These days Google is much more than search. Google for example invests in energy, mobile, fiber and much more. Just take a look… (more…)
State of Search
Posts About ‘Google’
The ‘Google Killer’ might Come From A Different Direction: Shazam?
The question ‘what will be the Google Killer’ has been asked many many times over the past decade. The answer continues to be the same, there will be no ‘one’ product, which will ‘kill’ Google. If Google gets killed, it will not be by a competitor but by themselves, for either growing too big, not doing what the end-user wants or losing focus for example.
Still, there will be a ‘new Google’ one day. It might not even be a search engine which will be that new kid on the block. And you could even say Facebook or Twitter are examples of ‘new Googles’ already. They haven’t killed Google, but sure are examples of other new initiatives which can be successful and who deliver part of the answers we are all looking for.
When it comes to ‘search’ the ‘new Google’ or the next ‘Google killer’ might come from a different direction than a straight forward search engine. Could it be Siri? Or maybe Bing has something up its sleeve? But it could also be coming from a complete different direction. Shazam for example. (more…)
Google Streetview Goes More Inside Businesses
Google yesterday launched a new addition to Google Maps as part of the Google Business Photos service. When using Google Maps in certain areas worldwide (yes, not only US) you can now find businesses and actually take a look inside them.
Google improved the functionalities to look inside in a 360-degree panoramic which allows you for example to see a holiday house from the inside before you decide to book it, not a bad idea in many cases.
To use the functionality you go to Google Maps, find the business and drag the orange Pegman on the left hand side of your screen onto an orange circle on the map. (more…)
What International Marketers Can Learn From The Search Engines
Search engines guide what search marketers do – their rules, guidelines and incessant updates all play a role in shaping strategies and recommendations – and often result in a lot of headaches and expletives. But how often do you look at what strategies and tactics the search engines are using to grow their own business? After all, search engines are businesses- international businesses – that want to increase their customer base and make a profit (and we know they certainly do that).
Rather than just reacting to updates and additions to tweak campaigns and websites, monitoring what the search engines are doing and where they’re going can provide useful insights into what is going to be important and effective in global marketing.
Over the next couple of posts, I’ll take a closer look at what Google, Yandex and Baidu are focusing on and how that can help us with our own global efforts. Today, I’m specifically looking at their choices and strategy when it comes to international expansion. (more…)
Google now has its own Instagram: Snapseed
Didn’t you feel as if Google has been slow when it comes to acquiring other companies lately? Only last year they were acquiring one about once a month, ever since it seems like Google has killed more products than it has built or bought.
Now Google is back on the buying field. And with an acquisition which seems to be directly related to Google’s ‘battle’ with Facebook. Google has acquired Nik Software, makers of several different apps which all have to do with photography. One of the apps being Snapseed, which won the iPad App Of The Year award in 2011. An app which also has 9 million users already. With this Google bought their own Instagram and is speeding up the battle for the social users. (more…)
Google Algo Update Improves Diversity of Results
For a while we have been seeing domination in certain SERPS from a single domain. Searchengineland wrote about this problem last month. In their example a single domain was dominating the SERP for “christopher jagmin plates”. It had been bugging me because a single domain can’t the 10 most relevant results for a single query in my mind.
On Friday Matt Cutts tweeted that there was a small algo change last week that will improve the diversity of search results in terms of different domains returned. This seems to have fixed the US SERPS but is it yet to roll out to the UK from what I can see thus far.
Easter Egg Google: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
Google has placed a new Easter Egg in the search engine which is based on the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. The purpose of the game is that every player has to link an actor in a maximum of six steps to Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon, known for films like Apollo 13, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, Mystic River and X-Men First Class.
The higher the number how farther away the actor is removed from Kevin Bacon, actors who worked directly with Bacon will get a Bacon number of 1. The game itself is based on the theory Six degrees of separation which states that everyone on earth through a network can be connected to each other in six different steps. With the game in Google you can check in how many steps an actor is linked to Kevin Bacon. (more…)
Anywhere I Chrome: Handy Browser Extensions for SEO
We all love a good tool now don’t we? Anything to make life easier and our work rate more efficient. When it comes to tools for SEO and related online disciplines it can be extra useful to have these tools to hand as browser extensions.
So if you’re still fannying around in Firefox or Opera (dems jokes – cc Hannah Smith) then here’s a list of useful Chrome extensions that we like to use at theMediaFlow. (more…)
Bing Keeps Challenging Google and is More Popular Than Ever
Bing seems to be on a small war path with Google. Earlier this week we already highlighted some of its social search strategy, but Bing has a broader challenge: Google. Microsoft has been actively promoting their search engine in different ways, along the way ‘attacking’ Google directly. And that while Bing is already gaining a little ground on Google in market share in the US last August.
While Comscore numbers show a small increase of Bing shares in the US and a small decline for Google, Bing is actively working on their visibility by doing a ‘Bingiton’, a TV campaign, by changing the name of Microsoft Advertising and by trying to lure away Google Adwords customers. All actions are not just aimed at showing how good Bing is though, they are also very much ‘against’ Google. (more…)
A Guide to all the Google AdWords PPC Settings
I can’t remember the last time I looked at a new PPC account that ticked all the boxes when it comes to the settings available within Google AdWords. Some of the settings are very easy to understand and set up, whilst others can be a little more confusing.
The aim of this post is to talk you through all of the settings available for a Google Search campaign and how to use and implement them. Some of these may seem very obvious to you, but you would be surprised to know how many campaigns are purely opted into the standard settings only. Advertisers can be wasting so much money on their campaigns if they are not targeted correctly and following the advice in this post should help you to get the most out of your PPC advertising.
Pirate Bay is out of Instant Search, ‘Bisexual’ back in?
Two years ago Google introduced “Google Instant”, which was an extended version of Google Suggest. Now not just the suggestions showed up, the page actually changes when typing in your search query, making that some people might decide to stop typing and pick a result which seems to be to their liking.
These suggestions ‘help’ people make their choices. But not all choices are good choices, according to Google at least. Which means the search engine banned specific sentences or searches from showing up in Google Instant. For words with for example sexual intent, that makes sense, you can for example search for the word “porn”, but there will be no suggestions there. If you want to see results on that term you first need to hit ‘enter’ to see the results.
Google now has banned another term: Torrentsite The Pirate Bay is taken out. On the other hand a much discussed term might be returning: bisexual. (more…)
Google Rolling Out Knowledge Graph Carousel More Widely
In August this year Google announced to be rolling out the Knowledge Graph to countries where English is the main language and at that moment the Knowledge Graph carousel was introduced on Google.com. Google is now rolling out the feature worldwide to all English users of the search engine.
The carousel will show additional lists and collections to a search query above the search results if this is relevant. The list and collections are used when the answer to a query cannot be shown as a single entity (person or thing). (more…)
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