sel logo
Search Engine Land » SEO » This day in search marketing history: February 26
In 2015, Google announced it would expand its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, beginning April 21.
This algorithmic change would have a “significant impact” in the mobile search results, impacting all languages worldwide, Google said.
However, when April came, the general consensus was that Mobilegeddon was fairly insignificant, for all the hype and panic their Feb. 26 announcement created.
Google also announced that apps indexed by Google through App Indexing would begin to rank better in mobile search. Google said this only will work for signed-in users who had the app installed on their mobile device.
Read all about it in Mobilegeddon Cometh: New Google “Mobile Friendly Update” To Reward Sites Beginning April 21.
2021: Google published a list of best practices to help ensure that its search engine understood the products that were being referenced. 
2020: Google was sending notices to sites that had mobile-first indexing issues. 
2020: A tool for those tired of manually weeding through placement reports to exclude inappropriate websites and apps from display campaigns.
2020: Search Console users could download complete information (instead of just specific table views) from almost all reports.
2020: A Burberry bag was showing up with a “view in 3D” option in the Google search results.
2019: Google said you could download the data from the interface or the API before they turned it off completely.
2019: Average position was one of the few constants for more than 15 years. But with the removal of right rail ads, in particular, its utility sharply declined.
2019: The other change was that name of the business would move to the description line.
2018: One tool showed how a site stacks up against the competition on mobile. The other aimed to drive home the impact mobile speed can have on the bottom line.
2018: Google’s John Mueller confirmed a reporting glitch with the crawl stats “time spent downloading a page” report in the Google Search Console for on Feb. 20 and 21.
2018: In a new structure, the Google Shopping business unit bid against other Comparison Shopping Engines in the ad auction to give the competing engines “equal treatment” as mandated in the ruling.
2018: Google added a new feature to help non-English speakers expand their English-language vocabulary. 
2016: Google’s John Mueller said you could use AMP to become mobile-friendly, but AMP itself was not a ranking signal.
2016: Google review snippets returned after a bug caused them to drop out of much of the search results for about a week.
2016: Google AdWords reports weren’t downloading or printing. Bing Ads had reporting delays that affected the Web UI, mobile and API.
2016: Users would be able to change the color of the Google logo using a “finger painting-like” feature.
2016: 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.
2014: Cutts answers the question: “Should I focus on clarity or jargon when writing content?”
2014: Rankings were restored and most traffic was returning to the affected websites.
2014: Even if you moved your penalized site to a new domain name and didn’t redirect the penalized site, Google might still find it and pass along the bad signals.
2014: The company officially announced the launch of Flexible Conversion Counting, and advertisers would see new columns in AdWords.
2014: Google released some case study performance results on the new campaign type.
2014: All you had to do was go to Google, search for [american idol] or [idol] during the voting window, and select from your favorite finalists.
2014: Users could also use the “What’s Here” option to quickly get lat-long coordinates for any spot on the map.
2014: The company announced $1.573 billion in Q4 revenue, a 50.3% increase over 2013.
2014: Beck was Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter from March 2014 through December 2015.
2013: Edmonson confirmed that Panda “caused a massive loss of traffic and revenue.” But HubPages wasn’t planning to change course; the planned was to improve quality.
2013: It seemed as if Google was testing hiding the search box completely from the Google search results page.
2011: The biggest “content farm” type brand that seemed to have suffered was Associated Content.
2010: Testing would continue until May, when it launched the new user interface.
2010: Google expanded the choices in its Search Options panel with the announcement of a tool to refine searches by location.
2010: Members of the European Union’s data protection group urged Google to make changes to its Street View mapping/photo service and warned that Google might be breaking EU laws.
2009: After testing ads for the past few months, Google News officially rolled out ads on Google News search results to all US based searchers.
2009: The first tweet was in binary and translated into “Feeling Lucky.” 
2009: Google added geo-tagged Panoramio photos to StreetView images.
2009: Rimm-Kaufman shared early first quarter PPC data showing the weak trends in retail for search advertisers.
2009: Yahoo eventually did issue a weather report confirming that there are ongoing updates that would be “completed very soon.”
2009: Yahoo announced that Facebook enhanced results were now turned on by default across search results.
2009: “For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer.”
2008: Automatic Matching was a way for Google to help advertisers utilize their full budget towards keywords that they may have not been targeting.
2008: Google updated their AdSense terms and conditions to include better verbiage for new products and features, as well as an update to their privacy requirements.
2008: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said the Microsoft takeover bid had been “a galvanizing event for everyone at Yahoo.”
2008: Minimum bids could be lower or higher than $0.10.
2008: Yahoo planned to unveil a project code-named “Search Monkey,” a set of open-source tools that allow users and publishers to annotate and enhance search results associated with specific websites.
2008: Yahoo Buzz was a site where “buzz-worthy” news articles were highlighted based on user votes,
searching activity, and email sharing. 
2008: The first feature was similar to a live chat box that you could add to any webpage and chat with anyone via your Google Talk or Gmail account.
2008: Google joined a consortium of Asian companies to build an undersea transpacific fiber optic cable that would provide much greater bandwidth capacity between the United States and Japan.
2007: Google’s advertiser reports would begin listing the sites where each ad runs.
2007: Google was giving more detailed reports on the malware issues with a specific site and they were also sending email notifications to webmasters about these malware warnings.
2007: Spotted in the wild.
2007: It appeared that Google registered Google Payment Australia PTY. LTD. in Australia.
2007: The Fair Trade Commission said the contract enabled Google to “one-sidedly cancel advertisement deals” with publishers.
2007: Microsoft plans on building out a specialized search engine focused on delivering medical information to consumers.
2007: The real challenge was figuring out how to work with content owners, not speech recognition.
2007: Pew asserted that roughly 13.5% of U.S. Internet users were accessing the Internet over mobile phones (or their equivalents).
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.
< February 25 | Search Marketing History | February 27 >
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land
About the author
Related topics
Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.
See terms.
Learn actionable search marketing tactics that can help you drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.
March 15-16, 2023: SMX Munich
Online Aug. 16-17: SMX Master Classes
Online Nov. 14-15: SMX Next
Start training now: SMX Advanced
Discover time-saving technologies and actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges.
April 15-17, 2020: San Jose
Hype Check: What Marketers Really Want to Know About Generative AI
Trends in Paid Search: Navigating the Digital Landscape in 2024
2024: The End of the Third-Party Cookie. So, What Now?
Enterprise Marketing Attribution and Performance Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
Enterprise Account-Based Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
Enterprise Marketing Work Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
The Definitive Guide for Writing and Designing Emails That Convert
Meet your new AI-powered marketing assistant!
Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.
Topics
Our events
About
Follow us
© 2023 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Third Door Media, Inc. is a publisher and marketing solutions provider incorporated in Delaware, USA, with an address 88 Schoolhouse Road, PO Box 3103, Edgartown, MA 02539. Third Door Media operates business-to-business media properties and produces events. It is the publisher of Search Engine Land the leading Search Engine Optimization digital publication.

source