Stone sun

Perform a Google search for [depeche mode members]. Not long ago, you’d get something that looked like the image below (plus a few images of a video to fill out the universal search results). Google is transitioning from universal search results to entity search results. In my example, Depeche Mode is a popular music band, and a band is an entity. Let’s break it down: Appearance & Behavior Let’s look at what happened to the appearance and behavior of images in Google’s SERPs with this transition. Knowledge Graph Image Carousel At the top, in fashionable black, Google gives us an image carousel. Because I searched for the members of Depeche Mode, Google displays pictures of each band member. Notice how each image is a clear head shot, and all are roughly the same size and dimensions. The pictures are served from gstatic.com, a Google-owned server. These images don’t exist on some website anymore — they’ve been appropriated by Google. For … [Read more...] about A Deep Dive Into Google’s Image Carousel And Knowledge Graph Results

Today, Google News did a post about the death of Osama bin Laden. Disappointingly, it offered no statistics on what was most read, shared, topics most covered. The post did share a “sample” of 100 links to coverage about Osama bin Laden from representative sources. So, I decided to go where Google didn’t — to see what that sample might tell us. In short, good stuff about Google News, yes — but lots of flaws, too. The coverage seemed pretty heavily skewed toward the mainstream media. I wondered if they all turned out to be saying the same thing. Yes, you did have plenty of general summaries. But as I went through the stories (and my idea of highlighting each of them proved way too much work), I did come across a number of things that stood out to me. Here are some highlights (and there will be some typos, sorry — had to dash out before my usual proofing. I’ll catch them later). The Non-Local, Non-Baltimore Sun Story Above, the Baltimore Sun … [Read more...] about The Google News “Osama Death” Sample Highlights Some News Coverage Woes

Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the Web. From Marketing Land: Google Analytics Updates Goals Set-Up Flow, Adds New Templates & Offers A Verification Option Google Analytics announced a number of new updates today to Goals, including a new set-up process, new templates, and a new verification option. Goals are created at the profile level, and can be started by navigating to a user’s account, property, and profile from the admin tab. Once the correct profile is selected, a user […] Twitter Adds Two-Factor Authentication Option Amid Recent Twitter Account Hijacks Twitter announced they’ve added two-factor authentication in order to help better secure Twitter. Recently, there has been a large increase in the number of high-profile Twitter accounts being hacked into. Such examples include the AP Twitter account, MTV Twitter account and many more. Many are due to insecure … [Read more...] about Marketing Day: May 22, 2013

Knowing what to believe in SEO can be challenging at best.You may hear two credible people stating two seemingly (or actually) contradictory things who are able to back their opinion with success stories or data.Very little is set in stone.Ad to make matters worse: things change.What is true one day may not be the next.In this article, we will explore some of the known and confirmed facts of Google’s 200 ranking factors, and what this tells us about search and our efforts.Before we dive in let’s begin with what I believe is the biggest myth.Myth: Google Has 200 Ranking FactorsOK, I can’t really prove without a doubt that there aren’t actually 200 ranking factors but let’s just consider one thing, an article.This article in fact, by Brian Dean written for Search Engine Journal way back in May 2013.The article is actually an infographic that claims to contain all of Google’s 200 ranking factors.Remember, this was written more than five years ago. … [Read more...] about 11 Things You Must Know About Google’s 200 Ranking Factors