If you thought Google's content evaluation processes were complicated in the past, this is a great video to watch; it will bring you right up to date with the insane level of evaluation which is being used today. These evaluation processes are "likely" what Google uses when trying to figure out if your content is, for the most part: A) Valuable B) Accurate C) Authoritative, and D) A good match for a particular query. The video, by Moz owner Rand Fishkin, … [Read more...]
IAB: $9.6B In Internet Advertising Revenues for 1st Quarter of 2013
Consumers worldwide are in a constant process of being bombarded left and right by advertising; be it print, television, or signage, people are rarely able to escape the grasp of both corporate giants and local businesses as they go about their daily routine. In fact, it’s getting to the point that many people simply tune out the bombardment of passive advertising confronted with each day, ignoring billboards driven past in cars and quickly thumbing through full-page ads … [Read more...]
Doing SEO to Your Site? Inquiring Minds at Google Want to Know
Out of all the posts and discussions on “SEO Profiling” through the years and with all sorts of opinions as well as speculation on what Google possibly wants or doesn’t want to know about someone’s SEO efforts, I believe there are finally some answers available for the taking as GOOG’s latest patent is sure to clear the air on some or all of these theories and misconceptions from both sides of the fence. A new Patent Application dated August 14, 2012 called “Ranking … [Read more...]
Search Market Share: Rivals Struggle as Google’s Shadow Grows Bigger
Newly released figures from comScore, an Internet analytics firm, show Google's dominant position to be a granite boulder against which weaker competitors can only grind futilely. Despite vigorous attempts by Microsoft, Yahoo and others to whittle away at the commanding share of Web visitors held by Google, the search king expanded its slice of the pie to 66.8 percent in June 2012, a significant rise from 65.5 percent in June of the previous year. Yahoo's share slid to 13 … [Read more...]
Knowledge Graph Misses Company Philosophy: Fast Better Than Slow
Google's new "Knowledge Graph" has been one of the most discussed topics out of many new releases from Google as of recent . It may also be the reason, or at least, a contributing factor, to Bing entering into a closer relationship with Encyclopedia Britannica. Ever since Google announced Knowledge Graph, the new feature has been present on countless search pages and is often based around information taken from Wikipedia. Wikipedia appears on the front of Google pages quite … [Read more...]
Google Webmaster Academy: Google’s Webmaster Beginners Guide
Below is a small grouping of videos (out of 492 videos Google team members have created) that have been released over the years. In May, Google announced a new section which details some web-mastering tips they want you to know about. Google's got plenty of things they don't want you to know, but these topics and processes are the things they do want webmasters to know and understand so that crawling and indexing your site (plus the web) could be done better which in-turn … [Read more...]
Business Listings Get New Name: “Places” Becomes “Google Plus Local”
Google local search results are becoming more important every day. As Google expands its local maps listings businesses continue to try determining why some sites out-rank or appear above them, particularity, in the local maps based results on Google’s first page. Recently, David Mihm, a search marketer who specializes in local SEO, released a study performed by 40 local search marketers from around the world (all of whom are listed on the survey results page). The study … [Read more...]
Google Panda: 10 Ways Panda Update Determines Content Quality
Google Panda is the Google algorithm that specifically attempts to improve the relevance of search results. While the Penguin algorithm focuses more on link quality, Panda is still very important and focuses on content quality. The standards Google uses in Panda are, like its namesake, fairly black and white. 10 Ways Google Determines Content Quality 1 ) Links: Especially from recognized "authority" sites within a particular niche are an important indication of content … [Read more...]
Study: “Social Signals” Boost Organic Search Engine Rankings
Just over a year ago in February of 2011 I did a post on "social media" and "social signals" called Social Media 101 “Algorithmically Speaking”. The post detailed how social media was a necessary component of search marketing and how "social signals" likely effected search engine rankings, if not at that time, would soon thereafter. The idea, at least publicly, that social signals could or would influence rankings began a while back in 2010 but the buzz has grown … [Read more...]
Google Market Share Strong Despite Growing Legal Problems, Competition
Google's Street View project is currently being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While Street Views are designed to provide panoramic views and wireless mapping of areas, there are allegations that the process “went beyond mapping wireless connections” and private information and communications have been intercepted and collected during the process. According to FCC documents, Google's data gathering efforts have allowed people’s communications, … [Read more...]
Authorship: Hooking Up Your Site with Your Google+ Page and YOU
I’m jumping right on the bandwagon with all of this Google+ stuff and advising others to use it without much hesitation because I’m pretty certain I know where it’s all going; I posted about it last year in fact. Google will use the power of its intermingling services to compete and possibly beat Facebook.com and other fast rowing social networks by rewarding sites which participate - with better rankings on Google. That’s the game at play, and a winning strategy for the … [Read more...]
One Year Into Google Panda; And It Still Isn’t Over Yet
The one-year anniversary of the original Google Panda update has come and gone and we’re still seeing significant tweaks in the aftermath . Google Panda was aimed at filtering out and eliminated junk content sites and/or sites heavily supported from ads by penalizing them for having poor content. While Google can’t physically remove data from a website, they sure can effectively prevent the masses from finding them by rating them lower than those with content perceived to be … [Read more...]
Simply Put: Why Google Both Makes and Breaks Online Business
This image (below post) is a visualization of how and why Google.com typically makes and breaks all online businesses. Although this does change a bit from time to time, for the most part, this is generally what you'll see accross the board when looking at web stats for various web sites. Having a great site, a good idea, or a unique service isn't enough to make it with your Internet business. You need visibility on Google to matter, period. Sites that do well on Google … [Read more...]
Google To Devalue Exact Match Domains: Is Google Going Too Far?
Barry Schwartz recently posted what he called his "Key Takeaways From Google’s Matt Cutts Talk At PubCon" One of these points stated that Matt Cutts specifically mentioned "Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank so well. For example, if you have a site at www.blue-widgets.com it may rank a bit too well for the keyword phrase [blue widgets]". This is unwise in my opinion - just get better at fighting spam...... I wonder if it's just some webmaster … [Read more...]