SEO News

Google and Yahoo Share Details About Ad Deal

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 5:04pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Other Topics

Reuters has reported that Google and Yahoo have disclosed parts of their ad pact. The details, which were filed with SEC, "take the unusual step of disclosing the contract governing the partnership, but leave out any financial terms, such as the revenue split on their deal."

The article states that a number of people are upset by the possible partnership, especially since this will give the Google empire control of 90% of the search market. However, the article later states that Google and Yahoo wants to emphasize that this is a non-exclusive agreement "in which Yahoo is effectively contracting with Google to sell ads alongside a portion of its search results." This positions Yahoo to focus on its stronger suits.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Maps Users Cannot View Maps Created by Others

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Other Topics

In a Google Groups thread, users are reporting that they are not able to share or view maps that are created by others. This error has been reported since July 29th and a number of users are impacted (but others are not).

After heated discussions on the thread and 56 messages with a number of members trying to illustrate the problem, Maps Guide Mike says that this is a bug that was indeed fixed and that they will push the fix externally soon.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups. Additional coverage is at Google Personalizes Maps by Adding "My Maps" Feature and Google Maps Supports User Generated Reviews.

Google Provides More Information about Personalized Results

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 4:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

A WebmasterWorld member points out that Google has been a little more open with regards to personalized search results. For example, when you do a search, you might see something like this, where Google says that these are searches based on your web history:

When you click on "More details," Google gives you more information about personalization:

Google announced this transparency at the end of July, and it's been relatively welcome addition. They fear that the results could still be personalized if you're not logged into your account, however.

On a similar note, Pierre Far has written that you can now opt out of this behavioral tracking, and he directs you to the forms you need to fill out on Google and Yahoo (in addition to NAI).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.

Long Title Tags Improve Google Search Rankings?

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:32pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topic of title tags. Now this title tag discussion is not a typical boring thread. In this thread, some webmasters and SEOs have been observing that longer title tags are returning higher rankings in Google, when compared to their counterparts.

The example given by the thread creator, is a generic one. Search for Ie: [blue used widgets] will more likely return a number one result with a title tag that looks like "blue used widget bla bla widget," while a number five result might be "blue used widget."

Of course, there are more factors, many more factors, that come into play in which page ranks better for a search term, then just a title tag. But there is some good discussion around this thread.

Senior member, CainIV, said:

I would agree. I am finding that prominence in the title, as well as a combination of semantics is playing a big role now. Longer titles with closely related themed works are working very well.

Do you think longer titles make an impact?

Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.

Google Places Product Results In 4th Position : Confuses Searchers

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google is now placing product results, for some searches, in the middle of the search results. For example, a search on ipod nano returns the Google Shopping results in the fourth listing, as opposed to above the web search results.

Yes, this is Google Universal Search at it's best, but it is confusing some users. A WebmasterWorld member asked why Google was placing AdWords listings within the search results. Yes, you and I know they are not AdWords listings, but does the average searcher? In that case, does the average searcher care if there are product results in the 4th listing, mixed into the search results? Maybe not, maybe that is what Google is testing.

For you, the advertiser, if you have product and you are not in Google Shopping/Product Search, then maybe it is time you submit your products to Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords Sandbox Finally Supports Video Ad Creation

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:14pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

After hearing rumors of the ability to create video ads within the Google AdWords API Sandbox, and then hearing that the launch of that feature would be delayed, it is now officially here.

Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team said at a Google Groups thread that this feature is finally here:

After a few false starts it does now look like video ad creation in the Sandbox environment is enabled for all users. I tested it today and my request that previously failed now goes through.
Apologies for the length of time it took to get this resolved.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google AdSense Adds Western Union Option To Five Countries

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 3:05pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

One of the most sought after payment options for Google AdSense publishers is the ability to be paid via Western Union.

Google had announced at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld that they have expanded Western Union payment to the following five countries:

Bulgaria
Egypt
Lithuania
Morocco
Taiwan

Western Union payments are also currently available in other countries, including Argentina, Chile, China (Mainland), Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines and Romania.

If you are in any of these 14 countries and would like to receive payment via Western Union, follow these instructions. You must also be set up as an "individual" publisher to qualify.

AdSensePro Ashley added that "payments will be made in US dollars, but your Western Union agent may be able to convert your payment to your local currency."

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 8, 2008

Posted: August 9th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: August 8, 2008

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 8:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

The Olympics start today and Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and the Search Engine Roundtable have special logos up for the event. Google launched Insights for Search. Google begins to track your web surfing via DoubleClick cookies. Yahoo Search had a major update. Live relaunched Webmaster Tools. SEOs are split on buying nofollowed links and do like blog links. Google blocked ranking software. Performics has been sold off. Do the best SEOs offer consulting? AdWords is performing maintenance this weekend and they are shutting down version 11 of the API on the 26th. More news at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

I may not be able to mail schwag outside of the United States.

Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: 08/08/08 - Google Insights, Performics Dropped & Yahoo Gets Better

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 6:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Today is 08/08/08. You can imagine how precisely Barry planned out this post -- since, well, that only happens once in a century.

The Olympics are Here!

Also occurring almost as infrequently is the Olympics, which started yesterday and are now being celebrated within the search industry and here at Search Engine Roundtable. Speaking of which, the designer of our Olympics logo, Mabe, got engaged last night. Everyone needs to congratulate her!!!

Google Launches Cool Tool

One of the cooler tools that I've seen released by Google is Google Insights, which was unveiled this week. For the statistics junkie, this is HAWT.

Google's DoubleClick Cookie Tracking Arouses Happiness, Fear

To better advertise to the search audience, Google and DoubleClick are going to apply cookie targeting. to utilize some more sophisticated means of advertising, including frequency capping, frequency reporting, improved ads, and better conversion tracking. This is both exciting but also frightening--lots of information from two really powerful companies.

Yahoo Encounters Search Ranking Changes, Gets Better

Yahoo is upping the ante and is apparently becoming closer to Google in terms of how relevant the results are. This may be due to a number of updates and algorithm ranking changes that we reported earlier this week. In any event, it's promising stuff!

Microsoft Updates Webmaster Tools

Earlier this week, Microsoft updated Webmaster Tools with crawl error and backlink reports. Sadly, though, the webmaster community has not been receptive to this tool. I hope they do, though, since the really awesome guys at Microsoft put considerable work into that project and are passionate about what they do.

Polls: Your Favorite Links?

We held two polls related to links recently and got some interesting feedback. In our first poll, you were asked whether you would buy links with the nofollow attribute. The answer, actually, is undecided. Half of you said yes, and less than half of you said no (with some being "other"). Personally, I think that nofollow paid links, if relevant, would yield clickthroughs, so that's important, right?

What about links from blogs? Most of you like blog links, with 64% of you saying yes. I'm surprised that such a large number (29%) said no -- if blogs are updated, have good content, and again, are relevant, why the hell not?!

Google Blocks WebPosition

The WebPosition application has been blocked by Google for reportedly automatically checking rankings. Apparently, Google never liked the application to begin with, with their SEO guidelines specifically pointing fingers at WebPosition and suggesting that people don't utilize the service.

Google Sheds Itself of Performics

While Google loves acquisitions, there was one they just couldn't keep. We learned mid-week that Google has gotten rid of Performics so as to avoid a conflict of interest with SEM agencies around the world. Now, Publicis, a French company, gets all the good stuff.

Why Don't SEOs Execute their Clients' Ideas?

Following a discussion on one of the forums, Barry wrote about why SEOs don't take on client work. Why aren't SEOs applying some of the ideas presented by clients and using them to boost their own companies? Well, there are a variety of reasons, but notably, the issues remain that it requires a lot of manpower, dedication, and the passion usually lies in helping people, not competing. I've been presented with a fair amount of great ideas in the past, but would it even be ethical to steal it and call it my own? I think you know the answer to that.

Google AdSense and AdWords Downtime Tomorrow

All Google AdSense and AdWords publishers and subscribers should note that there is Google AdWords downtime tomorrow as well as Google AdSense downtime. What happens during these routine maintenance practices? We don't really know; Google went the political route and didn't give us a straight answer. That made a forum member start guessing, and it was pretty informative.

Also, Google AdWords API v11 will be sunsetted on August 26th, so be sure to update to v12 ASAP!

Have a happy weekend!

The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics & The Search Engine Industry

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China start officially today. To celebrate the day, Google, Yahoo and Ask.com all have logos and themes up. We also have our theme up, we hope you like it.

Here is the Google Logo:

Here is Yahoo's animated logo:

Here is the Ask.com theme:

Dogpile and Live Search do not have themes. It would have been nice to see a custom background with Olmypic "hotspots," maybe next year.

Here is our theme:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

What Exactly Happens During Google AdSense Maintenance?

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:15pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday, AdSenseAdvisor posted on WebmasterWorld that there would be an outage for Google AdSense tomorrow, August 9th, between 10AM and 2PM PDT. Ad serving isn't affected but AdSense addicts won't be able to check their accounts.

Usually, these announcement threads go unanswered. This time, though, someone asked the details behind such a maintenance procedure. At first, AdSenseAdvisor gave the generic answer: "our engineers carry out all the tasks required to keep our systems running as they should."

Did the political answer suffice? Not so much. Forum members started speculating what would happen. A good explanation (though purely speculation) was offered by Hobbs, who said:

During maintenance, raw data is redirected from processing into storage mode, this includes all the traffic and clicks logs plus every thing else Google collects, think of it as a huge bucket filling up.
Post maintenance: First a raw data sample is processed and analyzed for consistency, click fraud, earnings .., if all is well the data processing tap is opened and reports start to trickling in till the bucket is empty.

So why can't you access your data? A few reasons are proposed: it may be on hold until this is complete, or if there are any problems, the reports would be inaccurate anyway so Google tries to avoid displaying it until everything looks good again.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords API Version 11 To Be Discontinued August 26th

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

In March, Google released AdWords API v12 and is finally discontinuing version 11. This will occur on August 26, 2008.

Migration from API v11 to v12 should be relatively straightforward. Jeffrey Posnick of the AdWords API team recommends that you read the documentation for any questions. Of course, Google Groups is available should you have any additional follow-up inquiries.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Live Search Greatly Improves Webmaster Tools But Webmasters Don't Give a Hoot

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search MSN Microsoft

Microsoft has spent a considerable amount of time and resources building out enhanced features to the Live Search Webmaster Tools. They announced releasing the new features this week, but it has gone, pretty much, unnoticed in the SEO and webmaster community forums.

I won't go through all the features of the tool, Vanessa Fox has done that at Search Engine Land, but I will discuss the lack of discussion around this launch.

There has been sufficient buzz about this tool in the past. We heard promises that it was coming in August 2007. Then in September 2007, Live Search began accepting beta testers to the program. In November 2007, Microsoft announced that it would be launched shortly. A few days later, I showed off screen captures of the tool and interface, and was a bit unimpressed, to say the least. Then Microsoft launched a beta version. I then discussed the Live Search rank bars found in their Webmaster Tools.

In any event, now the tool is out of beta, they added a bunch of features and no one cares. All we have is a single post at WebmasterWorld two days later, saying, that Microsoft announced it. But that is it. No feedback, no complaints, no suggestions, nothing. Someone did Sphinn the Search Engine Land post, but it has zero comments and only five sphinns. Hopefully people will have time to review it over the weekend and complain about it next week. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.

Advertisers Are Happy But Scared Over New Google / DoubleClick Cookie Tracking

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 3:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday Google announced that they will utilizing the DoubleClick cookie-based tracking technology to bring more targeted ads and better targeting features to adveristers. You can read most the blog and news commentary via Techmeme.

The features are simple:

Frequency Capping to enable advertisers to say, show my ad to this specific user only X times.
Frequency Reporting so advertisers can see the frequency data.
Google says this will provide "Improved Ads Quality."
And better conversion tracking with "View-Through Conversions".

So, there are many good features here for advertisers. But it also scares many people.

DoubleClick is huge, they run a huge portion of the ads across the web. In fact, some of the ads on this site are powered through DoubleClick. But then, look at the number of sites with AdSense on them. Now combine them. Google will be tracking individual computers from all sites containing a DoubleClick served ad and a Google AdSense served ad. Of course, Google the opt out details.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 7, 2008

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Does Google Index Flex Content?

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Other Topics

Web pages that are designed with Flex Content, that is, using "a module that allows for flexible display of introductory text, title, and an image from any content item," are not spidered by Google, from reports in Google Groups.

What are the options, then, if you're a Flex content developer? Just like Flash content, it seems, you should make the same content available in standard HTML for the search engine spiders. This would also help those users visiting your site using a browser that is not Flex compliant.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Performics Dropped by Google, Acquired by Publicis

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:47pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Other Topics

The Washington Post reports that Google has sold Performics, its search marketing division of DoubleClick. Because of the conflict of interest, this was promised, as stated by Barry both here and over at Search Engine Land.

Is there surprise in the industry? Not so much. Most people consider this "fairly expected" and that Google really only needed an affiliate network.

Nobody seems particularly moved by the news reports, and they're happy that Google has ridden itself of the conflict.

Blog discussion can be read at Techmeme, our past coverage is here, and forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Deep Analysis of Google SERP Click Through Rates

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 4:34pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

The Searchlight Digital Blog has an interesting post that illustrates the percentage of click-throughs you'd get based on a specific Google ranking. The analysis performed by Searchlight covers over 36 million queries and more than 19 million clicks.

The interesting data comes from the explanation from Pete, the blog post's author:

Where this gets really interesting though is when you look at what can happen if you own most of the real estate on a good SERP. The top four results put together account for over two thirds of all clicks that will happen (68.69% in total). The top ten taken as a whole will give nearly nine tenths! (Actual total figure - 89.69%).
Drop onto page two, and you’re basically stuffed. Unless the term gets huge traffic, you’re not going to.

In a way, this information is troubling, however. The discussion on Sphinn concerns individuals. NickWilsdon, for example, is quoted as saying: "That shows the effect of Google pushing up these authority sites into top positions. Eventually they will just leave scraps for everyone else."

I guess we're all hoping that day never comes.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

SEOs Like Links From Blog

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

A week or so ago, I wrote a piece named Are Links From Blogs As Valuable These Days? In short, some SEOs are now against buying or obtaining links from most blogs. They feel that Google may be devaluing the once golden, blog link (yes, I am generalizing). So I decided to run a poll to see how our readers perceive links from blogs.

The results are in and we have 141 responses from SEOs and webmasters. 90 or 64% of the respondents said they like links from blogs. 41 or 29% of the respondents said they do not like links from blogs. While the remainder, 10 people or 7% of the respondents said it depends on the blog.

Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 90 respondents or 64%
:: No said 41 respondents or 29%
:: Depends said 10 respondents or 7%

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Did Google Stop Crawling Blogger Blogs on Personalized Domains?

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

There are threads at Google Groups and DigitalPoint Forums with multiple reports of Google not crawling Blogger hosted blogs, that are on custom or private domains (i.e. not on blogspot.com domains). Many have reported that the Googlebot crawling has stopped as of July 30th.

I asked Branko to help me see any pattern to the issue and we found a couple things. Both domains listed in the thread have similar patterns.

(1) They both have a robots.txt file that blocks a Google crawer, Mediapartners-Google. Now, we know that Google uses multiple crawlers to index content and they all work together. Branko theorized that maybe that "reduced frequency due to reducing the number of spiders that visit his site." I agree, that is a possibility.

(2) This is more striking to us, is that if you view the source code of both of the reported blogs, you will notice a widget from a script named SetSystemMarkup. I am not sure what that widget does, but in the widget, it has NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW in it. Maybe Google is misinterpreting that as a META tag? I do see that these blogs are both in the Google index, but maybe this is impacting any recent crawl activity for these sites.

I do not think this is a Blogger or Blogspot.com wide issue.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Fixes Search Volume Bug in AdWords Keyword Tool

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Yesterday, we reported on the Google keyword tool outage, where the reports were missing search volume data.

The problems actually persisted throughout the day, causing major headaches for advertisers looking to research possible keywords. In any event, a Google representative posted in the WebmasterWorld thread that it would be fixed very soon. The Google rep said at about 2pm (EST):

This is very much a known issue, and while I have learned to never say definitely when something will be resolved, I hope that things will be back to normal by the end of today. If not then, well, very soon. ;)

As of about 5:30pm (EST), we have been receiving reports that the bug is resolved. I have confirmed it works for me, so you can now give it a try over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

How to start a multilingual site

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 11:50am CEST by Chark

Have you ever thought of creating one or several sites in different languages? Let's say you want to start a travel site about backpacking in Europe, and you want to offer your content to English, German, and Spanish speakers. You'll want to keep in mind factors like site structure, geographic as well as language targeting, and content organization.

Site structure
The first thing you'll want to consider is if it makes sense for you to buy country-specific top-level domains (TLD) for all the countries you plan to serve. So your domains might be ilovebackpacking.co.uk, ichlieberucksackreisen.de, and irdemochilero.es.es. This option is beneficial if you want to target the countries that each TLD is associated with, a method known as geo targeting. Note that this is different from language targeting, which we will get into a little more later. Let's say your German content is specifically for users from Germany and not as relevant for German-speaking users in Austria or Switzerland. In this case, you'd want to register a domain on the .de TLD. German users will identify your site as a local one they are more likely to trust. On the other hand, it can be pretty expensive to buy domains on the country-specific TLDs, and it's more of a pain to update and maintain multiple domains. So if your time and resources are limited, consider buying one non-country-specific domain, which hosts all the different versions of your website. In this case, we recommend either of these two options:

Put the content of every language in a different subdomain. For our example, you would have en.example.com, de.example.com, and es.example.com.
Put the content of every language in a different subdirectory. This is easier to handle when updating and maintaining your site. For our example, you would have example.com/en/, example.com/de/, and example.com/es/.

Matt Cutts wrote a substantial post on subdirectories and subdomains, which may help you decide which option to go with.

Geographic targeting vs. Language targeting
As mentioned above, if your content is especially targeted towards a particular region in the world, you can use the Set Geographic Target tool in Webmaster Tools. It allows you to set different geographic targets for different subdirectories or subdomains (e.g., /de/ for Germany).

If you want to reach all speakers of a particular language around the world, you probably don't want to limit yourself to a specific geographic location. This is known as language targeting, and in this case, you don't want to use the geographic target tool.

Content organization
The same content in different languages is not considered duplicate content. Just make sure you keep things organized. If you follow one of the site structure recommendations mentioned above, this should be pretty straightforward. Avoid mixing languages on each page, as this may confuse Googlebot as well as your users. Keep navigation and content in the same language on each page.

If you want to check how many of your pages are recognized in a certain language, you can perform a language-specific site search. For example, if you go to google.de and do a site search on google.com, choose the option below the search box to only display German results.
If you have more questions on this topic, you can join our Webmaster Help Group to get more advice.

Posted by Charlene Perez and Juliane Stiller, Search Quality Team

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 6, 2008

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Launches Insights for Search

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 5:25pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

At Search Engine Land, Barry talks about a brand new tool -- Google Insights for Search. The tool is intended to give advertisers and marketers some metrics of user behavior. In the screenshot below, you can see these metrics, which include geographic distribution, time trending, and news headlines. What you don't see (but is also included) are related search terms and rising trends. (Click for larger image)

Interestingly enough, the map is interactive and is quite similar to the display on Google Analytics. You can click on the regions and zoom in to cities to get an exact idea of where people are searching, like so:

At the same time, the table on the left hand side also gives you specifics (which cities are performing the search.

All in all, this tool like really fascinating and should definitely become a useful aid.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

How Many of You Meet with SEO Clients?

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 5:07pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: SEO SEM Companies

In a High Rankings Forums thread, forum members discuss whether they meet with their SEO clients or not. It must depend on how the business is structured (and if the client is local), but in the latter case, if the client is local and you're charging hourly, most people don't see why this would be a problem.

The frequency of meetings is also discussed. Again, the geographic location plays a role here, but it also depends on how deep you are on the project. One forum member says that if they're in the middle of working on changes, their meetings are more frequent than if they are in maintenance mode.

Some others don't take local clients at all because such meetings are too time consuming. Can you relate to that?

How many of you meet with your clients in person?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Google AdWords Schedules Downtime on August 9th

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 4:36pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Google AdWords will be unavailable on August 9th between 10AM and 2PM PDT on Saturday, August 9th, we've learned, while system maintenance is performed.

Ads will continue to run, but you won't be able to access the AdWords interface to make any changes. The API will also be unavailable.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

SEOs Split On Buying Links Have The NoFollow Attribute

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:27pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

In May I ran an informal poll asking Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute? In short, a nofollow attribute is an HTML attribute you add to a hyperlink that tells the search engines that you do not vouch for this link. Most search engines will not count that link as a vote for the site it is linking to.

I was actually surprised by the results. They were split down the middle.

Of the 177 responses, 50% or 89 people said they would buy a link with a nofollow attribute. While 45% or 80 people said they would not. 5% or 8 people said, it depends.

Here is the break down:
:: Yes said 89 respondents or 50%
:: No said 80 respondents or 45%
:: Other said 8 respondents or 5%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums .

Is Yahoo Search More Relevant Now? SEOs Claim "More Like Google"

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:20pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Optimization Yahoo

Yahoo conducted an update to their search engine over the weekend. We reported on the early discussion around the update and it then became official when the Yahoo Search Blog confirmed the update later in the day.

But since then, I have been hearing and reading discussion that the new Yahoo Search results are more like Google. And since Google tends to be the barometer of what is "relevant" and what is not, maybe Yahoo's search results are becoming more "relevant."

Yahoo Search moderator, travelin cat, at WebmasterWorld said:

We have never ranked in the top 100 results in Yahoo since their split with Google. Starting a couple of days ago, our site started showing up in Yahoo serps. Most of our kw phrases are now on either the first or second page.

Plus, we have a whole new DigitalPoint Forums thread on the topic of the Yahoo results being incredibly similar to Google results. Here is a select comment from that thread:

Did anyone noticed changes in Yahoo!' SERP today. Yahoo is following the same way as Google. Frequent change in Google SERP is kind of common now but it's new for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is changing search results very frequently now.

Not only are the results looking a bit similar, in some cases, the frequency of updates seems to be getting similar and the discussion has grown a bit around this update.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Suffers Temporary Outage

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:11pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

About a month ago, Google's external keyword tool began to show search volume numbers. Last night, there were reports via WebmasterWorld that the tool stopped showing these estimated search volume numbers, all together.

The reports were sending back error messages that read, "Insufficient Data." This happened for any and all keywords searches between the times of about 5pm (EST) and 10pm (EST) last night, August 5th.

I personally tested the tool this morning and most popular keyword phrases are showing search volume data. I suspect it might have something to do with the launch of Google Insights for Search, which Tamar will have a post on later and which I wrote about at Search Engine Land just about 8 hours ago.

All seems to be good now with the Google Keyword Tool.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebPosition Ranking Software Being Blocked by Google?

Posted: August 6th, 2008, 3:01pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: tools Search Engine

The historically popular search engine ranking software, WebPosition, has reportedly been blocked by Google from checking rankings automatically.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that WebPosition is no longer able to process one's search rankings as of August 5, 2008. Old time WebmasterWorld member, Barbara 'WebMama' Coll, who has been a member of WebmasterWorld since 2002, said:

Has anyone else noticed that after years of threatening it appears that Google has now blocked WP Gold from reporting rankings through their tool? We called the WP support line and they said they are waiting for Google to 'do' something and have NO ETA has to when it will be fixed.

There is no estimated time when the software will begin working again. This software has been around forever and I believe Google has threatened to block it many times. In fact, Google has named WebPosition Gold in their SEO guidelines saying, "Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google."

So maybe Google did something about it finally? Or maybe not. Time will tell.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

To infinity and beyond? No!

Posted: August 5th, 2008, 3:27pm CEST by Maile Ohye

Tags: crawling and indexing

When Googlebot crawls the web, it often finds what we call an "infinite space". These are very large numbers of links that usually provide little or no new content for Googlebot to index. If this happens on your site, crawling those URLs may use unnecessary bandwidth, and could result in Googlebot failing to completely index the real content on your site.

Recently, we started notifying site owners when we discover this problem on their web sites. Like most messages we send, you'll find them in Webmaster Tools in the Message Center. You'll probably want to know right away if Googlebot has this problem - or other problems - crawling your sites. So verify your site with Webmaster Tools, and check the Message Center every now and then.

Examples of an infinite space

The classic example of an "infinite space" is a calendar with a "Next Month" link. It may be possible to keep following those "Next Month" links forever! Of course, that's not what you want Googlebot to do. Googlebot is smart enough to figure out some of those on its own, but there are a lot of ways to create an infinite space and we may not detect all of them.

Another common scenario is websites which provide for filtering a set of search results in many ways. A shopping site might allow for finding clothing items by filtering on category, price, color, brand, style, etc. The number of possible combinations of filters can grow exponentially. This can produce thousands of URLs, all finding some subset of the items sold. This may be convenient for your users, but is not so helpful for the Googlebot, which just wants to find everything - once!

Correcting infinite space issues

Our Webmaster Tools Help article describes more ways infinite spaces can arise, and provides recommendations on how to avoid the problem. One fix is to eliminate whole categories of dynamically generated links using your robots.txt file. The Help Center has lots of information on how to use robots.txt. If you do that, don't forget to verify that Googlebot can find all your content some other way. Another option is to block those problematic links with a "nofollow" link attribute. If you'd like more information on "nofollow" links, check out the Webmaster Help Center.

Written by Torrey Hoffman, Webmaster Tools team

Female Bloggers

Posted: August 3rd, 2008, 3:27pm CEST

Tags: in Blogging Women Tech

I wanted to take a moment and thank the following bloggers and sites for including me in their recent lists of top/favorite female bloggers. I don't tend to pay the most attention to lists and rankings. There's always deserving people that don't get included and the general nature of lists is subjective. That said, I appreciate the recognition, the time it took to put together these lists, and I'm honored to be included among many of my own favorite female bloggers. It's a good reminder of what blogging is all about - sharing your own voice and ideas, whether it's to an audience of ten or ten million.

On the Go

Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 10:11pm CEST

Tags: Projects

I've been tweaking the design of my site behind the scenes for the last few weeks and made the changes live tonight. Of course, there will be continuous tweaks, but I feel purged! Overall, I've tried to reduce clutter and simplify the structure and presentation - a proper cleansing. It's an evolution but also a return to an earlier version with less density.

Working 073108

Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 7:54pm CEST

Tags: Pico post

A day in the life of webmaster support

Posted: July 30th, 2008, 7:08pm CEST by Maile Ohye

Tags: and feedback communication

It was an ordinary Wednesday morning when I decided to film my day at the Googleplex...

A recap of the day's events

10AM Meeting with the webmaster support team

Our team shares a doc containing our current agenda and the previous meetings' agenda, minutes, and action items. In this meeting, we discussed:
Feedback from blog post on Duplicate content due to scrapers. Some webmasters suggested that we could improve our detection. In order to improve quality, it would help to get feedback with specific examples. Susan Moskwa, one of our Webmaster Trends Analysts based in Kirkland, Washington, volunteered to post a blog comment to solicit more information.

Recent and upcoming releases
Webmaster Tools API on schedule
"Skip intro" in search results

JuneTune online chat agenda

Two recent spam techniques mentioned in the blogosphere. Brian White, who leads one of the Webspam-fighting groups at Google, explained that one technique is new twist on old idea, both are already handled.

11AM Meeting with Matt Cutts

Matt provided feedback on:
Proposal to write follow-up blog comment on duplicate content caused by scrapers to solicit specific examples. Approved.

"URLs and case sensitivity basics" presentation for online chat

1PM Lunch with Shyam, a Crawl engineer, and Jason, and AdSense engineer
2PM Meeting with Wysz to review slides for Google Trifecta
5PM Little "drive-by" to catch Reid, Evan, Charlene, Jessica, and Wysz while they're monitoring the discussion group
7PM Dinner with Matthias
p.s. A huge thanks to Wysz for his film editing skillz.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

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