As part of my Compete: Google Keeps Stomping The Others In Search Traffic article earlier this week, I posted the exact rules that Compete uses to calculate search share, along with commentary on why digging into this is becoming increasingly important. A reader noted the rules didn't seem right.

There's been a near parade of executives leaving Yahoo recently. TechCrunch reports three more are going or ready to go according to "sources close to the company." Click to continue reading...

Google has been visualizing US primary election data and, in anticipation of the US presidential election, has now created a Google Maps Elections Gallery. There is a wide range of data here, from election results, to Twitter Tweets and search query volumes for each candidate. All the maps can also

According to SEMPO and its Annual State of Search Survey 2007, SEMs largely remain focused on search fundamentals: traffic, conversions, CTRs and ROI. Very consistent with percentages in last year's results, marketers and agencies are interested in direct sales (58 percent) and brand awareness (61 percent).

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google seems to be testing additional AdSense fonts for the text used in the ads. The image shown here is from when Google tested using the Comic Sans font back in May. These tests seem to have expanded into various font types, including but not limited

Google announced that the page load time metric is now a live factor that will influence your quality score and your minimum bids for your AdWords ads. We first heard that page load time was coming to the Google quality score in early March. Google then provided advertisers with metric in their AdWords

Facebook 'dipping' craze irks pool owners from the Telegraph reports that teenagers on Facebook are using Google Maps to locate pools in their neighborhoods and then hold pool parties, as uninvited guests. The new phenomenon is called "dipping," and has caused concern amongst the Bournemouth, UK region. These

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask.com Adds Privacy Link To Home Page, Hopes People Care Google recently came under fire for not providing a link to its privacy policy right from its home

Google recently came under fire for not providing a link to its privacy policy right from its home page, as Yahoo and Microsoft do. Ask.com, apparently hoping to ride the issue to some consumer gains, has emailed us that it now proudly sports a privacy link on its home page, along with some

As I watch search marketers often continue to obsess about things like PageRank, I wanted to do a personal post / wake-up call related to our SMX Local & Mobile Search Marketing show happening next month in San Francisco, July 24-25. Because for all the buzz that goes on around link

Nielsen Mobile is reporting that Google leads rivals Yahoo and Microsoft in mobile search by margins comparable to those on the desktop. Click to continue reading...

The rumor was that Microsoft had been interested in buying Spot Runner, which provides a range of targeting capabilities to cable TV advertising (as well as online). But instead the company has purchased Navic. Navic does many things but basically enables more targeted and, in some cases, interactive

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning that Google said if your robots.txt is unreachable, your site might not make it into the Google index. By unreachable, Google means that if your server simply times out and does not return any server response when Googlebot attempts to access your

Conduct a search in Google for gay, lesbian, homosexual and other related searches and you might see Google supporting gay pride by adding a rainbow colored divider between the organic search results and paid search results. Philipp spotted this the other day and also added that Google is well known

Your landing page is a key part of any successful paid search campaign, and by now, the value of testing and optimizing your landing pages has become accepted wisdom. However, many testing methodologies—especially multivariate testing—are complex and are only appropriate for sites that

While Microsoft closed its book search service to focus on search with "high consumer intent," Google's gone the opposite way and expanded its book search service in one of the most consumer-driven search verticals, product search. Google Operating System reports that Google has integrated Google Book

Yahoo feels like a nation that won its independence only to see all its leaders immediately flee the country. The latest emigrants: Flickr cofounders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield. Their departure is unlikely to stall Flickr, but it gives a terrible impression of Yahoo as a company

The latest search engine share stats for May 2008 from Compete show Google hitting yet again another high. Let's do the numbers, including the debate on whether Microsoft Live Search Club searches should be counted plus how everyone might start generating queries in new ways. Click to

Short and sweet. Register by the end of the day this Friday, June 20, and you'll get the lowest rate -- just $1095 -- on SMX Local & Mobile in San Francisco July 24-25. SMX Local & Mobile provides the tips, tactics and strategies you'll implement immediately to achieve outstanding results

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SEMs Weigh In On Local Search Ranking VariablesSEO practitioner David Mihm conducted a survey of local search marketing professionals about which variables