Several weeks ago there was a weird issue where webmasters were noticing a greatly increased number of direct traffic referrals with some off similarities, such as older versions of Internet Explorer. As it continued, webmasters began to realize it was a retargeting spammer, and one of the largest retargeting networks, AdRoll, was the most noticeable […]
Is Google AdWords Incorrectly Forwarding Call Extensions? Why You Should Check Your Ads!
Call extensions have been a pretty popular option for local businesses looking to make it easy for potential customers to reach them. AdWords offers two varieties – one where you list and use your own phone number, or another option with call tracking where Google assigns one of their own tracking numbers and then forwards […]
Google Officially Makes Low-Quality Guest Blog Posts a Quality Violation
Matt Cutts warned early this year that guest blogging for SEO was dead. Then Matt Cutts announced Google took action on a large guest blog network, and it was Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest that was penalized. And now guest blogging has made its way into Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as a violation. Brian Ussery was the first to […]
FDA Watching What Claims Companies are Liking & Retweeting
Most companies don’t think twice about “liking” or “favoriting” what customers are saying when talking about their products or their brand. But it turns out the FDA is paying close attention and going after those companies who are liking or favoriting claims which are not proven. The FDA has sent out at least two warning […]
Twitter Testing New Promoted Video Ads For Advertisers
Twitter has announced they are expanding their Twitter Video Cards tests with promoted video ads. Twitter began testing native videos earlier this year, incorporating feedback from both brands and users. While the initial videos were short 6-second Vine videos, more recent clips appear to be much longer duration in length, such as the 2:24 video […]
New Google AdWords Extension for Mapped Local Product Results
Google is testing a new type of local result, but this time they are styled as local shopping ads, showing on a map where a product can be bought. Moz was the first to spot the change with a query for “gas grills”. It seems to only be a test at this time, as many […]
Google Starts Warning Websites That Redirect Mobile to Homepage
A couple of months ago, Google warned webmasters that they would be showing an alert in the Google search results to mobile users who were attempting to go to an internal page of a website but the website itself redirects all mobile users to the homepage instead. Now, Google has started sending letters to websites […]
Is the Google update mostly SSL implementation issues?
There has been a lot of chatter about a possible Google update happening late Friday and over the weekend. However, while there were two UK link networks that were penalized, it is unclear if there was actually an update or if it is fallout from the panic SSL switches that many websites are in the […]
Google Penalizes Two More UK Link Networks
As part of the flux SEOs are seeing this morning in the search results comes news that Google took out at least two link networks in the UK. The two networks were penalized but it is unknown if those who bought or sold links have received notices in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts yet. It […]
Google’s New AdWords Tracking Follows User Between Apps & Mobile Web
Reports state that Google is ready to begin testing a new type of tracking that will enable users to be tracked between apps and pages as one user. Right now, the same user who utilizes both apps and regular mobile are considered two different people for tracking purposes. This obviously creates a gap for advertisers […]