo combined for 29 percent,…
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Google Structured Snippets Officially Live In Search Results
Earlier this month we caught Google testing a form of knowledge graph data within the search results snippet. This feature is now officially being confirmed by Google on the Google Research Blog. Google calls these “structured snippets,” where Google will show snippets of data, relevant…
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China Blocks DuckDuckGo, The Privacy Search Engine
China has blocked DuckDuckGo, the privacy search engine, that recently made big news when Apple added them as a default search option to iOS and their upcoming desktop operating system. The Founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg, confirmed tha…
Cortana Coming To Windows 9, Will It Replace Bing?
Next week in San Francisco, Microsoft will unveil Windows 9 for the press. Among the features of the new OS is reportedly going to be the mobile virtual assistant Cortana. A range of sites are repeating some early evidence found by a German site and also a discussion on Neowin that assert Cortana…
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Google Maps Navigation Now Covers 104 Countries
Android Police points out that Google has expanded navigation for Google Maps to 20 additional countries. These are mostly in Africa, the Caribbean islands and South America. From Algeria to Venezuela, the addition of these 20 brings to an impressive 104 the total number of countries where Google…
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Bing Correctly Predicts “No” Win In Scotland Independence Vote
A few days ago, we reported that Bing predicted on September 15th that the vote for Scotland’s independence would be a “No” with a 52.5% vote for NO and a 47.5% vote for YES. The final results are now in and it was a 55% vote for No, so Bing’s prediction was correct and very…
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Want Scotland Election Results? Don’t Bother Asking Google Or Bing
It’s not often you have a vote that might create a new, independent nation. But that’s what’s happening today with Scotland. It’s such a big event that you’d think Google and Bing would be doing something special to provide election results. That’s not the case….
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Google+ Loses More Real Estate In Search, Brand Boxes Dropped For Logged Out Users
Continuing the trend of downplaying Google+ in search results, Google has dropped the display of Google+ elements in brands’ knowledge box results for searchers who aren’t logged into their Google accounts. Previously, the Google+ presences of brands prominent enough to rate knowledge…
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Google Makes Penalty Mistakes: The Buffer Story
Buffer’s Courtney Seiter posted on the Buffer blog that they had a bit of unusual Google Penalty that resulted in a 90% drop in organic Google traffic to the site. The issue had nothing to do with the Buffer web site, but rather a bug with Google, according to Courtney. Courtney said they…
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