The Search Engine Blog

On Page SEO Dead? Long Live Relevance!

Picturesque — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:25:07 +0000

There have been a number of posts lately about a trend we’ve already seen as well. On page changes such as H1 tags, bolding text, rearranging content, etc are having little impact on ranking. One example is this forum post. It illustrates what we’ve been touting for years. Provide quality content, have links from related [...]

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SWI and Returns Policy

Picturesque — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:22:48 +0000

Shopping While Intoxicated (SWI) is reported to be on the rise. If you sell online, now is a good time to review your return policy.

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Google Invades Hotel Searches

Picturesque — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:23:55 +0000

Has Google gone overboard? Some people are reporting (http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/4397179.htm) that selected hotel searches show Google’s own hotel comparison system above all paid advertising shoving natural searches way down the page below the fold. Is this too monopolistic? Will it help or hurt hotels and searchers?

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Less Reporting, Not Filling. Google Providing Less Information

Picturesque — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:35:37 +0000

Your reports will show less traffic for phrases. If you are tracking which search terms people use in Google when landing on your site’s pages, you’ll start receiving less clicks for those terms. It doesn’t mean that you are receiving less traffic for those terms, it just means that Google isn’t reporting the information any [...]

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Die Buzz, Die. Google Kills Google Buzz and More

Picturesque — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:13:57 +0000

It’s Halloween season and time for dead things. It’s a good time for Google to announce pending deaths including Google Buzz. It is redundant now that Google+ is here. Full Google announcement here. The Buzz layer in Google Maps was removed already making many people unhappy souls sure to haunt Google’s hangouts.

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Right Now Analytics From Google

Picturesque — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:04:27 +0000

What’s happening on your site right now, this very minute? We’ve been using Piwik to answer this question and finally Google has decided to offer it as announced in this Google Blog post. Better late than never. Will we stop using Piwik? Doubtful as it reports numbers differently than Google Analytics. It’s nice to get [...]

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Google+ in Ads and More…

Picturesque — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:42:14 +0000

Google announced on their Blogger blog that the +1 button will now appear in Google Ads. Naturally they want to know what kind of ads you like so they can show you more of the same. It’s up to you if you want to click it. You should start seeing ads more related to your [...]

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Adaptive Search Remembers You

Picturesque — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:58:37 +0000

It’s following you and remembering where you’ve been. Bing is doing more to customize your search based on where it thinks you are, where you’ve been before and what you are searching. If you are logged into Bing, it will base it on up to 18 months of history. This does wreck havoc on marketers but [...]

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Social Media Very Important to Bing

Picturesque — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:04:05 +0000

Submit your site to Bing’s search engine? Know what is most important to them? 1. Content (duh) 2. Social Media (eh?) 3. Links. Social media is far more important than the links you have to your site. So Bing is using RSS feeds, has low tolerance with issues in sitemaps and considers user interaction with [...]

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Update on Google and Sub-domain Links

Picturesque — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:13:49 +0000

A few days ago we reported that Google was reporting on sub-domains differently. It appeared that this would also affect how Google ranked links from sub-domains. Not so says Google. It only impacts webmaster reporting and not much else. Perfectly clear now? Needless to say, the forums are buzzing with even more questions and speculation.

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