Posts by Kristi Hagen

In an interview with Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts was asked whether or not links were being completely replaced with social signals for rankings. His answer? Not yet!

"There's this perception that 'Yes, everything will go social' or 'links are completely obsolete'. And I think it's premature to reach that conclusion. I don't doubt that in 10 years things will be more social and those will be more powerful signals but I wouldn't write the epitaph for links quite yet"

He goes on to talk about how big the Web is, reminding us that there are tons of signals that Google uses within its algorithm to determine rankings. Generally, major changes happen...

We were asked for a list of Social Media Tools that we would take on a 'desert island'. After some heavy debate and a few laughs we settled on our favorite tools based on these five critical factors:

1. Ease of use

2. Affordability

3. Time savings

4. Tracking

5. Overall reporting features

If you're looking for online tool to make managing your social media profiles easier then read on to see what our experts had to say...

Overall Social Profile Management Tool

Augmented reality is a long wished for dream of many, and a logical next step for many mobile devices. Looking through your smartphone's camera to see an additional overlay on real world buildings and streets has been the most realistic idea to date. Even then that idea is very rudimentary compared to what's possible.

A few months back we informed our members that Google decided they would help us take that next step. They announced the project that is being worked on at 'Google X' lab which they're calling Project Glass. This is a set of questionably fashionabl...

It's official, Google is testing Sitelinks in a new tabbed format. The sitelinks that you're used to seeing are still there. However, above them are clickable tabs with more categories of sitelinks to choose from.

While we've not had the chance to mess with the new format ourselves, others have reported that it appears sitelinks within each tab are determined by relevance and popularity. The new tabbed sitelink format gives your site the opportunity to increase the number of sitelinks substantially, as you can see in the example below with the search for Apple.

Search by Image has been used for pretty much anything like pinpointing the origin of old photographs, search by drawing, recursive search by image, and creating photo mosaics. Since its launch last year, Google has been making changes to the algorithms weekly to improve the way people use it and how it interacts with the normal search results. This is a feature that is overlooked by many but I feel that it's something you should stop to consider for a minute. Here's some of the latest changes announced by Google.

Image Search Results with Knowledge Graph

Google now h...

In a recent earnings call, when asked about the paid inclusion model for Google's newly announced Google Shopping, Google's representative blatantly ignored the FTC's definition of paid inclusion and went on to explain that they don't call it paid inclusion.

This is where I want to chime in just in case this is all news to you. Google Shopping, which has already begun to roll out, is what happened when they took Google Product Search (a previously free service) and switched it over to a service that you have to pay to be included in...

Attention all webmasters Google is giving us the chance to hang out with their Top Contributors...on Google+ of course. You can join them for weekly hangouts to discuss webmaster related issues as they relate to Google search.

You can bring your questions and concerns to the hang out to be talked over live or you can submit them in advance using Google Moderator