Tag: Search

Google on Duplicate Content Concerns Regarding Blog Posts on the Home Page

As you may know, Google’s Matt Cutts often posts videos on the company’s Webmaster Help YouTube channel, answering user questions. He linked to one today about duplicate content concerns and having blog posts on your home page.

The question was, “Hi, I’m noticing more people are using the API for their blog to pull the latest X posts up to the front page of their website. This gives a refreshing feel to the home page, but is this considered duplicate?”

Cutts responded by saying, “If you do something like this, my main advice would be not to put the entire blog post on the home page, but for example, if you have a paragraph – you know, something that’s sort of teaser – and then a link to the actual location of your article, that’s a pretty good way to do it.”

“If you go to the front page of my blog, I’ll have a whole bunch of different stuff there, but then there are always links that go to the original article for where it’s located on my blog,” he says.

Cutts does actually appear to generally show the entire posts on the main page of his blog, though you have to click the link to see all of the comments and everything.

“So, as long as you don’t have a completely duplicate blog post, where the whole things is completely there, it shouldn’t be an issue, but even then, Google for the most part, is able to disambiguate and say, ‘oh, this is a page that’s refreshing pretty often,’ and we have a pretty good idea that the actual content is linked to on these following pages,” says Cutts.

“It is very common for people to have their main blog, and have the full text of their posts right there on the main page, and that works completely fine. So those are very similar situations, and in general, people haven’t reported huge problems with that. So I think that’s perfectly fine to do.”

Long story short, as long as your posts link to the actual post pages, you’ll probably be fine.

June 21, 2011
Google Panda 2.2 Goes Live

Update: A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews, “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

A couple weeks ago, Google’s Matt Cutts talked about a new iteration of Google’s Panda update, which he said was already approved and would be hitting soon. The update has been commonly referred to throughout the search industry as “Panda 2.2”.

This version is expected to more heavily address the issue of scraped content, an issue that continues to plague the web and Google’s search results (the scraped content often ranks higher than the original) even post-Panda. Cutts is quoted as saying in a liveblog of an SMX Advanced session, “A guy on my team [is] working on that issue. A change has been approved that should help with that issue. We’re continuing to iterate on Panda. The algorithm change originated in search quality, not the web spam team.”

Google has not made any announcements or references indicating that the update has gone live yet, but webmasters are thinking it might have been released. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld thread, where there is a mix of webmasters claiming they have suffered from the alleged update and some that have recovered. One said, “I’ve recovered as of 36 hours ago. Day1 of recovery, traffic doubled, adsense tripled Day2 of recovered, 4 hours in, traffic has doubled again, back to my best levels of 18 months ago.”

Cutts said he didn’t know when Panda would be launched internationally (in other languages), and that Google has made no manual exceptions with the update, meaning all sites have been affected solely by algorithmic tweaks – none by hand. ”

It’s important to note that Google makes algorithmic adjustments every day, and sometimes even more than once a day. Obviously not all updates get the attention the Panda update has received, but you never know when some adjustment can impact your site’s rankings for better or for worse.

Cutts recently said, “If we think you’re relatively high quality, Panda will have a smaller impact. If you’re expert enough and no one else has the good content, even if you’ve been hit by Panda that page can still rank.”

You can still rank. Obviously you want to strive for quality, but this just shows that even if you lose a great deal of Google love at any point in time, you still have hope of getting back into its good graces if the quality is there. As Dani Horowtiz of DaniWeb discussed in a recent interview with WebProNews, there are a lot of adjustments you can make to your website (not all of which are directly content related) that can help you regain search referrals. Google has over 200 signals, and even if you have a lot of trouble gaining ground on one of them, there are a lot more areas where you may be able to improve.

June 20, 2011
Google AdMeld Deal Draws DoJ Scrutiny

Earlier this week, Google officially announced that it has agreed to acquire ad optimization firm AdMeld, and now, as expected it appears it will draw government scrutiny. Pretty standard really.

Bloomberg is reporting that the $400 million deal will be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice, citing two people familiar with the matter. Since all transactions over $63 million have to be reported for review by authorities, and this one in particular involves Google and advertising, this hardly comes as a shock.

The publication shares a statement from Google spokesperson Rob Shilkin, who says that the deal won’t hurt competition, and “The acquisition is designed to help publishers get the most from the rapidly growing display advertising industry, which is both complicated and incredibly competitive — the emergence in recent years of a huge variety of technologies for publishers, like Admeld’s, is great evidence of that.”

Earlier this week, on the Official Google Blog, Neal Mohan VP of Display Advertising wrote:

By combining Admeld’s services, expertise and technology with Google’s offerings, we’re investing in what we hope will be an improved era of flexible ad management tools for major publishers. Together with Admeld, we hope to make display advertising simpler, more efficient and more valuable, provide improved support and services, and enable publishers to make more informed decisions across all their ad space. These are all things our publisher partners have been asking us to further invest in. Of course, Admeld will continue to support other ad networks, demand side platforms, exchanges and ad servers, to yield the best possible results for publishers.

We believe that this investment will be an important step to help online publishers, and will further improve and grow the display advertising industry as a whole.

The investigation will reportedly aim to determine if Google’s dominance in search advertising could make this an anticompetitive buy, and will examine Google’s plans for expansion strategies related to the acquisition. The DoJ has not commented.

Meanwhile, an FTC investigation into Google’s broader search dominance and competitive practices is also expected to take place.

The DoJ recently approved Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software.

June 17, 2011
Should Google Display Click Counts on Ads?

Google is testing an AdWords feature that displays how many clicks an ad has received for a particular advertiser. It’s unclear how widespread the testing is, and whether or not Google will actually turn this into an available feature on a broad scale.

Nor do we know, if Google does make this widely available, whether it will be standard or optional for the advertiser. Affiliate marketer Vinny O’Hare was able to capture a screenshot (hat tip: Search Engine Land):

“I was up late watching tv when I saw a commercial for the Oreck air purifier and since I didn’t want to sit there for a half hour to learn the price I went to Google to see what they are going for,” writes O’Hare. “I was surprised to see the amount of clicks the advertisers has mixed in with the PPC ads on the results page. Knowing this can’t be a normal thing I took a screen shot of it. Click on the image to see it in full size. I am not sure Google wants to put out this info to everyone. I did a few more searches and it was on a few other searches but not many. It does help people doing ppc to see what their competition is actually doing.”

David Iwanow, co-author of O’Reilly’s Google Advertising Tools, commented, “The issue with any of this is that what is based on… is it local data, is it search data, is it ppc data, is it data from the beginning of time or just this month? The problem with any deployment like this is that it’s another black box that you have to try and explain to a client or deal with as an advertiser because you started a new campaign and people aren’t clicking on your ads because it shows you only have ever had 10 clicks…It’s another element that is going to potentially put advertisers in a box and make them weigh up the options of chasing a higher number again…. ie PageRank v3.”

There’s some interesting discussion going on about the feature in the WebmasterWorld forum. User “Tropical Island” writes:

I don’t know that I want my competitors knowing how many clicks I’ve been getting or how many I’ve paid for over the years.

I definitely think that it would encourage buyers to click on heavily clicked on ads. There is a reliability factor there as well.

LucidSW wonders if this could be some sort of extension to the +1 button. Google is using the +1 button on ads. While not the same as clicks, it would have a similar (perhaps not entirely the same) impact on ad clickability, one would think. If a large number of clicks are registered, some users might be more inclined to check it out for themselves.

LucidSW also makes the point that competitors knowing the number of clicks might be a “small price to pay” for getting more clicks.

In the thread, there is also a running theme that some users don’t understand that these ads are actually ads, and may assume that they’re regular search results, making the regular results appear less valuable, because they don’t display large numbers of clicks. Everybody in the thread so far seems to be in agreement on this, though personally, I have a hard time believing that this is the case for too many users, especially considering that they’re clearly marked with the word “ads.” Furthermore, the display in the new ads reads, “x clicks for this advertiser.”

O’Hare noted that he saw different things for the same keyword in Firefox and Chrome.

What do you think of the feature? Should Google make this widely available? Mandatory or optional? Tell us what you think.

June 17, 2011
Google Adds HTTP Header Support to rel= “canonical”

Google is now supporting link rel=”canonical” relationships specified in HTTP headers. Evidently this was heavily requested, as the feature is in response to webmaster feedback.

The syntax can be found in this document. Google Webmaster Trends analyst Pierre Far outlines an example on the Webmaster Central Blog:

To see the rel=”canonical” HTTP header in action, let’s look at the scenario of a website offering a white paper both as an HTML page and as a downloadable PDF alternative, under these two URLs:
http://www.example.com/white-paper.html
http://www.example.com/white-paper.pdf
In this case, the webmaster can signal to Google that the canonical URL for the PDF download is the HTML document by using a rel=”canonical” HTTP header when the PDF file is requested; for example:
GET /white-paper.pdf HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
(…rest of HTTP request headers…)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/pdf
Link: ; rel=”canonical”
Content-Length: 785710
(… rest of HTTP response headers…)

Far also notes that the canonical tag in HTTP headers might help when a site serves the same file from multiple URLs, such as a content distribution network, when the webmaster wants to let Google know the preferred URL.

The support is for web search only.

Last month, Google’s Matt Cutts discussed some reasons (which are few and far between) why Google might skip your canonical tags:

If you’re unfamiliar with rel=”canonical” altogether, watch our interview with Cutts from when it was first launched:

June 17, 2011
Google Launches “Me on the Web”

Google has released a new feature called “Me on the Web.” It’s a reputation management tool accessible from the Google Dashboard, underneath the Account details.

Google says the tool makes it easier to set up Google Alerts, and suggests search terms you may wish to monitor, and provides links to resources that offer information on how to control what third-party info is posted about you on the web. Product Manager Andreas Turk writes on the Google Public Policy Blog:

In recent years, it’s become easier and easier to publish information about yourself online, through powerful new platforms like social networking sites and photo sharing services. One way to manage your privacy on these sites is to decide who specifically can see this information, determining whether it is visible to just a few friends, family members or everyone on the web. But, another important decision is choosing how you are identified when you post that information. We have worked hard to build various identity options into Google products. For example, while you may want to identify yourself by name when you post an answer to a question in a forum so that readers know the response is reputable, if you upload videos about a controversial cause you may prefer to post under a pseudonym.

However, your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you — whether a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update. When someone searches for your name on a search engine like Google, the results that appear are a combination of information you’ve posted and information published by others.

As far as I can tell, there’s not a whole lot new going on here. Me on the Web simply shows you what links you have attached to your Google Profile, which you could also see by actually going to your Google Profile (and which you presumably already know, since you set them up in the first place), a link to Google alerts, and a couple of Help Center articles about reputation management. This is all accessible from the Google Dashboard, which there is a good chance you hardly visit. At best, it looks like just another access point for this info. I guess the alerts suggestions could be mildly helpful.

All of that said, Me on the Web certainly can’t hurt anything. If it makes a few more people, a bit more conscious of their online reputation, that’s not a bad thing by any means. It should also serve as another subtle reminder to Google users that they have Google profiles (which provide a landing page for those Google social products – Buzz and +1s).

June 16, 2011
Panda Victim Xomba “Dances on the Bones of Content Farms”

Earlier this year, we had a conversation with John Citrone, editor of the online writing community Xomba.com, which fell victim to Google’s Panda update. He gave us a preview of a redesign of the site, which had been in the works for some time prior to the update, as he told us the company saw the update coming and started preparing for it last summer.

“Around the first of the year, we began creating a new site design with new community networking features for people who want to express themselves in more than 140 characters,” he told us. “Our new design will reduce or eliminate our dependence on Google to bring us traffic through its search results; our focus is to build a community of people who want to network with each other and share their experiences and their passions.”

Today, Citrone tells WebProNews, ” Well, it’s official — we’ve relaunched with a new model and vision.” The company’s announcement comes with the title, “Xomba.com Dances on the Bones of Content Farms with New Site, New Direction, New Philosophy.” Here’s that:

The days of writing on content farms for fat payouts are over, and sites that continue to operate on that model are collapsing with a resounding “WTF?”

Not Xomba.

Long before Google decided to single-handedly wipe out content farms with the innocently named Panda update, Xomba was in the process of building a new site where users can share ideas, without fear of the corporate monolith search engine ruining the party. “Last summer,” says CEO Nick Veneris, “we began stripping low-quality content from Xomba while restructuring the site — from design to philosophy to purpose — to put the user, rather than the content, at the center of attention. This was nearly a year before anyone had even heard of Panda.”

“Too many sites, including the old Xomba, relied on substandard content to bring in revenue,” says Veneris. “We believe that method is dead, and we are ushering a new age of writing online. Xomba is, in a word, a social networking site for people who like to write — a place where people can share ideas in more than 140 characters, make friends and have a good time.”

With the new design, Xomba has introduced a follow system, easy-to-use writing templates, Author rankings and an educational component (called Xomba University) to help along inexperienced writers. Since relaunch, Xomba has seen an uptick of between two and three times the Article submissions, most of which are coming new users. And Xomba is already prepared to move — literally — to the next level, even considering investment capital to get them there. The redesign is just scratching the surface, as Xomba plans to introduce niche sites (sites focusing on a single topic) as part of the new Xomba publishing network.

It remains to be seen whether the changes will boost Google’s perception of content quality from Xomba, but the search engine has certainly been placing more emphasis on authors too. Last week, the company announced the rel=”author” authorship markup.

Google says it is experimenting with using data from this to help people find content from authors in search results, and will continue to look at ways it could help the search engine highlight authors and rank search results.

June 16, 2011
Yahoo Does App Search
Who says Yahoo doesn’t care about search anymore? The company has introduced two new ways to search for mobile apps: Yahoo App Search for the PC and the AppSpot mobile app for iPhone and Android.

On Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog, Yahoo SVP of Search and Marketplaces Shashi Seth writes:

With 425,000-plus apps in the Apple App Store and 200,000 apps in Android Market, we know finding what you want can be exhausting. And even more challenging: There are times you don’t know the specific name of the app, so you’re leaving it up to chance that you’re actually downloading the app you really want.

Using Yahoo!’s powerful search technology, App Search and AppSpot allow you to zero-in on any app by showing matching app titles with a full comprehensive description, price, overall star rating from users, and screenshots in one spot to help you with your decision: to download or not to download. For an enhanced mobile experience, Yahoo! AppSpot delivers daily, completely personalized recommendations of the mobile apps you should consider based on the apps you’ve downloaded.

@YahooSearchData
Yahoo! Search DataYahoo! Launches AppSpot and App Search – A Fun, Fast Way to Discover Apps You Love: http://bit.ly/kxJYXp (congrats @yahoosearch team!) 1 hour ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

Yahoo! Product Director of Mobile Search, Anil Panguluri, runs down the features of AppSpot:
Yahoo App Search on the desktop simply comes in the form of a new Apps tab on Yahoo search.

Obviously Yahoo is still interested in search, but last week, the company declared itself as “the premier digital media company,” citing its success in things like News, Sports, and Finance.
June 16, 2011
Google City Pages – Company Continues Cranking Out Local Features

Google has launched new city pages for Portland, Austin, San Diego, and Madison, but will continue to add to the list. City Pages are essentially a place users can go and see information about the best places to go in any given category in a city.

Specifically, you’ll be able to browse a list of businesses recommended by locals, by rating, category, and filter (ie: family friendly). In addition, it will show news about the Google Places community and upcoming events.

@GooglePlaces
Google PlacesIntroducing our new city pages: Find out about all things Google happening in Portland, Austin, San Diego and Madison: http://goo.gl/CHCfT 44 minutes ago via Tap11 · powered by @socialditto

On the Google Small Business blog, Cecelia Stewart of the company’s local marketing team writes, “Over the past six months, Google Places has ventured into Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Diego, California; and Madison, Wisconsin. Our goal for each of these campaigns was to celebrate the strong local business communities thriving in each of these cities. To do that, we’ve carried out a range of activities: hosted a bus tour to find the best barbecue in Austin, held a concert seriesshowcasing some of Portland’s favorite music venues, and met with thousands of small business owners to show them how Places can help them connect with customers.”

“And if you’re a business owner, we’ve got a special page just for you,” says Stewart. “Use it as your one-stop-shop to find out how to manage your presence on Google. Bonus: These pages have a fun set of video testimonials from small business owners using Places.”

That includes this video:

This is not the only local-related feature coming out of Google this week. They also launched the My Places tab on Google Maps. This is a way users can access a collection of the places they’ve starred on Google Maps, rated on Google Places, etc.

On mobile, Google is displaying icons on the front page for nearby places by category, such as restaurants, coffee, and bars (as well as a more button, which leads to shopping and other categories).

The company also launched a new feature that shows descriptive phrases in local search results, based on the most commonly used phrases associated with Places around the web.

June 15, 2011
Google on How Instant Pages Affect Analytics

Yesterday, Google introduced Instant Pages (among several other things), which is a new upcoming feature of Chrome that will instantly load a search result, when Google is confident that it is the one the user is going to click on. It does this by “prerendering” the page, or starting to load it even while you’re still on the results page, so it appears much more quickly when you actually do click on it.

The above video demonstrates this, and shows how much faster it can be compared to when you’re clicking from a normal Google search. It’s an impressive concept, but it has raised a few questions regarding analytics. Google told WebProNews a little about how it works.

We had a good question in the comments of a previous article we ran on Instant Pages. AL wrote:

I am wondering if this is going to impact our site analytics. If they retrieve the entire page – html, images, etc… – then would they not also trigger a visitor in our analytics, whether a visitor does or doesn’t visit our page?

If so, that would skew even the most basic of KPIs, including bounce rate which could be a ranking signal.

Another reader, Nick Stamoulis, added:

That’s a really interesting thought. Since the page is pre-loading, does that get recorded as a visitor? If the user doesn’t click on the link, will that impact the bounce rate?

As we had not seen Google address this directly, we reached out to the company to get some more insight. A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews:

Most website analytics solutions assume that one page load is equivalent to one user “impression,” or page view. Although google.com only issues the prerender hint when it is confident that it knows where the user will click, in some cases it will mispredict, resulting in a page that has appeared to load but was never actually shown to the user. Although this will happen relatively rarely, in some cases it is important for the webpage to know.

Chrome has implemented a new API called the page visibility API that, among other things, allows websites to detect when they’re being prerendered. You can learn more about that API at our Using the Page Visibility API article.

Analytics and advertising solutions will have to be updated to take account of prerendering via the page visibility API. In most cases the end site owner shouldn’t have to make any modifications to his page; the 3rd party will simply make a minor change to the javascript that is pulled into publishers’ pages. You should check with your analytics or advertising providers to check if their scripts are prerendering-aware.

Interesting, and helpful to know. I’m assuming that most major analytics providers will adjust accordingly, but it is definitely something to be aware of.

The Instant Pages technology is currently in the Chrome Dev Channel, and will be rolling out in Chrome beta this week, with stable and mobile releases coming in the coming weeks. Today, Google’s first Chrome OS Chromebooks became available for consumers.

June 15, 2011
Google Launches My Places Tab on Google Maps

Google announced the launch of a new tab on Google Maps, called “My Places,” which gives users a place where they can see the places they’ve starred on Google Maps, rated on Google Places or added to a customized map with icons and annotations through My Maps.

“Items are organized by date with your most recent activity at the top, and filters make it easy to sort and view only your maps, starred locations or rated places,” explains Google software engineer Hiroki Asakawa. “And of course, you can still create and share personalized My Maps through the ‘Create new map’ link.”

“My Places also simplifies your ability to manage the locations that make up your personalized maps experience,” adds Asakawa. “Using the drop-down arrow next to each location in your list, you can easily delete any of your saved maps, stars or Google Places ratings. These personalization changes will automatically be synchronized across all other Google properties including Google Places, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile.”

The My Places tab actually replaces the My Maps tab. To use it, you’ll obviously have to sign into a Google account.

The feature comes on the heels of some other local-related announcements from Google. This week, the company announced the addition of descriptive phrases to local search. The feature scours the web for the most commonly used terms used to describe places, and uses them to give users a quick glance of what places are known for.

Google also launched icons on the front page of Google for Mobile, which provide shortcuts to nearby places by category. There are icons for restaurants, coffee, and bars. If you go to “more” you can access things like shopping, ATMs, gas stations, etc.

June 15, 2011
25 Ways to Get Another Site to Link to Yours
This guest post was co-authored by Ken McGaffin and Susan Payton

There are many ways to get other sites to link to yours, which helps in boosting your ranking on search engines.

Here are 25 link-building methods you can use for your website.

1. Pay for a Listing

There are sites that will pay to host a link to your website, so if you’ve got the budget, this is your easiest method. This can be a great way of attracting traffic, but be careful that the site you’re advertising with follows Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Paid links fall within Google’s guidelines as long as they are designated as advertising. You should do this by:
- Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
- Redirecting the links to a page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
Fail to follow Google’s advice and you may adversely affect your site’s position in their search results.

2. Join a Trade Association

Oftentimes, trade organizations link to their members’ websites, so this is a great way to get more exposure for your site. A quick search will help you find many organizations that relate to the industry you’re in. Check to see that they have a member directory with links before joining.

Many trade associations now have a good online presence and as part of their benefits publish links to their member’s websites.

3. Get People Talking About Your Products

People might be talking about your products right now. Would you know if they were? It’s easy to set up a free Google Alert to find out any time someone mentions your company or links to your site. This might come in the form of a product review, blog post, social media update or question in a forum about your products.

It’s important to know who’s talking about you and respond to any questions or feedback (especially negative) immediately.

4. Join a Local Group

Just like with trade associations, local groups like Chambers of Commerce or business networking organizations will often link to their members’ sites. Find groups you want to be associated with and join.

5. Be a Great Case Study

By giving your opinion, taking surveys and connecting with the media, you can get a link to your site included in a case study or article. Let your opinions be heard, as it’s a great way to get some exposure online.

Companies are always looking for good case study material. If you can help your suppliers communicate the benefits of their products, then links can follow.

You likely fit into some category, whether it be as a young entrepreneur, senior entrepreneur, work-at-home parent or ecommerce specialist. Connect with others like you, and brand yourself as a representative of that group. Look for opportunities, such as the one that YoungEntrepreneur.com offers, to submit your story for more coverage of you and your company.

7. Submit a Tip

By providing useful information on your blog or website, visitors to your site will link to these tips and share with others. Also look for media leads like Help a Reporter Out, where journalists put out requests for tips or advice from certain types of people. You might get quoted in a
newspaper, magazine or website.

Submitting tips to industry journals or blogs raises your profile and brings nice links such as this one on The Woodworker’s Journal for Adam Rung.

8. Piggyback Breaking News

Pay attention to the news, and find ways to write blog posts or comment on relevant news. For example, after the news broke that the Clintons’ cat, Socks, had passed away, PetsPlace.com wrote an article on “10 Oddest Presidential Pets,” which was linked to by many other sites.

9. Become a Valuable Resource

Often, writers will compile a list of resources for an article. If you have a relationship with the writer or reporter, you might be included in that list. For instance, if you run a diner in Arizona, your restaurant might be included in a list of places to visit in an article about Arizona. At Wordtracker we set up an online marketing Academy that is packed with valuable advice – it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a month.

10. Offer a Discount

People love saving money, and they love sharing deals with others. Many bloggers specialize in finding coupons and sales and telling their readers about them, so make sure they know about your discount. During holidays, offer special themed discounts to improve visibility and links.

11. Make a Donation

While contributing to charity is good in and of itself, it can also provide good PR opportunity, as many organizations will link to contributors’ sites, or include them in a press release. You can issue a press release yourself about your involvement with a charity.

12. Support Your Industry

Whether you donate to industry organizations, attend meetings or just host a badge on your site, you may find that they respond in kind by hosting a link to yours.

13. Be Unusual

The more unique your business, the more attention it will get. Sites like CoolBusinessIdeas.com look for innovative companies to profile, and you can search for sites where you can submit your out-of-the-ordinary company.

14. Give an Interview

People make better stories than companies, so position yourself as an expert in your industry with journalists so that they will want to interview the person behind your company. Ask them to link to your website.

15. Start Hiring

Even posting jobs or internships that you have available can get you links. Human resources and hiring sites often link to other sites, so you might get linked to by dozens of sites from a single job description.

16. Attend an Exhibition

If you set up as an exhibitor at a conference or trade show, you may have the opportunity to get your link and company listed on the event’s website. Also offer to give quotes about your experience at the show to reporters.

17. Buck a Trend

If everyone else is suffering in a down economy but your company is thriving, ride this wave to get some publicity. Reporters look for anything that’s going against the grain, and that just might be your big break.

18. Publish Videos to Your Site

Video production is cheap these days, so create how-to videos, video blogs and interviews and host them on your site. Promote them through social media and email to get others to link to them.

Yeti Coolers are stronger than ordinary coolers. And they’ve made some videos to prove it. The videos attracted links from the spearfishing community at SpearBoard.com

19. Publish Videos on YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google, so it makes sense that posting your videos on here would drive traffic to your site. Not every video is viral-worthy, so focus on creating videos with useful content your customers will enjoy.

20. Position Your Products as Gifts

Bloggers and writers often compile gift lists for holidays, and your products and links could make these lists. Plan three months out to contact journalists about lists they’re working on in the future. So you should be pitching your best Valentine’s gifts in November.

21. Help People Make Money

Affiliate programs serve multiple purposes: first, they get other people to sell your products for you. Second, those people get to make money. And third, you get more links to your site. Set up an affiliate program that compensates people for writing about or linking to your site and making sales.

22. Offer Healthy Products

Health is still all the rage in the media, so if you sell products that are good for people, you increase your chances of getting media coverage.

23. Partner with a Local College

Your company might be a good partner for a local university. For example, you could offer special workshops or extend your company’s services or resources to the school. In return, you might be listed on the company’s website as a supporter.

24. Ask for Help

There are sites like MarketingProfs.com or Answers.com that allow you to ask for advice or feedback. It could be as simple as asking what web designers think of your website or whether your logo expresses what you want it to. You’ll get a link that anyone visiting that page will see.

25. Get Blog Reviews

There are thousands of blogs who review products. Identify the bloggers whose audience includes your target market and ask them to review your products. Be aware that some bloggers charge for their services, and you may also be required to give away a second product to one of their readers.

Use any or all of these tips to start getting more links to your website today!
June 15, 2011
Google Illustrates How Mobile Search is Growing

Google held an Inside Search event in San Francisco today, where it unveiled several new search features, including Voice Search for the desktop, Search by Image (based on Google Goggles) for the desktop, Instant Pages, and some new mobile features, including icons for nearby places and the ability to add suggested phrases.

Google also some interesting data about search habits.

“As much as technology has advanced, there are still many barriers between you and the answers you’re looking for—whether you’re juggling a clunky mobile keyboard or waiting for a website to load,” said Google Fellow Amit Singhal.

“The thirst for knowledge doesn’t stop when you step away from your computer, it continues on your mobile device,” he added. “In the past two years, mobile search traffic has grown five-fold. Mobile search today is growing at a comparable pace to Google in the early years.”

He showed that when you look at search traffic by day of the week, on the desktop, it drops on the weekend, while on mobile, it actually goes up on the weekend, while remaining significantly high throughout the week.

Singhal also showed that if you look at search traffic by time of day, desktop traffic rises from the early morning until around lunchtime, when it starts to go back downward into the evening. For mobile, it rises through lunchtime, dips slightly from about 1:00 to 3:00PM, then rises throughout the evening until about 11pm, when it drops off significantly into the wee hours.

The graph pictured at the top shows mobile search traffic growth over the past three years (red line) compared to overall Google search traffic growth over the same duration (blue line), only earlier in Google’s history.

I think the point is that mobile is a major part of search now, which means mobile browsing is a major factor in your online success.

Last week, we looked at a study from Google, showing the purchasing habits of smartphone users:

If you’re still not taking your mobile presence seriously, you’re behind. It starts with a mobile-optimized site, and can extend into increasing your visibility throughout popular mobile apps. While mobile is obviously huge for local business, people are clearly searching more from mobile in general, which means that if people are looking on the web for what you offer, they’re looking via mobile too. Don’t disappoint potential customers by offering a poor mobile experience, because chances are your competition has a usable mobile site.

June 14, 2011
Google Intros New Mobile Search Features

Google had several announcements today at its Inside Search event. Some of them brought features that have been available on mobile to the desktop (such as Google Goggles and Voice Search). Google also revealed some new mobile features.

For one, Google is displaying new shortcut icons on the Google for Mobile home page, to make it easier to find things nearby. There are icons for Restaurants, Coffee, Bars, and More. When you click More, you get other options like shopping, ATMs, gas stations, etc. This is also part of Google’s new Places homepage.

“On the results page, you’ll see a map with markers for your current location and places around you,” explains Director of Engineering Scott Huffman. “When you scroll through the results, the map remains at the top of the page and adjusts automatically to the listing you are looking at. That way, you can see the listing information while still getting location context from the map. Tapping on a result will quickly show you more about a place including reviews and other useful details. Discovering great places nearby has never been easier on your mobile phone.”

Google has also introduced a new way to build longer, more complex searches, with a feature that lets you add suggested phrases to the search box. The feature is already available on the Google Search app for Android and iOS, but now it will simply be available on google.com from the mobile browser. The following video illustrates how this works:

The new features are available for Android version 2.2 and up, and iOS 4.0 and up in 40 languages, globally.

June 14, 2011
Google Announces Instant Pages, Loads Results Before You Click

Google made several big search announcements today, including Voice Search for the desktop and Search by Image for the desktop (like Google Goggles on mobile). They also announced a couple new “instant’ features.

For one, at its Inside Search event, the company showed off Google Instant for image search, which will be available in the next couple months to all domains and languages where Google Instant is already available.

They also announced something called Instant Pages, which speeds up how quickly you can access your search result (provided that the top ranked result is the right one for you). This is a Chrome-only feature. Google explains:

Whether you’re typing, speaking, or using an image, entering your search is only part of the process. You’re not really done searching until you have the answer you’re looking for. But waiting for webpages to load adds time to this process – the average webpage takes about five seconds to load.

With Instant Pages in Chrome, you can skip the extra seconds waiting for a page to load and get to the answers you’re looking for faster with webpages that load instantly.

For searches when we can predict with reasonable confidence that you’ll click on the first result, Instant Pages technology will begin loading that webpage early so that by the time you click on the result, the entire webpage appears fully loaded instantly.

The above video demonstrates the feature in a side-by-side comparison with a normal Google search.

Google has maintained for a while now that speed is a ranking factor in its algorithm. Now, Google is helping the page load process along itself, to some extent.

The feature takes advantage of a prerendering technology, which is being baked into Chrome.

The technology is currently in the Chrome Dev Channel, and will be rolling out in Chrome beta this week, with stable and mobile releases coming in the coming weeks.

As most of Google’s new features are Chrome-based, it’s worth noting that the Google Chromebooks come out tomorrow.

June 14, 2011
Google Adds Descriptive Phrases to Local Search Results

Google has launched a new feature for Google Maps in the US and Great Britain. The feature displays a few words or phrases that attempt to describe what a place is known for.

The phrases that appear are those most frequently used on the web in describing the place. Google does not say exactly where they come from, but that they come from sources all across the web, such as reviews, web pages, and other online references.

Google says the terms can “help people quickly identify the characteristics that make a particular place unique. It’s like an opportunity to ask the business owner or its patrons ‘What’s good here?’ or ‘What do most people get here?’”

“For example, if I’m looking for a place to relax and enjoy a great cup of coffee this weekend, I can see at a quick glance that Cafe Grumpy could be the perfect spot,” explains Google software engineer Manjunath Srinivasaiah. “Besides being known for their ‘latte’ and ‘great coffee,’ they have a ‘no laptop’ policy — exactly what I was hoping for since I’d like to unplug and take a break from work this weekend.”

“Or if I’m planning to visit friends on the west coast and need to organize a night out, Rose & Crown could be an excellent choice given their ‘great beer selection’ and ‘trivia night’ games on site!” adds Srinivasaiah.

The feature could be useful, but Google doesn’t say whether this also picks up negative terms or has a mechanism to keep information current. What if a lot of people use “lousy beer selection,” to describe a place, for example? Will this show up? If so, it could be damaging for the place’s reputation. In terms of staying current, what if that same place upgraded their beer selection?

We’ve reached out to Google for additional information on this, and will update accordingly.

Google says the feature will be available in Place search on Google.com and Google Maps for mobile soon.

Update: A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews:

The terms selected by our automated system are intended to help users quickly identify unique characteristics about a place for which a business is commonly known. They are phrases commonly associated with the business from various sources across the web, and since we aim to avoid an editorial bias on this summary of terms, we’re more likely to leave the phrase up rather than remove it.

If a user wishes to flag a term for removal on legal grounds, however, our Help Center will guide the user through the process. We’ll review those complaints and take appropriate action when necessary.

Regarding freshness, the terms will be algorithmically updated on a regular basis, but we aren’t able to share additional details. We encourage you and other users to write rich and descriptive reviews about the places you visit, and we’ll continue working to refine our system to surface the most useful terms.

June 14, 2011
Google’s Matt Cutts on Why Amazon Often Ranks Well

If you search for products a lot, using Google, there’s a fairly good chance you’ve seen Amazon at or near the top of the results pages quite a few times. Someone sent a question about this to Google, and Matt Cutts used a Webmaster Help video to discuss the subject.

The question was phrased as: “Search for a physical product usually ranks Amazon #1, even though it may not provide the best user experience. What is being done to prevent large corporations from dominating search engine results?”

Matt’s responded by saying, “I think in general, not to call anybody out, but I think Amazon does have a relatively good user experience in general. I wouldn’t necessarily agree that Amazon always ranks number one for every physical product.”

“So typically when I do a search for a book, Amazon is up there, but if there is an official homepage for a book, it often ranks very well, and sometimes number one as well,” he continued. “The interesting thing is not every book has a home page. This is something that still surprises me. You’ll have a very savvy author. They’ll have a webpage, but they may not have a landing page or a page dedicated to that specific book. Sometimes it’s just a lack of savviness.”

He brought up one book that he had recently looked at, noting that no other content about it was on the web, other than Amazon, GoodReads, and Google eBooks.

“The best answer is, make sure there is an actual page for your product,” said Cutts. “In general, Google does try to figure out what are the official home pages whether it be for governments, universities, or states or whatever, and we try to make sure we return those when possible.”

“We are mindful of whenever users do a search, and then they complain to us, if they complain that they’re not finding an official homepage for a product, then that’s something that we do take into consideration,” he said. “In general, we do look at the number of links. We look at the content of the page, and if one particular website is able to get a lot of links, because a lot of people thank it’s a great site, then in general, usually it should rank relatively well, and I think that by itself isn’t necessarily a problem.”

Looking at this a little bit myself, I did find that a search for my wife’s book, “The Fireman’s Daughter” did return an Amazon result within the first few results (a band with the same name is ranking above it), while the landing page for the book from the actual publisher is buried 5 pages in. There are pros and cons to Amazon outranking this page. She makes more in royalties if the book is purchased directly through the publisher, but on the other hand, the Amazon brand also lends a bit of trust from the user’s perspective, as not as many people will be familiar with the publisher itself (this may be a different story with some more well-known publishers).

The question is not just about books though. Looking at it from the perspective of the average online store, the consumer trust factor likely plays a big role in Amazon’s rankings. Remember Google’s list of questions you could use to assess the quality of your site? It included something like “Would you feel comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?”

June 13, 2011
Could Botnets Inflate Search Engines’ Query Counts?

Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of the DuckDuckGo search engine had an interesting blog post over the weekend, talking about some weird traffic the site was getting. He points to a couple SERPs generated by what he deems to be queries from botnets.

In the comments, Eric Klein says one of them looks like its trying to boost ranking by “making it seem that there are a lot of requests.”

“Could they be trying to game their placement on search pages by hitting the search sites often enough to pretend to be meaningful?” he asks.

Weinberg responds, “Ahh, that’s a very plausible theory.”

“It’s known as ‘referral spam,” adds @TristanPerryIX in the comments. “It spams servers with HTTP referrers for two purposes:

1) Sometimes webmasters will (like you done :)) review the logs, and then click on their website. I assume these spammers are (wrongly!) assuming that this is ‘good’ traffic which might result in a sale/advert click.

2) Some websites have an automatic ‘these websites link to us..’ section or widget. Naturally referral spam could be used to game this section, thus getting a backlink (thus gaming the search engines).”

DuckDuckGo doesn’t save IPs, which is one of its selling points. It blocks them at the firewall level, Weinberg says, noting that this is dissociated from query data. “If we didn’t block the most egregious botnet machines and abusers, our machines would almost instantly be under water,” he adds.

“This discussion now makes me wonder if other search engines include this errant traffic in their query counts,” says Weinberg. “We work hard to keep them completely out because they would overwhelm our real direct queries #s and therefore distort our perception of progress. We also separate out API requests for the same reason, which now also makes me wonder whether everyone else is doing that too.”

It’s an interesting factor to consider, when you think about search market share.

Below, you can view a recent interview we conducted with Weinberg:

June 13, 2011
Google Replaces URLs with Site Names on SERPs (In Test)

Google is testing a feature in its search results pages that replaces the URL in a result’s snippet with the name of the site on which it appears. So, for example, a WebProNews article titled “Netflix Redesign Rubs Many Users the Wrong Way,” which has a URL that looks like this: www.dev.webpronews.com/netflix-redesign-2011-06, would just display WebProNews instead of the URL.

This was first reported by Alex Chitu at Google Operating System, working off a tip from David from Making Money with Android. It appears that even within the test, you users aren’t seeing this happen for every result.

According to Chitu, “David, who noticed this change, says that he searched for [madvertise] and ‘most of the results looked normal, with the website title, snippet and URL. However, two search results displayed the website name instead of the URL.’”

Image credit: Google Operating System

We’re still waiting to hear back from Google on plans for this feature and/or the extent of its testing.

As a user, I’m not sure this change would be an improvement. If you can see the domain name, you can tell what the site is, and sometimes the structure of the URL itself can give you an idea of what kind of page you’re actually going to be landing on, particularly if the result comes from a site that you’re familiar with.

I’ll be surprised if Google turns this into the norm for all search results, but it will be interesting to see if they roll it out on a broader basis .

It’s clear that as a general rule, people will complain when sites are redesigned. Some redesigns draw more criticism than others, and this would be just a minor adjustment to Google’s current design (which was broadly redesigned in the last year or two, and to plenty of criticism). Still, I can’t say I’ve ever seen anybody complain that Google shows URLs in search results, and I’d bet that some will complain if they’re removed.

What do you think? Should Google change the URLs to site names?

Update: A reader points to a similar test in Italy, where Google is testing both the URL and the site name together, which makes more sense in my opinion. Read the comments below.

June 13, 2011
Google Looks at Purchasing Habits of Smartphone Users

Google released some interesting stats this week about the purchasing habits of smartphone users, or more specifically, smartphone searchers. This is in the US only, but the study looks at how smartphones are used on a daily basis, how people are multitasking, the typical searches made from smartphones, how users are using devices to help make their purchase decisions, and whether or not they’re receptive to mobile ads.

This is all good stuff to keep in mind for any business, as the world grows more mobile, and more connected.

“Nearly 9 out [of] 10 smartphone owners use their devices throughout the day for a variety of activities ranging from using search engines to find information, to watching videos,” says Selina Rennie of Google’s Agency Team. “They have become so entrenched in our lives that 43% of smartphone owners say that they would prefer to give up beer instead of internet access on their smartphone.”

“Unsurprisingly, using the smartphone is an incredibly popular time-killer with nearly 60% claiming to use their smartphones while waiting, for example, in a queue at a supermarket or for a bus,” adds Rennie. “Smartphone users are also becoming increasingly reliant on their devices for shopping assistance with 70% of smartphone consumers using their devices while shopping in-store.”

Here’s a look at where smartphones are being used:

It’s also worth noting what consumers are doing while they’re using their smartphones, whether that be while consuming other media or doing other things in general:

The study suggests that 82% notice ads on their smartphones, and half of them take action. “However, it is not only mobile ads prompting action,” notes Rennie. “Mobile search is often prompted by cross media exposure. Over two thirds of smartphone owners have carried out a search on their smartphone as a result of traditional media.”

A few other points of note (as determined by the study):

– Search is the most visited site from smartphones at 77% compared to 65% for social networking sites and 46% for retail sites.

– Mobile searchers want their information “quick and convenient”.

– The most common types of info users are looking for using search engines on smartphones are:

1. News (57%)
2. Dining/restaurant information (51%)
3. Navigational (51%)
4. Entertainment (49%)
5. Shopping (47%)

In case you’ve at all doubted the significance of mobile to local business, consider that 95% of smartphone users have looked for local information, according to the study. Out of the local information seekers, 77% have contacted a business by either calling or visiting, and 44% have purchased either online or at a physical store. Nearly all of them take action within a day.

The entire study can be found here (pdf).

June 11, 2011
Google Adds New Product Ads for Mobile

Google has launched two styles of product ads for mobile that have previously been available for the desktop: product extension ads and product local ads.

“Product Extension Ads enable you to easily display relevant product images and details directly in your mobile search ads,” explains Google Mobile Product ads Surojit Chatterjee. “Since many mobile users are searching for product information while they are in a store or on the go, including this type of information in your ads can help you stand out by highlighting the products you carry and help drive mobile conversions for specific products on your site. Product Extension Ads are enabled by linking your Google Merchant Center account to your AdWords campaign. When your mobile search ad appears, and your Google Merchant Center account contains products that are relevant to the searcher’s query, Product Extensions show the product images, titles, and prices of your products in a plusbox under your ad.”

“An enhancement to Product Extension Ads, Product Local Ads show the actual availability of products in local stores along with the product image and price all within the mobile ad,” added Chatterjee. “This ad format takes advantage of one of the things that makes mobile uniquely powerful, the phone’s greater location aware capabilities. That’s why we’re especially excited to bring Product Local Ads to mobile where location is even more relevant to user’s searches. Now advertisers can better show what they have in-stock to users who are nearby and ready to buy their products. With the same Smartphone User Study showing that 54% of smartphone shoppers use their phones to locate a retailer and 34% search for a store’s product inventory, Product Local Ads help mobile shoppers complete their goals and can drive more in-store purchases.”

The Product Local ads can be shown based on location signals, which include local search queries and device location (when users have opted into share it). They require the advertiser to submit their local product inventory through the Google Merchant Center.

According to Google, 79% of smartphone users use their phones to help with shopping activities, such as finding more product info, comparing prices or locating a retailer.

June 9, 2011