Posts About ‘News’

Majestic SEO Site Explorer is now Free for Verified Domains

Good news for all you link data fans out there! Majestic SEO is announcing that Majestic Site Explorer is now going to be free for verified domains even if you are not a paid user.

Majestic also plan to remove restrictions for paid customers, give free users some additional benefits and they’ve updated the interface too!

“Hopefully – with Google’s Webmaster Tools and Majestic’s Webmaster tools syncing with just a couple of clicks, this new addition for free users will prove extremely popular. Useful AND free… and on a timely additional note, that’s combined with no personal tracking!” – Dixon Jones – MajesticSEO

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LinkRisk Goes out of Beta – (includes a special offer)

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A few weeks ago we announced the arrival of a new service, LinkRisk. LinkRisk responds to the latest developments at Google when it comes to links: your link profile. It calculates your ‘link risk score’ and will tell you if you have and if so which, links are dangerous pointing at your website and need removal.

The service has been in beta for a few months and last week at SASCON officially opened its doors to the public. Meaning that from now on everyone can sign up for an account.

With the sign up LinkRisk is giving State of Search readers an exclusive discount. When signing up through the link below the demo video you might get a 3 month upgrade on your account. (more…)

Does Flagged E-Consultancy Link Indicate Where Penguin is Going?

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Several weeks ago I decided to close guest posts on State of Search for the time being. Many thought it was just because I was getting so many bad requests for guest posts. It was however much more than that. In my view guest posting had become the newest link building tactic and not in a good way, it has become the equivalent of link exchange request.

And sooner or later things would go ‘wrong’ there. As I said a month ago: “The low quality content is hurting sites, and will be penalised by Google in the end I’m sure.”. It looks like that time is coming sooner than later. Though it isn’t directly low quality content which draws the attention, it’s the links.

Two signals point to that, first Matt Cutts who started tweeting about a new Penguin Update (‘Penguin 2.0′) and made a video (below) about what to expect in the next few months in terms of SEO in which he points at the upcoming update, which probably will hurt a lot of sites. Most likely this is the update Cutts talked about in San Francisco last year when he said “You don’t want the next Penguin update, the engineers have been working hard”.

That Penguin Update is coming and might just be focussing on guest posts a lot. A signal of that seems to come from E-Consultancy in the past few days. According to a tweet that went out towards Matt Cutts “author links in guest blog bios on Econsultancy have been flagged by Google.”. It turned out this was about a link on which E-Consultancy themselves reported before. (more…)

Sneak Preview of the New Google Maps

Last week it became clear that Google is working on a new Google Maps. Or should we say, has been working on a new Google Maps. They seem to be ready now and later today when Google I/O start the new Google Maps is expected to be presented. We are quite sure because one of the sessions is called “Google Maps: Into the Future”…

Some screens from the new Google Maps have already been sent out and some others have been leaked. The Google Operating System presented some imagery which showed the integration of Google+ into Google Maps (no surprise there). And now Droid Life has gotten their hands on some new imagery which seems to come from a sign up page for trying out the new maps which was temporarily released (too soon).

Find the images of the new Google Maps below (thanks to Droid Life) and notice the much prettier, much clearer and probably responsive design. (more…)

Breaking out of the SEO Echo Chamber

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Last week I was fascinated by Paul Miller’s story of his year without the internet. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that I feel the internet is corrupting my soul, I have been feeling like I’m stuck in an SEO (or perhaps more accurately a search industry) echo chamber of late.

It’s not that I don’t love this industry, I do; however I’ve been making a concerted effort to change my usual reading habits in search of something new. To be clear, I’m not talking cute pictures of kittens (can you read pictures of kittens?!); I’m not convinced that those are likely to bring me much in the way of inspiration, new perspectives, or new ways of thinking.

Today I’m sharing some of the sites I’ve been reading of late, along with further recommendations from other State of Search writers and various other kind souls who responded via twitter. I’ve grouped them into categories to make the list a little easier to digest…

Ready? Let’s go.

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A4U revamps and rebrands to PerformanceIN

A4U brands

After great success running the popular A4U  events as well as their news site,  industry events company A4U has relaunched and rebranded its business, complete with the launch of a brand new website.

The company is well-known for running conferences and expos aimed at  niche industry professionals, while it also runs the A4u news website.  As the industry continue to grow, for both publishers and affiliates, the Bristol-based business has brought a new edge to its offering with the launch of PerformanceIN.com. (more…)

Germany & Search: April 2013 Edition

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How time flies. April is gone as well – and still, there is no summer in sight. But at least there’s no more snow over here in Germany.

Content-wise it felt a little lower in April, this might be due to vacation or just because everyone is busy visiting conferences such as the SMX series which took place twice (Sydney and Munich). But nevertheless – I of course did collect the best pieces for “Germany Search” edition 04-2013 here on State of Search: (more…)

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Maintain a Social Media Presence and Ignore Scaremongering

Australian business fail social media - news.com.au

I’ve been offline for the last week, driving around the wilds of Tasmania in a camper-van with no phone or internet access. It’s certainly refreshing, and my brain feels like it’s seeing the internet in a revitalised way again. Despite spending more time with wallabies than people in the last week, I still didn’t entirely get away from the all encompassing world that is the internet!

Driving along, I heard a news report on the radio, discussed Australia’s SMEs’ failure to get involved with social media, with only a quarter of small businesses using the medium according to a recent survey. More details can be found on the News.com.au website.

AUSTRALIAN businesses are failing to keep pace with social media with less than a quarter embracing online opportunities, research reveals.

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State of Search News Update: What happened in week 14

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After a few weeks without a wrap up of the most important news in search and social it is time

In this post we will bring the top stories of what happened last week with links to articles around the web. So you will know what you’ve missed.  

Here’s what happened last week

Facebook launches ‘Home’ to take over Android

The biggest news last week of course was Facebook launching ‘home’. It wasn’t the expected Facebook phone, but a take over of Android, which will be rolling out shortly.

Related stories online: Inside Facebook, TechCrunch,Businessweek, AllThingsD, Business Insider, The Next Web 

LinkedIn rolling linked mentions of people and companies in status updates

Linkedin wants to be more like Facebook so it seems. It has started to roll out a new feature which is very Facebook like: mentions of people and companies in status updates which will trigger the recipient.

Related stories online: Official LinkedIn Blog, Mashable, WebProNews.  

Mobile advertising growing to 7.3 billion dollars with Google and Facebook taking most

Mobile advertising will reach $7.29 billion in 2013, and Google will take home more than half of it, Facebook follows after.

Related stories online: Marketing Pilgrim, Forbes, CNET

Google Places Dashboard gets Google+ Local Integration

Google has begun a staged upgrade of its Google Places Dashboard making it more integrated with Google+.

Related stories online: Searchengineland, Search Engine Roundtable, Google Plus Daily, 9to5Google, Marketing Pilgrim

iTunes URLs Losing Rank In Google Search

Less and less iOS applications were showing up in Google search for searches by app name, for example. Google acknowledged there are issues, but not a plot.

Related stories online: The Next Web, AppleInsider, Searchengineland, The Verge, Guardian 

Baidu Working on Google Glass-Like ‘Baidu Eye’

Rumours are Baidu is copying Google, but not in search, but in their Google Glasses project. Baidu seems to be working on a ‘Baidu Eye’.

Related stories online: CHINAdaily,  VentureBeat, Investor’s Business Daily 

Google’s Privacy Director Stepping Down

One of the toughest and most important roles within Google is becoming vacant. Privacy Director Alma Whitten is said to be stepping down from her job.

Related stories online: CNET, Engadget, Marketing Land, TechCrunch, AllThingsD

Fake Twitter Followers a Multimillion-Dollar Business

Everyone already knew Twitter followers can be bought. And we also knew there was a lot of money to be made there. It now actually turns out to be a multimillion-dollar business.

Related stories online: New York Times, Business Insider

Anonymous take over  North Korea’s Twitter and Flickr accounts

A remarkable ‘hack’ last week in North Korea where Anonymous hackers took over Twitter and Flickr accounts showing politically sensitive content.

Related stories online: Business Insider, SiliconANGLE, Mashable, ReadWrite

 

Gianluca Fiorelli’s Super Search Update – March edition

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What a month March has been!

We had conferences, Matt Cutts announced that Panda is going to be implemented in the real time algorithm (if it is not already rolled out in it) and the quality of the posts shared about our industry was really remarkable.

Somehow a fil rouge is clear amongst every post, presentation and video: Internet Marketing has become a sort of complex puzzle, where many different pieces and professional figures needs to links one each other in order to compose a figure : content, SEO, analytics, social media, design.

Content is at the base, but we should be all aware that content strategy is not the same as saying copywriting. Content Strategy is to copywriting the same as IA is to programming a web, and the content strategist is becoming a professional figure every agency or business company should start including in its organization chart. (more…)

Germany & Search: March 2013 Edition

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It’s soo ridiculous… March comes to an end and I still see the damn snow when looking outside of my office in Germany. That not nice, really! However… the depressing white – which also covered parts of THE German-conference event in March – SEOcampixx in Berlin – did not prevent from producing quite a bit a great content during this month. So, let’s get straight into “Germany Search” edition 03-2013 here on StateOfSearch: (more…)

Google did De-Index Digg, but by Mistake. Digg is back now

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Update:

Digg is now back in the search results after Google explained what happened. Matt Cutts from Google explains it had to do with a spammer attack:

“We were tackling a spammer and inadvertently took action on the root page of digg.com.”

He also stresses this has nothing to with Google Reader, which was suggested on Social Media since Digg announced it would build their own version of it.

He also said:

“we’ll be looking into what protections or process improvements would make this less likely to happen in the future.”

The official response from Google is:

“We’re sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We’re correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly.”

Original story:

There was a time when Digg.com was the hottest site on the web. Even hotter than Google, believe it or not. Those times have passed and its founder, Kevin Rose, has actually jumped ship to Google.

But still Digg is a force to reckon with. Quantcast last year estimated Digg’s monthly U.S. unique visits at 3.8 million, and that is US only. And a lot of that traffic still comes through Google.

Today however Digg disappeared from Google from a short time. Matt Sawyer of Datadial tweeted out earlier today that the site seems to have disappeared from Google. And he seems to be right. It had  (more…)

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