How Digital Impacts Local Neighborhood Searches by Laurie Sullivan

Perception counts for both world and local views. The Internet gave consumers a broad perspective to reach across the globe, and now it brings us closer to home. Some 85% of the world's population will have Internet access via 3G by 2017, supporting close to 9 billion mobile subscriptions, compared with 6 billion by the end of 2011, according to Ericsson's Traffic and Market Report - On the Pulse of the Networked Society. ...Read the whole story

  • search Google May Soon Charge For Free Services, Could Monetize TLDs by Laurie Sullivan

    Gmail, docs,and a variety of free Google services could soon cost consumers, agencies and marketers a small fee, say some search engine experts. The chatter comes after the company said it would charge for product listings in Google Shopping. ...Read the whole story

  • search Rio SEO Acquires Top Local Search To Enhance Local Expertise by Laurie Sullivan

    Rio SEO, a Covario company, has acquired Top Local Search to support local SEO for retailers, manufacturers and service businesses with multiple locations, as well as dealerships and franchise owners. The acquisition gives the software business unit five hyper-local SEO software offerings to its growing suite of search, social media and content marketing. ...Read the whole story

Staying Positive About Negative SEO by Ryan DeShazer

Following Google's "Penguin" algorithm update in late April, many SEOs have been debating the possibility of a practice called "negative SEO," whereby one SEO could hurt another's websites by intentionally pointing unnatural, "spammy" backlinks to their sites. Unnatural link activity includes links offered via paid inclusion directories and "link farms"; others have even suggested that anchor text diversity may trigger a Penguin penalty too. ...More

  • Why Time Spent Doesn't Necessarily Equal Ad Revenue by Erik Sass

    The Internet (or at least the part frequented by marketers) is suddenly abuzz with the realization that time spent online doesn't necessarily translate into advertising revenue. No surprise the most-cited example is Facebook, which soaks up tons of time but has only a fraction of the revenues of Google, with a smaller share of our online activity. ...More

  • It's The End Of Google Website Optimizer -- And I Feel Fine by Janet Driscoll Miller

    If you're a Google Website Optimizer user like me, you likely received an email last week indicating that the free Google testing tool was being discontinued. While at first I was disappointed by this announcement, reading further, Google said it would be integrating testing functionality directly into Google Analytics. For those of us who have used Google Website Optimizer for many years, the change may seem challenging.But there are two main benefits I already see from the new system. ...More