WASHINGTON – Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that they have seized the internet domain name weleakinfo.com. The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu of the District of Columbia and Special Agent in Charge Timothy M. Dunham of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The website claimed to provide its users a search engine to review and obtain the personal information illegally obtained in over … [Read more...]
Why Do My Search Results Look Different? “Determining Relevance Based On Users”
PALM BEACH, FL - Just because you see something in ‘search’ doesn’t mean someone else will see that same result. This is because more and more of the web, as well as the experience you receive on your mobile device – be it Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Google, etc., is being influenced by your past search and browsing habits, as well as where you go and how valuable your visit might be, and/or how many times you might return for more - all of which are being done through various … [Read more...]
Why Investigations Into Google’s Search, Ad & Android Businesses Will Go Nowhere
PALM BEACH, NY – It seems like every day there is a brand new, squeaky clean investigation (or at least some accusations) into our good-ole’ friends at Google Inc., and Alphabet Inc. Swirling stories of lawsuits and federal inquiries into a company that is so large, so big, it’s almost such that you could consider them, “too big to fail” – how familiar. Historically, investigations into good-ole’ GOOG have gone all but nowhere. For instance, in 2013 the Federal Trade … [Read more...]
What Does Google’s New BERT Update Do? Most Significant Update In Last Five Years
Bert, the yellow Muppet character from Ernie and Bert (Sesame Street). PALM BEACH, FL - Google’s BERT update (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) effects up to 10% of search queries by allowing Google to better understand natural language processing (NLP), for the most part, in longer tail keyword searches. It is something Google has been working on for the last few years and allows Google to use particular words within a search query that change … [Read more...]
How Google Search Worked (Back in 2010) With Quality Search Engineer Matt Cutts
PALM BEACH, FL – The below video was uploaded by Google’s YouTube account back in 2010. As of the time of this writing the video has been watched over 5.2 million times. It explains, in layman’s terms (a very simple way), how Google works, at least, how Google ‘worked’ back in 2010. Google's Quality Search Engineer Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced in 2013. The video includes Matt Cutts, who was at that time, Google’s quality search engineer. He also acted as somewhat of a … [Read more...]
If Google Removes URLs From Search Results, Who Exactly Stands to Benefit?
PALM BEACH, FL – Last week I ran a story about Google’s obvious intent to remove URL’s from search. The story was titled “Google Determined to Remove URLs from Search Results; Replace with Breadcrumbs” and published on October 18, 2019. It was a follow up to “EVIL: Will Google Do Away with Domain Name and Extension Entirely Anyway?” There has been wide reaction from both the SEO and Domain community on the coming change and it warrants added thought and hopefully, added … [Read more...]
Google Determined to Remove URLs from Search Results; Replace with Breadcrumbs
PALM BEACH, FL – It seems that Google, the world’s most popular search engine, is determined to do away entirely with URLs in its search engine, no doubt further increasing its position in, and not to mention, the value itself of “alternative URLs” by completely removing a person’s ability to subconsciously decide whether a site is trustworthy based on the URL itself. I touched on this topic back in September 2018 when I wrote “EVIL: Will Google Do Away with Domain Name … [Read more...]
Gobble, Gobble: Google Wants To Steal Your Website’s Local Event Calendar Traffic Too
PALM BEACH, FL – No, its not quite Thanksgiving yet; there are still several weeks to go. I wasn’t referring to [that] type of “Gobble, Gobble”, with a turkey or thanksgiving or any of that. But Gobble, Gobble seems to fit the bill. Because if you were to ask Google, every day is like a feeding frenzy. I’m talking about Google’s insatiable appetite to steal all of your content so that there is little traffic left for you. In fact, I bet Google would much prefer if your … [Read more...]
Google Says: “Always Be Link Building”
PALM BEACH, NY – If that little-soft-wet melon in your head is working properly, you're very likely - not going to get much benefit out of this piece.... but in case you’ve never thought of this before, it could be quite compelling and helpful. It also could serve its purpose well if there is someone you have been trying to "convince", but they are that type of thick-headed person that doesn’t trust your intuition when it comes to SEO and always needs to hear it from the … [Read more...]
Top 10 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online; Do-It-Yourself Marketing Strategies
WEST PALM BEACH - Every once in a while I'll come out with a list of goodies for those who look for website owner tips. Below is a list of these including the top ten best and/or most popular ways (in my opinion) to market your small business on the Internet including both do-it-yourself strategies and for those which aren't, reasons why you might be better off hiring a fully managed solution provider or Internet marketing company to do it for you. Some of these ideas you … [Read more...]
Search Optimization or Sponsored Search, Which One Is Better for My Business?
NEW YORK, NY – Whether a company embarks on typical optimization processes or just gives in and goes straight for Google’s recently re-branded “Google Ads” program is probably a question best answered only by someone who has been watching both of them evolve over the years, because both of them do work, and both can be used to grow your business exponentially, but figuring out which one works better or which will cost more is something the average business owner just has no … [Read more...]
How Google Became the Most Popular Search Engine; Eyes on Innovation
NEW YORK, NY – In the early 1990’s, the Internet was in its infancy. At that time, a great majority of information on this new and interesting "World Wide Web" was from colleges and universities. With the growth of this vast amount of information came interest in a better way for finding things which birthed some of the webs very first search engines, many of which you’ve likely never even heard of. Some who used the Internet at that time might be more likely to remember more … [Read more...]
Did DuckDuckGo Just Acquire Premium Domain “Duck.com” from Google?
NEW YORK, NY – Popular privacy search engine DuckDuckGo.com, might just be quacking all the way to the bank with its latest [potential] acquisition, Duck.com, according to name server and domain registrar details pointed out by domain industry website DotWeekly.com. It is important to note that this is just speculation at this time, but knowing that the privacy based search provider has been eyeing the domain for some time, specifically saying that it creates confusion … [Read more...]
Will Google’s Instant Answers Threaten, Even Destroy, Search Giant’s Future
LONG ISLAND, NY – This is a theoretical opinion and is far from fact, but I thought about it today and I’m going to share it with my readers, as I ordinarily do here on this site, a place where my thoughts about the Internet, meet the Internet itself - and my ramblings are meant, not just to entertain, or act as some therapeutic outlet, but to help form options, influence discussion, create dialog and educate. Today, we will touch on something that is a growing problem for … [Read more...]
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Purchase an Ngtld Domain Simply for Search Rankings
NEW YORK, NY – Many who read this site will be familiar with the out-of-the ordinary sales of a few new gTLDs recently, one of which was Vacation Dot Rentals. I stumbled onto an old post about it over at Ricks Blog [I enjoy Rick's ramblings and story telling as I am sure many others do: The post was called "Fake site on a Fake GTLD Sale? The tale of “No Results Found” at Vacation.Rentals" - I'm sure you all read it.] I wanted to see where the site was ranking today … [Read more...]