According to Google, “… rich snippets provide you with the ability to help Google highlight aspects of your page. Whether your site contains information about products, recipes, events or apps, a few simple additions to your markup can result in more engagement with your content — and potentially more traffic to your site.” Most of us are familiar with rich snippets and know they can increase click through rates for search results.
We know rich snippets are important, but implementation can be daunting and confusing. I’m not going to attempt to discuss the technical aspects of rich snippets or go into a how-to lesson — I’ll leave that to the experts. Google Webmaster Tools recently published a series of instructional videos about rich snippets. Video topics include a general introduction, types of rich snippets, product searches and troubleshooting, among others.
Not sure if you have rich snippets? Google also has a rich snippet testing tool that allows you to see if a web page contains a rich snippet markup, and, if so, preview the search result for that page.
Does your site contain rich snippets? Use the tool and find out (it’s painless, I promise). Yes? Good for you! No? Try them out and see whether rich snippets have an impact on your click-through-rates.
As millions of us are furiously jotting down ideas for our personal New Year’s Resolutions, here’s one resolution corporate communicators and marketers ought to include: adding an online newsroom to their websites. Consider this fact for a moment: less than half of all businesses even have an online newsroom. The intent to develop one is pending, however. And 2012 is almost here. But for now, this means that the majority of PR folks, corporate communicators, and marketers lack any sort of online newsroom presence. Talk about an untapped market! Given the recent Freshness updates – where preference is heavily tilted towards breaking news, such as the upcoming Presidential primaries or Occupy Wall Street, and frequently updated customer reviews on new products, like Amazon’s Kindle Fire – it’s clear that Google is increasingly relying on a website’s online newsroom as the primary source of trending, newsworthy, and up-to-date content. Read more…
After performing a search, Google offers a new option to narrow down search results. Under “More search tools”, you can now select “Verbatim” to limit traffic to just what you literally searched. Google has a short explanation here which suggests that the tool eliminates spelling corrections, personalized search based on your search history, synonyms, similar terms, and words with the same stem. Basically, you just get what you’re looking for without Google’s search suggestions.
The buzz is that Verbatim search is Google’s substitute for the phased out “+”operator. Previously, this could be utilized to make sure that a specific word in a specific form appeared in the search results. Google’s intentions might be to now utilize “+” to perform some function related to Google+. Only time will tell! Read more…
By most accounts, Black Friday was a huge success. Despite the shaky economy and the threat of occupy Black Friday protests, sales were the strongest since 2007 as national revenue increased 6.6% to a record $11.4 billion according to ShopperTrak.
But customers reported mixed feelings about the various deals and many retailers reported thinning crowds after the midnight surge. And as the now infamous “pepper spray” incident at Walmart proved, once again, Black Friday shopping is not for the faint of heart.
Needless to say, Cyber Monday presents a better experience for many and experts are predicting that Cyber Monday 2011 will be the biggest online shopping day in history, with online sales expected to exceed $1 billion dollars. Read more…
How To: Mobile PPC
Part Two of a Two Part Series on Mobile Search Marketing
Last month we covered mobile search engine optimization; now we turn our attention to mobile search advertising (PPC). As we had said, mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year (source). And this year, marketers in the US will spend over $1 billion on mobile advertising for the first time (source).
Things to Know About Mobile PPC
Mobile PPC campaigns generate, on average, click-through rates nearly three times higher than desktop campaigns…but conversion rates can be much lower, depending on the vertical (source). Google reports that 40% of all mobile searches are related to the person’s location, while Microsoft reports 53% (source). Read more…
Toyota is offering a “collection of popular mobile applications and data services” that’s being built into several of its new models. It’s called Entune and it acts like a smartphone that’s built into the car. In addition to Pandora, Open Table, weather, traffic and such, Bing is included as its voice-activated search engine.
Entune appears to be more evolutionary than revolutionary to me at this point. I mean, if you own a smartphone, you’ve already got access to all those apps while you drive. Although it can be cumbersome to get to them on a loose phone with a small screen while you’re trying to keep your eyes on the road and at least one hand on the wheel. Having Entune built into the dashboard, with a big touchscreen, is probably easier and safer.
What really caught my eye about this is that Bing is the default search engine, not Google. It’s reminding me of the battle soft drink manufacturers have to get their beverages into restaurant chains. If Bing ends up in more cars beyond Toyota, that’d be quite a coup for them. Perhaps some users of “Bing in the car” will transition to users of “Bing out of the car”?
Bing and Yahoo will be merging their search results by next year. This merger will be a game changer for Bing. The unified search user base will give them a new stronghold on the search engine market and a motive to provide more features for current website owners.
Keeping this in mind, Bing has already added huge improvements and details to Webmaster Tools for website owners to have stronger metrics for Bing SERPs, ad monitoring and keyword valuation. Bing promises to share more data, to increase transparency and to bring users more useful tools.
Per the Bing Team Read more…
Wired Magazine has a thought-provoking article in its November issue: Why Kids Can’t Search. Its basic premise is that young people are generally good at using search engines…but they’re terrible at evaluating the quality of the results they find. They don’t check the author’s credentials nor question who would publish a particular work or what their agenda may be. As the parent of two teenagers who write a lot of research papers, I can vouch that this is true!
That’s interesting in and of itself, but one paragraph in the story jumped out at me with its broader implications: Read more…
How To: Mobile SEO
Part One of a Two Part Series on Mobile Search Marketing
You’ve no doubt already heard the statistics imploring you to care about mobile search. If not, here is a smattering of factoids:
• More people worldwide will access the Internet on a mobile device than on a PC by 2013. (source)
• Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year. (source)
• 77% of smartphone users visit search engines (more than any other type of website, including social networking). (source)
• Nine out of ten smartphone searches result in an action (visiting a store or brand website, making a purchase, etc.). (source)
• 88% of local information seekers take action within a day, mostly within one hour. (source)
It’s crystal clear that marketers need to ensure that they can be found by people searching – and looking to buy – on their mobile devices. But how? We’ll cover mobile search engine optimization this month, and mobile search advertising (PPC) next month.
Things to Know About Mobile SEO
Mobile search is different from desktop search – Search Engine Land lists 14 ways. Note that searchers are more likely to be looking for local results, so these types of sites (and Google Places pages) are typically ranked higher.
Read more…
Google recently announced a significant change in how it handles search privacy. It has begun encrypting search queries for anyone who is signed in to a Google account, such as Gmail.
This means that when you are signed in and run a search on www.google.com, you will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com. So the terms you search on and the search results page will be encrypted.
Google explains the reason for this change:
As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.
Read more…
