This day in search marketing history: March 1

Google publishes Search quality rating guidelines

In 2013, Google .

Previous versions of the document had been leaked many times prior to this. But this was the first time Google went public with its document.

It detailed how Google’s search quality raters – people hired through a third-party agency to rate the search results – graded Google’s search results.

This document actually just a heavily edited version of an older leaked version. It went from 161 pages to 43.

What was missing? Of note, The Page Quality Rating Guidelines and Rating Examples. We detailed what else changed in .

This was released as part of Google’s larger , which provided a high level overview of how crawling, indexing and algorithms worked. Google also

Also on this day

2022: Google confirmed there was an “increase in errors when inspecting URLs” and was working on fixing the issue.

2022: Google: “We made this change because the data provided didn’t fully represent the complete view of the placements that help developers monitor brand safety for their advertisers.”

2022: The company also announced the global availability of its Marketing with Purpose attributes, a pilot for multi-asset Audience Ads and greater support for Google Import.

2022: The maximum video length on TikTok increased to 10 minutes following months of testing.

2021: In her new role, the veteran PPC journalist and former Third Door Media editor-in-chief would be helping marketers learn about Google Ads’ products and policies.

2021: Also discussed: ego ranking, how to help your clients write content and much more.

2019: The company hoped the $20 million it picked up in series B would bolster its platform to tackle the “complex” SEO climate.

2019: A recap of some new capabilities rolled out by The Accelerated Mobile Project.

2018: Four months in, 19 rivals said too little had changed.

2018: Users could apply to join the new advisory program to help advance the platform.

2017: Advertisers could show prices for types of products and services in text ad extensions on desktop as well as mobile.

2017: The highly requested desktop tool is now out of beta.

2016: Version 11.3 of AdWords Editor was now available.

2016: Google took action on 65% of the 35,000 user-generated spam reports submitted to Google monthly, according to Juan Felipe Rincon from Google speaking at SMX West.

2016: The AP Election Buzz tool tracked 2016 election-related search volume and tweets.

2016: Searching for [Solar System] on Bing would return a cool interactive solar system map.

2013: There remains ambiguity about exactly how much can be excerpted without a content license.

2013: Yahoo Clues provided a snapshot of keyword searches over time, plus great demographic information about keyword preferences between male and female, different age groups and by location.

2013: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

2012: Google said the new policy would simplify privacy across Google’s many properties and make it possible for the company to build a range of new products and services for consumers.

2012: A new display for local search results looked quite a bit like what Google often showed.

2011: Google Bikes pedaled around the world capturing pictures of streets where cars could not venture. 

2011: Facebook developers weren’t allowed to monetize their apps with ads from Google AdWords.

2011: Microsoft announced the ability to recognize price constraints, describing the innovation as “a small step in our journey to make search friendlier to natural language queries.”

2011: Facebook announced changes to its Comment Box widget to keep at least some of the comments next to the original content.

2011: Twitter said its users sent a total of 36.4 million tweets in a five-hour span beginning with the Oscars pre-show and continuing through the end of the show.

2011: DuckDuckGo added two new content providers to its “zero-click” search results: local business listings from Yelp and definitions from The Free Dictionary.

2011: Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman: “Google’s position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don’t want them to use our reviews on Places…. But that is not an option for us.”

2011: iPhone “app search engine” Chomp introduced a version for Android to help address the “problem of app discovery.”

2010: With website hacking and other forms of abuse on the rise, Google announced plans to step up the notifications it sent to webmasters when the company found these problems.

2010: The integration worked the same way it had since February 2009. When images were available, a small box labeled “User Photos” would appear in the upper right of the Street View interface.

2010: Google announced the winners of its Street View Trike suggestions contest.

2010: Bing said that “44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week.”

2010: Yahoo celebrated its 15th birthday, in honor of the company’s incorporation.

2010: “Portal websites like Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources, visited by over half of online news users on a typical day.”

2009: Barry Schwartz recaps his meeting with the Google Israel team in their Tel Aviv office.

2009: Ville d’Eu (more commonly known as simply “EU”) was thinking of changing its name in order to rank more easily in Google.

2009: Microsoft Live Search appeared to be flighting a new instant answer called “Best Match” that highlighted what presumably Microsoft found to be ideal result for the query.

2007: How Google came up with the figure plus some click fraud fighting initiatives it planned to implement.

2007: With financials for the year, a list of all of the company’s subsidiaries, as well as details of Google’s merger agreement with radio advertising placement firm dMarc.

2007: Search Impressions were up an average of 5%; Cost Per Click was down an average of 6%.

2007: Insider Pages was a reviews-based local search company.

2007: It appeared Outside.in was automating the process of collecting content from various sources. It also relied on tagging and user submission for content discovery and organization.

2007: On what makes search magical, why a new Google isn’t likely and debating whether Google is overrated.

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Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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