Entries Tagged 'Industry News' ↓

With the Holiday shopping season receding into memory, even with the record-breaking online sales numbers and success, the cold economic landscape of 2012 beckons. While online spending will continue to rise, and many economic pundits predicting a firmer, broader recovery in a presidential election year – the big question is where maximum ROI will be found online?

Continue reading →

SOPA stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act” and is a piece of Federal Legislation which has polarized the Internet community in recent months. So, just what is going on?

SOPA is a sister bill (a bill with proposed legislation which has not yet become law) to the Protect IP Act (PRO IP), which itself aims to hold hosting companies accountable for the content on sites.  For instance, if a website deals in counterfeit goods, or is selling pirated movies or music, then the hosting company could be held liable, and not just the website owners operating the business.

Continue reading →

Last week, Google rolled out “Caffeine”, essentially the 2.0 version of their improved web indexing process that released last year.  Caffeine focuses on identifying and prioritizing current information to improve relevancy and provide consumers with significantly improved timely results.

With Caffeine, Google speeds up the delivery of fresh web results to users – now you can expect to start seeing web pages in your search results which are only a few minutes old.

Continue reading →

Microsoft’s Bing is the major challenger to Google’s search engine crown, and last month they announced a further development with the online social networking giant, Facebook. Bing users are increasingly finding more Facebook “Likes” incorporated in their search results. Continue reading →

Google has launched “+1” which is a further development in search relevancy by leveraging social signals and influence.  The tool provides users the ability to “like” sites and search results in a similar way to Facebook’s Like button.

+1 will start showing up in user’s search results in a variety of ways, depending on their existing social connections, and also how aggregate recommendations are utilized by Google and websites.  +1 moves socialization out of the online social networks and into the broader Web, initially focusing on Google Sponsored Search, and its’ algorithmic index. Continue reading →

For small businesses looking to make their mark, the Internet represents a golden opportunity to let them punch way above their fighting weight. Your website provides an “always on” marketing channel to millions of potential customers. Developing a web presence is a natural extension for any business, however if you are reading this blog you already have an idea that building a website is not enough.  You have to make sure your website will gain exposure and generate high quality traffic who can be converted into paying customers.  To do this, you need good Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Continue reading →

When Google launched Instant Search last September, the reaction from Microsoft was negative. Times change fast in search engine land, and Microsoft is about to announce its own version of instant search for Bing.

Google has reported that less than 2% of users have opted out of Instant Search, though we cannot say whether this is because users really like the feature or whether they simply don’t understand how to turn it off. Nevertheless, 98% user adoption is a pretty hard number to argue against so Microsoft has had to come to terms with what search users are doing online, especially as they are trying to create a serious competitor for Google.

Continue reading →

We follow what Google does because it is the dominant search engine – if the mighty G changes something, everyone else tends to follow suit. Someone forgot to tell this to Blekko, but let’s get to the underlying issue behind the most recent algorithm change: Search Spam. You’ve experienced search spam on any search engine you’ve used; Google, Bing or someone else. However, Google has been heavily criticized recently from search engine professionals and the general public, motivating the recent algorithm change.

Continue reading →

What a year 2010 has been for SEO and e-tailers alike.  In our final Rankpay post for the year, we will take a light-hearted look at what events and movers dominated the scene. Continue reading →