The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a controversial piece of proposed U.S. legislation designed to “fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.” A large proportion of the digital community is fighting this legislation in hopes of stopping it from passing, on the grounds that it would create some very serious concerns […]
There’s been a lot of buzz leading up to the launch of Schema.org. The first thing that makes Schema.org a big deal is that it is agreed upon and standardized. The second thing that makes Schema.org a big deal is the essence of what it does. Schema.org provides a standard protocol to add more details […]
With the announcement that they will now charge advertisers when searchers click for directions from a local ad extension, Google has taken yet another step in its march toward the monetization of the Google Places channel. Since launching location extensions integrated with a Google Places account, Google has been pushing the product hard with local advertisers. […]
Norm Hagarty, CEO: By now most of us in the directional media industry have heard about TMP’s unfortunate demise. I don’t believe that this kind of turmoil is ever good. It certainly is not good for TMP’s staff, many of whom will face uncertain job prospects (at least in the short term); clients who now […]
Google wants to know what you think. The Google +1 update has been well documented here. +1 seems to be part of a trend, wherein Google is taking into account user feedback when doling out search engine rankings. Details are now coming to light about how Google put together its new Panda algorithm update. These […]
Google hasn’t had an easy ride in the social space. Google Wave and Google Buzz were both false starts. There has been speculation recently as to how Google was finally going to crack social media. Today they fired their latest salvo in the race; +1. As with any of Google’s most successful offerings, what works in its favour […]
Admittedly, I came late to the article syndication cheer-leading squad. Let’s just chalk it up to an innate cynicism, or an aversion to bandwagon jumping. However, there is no arguing with results, and the fact is, article syndication works. We’ve seen notable bumps in landing page traffic immediately following an article’s syndication and then subsequent […]
The Pew Research Center published their annual ‘State of the News Media’ study earlier this month. One of the big takeaways was that for the first time ever more people are turning to the Internet than to newspapers to get their news. This victory was actually a narrow one for Mr. Internets. At the end […]
While the actual ranking factors in Google’s algorithm are widely opaque, through research we can draw conclusions that drive the strategy of our industry. Constant research is essential. I have set out to look at ‘traditional local SEO factors’ vs. ‘new local SEO factors’, in a large sample. Recently, I conducted the following research. Question: Does […]
With Google’s change to the search engine results page, and Facebook’s integration (link to post about facebook places) of local deals via Facebook Places, it is clear that local content is stealing the show. What does this mean for your internet marketing strategy, and how are your partners going to help guide you through the […]