November 2013 Search Market Share Frozen, Overall Query Volume Down

It’s very cold in many parts of the US right now. And just like much of the country, the relative market share positions of the major search engines are essentially frozen. November search market share data from comScore reflects virtually no change from last month.

Google lost a fraction of a percent and Yahoo gained a miniscule tenth of a point, as did AOL. Bing and Ask.com were flat.

ComScore says that overall search query volume in November was down across the board, by a surprising 6 percent. Ask was off by 7 percent and AOL by 3 percent. Otherwise the “big three” were all off by the same 6 percent. That’s curious going into the holiday shopping season.

It may be that some of those queries migrated to mobile. The numbers above do not reflect mobile search market share.

According to StatCounter mobile now drives about 22 percent of global internet traffic and nearly 19 percent in the US. In terms of US mobile search share StatCounter offers the following breakdown:

Google — 88.8 percentYahoo — 7.7 percentBing — 3.2 percentAll others — 0.3 percent

Earlier today we reported results of a holiday shopping survey conducted by Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey. The survey found that just over 63 percent of smartphone owners used mobile search, but 61 percent said it was “harder” than on the PC.

Survey: Majority Use Mobile Search, Find It “Harder Than PC”

In the cross-platform, post-PC era, the big question the search industry faces is whether and how PC search behaviors are extending into mobile. The short answer is they are.

Google has sponsored research that shows majorities of smartphone owners use search engines�(74 percent). Yet mobile search, even voice-enabled search, is an awkward version of its PC sibling and people generally find it “harder” than using search online.

Those are some of the takeaways from questions in the recent holiday shopping survey conducted by Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey.

When conducting online research with your smartphone, which of the following best describes your behavior?�

I use a search engine just as on the desktop — 52.5 percentI don�t use my smartphone for online research — 21.1 percentI rely on mobile search and apps equally — 10.6 percentI use search when an app can�t find what I am looking for — 8.3 percentI primarily use mobile apps — 7.6 percent

(Numbers may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.)��

The survey found that just over half (52.5 percent) the mobile audience used search engines “just as on the desktop.” However overall it appears that more than 63 percent engage with mobile search to some degree (frequency is uncertain). Beyond the 52 percent, 10.6 percent said they “use search and apps equally.” The population that had replaced search with apps turns out to be relatively small.

A substantial number of respondents (21 percent), however, said they didn’t use their smartphones at all “for online research.”

Which of the following statements about mobile search best expresses your experience?�

Searching on a mobile phone is harder than on the PC — 61.4 percentSearching on a mobile phone is easier because you can use voice search –�18.5 percentI prefer using apps to search the web on my mobile phone — 10.6 percentI don’t use search at all on my mobile phone — 9.6 percent

(Numbers may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.)�

While the majority of smartphone users are tapping search on their mobile phones, most people find it “harder than on the PC” (61 percent). Fewer than 20 percent said that voice search made mobile searching easier. And just over 10 percent said they preferred using apps to mobile search engines.

The survey was conducted on November 21-22, 2013 by Marketing Land and�SurveyMonkey. Results were collected with a 95 percent confidence interval and a 5 percent margin of error from more than 400 Americans using�SurveyMonkey Audience.

Summary Of Findings & Complete Survey Data

Related coverage of the survey results:�

Survey: 3 Out 4 Consumers Now Notice Retargeted AdsSurvey: Majority Use Smartphones In Stores, Not For E-CommerceBrand Bias: 70% Of Consumers Look For Known Retailers When Doing Product Searches

November 2013 Search Market Share Frozen, Overall Query Volume Down

It’s very cold in many parts of the US right now. And just like much of the country, the relative market share positions of the major search engines are essentially frozen. November search market share data from comScore reflects virtually no change from last month.

Google lost a fraction of a percent and Yahoo gained a miniscule tenth of a point, as did AOL. Bing and Ask.com were flat.

ComScore says that overall search query volume in November was down across the board, by a surprising 6 percent. Ask was off by 7 percent and AOL by 3 percent. Otherwise the “big three” were all off by the same 6 percent. That’s curious going into the holiday shopping season.

It may be that some of those queries migrated to mobile. The numbers above do not reflect mobile search market share.

According to StatCounter mobile now drives about 22 percent of global internet traffic and nearly 19 percent in the US. In terms of US mobile search share StatCounter offers the following breakdown:

Google — 88.8 percentYahoo — 7.7 percentBing — 3.2 percentAll others — 0.3 percent

Earlier today we reported results of a holiday shopping survey conducted by Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey. The survey found that just over 63 percent of smartphone owners used mobile search, but 61 percent said it was “harder” than on the PC.

The Test Continues: Which Shopping Search Engine Finds The Best Price For A Blu-Ray?

It’s time for our second test of how well Google Shopping and other shopping search engines find the best prices on products. For this installment, what’s the lowest price from a major retailer for a copy of “Red 2″ in the Blu-ray, DVD and digital download combo pack?

Is The Featured Price The Lowest Price?

In this test, as with our last one, we’re trying to see if the “featured price” is better than the low price that can be found on each service, plus who finds the lowest price overall. Here’s the summary chart of our findings, where PriceGrabber did best, with Google just barely behind by only $0.03:

It may sound odd, but shopping search engines don’t always feature the best price. Sometimes this is down to the search engine choosing to feature a merchant with a better overall trust rating rather going with the cheapest. It can also be due to some search engines allowing merchants to buy their way into a featured position. Sometimes it happens because the search engines just do a poor job of showing results.

Deciding which is the “featured” listing for each shopping search engine can be tricky, but we’ll make the best choice we can and explain why we did. We’re also only going with prices from major, known retailers. There might be better deals listed, but sticking with prices from major retailers helps normalize across the board and reflects how online shoppers actually purchase, as our recent survey shows:�Brand Bias: 70% Of Consumers Look For Known Retailers When Doing Product Searches

For more background, also be sure to see the first in this series:�The Test Begins: Do Google Shopping & Other Shopping Search Engines Give You The Best Deals?

Searches were conducted yesterday, December 11, between 5pm to 6pm ET. As product listings often change, what’s presented in this article differ from what you see now.

Google Does Well

Usually, the shopping results box on Google looks as shown below, where several merchants are listed, with an image associated with each merchant’s listing:

However, a search for “red 2 blu ray” brought up a less-commonly seen box. This one was focused around the product, providing more details about it (you can click to enlarge the image below and several others in this story):

In fact, only one merchant was directly listed in the box as selling the product, Barnes & Noble, at $19.99. That’s the featured price, but there might be a lower price for those who know how to explore Google Shopping more deeply. To do that, they have to click on the�”View all stores and prices” link under the Barnes & Noble offer. Those who do get this page:

Now, it gets confusing. The top listing on that page is from Barnes & Noble, but the base price is $27.99, not $19.99. Under it is another Barnes & Noble listing with a $19.99 price. What’s happening?�Barnes & Noble sells direct to consumers, but it also allows other merchants to sell through its Barnes & Noble Marketplace.

Should the marketplace price be counted as coming from a major retailer? That can be argued both ways. But as Barnes & Noble seems to stand behind marketplace sellers, that’s one reason why we chose to count it as the B&N price. Also, in our previous test, we counted a similar Amazon product as a low-price for search engine Nextag, even though that product was being sold by a third-party through Amazon, rather than by Amazon directly.

Are there any lower prices from a major retailer for this product available through Google Shopping? Not that we could spot, after resorting the list by price.

In summary, the featured price was $19.99, and that matched the low price.

PriceGrabber: Beats Google By $0.03 & More Trust

Next up, PriceGrabber, where a search for “red 2 blu ray” brought up a listing for the product and promised a low price of $19.96:

Going in to learn more brought up this page:

In this case, we get the product offered by Amazon and WalMart, both major retailers and neither of which were represented at Google. That’s because they probably chose not to advertise in Google’s shopping listings for this product while they did choose to advertise at PriceGrabber. In both places, as with all major shopping search engines, only merchants who pay appear in listings.

So what’s PriceGrabber’s featured price? There’s a strong argument that it should be the one from Amazon, which is $22.99, because it’s first on the list. However, because the list is so small (only two merchants), it seems reasonable that a consumer would evaluate both. PriceGrabber also featured a $19.96 price before the drill-down into listings, which makes it further likely a consumer would seek that out. These factors, along with having counted the lower Barnes & Noble marketplace price in Google’s favor, tipped the balance toward considering $19.96 to be the featured price.

It’s also noteworthy that PriceGrabber, unlike Google, found a low price that’s unlikely to cause any consumer second-guessing. Some might still wonder if they can trust a Barnes & Noble “marketplace” merchant, but few likely would have that same concern over Walmart.

The Find: Hard To Spot The Bargain

We didn’t test shopping search engine The Find last time, because it hadn’t been cited in another test we were comparing to. But the company got in touch after our first article, asked to be included in the future, so we added it this time. How did it do? Lots of results, some we wanted, some not:

By default, the sort is “Best Results,” with the first match being the film “Red Tails” rather than “Red 2,” which isn’t really a “best” match. The first match for Red 2 on the list is from Amazon, with a $20 price. That turned out to be $22.99 when we actually went to the Amazon page.

Changing the sorting to “Lowest Price” wasn’t very helpful, because that caused all the copies of Red 2 originally shown to be buried behind other movies like Red Heat or Legally Blonde 2:

To find the lowest price, we had to carefully scan the first page of results with the “Best Results” sort to see if there was anything better than Amazon. Walmart was listed at $20 — which turned out to be the rounded-up price of $19.96 offered on the Walmart site.

Since Amazon was the first on the list, that was considered to be the featured price for The Find, though the $22.99 Amazon was actually charging was used, rather than the $20 that The Find had displayed.

Bing: Are These Really Shopping Results?

As for Bing, it had promised when it killed its dedicated Bing Shopping search engine that its new product ads or non-ad product listings with “rich captions” would do the job of showing product results better. I still find that unconvincing:

None of the ads (that the arrow at the top points to) appear with prices or images, in the way that shopping ads appear at the other services.

“Rich captions” do appear with pricing information next to two listings in the main results, Best Buy first at $22.99 and Walmart at $19.96. Amazon lacks them, perhaps because Amazon hasn’t implemented them.

I think the rich captions are easy to miss. There also remains no way to sort through only shopping results to see if these are the best deals of all that Bing knows about.

Still, for this test, we do have some prices to count, unlike the last test. In this case, the Best Buy price that comes first will be counted as the “featured” price while the Walmart price further down will be the low price.

Nextag, Shopzilla: Complete Fail

Next to … Nextag. Where, it turns out, the product isn’t apparently offered at all:

The product didn’t appear anywhere on the first page of results. Nor did it appear for a search on “red 2 blu ray” or “red 2 dvd.” Either Nextag doesn’t carry listings for it, or Nextag’s relevancy is so terrible that it can’t ferret out the product. Either way, it fails this test.

The exact same situation happens with Shopzilla:

Google Leads So Far

Two tests aren’t enough to draw conclusions about overall performance. Twenty tests might not be enough, nor will we be doing that many, as these are so time consuming to perform. That’s why there’s no headline on this story, or on our previous one, declaring any service to be the best.

Having said that, from our limited testing, for those who are looking for the best prices on products from major merchants, Google is doing the best so far.�Here’s the summary chart:

You can see for each search engine whether it found the lowest price for a particular product, not just within its own listings but across those from major merchants overall. You can also see the difference between the featured price shown and the lowest price, for those who spend time digging further into the listings.

Since Google has come under fire with accusations that it features prices that are above the lowest prices it knows about, it seemed fair to rate these search engines as having a “win” if they found the lowest price AND that matched the featured price.

On the second test, Google found the second lowest price — but that was so close to the lowest price (a $0.03 difference) that it seemed reasonable to also count this as a win, along with PriceGrabber’s win. On the first test, Google was the clear winner.

Will Google continue to do well? Tune in next week for our third test.

Related ArticlesConsumer Watchdog Says Google Shopping Costs Consumers, Complains To FTCThe Searcher�s Guide To Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Holiday ShoppingBrand Bias: 70% Of Consumers Look For Known Retailers When Doing Product SearchesThe Test Begins: Do Google Shopping & Other Shopping Search Engines Give You The Best Deals?

Brand Bias: 70% Of Consumers Look For Known Retailers When Doing Product Searches

New research from Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey shows that consumers have a definite brand bias when it comes to searching for products online.

According to data from a survey conducted last month, almost 70 percent of US consumers said they look for a “Known retailer” when deciding what search results they click on. That was the most popular response, followed by “Free shipping” and then “Discount or sale offer.”

Respondents were able to choose up to three answers to the question, What is most important in helping you decide which results to click on in a search engine search?

The top two replies were the only ones chosen by more than 50 percent of the 400+ consumers that took the survey. Rounding out the top five are “Image and price is shown” and “Review stars.”

Here’s the full chart showing each response:

The survey was conducted on November 21-22, 2013 by Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey. Results were collected with a 95 percent confidence interval and a 5 percent margin of error from more than 400 Americans using SurveyMonkey Audience.

Where Consumers Search For Gifts: Google & Amazon

We also asked the group of consumers which sites they plan to use this year when searching online for gifts. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google and Amazon were the runaway choices at 67 percent and 66 percent, respectively. They were the only two sites to be named by more than a quarter of consumers. Ebay ranked third with 24 percent.

But surprising to me, at least, was the strong showing of both Groupon and Etsy. Groupon was named by 13 percent of respondents and Etsy by almost 12 percent, meaning both sites scored higher than Pinterest and Bing. Shopping comparison engines Shopzilla, Nextag, Pricegrabber and Bizrate were the lowest scorers.

Over on Marketing Land today, Greg Sterling shares some of the survey data regarding smartphone use and mobile shopping, as well as what consumers say they’re looking for in a mobile shopping website, in his article Survey: Majority Use Smartphones In Stores, Not For E-Commerce.

Summary of Findings & Complete Survey Data

Related coverage of the survey results:�

Survey: 3 Out 4 Consumers Now Notice Retargeted AdsSurvey: Majority Use Smartphones In Stores, Not For E-CommerceSurvey: Majority Use Mobile Search, Find It �Harder Than PC�The Impact of Mobile on Holiday Shopping�byEli Schwartz at SurveyMonkey

Brand Bias: 70% Of Consumers Look For Known Retailers When Doing Product Searches

New research from Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey shows that consumers have a definite brand bias when it comes to searching for products online.

According to data from a survey conducted last month, almost 70 percent of US consumers said they look for a “Known retailer” when deciding what search results they click on. That was the most popular response, followed by “Free shipping” and then “Discount or sale offer.”

Respondents were able to choose up to three answers to the question, What is most important in helping you decide which results to click on in a search engine search?

The top two replies were the only ones chosen by more than 50 percent of the 400+ consumers that took the survey. Rounding out the top five are “Image and price is shown” and “Review stars.”

Here’s the full chart showing each response:

The survey was conducted on November 21-22, 2013 by Search Engine Land and SurveyMonkey. Results were collected with a 95 percent confidence interval and a 5 percent margin of error from more than 400 Americans using SurveyMonkey Audience.

Where Consumers Search For Gifts: Google & Amazon

We also asked the group of consumers which sites they plan to use this year when searching online for gifts. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google and Amazon were the runaway choices at 67 percent and 66 percent, respectively. They were the only two sites to be named by more than a quarter of consumers. Ebay ranked third with 24 percent.

But surprising to me, at least, was the strong showing of both Groupon and Etsy. Groupon was named by 13 percent of respondents and Etsy by almost 12 percent, meaning both sites scored higher than Pinterest and Bing. Shopping comparison engines Shopzilla, Nextag, Pricegrabber and Bizrate were the lowest scorers.

Over on Marketing Land today, Greg Sterling shares some of the survey data regarding smartphone use and mobile shopping, as well as what consumers say they’re looking for in a mobile shopping website, in his article Survey: Majority Use Smartphones In Stores, Not For E-Commerce.

Summary of Findings & Complete Survey Data

Related coverage of the survey results:�

Survey: 3 Out 4 Consumers Now Notice Retargeted AdsSurvey: Majority Use Smartphones In Stores, Not For E-CommerceSurvey: Majority Use Mobile Search, Find It �Harder Than PC�The Impact of Mobile on Holiday Shopping�byEli Schwartz at SurveyMonkey

This Holiday Shopping Season, Searching Google For “Pearl Necklace” Leads To NSFW Surprise

Those using Google to find the perfect pearl necklace for their significant other this holiday season may be in for a rude surprise. If you search for “pearl necklace,” one of the top results�is a definition from Urban Dictionary, which is completely not safe for work.

A reader sent us an email about the shock she felt when she saw this search result appearing at the top of Google Canada results (on Google.com, we see it in position two). Here is a screen shot of the result, with the snippet blocked out.

This does not come up on the first page when searching on Bing for [pearl necklace].

Last year, Google introduced a change so that adult content wouldn’t appear even if its SafeSearch wasn’t switched on, unless people were clearly explicitly seeking such content by using more specific terms. This, in fact, prevented an Urban Dictionary page from showing before. Our stories below have more about this:

�Spreading Santorum� Drops At Google; New Site Keeps Anal Sex Definition At Number OneSantorum�s Changing �Google Problem� � & Search Engine Land � Make The Rachel Maddow Show

So is this algorithm broken?

We have reached out to Google for a comment on this and will update the story as soon as we hear back.

Postscript on December 12th at 9am EDT: Google has still not responded to our request for a comment but it appears that sometime yesterday afternoon, Google has dropped urbandictionary.com’s search result from this set.

Related Articles�Spreading Santorum� Drops At Google; New Site Keeps Anal Sex Definition At Number OneShould Rick Santorum�s �Google Problem� Be Fixed?How Rick Santorum Is Making His �Google Problem� WorseAfter Santorum�s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google ProblemWhy Does Microsoft�s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google ProblemBing & Google: �Spreading Romney� Ranking Tops For �Romney� Is Normal

Matt Cutts: Google Penalties Get More Severe for Repeat Offenders

For website owners who have been penalized by Google for violating the webmaster guidelines, it can take months to rectify issues, get back into the index, and regain rankings. However, that isn't always the case.

Many people remember when Interflora was penalized shortly before Mothering Sunday in the UK for massive amounts of native advertising spam in various UK newspapers. They were back in the index very quickly, and that is the topic of a new webmaster help video, where Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts is asked to explain the kind of penalty that Interflora was hit with and how they managed to get back in Google's good books in just 11 days.

Cutts began by saying he doesn't like to talk about specific penalties or companies; rather, he prefers to speak in generalizations so everybody can learn and benefit. Generally this is true, as Google rarely calls out specific companies, but it does happen.

Perhaps the most important thing Cutts mentioned in the video wasn't about how to rebound from the penalty, but that repeat offenders get hit with a stronger penalty than someone who has tripped the spam filter for the very first time.

"Google tends to look at buying and selling links that pass PageRank as a violation of our guidelines and if we see that happening multiple times, repeated times, then the actions that we take get more and more severe," Cutts said. "So we're more willing to take stronger action whenever we see repeated violations."

So if your website has received a spam warning from Google, you need to be extra certain that you keep your SEO techniques very clean, and not skate too close to that gray line between white hat and black hat SEO. And this also means checking carefully for other things, like your backlink profile, so you can disavow immediately.

If a company were to be caught buying links, it would be interesting if, for example, you knew that it started in the middle of 2012 and ended in March 2013, if a company were to go back and disavow every single link that they had gotten in 2012, that's a pretty monumentally epic large action.

So that the sort of thing where company is willing to say, "You know what, we might've had good links for a number of years and then we had really bad advice and someone did everything wrong for a few months, maybe up to year, so just to be safe let's just disavow everything in that time frame." That's a pretty radical action and that's the sort of thing where we heard back on a reconsideration request that someone had taken that kind of a strong action, then we could look and say, "OK, this is something people are taking seriously."

There has been lots of debate over the past year or so about the best approach to take when using the disavow tool. Some people, when they think the hole is deep enough, will disavow every link except those most obviously clean, and basically start from scratch. Others take the more subtle approach and start disavowing the ones that are definitely dirty and hurting the website, and just add more to the disavow list and until the penalty is lifted.

But considering what Cutts is saying now, it seems that if you want immediate help with getting a site back into the index that has been penalized for bad quality backlinks, the fastest resolution seems to be wiping the slate clean by disavowing everything, and starting over again.

"It's not something I would typically recommend for everybody to disavow every link you've gotten for a period of years, but certainly when people start over with completely new websites they've bought, we've seen a few cases where people will disavow every single link because they truly want to get a fresh start," Cutts said. "It's a nice looking domain, but the previous owners have burnt to a crisp in terms of the amount of web spam that they've done."

This also gives hope to people who have had websites that have been crippled by spam, or are looking at purchasing a website that might have good content, or even just a really awesome domain name, that there is a way to bring that site back from the dead, by disavowing everything linking into it. It might not work in all cases, depending on the type of spam, but it is a possibility, which appears to be working for those wanting to resurrect a site killed by spam.

"Typically what we see from a reconsideration request is people starting out and just trying to prune a few links," Cutts said. "A good reconsideration request is often using the domain query (domain:), and taking out large amounts of domains that have bad links. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going the route of everything for last year or everything for the last year and a half, but that's the sort of large-scale action, if taken, can have an impact whenever we're assessing a domain within a reconsideration request."

So if you're looking to recover from a bad backlink penalty in Google, the fastest way to resolve it will be to simply disavow all the links obtained during the "suspicious" period of time when you purchased links. At the very least, you should disavow everything that could possibly be a problematic link. You'll be able to get back into the index quicker, which seems to be the solution that Interflora must have taken, since they were back in Google's search results 11 days later.

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

Matt Cutts: Google Penalties Get More Severe for Repeat Offenders

For website owners who have been penalized by Google for violating the webmaster guidelines, it can take months to rectify issues, get back into the index, and regain rankings. However, that isn't always the case.

Many people remember when Interflora was penalized shortly before Mothering Sunday in the UK for massive amounts of native advertising spam in various UK newspapers. They were back in the index very quickly, and that is the topic of a new webmaster help video, where Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts is asked to explain the kind of penalty that Interflora was hit with and how they managed to get back in Google's good books in just 11 days.

Cutts began by saying he doesn't like to talk about specific penalties or companies; rather, he prefers to speak in generalizations so everybody can learn and benefit. Generally this is true, as Google rarely calls out specific companies, but it does happen.

Perhaps the most important thing Cutts mentioned in the video wasn't about how to rebound from the penalty, but that repeat offenders get hit with a stronger penalty than someone who has tripped the spam filter for the very first time.

"Google tends to look at buying and selling links that pass PageRank as a violation of our guidelines and if we see that happening multiple times, repeated times, then the actions that we take get more and more severe," Cutts said. "So we're more willing to take stronger action whenever we see repeated violations."

So if your website has received a spam warning from Google, you need to be extra certain that you keep your SEO techniques very clean, and not skate too close to that gray line between white hat and black hat SEO. And this also means checking carefully for other things, like your backlink profile, so you can disavow immediately.

If a company were to be caught buying links, it would be interesting if, for example, you knew that it started in the middle of 2012 and ended in March 2013, if a company were to go back and disavow every single link that they had gotten in 2012, that's a pretty monumentally epic large action.

So that the sort of thing where company is willing to say, "You know what, we might've had good links for a number of years and then we had really bad advice and someone did everything wrong for a few months, maybe up to year, so just to be safe let's just disavow everything in that time frame." That's a pretty radical action and that's the sort of thing where we heard back on a reconsideration request that someone had taken that kind of a strong action, then we could look and say, "OK, this is something people are taking seriously."

There has been lots of debate over the past year or so about the best approach to take when using the disavow tool. Some people, when they think the hole is deep enough, will disavow every link except those most obviously clean, and basically start from scratch. Others take the more subtle approach and start disavowing the ones that are definitely dirty and hurting the website, and just add more to the disavow list and until the penalty is lifted.

But considering what Cutts is saying now, it seems that if you want immediate help with getting a site back into the index that has been penalized for bad quality backlinks, the fastest resolution seems to be wiping the slate clean by disavowing everything, and starting over again.

"It's not something I would typically recommend for everybody to disavow every link you've gotten for a period of years, but certainly when people start over with completely new websites they've bought, we've seen a few cases where people will disavow every single link because they truly want to get a fresh start," Cutts said. "It's a nice looking domain, but the previous owners have burnt to a crisp in terms of the amount of web spam that they've done."

This also gives hope to people who have had websites that have been crippled by spam, or are looking at purchasing a website that might have good content, or even just a really awesome domain name, that there is a way to bring that site back from the dead, by disavowing everything linking into it. It might not work in all cases, depending on the type of spam, but it is a possibility, which appears to be working for those wanting to resurrect a site killed by spam.

"Typically what we see from a reconsideration request is people starting out and just trying to prune a few links," Cutts said. "A good reconsideration request is often using the domain query (domain:), and taking out large amounts of domains that have bad links. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going the route of everything for last year or everything for the last year and a half, but that's the sort of large-scale action, if taken, can have an impact whenever we're assessing a domain within a reconsideration request."

So if you're looking to recover from a bad backlink penalty in Google, the fastest way to resolve it will be to simply disavow all the links obtained during the "suspicious" period of time when you purchased links. At the very least, you should disavow everything that could possibly be a problematic link. You'll be able to get back into the index quicker, which seems to be the solution that Interflora must have taken, since they were back in Google's search results 11 days later.

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

This Holiday Shopping Season, Searching Google For “Pearl Necklace” Leads To NSFW Surprise

Those using Google to find the perfect pearl necklace for their significant other this holiday season may be in for a rude surprise. If you search for “pearl necklace,” one of the top results�is a definition from Urban Dictionary, which is completely not safe for work.

A reader sent us an email about the shock she felt when she saw this search result appearing at the top of Google Canada results (on Google.com, we see it in position two). Here is a screen shot of the result, with the snippet blocked out.

This does not come up on the first page when searching on Bing for [pearl necklace].

Last year, Google introduced a change so that adult content wouldn’t appear even if its SafeSearch wasn’t switched on, unless people were clearly explicitly seeking such content by using more specific terms. This, in fact, prevented an Urban Dictionary page from showing before. Our stories below have more about this:

�Spreading Santorum� Drops At Google; New Site Keeps Anal Sex Definition At Number OneSantorum�s Changing �Google Problem� � & Search Engine Land � Make The Rachel Maddow Show

So is this algorithm broken?

We have reached out to Google for a comment on this and will update the story as soon as we hear back.

Postscript on December 12th at 9am EDT: Google has still not responded to our request for a comment but it appears that sometime yesterday afternoon, Google has dropped urbandictionary.com’s search result from this set.

Related Articles�Spreading Santorum� Drops At Google; New Site Keeps Anal Sex Definition At Number OneShould Rick Santorum�s �Google Problem� Be Fixed?How Rick Santorum Is Making His �Google Problem� WorseAfter Santorum�s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google ProblemWhy Does Microsoft�s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google ProblemBing & Google: �Spreading Romney� Ranking Tops For �Romney� Is Normal

Old Sites vs. New Sites: Which Will Win in SEO?

General trust is moving from older big brands to new innovative companies, but Google still seems to prefer established websites. Should Google change the way it values authority or is the change in public opinion already taking its effect on SEO?

This article describes which SEO ranking factors prefer new brands and which seem to have a positive effect on older, more authoritative websites and brands.

Current Markets Prefer New Brands

There used to be a time when big old brands were the most trusted companies in the world, but that is changing.

The banking crisis ruined it for financial institutes. Corporate social responsibility and sustainability seem hard for well-known brands in clothing, fast food, and energy. Government institutes across the world are plagued by negative statements from people like Edward Snowden. Big media companies are having a hard time surviving in a "content is free" society, so even old-fashioned publishers are losing people's trust.

New and innovative brands are taking over. People currently trust the opinion of the masses and that of close friends long before they would trust the expertise of scholars and renowned authorities.

Verifiable claims can make or break your business. Well-informed masses act as judge, jury, and executioner. Everything your company does is under constant scrutiny and the more you have done, the more mistakes you could have accidentally made.

Standing out from the institutes that have once damaged people's confidence gives new companies an initial benefit of the doubt. People want companies that fully embrace the influence that the crowd wants to have on them. Whether it's smart to trust the masses remains to be seen, but it is the current state of the market because earlier trust in large corporations appeared to be misplaced.

SEO Chances for New Brands

When the crowd endorses you, you are bound to attract a lot of inbound links and social media mentions. Although growth spikes in links are often a positive signal for your ranking in Google, the effectiveness wears off and the effect is limited to a smaller scope of keywords. If you can prove that your initial success is more than a fluke, links will hopefully continue to grow and you keep your top position in search results.

As you can see in the acquisition timing (grey line) from social media and viral links, their respective ranking effect timelines (blue and pink) show a short ranking peak and little remaining value. You can also see that top positions for more competitive keywords are possible with viral links, but there is little effect in the broader theme.

It's a fine line between a real hype and just active link buying. Without proper SEO guidance new brands are bound to make a lot of beginner mistakes which can make them look like spammers.

Investing in sufficient SEO and link building is also getting harder, because conversions on organic search traffic are getting harder to track. Without the ROI experience of older brands, new players might not trust that continuous effort will eventually result in a lot of free SEO traffic.

Older Brands Have Authority Domains

A domain name can earn authority in the eyes of Google mainly by having attracted the right links over many years and not resorting to black hat tactics. This form of domain authority enables a website to rank across a multitude of themes and keyword combinations. They don't require a lot of additional relevant links to be able to compete for almost every keyword.

As you can see a broad range of less competitive keywords is within the grasp of this authority website. Once an authority domain acquires additional relevant links, it builds on top of this strong foundation.

With older brands, much of the SEO effort for top positions is probably already taken. Calculating ROI on SEO effort will often only be done on the additional effort from this point. This makes them more willing to spend a lot of effort on a particular top position than new brands.

Is Google Taking Sides?

Google is creating great new ways to target your audience through paid ads, but they are reducing the openness and optimization options for organic results. Experience has shown older brands that little is changing, so they will continue on the SEO route they've chosen.

New brands get little proof for being on the right track. Personalization, conversational search, and "(not provided)" make it hard to see what your current ranking is and how close you are getting to great top positions with a lot of traffic. In these choices Google inadvertently favors experienced companies.

Domain authority is also providing a much better starting point for existing websites. Where people increasingly mistrust old-fashioned authorities, Google continuously serves them for every search query. It's about time the "domain authority" algorithm gets revised.

Do You Represent a New Brand?

New brands shouldn't just give up on SEO. They need an "old-fashioned" SEO expert that has been around for some time to understand and measure how SEO efforts are progressing. Only once they get close to those old brands will they see top 10 ranking and traffic across the board.

New brands can much more easily win the crowds and they can act with much more freedom. If you represent a new brand, use these benefits to take on the Internet dinosaurs you're competing with. They probably lack the flexibility to act on the ever-changing role of the Internet.

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Top Manufacturers of Consumer Goods Using PPC for Brand Awareness

Some of the top manufacturers of consumer packaged goods (CPG) – those products like soda, candy, liquor, and toothpaste – are using paid search not for direct sales, but for brand awareness – just like they would television ads. This, according to a recent study by AdGooroo, which looked at the PPC strategies of some of the biggest consumer brands in the world like Coca-Cola, Kraft, and others.

Usually, brands investing in PPC want to see a direct return on investment. Companies that sell CPG do so through third parties like grocery stores, not usually direct to the consumer. Nonetheless, these brands have a budget – averaging 6.2 million per month – and growing, according to the research.

The following table shows the Top 50 CPG brands advertising in paid search, with the top three being KraftRecipes.com (owning 16.8 percent of total CPG impressions), BettyCrocker.com (6 percent of total CPG impressions) and McCormick.com (4.1 percent of total CPG impressions).

So what exactly was their strategy? AdGooroo said they took a “brand laddering” keyword approach where:

CPG marketers attempt to maximize share of voice by layering their keywords with terms that span different stages in a consumer’s awareness and usage of the brand, including: brand terms (“Special K”), product terms (“breakfast cereal”), problem/need terms (“healthy recipes”), and finally, occasion terms where the product would be used (“how to lose weight”).

Looking at some specific categories within CPG, we can see the various campiagn tactics. In the baking mixes category, AdGooroo found “the vast majority of top keywords in the Baking Mix subcategory are related to desserts and dessert recipes.” Here, you can see the Duncan Hnes keywords:

CPG manufacturers of beer have no trouble understanding their audience, and the relationship between football and alcohol.

“Paid search leader BudLight.com’s keyword strategy can be summed up in one word: football. Specifically, the term 'nfl draft' accounted for more than 2.6 million of its 4.9 million total impressions during the period,” AdGooroo said in its report.

In the oral hygiene category, Colgate used paid search to perform special outreach, too – to diabetes sufferers – forging campaigns that raise awareness about the elavated risk diabetes sufferers have for gum disease. 

For a more in-depth look at 12 CPG categories, their impressions, keywords, and PPC campaigns, you can get the AdGooroo report here. 

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Retweets Most Likely to Happen After Hours [Study]

Expanding your engagement on Twitter can be a challenge. If you aren't communicating at the time your audience is online, you could miss that first touch. And how your tweets are structured can affect the rate of retweets you receive to amplify your brand’s voice.

TrackMaven released a study today highlighting research that shows when people are tweeting, and what components go into a tweet that drives engagement in its latest study, The Retweet Report.

Based on nearly 1,500 twitter accounts with more than 1,000 followers, the study looked at things like timing and structure. Beginning with the timing component, research showed overall that the most active days on Twitter were Monday through Friday, with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday showing the most activity. 

Most active times of day for tweets, set to Eastern Time, were noon to 1 p.m., likely when users were engaging on their lunch breaks.

But when it came to retweets, the days and times differed from the data points just mentioned. Suggesting that users are most active when off work, the day that showed the highest retweets on average was Sunday.

And the times people retweet most, according to this research, was after hours with the highest average occurring between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET.

Hashtags have been a way to expand exposure of a tweet. Knowing just how many to add before it becomes too much is a question brands sometimes struggle with. TrackMaven research showed that more hashtags do increase the likelihood of a retweet. 

However, using common sense to ensure the hashtags included are relevant and don’t degrade the quality of a tweet is the next step in making that decision about how many to use. 

As Twitter becomes a more visual platform, brands are taking advantage of the ability to add imagery to tweets. TrackMaven found that tweets with images garner much more engagement in the form of retweets than those without.

While data such as this can be a helpful guide for brands to build a foundation for a publishing schedule, understanding the brand’s specific follower set, where users are located and when they are most active is key to disseminating the message. Then, using the data gleaned from experience on what works with the audience in terms of engagement comes next.

For the full study from TrackMaven, check it out here.

 More Twitter TipsWhen to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr for Maximum Effect [Study]Tweeting from Events: Tips, Tricks and NetiquettePromoted Tweets: Is a Picture Worth 350% More Clicks?

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

Retweets Most Likely to Happen After Hours [Study]

Expanding your engagement on Twitter can be a challenge. If you aren't communicating at the time your audience is online, you could miss that first touch. And how your tweets are structured can affect the rate of retweets you receive to amplify your brand’s voice.

TrackMaven released a study today highlighting research that shows when people are tweeting, and what components go into a tweet that drives engagement in its latest study, The Retweet Report.

Based on nearly 1,500 twitter accounts with more than 1,000 followers, the study looked at things like timing and structure. Beginning with the timing component, research showed overall that the most active days on Twitter were Monday through Friday, with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday showing the most activity. 

Most active times of day for tweets, set to Eastern Time, were noon to 1 p.m., likely when users were engaging on their lunch breaks.

But when it came to retweets, the days and times differed from the data points just mentioned. Suggesting that users are most active when off work, the day that showed the highest retweets on average was Sunday.

And the times people retweet most, according to this research, was after hours with the highest average occurring between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET.

Hashtags have been a way to expand exposure of a tweet. Knowing just how many to add before it becomes too much is a question brands sometimes struggle with. TrackMaven research showed that more hashtags do increase the likelihood of a retweet. 

However, using common sense to ensure the hashtags included are relevant and don’t degrade the quality of a tweet is the next step in making that decision about how many to use. 

As Twitter becomes a more visual platform, brands are taking advantage of the ability to add imagery to tweets. TrackMaven found that tweets with images garner much more engagement in the form of retweets than those without.

While data such as this can be a helpful guide for brands to build a foundation for a publishing schedule, understanding the brand’s specific follower set, where users are located and when they are most active is key to disseminating the message. Then, using the data gleaned from experience on what works with the audience in terms of engagement comes next.

For the full study from TrackMaven, check it out here.

 More Twitter TipsWhen to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr for Maximum Effect [Study]Tweeting from Events: Tips, Tricks and NetiquettePromoted Tweets: Is a Picture Worth 350% More Clicks?

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

7 Reasons Your Blog Sucks & How to Fix It

Does your blog suck? If you’re not publishing informative, engaging content or you’re constantly pimping your company more than offering value to your readers, it probably does.

Don’t worry. Even if your blog does indeed suck, you can still salvage it and transform it into a leader in your niche.

Let’s look at some of the reasons your blog might suck, and what you can do about it.

1. You Post Sporadically.

How often do you publish on your blog? Once a month, every few months, or basically whenever the urge strikes you? If that sounds like your blogging routine, your blog just might suck.

It’s difficult to build readership and a core audience if you post infrequently or go long spells without publishing anything. Sure, you might get a stray visitor here and there, but when they see that you rarely post (say, the date on your most recent post was from two or three months ago) they have no incentive to keep coming back. They may even think the blog is extinct, so they vanish.

What to do about it: Create an editorial schedule and stick to it. Commit to publishing new content on a regular basis, even if it’s only one post a week or a few times a month. Don’t worry so much about quantity here. It’s more about quality and some level of consistency.

2. You’re an Incessant Self-Promoter.

Newsflash: audiences have no interest in reading a blog where all you do is promote your company, your products or your services.

It’s fine to make big company announcements or talk about new product releases on occasion. It’s even okay to weave in relevant features of your software application, for instance, in posts where it makes sense. But don’t use every post as a pulpit to pimp and promote your products. That’s what sales-driven landing pages are for.

What to do about it: Offer your readers value-driven content. Be selfless with your writing. People love process-driven content that helps them solve a problem. Offer your audience expert insights and commentary on the latest trends in your industry. Give back and build relationships through spotlights and group interviews.

If you do need to promote yourself, leverage research and persuasive data to make a compelling case as to why customers should buy your products or your services.

3. Your Writing Stinks.

Face it: everyone has different strengths and skills. Ultimately, writing may not be yours. All too often, small business or startup owners try to wear every hat; they’re the founder, CEO, webmaster, head of accounts receivable, and the company blogger. If their writing chops aren’t up to par, you might get blog posts that are unfocused, rambling or poorly structured, or the posts have no clear thesis or a really bold opinion with no supporting points.

How to fix it: Look, just because you can type, doesn’t mean you can write. Know your limitations and step away from the keyboard when required. Hire someone who can write. Here are some tips on finding and hiring writers.

4. Your Blog Consists Entirely of Guest Posts.

We get it – you’re busy. But if you can’t find the time to write and all you do is publish guest posts on your blog, it may come off as spammy. Regular readers may get the impression that your only goal is to churn out content for a traffic grab. Or they may think you don’t care enough about your own blog to post any longer, which is a clear turn off.

What to do about it: There’s nothing wrong with publishing the occasional guest post, but you still need to make your presence known. It’s your blog, after all; your content lends authenticity and a consistent voice – it reaffirms ownership. If you have regular readers, they’re there for a reason, and that reason is probably your writing. Again, get an editorial calendar and carve out time to write.

5. You Never Respond to Comments.

Readers who take the time comment on an article and never receive a response may never return. By not responding to audience feedback – even if you’re being criticized – you’re missing an opportunity to engage your readers and build a community.

How to fix it: The more you interact with your readers, answer questions, give feedback and share your thoughts, the more it feels like you’re committed to your readership, which drives more readers. Make sure you’ve got your blog set up so you get automatic notifications each time a comment is posted. Even if you don’t reply right away, set aside some time to read and respond to comments.

6. All Your Posts are Keyword Driven.

There’s nothing wrong with letting keyword research drive some of your content strategy. However, when every post is a play for search traffic and an exercise in checking off keyword-driven topics on a list, it’s obvious and it gets tedious.

How to fix it: Sure, work in a ratio of informational, keyword-driven topics for your blog, but don’t go overboard. Make sure to mix in topics driven by trends, current events, industry news, etc., so there’s a healthy balance.

7. You Bombard Visitors with Aggressive Pop-ups.

If someone visits your blog and it prompts a pop-up once, fine. But if pop-ups appear on a schedule of every few minutes, that really sucks. It kills the user experience and their trust in your site.

How to fix it: Dial back on the pop-up frequency. Please! Most audiences can deal with one per visit, but any more than that and it’s spamming, and frankly will drive them away. On mobile, the experience is even worse, where it can be near impossible to close out some pop-ups (be sure to test on a mobile platform). Also, try to align the pop-up offer with the article topic, instead of using a one-size-fits all approach. In cases where you don’t have a relevant offer, lose the pop-ups!

Do you have any tips for bloggers who might be feeling their blog sucks? Share yours in the comments.

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

4 Surprising Ways CPG Brands Are Using Paid Search For Brand Marketing [Study]

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers have been spending an average of $6.2 million monthly on Google AdWords in the US over the past three years, according to a new AdGooroo study which looked at ad impressions between August 2012 and July 2013.� All of the CPG companies engaged in brand marketing, but AdGooroo found that several brands took surprising approaches in their targeting to reach their desired audiences in search.

Here are four examples of CPG companies using search to broaden their share of voice in surprising ways:

In a departure from the standard tactic of promoting recipe and meal planning content among CPG food brands, Pop Secret, playing on its tagline “The secret to movie night,” aimed its paid search ads at consumers looking to stream movies.� More than 43 percent of the brand’s keywords were movie related such as “free movies” and “free movie streaming”, according to AdGooroo.Cereal brands Cheerios and Froot Loops also took different tacks with non-endemic keyword targeting. in addition to “how to lower cholesterol”, Cheerios focused on keywords such as “fun games” and “kid games”. Froot Loops sponsored keywords aimed at kids education including “pbs kids”, “funbrain” and “math games”.Colgate, which ranked 11th on AdGooroo’s list of top CPG advertisers, generated more impressions from the keyword “diabetes” than it did from its own brand name. To back up its advertised value proposition — not to mention sustain decent quality scores while competing against pharmaceutical brands — Colgate has a created content library around oral health issues pertaining to diabetes.In the world of soda wars, Pepsi stepped up its game for the Super Bowl, which it sponsored with TV ads, and then essentially sat on the bench while Coca-Cola sites accounted for more than 80 percent of paid search impressions in the carbonated beverage category. Pepsi’s top keywords during the period were “super bowl” and “superbowl”.

Kraft Foods Group, which dominated the CPG field with more than 20 percent of total CPG ad impressions on Google AdWords with its KraftRecipes.com and KraftBrands.com sites, took the more traditional approach of promoting recipe and meal planning content.

The full report is available for download here.

7 Reasons Your Blog Sucks & How to Fix It

Does your blog suck? If you’re not publishing informative, engaging content or you’re constantly pimping your company more than offering value to your readers, it probably does.

Don’t worry. Even if your blog does indeed suck, you can still salvage it and transform it into a leader in your niche.

Let’s look at some of the reasons your blog might suck, and what you can do about it.

1. You Post Sporadically.

How often do you publish on your blog? Once a month, every few months, or basically whenever the urge strikes you? If that sounds like your blogging routine, your blog just might suck.

It’s difficult to build readership and a core audience if you post infrequently or go long spells without publishing anything. Sure, you might get a stray visitor here and there, but when they see that you rarely post (say, the date on your most recent post was from two or three months ago) they have no incentive to keep coming back. They may even think the blog is extinct, so they vanish.

What to do about it: Create an editorial schedule and stick to it. Commit to publishing new content on a regular basis, even if it’s only one post a week or a few times a month. Don’t worry so much about quantity here. It’s more about quality and some level of consistency.

2. You’re an Incessant Self-Promoter.

Newsflash: audiences have no interest in reading a blog where all you do is promote your company, your products or your services.

It’s fine to make big company announcements or talk about new product releases on occasion. It’s even okay to weave in relevant features of your software application, for instance, in posts where it makes sense. But don’t use every post as a pulpit to pimp and promote your products. That’s what sales-driven landing pages are for.

What to do about it: Offer your readers value-driven content. Be selfless with your writing. People love process-driven content that helps them solve a problem. Offer your audience expert insights and commentary on the latest trends in your industry. Give back and build relationships through spotlights and group interviews.

If you do need to promote yourself, leverage research and persuasive data to make a compelling case as to why customers should buy your products or your services.

3. Your Writing Stinks.

Face it: everyone has different strengths and skills. Ultimately, writing may not be yours. All too often, small business or startup owners try to wear every hat; they’re the founder, CEO, webmaster, head of accounts receivable, and the company blogger. If their writing chops aren’t up to par, you might get blog posts that are unfocused, rambling or poorly structured, or the posts have no clear thesis or a really bold opinion with no supporting points.

How to fix it: Look, just because you can type, doesn’t mean you can write. Know your limitations and step away from the keyboard when required. Hire someone who can write. Here are some tips on finding and hiring writers.

4. Your Blog Consists Entirely of Guest Posts.

We get it – you’re busy. But if you can’t find the time to write and all you do is publish guest posts on your blog, it may come off as spammy. Regular readers may get the impression that your only goal is to churn out content for a traffic grab. Or they may think you don’t care enough about your own blog to post any longer, which is a clear turn off.

What to do about it: There’s nothing wrong with publishing the occasional guest post, but you still need to make your presence known. It’s your blog, after all; your content lends authenticity and a consistent voice – it reaffirms ownership. If you have regular readers, they’re there for a reason, and that reason is probably your writing. Again, get an editorial calendar and carve out time to write.

5. You Never Respond to Comments.

Readers who take the time comment on an article and never receive a response may never return. By not responding to audience feedback – even if you’re being criticized – you’re missing an opportunity to engage your readers and build a community.

How to fix it: The more you interact with your readers, answer questions, give feedback and share your thoughts, the more it feels like you’re committed to your readership, which drives more readers. Make sure you’ve got your blog set up so you get automatic notifications each time a comment is posted. Even if you don’t reply right away, set aside some time to read and respond to comments.

6. All Your Posts are Keyword Driven.

There’s nothing wrong with letting keyword research drive some of your content strategy. However, when every post is a play for search traffic and an exercise in checking off keyword-driven topics on a list, it’s obvious and it gets tedious.

How to fix it: Sure, work in a ratio of informational, keyword-driven topics for your blog, but don’t go overboard. Make sure to mix in topics driven by trends, current events, industry news, etc., so there’s a healthy balance.

7. You Bombard Visitors with Aggressive Pop-ups.

If someone visits your blog and it prompts a pop-up once, fine. But if pop-ups appear on a schedule of every few minutes, that really sucks. It kills the user experience and their trust in your site.

How to fix it: Dial back on the pop-up frequency. Please! Most audiences can deal with one per visit, but any more than that and it’s spamming, and frankly will drive them away. On mobile, the experience is even worse, where it can be near impossible to close out some pop-ups (be sure to test on a mobile platform). Also, try to align the pop-up offer with the article topic, instead of using a one-size-fits all approach. In cases where you don’t have a relevant offer, lose the pop-ups!

Do you have any tips for bloggers who might be feeling their blog sucks? Share yours in the comments.

Last Week to Save on SES London Tickets!
Learn to engage customers and increase ROI by distributing your online marketing efforts across paid, owned & earned media. Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London. Find out more ››
*Saver Rates expire this Friday, Dec 13.

Majestic Search Explorer Now Displays Ranking Factors

In October, Majestic SEO decided to launch their own alpha search engine named Search Explorer.

Today, Dixon Jones from Majestic, announced an added feature to the search engine that the SEO community might like. The feature shows you why the search tool ranked the results as they did.

Dixon explain that not only will Search Explorer show you search results in ranking order but now will also show you a “detailed view of how, and why, they ranked the results.”

Here is a screen shot showing some of those details:

This should help SEOs understand, on some level, what it may take to rank for specific keywords, what competitors are doing in their niche and it also gives you a list of link prospects for your linking campaigns.

For more details, see their blog post.

Google’s Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Abuse & Spam On The Rise

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video today on the things one should avoid when doing guest blogging. The main point he made was that guest blogging, on a whole, is “growing” in terms of the spam and abuse he sees in the guest blogging space.

Now, if you are guest blogging, Matt offered four-points on what you should not do.

Don’t make guest blogging your only link building strategyDon’t send out thousands of mass emails offering to guest blog to random sitesDon’t use the same guest article on two different sitesDon’t take one article and spin it many times

In short, Matt suggests you don’t do low quality, automated, abusive guest blogging without any “merit” or “editorial” value.

This is not the first time Matt or Google commented on guest blogging, here are three other stories on the topic:

Google�s Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Best Done In ModerationGoogle Warns Against Large-Scale Guest Posting, Advertorials & �Optimized Anchor Text� In Press ReleasesGoogle: Guest Blogging For Links? You Better Nofollow Those Links

Here is the video:

It’s True! Bing Ads Allows Use Of Exclamation Mark In Ad Titles

After reading the news yesterday that Bing Ads has made a change to its Editorial Guidelines prohibiting third-party sellers from appearing as an original brand, I noticed this notation in the change log from November:

We have removed the restriction on use of exclamation points in ad titles from the Content and Style Guidelines. A single exclamation point is now allowed in the title of an ad.

Really, exclamation marks in ad titles? The actual guidelines are a little fuzzy on this point, stating just that “One exclamation point or question mark is allowed per sentence in ad text.” with no mention of use in the headline.

It is indeed possible. Bing Ads has confirmed that it is acceptable to use one exclamation in the ad headline, in addition to an exclamation mark in the ad text.

This seems to have been a quiet roll-out, and I have yet to spot any ads using an exclamation in an ad title itself. Maybe you’ve spotted them or tested them yourself?

6 Ways to Improve Owned Digital Assets

I come bearing gifts. It is difficult, from time to time, to get the creative juices flowing -- especially when it comes to finding strategic next steps for a client. For a longstanding initiative, you have likely tested and performed a lot of tactics in reaching digital marketing success.

This time of year doesn’t help at all either, as our brains are mostly fried from a busy year of keeping up with the many changes and needs born from the digital marketing industry. With this, I thought it would be fitting to discuss of a few tasks you can undertake with little innovative or creative thought.

You Already Own It

Yes, that’s right, you own these areas I’m writing about, this facet of the commonly referred to marketing segments of Paid, Owned and Earned marketing/media assets. Some may find this familiar, as they are the track designations at the upcoming ClickZ Live.

My last attended SES made me think of this topic. We know that Paid efforts take dollars and Earned marketing takes creativity. Right now, our minds are on gifts, holiday parties and hopefully a few days off, so let’s look at Owned assets in online marketing. There are several different areas where you can better your Owned assets from within an SEO lens, as well as from a holistic digital view, with little effort.

Links, in Relation to Robots/404/302

I see this all the time and love when I have the chance to do some link harvesting with a tool like Open Site Explorer. Review the top linked pages on your site. You may find that from this report that you have links pointing to pages on your site that are excluded from search engine view via robots.txt or the Meta Robots tag. This is link value that is not getting through the door.

Also, take a look at those pages heavily linked to that are 302 temporarily linking to another page on your site. Turning this into a 301 permanent redirect will help search engines start giving credit to those links. Last, how many links are pointing to pages that are now 404 error pages where you may have accidently deleted the page or someone has got the domain linked correctly but the page name is incorrect?

Bad Redirections and Old Domains

This may sound a little similar to the above topic, but with a different twist. Do you own any other domains that have link value/domain age and are not permanently redirecting to the current site? I see this issue often, where a new site is created and the old site/site pages are 302 redirected to the new site.

Additionally, do you have any other old owned domains that are simple sitting aside and not being redirected to the current business or organization site? There could be additional link/age value to pass on to the current domain.

Referring Site Links

We all know it can be hard to get a good link, but what happens after we get the link? Many of us may cheer as we have accrued additional SEO value, but what you should be thinking about is the traffic potential of links.

Review Google Analytics Referring Sites and find those referring sources that are not from social media, email, etc., and visit the referring page. You may have a link from the source, but could the link be presented above the fold on the page? Should the anchor text be more enticing? Should the messaging around the link be more relevant? It is great that this referring source is bringing traffic, let’s have it bring some more!

Images/Video Driving Traffic

You did it! You have images driving traffic to your site via image search or universal image results… and you probably didn’t know it. Review Google Analytics Referring Sites and then view specifically /imgres as a source, in relation to a secondary dimension of Landing Pages. See what pages image traffic is likely landing on and then you may get a better idea of successful imagery.

Next, look in Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics at Search Queries data by Landing Page and filter, to only look at Images driving impressions in search results. This will help you get a better handle on which pages are hosting referring image traffic, but also the likely keywords that are ranking your images.

Once you have honed in on that, ask yourself how might these images be doing so well? It may be based on how captivating it may be to a click, but also look into how is it ALT tagged and ask, how relevant is this to the surrounding text and keyword theme of the page? This may shed some light on what you should be doing with other site images.

Aside from image referrals, think about the opportunity from heightened referrals from the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube. Is your homepage or video-relevant site page linked from the beginning of YouTube video descriptions? This is a quick fix to cater to those interested in your company, who want to know more or are bored with the video and still would like to review more about your company.

Those Damn PDFs

Sorry, I hate PDFs. Who likes a search result that traverses to your site organically, yet you cannot track it with an analytics snippet? Anyway, beyond losing this traffic from organic data, you still want this traffic to get to your main site. Remember, PDFs often don’t carry the navigational theme of the site and often times carry no link back to the main site. This forces the user to remember your brand and then search or directly visit the site. Add a link from the top of PDF back to the site to help funnel traffic back to the site. I would do this to all PDFs, but if you are short on time, I recommend running a report on all ranking site pages in SEMrush and then identifying any pages that are ranking which are PDFs.

Big Traffic/ Big Bounce

Take a quick look at highest referring organic landing pages, but also those with ugly bounce rates. If you are a seasoned search marketer, you may be able to simply look at the page and assess bad calls to actions, crappy messaging, display issues and such that can be quick indicators prime for bounce rate turnaround. If the page doesn’t have elements that seem responsible, do a few days testing using CrazyEgg or LuckyOrange to get a good example to typical page visitor behavior.

Still nothing? Once again, look at SEMrush and see what terms these pages are ranking well for. Then review the pages again and assess for relevancy between those terms and the messaging/keyword theme of the respective pages.

See, That Wasn’t So Bad

We were able to touch on some of the main areas of Owned assets such as links, social media, site content and site URLs themselves. Even better, we didn’t have to “Pay” for these assets and we didn’t have to “Earn” anything. We were simply just fine tuning what we already owned.

Upcoming Webinar: PPC Pause and Reflections for 2013
Thursday, December 12 - 2013 was a major turning point in search advertising. With Google's Enhanced Campaigns and Bing's innovative Smart Search capabilities in Windows 8.1, now is a great time to pause, reflect, and plan for the new year. Webinar attendance is free. Sign up today!

Google’s Matt Cutts: Link Spamming Google For A Specific Time Period? Then Mass Disavow Those Links.

In a recent video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt answered the question, “How can a site recover from a period of spamming links?”

The example given was when Interflora was penalized by Google for buying links and only was penalized for 11 days. The question was, how can a site with a penalty get their rankings back in 11-days like Interflora?

Matt didn’t give a specific answer to the question, instead he said he wanted to answer it in a general sense.

Matt said that you should disavow the bad links with a vengeance and disavow all the links that might be paid. Don’t use the disavow tool a single link at a time, instead use the domain level disavow option. Matt said this before, explaining that you should use the disavow tool more like a machete.

So, if you know you paid for links between a specific date range, technically, you can disavow all the links you acquired between those date ranges, or at least disavow most of them, at the domain level.

Here is the video:

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Following Android Refresh, Bing Intros New iPad Experience

Last week, Bing refreshed its Android app. Today, Bing announced an upgrade of its app for the iPad. The primary driver of the redesign was iOS 7 and the aesthetics of the new Bing app are intended to match the new Apple OS.

One of the most promoted new features, as on the Android app, is the ability to save the Bing daily image as homescreen or lockscreen wallpaper on the device. (This was apparently an often-requested feature.) In addition bookmarks can be saved/synced via Skydrive so that they can be accessed on other devices.

The new app also permits sharing of search results via Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. There have also been a number of improvements to maps results. However iOS users don’t (yet) receive the full,�redesigned Bing Maps experience, which is currently reserved for Windows PC and Surface users.

Voice search is also present, though that existed in the previous version.

As with Bing for the iPhone and Android devices, Bing for the iPad is not just a search engine but a full browser that seeks to keep users within its content universe. Bing continues to differentiate vs. Google by offering a range of expanded features (news, traffic, weather, stock quotes, movies, trending images, and popular searches on the home screen)�and a rich visual UI.

When Bing first launched its iPad app I was very impressed with the overall experience and functionality. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to test out the new app extensively to determine how or whether this improves upon the older version.

It’s not clear how successful these third party mobile platforms have been for Microsoft. However Bing clearly has an iOS following and it’s the right strategy for the company.

Google Toolbar PageRank Lives On With The First Update In Over 10 Months

Google has updated the Toolbar PageRank values this morning, despite Google’s Matt Cutts implying the update would not happen again within 2013.

The SEO community, discussion forums and social media outlets are lighting up with the news that Google has actually updated the Toolbar PageRank values. Why?

(1) The SEO industry always lights up when the most visible indicator and easiest to see metric of Google linkage data changes.

(2) Because no one expected a Toolbar PageRank update this year.

The last Toolbar PageRank update was over 10 months ago and I predicted, wrongly, that Toolbar PageRank was dead. I was wrong, Google updated it today, 10+ months later and well before anyone thought there would be an update.

Google has implied over the years that toolbar PageRank would go away and has slowly dropped support for the feature in several browsers over the years. Although, Google did tell us Toolbar PageRank wouldn’t fully go away, at least not on older browsers that support it.

For more on the importance, or lack-there-of, Toolbar PageRank see our guide on PageRank.

Here is the latest video from Matt Cutts on Google PageRank:

Update: Matt Cutts confirmed the update on Twitter saying the “team was fixing a different backend service and did a PR update along the way.”

Google Toolbar PageRank Lives On With The First Update In Over 10 Months

Google has updated the Toolbar PageRank values this morning, despite Google’s Matt Cutts implying the update would not happen again within 2013.

The SEO community, discussion forums and social media outlets are lighting up with the news that Google has actually updated the Toolbar PageRank values. Why?

(1) The SEO industry always lights up when the most visible indicator and easiest to see metric of Google linkage data changes.

(2) Because no one expected a Toolbar PageRank update this year.

The last Toolbar PageRank update was over 10 months ago and I predicted, wrongly, that Toolbar PageRank was dead. I was wrong, Google updated it today, 10+ months later and well before anyone thought there would be an update.

Google has implied over the years that toolbar PageRank would go away and has slowly dropped support for the feature in several browsers over the years. Although, Google did tell us Toolbar PageRank wouldn’t fully go away, at least not on older browsers that support it.

For more on the importance, or lack-there-of, Toolbar PageRank see our guide on PageRank.

Here is the latest video from Matt Cutts on Google PageRank:

Update: Matt Cutts confirmed the update on Twitter saying the “team was fixing a different backend service and did a PR update along the way.”