A recent article by the New York Times related a disturbing story. By treating your customers badly, one merchant told the paper, you can generate complaints and negative reviews that translate to more links to your site; which, in turn, make it more prominent in search engines. The main premise of the article was that being bad on the web can be good for business. We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even … [Read more...]

A few months ago, Google introduced AdWords Search Funnels reports. These describe click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion, with reports like Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. These reports are proving helpful for advertisers that would like a little more brand benefit from search advertising. At SMX Advanced last week, Vic Drabicky of Range Online Media talked  a … [Read more...]

Google announced today that it has completed its new web indexing system called Caffeine. The company claims it provides 50% fresher results for web searches than the previous index and is the largest collection of web content it's offered. "Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before," says Google software engineer Carrie … [Read more...]

Today, we're announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before. Some background for those of you who don't build search … [Read more...]

Hopefully some of you have seen one or two of our Search Story videos. We’ve been blown away by the creativity and brilliance of everyone that shared their own search story using the Search Stories Video Creator. It’s been a pleasure to see how all kinds of people use search to tell tales—whether silly, inspiring, true or imagined. It seemed like the next logical step was to ask the world’s best storytellers to get involved, so I … [Read more...]

The next time bird flu, swine flu, or any other nasty bug strikes, it'll be possible to get a significantly better idea of the effects worldwide.  Today, Google Flu Trends started processing information in eight more countries. Google decided to focus on the southern hemisphere - where it will soon be the winter flu season - with this update, and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, and Uruguay are the specific … [Read more...]

Google's new SERP design (you know, with the left-hand panel), has created more areas for webmasters to focus their SEO efforts on. While most of the options available here have been available for quite some time, they are now in the user's face and they will be used more. We  spoke with Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team, at Google I/O recently. He talked a bit about the new Google SERP redesign, and the opportunities it creates for … [Read more...]

Individuals who have invested in Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo might want to lower their expectations.  Bank of America Merrill Lynch cut its price targets on the companies' stocks today, with Google by far bearing the worst of it. Now, instead of $685, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has taken the position that Google will just hit $630.  That's a drop of more than eight percent, which is a very serious amount.  It wouldn't be surprising … [Read more...]