Archive for the ‘News Update’ Category

Yesterday Google announced that they will be releasing Business Photos for Google Maps, which means users will be able to check out the inside of local businesses online. Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Consumer Products, said that Google Business Photos will be released in the U.S., Austrialia, New Zealand and Canada next week, and expanding to additional countries next month. Businesses will be able to either submit their own photos, or apply to have a Google-sponsored photographer come and …

Search Engine Roundtable released an article yesterday that explained a new feature: voice search. This feature appears to be available to a limited number of users on a testing basis on the Google search platform.

Essentially, the new feature detects whether you have a microphone enabled on your computer and whether or not the browser you are using will support that hardware. If all systems are a go, when you type a query into Google search, you receive an …

Bing announced yesterday that they are unveiling a new and improved user interface for Bing shoppers. With an enhanced homepage and product results page, shopping on Bing is now a much more dynamic experience that feels more like a catalog than a search engine.

Let’s first take a look at Bing’s new Shopping homepage.­­

As a shopper, the new homepage feels much more intuitive than searching …

In a blog post SEOmoz published today, “Great Content for SEO: Simpler than You Ever Imagined,” Rand Fishkin supplies readers with a huge relief: “a simple yet massively powerful process for building search-optimized, ‘great content.’” Fishkin lets us know straight out of the gate that while this may not be a new process, it is one that isn’t being used to it’s full potential by most organizations, so it could give SEO pros a competitive edge. And who …

Google announced this week that the updated version of the Analytics interface is now available to all Analytics users, allowing you to switch between the old and new versions as you please. If you haven’t heard any buzz about the new Analytics interface until now, the enhancements provide a streamlined layout with the ability to create multiple dashboards. You can also now create event goals and pre-filtered reports.

Let’s take a look at the new interface. Once you’re in Analytics, you’ll …

Today’s News Update covers an article by Erez Barak of Search Engine Watch: Social Has Crossed the Marketing Budget Chasm; Will It Drown Search?

So, why the cheese-ball 80’s cinema reference? Because according to Barak, there have been a few reports and surveys recently released that show small businesses leaning toward an emphasis on social media marketing instead of the “traditional” search marketing. The first survey he supplies shows …

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave with no Internet connection, I’m sure by now the news of Google’s latest algorithm update, dubbed Panda, is old hat. Perhaps you have also already caught wind of Google’s addition of the +1 button, which is the search engine equivalent to Facebook’s “like” feature. Furthermore, Google has created two new ways for searchers to block sites from their search results. Chrome users can add an extension to allow them to block …

When Google asked users to buy-in to Google Instant, the general consensus was that PPC and SEO efforts would not be affected (though some felt SEO might indeed be dead). Matt McGee of Search Engine Land wrote his initial thoughts the same day as the Instant announcement, and he placed his bet with Instant. He emphasized that Google made it clear there were rules in place to determine what counted as an “impression” to keep any huge shift …

As Rob Young announced in his post on Search Engine Journal, “AlltheWeb Closes Its Doors,” yesterday was the last day for Yahoo’s search site AlltheWeb. This is another step for Yahoo in completely moving away from search services, but also marks the closing of another third-tier search engine. While no one search engine seems to be able to gain significant ground against Google in terms of traffic and visibility, there are still many other third-tier options to gain some …

Today’s news update is in reference to an article written by Andy Atkins-Krüger called, “Yandex: Not Copying But Searching For Google’s Underbelly.” In his article, Andy discusses a recent conversation he had with Ilya Segalovich, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Yandex. The main purpose of Andy’s post is to uncover the similarities and differences between Yandex and Google as search engines and where Yandex may be headed in the future.

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