Google Gets “Lowest Score Ever” In Customer Satisfaction Survey
There’s a mystery surrounding the latest customer satisfaction numbers released by ForeSee Results (for the American Customer Satisfaction Index [ACSI]). Published late last night, they indicate the lowest levels of consumer satisfaction with search engines (and portals) since 2003. The…
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Google News Showing Old Stories As New: A Google Bug Or Publisher Hack?
Last week I reported on the Search Engine Roundtable a huge array of complaints from Google News publishers and searchers that some news outlets are showing old stories in Google News but they are appearing as breaking new stories. The example I gave w…
Google Agrees To Settle Lawsuit Over Passing Search Queries To Third Parties
Google has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that stems from two searchers accusing the company of sharing their search queries with third parties without user content or knowledge. As part of the settlement, Google has agreed to pay $8.5 million…
UK Prime Minister Attacks Google, Bing & Yahoo On Child Porn, Demands Better Efforts By October
UK prime minister David Cameron unveiled a wide-range of efforts today to protect children against pornography on the internet. A significant part of his speech attacked the search engines of Google, Bing and Yahoo for not doing enough and demanding changes by October. Below is Cameron’s…
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Google: Today’s Enhanced Campaigns Rollout Will Take Several Weeks To Complete
Account managers have been bombarded with alerts in their AdWords dashboards for months now. Today, notices like the one below started appearing upon login to AdWords — upgrade your campaigns by July 22 or Google will do it for you. Now, in a new blog post, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice…
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Google Enhanced Campaigns Are Here: What You Need To Know Now
If you haven’t done it, Google will do it for you today. All AdWords Enhanced Campaigns “legacy” campaigns will be “enhanced”. Many expected to wake up to an exclusively enhanced world. The big switch-flip at midnight didn’t happen, and you can even still create…
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HopStop Bought By Apple For Public Transit Data
Hot on the heels of its acquisition of Locationary, Apple has bought transit site and cityguide HopStop for an undisclosed amount. It’s an ugly site that has very useful public transit schedules, maps and related information. The value of the data to Apple Maps is obvious. HopStop launched in…
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Google Confirms Panda Update Is Rolling Out: This One Is More “Finely Targeted”
This morning I noticed a possible Panda update was rolling out, one that seemed to be “softer” in nature than the previous updates, where many webmasters who were originally hit by the algorithm are now claiming recovery. Google has confirmed a Panda update is rolling out and this…
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Google: Authorship Bug Affects “Very Few Sites,” Actively Working On A Fix
Google has confirmed that there are current issues with displaying authorship rich snippets on “very few sites.” A Google spokesperson told us “it’s something we’re actively working on” but that “it affects very few sites” on the Internet. This is a…
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Google Tablet CPCs Rise 1.7% Above Desktop For First Time [The Search Agency Report]
The Search Agency issued its Q2 State of Paid Search report today, finding that overall impressions were up 19.2 percent across all search engines quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), while overall clicks declined 7.8 percent. Cost-per-click (CPC) rose across all devices. This marks the first quarter The…
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Google’s Matt Cutts: Linking 20 Domains Together Likely A “Cross Linking Scheme”
A common question I see from webmasters and SEOs is how many sites in my network can I link together without getting in trouble. Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, answered a question on that topic in a recent video which asked “If I have 20 domains, should I link them all…
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New Google Maps App For iOS Includes Dedicated iPad Experience
Just a few hours after opening up the new Google Maps desktop version to anyone interested, Google has followed up by announcing new Google Maps apps for iOS. The big news is that, for the first time, there’s a dedicated iPad experience of Google Maps. Sure, you could use the previous Google…
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New Google Maps Now Open To All, No Invite Needed
Google has opened up the new version of Google Maps to anyone who wants to give it a try — no invite is needed. The company shared the news via Twitter this afternoon. First announced at the Google I/O conference in May, the new Google Maps was initially available only to a select group of…
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Google Study: Mobile PPC Ads Also Do Not Cannibalize Organic Traffic
Google released a new study as part of its series of analysis aimed at answering the perpetual question of whether PPC ads cannibalize organic traffic. You know the question: “If I’m already ranking, why should I pay for ads if they are just going to steal free clicks from my organic…
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How To Spot Crappy SEO Pitches You Can Ignore
Just like anyone, I get crappy SEO pitches. My advice to anyone who gets these out of the blue is to ignore them. A good firm isn’t clogging your inbox with supposedly awesome sounding offers. But as a guide to crap you can especially ignore, here’s the latest from my inbox. The Pitch…
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Google Logo Marks The 407th Birthday Of Rembrandt van Rijn
Google has dedicated today’s homepage to Rembrandt van Rijn, marking the Dutch painter and etcher’s 407th birthday. The Google logo includes a self portrait of the artist standing in front of a “Google” etching. With more than 40 remaining self portraits, Rembrandt was known…
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Google To Take Action Against Fake Search Results Injected Into Browser History
Google made a clear stance late Friday on the Google Webmaster blog that they will not tolerate webmasters pushing deceptive search results to searchers through the use of browser history spamming techniques. The technique uses a method of detecting a click on the browser’s back button. When…
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Desktop Search Activity Up 12% YOY In June, 4th Straight Month Of Double-Digit Gains [comScore]
Desktop search activity continues to rebound, and was up 12 percent year-over-year in June according to the latest comScore qSearch data just out today. ComScore estimates that there were 19.2 billion “core” desktop searches last month. That’s down four percent from the 20 billion…
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Google’s Schmidt: Hollywood Should Take Content Pirates To Court
Google’s Eric Schmidt says that the entertainment industry should focus on taking content pirates to court, rather than just trying to get Google (and other search engines) to remove pirate sites from search results. His comments, reported by Variety, came yesterday during an impromptu chat…
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Finally, Auto-Tag Bing Ads URLs For Google Analytics: Bizible Debuts Free Tool
The ability to auto-tag destination URLs in Bing Ads has been one of top product requests for the platform for years now. Manual URL tagging is ire-inducing, error-prone and a real impediment to many advertisers even running campaigns on Bing Ads. If you use Google Analytics and don’t tag…
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