Google+ Quietly Removes Descriptions from Snippets

June 18, 2013
Google+ Quietly Removes Descriptions from Snippets - Except for Interactive Posts

Through most of its existence, Google+ has provided webmasters with the means to control the appearance of a page shared on Google+.  By marking up a web page with the correct data, it was possible to reliably generate the desired title, image and description accompanying a link shared on Google+. However, a recent update has [...]

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Key Search Marketing Takeaways from SemTechBiz 2013

June 6, 2013
Key Search Marketing Takeaways from the Semantic Technology and Business Conference San Francisco 2013

I've just come from the Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco, and it was both thoroughly enjoyable and highly instructive. I was joined there on the panel "Search Marketing in a Semantic World" by my esteemed colleagues Matthew J. Brown and Barbara Starr.  Our panel discussion was lively and, I hope, interesting and [...]

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Bing Mounts a Personal Offensive Against Google's Knowledge Graph

March 21, 2013
Bing Mounts a Personal Offensive Against Google's Knowledge Graph with Snapshot Improvements

As reported by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, Bing has announced and rolled out an update to its Satori-fueled Snapshot today. As with Google's Knowledge Graph, Bing's Snapshot (or "Snapshots" – the label is awkward one) is entity-focused, and the update extends the number of entities being shown, improves and extends the relationships displayed [...]

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Beyond Rich Snippets: Semantic Web Technologies for Better SEO

March 7, 2013
Beyond Rich Snippets: Semantic Web Technologies for Better SEO

The rallying cry from the search engines to encourage the use of semantic markup has been, so far, centered on rich snippets.  Markup you site with structured data, they say, and your search result snippet might be enhanced with information and graphics that will increase the number of searchers that click through from the results [...]

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New York Times Prototypes a Linked Data Search Engine

March 4, 2013
New York Times Prototypes a Linked Data Search Engine

On Beet.TV, Andy Plesser recently featured a short but fascinating video of Michael Zimbalist, Vice President of Research and Development Operations at the New York Times, talking with Joanna O'Connell of Forrester about a prototype linked data search engine being developed by the Times.

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Google Data Highlighter: Markup-Free Structured Data for Google

December 12, 2012
Google Data Highlighter - Markup-Free Structured Data for Google

Google announced today a new, potentially powerful addition to its Webmaster Tools options today:  the Data Highlighter. The Data Highlighter allows webmasters to select text on a web page and associate it with properties for a particular data type.  At this time the only supported data type is for events, but (perhaps based on lessons [...]

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Fall of the Machine Part II: Google's "Disavow Links" Tool

October 16, 2012
Fall of the Machine Part II - The Disavow Links Tool from Google

Google has released a tool which allows webmasters to disavow links pointing to their site. Humans again have kicked the machine.

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The New Structured Data Report in Google Webmaster Tools

August 1, 2012
Google Webmaster Tools Structured Data Report

Google has just announced a welcome new addition to the information available in Webmaster Tools:  the Structured Data Report. While Google has long been consuming structured data markup, until now there's been no mechanism to verify that Google had actually consumed the structured markup that webmasters had been providing.  With the Structured Data Report, Google [...]

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The Three Cardinal Sins of Tweet Button Implementations

May 29, 2012
Three Cardinal Sins of Tweet Button Implementations

The tweet button allows users to tweet a link to a page with a single click, and is one of the most ubiquitous social sharing buttons on the web.  This site uses it, your favorite sites almost certainly carry it, and if your mom has a blog you'll probably find a button there sporting a [...]

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Getting Started with Structured Markup for SEO

April 26, 2012
Getting Started with Structured Markup for SEO

My SMX Toronto presentation on using structured markup for search engine optimization. Includes a brief overview of semantic web principles, a comparison of the different flavors of structured markup (microformats, microdata and RDFa) and examples of rich snippets generated from structured markup.

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