Ryan Stewart says, “Earlier this year, Google rolled out the Related Questions feature (AKA “People Also Ask”). If you haven’t seen them yet, related questions appear in an expandable box, mixed in with organic results.Once expanded, a typical answer contains a machine-generated snippet, a link to the source website, and a link to the Google search for the question.How common are related questions?We started tracking Related Questions in late July on the MozCast 10K, where they originally appeared on roughly 1.3% of queries. Keep in mind that the MozCast set tends toward... [...]

Dr. Peter J. Meyers says, “As part of the MozCast 10K (a 10,000-keyword daily Google tracker), we keep a close eye on the domains with the most page-one Google real-estate. As of December 1st, these were the “Big 10”.“Share” represents the percentage of total results each domain has across the entire data set. Of course, absolute rankings can vary a lot depending on the data set, but what’s more interesting is how any given brand moves over time.We watch day-to-day movements closely as search marketers, and often track winners and losers when Google announces... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Could social signals be one of the mysterious 200+ factors that Google considers in order to determine your website’s rank?SEOs and digital marketers have been debating the question for ages. But what does the data actually say?Here’s a new perspective that attempts to answer this constantly debated question.Google Says NoGoogle is often cryptic about what factors it uses to determine rank, but in the case of social signals, they’ve actually been fairly straightforward.Many Google representatives have mentioned that social signals are not a rank factor. One... [...]

Eli Schwartz says, “Last year, I conducted a comprehensive survey to discover the search engine preferences of internet users and learn who truly dominates the search market.All of the current search engine market share reporting entities (comScore, Hitwise, SimilarWeb and others) utilize technology-based tracking, and I wanted to see if a survey panel-based approach would yield the same results.What I discovered was only somewhat surprising. My results, placing Google at the top with 80 percent of the market, differed significantly from comScore’s 67 percent; but my findings were in... [...]

Barry Levine says, “As marketers wrap up their strategies for this holiday season, search engine optimization (SEO) is obviously at the top of their to-do lists.But site search, Swiftype co-founder and CEO Matt Riley told me, is a different thing. So we pinged him for a few pointers.“They are totally different universes,” he said, with “different use cases.” His company, one of a variety of providers and methods for site search, handles this function for several hundred thousand desktop/mobile sites and apps, including those of Qualcomm, Dr. Pepper and SurveyMonkey.In the world... [...]

Dharmesh Shah says, “If you’re like me, you probably use Google many times a day. But chances are, unless you’re a technology geek, you probably still use Google in its simplest form. If your current use of Google is limited to typing in a few words and changing your query until you find what you’re looking for, then I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way — and it’s not hard to learn.On the other hand, even if you are a technology geek and can use Google like the best of them already, I still suggest you bookmark this article of advanced Google search tips. Then,... [...]

Jennifer Slegg says, “For many SEOs, a glimpse at the Google’s Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines is akin to looking into Google’s ranking algorithm. While they don’t give the secret sauce to rank number one on Google, they do offer some incredible insight into what Google views as quality – and not-so-quality – and the types of pages they want to serve at the top of their search results.Last week, Google made the unprecedented move of releasing the entire Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines, following an analysis of a leaked copy obtained by The SEM Post. While Google released... [...]

Gianluca Fiorelli says, “Whenever Google announces something as important as a new algorithm, I always try to hold off on writing about it immediately, to let the dust settle, digest the news and the posts that talk about it, investigate, and then, finally, draw conclusions.I did so in the case of Hummingbird. I do it now for RankBrain.In the case of RankBrain, this is even more correct, because — let’s be honest — we know next to nothing about how RankBrain works. The only things that Google has said publicly are in the video Bloomberg published and the few things unnamed Googlers... [...]

Ben Davis says, “I was going to write a post titled ‘Google Voice Search: What does it mean for marketers?’But then I realised it would be apt to sum up Google’s update with as few written words as possible.It’s great fun exploring Google’s voice search and knowledge graph, so here’s my summation of Google’s update through some choice screenshots.Google understands superlativesEven if the knowledge graph isn’t all that flattering to English footballer, Phil Jones.As you’ll know if you’re a voice search user, the knowledge graph... [...]

Kat Fay says, “Videos, reviews or an author’s picture can drive clicks on search results, according to a study by Blue Nile Research.Many retailers believe that showing up first in organic search results on Google and Bing is a guarantee of success. But lower positions often generate more clicks than the top spot, especially when the links include videos, pictures and reviews, according to a study from Blue Nile Research.The study identifies the three most common forms of visual content that lead consumers to click:Star reviews of products, such as giving an item one to five starsAn... [...]