Ever since Larry Page took his reign back from Eric Schmidt at Google one trend has been prominent: saying goodbye to products which are of no use anymore to Google. We’ve seen many products being closed in the past year or so and now we can add several more to them, amongst which iGoogle and Google Video. (more…)
Dear Google… I have been waiting for years now, and I think I have the entire search-community in the Nordics behind me when I say: When will local search listings work as they are supposed to? We are close to giving up, and you dear Google, might miss your chance in the Nordic SMB market…
Dear Google… So now Google Places is over, and Google+ has taken over as your local business pages. Does this mean that local listings will work now? I guess the answer is no, the back-end of Places is still the same as far as I can see… And that is the root of the problem; a system that simply does not work in the Nordics. (more…)
Having issues with searching through your Chrome browser? You’re not alone. The browser seems to be playing up.
One of the reasons browsers became important for search engines was the new found option to search from the URL bar. Just start typing, hit enter and the search engine you’ve set as your default search engine will show the results. Handy.
Ever since a few years Google has got Chrome as their own browser. Next to the URL function Chrome gives Google a lot of information on the searcher. Many people using Chrome however use it because of the speed: it is a fast browser. A lot of people using Chrome have been having issues using the search through URL bar functionality. They are getting a blank page after a search. (more…)
For many Google advertising is still something they ‘just do’ or if they don’t like it, keep away from. There are how ever many experts who can really make a difference in ads, just take a look at Evert‘s post “How to Keep Control over the New and Improved Exact & Phrase Match in Adwords” recently.
One thing which is hard to understand for some is how to actually look at the traffic you are getting from advertising: how are they different and how can you make best use of them? On the Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center Google tries to help their customers with just that. Last week they launched the video you can see below on that topic.
We are interested to know what you take out of videos like this. Is it useful?
“It is all about the money!” you are probably thinking. Yes, that is true, but not really the correct answer, or the only answer.
Hi, I am Gianluca and this my first post on State of Search, and I do not consider myself an anti-Google or a pro-Google SEO. I am more an anti-dumb SEO.
And one of the dumbest things we as SEO professionals may do is to get fixated with the last events, toys, and shining objects hitting the Search industry. The cause of this dumb vision of Search is in our dependency to contingency, somehow justified by more than 500 updates Google implements along the year, a Search industry churning out new products almost every week and with new platforms which can be used to market our sites on. (more…)
Two more new design tests by Google have been ‘spotted’ in the wild. The first one is a follow up to the one we saw last week. The second one show more mixture in the local results but also might just be a bug.
As you know Google tests out a lot. Many of these tests just ‘disappear’ into nothing. A few people see the tests, they didn’t work, and then Google pulls them. When tests start returning, sometimes in a little bit different format, it’s an indication that something is up. Google now seems serious about the tests on their new design without the left sidebar and is changing their local results. (more…)
Google Search Plus Your World is all about social data. Many things Google does in social is aimed at getting information from you so they can build up your profile and return you search results and other related information which is personalised for you, based on your social graph.
To do that Google needs to know your social graph. It needs to know how you connect to entities and to other people. In some of my presentations I showed some of what Google knew of you because Google gave that information away, for free. Now it seems to have pulled the social circle data. There is no announcement and you can still find the search result, but the page itself gives a 404. (more…)
We know that Google is constantly testing new stuff. Whether it is a new feature or a new design, they always test ‘in the wild’, meaning that actual users get the new features or design to see how they respond.
Now a new test has shown up, one which is mainly about the User Interface, the design of the search result page. In particular the navigational part. In this design the sidebar is completely gone and we see a new type of top navigation. (more…)
So this is a post written on the plane so bare with me for a little. It’s thoughts put on paper, but I think it’s important. For the past year and a half I have been talking all over the world about Google’s Social Search efforts. How the search giant was, and still is, trying to embed social into search. At first my talks were about the social signals we were seeing, how Google was for example integrating Twitter results or how it was showing when and where someone was sharing a specific piece of content. That was even before Google launched Google+. And even then I was saying: Google is up to something more than just a Facebook clone.
I showed some of my findings and conclusions at SMX 2011. Soon after that Google+ launched. It sure as hell looked like a Facebook clone, and don’t get me wrong, if Google would be able to push out Facebook, they sure would, but still Google+ is much bigger than a social network. It is much bigger than a Facebook competitor. I actually wrote about that back then as well, explaining what Google+ was really all about.
In the past few months, well, to be honest ever since Google+ launched, I have heard a lot of complaints from marketers about Google+. These complaints are mostly about the social network part of Google+: too little numbers, not enough functionalities, not enough engagement, you name it, all the complaints were there. And the funny thing is: they were all true. But now I believe it is time to stop complaining and get to work, you might be too late already. (more…)
Whether you call it Google Products, Google Shopping or Froogle (yeh I forgot they called it that before, too) things are about to change in a BIG way, again! Google has always been seen as a level playing field where small and huge companies alike could compete on equal terms. Google Products (that’s what I’ve always called it) was a big part of creating this level playing field and was a fantastic free service that allowed retailers of all sizes to display their products in the organic SERPs. It was another reason that we all fell in love with Google – they helped David fight Goliath. It didn’t matter that you didn’t have a ‘Nike’ sized search budget because results were driven on the basis of relevance and quality – things we could all control with good content and a solid search strategy. In fact, Google’s early “shopping” system allowed retailers to sell their products online even if they didn’t have a website. It was an all-inclusive service that was available to everybody, at zero cost. It was perfect, it was progressive and despite being quite difficult to use, retailers loved it. (more…)
This Friday Talk is not a presentation as such, but a talk on stage with Eric Schmidt. A few weeks ago we witnessed Schmidt discuss Google with students in Amsterdam, now he talks to Channel 4′s Krishnan Guru-Murthy and fields questions from the audience. He addresses topics including the future of the Internet and how mobile is shaping the web.
A few weeks ago Eric Schmidt told a group of Dutch students that Google always tries to be impartial when it comes to political matters. They feel they shouldn’t take stand and even though Eric Schmidt has been linked to the Democrats before and Obama has spoken at Google, they claim not to have a preference.
On one matter however Google has always been clear: it supports the gay community and gay marriage. Sergey Brin actually took a pretty solid stand towards Proposition 8 in California in 2008.
At the moment the discussion about gay marriage again comes up in the US and it might seem as if Google again is taking stand. The fact that its in the news is actual a coincidence with what happens if you do a search for “Gay” or “Gay marriage” on Google you will get this result:
As said, this is not directly related to the news, it is something which Google has done in different formats over the years as you can see on the screens on Michel’s post on his own blog. But it is a nice coincidence for those supporting the purpose.
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