In the news...
BBC tweaks titles to improve visibility
Monday 30 November 2009
Search engine optimisation for news websites is an interesting and tricky topic. News site copywriters need to make their headlines short and catchy to draw readers in, yet this may mean that key search phrases are omitted, leaving the site less visible to search engines.
New-style site hierarchies in Google SERPs
Monday 30 November 2009
Never content to rest on its laurels, search giant Google has been treading the innovation path yet again, this time addressing the way that it delivers site hierarchy information in its results pages.
Google hints that site speed may soon affect rankings
Tuesday 17 November 2009
At the PubCon search event in Las Vegas on Thursday, Google's ever-cheerful Matt Cutts gave the strongest hint to date that site speed will soon become a factor in SERPs rankings. In his conference presentation, as well as in a video interview with WebProNews, Cutts revealed that there is a strong lobby within Google that wants to introduce a new ranking factor concerning how fast a site or page loads.
Bing UK Launched by Microsoft
Sunday 15 November 2009
Despite rumours – reported last week by Marketing magazine – that Bing's UK launch would be delayed until next year, Telegraph.co.uk has revealed that Bing has now been rolled out to Internet users in the UK, allowing them to get localised results that are more relevant to their search.
Google Commerce Search launched for on-line retailers
Saturday 07 November 2009
On Wednesday this week, Mountain View unveiled a new facility for retail sites – conveniently just in time to help them cash in on the festive season! Google Commerce Search is designed to make on-line shopping quicker and easier for consumers, which is likely to be music to retailers' ears.
Facebook gets tough on ad scams
Friday 06 November 2009
In a post on its developer blog on Thursday, social networking site Facebook announced that since its update to its terms of service in the summer, it has disabled two ad networks that were running deceptive ads.
Google names that tune in one
Thursday 29 October 2009
Search giant Google has taken a step into the on-line music market by launching a new search service in partnership with established music sites Lala and iLike (owned by MySpace). Currently available only in the USA, the service – which some pundits are dubbing 'OneBox', as this was Google's internal code name – allows users to search for music tracks by entering song titles, artists or just snippets of lyrics.
Google Unveils Social Search
Monday 26 October 2009
On Monday, Google announced its new Social Search feature, which the company has rolled out as an experiment on Google Labs. Part of the search giant's 'Holy Grail' mission to make search more relevant, Google Social Search includes results from the user's 'social circle' in a special section within the results pages.
Massive Chinese click fraud ring uncovered
Tuesday 20 October 2009
It's pretty obvious that as long as there's pay per click (PPC) advertising , there will be click fraud. The two just go hand-in-hand in today's world. Click fraud occurs when a person sets up a website, signs up with an ad network and then clicks on the ads to generate ad revenues with false clicks.
Royal Mail postcode lottery
Thursday 08 October 2009
The Royal Mail has threatened legal action against Ernestmarples.com, which has been supplying postcode data to a number of websites. In response, Ernestmarples.com – cheekily named after the Postmaster General who oversaw the introduction of postcodes way back in 1959 – has closed its postcode feed to the sites, which include Job Centre Pro Plus (which helps people find jobs), HealthWare (which locates nearby pharmacies and hospitals), Planning alerts.com (which monitors planning applications) and Straight Choice (which reveals the sources of political leaflets).
Voice is choice with Bing
Thursday 08 October 2009
In the US, Sprint Wireless has announced the launch of its new Samsung Intrepid Smartphone, which is the first mobile to feature Microsoft's brand-new voice user interface, Tellme. Available in the States from October 11, the new mobile will allow users to search the web with Bing , compose a text message or dial a friend by simply talking instead of typing.
Google loses out to Bahama botnet
Thursday 08 October 2009
Click Forensics, the Internet traffic quality management company, has revealed in its blog this week that the Bahama botnet can claim web giant Google among its many victims. As well as cheating on-line advertisers out of free traffic and generating fraudulent paid clicks, ad providers are also suffering at the hands of the scammers, believed to be Ukrainian.
Gmail attacked by phishing scam
Wednesday 07 October 2009
Internet giant Google admitted to the BBC on Tuesday that users of its web-based e-mail system, Gmail, had been subject to an attack from hackers, with passwords then posted on line. The news came hard on the heels of reports that up to 10,000 Hotmail addresses had suffered similar phishing assaults, being posted on line at Pastebin, a website used by developers to share code.
Hotmail passwords leaked
Tuesday 06 October 2009
Microsoft has today been forced to admit that thousands of Windows Live Hotmail passwords have been leaked on line. The news was originally broken on 1 October by technology blog Neowin and, since then, messages advising friends to change their passwords have been flying around Twitter and other social networks.
Google unveils Sidewiki
Sunday 27 September 2009
Web giant Google has, not for the first time, attempted to steal the limelight from its rival Yahoo! by launching its new comment-sharing browser tool, Google Sidewiki, the day after Yahoo! released its new-look Yahoo.
Yahoo! redesigns its search experience
Saturday 26 September 2009
Yahoo! Inc launched its new Yahoo! Search earlier this week. The company, based in Sunnyvale CA, trailed its revision on the Yahoo! Search Blog as " an all-new Yahoo! Search experience that makes search more personally relevant ".
Bing introduces Visual Search
Friday 18 September 2009
In its most recent bid to claw market share from search leader Google, Microsoft has introduced a feature called Visual Search – which does what it says on the tin – to its Bing search engine. Launched back in May, Bing's share of US searches rose to 10.7% in August, with Google still number one at 64.6% and Yahoo in second place with 16%.
Surge in click fraud traced to Bahama Botnet
Thursday 17 September 2009
If you think that the idea of a villain in another country controlling the computer in your home is mere fiction – perhaps an ideal story line for an episode of 'Dr Who' – you need to think again! Web traffic management specialist Click Forensics has discovered that a recent surge in click fraud traffic is due to a botnet – that is, a network (net) of software robots (bots) that operate automatically.
BBC pays Google to top search results
Wednesday 16 September 2009
The BBC found itself at the centre of a whirlwind of controversy this week when the Mail on Sunday revealed that the corporation has been paying US search giant Google for the right to use key words and phrases that put its news at the top of results lists.
Search Options now on Google Images
Saturday 01 August 2009
Google has announced that its recently launched Search Options panel is now available for image searches. On the Official Google Blog yesterday, Friday 31 July, executives Ken Dauber (Software Engineer) and Nate Smith (Associate Product Manager) wrote: " A few months ago when we announced the Search Options panel, we promised that you would soon see similar functionality across our other search properties.
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