State AGs: Google Still Allows & Profits From Illegal Drug Ads

The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is accusing Google of continuing to give consumers access to illegal and counterfeit goods — including drugs — in its search results, and letting sites that deal in such goods to advertise with Google. NAAG has asked Google co-founder…

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Google Claims Searches & Paid Clicks Can Predict Box Office Success With 92% Accuracy

A newly released white paper from Google claims the search engine can predict a movie’s opening weekend performance within 92 percent accuracy based on search query and paid click volume. After evaluating search and paid click data for 99 top box office films in 2012, Google correlated the…

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Bing Pushes To Build Marketshare Through “Bing It On” For Faster Airport Wifi

I got a surprise recently on my trip through Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. When I tapped into the free wifi there, I was offered a “premium connection speed upgrade” if I took Bing’s Bing It On challenge. It turns out Bing has been doing this in several airports since…

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Optimizing Google Enhanced Campaigns: Success Starts At Migration

In February of this year, Google made headlines with its launch of enhanced campaigns. Since the initial outpouring of both interest and concern, advertisers have been seeking to understand how enhanced campaigns will not only reshape their campaign st…

Mystery Solved: Why Mobile Safari Searchers Appear To Come “Direct” To Sites Rather Than Via Google

Since September, people using Safari in iOS 6 and searching on Google have appeared to publishers as they’ve come directly to their sites, as opposed to having been driving by search. At last, the reason behind the Dark Google cut-off of data has been found: mobile Safari doesn’t…

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Google AdWords Image Extensions Now In Beta

Today, Google has announced the official beta for Image Extensions in AdWords. The image extension has been spotted here and there in the wild over the past couple of months. It allows AdWords advertisers to display relevant images with text ads. Google will certainly be experimenting with the…

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Google’s Matt Cutts: Web Spam Benefits From Using Rel=”Author”

A new video by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, talks about how potentially using rel=”author” structured data can help Google’s web spam team improve search quality. Matt Cutts explains that moving from the anonymous web to a web with identity helps Google…

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Microsoft Search Ad Revenue Estimates Get Major Downgrade; Google Retains 74% U.S. Market Share [Report]

eMarketer has issued a major revision to its predictions for Microsoft’s U.S. search ad revenue. The latest estimates peg Microsoft net search ad revenue at $660 million last year and $890 million this year, down substantially from the previous estimates of $1.41 billion last year and $1.84…

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Google’s Cutts On SEO Industry Misconceptions: Updates, Revenue Goals & Link Building Obsession

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts released another video today named What are some misconceptions in the SEO industry? In short, Matt outlined three topics in this five minute video. (1) SEOs confuse algorithm updates with data refreshes. (2) Panda & Penguin algorithms are not…

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“Text Link Ads” Was Latest Hit By Google’s Actions Against Link Sellers

On May 15th we reported that Google targeted yet another link selling network that resulted in several thousand penalties. Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, has revealed which link network was the target via Twitter last week. The target was one of the oldest and arguably the most…

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Google Search Rolling Out Nutrition Information On More Than 1,000 Foods

Building on their Knowledge Graph technology, Google search is rolling out nutrition information on more than 1,000 fruits, vegetables, meats and meals. Users will be able to search on everything from simple one-word terms like apple or carrot to more …

Google Adds Structured Data Markup Helper Tool

Google announced today a new, fun and useful tool to help webmasters markup their webpages with schema structured data. Structured data markup can help a webpage enhance its search listings by adding rich snippets to the search results page. Google ann…

Video: Google’s Matt Cutts On Advertorials & Webmaster Guidelines

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video today on YouTube clarifying Google’s stance on Advertorials and “native advertising.” Advertorials are editorial-like content that is published because an advertiser has paid the publication to publish the story or…

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