SEO

I just returned from the UK. On my return I saw this news item: “Google’s Schmidt to Meet Britain’s Cameron as Tax Row Rages.” If the link goes dark, just run a query for “Google tax UK” and you will get some of the information. You can watch a video snippet at “Ed Miliband Accuses Google of Avoiding Fair Share of Tax” as of 6 am Eastern, May 18. I watched a bit of the discussion between a UK elected official and a Googler on the telly before I had a wonderful flight back to the United States. I thought the discussion was one of those technical misunderstandings. I recall a phrase which suggested that Google was not communicating clearly. Wired Magazine, UK edition, ran this story: “MP to Google: You Do Evil When It Comes to Tax.” As I understand the issue, Google pays what it owes within the boundaries of the regulations. The UK is struggling economically, which is evident in the number of folks who seem to be wandering about Hounslow without much to do at 10 30 am of a morning. My bus ride to Heathrow was an eye opener. The impression I had on the secondary streets to the airport was that High Street Kensington is different from the bus route from Hammersmith to Heathrow. Wired said: At a Public Accounts Committee hearing on 16 May, chairperson Margaret Hodges accused Google of “deliberately manipulating the reality of their business” and claimed to have whistleblower evidence that UK Google staff had sold advertising and invoiced UK-based customers. “You are a company that says you do no evil,” she told Google vice-president Matt Brittin. “I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax.” My view is that if rules and regulations exist, those rules must be followed. Some people are able to interpret the rules one way. Others see the rules differently. I think Google has its view of what is required, and the UK officials have another view. If the quick trip by Google’s chairman is going to happen, will Google be able to explain its point of view and carry the day? My hunch is that there may be some further discussion about taxes which will require more than Google Glass to get the elected officials to see the world as Google perceives it. Apparently millions of pounds are the point of the discussions. In my opinion, some countries do not understand how nation states should react to Google. Countries, in some situations, may be less influential than companies. Annoyed officials may be clinging to an outmoded view of what rules and regulations are supposed to do. What’s clear is that Google’s comments reported on May 16, 2013, have sparked some phone calls and a possible meeting between the highest levels of the British government. Quick actions such as buying Motorola and meeting with David Cameron can signal some of the consequences of quick thinking and even quicker actions. In my opinion, some countries and their officials don’t understand the Google systems and methods. Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2013

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web...

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google’s Matt Cutts: Domain Clustering To Change Again; Less Results From Same Domain Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google’s search results related to the diversity of the results being displayed. Matt said that Google is launching “soon” a new change that will make it less likely to see results from the same domain name, if you [...] Yandex Announces “Interactive Snippets” & SERP Redesign At Moscow Conference Yandex has presented what it claims is a new concept in search engine results pages to a Russian audience at an online industry conference in Moscow. They’ve nicknamed the new concept “Islands,” but are describing it functionally as “Interactive Snippets” and the next step on from rich snippets. To be launched in a few weeks [...] Search In Pics: Google Blimps, Sullivan Junior At Google LA & A Google Mohawk In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the Web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Google+ Blimps: Source: Google+ Danny Sullivan’s Kid At Google LA: Source: Google+ Android Statue Placing Android [...] Google Updates AdWords Express Sign-Up Process, Ad Copy Preview And Dashboard Google has updated the interface for AdWords Express, Google’s AdWords product designed for small businesses. Among the interface updates are a redesigned dashboard to show an at-a-glance look at ad views (impressions), clicks and calls generated as well as a pie chart that tracks monthly budget expenditures. A new performance graph allows advertisers to compare results [...] Analyzing Competitiveness In Your Paid Search Account The auction-based industry we work in involves a number of metrics which help search marketers identify where they are doing better or worse than the competition. Just to name a few, the most common metrics search marketers usually look at are the Quality Score (QS), the average cost-per-click (CPC), the impression share (IS), and the [...] Yahoo Wins $2.75 Billion Appeal In Yellow Pages Case Yahoo announced yesterday that it had prevailed in an appeal of a $2.75 judgment in Mexico obtained by former joint venture partners: The appellate decision overturned all monetary awards against Yahoo! Inc. and reduced the monetary award against Yahoo! Mexico to $172,500. Yahoo! Mexico was awarded $2.6 million in the original judgment, and this award [...] Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing: Google: “Game Changing” Features Will Boost Google+ Adoption Federal Appeals Court To Decide If Facebook “Likes” Are Protected Speech Twitter, NBA Score Deal For Basketball Game Highlights, Ads In Tweets Will Tumblr Be Yahoo’s Big-Splash Acquisition? Managing The Migration To A New Affiliate Network GAN’s Closing May Push Retailers Toward Better Affilliate Advertising Results Live Blog: Fireside Chat With The Android Team Google On Glass Privacy Issues & Congress: “Social Cues” Will Help, Plus It Takes Trust Seriously Congress Sends Google CEO Larry Page Letter Asking About Google Glass Privacy Concerns Live Blog: Grow Your Audience With Google+ Search News From Around The Web: Local Search & Maps Google Local Adds New Troubleshooter to Move Reviews When a Business Relocates, Mike Blumenthal How Google Made Maps Human, Savvy, and Monetizeable, Fast Company Sharing on MapQuest apps for iPhone and Android, blog.mapquest.com Link Building How to Calculate the Value of a Yahoo Directory Listing, seobraintrust.com Mozscape API Wiki Update, SEOmoz How to Be a Badass Link Builder, Search Engine Watch Paid Search A BETTER Guide to Call Tracki

How to Build a Google Analytics Tracking Code was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips. Need more input? As an optimizer who is regularly looking to learn more about how my recipients are interacting with content, I find myself regularly consuming analytics reports filled with Google Analytics tracking code data like Johnny Number 5 eats the Encyclopedia Britannica in the above clip from the 1986 gem Short Circuit. Google Analytics tracking codes —  also know as custom campaigns or UTM codes — are custom tracking parameters that communicate to Google Analytics granular information about how your referral traffic is interacting with your calls to action. To implement a UTM tracking code simply add your desired parameters to the end of the URL you want to track insights for, like this: http://www.YourWebsite.com/your-CRO-landing-page-article?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=viral&utm_campaign=CRO-0513-JThompson UTM tracking codes can help you analyze traffic from banner ads, email newsletters, social media content, and any other campaign that links people to a property that you own (such as your website or your blog). You cannot use UTM tracking to analyze clicks to external websites, like YouTube or Link-To-Related-Content.com. To track click activity on links that send people to properties you don’t own, Bitly is a great free resource. How To Put Together a Google Analytics Tracking Code Bruce Clay, Inc. does not recommend or condone using “awesome” as a Google Analytics UTM code parameter. (But we may or may not find it amusing.) There are five possible parameters you can set for each UTM tracking code: Source, Medium, Campaign, Content and Term. You don’t have to use all of them. For this blog post I am going to show you show to create a UTM tracking code for a link that directs people from a blog post to a page on my website. To keep it simple, I am only going to discuss the parameters needed for this scenario — Source, Medium and Campaign. Note: When and how to use Term and Content parameters is really a whole separate blog post; leave a comment if you are interested in seeing us write about it. The Medium (&utm_Medium) is the most broad parameter and tells Google Analytics — big picture — how to classify the medium by which your link was presented to the user. For example, was the link presented in a Facebook wall post? Then the Medium might be “viral” because the link you posted to your Facebook wall is now spreading virally all over the Internet and, accordingly, was delivered via a “viral” medium. (If viral is too abstract for you, “social” could also work.) Was the link transmitted to the end user via an email newsletter? Then your Medium might be “email,” or even more specifically, “ConstantContact” or “CheetahMail” to identify the service that delivered your newsletter. In our example above, our link was a blog post, so we used &utm_medium=viral. Getting one step more specific from Medium, the Source (&utm_Source=) tells Google Analytics where the click came from, where the person was when they clicked the link. In our example above (utm_source=blog) the person clicked on a link that was posted to my blog (so the Medium is “viral,” and the Source is “blog.”). Other Source options might include Twitter, Facebook or newsletter (Medium equals “email” and Source equals “newsletter”). The Campaign parameter (&utm_Campaign=) is one step even more specific than Source, and the parameter where you can really start to get granular with your tracking. The Campaign is how you identify the specifics of a link, from the details of where it goes all the way down to the color and size of the call to action. In the example above I used &utm_campaign=CRO-JThompson-image because I wanted to identify which of my silos encouraged the most clicks, the longest time on site, and — at the other end of the spectrum — the most site exits. I also wanted to collect data to hel

The Starcount Social Star Awards are on May 23 and they're getting serious: YouTube stars help Jesse Heiman become a YouTube great through the "most epic montage ever montaged." You know it's on when the montage happens. Don't think for one moment it isn't on with a montage.

In conjunction with the arrival of "Star Trek Into Darkness", Bing has added a couple of features that fans should appreciate: a home page Easter egg when you search for "beam me up" and a new language option to Bing Translator: Klingon.

Very busy week at Google, mostly because of I/O but a lot of other things going on - it didn't help that I was offline for two days. We first discuss the ten changes coming to Google related to SEO, including softening Panda...

On May 15th, Google's head of search spam, announced on Twitter that Google has taken "action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link that passes PageRank network." Google has done this time and time again...

Jane Wang from Google announced in the Google Business Help forums that you can now make a request for Google to move your businesses reviews from one listing to another...

As we expected, Google introduced the new Google Maps interface and features at Google I/O. The new maps are no longer a "static map" but now the maps are "immersively interactive" said...