AdWords users who were also tapping Google's built-in Conversion Tracking no longer have to display the "Site Stats" logo on their tracked pages. Previously, a text block with the words "Google Site Stats" automatically appeared on every page where users had embedded the conversion tracking code. The info let visitors (who converted from an AdWords ad) know that they were being tracked and offered info about how to disable the cookies if they wanted.

"For some websites, the logo from time to time could delay the loading of the conversion confirmation page which caused [the] bad experience for ...Read the whole story...

How would your team stack up if a potential client used Google's criteria for screening an SEO agency? The giant has posted a list of guidelines for site owners interested in organic search services, starting with asking for examples of previous work -- be it through case studies, testimonials, or even actual SERP screengrabs. Big G also suggests that site owners ask about goals and how they're measured from the onset.

Meanwhile, when's the last time you brushed up on Google's Webmaster Guidelines? Do you have experience in the client's chosen vertical? What about their city? Do you ...Read the whole story...

Microsoft only acquired semantic search startup Powerset about a month ago, but the integration has already greatly improved Live Search in three key ways: better Wikipedia captions, better related search suggestions and better answers to question-style queries.

Before the integration, Wikipedia snippets showed up as sentence fragments in Live Search results; now, the captions are more substantial. Meanwhile, searchers will find more Live Search Answers in the results thanks to Freebase, an open source database that Powerset was already pulling from. Lastly, users will get better related search suggestions, as Live Search is using Powerset's Factz technology to ...Read the whole story...

"Using a web search engine like Google is usually fine for casual searches, but when you need to delve deep into a subject, it just won't do," says Sarah Perez. "What you really need is a research engine that explores the unindexed reaches of the Deep Web. For that, there's now Infovell, 'the world's research engine.'"

Infovell crawls info vaults, including PubMed Central (a trove of medical and health-based journals), claims filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as various academic publications that are open for the perusing, but not indexable by the major engines. ...Read the whole story...

Joe Teixeira schools readers on five Google Analytics metrics that most likely go unused. First up is the $Index, which gives each page on your site an average value. "It takes the amount of either Ecommerce Revenue or Goal Value that each page was responsible for, and divides it by the number of Pageviews for each page to give you a financial value in your currency of choice," he says.

Meanwhile, percent of search exits tells you the percentage of visitors that leave immediately after conducting a site search (if your site has that capability). "These people did ...Read the whole story...