This day in search marketing history: January 26

LinkedIn Ads launches

In 2011, LinkedIn Ads officially launched.

Advertisers could now target by exact job title, company name or LinkedIn Group.

LinkedIn’s self-service PPC ad offering launched in beta in July 2008 under the name LinkedIn DirectAds. Originally, advertisers could only target by geography, job function, industry, company size, seniority, age and gender.

Although marketers liked LinkedIn Ads’ extensive ad targeting, they were critical of how expensive it was on a per-click basis.

Also on this day

Google Ads scripts rolls out support for asset-based video ads

2022: Advertisers had until Feb. 28, 2022, to migrate their code from the previous media-based video ads.

Google’s Topics API: Advertisers share concerns about topic diversity and other potential challenges

2022: Search marketers applauded Google’s proposed user privacy measures, but also highlighted its shortcomings – particularly the number of topics in the initial design.

Microsoft Advertising now offers Filter Link Extensions

2021: Filter Link Extensions gave advertisers more visibility and the opportunity to tell customers more about their business offerings.

Insights from our 2017 holiday retail survey

2018: Holiday budgets rose across most platforms, plus what retail marketers did differently.

Google Bulletin: Hyperlocal news, Nextdoor competitor or both?

2018: Google described it as a “lightweight app for telling a story by capturing photos, video clips and text right from your phone, published straight to the web.”

Survey: People becoming less inhibited about using voice search in public

2018: Texting was the most common use case for voice. Men used voice search more than women.

Analyst firm: Google Home gains ground on Amazon Echo, now 44M total devices sold

2018: Google Home accounted for about 40% of the units sold in the US during the holiday period.

Search in Pics: Google bison, bowling balls & game controller tables

2018: 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.

Wilder Penfield Google doodle spotlights neurosurgeon once considered the ‘Greatest Living Canadian’

2018: Google’s doodle included an illustration of Penfield and highlighted his research on how smells could impact memory-recall.

iProspect: 2016 mobile CPCs up 26%, Shopping spend up 41%

2017: Mobile CPCs were expected to rise and CTRs to fall as competition and impression volume increased.

Google Maps will tell you how hard it will be to find parking

2017: You could plan enough time not just for driving to your destination but also the time it would take to park at your destination.

Google “spinner” Easter Egg returns interactive spinning wheel at top of results

2017: You would get an interactive spinning wheel that let you choose anywhere from two to 20 numbers when you searched Google for [spinner].

Bessie Coleman Google doodle celebrates 125th birthday of first African-American female aviator

2017: The Doodle included an animated image of Bessie, or “Queen Bessie,” as she was known during her exhibition flying career.

AdGooroo Launches Competitive Insights For Local Paid Search

2016: The new tool provided keyword, ad copy and budget insights at a city level.

Google Introduces Candidate Cards In Search For Presidential Election Season

2016: Google created a prominent placement for the candidates’ own messages and content in a horizontal carousel in search results.

Who Invented The Mechanical Television? John Logie Baird Google Doodle Marks TV’s 90th Anniversary

2016: The Doodle marked the 90th anniversary of the first demonstration of a television.

Video Of Matt Cutts Talking About The Early Days At Google

2015: A 34 minute video of Cutts giving a talk at UNC Chapel Hill.

Cortana Expands The Boundaries Of Search, But Will It Eventually Eat It Too?

2015: With Cortana, Bing was “creating new user paradigms and bringing search into the context of what you’re already doing.”

Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search

2012: That time when Google’s supposedly sophisticated Universal Search algorithm picked a cartoon video on YouTube created by a company pitching its SEO software to Rick Santorum.

Google Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed

2012: This was only a data refresh.

Now Test Your Sitemaps Before Submitting Them To Google

2012: Google Webmaster Tools added a feature that allowed you to test your sitemap files prior to submitting them.

FairSearch.org Introduces Anti-Google “Good To Know” Ad Campaign

2012: The ads argued that Google unfairly promoted its own products, delivered search results that weren’t objective or in the best interests of users and didn’t respect user privacy.

Major Entertainment Groups Accuse Google, Bing Of Directing Users To Illegal Content

2012: The groups proposed a “Code of Practice” for how search engines could better encourage consumers to locate legal content on the web.

Google’s “Trusted Photographers” Turns Business Photos Into A Self-Serve Product

2012: Local businesses that were interested in having interior photos taken could use the Business Photos website to find a “trusted photographer.”

Report: Click Fraud Rate Drops to 19.1% In Q4 2010

2011: This was the first decline in click fraude reported since Q2 2009.

Google Will Drop Real Estate Search & Listings From Maps

2011: Few people used it.

A Lesson From the Indexing of Google Translate: Blocking Search Results From Search Results

2011: Google confirmed that the Google Translate team has been unaware of the issue and said they would resolve it.

Google Removes Piracy-Related Terms From Instant Search

2011: That includes searches involving the word “torrent” as well as “BitTorrent.” But Google’s move seemed to catch some unrelated terms in the process.

Upstart DuckDuckGo Challenges Google With Strong Privacy, Cool Tools & Quackpot Name

2011: DuckDuckGo started more aggressively marketing the search engine with a campaign aimed squarely at Google, with the slogan “Google tracks you. We don’t.”

Reports The Self-Service Twitter Ad Platform Is Live May Be Greatly Exaggerated

2011: It actually required advertisers or agencies to work with an in-house sales representative. Twitter planned to test a self-serve ad product later that year.

If Google Played Jeopardy: Smartest Search Engine, But It’s No Ken Jennings

2011: How several search engines fared when asked to answer “Jeopardy” clues.

Google Expansion Plans For Southeast Asia

2011: Google would be opening a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Google Leases 100,000 Square Feet In Historic Venice Beach Buildings

2011: They would begin moving into the offices that year.

Disabling The Google Toolbar Doesn’t Stop Google From Tracking You

2010: Google said it was only an issue until a user restarted the browser, and it only affected the open tabs for a small number of users.

Yahoo’s Q4 2009 Revenues Down Only 4%, Search Ads Down 15% YoY

2010: Most of that decline came from a 15% drop in search ad revenue from Q4 2008 compared to Q4 2009.

Google Trying To Remain In China, Even If Search Engine Doesn’t

2010: Google CEO Eric Schmidt seemed to “walk back” some of Google’s prior strong statements about leaving China.

Google Acting Like A Carrier, Being Treated Like One By The FCC

2010: The regulatory body sent out requests for information to wireless carriers about the adequacy of their consumer disclosures associated with early termination penalties.

Collecta Widget Brings Real-Time Search Results To Any Site

2010: It included several customization options.

Search Market Share 2008: Google Grew, Yahoo & Microsoft Dropped & Stabilized

2009: In short, it was a 6% gain for Google.

Google Confirms Testing Favicons In Search Results

2009: The favicon only appeared when you did a site: command search.

Google (Finally) Addresses FeedBurner Problems

2009: The problems were associated with the migration of so many publishers to the new platform.

Microsoft Lowers Search Growth Expectations

2007: Microsoft lowered those expectations from as high as 11 percent to as low as 3 percent growth.

Google Checkout Blogs On Recent Promotions

2007: Some of the promotion they were doing was designed to react to consumer demand

Google, YouTube, & Wikipedia All On Top 2006 Brand List

2007: Question: “Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?” Answer: Google.

Google Book Search & Google Maps Team Up

2007: It showed “places mentioned in this book” on the Google Book Search page.

Intel Wins Back Google’s Server Business

2007: Google had begun purchasing Intel processors for their servers.

Dan Cohen, Ex-Yahoo Lead, New CEO of Pageflakes

2007: Pageflakes was an easy and free way to “build a dynamic personalized home/start page.”

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

How to produce actionable content throughout the marketing funnel

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.

2021: How are local service ads impacting Google Ads accounts? by Joy Hawkins

2018: 5 New Year’s resolutions for your PPC campaigns by Mona Elesseily

2018: Back to the basics: Beyond ranking factors by Garrett Mehrguth

2017: What’s love got to do with Valentine’s Day? by Mona Elesseily

2017: Do organic keyword rankings matter anymore? by Julian Connors

2017: The essential guide to pharma SEM by Justin Freid

2016: New Google Research: Can The Long Tail Be Covered Without Broad Match? by Matt Lawson

2016: Search Update Impact On SEO & Content Strategies: Staying Ahead With A Focus On Quality by Jim Yu

2015: 11 Tips For Using Slide Presentations For Local SEO Advantage by Chris Silver Smith

2015: Site Speed & PPC Performance: Why You Can’t Ignore A Slow Site Anymore by Pauline Jakober

2012: Are You Keeping Secrets From The Search Engines? by Karen DeJarnette

2012: What The Holidays Tell Search Marketers by Matt Lawson