At SMX West today, Microsoft’s Bing revealed some updates to Bing Webmaster Tools. There’s a new organic keyword research tool and an API.
On the keyword research tool, Bing’s Duane Forrester explains, “This tool allows you to perform keyword research on any phrase you enter. It resides within your WMT account and offers the ability to see query volume data on the phrase you enter, and related phrases, across many different countries and languages. You can easily explore query volumes on keywords by simply clicking on any related keyword. All data within the tool is exportable, and we hold a history of up to 6 months for all phrases. This means you can select a date range covering up to the previous six months to see query volume data for the time period you select. Query data shown in the results within this tool are based on organic query data from Bing and is raw data, not rounded in any way. This tool is found when you login, on the Keyword tab.”
“Upon login, you see a simple interface with a few options to help you target country and language. You can also select “strict” to ensure results are restricted to the exact phrase to word you entered,” he continues. “Entering a phrase or keyword and clicking the Search button will bring back organic keyword query data for the phrase entered, as well as for related phrases. Here we have selected one filter for the United States, but left the language open, and strict unchecked to see what the keyword ecosystem looks like around our topic, in the US. Not surprisingly, our example of fly fishing, during these winter months, nets us lower query volumes. The graph clearly shows a run-up on query volume coming into the holiday season, and trending lower afterwards. ”
The API, of course, lets you access the data in other places. The documentation for that is here.
Forrester goes more in depth into the new changes in this blog post.
The features are currently available to all people with webmaster tools accounts.
Microsoft may or may not be involved with antitrust complaints against Google in Europe, related to Google+. Pretty vague, I know, but conflicting reports are painting it that way.
Reuters first reported: “Microsoft and several other companies have complained to EU antitrust regulators about Google’s social networking tool,” and that, “The complaints, which have not yet been filed formally with the Commission, may prompt the European Commission to broaden its ongoing investigation into Google, which focuses on whether it is too dominant in the web-search market.”
Reuters cites “people familiar with the matter”.
ZDNet has countered the Reuters report, indicating that Microsoft is “not involved in an antitrust complaint over Google+.” Reporter Mary Jo Foley cites a Microsoft spokesperson as saying, “We have not filed a complaint regarding Google+.”
Still, as you can see from the first Reuters quote above, it says that complaints “have not yet been filed,” so that doesn’t necessarily mean the report was false. Furthermore, that Reuters article also quotes a Microsoft spokesman as saying that the company had not filed a complaint.
So, it seems clear that no complaint has been filed, but apparently it’s still possible that formal complaints are in the works. I guess we’ll see if it happens.
Foley, while noting that Microsoft has sought other regulatory intervention against Google implies that Microsoft doesn’t have much of a vested interest in intervening against Google+, but Search Plus Your World could give Google an advantage to Google as a search engine, in terms of delivering personalized content to Google+ users. I’m not sure they would have much of a leg to stand on, however, since Bing has Facebook and Twitter data at its disposal.
A lot of people have complained about the relevancy of Google’s Search Plus Your World results anyway, though Google’s big privacy policy consolidation could enable the company to more freely integrate not just Google+ but all of its other products with one another, which could potentially make the search engine more personally relevant than ever.
Also, let’s not forget that Microsoft is part of the FairSearch Coalition, which aims to inspire regulatory intervention against Google at just about every turn. And what do you know? They just opened up shop in Europe.
In the realm of search engine optimization offerings, SearchDex, a digital marketing service and solutions provider, today announced at eTail Palm Springs the release of InferClick, a new solution to help empower online retailers with actionable insights into consumer behavioral patterns.
InferClick, the behavioral data analytics technology from SearchDex, provides online retailers revenue tracking by keyword, increased keyword valuation, enhanced merchandising, intelligent product recommendations, keyword expansion based on user behavior, as well as the ability to create new pages around newly discovered keywords.
“As online retailers strive to recognize how buyers find and interact with their ecommerce sites, e-tailers need the necessary tools to discover the relevant actions and behaviors of consumers in order to determine critical revenue drivers,” said David Chaplin, CEO at SearchDex. “InferClick is our answer to the demands of online marketers who would benefit from these capabilities, offering improved keyword targeting and additional enhancements focused on SEO program expansion through the analysis of view-stream and shopping cart data.”
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
It would, of course, be helpful to know some more specifics about this method of link analysis, but that’s probably one of those things that Google would rather play a bit closer to their chest than some of their other signals. Google can’t have people going out and exploiting that information and gaming the results, now could they? That could be a big “bug” that could end up hurting that search quality they’re trying so hard to maintain.
I’m sure there will be plenty of theories and speculation regarding how Google is analyzing links, just as there has been since the dawn of PageRank.
I doubt this new change will bring about any major findings in SEO, but it’s interesting to know that such a change was made – one that removes something that Google has been using for “several years”. One has to wonder if this will have a major impact on the PageRank of sites around the web.
Another of these would be an increase in the number of queries that will return image results in Universal Search. Here’s what Google listed for that:
Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename âterraâ, project codename âImages Universalâ] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches.
To me, this means images should probably a bigger part of your SEO strategy. Images were already important to SEO, but if they’re going to inject more images into the first-page organic results mix for more queries, this is another opportunity to get your content in front of searchers’ eyeballs.
Last year, we ran a good article by Michael Gray about optimizing images for search traffic. That would be a good place to start for some solid advice on taking advantage of this.
Let’s not forget, however, that Search Plus Your World plays a major role these days in what images Google shows users in such results, so perhaps this should also be considered yet another reason to expand your Google+ presence, and engage with others on Google’s social network.
This other entry to Google’s list is certainly worth considering as well:
Fresher images. [launch codename âtumericâ] Weâve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
As previously reported, Google announced its list of February algorithm/search quality changes. The list had forty changes. One of them was “more locally relevant predictions in YouTube’.
The related part of the list says:
More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename âSuggestâ] Weâve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
Clearly better suggestions/predictions for YouTube users is an area of interest Google is very focused on these days.
Another example of evidence to that effect would be a letter the company recently wrote to Congress regarding its new (and widely publicized) privacy policy changes. In the letter, Google noted that the old policies have restricted the companyâs ability to combine info within an account for web history (search history for signed in users) and YouTube.
âFor example, if a user is signed in and searching Google for cooking recipes, our current privacy policies wouldnât let us recommend cooking videos when she visits YouTube based on her searches â even though she was signed into the same Google Account when using both Google Search and YouTube,â Google said in the letter.
The privacy policy consolidation, and the merging of Google products into one larger Google product (for all intents and purposes) along with the new location-based recommendation adjustment indicate that Google is trying hard to keep people on YouTube for longer periods of time, which is really just a reflection of other YouTube announcements of late (the redesign being a primary example).
The connected living room is becoming a reality for more and more people, and YouTube is still the big kid on the block for online video. It’s going to be more important than ever for Google to keep users not only coming back, but keeping them on site for as much time as possible.
This other entry to Google’s list may be worth taking into consideration as well:
Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename âVeniceâ] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
I wasn’t expecting this to come until early March, since the month isn’t even over yet, but Google has gone ahead and released its monthly list of updates: 40 changes for February.
While we’ll take a deeper look into the list soon, it’s worth noting right off the bat that there is a Panda update listed. Late last week, in light of Panda’s one-year anniverary, I asked Google if the Panda adjustment from January’s list had been the most recent adjustment to Panda. The response I received from a spokesperson was:
âWe improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda.â
This was basically what the company said in January. Now, in today’s list for February, Google says:
“This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.”
So between January’s and February’s Panda news, it sounds like Panda is more ingrained into how Google indexes the web than ever before, and may even be pickier about quality.
Here’s the full list in Google’s words:
More coverage for related searches. [launch codename âFuzhouâ] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the âSearches related toâ section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what youâre searching for.
Tweak to categorizer for expanded sitelinks. [launch codename âSnippyâ, project codename âMegasitelinksâ] This improvement adjusts a signal we use to try and identify duplicate snippets. We were applying a categorizer that wasnât performing well for our expanded sitelinks, so weâve stopped applying the categorizer in those cases. The result is more relevant sitelinks.
Less duplication in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename âthanksgivingâ, project codename âMegasitelinksâ] Weâve adjusted signals to reduce duplication in the snippets forexpanded sitelinks. Now we generate relevant snippets based more on the page content and less on the query.
More consistent thumbnail sizes on results page. Weâve adjusted the thumbnail size for most image content appearing on the results page, providing a more consistent experience across result types, and also across mobile and tablet. The new sizes apply to rich snippet results for recipes and applications, movie posters, shopping results, book results, news results and more.
More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename âSuggestâ] Weâve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename âWREâ] Weâve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be.
Refreshed per-URL country information. [Launch codename âlongdewâ, project codename âcountry-id data refreshâ] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.
Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename âterraâ, project codename âImages Universalâ] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches.
Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms. [project codename âSuggestâ] We have a narrow set of policies for autocomplete for offensive and inappropriate terms. This improvement continues to refine the algorithms we use to implement these policies.
âSite:â query update [launch codename âSemicolonâ, project codename âDiceâ] This change improves the ranking for queries using the âsite:â operator by increasing the diversity of results.
Improved detection for SafeSearch in Image Search. [launch codename “Michandro”, project codename âSafeSearchâ] This change improves our signals for detecting adult content in Image Search, aligning the signals more closely with the signals we use for our other search results.
Interval based history tracking for indexing. [project codename âIntervalsâ] This improvement changes the signals we use in document tracking algorithms.
Improvements to foreign language synonyms. [launch codename âfloating context synonymsâ, project codename âSynonymsâ] This change applies an improvement we previously launched for English to all other languages. The net impact is that youâll more often find relevant pages that include synonyms for your query terms.
Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename âMangoâ, project codename âFreshnessâ] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness.
More organized search results for Google Korea. [launch codename âsmoothiekingâ, project codename âSokoban4â] This significant improvement to search in Korea better organizes the search results into sections for news, blogs and homepages.
Fresher images. [launch codename âtumericâ] Weâve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
Update to the Google bar. [project codename âKennedyâ] We continue to iterate in our efforts to deliver a beautifully simple experience across Google products, and as part of that this month we made further adjustments to the Google bar. The biggest change is that weâve replaced the drop-down Google menu in the November redesign with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page.
Adding three new languages to classifier related to error pages. [launch codename “PNI”, project codename “Soft404”] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as âsoft 404sâ), pages that return valid text to a browser but the text only contain error messages, such as âPage not found.â Itâs rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so itâs important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Portuguese, Dutch and Italian.
Improvements to travel-related searches. [launch codename ânesehornâ] Weâve made improvements to triggering for a variety of flight-related search queries. These changes improve the user experience for our Flight Search feature with users getting more accurate flight results.
Data refresh for related searches signal. [launch codename âChicagoâ, project codename âRelated Searchâ] One of the many signals we look at to generate the âSearches related toâ section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], thatâs a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.
International launch of shopping rich snippets. [project codename ârich snippetsâ]Shopping rich snippets help you more quickly identify which sites are likely to have the most relevant product for your needs, highlighting product prices, availability, ratings and review counts. This month we expanded shopping rich snippets globally (they were previously only available in the US, Japan and Germany).
Improvements to Korean spelling. This launch improves spelling corrections when the user performs a Korean query in the wrong keyboard mode (also known as an “IME”, or input method editor). Specifically, this change helps users who mistakenly enter Hangul queries in Latin mode or vice-versa.
Improvements to freshness. [launch codename âiotfreshwebâ, project codename âFreshnessâ] Weâve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
Web History in 20 new countries. With Web History, you can browse and search over your search history and webpages you’ve visited. You will also get personalized search results that are more relevant to you, based on what youâve searched for and which sites youâve visited in the past. In order to deliver more relevant and personalized search results, weâve launched Web History in Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Morocco, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Kuwait, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Nigeria, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Moldova, and Ghana. Web History is turned on only for people who have a Google Account and previously enabled Web History.
Improved snippets for video channels. Some search results are links to channels with many different videos, whether on mtv.com, Hulu or YouTube. Weâve had a feature for a while now that displays snippets for these results including direct links to the videos in the channel, and this improvement increases quality and expands coverage of these rich âdecoratedâ snippets. Weâve also made some improvements to our backends used to generate the snippets.
Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename âVeniceâ] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Improvements to English spell correction. [launch codename âKamehamehaâ] This change improves spelling correction quality in English, especially for rare queries, by making one of our scoring functions more accurate.
Improvements to coverage of News Universal. [launch codename âfinal destinationâ] Weâve fixed a bug that caused News Universal results not to appear in cases when our testing indicates theyâd be very useful.
Consolidation of signals for spiking topics. [launch codename ânews deserving scoreâ, project codename âFreshnessâ] We use a number of signals to detect when a new topic is spiking in popularity. This change consolidates some of the signals so we can rely on signals we can compute in realtime, rather than signals that need to be processed offline. This eliminates redundancy in our systems and helps to ensure we can continue to detect spiking topics as quickly as possible.
Better triggering for Turkish weather search feature. [launch codename âhavaâ] Weâve tuned the signals we use to decide when to present Turkish users with the weather search feature. The result is that weâre able to provide our users with the weather forecast right on the results page with more frequency and accuracy.
Visual refresh to account settings page. We completed a visual refresh of the account settings page, making the page more consistent with the rest of our constantly evolving design.
Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
SafeSearch update. We have updated how we deal with adult content, making it more accurate and robust. Now, irrelevant adult content is less likely to show up for many queries.
Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections.
Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a userâs city more reliably. Now weâre better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since Google first launched the Panda update. OK, who am I kidding? It feels like an eternity ago. But it’s been a year. How much work have you done on your site to comply with Panda in that amount of time?
Now that you’ve had a year to get to know it, how do you think Google has done with the Panda update? Was your site affected? For better or for worse? Do you think Google did a good job in making search results higher in quality and relevancy? Let us know in the comments.
Earlier this month, when Google ran down its publicly known algorithmic changes for the month of January, it mentioned what still appears to be the most recent change to Panda. It said:
“We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda.”
This change had actually been confirmed in January, but was spelled out one more time (as much as Google will in fact spell it out). Just to make sure this was in fact the most recent Panda-related adjustment, we asked Google. A spokesperson for the company responded: “As mentioned in January, we’re continuing to improve how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines.”
So, it sounds like the improvements are still ongoing, but no major Panda update since that particular announcement.
This list has been referenced plenty of times by myself and others discussing the Panda update, but as Google tweaks it, these things will continue to be important to keep in mind. Possibly even more than ever, considering that it’s so much more “integrated into the pipelines”. It’s the list of questions that provides “guidance” on how Google looks at the issue of search quality.
Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control is done on content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites donât get as much attention or care?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page youâd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
For a comprehensive look back (and forward) at the ongoing Panda saga, you may find our Panda page useful. It basically looks like our homepage, but is dedicated to Panda-related stories. Sure, in essence, it’s basically a tag page, but with our recent redesign, kind of takes on a life of its own. It points to all of our coverage, all the way back to the beginning. It includes the important info, as well as some of the more fun things, like Panda bread, parody videos and infographics.
Here are a few of the classic videos:
And speaking of infographics, Search Engine Land and BlueGlass put this one together:
It’s a well put-together infographic for sure, and provides a nice visible timeline of the various iterations of the Panda update, but it really only scratches the surface of the affects the update has had on the web – the struggles of webmasters who felt their sites were unjustly impacted for the worse. We heard a whole lot of stories over the last year. We covered some of them, but only a fraction. For some sites it was clear that their quality was lacking, and didn’t really deserve to be ranking over higher quality sites, but for others, we had to wonder if Google was making the right call. Some sites were able to recover (fully or partially), while many, no doubt, just gave up and started over. Some had to make huge adjustments to their entire content strategies.
No better example of this exists, than Demand Media, widely considered the poster child for the content farm concept – a concept, which ultimately led to the Panda update’s existence in the first place, and its early pre-Panda nickname the “farmer update”. Demand Media’s eHow property, specifically, was the main culprit, though other of the company’s properties were named from time to time in the visibility reports from third parties referenced in the above infographic.
Amazingly, the initial Panda update a year ago didn’t have any impact on eHow, but that would change in future iterations. It ultimately led to an huge shift in strategy for Demand Media’s content arm, which included the addition of a new user feedback system, the deletion of thousands of articles, and the reduction in new article assignments. All the while, the company has been expanding its social presence, and forming content partnerships to boost the quality and reputation of its eHow brand, which has a top 20 domain in the U.S. Demand Media’s properties get 100 million visitors per month.
The Panda update has had such an impact on this company that it still has to talk about it in its earnings calls. They just had one a couple weeks ago, and declared that the last Google algorithm update to affect eHow as in July. Panda 2.3, as its referred to in the infographic, was on July 23. There have been 5 Panda updates since then, so it would appear that the company has learned how to cater to it.
I’m not going to dig back through all of the Panda stories of the past year, because frankly, there are just too many of them. A lot of anecdotes, a lot of theories, and a lot of analysis. There’s enough to write a sizable book. Maybe one day.
One important thing to note, which is also referenced in the infographic, is that Panda is only one of over 200 signals Google uses. It’s an important one, but there are a lot of other ones. A lot of other important ones. These days, the big controversial Google signal is “Search Plus Your World“. There’s a lot of criticism about how its damaging relevancy. I’ve seen examples where Google’s “freshness” update has hurt relevancy. The lack of realtime search isn’t helping things either.
In a week or two, Google will likely give us a look at the changes it has made to its algorithm since that January list. Then webmasters and SEOs sill have even more factors to consider in the elaborate quest for gaining visibility in the world’s largest search engine as it continues to become more personalized to each user. Nobody said it would be easy, but these things are worth paying attention to.
Now that we’ve had an entire year to digest the Panda update, while being thrown new curveballs from Google along the way, how do you think Google is doing with search quality? Is Google showing more relevant results that it was a year ago? Tell us what you think in the comments .
Google announced the addition of upcoming concert dates to search results for bands and music artists, by location. The goal is for users to be able to see when they’re favorite music acts are performing somewhere within their own vicinity.
“If they arenât touring near you, the new results for concerts wonât appear, but if the band happens to be coming to your town within the next few months, you can see the concert dates listed under the bandâs official website,” says search quality product manager Kavi Goel. “You can then click on the bandâs official site to learn more or click on other web pages to learn more about the event or to buy tickets.”
“For example, I was searching for the [black keys] to listen to some of their music online,” adds Goel. “I wasnât explicitly looking for their tour schedule, but now I know I should keep my calendar clear on Friday May 4, since they will be coming back to the Bay Area, and I remember how great they were at Outside Lands last year.”
Google gets the data from multiple sites (though it doesn’t get specific, beyond the bands’ sites), but the the info appears under the result for the band’s official site. Google will link the info to event sites where users can find ticketing info and whatnot.
Google does mention that you can provide rich snippets markup to have your site included as a potential source of such info.
The feature is only available on google.com in English for the time being.
As you may know, Microsoft and Yahoo have a “search alliance” which sees Microsoft powering Yahoo’s organic search results, as well as migrating Yahoo Search Marketing to Microsoft’s adCenter.
The organic transition has already happened worldwide, and the ad platform transition is still in the process. In fact, the companies just announced that it’s rolling out in the UK, Ireland and France.
In a post on Yahoo’s Advertising Solutions blog, Yahoo is pointing to four recent studies from Efficient Frontier, Marin Software, Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) and Ignition One, and pulling out some points made in these about the momentum of the search alliance’s paid side:
Microsoft and Yahoo have begun the migration of Yahoo Search Marketing accounts in the UK, Ireland and France to Microsoft adCenter. This is, of course, part of the “Search Alliance” between the two companies, with Microsoft powering Yahoo Search, both on the organic side of things, as well as on the paid side.
The transition has been complete in the US, Canada and India on the paid side. For organic, it’s already complete globally.
UK advertisers will get access to the combined audience in April, Microsoft says. The company expects to ramp up Yahoo traffic to the adCenter platform by March 19. The transition is expected to be complete by the end of April (in the UK, Ireland and). The entire Yahoo paid search volume is expected to be transitioned to adCenter within two weeks of March 19.
“Yahoo! Search and France Bing will soon offer a competitive search offering that provides advertisers both quality audiences and opportunities to leverage strategic partnerships to efficiently deliver a strong return on investment,” says Microsoft’s Cedric Chambaz. “This means our advertisers are now just a couple months away from benefiting from the new joint audience. By then, you will be able to advertise on the full Yahoo! Search, Bing and their partner networks traffic through your adCenter campaigns.”
In the meantime, Microsoft suggests getting an understanding of the new editorial policies, adjusting your budget for increased traffic and adjusting your bid strategy to maintain competitiveness.
Chambraz says that in the coming weeks, the Microsoft Advertising blog will publish more in-depth recommendations.
Bing has launched “Linked Pages,” which allow people to link sites related to themselves in search results for when people search for the person’s name.
Pretty interesting, especially since Bing allows users to simply add links that they just like.
“Search for yourself,” suggests Ian Lin of Bing Social Search. “Try including your city, school, or employer â for example ‘John Smith Bing’ â to find more results and start linking. Links can include your blog, a personal website, organizations youâre associated with, activities youâre involved with or just sites you like. And as your interests and activities change, you can easily link more. So now when your friends search for you, theyâll not only see trusted results from Bing, but also the pages and sites youâve linked.”
You can add your links at bing.com/linkedpages. You log in with your Facebook ID, by the way.
“Help your friends show up better on Bing too,” says Lin. “Just search for a friend and link pages about them.”
“You have full control over what results youâre linked in,” Lin adds. “Simply follow the link notification from Facebook or go to bing.com/linkedpages to remove links you added or links your friends added about you. Once you remove a link, you are the only person that can go back and relink yourself to that page. And as a reminder, you have to give permission to Bing to start linking pages and can turn it off at any time by disabling the application in Facebook.”
“As the most popular social network, Facebook has given all of us an easy way to re-connect with old friends or schoolmates,” Lin adds. “Chances are theyâre using search to check us out to see what else weâve been up to. With Linked Pages on Bing, you can decide how you look to your old roommate, your first crush, or a new friend.”
The Linked Pages are US-only at first.
The whole thing is a pretty interesting strategy for people search. It gives people more of a say in what information comes up for them in web searches. Really, it appears to be Bing’s answer to the Google Profile, which of course is the center of a user’s Google+ presence. And as you know, Google+ is being much more integrated into Google search results these days.
At BlogWorld back in November, I sat in on a session led by Bing’s Duane Forrester, in which he explained that search engines have trouble connecting your various web IDs together to you as a person. I suggested that Google does this via the Google profile, which enables users to put the links they want associated with themselves on there, and connect them to their Google presence. I asked Forrester why Bing doesn’t have something like this, given that who you are is becoming such an important signal on the web, and many people have various accounts with different non-identifiable user names all over the web. Here’s a snippet from my previous article on this subject:
His response in a nutshell was that this isnât one of the things users say they want. Bing asks what features users would like to see implemented, and they try to implement them as such, when feasible.
Another difference between Microsoft (which owns Bing obviously) and Google are the philosophies around their products. He referenced recent comments by Eric Schmidt, saying that Google is all one product. Microsoft, on the other hand is comprised of all kinds of different products, and thatâs the way they view it. Googleâs view (at least by my understanding) is that its various products are more like features of one greater product (which is actually how Iâve tended to look at it myself, which is why I consider Google+ to really be a lot bigger than people typically tend to view it as).
Forrester talked about how they could use things like Windows Live ID, but then there are potential legal issues that could come about when trying to use that stuff.
By the way, Google’s privacy policy consolidation kind of plays into the mentality described above.
But it looks like Bing is kind of making up for the lack of a “profile” with this new offering. The fact that it has deals with Facebook and Twitter certainly help on the personalized connections front – the element Google is bringing to the table with Google+ and “Search Plus Your World”.
If Bing can keep increasing its market share, this whole approach will only gain relevancy to web users.
Bing’s Linked Pages are in beta. It appears that some have already been taking advantage, but you may not be able to do your own link associating just yet. Bing says to “check back soon”.
I’m sure by now you’ve all seen today’s animated Google Doodle. The multi-colored never-ending wave pattern honors Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who is best known for his studies on electromagnetic waves (and the fact that the unit of frequency, the Hertz, is named after him).
Now there is talk on the interwebs that Google got it wrong, however.
First spotted by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, the point has been brought up on Google’s Webmaster Central forum that the waves portrayed in the Doodle might not be correct to Hertz’s work. User Eric Hanson says,
Hertz described sound frequencies which are strictly sinusoidal in nature, for a company that has so much to do with the sciences, I wonder why the wave for today’ Google Doodle is clearly erroneous as it relates to the type of waves that Hertz described.
Another user, Zen Climber, elaborates:
Google’s doodle is made out of ellipse halves. To re-create Google’s doodle requires an infinite number of sinusoidal wave combinations. Same as it would be possible to create a periodic square wave using an infinite number of sinusoidal waves. All periodic wave forms have a frequency, which is represented in Hz (1/s) or Hertz. If you stop thinking here, the Google doodle would be a fair tribute to mr. Heinrich Hertz. However, february 22nd is not the celebration of periodicy, it’s mr. Hertz birthday! Heinrich Hertz clarified and expanded Maxwell’s Laws which described a finite number of electro-magnetic waves. Thus, i would say, the Google doodle is wrong!
From my terrible understanding of the science behind this, I’ll say that it appears they have a point. If they don’t both chastising me – I’ll just plead ignorance.
For their part, Google knows they are “making waves” with this one, posting this to their Google+ account:
We’re making waves with our doodle for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the German physicist who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves and whose research contributed to the invention of television and radio. For those of you who remember your high school physics, you’ll know he’s also the namesake of the unit hertz (Hz), which measures frequency. Visit the homepage to see it in action.
And for reference, here’s the Doodle in action:
Sound off! First, are the concerned science geeks right? Is Google’s Doodle wrong? And if so, do we care? I mean, the point is to honor the guy whose research paved to way for modern wireless communication. Plus, the logo has to look like the official Google logo (at least a little bit). And if you look closely enough, you can make out the letters (in their right colors) as the wave scrolls by.
Today’s Google Doodle honors German Physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who is probably best known for the unit of measurement that bears his name.
Hertz’s experiments in electromagnetism paved the way for wireless communications, as he was the first scientist to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves. His early research served as an expansion of the theory of electromagnetism proposed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1865. Maxwell proposed that light itself was a series of electromagnetic waves and this prompted Hertz to construct his own apparatus to generate electromagnetic radiation.
Hertz did this in 1886 with a radio wave transmitter using a high voltage induction coil, a condenser, and a spark gap.
But he also had to detect the waves, so he built a receiver to detect the oscillating current. This was visible through the sparks across the spark gap. In later experiments with electromagnetic waves, Hertz determined that the radiation’s velocity was the same as light’s velocity and that radio waves’ reflection and refraction was also the same as light.
The “Hertz,” a universal measure of frequency, was established in 1930.
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates what would be his 155th birthday, Hertz Died at the age of 36.
For this Doodle, we chose to create a simple and elegant homage for Heinrich Hertz, whose research into electromagnetic waves contributed to the invention of the radio, television and radar,â said the Doodle’s creator Sophia Foster-Dimino. âSo extensive were his experiments that thereâs a unit of frequency, the hertz, named for him â hence our wavy Doodle!”
Last year, Google, Bing and Yahoo teamed up to announced schema.org, an initiative to supporta a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages.
Schema.org got some rich snippet markup for music a couple months later, which servies like MySpace, Rhapsody and ReverbNation immediately started implementing.
Google announced today that the trio of companies have no launched a new video markup. Google product manager Henry Zhang writes on the Webmaster Central Blog, “Adding schema.org video markup is just like adding any other schema.org data. Simply define an itemscope, an itemtype=âhttp://schema.org/VideoObjectâ, and make sure to set the name, description, and thumbnailURL properties. Youâll also need either the embedURL â the location of the video player â or the contentURL â the location of the video file.”
In the post, he shares an example of what a typical video player with markup might look like.
“Using schema.org markup will not affect any Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds you’re already using,” says Zhang. “In fact, we still recommend that you also use a Video Sitemap because it alerts us of any new or updated videos faster and provides advanced functionality such as country and platform restrictions.”
“Since this means that there are now a number of ways to tell Google about your videos, choosing the right format can seem difficult,” he adds. “In order to make the video indexing process as easy as possible, weâve put together a series of videos and articles about video indexing in our new Webmasters EDU microsite.”
The relevant section on the Schema.org site is here.
Search Engine Strategies London is going on right now, and Googler Avinash Kaushik gave a keynote address that appears to have left attendees inspired.
State of Search’s Louis Venter has an extensive account of Kaushik’s speech. One interesting part is what he says about bounce rate. I’m not sure if these were Kaushik’s exact words, but Venter writes, “Bounce rate shows you how much you suck.”
One issue that’s been debated in the industry is how much of a signal bounce rate is in Google’s algorithm. If this is the message Kaushik is sending, however, it stands to reason that this is the message Google is sending. He is, after all, the digital marketing evangelist for the company, and the analytics guru.
Another highlight was the following list of “things you should measure for social contribution” as Venter conveys:
1) Conversation rate â if you talk does anyone care? The number of audience comments per social contribution will help measure this.
2) Amplification rate â 70, 000 people follow Avinash, his second level of people is over 1 million people. # forwards per social contribution is a key metric to cover too.
3) Applause Rate â # positive clicks per social contribution
4) Economic Value â sum of your macro and micro conversions and how they contribute to your overall picture
The FairSearch Coalition announced that it has expanded its presence into Europe, with the launch of a new site at FairSearchEuopre.org.
The organization says that as its membership has grown, it has realized that the concerns it was founded on are not limited to the U.S.
That is true. Its members (including Microsoft) operate internationally, and those concerns are largely about Google’s competitive practices. If you’re unfamiliar with FairSearch and its principles, I suggest perusing this page full of our past coverage, and watching this pair of interviews that look at both sides of the story.
Thomas Vinje, which has represented “a number of high tech and Internet companies” will join the coalition as its European Counsel. âFairSearch.org has an important story to tell in Europe, and I want to help them tell it,â he said.
âSearch is where people enter the Internet, looking for cultural and commercial information,” says Vinje. “In addition to general search engines such as Google, consumers use specialized search engines to help them find flights, hotels, restaurant reviews, shopping deals and directions. Companies that run these specialized sites are creative and some have tailored their listings to add consumer feedback or to help people find things locally.”
âWe believe consumers are entitled to choose the best specialized search engine in an informed manner on a level playing field,” he adds. “We do not want one dominant company surreptitiously to steer users to its own offering, which is sometimes inferior. Consumers deserve to understand what is going on, so they can decide for themselves.â
Yandex, the Russian search engine giant, announced a new social networking search program.
The announcement doesn’t mention Twitter specifically, but Search Engine Land is reporting that the search engine has made a deal with Twitter to gain access to the Twitter Firehose. Little has been said about how Yandex will actually used this, but reporter Greg Sterling says, Yandex “has discretion over what it uses and how that content is ranked and displayed.”
Bing has access to Twitter (and Facebook), and some have expressed intent to actually switch search engines over the whole thing. Could Yandex become a more significant global competitor with some more expansion? Beyond Russia, Yandex has sites in Turkey, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
Yandex’s new offerings include the roll out of a beta version of a “people finder” for its Russian site. Users can view all public profiles of a person with accounts on sites like VKontakte, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Odnoklassniki (popular services in that country).
“It is so much more convenient to see multiple profiles of the same person grouped together,” says Yandex Product Manager Alexander Chubinskiy. “Yandex does this grouping with care — only those profiles that refer to one another get grouped. Web users can choose if they want their profiles on different websites to appear in search results separately, or as grouped together. So, if one of your personal profiles refers to others, the icons of those websites on which they are hosted will appear on the same thumbnail. Conversely, the user can remove cross-reference from their personal pages so that each of the profiles appears in Yandex’s search results independently.”
Yandex claims about 61% of Russia’s search market share and 45 million monthly visitors to its Russian search engine.
The company says it processes over two million people searches daily. About half of them, it says, are to find information about celebrities, while the other half ask about someone’s friend, a contact, an employee or a partner.
Content+ put together the following infographic breaking down “the anatomy of content marketing,” which it calls the “heart of online success”. It draws on data from a variety of sources as cited at the bottom.
Some interesting stats it lays out:
– Word of mouth is the primary factor behind up to 50% of buying decisions
– Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors
– Companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links than others
– 37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable content type for marketing
Often when some new search product comes along, the blogosphere wonders aloud whether it’s a Google Killer. A recent example of this would be Siri. Google may have a response to Siri in the works, but nothing’s killing Google in the foreseeable future.
Back in 2008, a search engine called Cuil launched. 2 years later, its servers were shut down. It may not be dead completely, however. News comes today (via Bill Slawski), Google has acquired 7 of Cuil’s patent applications.
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results with a Variety of Display Paradigms
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results Using Tabs
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results Using Stacks
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results with Configurable Columns and Textual Summary Lengths
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results with an Associated Anchor Area
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results with Various Forms of Advertising
Apparatus and Method for Displaying Search Results with a Menu of Refining Search Terms
Cuil launched to a fair amount of industry hype, touting a bigger index and better relevance than competitors. They claimed an index three times the size of Google’s at the time, with 120 billion pages. The patents don’t appear to deal with any significant indexing methods, however, and instead focus on aesthetics. As you can see, they’re all related to the display of search results.
It’s worth noting that former Googlers Anna Patterson and Russell Power were heavily involved in the creation of Cuil.Patterson actually rejoined Google in 2010.
For more on Cuil, peruse some of our past coverage on it:
If you don’t want to see more ads from a certain advertiser in your Google search results, it appears that you can now eliminate them. At least some users can, for some ads.
It’s unclear whether this is a test or is a new feature in the process of rolling out, but some are seeing ads appear above search results that say “Block all domain.com ads.” Andrew Girdwood shows an example from the UK, with Netflix.co.uk, but Barry Schwartz points to one for the Netflix.com domain as well. When I get a Netflix ad however, I’m not presented with the option, so it seems the feature is currently not available to all.
Google started letting users block domains from their search results about a year ago, in an apparent effort to lend to increased search quality on a per user basis.
At the time, Google noted that it wasn’t currently using the domain blocking as a ranking signal, but that they would look at the data and see whether it would be useful in the future – kind of the anti-+1.
We’ve reached out to Google to determine whether this is a test or a feature roll-out. We’ll update accordingly.
Are you seeing the new feature on ads? Is it a good idea? Let us know what you think.
