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It?s time to stop PROTECT IP A couple months ago, I wrote this about SOPA: SOPA galvanized the tech community, from start-ups to venture capitalists to the largest web companies. SOPA was an unexpected shock and a wake-up call. Well, guess what? Now the internet is awake. And I don?t think it?s going back to sleep any time soon. We might [...]

Sharing a search story I?ve been reading a lot of the coverage of the Search plus Your World launch and I wanted to share my story and then clarify something. I love to stay up until early in the morning playing Werewolf. In early December I went to a journalism conference called ?News Foo Camp? in Phoenix and played [...]

Larry Lessig on the corrupting influence of money Larry Lessig has a new book called Republic, Lost which discusses the corrupting influence of money on politics. I would highly recommend the book, because it gets to the heart of why things so many things in Washington, D.C. seem broken today and how to fix them. If you don’t have the time to read [...]

Beware of fake Matts leaving comments A lot of the time, I dispel misconceptions by leaving comments on blogs. That works great, except for the rare occasion when someone pretends to be me and leaves a rude, fake, or otherwise untrue blog comment. Over the previous decade, I’ve only seen 4-5 times where someone impersonated me. But in the last month, [...]

Progress against SOPA When I did my blog post about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week, things looked quite grim. The fight isn’t over, but there’s been a lot of great developments in the last few days. If you’re not familiar with SOPA (and the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate), here’s a video that covers [...]

I need your help?please. Call your congressperson? (This is post is my personal opinion.) Normally I don’t like to ask people for help, but I could really use your assistance. If you’ve ever watched one of my webmaster videos, or if I’ve responded to you on Twitter, email, or somewhere else online, please take 5-10 minutes to help me out today. Here’s [...]

Grow a moustache and fight cancer! For my next 30 day challenge, I’ll be growing a mustache to raise awareness and money for men’s health issues, and specifically prostate cancer research. Men of search and SEO, please join our team. You can raise awareness, or raise cash. And it’s super simple: just don’t shave your moustache for 30 days. The name [...]

Halloween costume: stickman from xkcd For Halloween this year I asked people on Google+ what I should be for Halloween, and someone suggested going as the blackhat stick man from xkcd. You know, this guy: That sounded like a good challenge. I finished the costume and taped a video, but unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to get the video [...]

Halloween Pumpkin: Portal Turret! I made a Portal turret for my Halloween pumpkin! I was trying to think of things to carve: vampire Android? R2-D2? Zoidberg? Then I thought: I could do a character from Portal 2! I was going to carve something like GLaDOS or Wheatley, but then I realized that a portal turret would be perfect: To [...]

New 30 day challenge: going vegan! Okay, I’m starting up a new 30 day challenge: I’m going to eat vegan for the next 30 days. That means no meat, dairy, or eggs. I’m curious to see how it will go.

Google Testing New Look SERPs A really quick post today, I just spotted Google testing a new look to their search engine results (which impact all organic and paid results). Once again this is on Google.co.uk and it disappeared almost immediately after running a few queries. The screenshot below will explain better than words - Although the basic layout is [...]

Google Testing Display URLs At The Side Of Organic Results Another test we spotted this morning, this time for the organic results in Google.co.uk. The display URLs have been moved up from below the description snippet and moved to the side just underneath the title of the organic result. Screenshot as below for the ‘car insurance’ SERPs - I personally think this makes the organic [...]

Google Capitalising Keywords In Organic Display URLs I spotted a test last month where Google were adding spaces between keywords in Adwords display urls and today I have just noticed a new test, but this time for the organic results. I am not sure if this is entirely new (certainly not something I can remember seeing before), but Google seem to be [...]

Spaces Between Keywords In Adwords Display URLs Seeing some strange Adwords tests this morning, with spaces between words in Adwords display urls when they contain a keyword in (or matched) to the query. Screenshot below for ‘theatre breaks’ as an example - Notice the spaces in the display urls where the keyphrases within the search query are matched against the keywords within [...]

Adwords Ads Background Back To Yellow? Google has been playing with Adwords ad background colours again. We are now seeing a pale yellow colour in the UK SERPs, as per the screenshot below - I first noticed this about a week ago while running some queries in the US and the tests still don’t seem to be completely widespread just yet. [...]

Announcing The Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool As you might have noticed, I haven’t blogged here since August. Well, that was for a very good reason. This year I founded a new search marketing agency called Screaming Frog and have been working on a new onsite SEO tool, which has prompted this post. It has been a little while in development, but [...]

Google Search Query Reports: Beware Other Unique Queries! Ever since Google launched the Search Query Report in AdWords, advertisers have been using the data to refine and evaluate their current keyword lists, identifying any potential new keywords that they could add into their accounts. As those of us who use these reports know all too well, when looking at these reports you do [...]

Google Testing New Ad Format For Comparison Ads Google started testing Adwords comparison ads last year and subsequently rolled out credit card comparison adverts in the UK during February this year. Typically the adverts have been within the usual top sponsored ad positions in the usual Adwords format at the expense of an advertiser. But check out this test I spotted earlier today [...]

Google Testing Different Colour Backgrounds For Adwords Ads Over the past couple of weeks Google have been testing new background colours for their Adwords ads again. Google changed from their usual blue background to a yellow back in 2007 which is what we see predominantly today in the SERPs. Now it looks like testing time again, I am connecting to a DC with [...]

Google Geo Targeting Still Poor On The Long Tail Since I complained about the geo problems in Googles UK SERPS last year, there have been improvements. Some of the generic phrases which I noted had non UK orientated sites (ie. sites that don’t even sell to the UK) in the results have improved significantly. However, there is still a geo problem in the Google [...]

9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Avoid these title tage errors and you'll rank higher in search results and more people will click thru to your site.

6 Things You Don't Know About Online Video Marketing Tips for creating online videos that your target audience will learn from, will remember, and will want to share.

SEO Tips for E-commerce Sites Rank higher in search engine results and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store.

Google's New Page Layout Algorithm Penalizes Above-The-Fold Advertising Google's latest change takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads.

Has Google Replaced Content as King of the Web? How Google is now JUDGING your WHOLE site instead of just the webpage/content in question.

How to Create an Editorial Guide for Your Facebook Fan Page Questions to ask yourself and, based on the answers, tips for creating an effective Facebook editorial guide.

Learn How to Track Phone Calls with David Szetela A large number of conversions happen over the phone. This can be very problematic for many companies as they have no idea how many calls they received, or they do not know what traffic source or keyword caused the phone to ring. Call tracking is the answer to this problem. It has been around for [...]Learn How to Track Phone Calls with David Szetela is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Coupons as an Online Marketing Strategy This is a guest post by Ella Davidson of Coupons.org. Coupons is a charitable-leaning couponing site that strives to provide fresh and authoritative coupons and news. Coupons are experiencing an explosion in popularity?among consumers and marketers alike. For the former, the attraction is clear: coupons are a quick and simple way to save money; if [...]Coupons as an Online Marketing Strategy is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Join Us at the AdWords Seminar Workshop at SMX San Jose We?re teaming up with SMX to conduct a one day intensive AdWords training course before the SMX San Jose conference starts. If you live in the region and want a solid day of training ? this is perfect. If you?re going to be at SMX San Jose; come a single day earlier and leave with [...]Join Us at the AdWords Seminar Workshop at SMX San Jose is a post from: Certified Knowledge

How to Design the Perfect Form Almost all conversion activities end in some type of form: Ecommerce checkout Contact form Whitepaper download Newsletter subscription and many more Yes, most forms are not well designed. The best traffic you can buy will not help you out if your form doesn?t work properly. However, designing forms isn?t that difficult if you know the [...]How to Design the Perfect Form is a post from: Certified Knowledge

How Savvy Is Your AdWords Account? When you do AdWords account audits, you need to go beyond the data to see how savvy the AdWords account is. If the account is well put together, then the account manager generally knows what they are doing and you will end up talking quite a bit about the data and the account?s strategy. If [...]How Savvy Is Your AdWords Account? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Learn How to Leverage Existing Content for Your Content Marketing Needs Did you know: 44% of all US internet users have created some content online (Pew Internet ? PDF) We create as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of man through 2003 (from Eric Schmidt) The world’s roughly 27 million computer servers processed 9.57 zettabytes of information in 2008 (source) More [...]Learn How to Leverage Existing Content for Your Content Marketing Needs is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Productivity Tip for Following Up On Emails I?m a huge fan of making my time as productive as possible. I don?t want to waste time in hunting down if someone has replied or try to add yet more things to my calendar just to try to remember something. I like quick and automated solutions. When you send an email that you need [...]Productivity Tip for Following Up On Emails is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Some Free Market Motive Videos are Available This Week Market Motive is making some of their videos free this week. Each day there will be one video available for free. If you?re curious about the difference between Certified Knowledge and Market motive, you can see the full details in this post about the master certification. I recommend putting these on your calendar and taking [...]Some Free Market Motive Videos are Available This Week is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Do you want a Master Certification in PPC? Market Motive offers master certifications in a variety of disciplines from analytics to conversion optimization to PPC. Earlier this year, I took over the PPC Faculty chair at Market Motive and have had a great time working directly with students in both teaching them Google AdWords marketing; and working with them to improve some of [...]Do you want a Master Certification in PPC? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Forget A/B testing ? Is Multi-Ad Copy Testing the Future? Matt Van Wagner is one of the funniest, and smartest people I know in paid search. In fact, I enjoy Matt so much, he?s doing the technical editing for the 2nd edition of Advanced Google AdWords (Thank you, Matt).  He?s also the President of Find Me Faster and you can find him on twitter. Matt [...]Forget A/B testing – Is Multi-Ad Copy Testing the Future? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

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All parts of design are importantno, Im not kidding A reader calling himself ?areyoukiddingme? writes about color symbolism:

Constant Contact Chooses SkySQL for MySQL Support Extract not available.

Exact Match Domain Absurdity Are you vacationing this spring? Lots of folks take a trip over Memorial Day weekend, but I can't remember the exact date.

Article Spin Fail Humans rock! You know sometimes it's funny to see how article spinning software just totallly misses the point.

Google Instant Suggests Site Models When Using Site Operator All a man wants to do is use the site operator in Google, but noooo…  If you type “site:” in the search field, before you get a chance to type in the domain, Google Instant suggests the most popular search results and look what you get, a bunch of 15 year old girls taking pictures of [...]

5 Reasons CharlieSheen.com is not Winning Charlie Sheen would not have made it as a domainer as this sad case illustrates.

AdSense Fail: SEO Malpractice and Guaranteed SEO We can all get along but not on the same AdSense ad. Behold the irony of this ad which I observed on a popular SEO website.

Buying Call of Duty Black Ops I’m heading out to buy my copy of Call of Duty Black Ops and have a few thoughts before go. Multiplayer online games have been part of my life since the mid-1990′s. It was lonely in those days, firing up the old 28k modem and a bit of hope to connect with friends. I remember [...]

Google Ads During the Election Google shy away from brand damage during the political season.

Link Building, Web Designer Style Link building for web designers can be easy... and some might say sleazy.

14 Things I Dig about Digg 4 Did you think there was nothing to like about the new Digg, Digg4? Think again :)

Miss Me Yet? Do you miss the Digg Bury Button? Be honest.

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