Since the expansion of Google’s Knowledge Graph, I’ve been getting tons of questions around different Knowledge Graph results. One of the most frequent questions I get from my clients and business owners is regarding which Knowledge Graph result is best to have: a general brand or local panel. Before going into the answer for this question, here are some examples of what a brand and local Knowledge Graph panel look like. Brand Local The answer to which is preferable is not as simple as you Continue Reading ...
Posts Tagged ‘ Channel: SEO ’
SEO in 2017: Seizing opportunity, evangelizing success, achieving overarching growth
As we begin 2017, the fusion of the search and content marketing disciplines has become increasingly more evident. A full 89 percent of B2B marketers (PDF) say that they use content marketing, as do 86 percent of B2C marketers, according to the Content Marketing Institute. Additionally, over 70 percent of marketers in both groups plan on producing more content in the new year than they did in 2016. However, content only has real value if it is found and optimized, and if it converts with Continue Reading ...
Google’s top results for “Did the Holocaust happen” now expunged of denial sites
Several days after Google put a search ranking change into place, the first page of results for “did the holocaust happen” now appears to be entirely free of denial sites. The algorithm change happened earlier this week. As we covered, it caused the Stormfront denial site that was ranking tops for that search to slip to the second spot, bumped behind the authoritative US Holocaust Memorial Museum site. Now Stormfront is entirely gone while USHMM remains: Stormfront has not been banned Continue Reading ...
Google studying ways to deal with offensive search suggestions & results
As Google has come under fire for search suggestions like “are women evil” or actual results questioning whether The Holocaust happened, those who oversee its search engine aren’t ignoring the issue. They’re just taking time to figure out the best and most comprehensive response. This week, I met with several engineers and executives involved with Google’s search results, including Ben Gomes, vice president of core search. There’s no question that Google has heard the concerns. Continue Reading ...
Move over Amazon Echo & Google Home: Here comes Microsoft Cortana
Can’t decide which voice-activated home assistant you want, Amazon Echo or Google Home? Next year, you’ll have a third choice — Microsoft’s Cortana. Unlike Amazon and Google, Microsoft isn’t making it a Cortana device itself. Rather, today it announced a way for anyone to integrate its Cortana agent into devices, through the Cortana Devices SDK. That’s apparently going to be used by Harman Kardon to make a speaker with Cortana smarts to be released next year. Microsoft shared Continue Reading ...
NORAD’s Santa Tracker counts down the days until Christmas 2016 with Bing’s help
Google’s not the only one with its eye on Santa’s whereabouts. For 61 years now, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has tracked Santa’s December 24 trip around the world. The practice started in 1955 when a Sears, Roebuck & Co. advertisement mistakenly included NORAD’s phone number to call Santa. According to NORAD’s website, the number dialed directly into the Commander-in-Chief’s operations hotline. “The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Continue Reading ...
Google begins rolling out a new desktop search user interface
Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that they have begun rolling out a new design and look for their desktop search results page. The new design has a more boxy look resembling a mobile user interface. I believe the official rollout began yesterday, but I spotted tests of this new design a few weeks ago. Here is a screen shot of the new design: It is unclear how long this new design will take to full roll out to all searchers, but I am personally able to replicate this across dozens Continue Reading ...
Canonical chaos: doubling down on duplicate content
Search engines are getting smarter. There is little doubt about that. However, in a CMS-driven web where content can often exist on several URLs, it is not always clear what is the authoritative URL for a given piece of content. Also, having content on several URLs can lead to problems with link and ranking signals being split across several variations of a piece of content. It is hard enough standing out in the often hypercompetitive search landscape, so you would imagine that most businesses Continue Reading ...
Google knowledge panel now showing videos from the web carousel
Google is now showing videos in the knowledge panel. The videos are showing up below the knowledge panel and they are titled “videos from the web.” The videos are related to the knowledge panel information that is triggered based on your query. This was first spotted by @sergey_alakov. Here is his screen shot: About The Author Continue Reading ...
Fun with robots.txt
One of the most boring topics in technical SEO is robots.txt. Rarely is there an interesting problem needing to be solved in the file, and most errors come from not understanding the directives or from typos. The general purpose of a robots.txt file is simply to suggest to crawlers where they can and cannot go. Basic parts of the robots.txt file User-agent — specifies which robot. Disallow — suggests the robots not crawl this area. Allow — allows robots to crawl this area. Crawl-delay — Continue Reading ...