Microsoft recently announced a new “extension” as part of an update to its Office 365 ProPlus software that forcibly changes company-wide Chrome and Firefox search engine defaults to Bing search, automatically, from what is likely set to Google. After considerable backlash, the company is reversing course, a bit. In a predatory fashion, the extension automatically…
For my first post on Search Engine Land, I’ll start by quoting Ian Lurie: Log file analysis is a lost art. But it can save your SEO butt! Wise words. However, getting the data we need out of server log files is usually laborious: Gigantic log files require robust data ingestion pipelines, a reliable cloud…
The latest episode of Google’s Search for Beginners video series goes over the best (and worst) practices for SEO. As the title of the series suggests, the best practices explained in the video all involve beginner-level tactics. So you may be familiar with much of this already. It’s also worth noting that Google’s advice in…
Google added annotation cards in change history reports in the Google Ads UI on Wednesday. There are also new sections for Using annotations. You’ll see a little triangle icon below the change history performance chart indicating an annotation. Click on the triangle to open a card that lists and links to the types of changes…
ADVERTISEMENT As per a new agreement between ICANN and Verisign, the price of domains ending in .com may go up in the coming years. Domain registrar Namecheap reports that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has allowed Verisign to increase the wholesale price of .com domains. The new contract allows Verisign to…
Creating content is a process that has to get smarter all the time. Google is continually improving how it understands naturally expressed human language, as perfectly evidenced in its BERT update from last October. Google has said – and webmaster trends analyst John Mueller has echoed – that there is really nothing drastically new to…
More than 80% of marketers use location data to improve the performance of their campaigns. Location-based ads accounted for $26.5 billion in media spend last year, a figure that’s expected to grow more than 40% by 2022. While location-based marketing is widely practiced, understanding and effectively using location-based audiences remains a challenge for small to…
Facebook has reportedly acquired Scape Technologies, a UK augmented reality (AR) startup. TechCrunch estimated the purchase price might be around $40 million. If Scape were just another AR company, the news wouldn’t be that interesting or potentially significant — but it isn’t. 3D mapping the physical world. Scape’s technology is about creating a 1:1 digital…
ADVERTISEMENT What if I told you there’s a way to build an online empire through posting photos you love? And what if I told you those photos don’t even have to be your own? You’d shake your head. Impossible. But what if I told you someone actually went and did it? In fact, many people…
ADVERTISEMENT Instagram is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to group their following list into different categories. The new “Following Categories” feature groups the accounts you follow into lists such as: Accounts you see most often Accounts you least interact with Accounts sorted by earliest to latest followed Instagram uses data from…