Google: From Idea To Present Day
The following short video tells the story of Google from its inception to the present day.
The History Of Google
October 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Trusted Stores Program Helping Consumers Shop Online In Safety
October 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Helping shoppers choose stores they can trust
Google have launched the Google Trusted Stores Program to help online consumers shop with more confidence. The original post can be found here.
Online shopping is great for many reasons, but most of all it’s a convenient and fast way to turn your intent to buy that new pair of running shoes, for example, into an actual purchase. But shoppers tell us they’re often nervous about buying from online stores they don’t know. We created the free Google Trusted Stores program to help solve this problem. When shoppers see the Google Trusted Store badge, they know in a snap they’re shopping with a reputable retailer and they can feel confident making an informed purchase.
We’ve been testing the program since last fall with about 50 online merchants and more than 10 million orders. It’s working even better than we hoped, generating positive feedback from shoppers and increasing sales for merchants. Starting today, Google Trusted Stores is open to all U.S. merchants who want to apply.
Helping shoppers choose stores they can trust
When shopping online, you may come across the Google Trusted Store badge. Hover over it and you’ll see a “report card” which shows “grades” for that merchant’s shipping and service, including more precise metrics about what the grades mean.
The Google Trusted Store badge and report card
This badge is only awarded to online stores that deliver a great overall experience, so even if you haven’t shopped with this merchant before, you can easily tell if they are trustworthy, ship quickly and reliably, and offer exceptional customer service. If there’s a problem with your purchase, we’re here to help. When you buy from a Google Trusted Store, you can opt in to get up to $ 1,000 lifetime purchase protection per shopper. And our dedicated customer service team is there to work with you and the merchant to assist in resolving the issue.
Helping merchants demonstrate their excellence and earn new business
Google Trusted Stores helps online stores attract new customers, increase sales and differentiate themselves by showing off their excellent service via the badge on their websites. Soon the badge will also appear on Google.com ads and in Google Shopping results.
Google Trusted Store badge on AdWords
Over the last nine months of the pilot, our tests show that participating in this program can help merchants big and small. For example, Wayfair, the largest online-only retailer of home goods and one of the top 50 largest online retailers as ranked by Internet Retailer, increased sales* on its site by 2.3 percent with Google Trusted Stores. And Beau-coup, a specialty online favors and gifts retailer, saw an 8.6 percent increase*. Take a look at our merchant success stories to learn more about how Google Trusted Stores has had a positive impact on website conversion rates and average order sizes for online retailers.
Google Trusted Stores is entirely free, both for shoppers and for online stores. We’re still testing the most helpful ways to display Trusted Stores information to shoppers, so you may see different versions, or none at all, while we conduct experiments. If you’re a merchant and would like to participate in the Google Trusted Stores program, please apply.
*Increased sales percentages are based on a combination of uplift in conversion and average order size.
Google Affiliate Network Blog
Google Has Improved Its Google Shopping
October 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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The below article by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping, talks about the improvements made to Google Shopping and how it makes it easier for merchants to participate in and get more out of Google Shopping. The original post can be found here.
In May, we announced Google Shopping, a new way for people to find and research products, and discover where to buy those products online or nearby. Google Shopping helps people turn their shopping intentions into actions quickly and easily, and then connect directly with merchants to make purchases.
Progress, improvements and easier onboarding
We’ve been pleased by the rapid adoption of Google Shopping in the retail community; tens of thousands of merchants, including many marketplaces, have come on board and are participating in Google Shopping via the new model, based on Product Listing Ads (PLAs). Overall, this represents inventory from over one hundred thousand sellers.
As the transition to the new model continues, we’ve made changes that will make it easier for merchants to participate in and get more out of Google Shopping. We outlined several of these last month and are pleased to share several more:
- Google Trusted Stores annotations are appearing on product pages within Google Shopping, providing participating merchants with greater ability to attract new customers and helping shoppers to make more informed shopping decisions.
- For merchants that are not familiar with Adwords, we have created a simplified sign-up flow in Merchant Center to make participation easier.
- AdWords Editor updates are reducing the amount of time it takes to optimize a PLA campaign — from hours to minutes, in many cases.
- Campaign Tracking URL templates have decreased the number of steps required to set up tracking in AdWords and are making the process easier for merchants.
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| Google Trusted Stores annotations are now appearing on Google Shopping |
Of course, it’s not too late for merchants to get on board and optimize their campaigns prior to the upcoming holiday shopping season. We’ve recorded a series of Hangouts on Air to help small and mid-sized businesses transition to Google Shopping, and have made some Google Shopping best practices available here.
Some Google Shopping Superstars, and the Three C’s
We’ve seen some early success stories from a variety of retailers, demonstrating how Google Shopping has helped them to connect with consumers, drive clicks to their websites and improve conversion rates. Highlights from some mid-sized merchants are listed below; you can find the full text of all these success stories following each description.
- Adorama, one of America’s largest photo retailers and mail-order suppliers, saw their click-through rate (CTR) jump by 176 percent and their conversion rate rise by 100 percent in June 2012, as compared to a year earlier; a similar year-over increase also occurred in July 2012. The full success story can be found here.
- Campmor, a recreational equipment retailer, saw sales increase 10x between January 1 and the present, using PLAs and Google Shopping. The full success story can be found here.
- Empire Covers, an online retailer offering protective covering for cars, trucks, boats, RVs, and motorcycles, along with accessories for pet travel and outdoor living, saw their cost-per-acquisition (CPA) decline by 36 percent between April and August 2012. Additionally, CPCs dropped by 11 percent from July to August 2012. The full success story text can be found here, and a video with more details here.
- Plow & Hearth, a leading retailer of products for the home, hearth, yard, and garden that includes all of its products for all of its brands in PLAs on Google Shopping, saw a number of dramatic results: unique site visits increased by 129 percent, pages per visit increased by 6.3 percent and average visit duration increased by 14.7 percent, while their bounce rate dropped by 9.8 percent. The full success story can be found here.
- ToolKing.com, an Internet Retailer 500 company offering tools, hardware, home-improvement items, outdoor goods, and more across multiple e-commerce channels, lists all its products in Google Shopping via PLAs. Since signing up for PLAs, ToolKing.com’s traffic and conversion rates have risen by more than 50 percent, average order value is up by nearly 15 percent and the sale of thousands of items it once considered “dead” have been reinvigorated. The full success story text can be found here and you can watch a video with more details here.
- TravelSmith Outfitters, an outfitting resource for savvy travelers, used the expertise of Mercent to implement PLAs. Since then, product sales originating from PLAs and Google Shopping have increased by 200 percent. They have also increased consumer traffic by approximately 10 percent and have seen orders go up by 35 percent, with more than a 26 percent increase in sales conversions. The full success story can be found here.
There’s more to come!
We look forward to sharing more with you over the coming months — from new merchant tools that provide more control and flexibility, to new features that will make holiday shopping easier and more fun for consumers. We’re also in the process of planning our 2013 roll-out of Google Shopping in Europe, Asia and Latin America. We’ll have more to share in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping
Google Cracks Down On Low Quality Exact Match Domains
October 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Matt Cutts Announces Google “Weather Report”
Matt Cutts Twitter Post Minor “Weather Report” 28-09-2012
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam fighting team, posted via Twitter, that Google will be making a “small” algorithm change that will effect “low quality” exact-matched domain websites. These “low quality” websites will see a fall in their search engine rankings. This new change is said to affect 0.6% of English-US search queries.
Google’s previous updates, Panda and Penguin were aimed at low quality content and fighting web spam respectively, however, this latest algorithm update is said by Matt Cutts, not to be related to either Panda or Penguin.
What is an “Exact Matched” Domain Name?
An “Exact Matched” domain, is a domain name that copies the search query or keyword.
For example, if someone is looking/searching for “buy red widgets” in the search engine, and one of the results that appeared was “www.buyredwidgets.com” – that is an exact-matched domain. The domain name “matches” the keyword phrase “exactly”.
This new Google algorthm update is targeting LOW QUALITY websites with EXACT MATCHED domains. So, if you have an exact-matched domain and that the content on that website is of “good quality” it should be fine. But unfortunately, we have seen many times in the past, with Google updates that there can be collateral damage to innocent websites. Only time will tell…
So, does your websites an exact matched domain?
Does it have good quality content?
If NOT, you had better be prepared for the coming Google Storm…
Google Search Updates: 86 changes for June and July
August 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google made 86 changes to the search algorithms in June and July.
Google no longer use separate descriptive names and codenames. Usually the descriptive names are just repeats of the information in the short description. Names are sometimes used for providing a unique identifier for a given change, so in cases where we there isn’t a name, an ID number is added.
Here is the list of updates for June:
- uefa-euro1. [project codename “Answers”] Addition of a live result showing schedule and scores of the EURO 2012 games (European championship of national soccer teams).
- #82293. [project codename “Answers”] Improved dictionary search feature by adding support for more natural language searches.
- Better HTML5 resource caching for mobile. [project codename “Mobile”] We’ve improved caching of different components of the search results page, dramatically reducing latency in a number of cases.
- ng2. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] Better ordering of top results using a new and improved ranking function for combining several key ranking features.
- Ref-16. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] Changes to an “official pages” algorithm to improve internationalization.
- Bamse. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
- Bamse-17L. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
- GreenLandII. [project codename “Page Quality”] We’ve incorporated new data into the Panda algorithm to better detect high-quality sites and pages.
- #82353. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change refreshes data for the Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
- SuperQ2. [project codename “Image”] We’ve updated a signal for Google Images to help return more on-topic image search results.
- #82743. [project codename “Answers”] Changes to the calculator feature to improve recognition of queries containing “and,” such as [4 times 3 and a half].
- komodo. [project codename “Query Understanding”] Data refresh for system used to better understand and search for long-tail queries.
- #82580. [project codename “Answers”] This is an improvement for showing the sunrise and sunset times search feature.
- PitCode. [project codename “Answers”] This launch adds live results for Nascar, MotoGP, and IndyCar. This is in addition to Formula1 results, which were already available.
- timeob. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved natural language detection for the time feature to better understand questions like, “What time is it in India?”
- #81933. [project codename “Synonyms”] This launch improves use of query synonyms in ranking. Now we’re less likely to show documents where the synonym has a different meaning than the original search term.
- #82496. [project codename “Answers”] Changes made to the movie showtimes feature on mobile to improve recognition of natural language queries and overall coverage.
- #82367. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
- #82699. [project codename “Other Search Features”] We’ve made it easier to quickly compare places. Now you can hover over a local result and see information about that place on the right-hand side.
- CapAndGown. [project codename “Image”] On many webpages, the most important images are closely related to the overall subject matter of the page. This project helps you find these salient images more often.
- #82769. [project codename “Answers”] Improvements to the calculator feature on mobile to improve handling of queries that contain both words and numbers such as [4 times 3 divided by 2].
- Vuvuzela. [project codename “SafeSearch”] We’ve updated SafeSearch to unify the handling of adult video content in videos mode and in the main search results. Explicit video thumbnails are now filtered more consistently.
- #82537. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve enabled natural language detection for the currency conversion feature to better understand questions like, “What is $ 500 in euros?”
- #82519. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve enabled natural language detection for the flight status feature to better understand questions about flight arrival times and status.
- #82879. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved the triggering for the “when is” feature and understanding of queries like, “When is Mother’s Day?”
- wobnl0330. [project codename “Answers”] Improvements to display of the weather search feature.
- Lime. [project codename “Freshness”] This change improves the interaction between various search components to improve search results for searches looking for fresh content.
- gas station. [project codename “Snippets”] This change removes the boilerplate text in sitelinks titles, keeping only the information useful to the user.
- #81776. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved natural language detection for the unit conversion feature to better understand questions like, “What is 5 miles in kilometers?”
- #81439. [project codename “Answers”] Improved display of the finance feature for voice search queries on mobile.
- #82666. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
- #82541. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.
- gaupe. [project codename “Universal Search”] Improves display of the flights search feature. Now, this result shows for queries with destinations outside the US, such as [flights from Austin to London].
- #82887. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved natural language processing for the dictionary search feature.
- gallium-2. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change improves synonyms inside concepts.
- zinc-4. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change improves efficiency by not computing synonyms in certain cases.
- Manzana2. [project codename “Snippets”] This launch improves clustering and ranking of links in the expanded sitelinks feature.
- #82921. [project codename “Alternative Search Methods”] We’ve improved finance results to better understand finance-seeking queries spoken on mobile.
- #82936. [project codename “Answers”] Improved display of the weather search feature, so you can ask [weather in california] or [is it hot in italy].
- #82935. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved natural language detection for the sunrise/sunset feature.
- #82460. [project codename “Snippets”] With this change we’re using synonyms to better generate accurate titles for web results.
- #82953. [project codename “Answers”] This change improves detection of queries about weather.
- PandaMay. [project codename “Search Quality”] We launched a data refresh for our Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
- ItsyBitsy. [project codename “Images”] To improve the quality of image results, we filter tiny, unhelpful images at the bottom of our image results pages.
- localtimeob. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved display of the local time search feature.
- #82536. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved natural language detection to better understand queries about baseball and return the latest baseball information about MLB, such as schedules and the latest scores.
- Improvements to Images Universal ranking. [project codename “Universal Search”] We significantly improved our ability to show Images Universal on infrequently searched-for queries.
- absum3. [project codename “Snippets”] This launch helps us select better titles to display in the search results. This is a change to our algorithm that will specifically improve the titles for pages that are in non-Latin based languages.
- #83051. [project codename “Answers”] We’ve improved display of local business information in certain mobile use cases. In particular, we’ll highlight information relevant to the search, including phone numbers, addresses, hours and more.
- calc2-random. [project codename “Answers”] This change improves our understanding of calculator-seeking queries.
- #82961. [project codename “Alternative Search Methods”] When you search for directions to or from a location on your mobile device without specifying the start point, we’ll return results starting from your current position.
- #82984. [project codename “Universal Search”] This was previously available for users searching on google.com in English, and now it’s available for all users searching in English on any domain.
- #82150. [project codename “Spelling”] Refresh of our algorithms for spelling systems in eight languages.
- NoPathsForClustering. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] We’ve made our algorithm for clustering web results from the same site or same path (same URL up until the last slash) more consistent. This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our clustering system better and simpler.
- Hamel. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change updates a model we use to help you find high-quality pages with unique content.
- #81977. [project codename “Synonyms”] This change updates our synonyms systems to make it less likely we’ll return adult content when users aren’t looking for it.
- Homeland. [project codename “Autocomplete”] This is an improvement to autocomplete that will help users to get predicted queries that are more relevant to their local country.
Here’s the list of updates for July:
- #82948. [project codename “Other Search Features”] We’ve improved our natural language processing to improve display of our movie showtimes feature.
- yoyo. [project codename “Snippets”] This change leads to more useful text in sitelinks.
- popcorn. [project codename “Snippets”] We’ve made a minor update to our algorithm that detects if a page is an “article.” This change facilitates better snippets.
- Golden Eagle. [project codename “Autocomplete”] When Google Instant is turned off, we’ll sometimes show a direct link to a site in the autocomplete predictions. With this change we refreshed the data for those predictions.
- #82301. [project codename “Indexing”] This change improves an aspect of our serving systems to save capacity and improve latency.
- #82392. [project codename “Indexing”] This launch improves the efficiency of the Book Search ranking algorithms, making them more consistent with Web Search.
- Challenger. [project codename “Snippets”] This is another change that will help get rid of generic boilerplate text in Web results’ titles, particularly for sitelinks.
- #83166. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change is a major update to Google Maps data for the following regions: CZ, GR, HR, IE, IT, VA, SM, MO,PT, SG, LS. This new data will appear in maps universal results.
- #82515. [project codename “Translation and Internationalization”] This change improves the detection of queries that would benefit from translated results.
- bergen. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.
- Panda JK. [project codename “Page Quality”] We launched Panda on google.co.jp and google.co.kr to promote more high-quality sites for users in Japan and Korea.
- rrfix4. [project codename “Freshness”] This is a bug fix to a freshness algorithm. This change turns off a freshness algorithm component in certain cases when it should not be affecting the results.
- eventhuh4. [project codename “Knowledge Graph”] We’ll show a list of upcoming events in the Knowledge Graph for city-related searches such as [san francisco] and [events in san francisco].
- #83483. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change helps surface navigation directions directly in search results for more queries.
- Zivango. [project codename “Refinements”] This change leads to more diverse search refinements.
- #80568. [project codename “Snippets”] This change improves our algorithm for generating site hierarchies for display in search result snippets.
- Labradoodle. [project codename “SafeSearch”] We’ve updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.
- JnBamboo. [project codename “Page Quality”] We’ve updated data for our Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
- #83242. [project codename “Universal Search”] This change improves news universal display by using entities from the Knowledge Graph.
- #75921. [project codename “Autocomplete”] For some time we’ve shown personalized predictions in Autocomplete for users who’ve enabled Web History on google.com in English. With this change, we’re internationalizing the feature.
- #83301. [project codename “Answers”] Similar to the live results we provide for sports like baseball or European football, you can now search on Google and find rich, detailed information about the latest schedule, medal counts, events, and record-breaking moments for the world’s largest sporting spectacle.
- #83432. [project codename “Autocomplete”] This change helps users find more fresh trending queries in Japanese as part of autocomplete.
These list of updates were taken from a Google Blog post.
Google Shopping Updates
August 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google is updating Google Shopping, and in the following article, Jennifer Dulski, Director of Product Management at Google Shopping, describes what is happening with Google Shopping.
Helping Merchants Succeed: Updates to Google Shopping
We’re dedicated to helping merchants succeed with Google Shopping and a huge part of this success involves making it easy for businesses to optimize their accounts, especially before the holiday season. For example, we recently released an update to AdWords Editor that allows retailers to easily manage Product Listing Ads at scale and delivered a series of four Hangouts on Air to help merchants make the transition to Google Shopping.
We’re continuing to actively release improvements to the product and we recently started ranking the results in Google Shopping based on a combination of relevance and bid price–just like Product Listing Ads are ranked. While products listed without a bid will continue to show until the final transition to a commercial model is complete in the fall, advertisers who are promoting their products with Product Listing Ads will have better positioning and increased traffic.
Merchants who create Product Listing Ads will also have greater control over where their productions appear in Google Shopping, due to the inclusion of bid as a factor in ranking. And in the future, they will have the opportunity to differentiate their businesses and market special offers, such as, “30% off all refracting telescopes”.
9 Days Left To Take Advantage of Limited Time Offer
In May, we announced Google Shopping, a new initiative to improve our shopping experience that makes it easy for shoppers (your customers) to easily research purchases, compare different products, their features and prices, and then connect directly with merchants to make purchases.
A key part of this initiative was helping make this transition easier for merchants by offering two incentives:
- All merchants that are promoting all of their online product inventory and who are compliant with Google Shopping policies by August 15, 2012, will receive a monthly AdWords credit of 10% of their total US spend on Product Listing Ads through the end of the year.
- Additionally, merchants active on Product Search as of May 30, 2012 can fill out this form by August 15, 2012 and receive a $ 100 AdWords credit to use toward Product Listing Ads
With only 9 days left until the August 15th deadline, we suggest visiting this site to learn more about these incentives today.
We’re focused on ensuring that merchants of all sizes succeed with Google Shopping and the roadmap includes even more exciting changes that will make it easier to manage Product Listing Ads. To get started with Google Shopping, visit our getting started guide
Jennifer Dulski, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping
Google: New Notifications About Inbound Links
August 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Matt Cutts recently talked about Google’s new update to their search algorithm. In this post, Matt Cutts talks about:
- Link Messages relating to Unnatural Links
- New Link Messages and how serious they are
- Gives examples of different linking scenarios
- What you should do if you get a new link message
Webmaster level: Advanced
Lots of site owners use our webmaster console to see how their site is doing in Google. Last week we began sending new messages to sites with a pattern of unnatural links pointing to them, and I wanted to give more context about these new messages.
Original Link Messages
First, let’s talk about the original link messages that we’ve been sending out for months. When we see unnatural links pointing to a site, there are different ways we can respond. In many severe cases, we reduce our trust in the entire site. For example, that can happen when we believe a site has been engaging in a pretty widespread pattern of link spam over a long period of time. If your site is notified for these unnatural links, we recommend removing as many of the spammy or low-quality links as you possibly can and then submitting a reconsideration request for your site.
In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won’t take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves.
New Link Messages
In less severe cases, we sometimes target specific spammy or artificial links created as part of a link scheme and distrust only those links, rather than taking action on a site’s overall ranking. The new messages make it clear that we are taking “targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole.” The new messages also lack the yellow exclamation mark that other messages have, which tries to convey that we’re addressing a situation that is not as severe as the previous “we are losing trust in your entire site” messages.
How serious are these new link messages?
These new messages are worth your attention. Fundamentally, it means we’re distrusting some links to your site. We often take this action when we see a site that is mostly good but might have some spammy or artificial links pointing to it (widgetbait, paid links, blog spam, guestbook spam, excessive article directory submissions, excessive link exchanges, other types of linkspam, etc.). So while the site’s overall rankings might not drop directly, likewise the site might not be able to rank for some phrases. I wouldn’t classify these messages as purely advisory or something to be ignored, or only for innocent sites.
On the other hand, I don’t want site owners to panic. We do use this message some of the time for innocent sites where people are pointing hacked anchor text to their site to try to make them rank for queries like [buy viagra].
Example scenario: widget links
A fair number of site owners emailed me after receiving one of the new messages, and I think it might be helpful if I paraphrased some of their situations to give you an idea of what it might mean if you get one of these messages.
The first example is widget links. An otherwise white-hat site emailed me about the message. Here’s what I wrote back, with the identifying details removed:
“Looking into the very specific action that we took, I think we did the right thing. Take URL1 and URL2 for example. These pages are using your EXAMPLE1 widgets, but the pages include keyword-rich anchortext pointing to your site’s url. One widget has the link ANCHORTEXT1 and the other has ANCHORTEXT2.
If you do a search for [widgetbait matt cutts] you’ll find tons of stories where I discourage people from putting keyword-rich anchortext into their widgets; see http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-061608.shtml for example. So this message is a way to tell you that not only are those links in your widget not working, they’re probably keeping that page from ranking for the phrases that you’re using.”
Example scenario: paid links
The next example is paid links. I wrote this email to someone:
“I wouldn’t recommend that Company X ignore this message. For example, check out SPAMMY_BLOG_POST_URL. That’s a link from a very spammy website, and it calls into question the linkbuilding techniques that Company X has been using (we also saw a bunch of links due to widgets). These sorts of links are not helping Company X, and it would be worth their time to review how and why they started gathering links like this.”
I also wrote to another link building SEO who got this message pointing out that the SEO was getting links from a directory that appeared to offer only paid links that pass PageRank, and so we weren’t trusting links like that.
Here’s a final example of paid links. I emailed about one company’s situation as follows:
“Company Y is getting this message because we see a long record of buying paid links that pass PageRank. In particular, we see a lot of low-quality ‘sponsored posts’ with keyword-rich anchortext where the links pass PageRank. The net effect is that we distrust a lot of links to this site. Here are a couple examples: URL1 and URL2. Bear in mind that we have more examples of these paid posts, but these two examples give a flavor of the sort of thing that should really be resolved. My recommendation would be to get these sort of paid posts taken down, and then Company Y could submit a reconsideration request. Otherwise, we’ll continue to distrust quite a few links to the site.”
Example scenario: reputation management
In some cases we’re ignoring links to a site where the site itself didn’t violate our guidelines. A good example of that is reputation management. We had two groups write in; one was a large news website, while the other was a not-for-profit publisher. Both had gotten the new link message. In one case, it appeared that a “reputation management” firm was using spammy links to try to push up positive articles on the news site, and we were ignoring those links to the news site. In the other case, someone was trying to manipulate the search results for a person’s name by buying links on a well-known paid text link ad network. Likewise, we were just ignoring those specific links, and the not-for-profit publisher didn’t need to take any action.
What should I do if I get the new link message?
We recently launched the ability to download backlinks to your site sorted by date. If you get this new link message, you may want to check your most recent links to spot anything unusual going on. If you discover that someone in your company has been doing widgetbait, paid links, or serious linkspam, it’s worth cleaning that up and submitting a reconsideration request. We’re also looking at some ways to provide more concrete examples to make these messages more actionable and to help narrow down where to look when you get one.
Just to give you some context, less than 20,000 domains received these new messages—that’s less than one-tenth the number of messages we send in a typical month—and that’s only because we sent out messages retroactively to any site where we had distrusted some of the sites’ backlinks. Going forward, based on our current level of action, on average only about 10 sites a day will receive this message.
Summing up
I hope this post and some of the examples above will help to convey the nuances of this new message. If you get one of these new messages, it’s not a cause for panic, but neither should you completely ignore it. The message says that the current incident isn’t affecting our opinion of the entire website, but it is affecting our opinion of some links to the website, and the site might not rank as well for some phrases as a result.
This message reflects an issue of moderate severity, and we’re trying to find the right way to alert people that their site may have a potential issue (and it’s worth some investigation) without overly stressing out site owners either. But we wanted to take this extra step toward more transparency now so that we can let site owners know when they might want to take a closer look at their current links.
Google Panda Update 3.9 Released
July 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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According to Google, they have released the latest update to their Panda algorithm.
Google posted on Twitter that the update will affect about 1% of search results.
“New data refresh of Panda starts rolling out tonight. ~1% of search results change enough to notice. More context: goo.gl/huekf ”
by A Googler (@google) July 24, 2012
New Local Search Ads in Google Maps for Mobile
July 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Redesign Their Ad Formats For Google Maps For Mobile
The following post by Jay Akkad, Google Product Manager, Mobile Ads, describes the changes and redesign for Google’s ad formats for Google Maps for mobile.
People use their mobile devices to discover and engage with the world around them. Searching for local information is one of the most common activities on mobile – in the US, said they had done so, and nearly every surveyed country reported numbers over 80%. With Google Maps, they make informed decisions about places to see, shops to visit, meals to eat, and more.
To enable advertisers to better connect with potential customers via mobile search, we have redesigned our local ad formats for Google Maps for Mobile. These have produced measurable results – in initial tests, these redesigned formats increased click-through-rates by 100%. This visual redesign will be rolling out today to the newer versions of Android phones.
The updated formats feature several key improvements:
- Important calls to action like “get directions” and “click to call” are now more prominent in the ad and clickable in more places.
- A new hyperlocal marker shows the user how close they are to an advertiser’s business location
- Clicking on the ad now takes the user to an advertiser’s website from within the app, making it simple to browse the site without losing context or access to maps app navigation.
Above: Current view of local ads in Google Maps for Mobile
Below: Launching today, new feature improvements in local ads in Google Maps for Mobile
Ads in Google Maps for Mobile are one of many ways advertisers are delivering relevant local answers to people’s questions on mobile. Likewise, a recent campaign from T-Mobile shows how search ads, combined with location extensions, enabled them to reach users close to their store locations across mobile search and maps.
T-Mobile understood that they needed to adjust their goals and tactics to cater to mobile user behavior. On the difference in user behavior between desktop and mobile campaigns, Kari Nicholas, Media Director of T-Mobile USA explained, “Consumers searching on mobile devices tend to be further down the purchase funnel and have a more informed opinion about what they want, which presents an opportunity for us to influence their decision regarding where to buy while they’re on the go. That’s why we felt it was essential to provide a way for them to easily find our retail locations.” T-Mobile’s approach of using mobile location extensions drove over 160,000 click-throughs and a click-through-rate of 13%. To read more, download the full case study, here.
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T-Mobile’s mobile search ads on Google.com and Google Maps for Mobile contain locally relevant information like a user’s distance from their closest location, and the ability to call and get directions to their closest store.
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Mobile technology is enabling people to connect with businesses in new ways via smartphones and tablets. People use search and click to businesses’ websites, but they are also clicking to make phone calls, find directions to walk into local stores, and more. To take advantage of these new local search ads on Google Maps for Mobile, make sure you’ve done the following:
- Target the relevant campaigns to mobile devices
- Enable ads to show to search partners
- Finally, havelocation extensions enabled within AdWords to take advantage of all these new features – so be sure to enable them if you haven’t already!
We’re looking forward to further understanding mobile usage trends and helping businesses better connect with their customers on the go.
Posted by Jay Akkad, Product Manager, Mobile Ads
Introducing Webmaster Academy
June 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Launches Webmaster Academy
Julian Prentice, from Google’s Search Quality Team, talks about the launch of Google’s Webmaster Academy, which offers educational content to help you understand and use Webmaster Tools:
Webmaster Level: Beginner
Looking through all of the information in Webmaster Central can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started with a website. This is why we’re excited to introduce a new set of educational materials in a program called Webmaster Academy. Webmaster Academy provides practical and easy-to-understand lessons for beginner webmasters to help you improve your site with topics like getting your site in our index, providing search engines with helpful information about your video and image content, and understanding Webmaster Tools features.
We’ve organized the content to represent what beginner webmasters should know in a way that’s both structured and modular, meaning you can go through the whole curriculum, or pick and choose your own path. Once you’ve read the articles, you can easily delve deeper into each topic, as we provide links to more in-depth articles. Most lessons are also accompanied by a video from the Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. If you’re looking to understand search and improve your site, Webmaster Academy is for you!
Have feedback? Excellent. Post it in our Webmaster Help Forum.
