Governments Across The Globe Are Making More Requests To Remove Content From Google Services

According to a new Transparency Report released today, Google received 4,096 government requests to remove 42,249 pieces of content during 2012. The purpose of Google’s Transparency Reports is to record the number of worldwide government requests to censor content on Google services, and…

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Google Downplays Google+ With Updated Authorship Snippet?

Google has quietly changed the user interface for how they display the authorship snippet in the search results. The largest difference is that they removed the “more by” link that linked to additional stories written by that author. The other changes include that now clicking on the…

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Google Are Testing Layout Changes – Green Arrow Dropdown

As you can see from the screenshot above, the green dropdown arrow appears at the side of the URL and contains “Cached”, “Similar” and “Share” links.  Interestingly – this appears to get rid of the Google Instant Previews… Here is a slightly larger image, which may be a bit clearer:

The post Google Are Testing Layout Changes – Green Arrow Dropdown appeared first on SEO Blog by Dave Naylor – SEO Tools, Tips & News.

Google Pulls Related Searches Filter Due To Lack Of Usage

Google has quietly removed the “related searches” option from the search tools menu within the Google search results page. When Google launched search options in October 2009, the option for “related searches” appeared on the left-hand side under the “standard…

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Google Hits Mozilla With Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content

Have user generated content on your site? Pay attention to what those users are doing. That’s the takeaway from Google hitting Mozilla with a spam penalty this week, along with another takeaway. Despite Google’s saying it’s being more transparent about spam actions, people clearly…

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Google Places For Business Gets Its Own iPhone App For Managing Listings

Local business owners have a new tool for managing their Google Places For Business listing: a dedicated app that works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. There’s no official announcement that I can find about the app, and as best I can tell, the iClarified blog was first to report on it. The…

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Using the X-Default Hreflang Tag For Multinational SEO: Default Language Opportunities

Google & Yandex announced the new x-default hreflang tag earlier this month, and in doing so closed the final gap in executing ‘perfect’ SEO platforms for multinational brands. There is, however, the question of what language content to use as your default, and how you can bring a little…

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Google Autocomplete: Your Personal Brand’s First Impression

Pop Quiz:  What is the first thing a searcher sees when they type your name into the Google search bar? If your answer was related webpages found in SERPs, you’re wrong — that would be the second thing. The first thing they see are the Autocomplete suggestions that drop down from the…

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Tokyo Court Orders Google To Alter Search Suggestions & Pay Fines

AFP reports a Japan court has ruled Google to alter the search suggestions and fined Google 300,000 yen ($3,100). The Tokyo District Court ruled that Google has to change the auto-completions for a search on a particular man’s name – the name was undisclosed – because Google…

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Google: Adding Too Many Pages Too Quickly May Flag A Site To Be Reviewed Manually

Google’s Matt Cutts answered a question submitted by another Googler, John Mueller, on YouTube asking, “Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages all at once or in stages?” The question is, if you build out a new section of your website with tons of content –…

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What Google’s EU Settlement Means For Search

Google vs EuropeGoogle and the EU are about to reach an antitrust settlement. What will this mean for search in Europe, and how will European businesses be affected?

Post from on State of Search
What Google’s EU Settlement Means For Search

Google Quick View Badge Field Trial

Google announced a new Google field trial experiment for a feature they’ve been quietly testing named Quick View. The Google Quick View badge is found on a select number of sites when a searcher uses Google Mobile search from their smartphone. The feature is currently working for Wikipedia on…

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Creating Content For Online Stores (when people don’t really read)

contentContent is on top of every digital marketer’s priority list. We need to design sites in a way that users can easily scan the copy to improve user experience

Post from on State of Search
Creating Content For Online Stores (when people don’t really read)

Study: Google Image Search Referrer Traffic Drops 63% Since Upgrade

Define Media Group released statistics from 87 different websites on the images the new Google Image Search design features have impacted on publishers websites. Overall, sites in the study saw an average decline of 63% of their traffic from Google Ima…