The Hat Play

DoubleClick Search Announces New Google Shopping Campaigns Tools For Retailers Today Doubleclick Search launched three new reporting and optimization tools for retailers using the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite. Designed for Google’s Shopping Campaigns, which take effect on August 31, new Adaptive Shopping campaigns structures product groups based on similar conversion rates. Integrating directly with Google Merchant Center, the tool automatically subdivides existing product groups by product ID based on performance. Google says it has found that 90% of the median advertiser’s cost comes from only 9.5% of its products. Adaptive Shopping Campaigns are designed to isolate high-spending, high-converting products from lower-converting products so that bids can be set separately. Advertisers often lump these high-spend products into bid groups with other, lower-converting products — leading to bid values that are not optimized, based on relative performance. Adaptive Shopping campaigns e...

Google Market Share: 67 Percent On PC, 83 Percent In Mobile Last week, comScore released its August U.S. search market share rankings report. It appears Google has permanently plateaued at 67 percent (or so). In Europe, Google’s share is above 90 percent, which is why all the antitrust activity. Back in the U.S., Microsoft and Yahoo combined for 29 percent, which is where the Search Alliance has been since day one. The only drama of late was provided by the fall of Yahoo’s share below 10 percent briefly. However, Yahoo now appears to be resting at 10 percent. Google Market Share: 67 Percent On PC, 83 Percent In Mobile StatCounter, by comparison, shows Google’s U.S. desktop market share to be higher: 76.4 percent. Bing has 13 percent and Yahoo has 9 percent in the StatCounter data. The comScore numbers above don’t reflect mobile search. However, I suspect we’ll see that in the near future, just as comScore has combined mobile and PC traffic in its new unified Top 50 sites list. StatCoun...

Yahoo Replaces Google As Default Search Provider in Firefox Yahoo and Mozilla just announced a “strategic five-year partnership that makes Yahoo the default search experience for Firefox in the United States on mobile and desktop.” The companies said they will explore other potential “future product integrations and distribution opportunities to other markets.” Yahoo is thus going to displace Google the current Firefox search provider. Firefox was at one time the main alternative to Microsoft’s IE browser but has been supplanted for many by Google’s Chrome, now the world’s top browser. In mobile Firefox has struggled to find an entry point. Firefox has a roughly 16 percent browser market share on the desktop in the US market according to StatCounter. Google and Firefox have had a less congenial relationship since the former launched competitive browser Chrome. The last Google-Firefox search deal was in 2011. While the Yahoo deal makes sense for both parties, there may be some monetary ...

Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool The new tool is at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly and it basically gives you a pass or fail grade. Either it tells you that you are mobile friendly or you are not mobile friendly. The messages I was able to generate include: Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly. Not mobile-friendly In each output, the yes, you are mobile friendly or no you are not, Google may or may not give more or less advice depending on the site. For example, for this site, we got an “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly,” but it did add that “this page uses 9 resources which are blocked by robots.txt. The results and screenshot may be incorrect.” It then listed out those resources it had issues with, so you as the webmaster can decide if it is something that needs addressing. Here is a screen shot: Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool I then tested a site that I know what not mobile-friendly and Google explained what the issues were including (a) text t...

Google’s Knowledge Graph Finally Shows Social Networks Not Named Google+ Years after a controversy over a decision to promote its own social network, Google+, in search results, Google has begun linking to other social networks in its Knowledge Graph. As first spotted by Bernd Rubel and reported by Search Engine Roundtable, Google is now showing icons for social sites including Facebook, Twitter and even MySpace and others. The Knowledge Graph panel on a search for “U2,” for example, shows links to the band’s profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, along with Google properties like YouTube and Google+. Google’s Knowledge Graph Finally Shows Social Networks Not Named Google+ The social links don’t appear in all Knowledge Graph panels, and different social sites will show up for different Knowledge Graph entities. Search for “Starbucks,” for example, and you’ll still only see the company’s recent Google+ posts. Search for “Bono” and you won’t see anything from any social network. Sear...

21 Link Building Ideas That Have Nothing To Do With Guest Posting I think we’ve gotten better at not relying completely on guest posting as the only way to get links. I think. At least, I sure hope we have. Don’t get me wrong: Guest posting done correctly still works really well – note the emphasis on “done correctly.” I’m not recommending you remove it from your tactic list, but a little tactical diversity never hurt anyone. Note: I’m keeping these high level and vague on purpose in order to inspire as many starter ideas as possible. I find this to be ideal for brainstorming. It’ll be up to you to take the ones you like, add your own twist, and flesh it out to make it work for your company. (C’mon, I can’t do all the work for you!) PR Boilerplate. Press releases aren’t dead. Make sure you have an optimized boilerplate at the end of all of your news releases that talks about your company. It’s almost always included if/when your release gets picked up by another source. Executive Bios....