Technical SEO and Analytics Consultant
Microsoft wants schools to use Bing as the default search engine. The Bing for Schools program is open to U.S. K-12 schools, providing a tailor-made search experience that removes all advertising from search results and filters out adult content.
With Bing Boards, which resembles a sort of inline image slide show, Bing is experimenting with putting Pinterest-like boutique content front-and-center in search results, or at least complementing them from a sidebar next to search results.
Google Analytics announced a redesign of the administration panel. Not only does the new design have a more consistent look and feel, but it should also go a long way to helping users visualize the settings for an account, property and profile.
The same tool that allows users to use A/B content tests on their site is now available through an API. The new content experiments API allows developers to pick and choose from all the features and create a custom solution that fits their needs.
New features are coming in Windows 8.1. Once such feature is a new global search, powered by Bing that provides a "view of many content sources (the web, apps, files, SkyDrive, actions you can take) to provide the best 'answer' for your query."
The Google Analytics team announced a new, more streamlined way to measure your goals. From the visual layout of the interface, to setting up new goals and all the way through to reporting, working with your analytics goals has changed.
Google Checkout will be retired in six months, Google has announced. The service, which has been used by many web merchants as an alternative to PayPal and has been the default payment option for Google Play developers, is going away Nov. 20, 2013.
At Google I/O, Google Analytics introduced a new feature that's quite a big deal to Premium Analytics users. Google is now giving Analytics Premium users the ability to use Google BigQuery to crunch their analytics data and other offline data sets.
Using the new markup will allow Google algorithms to understand which image on your server is your preferred logo. If you used such a file on your home page, you can designate it directly from the same IMG tag you use on your site.
Page took the stage giving what almost could be described as an elevator pitch or Google infomercial followed by over a half hour of live question and answer with the audience. He spoke on technology, Google Now, opportunity, negativity, and more.
You will now be allowed to directly engage with your Facebook friends right from Bing's search results pages. The new tool will allow you to ask questions or provide comments or answers on posts that are relevant to the search.
"Search Engine Optimization: The One Visual SEO Book You'll Really Ever Need" (Third Edition) by Kristopher Jones is out now and covers everything from SEO basics to technical, social, and local search. Learn how you can win your own signed copy.
You can now filter your traffic data more granularly in Google Analytics. Google has introduced several new filters to help you take a deeper dive into analytics in the areas of mobile, social, content and traffic, audience/users, and ecommerce.
The next wave of the Bing it On Challenge has arrived. Now Bing has taken their side-by-side comparison challenge out of Google's back yard and into the front lines of Kansas, where Google is bringing super-fast Internet to the masses.
Google has added goal conversions to its real-time reports. The Conversions report shows a list of the most recent goals, sorted by the number of conversions (highest to lowest). The report shows the goal number, then the name you gave your goal.
Have you noticed as few as 4 or 8 search results on Bing? That's because more than 50 percent of searchers click on Bing's first organic result. If you don't find what you're looking for, Bing may show 12 or 14 results after an unsuccessful search.
The new Google Analytics Customer Journey to Online Purchase tool lets you interactively explore the typical online buying behavior of your site's visitors and see how different marketing interactions affect your sales and conversions.
The average size of web pages has increased by 56 percent. Desktop page load times have decreased slightly. However, mobile page load speeds have decreased by 30 percent. Nearly every county is trending toward faster page load times on mobile.
Separate from Bing's social sidebar efforts, the folks at Bing have added a "Pin it" button to the Bing image search results. No more copy-and-paste. No more extra plugins. Now you can Pin images you find directly from Bing to your Pinterest boards.
Google Analytics has revamped its social reports. The Data Hub Activity report shows a timeline of activities and offers filtering by network, while Trackbacks show you what sites link to yours, plus how much traffic those links drove to you.
