Unofficial google image search by drawing

Today is my 20th anniversary of covering search and search engines. To mark the occasion, I wanted to reflect on some of the big changes that I’ve seen over the past two decades of covering the space. 1. The search revolution Chances are, the first resource you turn to if you have a question about something is a search engine, whether it be Google, Siri, Bing, Yelp, others or a combination of services. This simple act, that you likely don’t think twice about, was a highly revolutionary change to how people sought information. Before popular consumer-focused search engines emerged just over 20 years ago, people got answers the same way they had for hundreds and thousands of years: largely by asking other people. If you needed an answer, you turned to people like a teacher, a professional, a best friend or a librarian. Sure, there were also tools to use: libraries, library catalogs, yellow pages and professional databases like LexisNexis. But for most people, getting an … [Read more...] about 10 big changes with search engines over my 20 years of covering them

Here at Search Engine Land we regularly hear from people who have created “radical,” innovative,” “next generation” search technology, promising to “fix” the “broken” search we all allegedly pitifully struggle with today. In virtually every instance that I can remember, these promises over-hype and under-deliver, rarely offering something that becomes part of my regular search arsenal. But the bizarrely-named DuckDuckGo is different, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it’s actually a very good search engine—and it truly can do useful things. Second, the creator of DuckDuckGo has a nearly maniacal obsession with privacy, and has built very powerful tools into the search engine that go to great lengths to keep your queries (and your identity) anonymous. DuckDuckGo is also remarkable in that it’s the creation of a single individual, serial entrepreneur and angel investor Gabriel Weinberg. And rather than … [Read more...] about Upstart DuckDuckGo Challenges Google With Strong Privacy, Cool Tools & Quackpot Name

It’s Christmas Eve, and you know what that means. Santa Claus is busy delivering toys to boys and girls around the world. Where is Santa Claus right now? Below, our annual round up of ways to find Father Christmas, from tracking Santa on Google Earth to monitoring him from your iPhone. NOTE: If you’re looking for the latest information on Santa tracking for the current year, see our Your Guide To Santa Trackers page. NORAD’s Santa Tracking Monopoly I’ve been writing about Santa tracking for five years now. Back in 2005, there were a variety of Santa tracking services out there. Since then, most of them have given up and simply point to NORAD Tracks Santa. That’s fine — NORAD does a great job. NORAD is the joint US-Canadian missile tracking organization. But for more than 50 years, NORAD has also been tracking Kris Kringle due to a misprinted phone number. Since 2007, NORAD partnered formally with Google to produce an entire suite of Jolly St. Nick … [Read more...] about The 2010 Santa Tracker Review, From NORAD To Google Earth

Unless you’re talking to tech geeks, SEO usually gets lumped in with genius-exclusive activities like coding or hacking. This makes sense, when you think about it, because, at one point, SEO was a little bit like hacking. Back in the good ol’ days, so-called “black hat” SEOs used to find creative ways to game the search engine system and manipulate low-quality pages into ranking at the top of Google’s charts. While search engines and user preferences have dissuaded many of these practices, there’s still a massive difference between good and bad SEO, and knowing which is which can make all the difference in your online presence. I’ve created a current, up-to-date guide on the major good and bad SEO tactics so you know what to do, and what to avoid, in your content creation — down to Google’s recent mobile penalty update. It’s true: even if you’re not purposefully creating keyword-stuffed content or pages crammed with … [Read more...] about An Up-to-Date Guide on Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: The Do’s and Don’ts

share tweet share pin it e-mail share This post was updated on July 11, 2016. All aboard! The Google quality train is making its way through the internet once again. This time, the engineer driving this metaphorical train is driven by quality and improved user experience. Even though this is an unconfirmed update from Google, we at Searchmetrics are seeing changes in a number of domains that were previously rewarded by Phantom. Especially where quality signals are concerned, we’re seeing connections to the work of previous Phantom updates. Therefore, we are unofficially considering the fluctuations to be signs of “Phantom 4,” since clear trends have emerged in our data indicating that Google is devaluing specific areas of domains exhibiting poor quality and experience for users. To be clear, there is not an easy answer here. While we can observe multiple quality factors (404 error pages, too many ads on the page, etc.) as potential … [Read more...] about Return of the Phantom: Part 4