SEO Blog | Customer Magnetism» Search Engine News

Fresh from Google: The Freshness Update

admin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:35:59 +0000

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh.” – Amit Singhal, Google Fellow The folks over at Google make around five hundred changes to their algorithm every year. A lot of those changes go unnoticed by most, as they’re intended to just keep search as simple and quick as possible. However, every now and then Google makes a major change, and two of the past major updates are coming...

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Friday Reads

Mary Elizabeth Allen — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:42:38 +0000

Welcome to a new feature of the CM blog: Friday Reads! In addition to sharing snippets of what’s going on in the tech and online world, we’ll be posting links to stories of interest that drew our attention over the past week. This week we showcase everything from Facebook to NASA to dolphins, along with an appearance by Dr. Peter Venkman. Enjoy! TECH NEWS • Friday’s Google Doodle full of Vitamin C • Great writeup on Discovery’s success with social media • Oops! Parents, might...

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New Google Features: Quick and Informative

Mary Elizabeth Allen — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:04:33 +0000

I was catching up on Google’s search blog this morning and wanted to share a couple of fun and useful new features they’ve integrated into their search page. First up: holiday dates. Google has added a line to the very top of their results page that will state the date of the holiday for which you’re searching – without you having to click on any search results! They used the example of National Popcorn Day, but I chose to search something a little more traditional:...

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Mostly Common Sense: Looking at Elements of the 2011 Local Search Marketing Factors Report

Mary Elizabeth Allen — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:28:57 +0000

Every year since 2008, David Mihm has released a comprehensive annual assessment of local search marketing factors: what’s gotten more important, what’s waning, what’s new. He works with major players in the search industry to assess key local search aspects and their importance, then compiles the results together with comments from the report contributors. The 2011 report was just released and contains a lot of data, so much so that I could go on for hours about the findings in a very SEO-geek sort of...

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FIFA Women’s World Cup Final Tops Trending Topics, Tweets

MJ — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:02:20 +0000

The Internet is still abuzz with activity the day after a dramatic finish to Japan’s victory over the US in the FIFA Women’s World Cup Finals soccer match. Japan, who has never played in the final, won after a 2-2 overtime tie sent the game into a penalty kick shootout. The international tournament, which features teams from 16 countries, is played every four years; this time in Germany. This year’s event outcome took over the Internet on trending topics on both search engines and social...

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Catching Up With Google on a Busy – And Short – Week

MJ — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:13:34 +0000

Google made a number of changes in the past week or two that are causing quite a stir. Some were directly related to others and some were not. Here is a quick recap of the major tweaks for those still recovering from the holiday weekend and a short workweek. - Early this week Google stopped its Realtime Search feeds. When Realtime Search was up and running, social media website Twitter.com’s realtime posts, called tweets, were a part of Google’s realtime feeds along with posts from...

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JC Penney Puts On Its Party Dress: Google Time-Out is Over

MJ — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:52:39 +0000

Sometimes when you’re bad and you get caught, you’re punished. JC Penney experienced this with Google back in February, when the retailer’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices were deemed questionable. Google investigated a claim in The New York Times and decided that the nationwide department store had misbehaved. As a result, JC Penney was manually removed from Google’s search engine results pages. In other words, it was given a time-out by Google. The company could not compete online in the free, organic listings except through...

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Customer Magnetism Review: Bing and Facebook Create Social Search

MJ — Mon, 23 May 2011 20:03:20 +0000

Customer Magnetism Review is a monthly blog feature. We review various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. It’s our way of keeping you up to date on the Internet’s latest. Search engine Bing and social media website Facebook joined forces last year. They have now stepped it up a notch. As of last week, Bing and users linked to Facebook can now see what their friends and other Facebook users like while they are doing an online...

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Google Ad Previews Provide Instant Gratification

MJ — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:13:15 +0000

The Internet just keeps getting faster. Now Google AdWords has leapt into the realm of Instant gratification, too. Similar to Google Instant graphic previews that debuted last year with a magnifying glass on the side, users can now preview Google AdWords in the same way. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on what you’re looking for from your online advertising. On one hand, this makes the ad traffic more qualified. You know that anyone clicking through to your ad from...

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Humans: Ranking Your Website Since Day One

Lindsay Martin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:02:04 +0000

A recent post on YouMoz (SEO Moz’s user-contributed blog section) addressed what they believed to be the injustice of Google’s Farmer/Panda update that devalued poor-quality websites using a basic and apparently flawed evaluation system. I was honestly surprised to find some people believe that Google is trying to make itself the judge and jury of content quality, shamelessly devaluing sites offering content they don’t deem authoritative. The author of the article suggests that Google should be offering users relevant content, not acting as a content...

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