Posts About ‘Google’

Google +1 Button is here, Get your Data to Google!

After the launch in beta of the +1-button Google yesterday finally launched the official button. Now everybody can put the +1 button on their website. On their blog Google showed how you can put the button on your site. The code which before was discovered by a Dutchman now is publicly available.

Most probably we will be seeing many sites implementing the button over the next few days. Chances are that the button will replace the Google Buzz button which still can be found on many sites, doing nothing.

The button will help make the pages on your website more visible for people who have friend who recommended the page. The page will then be visible in the SERPS via the “XXX +1′d this” tagline below the result. (more…)

Inside The GooglePlex

Some of us dream of working for Google, others wouldn’t be caught dead in the Plex. But if you look at this segment from a TV-show from last year, you have to admit, it looks darn right nice…

UPDATE: Did Google kill the option for Non-logged in users to clear their web history?

A very interesting find by one of our regular readers Brandon Moreau, who before did two guestposts for us. It seems as if Google has, without telling anybody, turned off the possibility to turn off your search history personalization for those who are not logged in.

As you may know Google tracks you. Based on your web- and or search history (depending on the level of personalization you allow Google to go) Google serves you personalized results. This means that you will most probably see different results, or a different order of results, than your next door neighbor or even the colleague sitting next to you. Since late 2009 Google decided to turn this on for everybody, including those who are not logged in to any Google account (SEL reported on it here). Something every SEO has to keep in mind.

You have however always been able to turn this feature off. You can still do this when you are logged in, but when you are not logged in this possibility is now gone. (more…)

New tool: Google Correlate: Google Trends in reverse

Google just launched an interesting new tool: Google Correlate. It is currently available in beta in Google Labs. The tool enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. In other words: it does what Google Trends does, but in reverse.

The tool could very well be an interesting tool for SEOs doing keyword research, but is primarily intended for researchers. On their blog Google states that the tool is designed for researchers to see what terms best match the current trends in real life. (more…)

Dutch researcher downloads 35 million Google Profiles

Aren’t they lovely, the new Google Profiles? And you can put so much information in it. Information which everybody can see. And download… We’ve discussed the privacy matters around the profiles before and I will be talking about the presentation I did at SMX about the profiles soon too. But there is a lot more to the Google Profiles. A Dutch researcher was able to download, export and import 35 million Google Profiles, with data.

The researcher Matthijs Koot, working for the University of Amsterdam, is writing a research paper about anonymity and privacy. For that research he decided to look at the Google Profiles. He noted that a lot of the information can be downloaded pretty easy. (more…)

Eric Schmidt named Media Person of the Year

Now what if you were CEO of a big company and wanted to become “Media Person of the Year”. What would you do? Show up in the press a lot off course. And be controversial. Maybe that is what brought Eric Schmidt to his several epic quotes.

Or it is just a coincidence. What is happening is that Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, has been named Media Person of the Year by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (more…)

Google SERP Tests That Didn’t Make It

We all know that Google is testing a lot of things all the time. They usually do this by giving a portion of the users a new feature, function or design to look out. Based on the responses (not the tweets, but how people actually click) they figure out what works and what doesn’t.

We always love to look at the new changes Google is testing out. It gives us an insight into where Google is heading. Now most of the things we spot are indeed changes which are actually being made. Many of the tests which are spotted by many make it. But there are also a lot of changes which don’t make it. This weekend I stumbled on a presentation of a Googler which showed some screens of design tests that didn’t make it. What is interesting about looking at tests that didn’t make it? For one thing, it gives us an idea of how Google is thinking. And you still might see some of the test-changes become actual changes in the future, who knows. (more…)

SEO for Google vs Bing: How Different are They?

This post is part of our coverage of SMX Advanced London 2011. It is a panel discussing the differences between Google and Bing and how or if we should be optimizing for these differently.

In this post we will describe the talks from Gill Reich, VP of Product Management, at Answers.com and Daniel Ruby, Research Director at Chitika. They took an in depth look at the differences between the search engines.

Demographics

Firstly some basic demographics:

- The biggest difference between the browsers: 87% of Bing users come from IE vs 47% of Google users from IE

- Users of Bing predominately come from the US - 83% vs just under 50% for Google

- Top cities are all US for Bing vs Google where only NYC is the only American city in its top 10 traffic-generating cities.

Bing’s Growth

Yahoo! and Bing are potentially monetising better than Google and seeing significant growth. This double combination is enough to warrant a second look. Users of Bing are generally less tech savvy therefore generate a greater value per impression, this is worth taking into account.

There are varying views on how well/poorly Bing/Yahoo! will do over thecoming months. Some (Mashable apparently) say that at this rate, Bing could potentially surpass Google within the next year.

Sounds more than a little optimistic to me. Others (Henry Blodget) suggest that the traffic acquisition costs are more than three times their revenue as they try to hit scale.

Bing is buying their traffic at the moment, hoping this will pay off in the long run. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

Portals and Platforms

Take the MSN homepage as an example– not only is there a search box that points to Bing but it also includes footer links and sidebar links that point to search results on Bing.

Looking at upstream traffic to Bing – 21% comes from MSN whereas Google has a wider variety of sources including 17% Facebook followed by YouTube etc.

Bing SERPs are clearly centred around their own properties – e.g. above the fold predominately centred around links back to MSN pages. Google is much more open, it powers the entire web. E.g. Adsense = a large chunk of pages on web are advertising Google and monetising large amount of the web.

Bing is focusing on being a portal. Google a platform.

How Gill came to Understand Search Engines’ Importance

Search engines were previously always used to help you find websites. Now search engines, particularly Google, is how you find information. Often you barely even know you are on another site. This makes it very difficult for webmasters.

People no longer think of search engines as a way to find a website with an answer, they see it as a direct means to an end.

Summary of the talk by Gill Reich

Users are different (Country, browser)
Searches are different (context, number of words)
Engines are different (technology & business models)

Bing has got significantly better but Google’s technology is still in a league of its own. This sets it apart.

A more in-depth look at Bing

Daniel Ruby, Research Director at Chitika.

Why should I care about Bing?

Volume

Yahoo/Bing has become the first volume related competitor to Google in years. Based on traffic generated by search engines – even though Bing serves much more as a portal, it does still drive traffic. 15-18% for Chitika.

Value per impression

Both Yahoo! and Bing users are more likely to click on an ad, so they’re worth more as monetisation tool.

What affects my Bing Postioning?

By and large, it’s similar to Google – content, links etc.

The differences between Bing and Google?

1. Bing does not like forums, 90% of forum results show up further down Bing results than Google results.

Many forum results that Google positions on the front page don’t appear in Bing’s top 100.

2. Bing does not like content farms

Even post-Panda, Bing tends to rank low quality content sites lower than Google positions.

3. Bing is significantly worse than Google at broad matching keywords such as 401k – Retirement Plan

Verbatim keyword matching is much more important for Bing traffic. Be more verbatim in your keyword strategy for Bing, don’t expect it to understand synonyms and context as well as Google does.

4. URL results are ineffective

If a user searches for a url, Google will assume that the user is looking for information on the url and will also show results with that URL as keyword

5. Bing is more likely to show related searches, sites that are similar to that original searched-on url

6. Phone number searches

Bing provides fewer results, assumes that if you don’t find the number you are looking for within the first couple of pages – there is no point in showing more ‘spammy’ types of results.

7. Ambiguous searches

If a search has multiple possible meanings, Bing will err of the side of local results whereas Google is more likely to err on the side of brand.

General observations

Bing more likely to censor ‘questionable’ content such as watching copyrighted tv shows online, finding free essays, cheats etc. It also seems to struggle with parsing PDF files compared with Google.

Summary of the talk by Daniel Ruby

- The number one long-tail results on Google will appear on Bing’s first page 67% of the time, Bing/Google have a lot of fractured results crossover.
- So do I need to focus on Bing? Yes, according to Daniel. And yes again.
- The traffic is growing and it is valuable.

Yandex

Someone who could be a competitor is Yandex. The session at SMX ended with a few words from Andy Atkins-Kruger on his experience of Yandex having visited Moscow and met its founder Ilya Segalovich recently.

Yandex is focusing increasingly on MLR (Machine-Learned Ranking), which some are suggesting is also the preferred route for Bing. Google uses this to a much lesser degree, favouring it only for the Adwords algorithms. This could lead to increased differences further down the line.

All in all, Bing is growing and isn’t about to go away. It can provide valuable new visitors that may not reach your site if you focus all of your efforts solely on Google. It’s worth taking the time to consider it.

(Thanks to Razorfish for the image!)

More posts about Bing vs Google that might interest you:

- Google or Bing: The Royal Wedding
- Searches on Bing More Successful than on Google
- The Bing and the Beautiful
- Bing keeps denying copying Google and accuses Google of clickfraud
- Osama Bin Laden killed: how did Google and Bing respond?
- Why Bing will be trailing on Google and why it should hook up with Apple and Facebook

News near you: local, mobile and personal integrated by Google

Yet again Google has launched a new feature. And again it seems to be part of their bigger strategy which has to lead to a more social like Google: news near you. If you are an Android or iPhone user living in the US you can now go to news.google.com and you will be prompted with a request to share your location. If you accept, “news near you” will be available.

The feature was introduced by Google News Product Manager Navneet Singh. The new service from Google lets you see news from the location your phone tells you where you are. You can personalize it further on the personalization page where you can determine whether you want news on specific topics. (more…)

Page 40 of 53« First «...10 20 30...37 38 394041 42 43...50...»Last »

State of Search