Ripoff Report Is Back In Yahoo Australia’s Search Results, But Not Completely

After what we think was about a week of being de-indexed, the controversial Ripoff Report website is showing up again in search results on Yahoo’s Australian website.

But a company spokesperson tells us that some URLs are still blocked.

Late Wednesday night (May 21), we noticed that a site:ripoffreport.com search on Yahoo7 — the Australian version of Yahoo — was once again showing URLs. That was a week after we first reported that the entire domain had been dropped due to defamation complaints. A Yahoo7 spokesperson confirmed then that the site had been removed after “significant complaints in regards to defamatory content” while the company reviewed its legal options.

The same spokesperson gave us this statement about Ripoff Report’s return to search results:

We said that we were reviewing the site due to complaints received, and this process occurred. There are still some links for which measures to stop ripoffreport resultsappearing in Yahoo7 Search remain, but most of the site is now unblocked.

In short, some URLs are still not showing up but “most of the site” is.

Yahoo7 declined to tell us how many or what percentage of the site’s URLs are still blocked. At the bottom of the site:ripoffreport.com, I see an indicator that says “164,000 results” — but I have no idea how that compares to the number of results before the site was removed. (Yahoo7 gets its search results from Google. A site:ripoffreport.com on Google.com shows about 7.7 million results. But that’s an unreliable number by itself, and it’s quite possible that Yahoo7′s index was much smaller to begin with.)

Australia doesn’t have laws that protect online publishers from being held liable for content published by others, as the Communications Decency Act does in the U.S. So, as I wrote last week, Yahoo7 could potentially be held liable if it shows defamatory content in its search results from Ripoff Report (or any other website).

After doing its own legal review, Yahoo7 appears to have decided that some Ripoff Report URLs are defamatory and need to be kept out of its search results — but not the entire site.

RetailMeNot Says On Google Ranking Drop: The Reports “Greatly Overstate” Our Organic Search Impact

On Tuesday, Google pushed out their revised Panda Algorithm code-named Panda 4.0. Panda is designed to remove low-quality content from Google’s search results. Yesterday, we published an early Winners & Losers report on which large sites were impacted the most both in a positive and negative way.

RetailMeNot was one of the larger sites on the losers list, where Searchmetrics reported an approximate 33% loss in organic search visibility after Panda 4.0 was released. RetailMeNot was quick to issue a statement responding to these reports saying they “greatly overstate the impact on RetailMeNot.com.”

The company statement released this morning reads:

The company believes these reports greatly overstate the impact on RetailMeNot.com. Over RetailMeNot�s history, search engines have periodically implemented algorithm changes that have caused traffic to fluctuate. It is too early to judge any potential impact of the latest Google algorithm change. While RetailMeNot�s traffic with Google continues to grow year-over-year, the company has experienced some shift in rankings and traffic. The company continues to believe its focus on content quality and user experience will continue to help grow the business, enable consumers to save money and drive retailer sales.

As you can see, the company has said they “experienced some shift in rankings and traffic.” But they say it is too early to tell the overall impact on the company.

In addition, the company said they have “made considerable strides to diversify its traffic sources” detailing that “approximately 35% of RetailMeNot�s traffic came from sources other than search engine.”

RetailMeNot’s stock price has dropped today over 18%:

Finally, RetailMeNot said at this time, they will not have an update to its financial guidance.

You can read the full statement over here.

Searchmetrics has emailed us additional data, detailing the top 250 loser keywords for retailmenot.com after Panda 4 for google.com. Attached below is a screen shot of some of those ranking changes. I should note, Searchmetric data does not measure traffic, it measures search engine result pages and calculate how likely it is to get search traffic.

Postscript: Searchmetrics US data for charts have updated this morning. Here are two charts showing a drop of SEO visibility of 50% for RetailMeNot:

New “Open Internet Project” Seeks To Derail Google-EU Antitrust Settlement

Frustrated by what it sees as the European Commission’s capitulation to Google, a new group called the “Open Internet Project” (OIP) seeks to derail the current Google antitrust settlement or create a new investigation. A mixture of French and German publishers and companies are behind the initiative.

The OIP claims to represent hundreds more European internet companies which argue, in essence, Google is too powerful and too much in control of what happens online.

The group submitted a new competition complaint to the European Commission reasserting or reviving most of the complaints previously leveled against Google. Among them are the following:

Google�s overwhelming dominance … have made it quasi-impossible for other companies to compete with GoogleData�whose importance is paramount for digital competition (�the new currency�)�are used illegally by Google to strengthen its positionGoogle … promotes its own services and demotes rivals through unannounced and unjustified algorithmic changes that primarily affect competing website but not its own sites

There are also complaints surrounding AdWords and other areas. The claims and complaint can be accessed on the group’s site.

The group wants to see fines imposed on Google. It also wants to see establishment of a “review mechanism for algorithm changes that demote rivals,” forced Google data licensing to competitors and/or potential breakup of the company.

This final, “structural” remedy was also offered as a possibility to address Google’s market power by a German government minister. He argued that Google and other large internet companies pose a threat to the “future of democracy” and, in particular, “500 million people in Europe.”

While the EU antitrust settlement hasn’t been formally completed, everything coming out of the European Commission suggests that it’s a done deal. This new OIP complaint and broader PR initiative (including a conference) are designed to put the brakes on that settlement, which would probably preclude many of the claims being made again here.

Vocal criticism coming from the OIP and from various European government officials will put new pressure on the European Commission. It’s not clear whether that will be enough to force reconsideration of the settlement.

Some in Europe want to see Google “punished” and some want to see it “structurally” restrained (read: broken up). That’s not likely to happen. But this kind of aggressive talk is growing louder and more common among some non-US government officials.

Is eBay A Big Loser In Google’s Panda 4.0 Update? — Winners & Losers Data

Yesterday, Google began rolling out their Panda 4.0 update�designed to punch low-quality content. That’s generated both “winners” who have moved up in rankings as “losers” have dropped down — and eBay might be one of the big losers.

Searchmetrics gave us their initial winners and loser charts, based on rankings they continually monitor. These show that one of the biggest losers was eBay. According to the data, eBay lost a tremendous amount of traffic from Google, much of it from the ebay.com/bhp/ area of its site.

Another huge loser was Ask.com, yes, the search engine, that lost a tremendous amount of traffic in their Questions section at ask.com/question/.

The Losers: Ask.com, eBay, Biography.com & Google-Backed RetailMeNot

Among the top losers include Ask.com, ebay.com, biography.com and retailmenot.com. I should note, retailmenot.com is venture backed by Google’s venture arm. Here is the top list of losers from the Searchmetrics initial analysis:

Here is a chart showing eBay’s UK drop by their main root domain versus the directory from Searchmetrics:

Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz also documented with their analytics how much eBay lost with this update. Pete said, “over the course of about three days, eBay fell from #6 in our Big 10 to #25.” Meyers digs deep into the analysis on the Moz blog.

Refugeeks looked at early SEM Rush data, which also showed a steep decline for ebay’s web site in Google. Note, SEMRush will be sending me more data as they work it up at their office. Here is a chart from the UK data:

The Winners

With all algorithm updates, there are also those who win and gain rankings. The big winners seem to be glassdoor.com, emedicinehealth.com, medterms.com, yourdictionary.com and shopstyle.com.

The SearchMetrics data is sorted by increase in SEO visibility in absolute numbers, but sorted by percentage (relative).

Only Losers Really Know If They Lost

As we said with the Panda 3.5 Winners & Losers report,�lists like this aren’t perfect. The sites above may have had gains and drops for other reasons; less visibility this week because last week they were visible for different news stories, for example.

It’s also worth remembering that this is a sample of search terms. The only way to really know if any update has hurt or helped you is to look at your search-driven traffic from Google, rather than particular rankings or lists like this, which have become popular after Google updates. If you’ve seen a significant increase, you’ve probably been rewarded by it. A big decrease? Then you were probably hit.

Official: Google Payday Loan Algorithm 2.0 Launched: Targets “Very Spammy Queries”

Google has confirmed they have released a new algorithm update to their Payday Loan Algorithm update over this weekend.

This algorithm specifically targets “very spammy queries” and is unrelated to the Panda or Penguin algorithms. A Google spokesperson told us:

Over the weekend we began rolling out a new algorithmic update. The update was neither Panda nor Penguin — it was the next generation of an algorithm that originally rolled out last summer for very spammy queries.

This comes with at no surprise to most SEOs and Webmasters who watch the space. There was a tremendous of rumors and signals of a major update over the weekend, intensifying over the past couple days as webmasters began to look at their analytics and the update has continued to roll out through Google.

The original Payday Loan Algorithm launched just about a year ago on June 11, 2013. Back then, Google’s Matt Cutts told us the algorithm impacted roughly 0.3% of the U.S. queries, but Matt said it went as high as 4% for Turkish queries where Web spam is typically higher.

Google told us this specific update is an international rollout and it affects different languages to different degrees, but this impacts English queries by about 0.2% to a noticeable degree.Here is a video back when Matt Cutts of Google announced the update was coming back in 2013:

(Spam image by Mike Mozart. Used under Creative Commons license.)

Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now

Google’s Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that they have released version 4.0 of the Google Panda algorithm.

Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google�s top search results.

But didn’t Google stop updating us on Panda refreshes and updates since they are monthly rolling updates? Yes, but this is a bigger update.

Panda 4.0 must be a major update to the actual algorithm versus just a data refresh. Meaning, Google has made changes to how Panda identifies sites and has released a new version of the algorithm today.

Is this the softer and gentler Panda algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in that direction.

Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.

Here are the previous confirmed Panda updates, note, that we named them by each refresh and update, but 4.0 is how Google named this specific update:

Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)Panda Update 20, Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announcedPanda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Postscript: We have now published the big Winners & Losers from this update.

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

Rubik’s Cube Invention Celebrated With Google Logo To Mark The Puzzle’s 40th Anniversary

Google went all out today to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Rubik’s Cube, giving the classic 80′s toy its very own interactive logo on the site’s global homepage.

Doubling as digital version of the toy, the Rubik’s Cube logo will most likely prove to be a major time-suck as users across the globe try to solve the online version of the puzzle. Along with the logo, Google included Google+, Facebook, Twitter and email links so players could share the game across their social circles.

While the Rubik’s Cube is associated with 80′s pop culture in the US, the toy was originally created in 1974 by Budapest architecture professor Erno Rubik and was first marketed as a “Magic Cube” in his home country of Hungary.� According to the toy’s website, Erno Rubik saw his invention as much more than a toy:

Erno has always thought of the Cube primarily as an object of art, a mobile sculpture symbolizing stark contrasts of the human condition: bewildering problems and triumphant intelligence; simplicity and complexity; stability and dynamism; order and chaos.

The toy was picked up by Ideal Toy Company after being discovered at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1979. With 350 million Rubik’s Cubes sold since the 80s, the toy’s manufacturer claims it is the best-selling toy of all time.

For anyone who wants to commit their day to solving Google’s Rubik’s Cube, the Google Doodle archive offered the following list of keyboard shortcuts:

10 Best Heal Care Stocks To Own For 2015

10 Best Heal Care Stocks To Own For 2015: Siebert Financial Corp.(SIEB)

Siebert Financial Corp., through its subsidiary, Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., engages in the retail discount brokerage and investment banking operations in the United States. The company provides Internet and traditional discount brokerage and related services to retail investors; independent retail execution services; and retail customer services. It also offers various self-directed retirement accounts, for which it acts as agent on various transactions; and lends customers a portion of the market value of certain securities held in the customer?s account through its clearing agent. In addition, the company, through its other subsidiary, Siebert Woman?s Financial Network, Inc., provides products, services, and information to serve women?s financial needs. Further, Siebert Financial Corp. offers equity execution services on an agency basis, as well as equity and fixed income underwriting and investment banking services to institutional investors, and issuers of equity a nd fixed-income securities. The company provides its discount brokerage services through a broker on the telephone, through a wireless device, or via the Internet. It maintains seven retail discount brokerage offices in New York; Jersey City, New Jersey; Boca Raton, Surfside, West Palm Beach, and Naples, Florida; and Beverly Hills, California. The company was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  Muriel Siebert, founder of Siebert Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: SIEB), passed away over the weekend. Many new investors may not know her nor may they know just how important and influential she was on Wall Street and in the financial services industries. Ms. Siebert died at the age of 80 years old, and we wanted to list some of her accomplishments that have led to at least more equality ! among women in what had been a men-only club before she came on the stage.

source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/10-best-heal-care-stocks-to-own-for-2015.html

Google’s Matt Cutts Regrets Not Acting Faster On Paid Links & Content Farms

In Google’s Matt Cutts latest video, he answers a question I personally asked about what he regrets, what decision he regrets making in the past related to webspam. My question specifically was:

Was there a key moment in your spam fighting career where you made a mistake that you regret, related to spam?

Matt answered it in than four minutes explained he regrets not acting sooner on (1) paid links and (2) content farms.

Google’s Paid Links Regret

Matt explained that several years ago at a search conference in San Jose, a well-known SEO told him that paid links are too common and there are no ways for Google to fight against it. That is when Matt said he realized that Google has made a mistake and they allowed paid links that passed PageRank to go too far. So in 2005 or so, Google cracked down heavily on paid links and now at this point, Matt said “most people” realize paid links are against Google’s guidelines, possibly against the FTC’s guidelines, that they have algorithms that fight against it and also manual actions around paid links. But Matt regrets not taking action sooner and waiting too long.

Google’s Content Farms Regret

The second regret Matt admitted to was around not acting sooner on content farms. Matt Cutts explained that early on, he did get some user complaints about the horrible user experience some of these content farms had. But when Matt himself went to one of the sites based on a search on how to fix a toilet in his home, he felt the user experience was good. He said he “over generalized” based on that one example, when he should have looked at the site overall and not just one page.

Because of that over generalization, Google didn’t act as fast as they should have on content farms and thus it became more of an issue on the web and for Google to deal with. Here Matt is specifically talking about Panda.

Matt did say that Google does do a lot of “great work” and finds it “rewarding” on the whole. But at the same time, he said he always “wonders” if you could do better by acting one way or another.

With New GDN Ad Format, Text Ads Will Compete In Display Auctions

Today, Google unveiled a new ad format on the Google Display Network (GDN) called magazine ads in which text ads are converted to show as “display-like” ads on publisher sites that have opted only to show display ads in their AdSense accounts.

The implication for AdWords advertisers is that text ads on the Google Display Network will now compete with display ads in the auctions. A winning text ad will then be converted to the magazine ad format.

The company stated on the AdSense blog, “we�ve created a new format allowing text advertisers to increase competition on your display-only ad units while maintaining a design aesthetic suitable for display.” In other words, more ads entering the auction will likely lead to higher CPCs and more ad revenue.

These ads could perform quite well and offer more reach to text ad advertisers. However, it is not clear, yet, if advertisers will have controls or reporting on this format. Another question is whether an advertiser’s display and text ads will end up competing against each other and raising the cost-per-click. We have inquired with Google and will update here when we learn more.

The magazine ad format is automatically enabled for AdSense publishers that have chosen only to show display advertising. Publishers do have the option of disabling magazine ads if they wish.

Google’s Matt Cutts Regrets Not Acting Faster On Paid Links & Content Farms

In Google’s Matt Cutts latest video, he answers a question I personally asked about what he regrets, what decision he regrets making in the past related to webspam. My question specifically was:

Was there a key moment in your spam fighting career where you made a mistake that you regret, related to spam?

Matt answered it in than four minutes explained he regrets not acting sooner on (1) paid links and (2) content farms.

Google’s Paid Links Regret

Matt explained that several years ago at a search conference in San Jose, a well-known SEO told him that paid links are too common and there are no ways for Google to fight against it. That is when Matt said he realized that Google has made a mistake and they allowed paid links that passed PageRank to go too far. So in 2005 or so, Google cracked down heavily on paid links and now at this point, Matt said “most people” realize paid links are against Google’s guidelines, possibly against the FTC’s guidelines, that they have algorithms that fight against it and also manual actions around paid links. But Matt regrets not taking action sooner and waiting too long.

Google’s Content Farms Regret

The second regret Matt admitted to was around not acting sooner on content farms. Matt Cutts explained that early on, he did get some user complaints about the horrible user experience some of these content farms had. But when Matt himself went to one of the sites based on a search on how to fix a toilet in his home, he felt the user experience was good. He said he “over generalized” based on that one example, when he should have looked at the site overall and not just one page.

Because of that over generalization, Google didn’t act as fast as they should have on content farms and thus it became more of an issue on the web and for Google to deal with. Here Matt is specifically talking about Panda.

Matt did say that Google does do a lot of “great work” and finds it “rewarding” on the whole. But at the same time, he said he always “wonders” if you could do better by acting one way or another.

2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Mike Stelzner over at Social Media Examiner has published the�6th Annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report�based on a survey of over 2,800 marketers.

It’s a pretty robust report at 50 pages and covers the gamut of social media marketing topics from the most important social platforms for marketing to the most important social content types to the ways marketers will be changing their approach to social media in the future.

Some of the highlights include:

92% of marketers say social media is important for their business (up from 86%)58% of marketers say original written content is the most important form of content68% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogging61% of marketers plan to increase Google+ activities in 20146% of marketers are podcasting and 21% plan to increase podcasting activityFacebook and LinkedIn are the two most important social networks for marketers64% of marketers plan on increasing their use of LinkedIn

You really get a lot of details in this report on all major social networks and activities including Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Forums, Podcasting, Snapchat and categories like mobile, social review sites and social bookmarking.

SME also asked some great questions about time spent on social, measuring ROI, outsourcing, types of content, integration with other marketing tactics and what other forms of marketing that social media marketers were using.

Top Goals and Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The top benefits cited for social media marketing include top of funnel objectives like increased exposure (92%) and increased traffic (80%). While that is to be expected, what is interesting is that the more time marketers have been at social media marketing, the more social media helped them improve sales.

The�breakdown between B2B and B2C social platforms that were most�important to marketers was interesting as always:

Top B2B Social Media Platforms:33% LinkedIn31% Facebook16% Twitter11% Blogging3% Google+3% YouTubeTop B2C Social Media Platforms68% Facebook10% Twitter6% Blogging6% LinkedIn2% YouTube2% Google+2% Pinterest1% Social Review Sites (Yelp)

The amount of importance placed on Facebook isn’t surprising given their popularity. I guess Marketers have resolved to accept Facebook as an advertising platform more than an organic social network.

Another interesting point is that only�11% of�B2B marketers and 6% of B2C marketers find blogging most important while 68% say they plan on increasing their use of blogging in the coming year.

Recent UMass Dartmouth studies show the biggest increase in Fortune 500 companies blogging in their 2013 report so blogging is definitely a future area of focus.�Marketers are optimistic about blogging, but I think shiny social network syndrome has them distracted from the true value blogging brings to social media success.

There’s a lot to digest and a lot of insights to be gleaned so be sure to get your copy of the report over at Social Media Examiner�for free while available (Until May 30th).

In the meantime, what are the primary benefits you are seeing from social media and networks? Are you integrating social across marketing and communications or is it treated more independently?

Doodle Equality: In 2014, Google Features Women In Special Logos Nearly Half The Time

If you haven’t noticed, the Google Doodle team — which creates those special Google logos — has been making up for lost time in 2014, adding significantly more women to the number of historic figures featured on Google’s various regional and global homepages. Now, nearly half the logos feature women.

Google was called out in February after a revealing study�by female advocacy group SPARK uncovereded Google’s considerable lack of female-focused Doodles. The study found only 17 percent of the Google logos honoring historic figures between 2010 and 2013 celebrated women.

Google Doodle team lead Ryan Germick acknowledged the site’s shortcomings at the time of the study, claiming his team was working toward evening the number of female versus male logos, “We’ve been working to fix the imbalance in our doodles � this year we�re hoping to have women and men equally represented.�

The number of women featured so far this year on Google’s homepage proves Germick has made good on his team’s effort to fix the imbalance between male and female logos.

Of the 115 regional and global logos listed on the Google Doodles archive page for 2014, 48 honor historic figures, and 23 of those are women. That brings the percentage of woman-based logos to 48% versus 52% for male-focused logos.

Sadly, drawing attention to gender bias in the tech world has become clich�. Just last week, Search Engine Land’s Ginny Marvin reported on a�study conducted by Wordstream offering quantitative data that female digital marketers are undervalued by 21 percent compared to their male counterparts.

What’s refreshing is to see someone admit there’s a problem, and then actually do something about it as the Google Doodle team has done.

In addition to upping the number of women featured on various Google homepages, the Google Doodle team marked “International Women’s Day” on March 8 with an interactive logo that included the following film recognizing over 100 inspiring women from around the world:

On the US Google homepage, the number of females featured since the start of the year has outpaced the number men.

Of the 17 US Google Doodles this year, writer John Steinbeck and chemist Percy Julian were the only men honored with a logo, while the following seven women have been featured on Google’s US homepage:

Zora Neale Hurston, January 7Dian Fossey, January 16Harriet Tubman, February 1Agnes Martin, March 22Dorothy Irene Height, March 24Audrey Hepburn, May 4Dorothy Hodgkin, May 12

Google’s Harriet Tubman logo kicked off Black History Month.

Doodle Equality: In 2014, Google Features Women In Special Logos Nearly Half The Time

If you haven’t noticed, the Google Doodle team — which creates those special Google logos — has been making up for lost time in 2014, adding significantly more women to the number of historic figures featured on Google’s various regional and global homepages. Now, nearly half the logos feature women.

Google was called out in February after a revealing study�by female advocacy group SPARK uncovereded Google’s considerable lack of female-focused Doodles. The study found only 17 percent of the Google logos honoring historic figures between 2010 and 2013 celebrated women.

Google Doodle team lead Ryan Germick acknowledged the site’s shortcomings at the time of the study, claiming his team was working toward evening the number of female versus male logos, “We’ve been working to fix the imbalance in our doodles � this year we�re hoping to have women and men equally represented.�

The number of women featured so far this year on Google’s homepage proves Germick has made good on his team’s effort to fix the imbalance between male and female logos.

Of the 115 regional and global logos listed on the Google Doodles archive page for 2014, 48 honor historic figures, and 23 of those are women. That brings the percentage of woman-based logos to 48% versus 52% for male-focused logos.

Sadly, drawing attention to gender bias in the tech world has become clich�. Just last week, Search Engine Land’s Ginny Marvin reported on a�study conducted by Wordstream offering quantitative data that female digital marketers are undervalued by 21 percent compared to their male counterparts.

What’s refreshing is to see someone admit there’s a problem, and then actually do something about it as the Google Doodle team has done.

In addition to upping the number of women featured on various Google homepages, the Google Doodle team marked “International Women’s Day” on March 8 with an interactive logo that included the following film recognizing over 100 inspiring women from around the world:

On the US Google homepage, the number of females featured since the start of the year has outpaced the number men.

Of the 17 US Google Doodles this year, writer John Steinbeck and chemist Percy Julian were the only men honored with a logo, while the following seven women have been featured on Google’s US homepage:

Zora Neale Hurston, January 7Dian Fossey, January 16Harriet Tubman, February 1Agnes Martin, March 22Dorothy Irene Height, March 24Audrey Hepburn, May 4Dorothy Hodgkin, May 12

Google’s Harriet Tubman logo kicked off Black History Month.