Today Google announced that they are rolling out longer meta description snippets for some keyword searches. The new feature will appear in search results for queries that are 3 words or longer and have a very specific intent. So for example, if you are searching for something like “Google Rolls Out Extended Snippets” you’ll see some results that have longer meta description snippets (3 or 4 lines instead of only 2) like this: Read More

Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land has posted some new search engine market share figures…Google gained another 6% in search market share in 2008!  What? Are you surprised?

What’s even more interesting is that Google’s profits are rising as well, even in this bad economy.  Microsoft, which has never ever had massive layoffs in it’s history is laying off 5000 employees and Google actually posted an increase in profits in the last quarter of 08. Amazing.

Here’s the story:

Search Market Share 2008: Google Grew, Yahoo & Microsoft Dropped & Stabilized

Online, a landing page is the first impression a potential customer, friend, or even an enemy, has to a website. The landing page is an opportunity to answer a question, deliver an opinion, offer a product or service, or completely alienate a visitor to your web property. Depending on your goals, your landing page may be effective – but let’s look at some practical uses of landing pages – making online “friends” and converting customers. Read More

When creating a commercial website there is an idea that is central to core sensibilities of the business model. That is, usually, at root, how does this site make money? In many cases, when creating a site, a business was preexisting, while other times a business model is based on what new marketing models can offer – web traffic. Neither case is a bad model in and of itself, and likewise, neither approach guarantees success. More to the point though, nothing can guarantee success, but there are ways to get a leg up on competition and to better position a website for success.

First there are keywords. In the web world, and as I’ve said before, this is the cornerstone of the search game. Fine and dandy. But what happens with keywords? They can’t just be stuffed into content and layered transparently in an attempt to game search engines. They can’t just be placed anywhere any longer. In PPC you can bid on them, but even Yahoo has tried to deny random bidding strategies by implementing a minimum CPC for a site to advertise for certain keywords based on relevence. Google has been doing so for some time.
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