Next Thursday, Search Marketing Now will present a free webcast, Links, Link-Building and Public Relations at 1 PM EDT. Registration is still open at Search Marketing Now. With most folks eager to attract links to help their organic search rank, where does the public relations pro fit in? While links are an SEO function, link-building must also [...]

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A three-part series about linking — and more specifically, how search marketers may view links differently from other Internet users — all went hot on Sphinn last week. Along with that, articles more specific to link building were also popular, as was an article on image SEO. But the hottest discussion topic of the week [...]

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When studying backlinks to competitor sites, most people do so in order to identify potential link targets for their own site. While this is a very useful thing to do, there are many other strategically useful bits of competitive intelligence that can be deduced by studying links. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say [...]

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Time is running out on early bird rates for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East! Register by September 10 and you’ll pay only $1295 for three days of exceptional content and invaluable industry connections. Join us October 4-6 in New York City for actionable tactics, best practices and strategies for all skill levels – whether [...]

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In what is becoming an annual ritual Google announces a dramatic acquisition, pundits speculate about the potentially market-changing impact and anti-trust investigators give it a long, hard look — only to allow it in the end. Last year the transaction in question was AdMob; this year it’s ITA software. Since the roughly $700 million deal was [...]

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Visiting the Google homepage today may make you go “wow.” It has one of the most wild and explosive special Google logos I have ever seen. There are dozens of balls that make up the Google logo, and they bounce around the screen all to come together to form “Google.” The balls in [...]

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A raft of recent search engine developments in the Far East means the picture is not so wonderfully clear anymore. In Japan, Korea and China there have been signficant search engine market changes. Let's try and figure out what's going on?

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Forcing Some Searchers Into 20 Search Results For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results [...]

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For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page. Andy Beard and myself are in [...]

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adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing. It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in [...]

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I am sick of small businesses being scammed by shady and/or incompetent SEO consultants so I put together this list of questions that any business should ask before they hire a local SEO consultant.

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A busy day for Google on the legal front continues with news that the company has agreed to $8.5 million in payments to settle a federal lawsuit surrounding Google Buzz and privacy. According to AFP, court documents filed today show that seven plaintiffs will get no more than $2,500 each, lawyers that filed the case [...]

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Google’s announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won’t want to miss.” What big news could there be? Let’s speculate — but I wouldn’t get too excited. Here’s what the invite says: We invite you to join us on Wednesday, September 8, to share our latest technological innovation and to get an [...]

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It’s sort of a baby step in Facebook’s efforts to improve its search results, but certainly worth noting here: Facebook is now showing news articles in its search results and ranking them by how many “likes” and “shares” the articles have received from Facebook users. The All Facebook blog says the number of friends who [...]

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google’s business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its [...]

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google’s business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its paid and editorial results in a way that violates antitrust laws. We received a tip about the investigation this week, and Google confirmed today that an investigation started in July. [...]

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A German court has found YouTube liable for copyright damages after one of its users uploaded copyrighted music videos. A Google spokesperson tells the AP that it’s evaluating the court’s decision and will appeal. The case stems around a YouTube user who uploaded several videos of singer Sarah Brightman. While YouTube specifically warns users not to [...]

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In Part 1, we looked at query operators for refining our searches. Now for Part 2, let’s look at parameters that we can add/modify in the URL of the the Google SERP (search engine results page.) The operators listed in Part 1 should suffice for most searches. Yet, certain types of searches are most efficiently accomplished [...]

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Earlier this summer Google rolled out Expandable Map Ads for mobile devices. These ads appear on the mobile web and in apps. To participate advertisers must enable location extensions and be opted in to the content network for mobile. They begin as a banner that expands when clicked into a map with the option to [...]

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If you visit Google on Saturday, September 4th, or visit a Google property where it is already September 4th such as Google New Zealand, you will see a special Google logo. The logo is of a buckyball or fullerence, which is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, [...]

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