Internet Marketing

SEM is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is also called paid search and sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis. SEM is short for “search engine marketing,” which once was used as an umbrella term to encompass both SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search activities. However, over time, many adopted the SEM acronym to refer solely to paid search. Here at Search Engine Land, we generally use SEM and/or paid search to refer to paid listings, with the longer term of search marketing used to encompass both SEO and SEM. Advice For Newbies New to paid search ads? Don’t worry! Search Engine Land has the perfect series for you: PPC Academy. This special column began in 2010 and provides a different installment each week to bring you up to speed on paid search. Another starting place is Google’s “Insider’s Guide To AdWords,” which you’ll f

Last night, Google pushed out a new and major local search ranking algorithm change. I broke the story at Search Engine Land where Google provided details for me on this update. Note: Later we named the update the Pigeon update . This is not really a spam change but more of a fundamental change to the local search ranking algorithm. Google would not tell me the percentage of queries impacted by this change but based on early reports, I'd say it is a significant number of queries impacted by this local algorithm change. The changes have rolled out to both the Google Maps search results and Google Web search results. Google told me that the new local algorithm has "deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more." It also has better accuracy over distance and location rankings. This has rolled out

Google announced their Q2 earnings last night and beat estimates, although some are worried about mobile ads being an issue and Nikesh Arora leaving the company. But the earnings report showed a couple things advertisers here would be interested in, at least two things: (1) The new ad format used for AdWords ads in the search results, that blend in better, had a nice increase in click through rates and that lead to more money for Google despite lower CPC prices. Here are before and after on the ad formats: Old ad format: New ad format: (2) Google broke down where the paid clicks came from in more detail for the first time: Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 25% over the second quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2014. Sites paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads we serve on Google owned and operated

Back in May we reported that eBay had some sort of penalty that hit their Google search visibility by about 50%. That is major but now we somewhat know how major. Danny Sullivan reports on Search Engine Land that it may have costed them $200 million. On the eBay earnings call yesterday, eBay’s chief financial officer Bob Swan said : Now, let’s turn to the Marketplaces business. Marketplaces delivered $2.2 billion in revenue, which grew 6%, GMV grew 8%, and operating margin declined 340 basis points. It was a challenging quarter. As John indicated, we got off to a good start, but we had significant obstacles late May.The combination of the cyberattack and the Google SEO had an immediate and dramatic impact on GMV growth. June GMV growth was 7% driven by slower active buyer growth and lower conversion. In light of these events, we have made significant investments to get eBay users reengaged, including couponing, seller incentives and increased marketing spend...

Google announced last night on Google+ that they have removed their naming restrictions, preventing you from using nicknames and pseudonyms.So if you wanted to use the name "rustybrick" because you didn't want to use your real name, for privacy reasons, you can. If you wanted to use "GoogleGuy," you could. This was how things were back in the day, very few people 10 years ago used their real names. Everyone used nicknames within the social network or discussion forum they participated in. Now, it is less common. Google+ is now allowing for it because, well, I guess they want to solve their YouTube comments problem. Here is the post: "When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names. Over the years, as Google+

In a Google hangout yesterday with Google's John Mueller, John explained 31 minutes and 47 seconds into the video that Google updates their data for manual actions within Google Webmaster Tools twice a day on average and then only sends out emails once a day on average with notices. He said: "I believe webmaster tools data for manual actions updates, maybe, twice a day. Something around that range. And emails we may send out once a day." He said this in regards to why you may get an email notification of a manual action but when you check, there is no manual action. There can be other reasons, such as manual actions expiring. But all of this is rare and it isn't common to see this happen often. Here is the video:

After a promised quiet holiday period, Google’s search results started fluctuating again on the 8th of January culminating at a massive 2.91 roos on the 17th. This is the 6th strongest SERP fluctuation we’ve seen in a year and the first major result shake up in 2014. For comparison, here’s a list of recent events recorded by Algoroo :   Roos Date Update       4.12 23-May-13 Penguin 2.0       3.48 17-Dec-13 Unnamed Update       3.27 6-Jun-13 Panda Dance       3.15 21-Aug-13 Hummingbird       3.11 5-Oct-13 Penguin 2.1       2.91 17-Jan-14 Current Update       2.82 27-Nov-13 Unnamed Update       2.45 16-Aug-13 Unnamed Update       2.33 25-Oct-13 Unnamed Update       1.64 21-Nov-12 Panda #22 A “roo” is the average movement

Google’s Matt Cutts –  who holds the title of “distinguished engineer” — is taking a break from his duties as Google’s chief web spam fighter. Cutts has announced on his personal blog that he’s taking leave through October. It will be the longest break Cutts has ever taken from Google since he started with the company back in 2000 and since he began overseeing the web spam team in 2004. It’s also one that he writes is overdue. From his post : When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she’d get to see more of me. I talked about this as recently as last month and as early as 2006. And now, almost fifteen years later I’d like to be there for my wife more. I know she’d like me to be around more too, and not just physically present while my mind is still on work. Cutts says he’ll be off work through October of this year. He notes he won’t be checking any work email. He also stressed that there’s no specific event behind him tak