Ginny Marvin says, “Ad disapproval notices are typically uninteresting bland affairs, free of controversy. Last week, however, a disapproval notice from Google raised eyebrows. WordStream received a disapproval notice for a Gmail ad — the ads looks similar to email messages and appear in the Promotions tab — in a campaign that used “curvy” and “plus size” keywords in the targeting. The disapproval reason given in the AdWords UI simply stated, “Gmail Ads- Body type and personality targeting”. It was the full policy explanation that the team received that caused... [...]

Varun Sharma says, “A new year brings along new opportunities and new challenges. The SEO world, too, is preparing to combat unexpected threats, especially from various Google penalties. What are those possible threats? Imagine, you wake up one fine morning and get a call from the office reporting, “We have lost all traffic,” and your heart stops. It’d be no less than a nightmare… your worst nightmare, in fact. But did you know this could really happen, at any time? Whether you like it or not, websites in variety of niches depend on Google for a high percentage of their traffic.... [...]

Lei Sun says, “Google has spoken — and an important part of the mobile web will never be the same. At least that’s the theory, and certainly the search giant’s intention. Google sees app install interstitials — those big ads that pop up suddenly on the mobile web and monopolize all of your mobile device screen to prompt you to download an app, rather than let you keep surfing — as too annoying to users. On November 2, the company therefore put in place a new policy to discourage the ads. According to this policy, Google has since penalized mobile websites that use such interstitials... [...]

Jonha Richman says, “Google’s latest change in the way it looks for URLs on the Web may give small business owners one more reason to switch to HTTPS. In an effort to secure users from man-in-the-middle attacks or data modification while browsing the Web, Google has recently announced its adjusting its indexing system to look for more HTTPs pages. In a recent announcement, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zineb Ait Bahajji said that the company is now going to index HTTPS pages first before the equivalent HTTP page. This means that even if you have an HTTP URL, Google will make... [...]

Ryan Stewart says, “Earlier this year, Google rolled out the Related Questions feature (AKA “People Also Ask”). If you haven’t seen them yet, related questions appear in an expandable box, mixed in with organic results. Once expanded, a typical answer contains a machine-generated snippet, a link to the source website, and a link to the Google search for the question. How common are related questions? We started tracking Related Questions in late July on the MozCast 10K, where they originally appeared on roughly 1.3% of queries. Keep in mind that the MozCast set tends toward... [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “As part of the MozCast 10K (a 10,000-keyword daily Google tracker), we keep a close eye on the domains with the most page-one Google real-estate. As of December 1st, these were the “Big 10”. “Share” represents the percentage of total results each domain has across the entire data set. Of course, absolute rankings can vary a lot depending on the data set, but what’s more interesting is how any given brand moves over time. We watch day-to-day movements closely as search marketers, and often track winners and losers when Google announces... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Could social signals be one of the mysterious 200+ factors that Google considers in order to determine your website’s rank? SEOs and digital marketers have been debating the question for ages. But what does the data actually say? Here’s a new perspective that attempts to answer this constantly debated question. Google Says No Google is often cryptic about what factors it uses to determine rank, but in the case of social signals, they’ve actually been fairly straightforward. Many Google representatives have mentioned that social signals are not a rank factor. One... [...]

Eli Schwartz says, “Last year, I conducted a comprehensive survey to discover the search engine preferences of internet users and learn who truly dominates the search market. All of the current search engine market share reporting entities (comScore, Hitwise, SimilarWeb and others) utilize technology-based tracking, and I wanted to see if a survey panel-based approach would yield the same results. What I discovered was only somewhat surprising. My results, placing Google at the top with 80 percent of the market, differed significantly from comScore’s 67 percent; but my findings were in... [...]

Barry Levine says, “As marketers wrap up their strategies for this holiday season, search engine optimization (SEO) is obviously at the top of their to-do lists. But site search, Swiftype co-founder and CEO Matt Riley told me, is a different thing. So we pinged him for a few pointers. “They are totally different universes,” he said, with “different use cases.” His company, one of a variety of providers and methods for site search, handles this function for several hundred thousand desktop/mobile sites and apps, including those of Qualcomm, Dr. Pepper and SurveyMonkey. In the world... [...]

Dharmesh Shah says, “If you’re like me, you probably use Google many times a day. But chances are, unless you’re a technology geek, you probably still use Google in its simplest form. If your current use of Google is limited to typing in a few words and changing your query until you find what you’re looking for, then I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way — and it’s not hard to learn. On the other hand, even if you are a technology geek and can use Google like the best of them already, I still suggest you bookmark this article of advanced Google search tips. Then,... [...]