All Entries in the "Google" Category

How Google Killed the Longtail [Infographic]

Infographic put out by SEOBook.com demonstrates that by the innovations of Google Search over the years, they have essentially killed long-tail search.

Possible Google Acquisitions in 2010 and Beyond?

It is becoming more evident everyday that we are living in a Google world. What began as a search engine has quickly evolved into many additional things. Just this month, Google entered the cell phone business with the release of the Nexus One. They are also working their way into the real estate business. What’s next? This post takes a somewhat humorous look at possible Google acquisitions for 2010 and beyond.

New Quality Guidelines For Google Maps Listings

If you are a local business and want to be found on Google Maps, you will want to make sure you are listed first of all. Along with that, you might also want to pay close attention to some new guidelines Google has issued regarding their goal to keep Google Maps a great source of information for users and business owners alike.

Viacom Does the Right Thing: Withdraws Request for YouTube User Data

It was about two weeks ago when some idiotic U.S. judge ruled that Viacom, in their ongoing lawsuit with YouTube over copyright infringement, had the right to access YouTube users’ private data. Many including myself questioned the intentions of Viacom. Are they looking to compile a list of all possibilities of copyright infringement? Or even more disturbing, do they wish to compile a list of individuals they can begin suing for watching content that infringes copyright laws? Well, no more need to worry as Viacom has withdrawn their request for that information.

You&A With Matt Cutts – SMX Advanced

What’s a You&A? That’s where you, the audience, put your questions directly to the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts. As an engineer in search quality, Matt’s been dealing with webmaster issues for Google since 2000 and is well known to many advanced search marketers from his blog and public speaking.

Google Announces New Features in Google Earth 4.3

Google has announced a new version of Google Earth in which they have completely rethought how you might interact with the 3D world. They’ve redesigned the navigation to make it much easier to fly from the heavens down to the streets of your town. And with all of the great user-created buildings in the 3D Warehouse, they have made it easy for you to get right up close to see the rich detail.

SEOs Breathe Sigh of Relief As Google Decides To Sell Performics

When Google decided to acquire DoubleClick nearly a year ago, many in the search marketing industry were very concerned that Google now owned a SEO company – Performics. It would be a huge conflict of interest to have a organic search index and yet at the same time be making money providing a service that helps companies to improve their positioning in that index. When the acquisition was finally approved last month, Danny Sullivan wrote an open letter asking Google to do the right thing.

Open Letter Asking Google To Do the Right Thing Regarding Performics

Now that Google officially owns DoubleClick, there is another dilemma at hand and that is they also own a SEO company. Is this a conflict of interest? Absolutely! Let’s face it – Google is now in the SEO business – selling services through DoubleClick’s Performics to people who want to rank well on search engines, including Google. This also places Google in the paid inclusion business, something it called evil back in 2004, when it went public.

Danny Sullivan has written an open letter to Google asking them to do the right thing – namely to spin off Performics as they should not own such a company.

Sites Selling Text Links Get Google-Slapped, Should They Worry?

It is all over the blogosphere – sites known for selling text link ads or Google PageRank have been slapped with a PageRank reduction for their own sites by the almighty Google itself. Is this a worldwide PR update with a possible algorithm change or is it more along the line of a hand job? Seeing that a couple of sites we launched several months ago are still at a “0″ PageRank, even though they have a good amount of links pointing to them, I’d have to say the latter. The question that remains to be answered is, “should publishers and those buying links be worried?”

Is Google Misleading Search Marketers?

I started my Monday off with a strange phone conversation. I had put together a proposal for a potential client for both SEO and paid search management. The SEO portion of the proposal involved an initial cost which would allow us to develop and implement a strategy to optimize their site so that they could improve their visibility for organic search. Following up today with a phone meeting, my point of contact said they had just spoken to someone at Google who said that “Google” themselves would optimize their site for nothing – no initial investment, no set up costs, free. The potential client’s next question – “Why would we pay you to do something that Google will do for free?”

Let the Privacy Wars Begin!

I was asked recently if Google’s dominance in search would ever change, at least anytime soon, to which I responded that I did not believe so unless they make a major mistake. And what is the most crucial area that Google needs to pay close attention to? How they handle privacy.

More and more Internet users are worried about the amount of information Google and other search engines have on them. In fact, my father recently told me that he was through with Google because he feels they have become a type of “big brother.” He does not trust their privacy policy practices.

Should SMBs Be Worried About Google’s Universal Search?

In May, Google announced that they had begun to roll out “universal search” features, where their search results pages would contain more than just web pages and documents. Additional content would include videos, images, news, maps, books, and even stock quotes. In a blog post on the subject, Marisa Mayer wrote, “With universal search, we’re attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.”