Greg Sterling says, “Google has quite successfully pivoted toward mobile over the past few years. And while more searches now happen on mobile devices, it has been hotly debated whether search plays as central a role for mobile consumers as it does for desktop users. Earlier this week, Google released survey data that asserts search has indeed become a primary resource for smartphone owners. In addition, it’s the most frequently used shopping tool for mobile consumers, according to the findings. Earlier this year, Google polled 1,000 smartphone users “several times a day for a week”... [...]

Wesley Young says, “Images have become ever more important in online presence and marketing.  It seems rare that an article, email, ad or social media post isn’t led by a hero image or graphic. There’s no question that images boost visibility, engagement and click-through rates. A study on Google+ concluded that posts with images were shared three times more than those without images. Likewise, Socialbakers reported that of the top 10 percent most engaging Facebook posts (likes, shares, comments), 93 percent of them were photos. And a study by BrightLocal found that60 percent of consumers... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “With Google’s roll out of the new Merchant Center interface came more functionality for Feed Rules. Feed Rules debuted earlier this year to allow marketers to make some changes to their product feed data right within Merchant Center. But what can you really do with Feed Rules and who should be using them? The consensus is that Feed Rules are still best for simple updates, and it’s ideal to make changes to the actual feed. In reality, however, that’s not always possible or timely and why Feed Rules have such appeal. Maggie Webb, Partner at Five Mill Inc., says that... [...]

Zac Johnson says, “The goal for every business and brand on the internet today is to rank at the top of Google for their most treasured keywords. However, this is extremely unlikely. There are currently over a billion active sites on the Internet today, and Google is only listing around ten organic listings on each page of their search results. Throw the importance of ranking only on the first page of Google into consideration, and you might find the concept of ranking a local business even harder. The good news is, with a little bit of work, hard effort and focus. The good news is, with... [...]

Joy Hawikns says, “It seems very apparent that Google has a filter for local that weeds through all the listings that should appear in the 3-pack on Google and in the Local Finder (when you click “More Places”), then filters some based on their spam score. Bill Slawski wrote about this in July and referenced the patent that was granted June 21, 2016, about it. To quote the patent: A spam score is assigned to a business listing when the listing is received at a search entity. A noise function is added to the spam score such that the spam score is varied. In the event that the spam score... [...]

Nate Kristy says, “Google is an online marketer’s best friend. In order to help companies help themselves, Google offers many free tools that are useful for small businesses. For example, the Keyword Planner tool provides insights on search trends and Google Analytics showcases website performance. But with all of the time and resources that go into building and managing websites to attract customers, it’s surprising that the majority companies are not taking the time to look at how their websites are performing. In fact, BuiltWith, a site tracking software, shows that only 8.1 percent... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google announced they have improved the Search Issues report in the Google Search Console. Specifically, the reports now provide more specific explanations of the security issues detected by Safe Browsing. The types of security issues that can show include malware, deceptive pages, harmful downloads, and uncommon downloads. The new explanations promise to give more “context and detail” into the security issues. This includes “tailored recommendations for each type of issue, including sample URLs that webmasters can check to identify the source of the issue, as... [...]

Joy Hawkins says, “It seems very apparent that Google has a filter for local that weeds through all the listings that should appear in the 3-pack on Google and in the Local Finder (when you click “More Places”), then filters some based on their spam score. Bill Slawski wrote about this in July and referenced the patent that was granted June 21, 2016, about it. To quote the patent: A spam score is assigned to a business listing when the listing is received at a search entity. A noise function is added to the spam score such that the spam score is varied. In the event that the spam score... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Have you checked your Google organic search traffic this morning? If not, you may want to. It seems Google may have tweaked their search ranking algorithm, your site may be ranking higher or lower or the same depending on if this update has impacted your web pages. Google has not yet confirmed the update but based on a lot of chatter in the search community, it seems like an update is indeed happening. To be clear, it seems like there were two updates in the past twenty-four hours. The large update seems to be around core web search, which kicked off earlier this morning... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Google announced that is dropping the “mobile-friendly” label in search results. The company says that now 85 percent of pages in mobile results are in fact mobile-friendly. Google also said today in a blog post that it will impose a ranking penalty on “intrusive interstitials” that impede user access to content. According to the post: Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile... [...]