Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

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Internet Corporation Listing Service Invoice – Fake Invoice Scam

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Internet Corporation Listing Service Invoice

A company named the Internet Corporation Listing Service (ICLS.net) continues to send out invoices in the USPS mail that are fake. The invoice they sent looks like the one I received above, which claims to be for $259 for a five year website search engine listing, from August 15, 2023 to August 15, 2028. the problem is that companies with websites (or even people such as myself) with domain names and websites should not pay for a search engine listing. Such a listing isn’t required that you pay, as the search engines such as Google and Bing actually will list your website for free. [Read more…]

Pulsr: First AI Search Engine for NFTs Launches

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Pulsr AI search engine for NFTs home page

Pulsr, the first-ever AI search engine for NFTs has launched. Pulsr is an AI search engine that contains over 5 million NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) across Ethereum, Polygon and Tezos, now openly available for discovery on its platform. Pulsr revolutionizes the NFT ecosystem by employing AI to automate, identify, and distribute NFT searchability Web3-Wide, effectively easing discoverability challenges for onchain collectors and NFT marketplaces. [Read more…]

Artlist Launches AI-Powered Footage Search Engine

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Artlist AI-powered footage search engine

Artlist’s AI-powered footage search engine for digital creators

Artlist, a creative technology company that is used by millions digital creators around the world, has launched their new AI-powered footage search engine. Artlist’s new advanced search engine is integrated into its product, helping creators to find the exact footage that they need more quickly than ever. [Read more…]

GotConn Privacy Search Engine Launches

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GotConn Privacy Search Engine

There’s a new privacy-based search engine that just launched called GotConn. GotConn claims that it offers private search, no personalized search results, and makes use of no third party trackers. They also claim that it doesn’t track IP addresses and doesn’t keep user session logs–and doesn’t sell personal information. [Read more…]

SearchBox Launches SearchAI SmartSuggest, SearchAI Answers and SearchAI Personalization

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searchblox smartsuggest

SearchBlox, a company that provides enterprise search server tools, has launched SearchAI SmartSuggest, SearchAI Answers and SearchAI Personalization. SearchAI Answers uses natural language processing to provide a more intuitive search experience similar to Google’s Featured Snippets. Websites with a lot of data to search through can integrate SearchBlox’s tools into their internal site search to now provide better suggest, answers, and personalization. [Read more…]

The Bing Search Engine is Now Microsoft Bing

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Microsoft Bing logo

New logo for Microsoft Bing.

Microsoft has rebranded its Bing search engine and given it a new name: Microsoft Bing. Most of us will most likely continue to refer Microsoft’s search engine as “Bing”, but Microsoft would like us to now refer to their search engine as Microsoft Bing rather than just “Bing”. Get it? I’m as confused as you are. [Read more…]

Google Thinks I Posted Every Post 7 Hours Prior

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google bug posted 7 hours ago

I’ve been watching this interesting Google bug for over a year now. Turns out that Google thinks that I posted every single post 7 hours prior to when I post. Whenever I make a new post here on my WordPress blog, and go find the post in Google’s search results, Google ALWAYS shows that I posted it 7 hours prior–even if I made the post 3 minutes ago. [Read more…]

iWon.com and iWon Email Shutting Down

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Do you remember the iWon.com website? It was a web portal that included a search engine, but you could “win” rewards and prizes for using their site, up to a certain number of times per day. The more you used the site the more you could win entries into the money that they were giving away each, and every day. A lot of people started using iWon Email years ago and still rely on iWon email to this day, but it’s going away starting on October 2, 2017.

iwon.com site

I never really spent a whole lot of time on their site, but I remember having an iwon free account and at least entering something every so often. But I never really did win anything. Or maybe I did? I honestly don’t remember. As I recall, the IAC search (IAC owns iWon.com) was pretty much using another search engine’s results (I believe it’s was Google’s search results). [Read more…]

How Not to Redirect an Old Blog Post: Courtesy Microsoft

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Well, here’s one that has got me scratching my head. Actually, I’m trying to decide if I should be scratching my head or doing a face-palm thing. An old post from Microsoft, which was a pretty important announcement, is being redirected to another URL. But wait, it actually doesn’t redirect. And then when you click the link that they tell you to, because it’s been moved to another location, you get another notice that you’ll be redirected to the new location. Oh wait, it doesn’t redirect you. Confused yet? You should be. [Read more…]

With Featured Snippets, Apparently Good Spelling Doesn’t Matter

Posted on Written by Bill Hartzer

All the rage nowadays amongst SEOs is about Google’s featured snippets that show up in the search results. It’s that coveted “rank zero” that everyone wants to get. Not only can you rank on the first page, but if your content is good enough, then Google will pull (scrape) your site and feature part of your content at the top of the search results. [Read more…]

Submit URL to Google: New Form Implemented in Search Results

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We all know by now that you don’t need to actually submit your URL to Google or “submit URL to Google”. Google’s crawlers typically are so good about crawling the web that you don’t need to tell them about a new URL or a new page. And, it’s been this way for years now. I’ve written about it time and time again. You don’t need to submit your website to the search engines, it’s actually free, and you certainly do NOT need to pay to submit your website. [Read more…]

Did Chinese Hackers Steal Google’s Organic Search Algorithm?

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War and Peace in the Information Age

Have Chinese hackers stolen Google’s search engine secrets? Have they infiltrated the super-secret Google algorithm, allowing them to manipulate Google’s search results? According to a new book by Bill Gertz titled War and Peace in the Information Age, “Chinese cyber-intelligence services had developed technology and network penetration skills allowing them to control the results of Internet searches conducted on Google’s world-famous search engine. [Read more…]

Google Answer Boxes Can Appear in Results for Site Search Queries

Posted on Written by Bill Hartzer

Apparently, Google Answer boxes can appear in the search results when performing a site:domain.com type of search in Google. I find this kind of odd, as typically someone isn’t looking for an answer per se when they use the site: search operator at Google.

What is a Google Answer Box?
A Google Answer box is Google’s attempt to give you information in their search results about search query (keyword) so you don’t have to click through to a website to get the answer. Google predicts the answer to your question, scrapes the data from a website, and makes it show up at the top of the search results. This is often referred to ranking 0 (zero) position, before the first result. In most cases, Google will show Google AdWords ads before the answer box.

Here is an example: [Read more…]