Microsoft Clarity, a free product to help site owners better understand visitor behavior so that they can improve their user experiences, is out of beta and now generally available, the company announced Wednesday. First launched as a closed beta in 2018, Microsoft Clarity provides site owners with visual heatmaps that illustrate user engagement, individual session…
Taken in totality, Google’s recent announcements on its expanding use of natural language understanding algorithms represent a major evolution in how it determines what content gets surfaced in the search results. In turn, these algorithms will impact how we approach content and optimization. Ranking passages in the search results. Google is rolling out passage-based indexing,…
In part one of my recent interview with Mike Blumenthal, local SEO expert and co-founder of customer experience management platform GatherUp, we spoke about the lack of resources Google allocates to addressing spam on Google Maps. Here, in part two, we talked about the importance of review attribution for local businesses on Google Maps. Reviews are…
Foursquare began life as a gamified social “check-in” app, which offered helpful tips for others as they competed to become “the mayor” of local venues. It evolved into a local search purveyor but after adoption plateaued and investors grew restless, the company pivoted to location intelligence. And although the Foursquare app continues to exist it’s…
Google ads is now 20 years old. At its 15 year milestone, we chronicled AdWords’ evolution into a $60 billion business. We were still talking about Yahoo as a player in search, enhanced campaigns ushered in mobile as a marketing must-do just two years prior and ads-only Google Shopping was three years old. Fast-forward five…
Along with updates for merchants’ holiday Shopping campaign efforts, on Thursday, Google announced consumer-facing updates in Shopping that retail marketers should pay attention to — particularly as it relates to the importance of pricing and promotions. Retail advertisers will also have access to more reporting and performance insights for Shopping campaigns and new customer targeting…
Consumers’ accelerated shift to online shopping will be one of the lasting trends of 2020. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of U.S. holiday shoppers said they plan to shop online more for the holidays during COVID-19, a Google survey found. It’s unclear whether Amazon’s Prime Day shift from July to October will last post-pandemic, but the timing…
Google has confirmed on Twitter much of what we wrote in our story: How Google indexes passages of a page and what it means for SEO. Google wrote “this change doesn’t mean we’re indexing individual passages independently of pages. We’re still indexing pages and considering info about entire pages for ranking. But now we can…
Link building is very time-consuming. Just securing 10-20 links a month can be mind-numbing. But by aligning resources, you can build a program that can help you earn hundreds of links in a month. On October 14, I moderated a sponsored Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Kevin Rowe, Founder and CEO, PureLinq. He shared…
Google has posted another update regarding the indexing issues with mobile-indexing and canonicalization. As of last Wednesday, October 14, 2020, the final indexing issue has been resolved, outside of minor “edge cases.” The statement. Google said “Final update: the canonical issue was effectively resolved last Wednesday, with about 99% of the URLs restored. We expect…