Google decided earlier this week to change the way it provides local business listings. When searching for local business info, previously you would have seen this: You got a little map with a list of nearby local businesses matching your search. Since this map consistently showed up above regular search results, some businesses could rank […]
If they still seem somewhat of a mystery, I recommend the “How Internet Search Engines Work” article over at howStuffWorks.com. Although the engines deliberately keep some parts of their operation secret, the basics of how they work are public knowledge. And some of this information can be used to determine how search engine-friendly your website […]
We haven’t put out a reaction to Google Instant, that has some in our industry pulling their hair out and others sitting back and laughing. Some think it’s the death of SEO while others think it will be ultimately discarded as a failed experiment. The reality is somewhere in between. Until it’s been around for […]
As of yesterday, Yahoo has completed the switch over to Bing’s search engine results. This completes part of a larger process that was started last year when Microsoft inked a deal with Yahoo to power their regular search results (paid/sponsored results are not moved, yet). What does this mean for your website? Well, one less […]
Amidst the noise about a certain new device from Apple, you may have missed another bit of fruit-related news: iAd. Apple is apparently going to be releasing a mobile advertising platform, most likely the results of its acquisition of Quattro Wireless (after a failed attempt at AdMob). There aren’t many details known but some are […]
Google officially acknowledged the relevancy (pun intended) of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, last year and now Google has gone and audited itself. Google has made its “SEO Report Card” available to the public. It appears to have only evaluated itself on some basic criteria, but it’s fascinating how poorly they score in several key […]
Earlier this year we commented on an upcoming update to Google’s rules for ranking websites codenamed “Caffeine.” This update actually changes how Google analyzes web pages significantly but current rankings, for the most part, should remain stable per our tests in the Developer Preview. Google is now launching Caffeine starting with 1 data center by […]
Twitter announced recently that it is adding “location services” to its micro-blogging service. This means that users will soon be able to (optionally) enable their twitter posts (or “tweets”) to include the location they’re sending the message from. For instance if I am travelling in the Andes mountains with my iPhone (and I somehow magically […]
A fairly accepted, but advanced, practice within the SEO community called PageRank Sculpting has been undone by Google. I won’t get into all of the details but the important thing to remember is that if your site was making use of PageRank Sculpting (or your SEO experts said they were) then you better find out […]
Last week Google added what it’s calling People Profiles to search results. Now you can create a central identity with relevant contact and other info with Google. This is in addition to other profiles you may already have created on Google services like Blogger, Google Reader or Picasa etc… And in fact this central profile […]