The deadline for Yahoo search marketing advertisers to convert their campaigns to Microsoft’s adCenter is just round the corner. You have had more than enough time to do but there are no doubt certain procrastinators out there.

“Given what a busy time of year this is for everyone, both personally and professionally, you may have the feeling that there’s something you’re supposed to do, but haven’t yet. Did you forget something?“ asks Microsoft’s Ricky Poole.

“With all of the holiday hustle and bustle, I wanted to take a minute to remind any of you in the US and Canada who may still have campaigns in Yahoo! Search Marketing that the transition tool will be closing on January 5, 2011,” he adds. “If you have not yet transitioned your PPC accounts from Yahoo! to adCenter, after January 5th you will need to do so manually through exporting and importing your campaigns.”

Yahoo and Microsoft completed the search transition in United States plus Canada in the month of October. Microsoft even extended its adCenter backing hours during the transition.   Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

On Friday, Google added a novel notification to search results to let people know when a website may have been hacked. As hacking is running rampant nowadays; it is probably not a bad idea but not all webmasters are excited about it.

In the past; Google has let website owners know about this through messages at webmaster central but Google was not getting the response from websites that they would like; with it often taking days, weeks or even months for website owners to notice. Barry Schwartz pointed out to a webmasterworld thread at search engine roundtable where Google’s Matt Cutts avowed this.

“The fact is, not everyone logs into Webmaster Tools obsessively to see if they have any messages,” says Cutts. “So we needed to find a way to surface this potential risk so that site owners would find out more quickly if they’ve been hacked.”

“We now have two different responses for sites with malware vs. sites that we think may be hacked. When we detect malware, we try harder to let users know that they may be stepping into a dangerous part of the web (e.g. an interstitial so that users really need to be sure they want to visit that page),” adds Cutts. “In contrast, a hacked site might not be immediately dangerous to users. But we still want to alert site owners, because if a site is hacked right now, in practice it’s not too much harder for a bad actor to add malware to the hacked page.”

If a person clicks on the link in the search results which avows this website may be compromised; he/she will be taken to an article at Google’s help center which explains more. People can access these websites that are accompanied by these links at their own risk.

“We use a variety of automated tools to detect common signs of a hacked site as quickly as possible,” said associate product manager Gideon Wald. “When we detect something suspicious, we’ll add the notification to our search results. We’ll also do our best to contact the site’s webmaster via their Webmaster Tools account and any contact email addresses we can find on the webpage. We hope webmasters will also appreciate these notices, because it will help you more quickly discover when someone may be abusing your site so you can correct the problem.”

Wald as well acknowledged concern from webmasters about lost traffic and told that once the problem has been fixed then the warning label will be automatically removed from the search results. This feature is a windfall for users.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

We recently looked at how Google and Bing utilize links on twitter and facebook for organic ranking following a piece of information from Danny Sullivan on the topic. Google’s Matt Cutts has now addressed the topic a bit more in a novel video which has been uploaded to Google’s webmaster help channel.

“We do use Twitter and Facebook links in ranking as we always have in our web search rankings, but in addition we’re also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or creator on Twitter or Facebook,” says Cutts. “I filmed a video back in May 2010 where I said that we didn’t use that as a signal, and at the time, we did not use that as a signal, but now, we’re taping this in December 2010, and we are using that as a signal.”

Now this does not implies that unexpectedly twitter and facebook are the main ranking factor in determining where your content is exhibiting in organic searches. If anything; Google appears to be tiptoeing into waters in this area.

“The web search quality team has a lot of different groups in a lot of different offices, so people including the original Blog Search team, people who worked on Realtime Search…have been working on using these sorts of things as a signal,” explains Cutts. “So primarily, it has been used a little bit more in the realtime sort of search, where you might see individual tweets or other links showing up, and streaming up on the page. We’re studying how much sense it makes to use it a little more widely within our web search rankings.”

To reiterate; you will view this playing more of a role in realtime search but Google is “looking at it more broadly within web search as well,” as per Cutts.

“Now, there’s a few things to remember,” he warns. “Number one is: if we can’t crawl a page (if we can’t see a page), then we can’t really assign PageRank to it, and it doesn’t really count. So if we’re able to obtain the data, then we can use it, but if for some reason a page is forbidden for us to crawl or if we’re not able to obtain it somehow, then we wouldn’t be able to use it within our rankings.”

This would appear to imply that links within facebook will not mean a whole lot when the user is not sharing his/her updates with everyone; numerous facebook users have their privacy settings adjusted to share only with their friends. While facebook might have far more users as compared to twitter; privacy settings will undoubtedly greatly reduce that number in terms of links which will potentially help your search rankings.

“This is something that is used relatively lightly for now, and we’ll see how much we use it over time depending on how useful it is and how robust it ends up being,” says Cutts. “The one thing I would caution people about is don’t necessarily say to yourself, ‘Ha. Now I’m going to go out and get reciprocal follows, and I’m gonna get a ton of followers,’ just like people used to get a ton of links. In the same way that PageRank depends on not just the number of links, but the quality of those links, you have to think about what are the followers who mean quality. Who are the people who actually are not just bots or some software program or things like that.”

Stay tuned with http://www.seoglobalexpert.com for more updates.

Bing has brought in destination pages for city searches. If you go to a city’s page you will discover information about events, flights, weather, news etc. related to that city. You can find them by just searching on Bing for a city and clicking destinations tab.

“The new feature assembles all of the relevant information about a destination on one page so you can research a city before you go,”explains David Lindheimer of Bing Travel.   “The top things you need to plan your trip – including flight information, a list of hotels in the area, popular attractions, local events, local news, civic photos, a map and a weather overview – are now in one place.”

“Click into each of the sections to see a full list or gallery relevant to the city,” says Lindheimer. “If you’re searching for a local city, Bing can recognize that you’re close and serve up results accordingly. Let’s say you’re thinking of travelling to Miami this winter. Type Miami, FL into the search box, and click ‘Explore City’ to check out the destination city.”

Like Bing’s recently launched artist pages for music information these destination pages could probably utilize a bit of work. For instance; the one for our hometown Lexington; KY appears to have good information at first glance but you will also oddly find a listing on the left-hand side for castles.

Interestingly enough; while we do have a castle quite close to the airport; Bing has four listings under castle and they appear to all be castles in Italy. In all fairness we do have white castle plus castle jewelry location but those are not appearing in the listings either.

Yet; Bing’s destination pages undoubtedly do appear to be valid if you are looking out for flight information, news, maps or weather. There are also additional helpful links presented in the left-hand panel. The pages are available for more than 3,000 cities across the globe. The content; Bing avows is contextual based on user location.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

Google has added a great new feature to Google News. Now when you carry out a search; near the top of your results; you will view a button to follow news for that query.

When you click that button; it will add that query to the topic list on the left-hand side of the screen and will also craft a custom section on Google news homepage dedicated to that topic. For instance; if I search on Google news for facebook and click the button then facebook is added to my topic list.

Facebook News

Google has allowed users to customize their news experience in akin ways for quite sometime but the button just provides a call-to-action. And just like a call-to-action in an advertisement; it will promote clicks and further use of this type of customization and therefore improve the Google news experience.

The result of this is keeping users interested in utilizing Google News and let us face it; it is not quite as critical of a go-to source for news nowadays as numerous facebook and twitter users are utilizing these services as news readers. Google has without doubt done a lot over the last year to keep Google news interesting and it will have to keep in putting efforts so that the traffic does not go elsewhere.

The call-to-action added by Google for news customization will definitely help users to a great extent.

Stay tuned with http://www.seoglobalexpert.com for more updates.

Google has brought in a novel version of Google maps for Android which has numerous novel features. These include 3D map interaction plus offline reliability features.

Google is now utilizing vector graphics for map so you will not view map load in squares as it has done in the past; instead it will dynamically draw the map as you utilize it. Google lists the below noted features which come with this functionality.

• Tilting: Drag down with two fingers for tilting the map. Tilt while zoomed in on one of the hundred plus cities across the globe with 3D buildings to view a skyline spring to life.
• Rotating: Twist with two fingers for rotating the map. After rotating to view 3D building; rotate around them to gain a novel perspective from any direction.
• Smooth zooming: Slide two fingers together or apart and view map and labels continuously scale to zoom any level; stopping when your fingers stop.
• Compass mode: Center the map on your location and after that tap the compass button in the top right corner; the map will flip into 3D mode and begin rotating to match your perspective while keeping all the labels upright and as well as readable.

When you talk about the feature of better offline reliability; Google will cache large areas on your device based on where you utilize the map most and they will be available to you even if you lose the connection. It will begin catching the areas you visit the most when your phone is plugged in plus connected to Wi-Fi; so it can do this while you are charging your phone.

“We’re already hard at work improving the algorithms and technology behind these features, so over time you can expect to see maps work better in more offline situations,” avows product manager Michael Siliski.

The app also comes with offline rerouting for if you lose connection while utilizing GPS navigation.

Google maps 5.0 works with Android 1.6 plus higher but 3D and offline features need at least 2.0. Google also notes that certain features may not be backed by all devices or countries.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

As you might have noticed; Google has been putting a lot more emphasis on local nowadays as compared to past years. This consists of everything from introduction of Google places plus place pages to automatically exhibiting more local results for certain searches; and various other plans provided to businesses at local level; like tag advertising or product inventory; Google caters a lot more to location based search plus local business search than ever before; and this trend will probably continue.

We checked with eminent seo analyst Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. regarding search trends plus where the search industry is headed. “Certainly the enhancements have been gradual…now, anybody that has a local result, the first organic link is down below the fold,” says Clay. “I never expected that to happen…the organic links, they’re gone. For the last four or five months, I’ve been saying that the new page one in the search results is really positions one, two, and three. That is page one. And I think Google agrees.”

“If you look at some of the results, our benchmarks have shown that commonly, there will be seven organic results on the first page, and sometimes as few as four results that are organic on the first page of the Google results set – right now,” he says. “So does Google owe any loyalty to what is traditional organic? Of course not. Now, the argument I would say for Google, is that if they’re gonna throw up some local results, they’re gonna argue that those are organic, and that they’re more targeted to location, and therefore that they’re more relevant to the normal organic results, in which case they’re carrying forward with organic results. It’s just that they’re not organic like anybody in the SEO space has ever thought of before.”

So search engine optimization webmasters plus businesses really have to mull over how the search engine optimization game has altered in this way. You cannot expect individuals to go past the first page of results. It takes place but I am guessing it takes place less and less as individuals adjust their queries to find what they are looking out for when results do not offer it. The addition of Google Instant has without doubt just fueled this.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.

Google has improved its product search engine with novel capabilities to locate things in physical brick and mortar stores and for browsing their offline inventories.  Just in time for busy holiday shopping season; the added functionality is planned as a complement to search engine’s ability to deliver links to products available in online stores.

When anyone looks out for a product; Google will tell the individual in which local stores in can be found in stock; along with map and other information like phone numbers plus addresses.

For imitating offline experience of browsing in a store; Google is even adding features called aisles and popular products in which akin and related products to the one browsed for are exhibited. These features will be available later this week.

Apart from this; Google has also enhanced its shopper product search application for Android devices; which locates products available in local stores and can be queried with both text and as well as by voice plus through photos of items and of their barcodes.

The new features are available in U.S. for the time being. Google’s product search engine presently indexes over one billion products from 200,000 merchants.

For the offline inventory information; Google is working with around 70 major retail brands which collectively have tens of thousands of physical stores. Google will try to expand the number of merchants feeding it offline inventory information.

Stay tuned with SEO Global Expert for more updates.