Mark Traphagen says, “On June 25, 2014, Google’s John Mueller made a shocking announcement: Google would be removing all author photos from Google search results. According to the MozCast Feature Graph, that task was fully accomplished by June 29. In this post I will: Give a brief overview of how Google Authorship got to where it is today. Cover how Google Authorship now works and appears in search. Offer my take on why Author photos were removed Investigate the oft-repeated claims of higher CTR from author photos”. Author Photos are Gone: Does Google Authorship Still Have Value? MOZ... [...]

Website Magazine is hosting a webinar on Thursday, July 31 at 2.00 pm EDT. The topic of the webinar is “Did Google just penalize me?”. The WM team says, “That’s the first question everyone asks when their traffic drops. The mystique of search engines, and how they do what they do, lends itself to sensationalism. Mainstream media fans the flames with reporting about websites violating terms of service, with results ranging from penalties to page rank downgrades. The truth is, today few businesses are immune to traffic drops spurred by Google’s seemingly continuous algorithm... [...]

David Skerrett says, “This year’s Google I/O conference, held weeks after Apple’s WWDC, showed the world that Google really is taking over every aspect of our lives, and challenging its fiercest rivals. As Android users have increased from 530m last year to more than 1bn this year, Google announced its ‘biggest ever overhaul’ with a completely new set of Android products. Read on for my top five developments (plus a dose of healthy rivalry)”. Five key trends and takeouts from Google I/O 2014 ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Robert Miller says, “Google Analytics is always updating and adding new features. Here are four methods to help you get the most out of your analytics tool. As a part of the consulting services I provide to clients, I often do trainings of Google Analytics. Sometimes it’s one-on-one or to a small group, and other times it’s to multiple teams at once. As such, there is usually a broad range in the knowledge base of training participants. Here are four resources that I find are helpful for clients to get started with Google Analytics. A number of them would actually be helpful with... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Google is making many companies nervous. Anything bought online that involves the collection of information naturally falls into Google’s path. Even outside of this large niche, Google is getting stuck into larger engineering projects like the self-driving car. Let’s take a look at industries ripe for disruption by Google”. Seven big industries Google could disrupt ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Google now delivers Universal Search results—those that include a blend of links, videos, images, news, shopping listings, and map data—for 81% of all US searches, according to a recent report from Searchmetrics. The analysis was based on data from millions of keyword searches conducted on Google.com in the United States between January and December 2013. The number of results that include Universal Search integrations has steadily increased over time and is up six percentage points from 2012, it found. Below, other key findings from the report“. Google Universal... [...]

Lisa Furgison say, “Your website is like a high-performance car. Similar to a Porsche, your website should grab attention, navigate easily and hit max speeds. To keep a fancy sports car in tip-top shape, you use a specialized mechanic. To keep your website in tip-top shape, you should use Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT). Think of this Google feature like a toolbox full of fine-tuning agents that can help you improve your website. GWMT isn’t just about performance either; you can learn how customers find your site and use this information to tweak certain pages and boost website traffic”. A... [...]

Derek S says, “Nobody is immune to change. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not even Google. For a while now, author’s photos have shown up next to their work in Google’s search results. When photos were first added to search results, click-through rates increased for links with photos next to them. However, Google has now decided to do away with a couple of Authorships key features. John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, wrote on his Google+ page that search engine giant is aiming to “clean up” and create “more consistent design across devices” with... [...]

Demian Farnworth says, “Have you ever wondered what the subreddit “ShittyBattleStations,” hammerhead sharks, and the Internet have in common? Yeah, me neither. But I recently discovered that the three seemingly unconnected entities all stretch my sense of nostalgia. ShittyBattleStations is a subreddit where people share photographs of their gaming environments. Imagine bad camera angles of a bean bag chair, milk crate, high-powered computer, and a gallon of water. It’s a place for snapshots of a subculture interested in avoiding the complex world — a subculture that reminds me... [...]

Tom Capper says, “Customer loyalty is one of the strongest assets a business can have, and one that any can aim to improve. However, improvement requires iteration and testing, and iteration and testing require measurement. Traditionally, customer loyalty has been measured using customer surveys. The Net Promoter Score, for example, is based on the question (on a scale of one to ten) “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”. Regularly monitoring metrics like this with any accuracy is going to get expensive (and/or annoying... [...]