Robert Fisher says, “What if you owned a paid directory site and every day you received emails upon emails stating that someone wants links removed. As they stacked up in your inbox, whether they were pleasant or they were sternly demanding you cease and desist, would you just want to give up? What would you do to stop the barrage of emails if you thought the requests were just too overwhelming? How could you make it all go away, or at least the majority of it? First, a bit of background We had a new, important client come aboard on April 1, 2013 with a lot of work needed going forward. They... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Are you doing what’s best, or simply seeking the protection of the herd? It’s an enticing idea: ‘Best practice’. It suggests a clearly defined path to success; a recipe for perfectly honed websites, trouble-free projects, delighted users; a silver bullet. But what is ‘best practice’? I don’t mean best practice for UX design, or best practice for SEO, or best practice for project execution. But the concept of ‘best practice’ itself.  Where do best practices come from? How do we recognise them? How do we adopt them?”. The... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “In its latest move to prove the value of its AdWords advertising platform, Google haslaunched Website Call Conversions. The new conversion type tracks phone calls that happen after a user lands on a website from an AdWords ad. By adding code to their sites, advertisers can track whether calls are made by users who click on a phone number or dial the number from their phones. When a user arrives at the site after clicking an ad, Google dynamically generates a unique phone number that can display for up to 90 days. Reporting shows which keyword and ad generated a call. Google... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Google’s back in the open source game, and in a big way. In a world increasingly bent on opening up innovation outside the company firewall, Google just took a major step forward. In June, Google made cloud headlines when it open sourced its Kubernetes project for managing Linux application containers. (These containers are a sort of software “wrapper” that make it much easier to run a given program on any computer without a lot of laborious customization work.) In effect, Google has offered the open source community an application architecture modeled after... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Like a volcanic eruption, search marketers are raising their voices today over an unpopular AdWords change that Google announced late Thursday. If you missed the news, Google said that AdWords will no longer allow advertisers to prevent their ads from showing up on “close variants” of their keywords — i.e., ads will, by default, show up on both the advertisers keywords and on close spellings. If you bid on the singular version of a keyword, it might also show on the plural version and you can no longer tell Google you don’t want that. Your ads might also show on... [...]

Frederick Vallaeys says, “AdWords is great at telling you how much money your ads cost and how many conversions you’re getting but what happens between the click and the conversion remains a mystery unless you add Google Analytics to the equation. It can tell you what people do on your site, so if they’re not converting, it can help you find out why. And when you can fix conversion rate issues, your AdWords performance will get better. With the speed at which new features get added, it’s easy to overlook one or two cool capabilities so here’s a roundup of 10 of my favorite ways to... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Google announced on Tuesday that it has added new spam filtering support to Gmail to help crack down on phishing attacks. Last week, Gmail added support for non-Latin characters as a first step in helping email become more global. This is good news for countries where users speak and write in non-Latin languages, but it can also present potential security challenges”. Google Introduces Better Spam Filters to Combat Gmail Phishing Mashable  [...]

Re/Code team says, “Google’s search engine is displaying Frankenstein-esque characteristics. Like the fictional scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who created a monster more powerful than its master, Google’s algorithm designed to rid the Internet of spammy links is proving difficult, if not impossible, to control. In June, CNBC.com reported on a Google algorithm called Panda that crawls the Web to periodically push what the search provider considers lower-quality sites down in the rankings while elevating better pages”. Has Google Lost Control of Its Anti-Spam Algorithm? Re/code  [...]

David Hamilton says, “Well, that’s one way to bend the Internet to your will. Google on Thursday applied its not-inconsiderable leverage as Search King of the Universe to “encourage” websites to encrypt their traffic, thus protecting themselves and their users from hackers and other spies (hello, NSA!) What Google is doing here is an unquestionably good thing. The decentralized Web has been remarkably lax in adopting simple security measures that safeguard your email, conversations, reading habits, and all other manner of personal details you’d rather not share with... [...]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “Google’s YouTube has acquired Directr, a startup aimed at helping small businesses create promotional videos. Directr markets a mobile app on iOS that provides small businesses with a way to create and publish videos. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but Directr is a relatively small operation, having only raised $1.7 million in funding. The company will integrate into YouTube’s video ads division. “Our small band of scrappy film lovers set out 2 years ago to help regular folks make great video. Today, we are incredibly excited to take the next... [...]