Google is now adding knowledge panels for trending news stories – search queries that would otherwise not return many results and with results primarily on news stories. I read a news story about a missing woman, and as the article was a couple of days old, I did a Google search for her name. Along […]
Archives for 2015
Google Testing Flight Search Box in Sidebar Above AdWords
Google often adds a sponsored flight search box into the Google search results when the search query indicates the searcher is looking for a flight. Now they are testing a different style of box, this one in the sidebar that appears directly above the sidebar AdWords ads. Here is how it looks: It is responsive, […]
Bing Ads “Related Products” Annotation in Search Results
I spotted this new Bing Ads feature that appears to be in testing or beta. For this example, it was an extremely generic search query – “shoes” – but it gave the advertiser the ability to tailor their ad unit to also feature a very specific style of shoes that a searcher could be interested […]
Check URLs in Bing Places for Business
While most places you submit website addresses to try and save you from yourself by ensuring that the URL for a business you submit is actually valid and reachable, Bing Places for Business seems to either not have checks in place or they are having code errors on their back end. The invalid URLs, which […]
Google Reveals One Reason for Slow Panda Updates
Gary Illyes from Google made an interesting comment about why we don’t see more frequent updates of the Panda Algorithm. He was speaking at SMX Advanced this week during a Google AMA. The question was about when we would see Panda and Penguin updated, as we have been waiting for them to be updated or […]
Google Panda Will Be Updated in 2-4 Weeks
Good news for those who have been eagerly awaiting a Google Panda update – we will see the next one within the next two to four weeks. Gary Illyes from Google made the announcement at SMX Advanced this week, and while he wouldn’t be more specific than 2-4 weeks, it does mean that we will […]
Marketers Rank CTR as Least Important Metric in Video Campaigns
When Measuring Success of Programmatic Video Campaigns Marketers Rank Click-Through Rates as Least Important Metric According to a new survey of senior marketers released today by Unruly, click-through rates are the least important metric when measuring the success of online video campaigns. Instead, viewability and completed views were the highest priorities among marketers in both […]
Google Planning to Devalue Content Behind Interstitials
We have known for a couple of months that Google was planning to add interstitials as a negative ranking factor in an upcoming mobile friendly algo, but it appears that the same will be coming to the regular search results too. Maile Ohye from Google warned webmasters at SMX Advanced that they will also be […]
Google Compares Content on Mobile Versus Desktop But Ranks Desktop Content
At SMX Advanced this week, Gary Illyes from Google, during his AMA session with Danny Sullivan, commented that Google does not rank mobile content based on what is on the page served for mobile users, as the page is still ranked according to the content on the desktop page. From one perspective, this does make […]
Google Answer Boxes Officially Called Featured Snippets
Those Google answer boxes at the top of the search results have an official name. According to Gary Illyes, they are officially called “Featured Snippets”. The name makes a lot of sense, since they are snippets of text taken from the linked page and they are featured at the top of the search results. So […]