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Daily Search Forum Recap: May 27, 2008

Posted: May 28th, 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.

Is Link Buying Worth the Effort?

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:23pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

A WebmasterWorld member was desperate for improved rankings, so he bought links. As a result, his rankings tanked and he was wondering if there's a better way to buy build links.

Really, if you're trying to buy links, the recommendation is to avoid using brokers. Go directly to webmasters and ask them if they can place a link on the site where it appears naturally (not in the navigation, for example). Additionally, go for quality over quantity. As pageoneresults says, "[t]en (10) high quality links will typically trump a hundred (100) low quality links."

The best ways to build links is slowly and methodically, he adds. You don't want to add a bunch of inbound links immediately because it can raise red flags.

On a related note, Jim Boykin suggests that you build links by focusing on the right text by having the right content on targeted pages. Don't necessarily link to your homepage; build links to the appropriate internal pages instead.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

A Reminder to Update Your Google AdSense Login to a Google Account

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:16pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

We posted about the requirement to link Google AdSense accounts with a Google Account in February. As indicated in the comments of that blog post, the frustration of doing so is still there and a lot of publishers are not taking the plunge as a result.

Well, Google is reminding you that you have no choice. You'll need to do it, according to a Google Groups thread. AdSensePro Ashley refers to a new post on the Inside AdSense blog which states that if you don't make the change, you'll be locked out of your account -- for good. (Roger, I'm sorry.)

There's no exact date for when this will be rolled out, but Google states that it will be a requirement "in the next few weeks."

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Google's International Search Filters A Little Off?

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

A Google Groups webmaster is reporting that he is finding .co.nz (New Zealand) sites ranked highly in the Google Ireland (google.ie) search result. Strangely enough, that .co.nz site is not even hosted in New Zealand; it's hosted in the US.

Similarly, the webmaster reports that a few other sites are being ranked highly even though they are US-based servers. He suspects that there is a problem with geotargeting in addition to other issues (like duplicate content filters, which he's also encountering problems with).

This may be a problem, and Google rep JohnMu has reported it as an issue. Hopefully we'll see some resolution soon.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 Party Guide

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 3:50pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Conferences

Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 will be held on June 16-18, and the parties are already being planned. AussieWebmaster has opened the floor to anyone who knows of happenings in the area, but Becky Ryan has already posted a few events that she knows will be occurring in a Search Engine Watch Forums thread.

On the first day (June 16th), there will be a networking reception from 5:30 until 6:30 in the expo hall.

On the second day (June 17th), there will be sponsored parties (TBA) and a number of private parties. Aim to get invited and you should have a good time.

As stated, there will be more parties to be posted, so be sure to check the forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Don't Block Your 301 Redirects with a Robots.txt File

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:56pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

A Google Groups thread has a very interesting discussion that is almost complete. The discussion takes you through the life cycle of a 301 redirect. Site owner moved from domain.com to domain.info, on a domain name sale, but wanted to retain his links, so set up a 301 redirect from .com to .info for a certain period of time.

Besides for the thread covering a ton of details that are critical to such a move, I wanted to highlight one point made by Googler, JohnMu. John said that you should not use "the robots.txt to block crawling while you have a 301 redirect enabled for the domain. By blocking crawling, you're effectively blocking the search engines from recognizing the redirect properly."

I wonder how many people do that because I never would have thought people do.

Besides for that, there is some discussion on how long the 301 should be in place before handing over the old domain to someone else. If you 301 the results for 3 weeks and then hand the old domain over to the new owner, if that owner drops the 301, will Google return the old links back to the old domain or keep them at the new domain? Some suggest keeping the 301 live for at least 6 months.

There are many tips in the thread for such a process including collecting as much linkage data you can from the previous domain. You can collect linkage data via Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools, your web analytics, your own database scripts and more. This way you can go back to those sites and ask them to update your link to the new domain.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute?

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members if they would consider buying a link that has a nofollow attribute appended to it. For those who don't know what the nofollow attribute is a snippet of code added to the html of the link, so a search engine can easily detect if they should follow the link (in terms of link popularity and even actually following the link physically). It looks something like this:

<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a>

In any event, the thread asks if you would buy such a link. I know people do, cause some of my advertisers buy them from me. But would you buy such a link? I know it depends, depends on if the link is on a high trafficked site, or in a prime location, and so on. But let's pretend the link is on a site like this or a site like Search Engine Land, would you buy a link from those types of sites, if it was nofollowed?

Here is the poll (try not to use the "other" option):

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Verification of Google Webmaster Tools Fails At 12:22am?

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:30pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

One constant thread you see at the forums are threads complaining that their sites become automatically unverified in Google Webmaster Tools. So the webmaster needs to go back in and manually click the verify button in Webmaster Tools, to reverify the site.

One webmaster wrote a Google Groups thread discussing a pattern he has seen. This webmaster wrote a script to notify him whenever his verification file is being accessed by Google. This way he knows when Google has tried to re-access his file and if he needs to go back in a verify the sites again.

Over the course of months, he believes he found a pattern where if he verifies his sites at around 12:22am (not sure what time zone), without failure the verification will fail, even if the verification file is there and accessible. His theory is as follows:

Since the file is obviously there and accessible, the only thing may be a slower response time. Even though it responds fully (I get my email), maybe Googlebot Sitemaps finds it a bit slow and flags it as unverified.

Maybe, at that time, Google's webmaster tools servers hiccup and need a nice kick? Or maybe it is nothing. But I found this thread both unique and interesting.

Googler, JohnMu, promised to show it to an engineer. So I hope to see confirmation of some sort, shortly form Google.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 26, 2008

Posted: May 27th, 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.

comScore: Google Search Share is at 61.6%

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 4:11pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

comScore released its April 2008 rankings last week, and it appears that Google has increased its search share to 61.6% up from 59.8% the previous month.

Even though this is an overall view of search traffic, forum members wonder if the quality will improve in certain niches (especially Ask, now that it may target women -- of course, women would have to actually realize this and search Ask in order for this new arrangement to work for them). It all depends on the users, according to a forum member. Google performs very well in certain areas.

Looking at this data, another forum member wonders why Google, the "search giant baby," is worried about the Yahoo-Microsoft merger. That's one specific issue that will affect a lot of people for some time.

On a related note, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has graphed out the search shares of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The graph shows that Google search shares have increased, whereas Yahoo and Microsoft search has decreased for the most part.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Temporarily Penalizes Blogspot & Info Domains

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Over the weekend, I noticed reports from WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums suggesting that Google dropped .info and blogspot results from its index.

First reports came in at around 9:50am (EST) on May 23rd at both forums. Massive panic actually started where we saw dozens of forum posts with members not understanding how Google can completely wipe off many (not all) .info TLDs and all Blogspot results. Here is one person's reaction:

But banning all .info domains without any apparent reason is greatly surprising.

But most felt this was a pretty large Google bug and they were right.

About five hours later, Webmasters began to see the old results come back to life. At 2:49pm (EST), we got reports from WebmasterWorld that the info TLDs were coming back into the Google results. Then at 4:33pm (EST), we received similar reports from DigitalPoint Forums.

Imagine that, Google delisting most of the .info TLDs and blogspot hosted blogs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Memorial Day Logos from Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile But Still Not Google

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 3:33pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Historically, most search engines do not place a special logo up on their home page for Memorial Day. I am not sure why, I know it is just a U.S. holiday - but typically, the lack of a special logo, confuses many Americans.

This year, we had some search engines that historically have not placed a special logo for Memorial Day, place one. But Google, still, has yet to showcase a special logo for today. In any event, here is a run down of the special logos from Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, Cre8asite Forums and yours truly.

Yahoo:

Ask.com:

Dogpile.com:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Here is a look past at the previous years coverage of Memorial Day:

Where is 2006? Well, I got married on Memorial Day weekend of that year.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: Where is Google's logo, the Stepforth blog has a comment from Google:

Thank you for your note. We understand your interest in seeing a Memorial Day Google logo. If we were to commemorate this holiday, we'd want to express reverence; however, as Google's special logos tend to be lighthearted in nature, this would be a particularly challenging design.
We wouldn't want to create a graphic that could be interpreted as disrespectful in any way.

We have a long list of holidays that we'd like to celebrate in the future. We have to balance this rotating calendar with the need to maintain the consistency of the Google homepage. We really appreciate your feedback regarding the Google logo, and please be assured that we're actively pursuing ways in which we can acknowledge Memorial Day and other such occasions in the future.

Regards,
The Google Team

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 25, 2008

Posted: May 25th, 2008, 5:28pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

In this Memorial Day weekend recap, I discuss the recent Google changes, floating fours, case sensitivity, minus X penalties and the local universal search change. I mock Microsoft Live Search's Cashback program. I looked into Ask.com's search update and then move to Yahoo's search ad change. Google updated the AdWords billing page. Plus SEOs are not rats, go figure. Check it out and don't forget to listen for a chance to win schwag, by commenting below at SERoundtable.com.

To win, watch the video and comment at this post below with the correct answer. 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:

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.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 23, 2008

Posted: May 24th, 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 Universal Search Local Results Adds "Change Location"

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 7:23pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Google Universal Search has been around for a while now. But today, Sam asked me to look at a search for scuba diving, which shows the local results smack in the middle of the page. Now, Sam (via Tamar) did not see that, same saw a box at the top that shows "Looking for local results for scuba diving? Enter location."

Let me first show you what Sam saw, which I can replicate using a different browser, a browser I did not use to search with Google Maps in.

Now, on my primary browser, where I use Google Maps and have a default location, I don't get that box. I get the results immediately, in the middle of the page, which is classic Universal Search. But, there is a slight change, it adds "near 2 executive blvd., 10901 change location," which is my location. Here is a screen capture:

If I click on the "change location," I get this:

Then clicking "back to results" brings back the previous screen.

Going back to Sam's example above. Google will ask you for your location, when it doesn't know it. You do not need to be logged into Google. You just need to have searched with a default location on Google Maps in the past to see the map pop up. If you have not, then Google will ask you for your location. When you enter it into the web search results in Sam's example above, then Google will show you a map at the top and not in the middle of the page. But, if you search again, Google may show you the map in the middle of the page, depending on the query.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Weekly Search Buzz Roundup - 05/23/08: Google Update, Micrsoft Cash Back & Google Health

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 6:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Two weeks until SMX Advanced. Four weeks until SES Toronto. Stuff is looking up after a conference-free (and relatively busy/boring/slow news) month. I'm getting excited :)

Webmasters Report Big Google Update

The biggest news of the week, perhaps, is the fact that Google is undergoing a May 2008 update. Many people are reporting a huge shift in their rankings this week and drop in traffic.

On a similar note, the floating four doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. A theory by Tedster has been proposed that this may have something to do with the number of URLs indexed. Hey, you never know.

Case Sensitivity Matters

While people have debated the previous impact of case sensitivity, Barry performed a test with different case and found results that weren't consistent. In other words, it looks like Google is somewhat testing out theories related to case.

Google's Minus X Penalties

In an interesting analysis of the minus X penalties, an SEO graphed his client's experience with the negative penalties and says that it has something to do with nofollow removals, PR4 links added, and some optimization techniques.

If Google Visits Your Site, Will You Be Penalized?

Either someone has been writing content that's really pertinent to Google or Google is performing a review of his site, but one webmaster is worried that the hundreds of visits from Google may result in a penalty. What say you?

Ask.com Shifts Algo

Ask.com webmasters are reporting an algorithm shift with updated rankings. The last time we reported such a thing was in October of 2007, so this is a breath of fresh air.

Microsoft's Cash Back Program

Want some money? Most people do. If you want to get cash back on your purchases, check out the Microsoft Live's Cash Back program which offers you money based on products purchased through the search engine. I think it may work for those who really want the money, but Barry disagrees. He's probably right.

Google's Crown Jewels Discussed

They say Google has the best search algorithm in town, but people are curious about it. Google VP Udi Manber wrote a blog post on the Google Blog about quality factors, and I have to say it's a pretty interesting read -- one of my favorite posts on the Google blog of all time. If you haven't read it, go. Now.

Yahoo is Playing with Ads

Yahoo is performing their own tests with ads, and while the changes are subtle, this is what A/B testing is all about. Will it improve CTR? I guess Yahoo will find out.

Google AdWords Billing Page Update

If you want detailed information about your Google AdWords billing, hop on over to Google AdWords and take a look at the new changes. Looks good, right?

Controversial Google AdWords "Automatic Matching" Beta Launching

A small amount of Google AdWords advertisers are currently being selected for the automatic matching beta launch within Google AdWords. The ads will go live in June 3rd and those who don't agree with the suggestion can opt out beforehand.

Google Supports Third-Party Ad Serving Technology

Google is now supporting third party ad serving technology, and AdSense publishers can partake in this as long as they opt in for image ads, enable advertisers to target your AdSense channels, and opt into placement targeting.

You Don't Report Your Competitors

...because if you did, you'd look pretty silly, wouldn't you? We ran a poll and asked you if you report your competitors to Google and most of you (70%) said no. That's good to hear.

Google Health Launches

This week, Google Health launched which somewhat is a journal of the kind of medicinal information that you may see for emergencies for babysitters on your refrigerator door. Now, it's all online. Useful? Depends. A privacy concern? For most of us, debateable. For Gen Y'ers, probably not.

That is all for this week. Have a nice long weekend!

Google May Penalize Fake Linkbait, According to Matt Cutts

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:44pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Many blogs are abuzz with the news about a recent fake piece of linkbait that ended up capturing the eyes and ears of many big traditional news outlets and bringing the originating story thousands of backlinks. After the community went up in arms about the "snakeoil" tactics of this piece of bait, Nick Wilsdon and Barry at Search Engine Land talk about the ramifications of the action, especially with how Matt Cutts is responding to it from a Google perspective. In a Sphinn thread (that is REALLY long; you have been warned), Matt says:

My quick take is that Google’s webmaster guidelines allow for cases such as this:
“Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it.”

There’s not much more deceptive or misleading than a fake story without any disclosure that the story is hoax.

Numerous forum members at Sphinn are disappointed in the approach taken here, especially since it was fake and deceptive. Others think it's unfair for Google to assert control over web content. Yet others understand that Google wants to link to the most trusted and relevant website, so they're going to obviously take action. I'd argue that the piece of linkbait in question is the most relevant piece of the pie here and should rank #1 for the query.

The question is: what would happen if nobody admitted that the linkbait was fake and everyone assumed it was true? Even if people contest the motives of this particular piece of linkbait, it was confirmed as fake, but do you really think that every piece of linkbait out there is legitimate?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and Sphinn

Does Domain Name Registration Length Impact SEO?

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

The question of domain name registration and its impact on SEO is not a new one. However, every so often, the question comes up. Would it be better to register your domain name for 5 years instead of renewing it for just another year?

In our past coverage, we reported that there are some signals sent by extended domain name registrations, including informing the search engines that your website is not spammy (you're here to stay). Google does weigh in on these signals, apparently (albeit not as much as other factors, obviously).

Domain name registration lengths may also show more about your commitment to your work. If you extend your registration for many years, it shows that you're serious about your business. I'd say that this is stronger than renewing it yearly every single year.

Others disagree that domain name registration lengths have any profound impact on SEO. Instead, the older the domain is (rather than the length of registration), the better it is.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Publishers Upset with Poor Google AdSense Quality Targeting

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:16pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

What's worse than having pop-up ads on your website? Having ads on your website that aren't actually contextual and aren't properly matching the text of your website to draw in prospects. (Well, maybe it's not worse, but it's surely frustrating a lot of publishers.) At WebmasterWorld, incrediBILL says that "[t]here were ads for all sorts of junk linking to sites that didn't have what it claimed, Amazon affiliates, off topic garbage, even phone company directory listings." He started trying to weed out the bad ads by hand, but says that his filter list is already full, so it wasn't easy to do.

Bill is not alone. It seems that a lot of other publishers are starting to filter out up to 90% of new ads that are using the Google AdSense program. Publishers complain that "[a]pparently the targeted ads aren't quality/relevance checked at all by Google," which doesn't make the viability of AdSense a strong one at this time.

Is there a correlation to a holiday weekend? Some forum members suggest that to be the case. One member says that "[l]ow advertiser inventory lowers the threshold to the bottom feeders." But others contest this claim, saying that bottom feeders should cease to exist if Google is really screening them for quality. This is a valid point.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Most SEOs Don't Report Competitors To Google

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 2:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

A couple weeks ago I asked if Do You Report Your Competitors as Spam in Google? Well, the results are in and most SEOs said they do not report their competitors to Google as spamming. Of the 159 responses, 111 respondents or 70% said no, they do not report competitors to Google. 45 respondents or 28% said they do report competitors to Google. While three of those votes were for "other" but was actually left blank.

Here is the break down:
:: No said 111 respondents or 70%
:: Yes said 45 respondents or 28%
:: Other said 3 respondents or 2%

I am actually a bit surprised by the results, I would have thought more SEOs would anonymously say that they do report competitors to Google. These results, to me, shows a fairly strong unity amongst the SEO industry.

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

Google Is On My Site! Will I Be Penalized Soon?

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 2:00pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has some discussion over one member spotting a Google IP address navigating through his site. The IP address originates from the Mountain View location and resolves to Google, so he is convinced a Googler is manually reviewing his site.

Well, it can be a manual review or it can be a Googler interested in your site. Maybe the Googler is using your site like a normal user? Maybe? If you think not, then maybe your site should be manually reviewed?

Heck, Google's people are all over this site all the time. Here are some stats from Google Analytics where I try to isolate Googler's on my site (I am sure it isn't 100% accurate):

Here is a chart showing "network location" for the past 30 days or so. Notice all these Googlers on my site:

Here is a chart showing my visitors from the Mountain View area, the location of Google's headquarters.

So am I being manually reviewed or are Googler's just reading this site? Maybe both. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Love Google Maps? Help Improve It With Your Suggestions

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 1:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Google Maps has really come a long way since it originally launched, a really long way. The mapping tools offered by Google are not only informative but very fun to use. From street views, directions, plotting your own points, user images, wikipedia data, data overlays and much more - it is really a great tool for users.

But it can be better and Google is looking for suggestions from us.

Google Maps Guide Brian posted a thread at Google Groups asking for our feedback and suggestions. He said:

We're always interested in hearing your feedback and feature suggestions. Use this group to share your thoughts, and I, along with the rest of the Google Maps Guides, will make sure that your comments shared with the rest of the team.

If there is any feature you want, this is your time to let Google know about it. Just go to the thread, join the forum and post your two cents.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google AdWords Magnifying Glass Goes Missing

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 1:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Yesterday afternoon at about 4pm (EST), the Google AdWords magnifying glass feature went missing. The magnifying glass is a little icon you can find in the keyword list within your AdWords management interface. When you mouse over the icon, up comes information regarding your quality square factors. Here is a screen capture:

That feature went missing around 4pm (EST) yesterday and finally came back around five hours later.

In a WebmasterWorld thread, AdWordsAdvisor confirmed the issue at 7:48 pm and then about an hour later informed us the issue should have been resolved.

I can confirm that I see the magnifying glass this morning.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 22, 2008

Posted: May 23rd, 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.

Yahoo Reduces Top Ads & Changes Ad Layout Slightly

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 7:46pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo made small, but significant changes, to the layout of the top search ads. It seems like Yahoo is now showing a maximum of three ads at the top of the page, when they use to show four ads. Plus, they have moved the display URL under the ad description.

Here is a sample of the old layout:

Notice the display URL is on the same line as the description. Plus, there are four ads for this particular search result. This picture was taken from James Omdahl and seems to be as recent as January 2008.

The new/current layout:

Notice, the display URL is now under the ad description and there are only three ads.

Spratjac, notified us of this change in Search Engine Roundtable Forums just a couple hours ago. He said, "On some of the keywords that I follow that normally show 4 ads above the organic results, it's now only three - very consistently." "Also, the ads look simultaneously more compact (closer together), and yet bigger (the URLs are now on a line by themselves)," he added.

Is Yahoo taking the Google route of reducing the number of ads to improve search quality and click-through rate?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

I Rank Too High on Google! Is Something Wrong?

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:56pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

Some webmasters will kill for a top ranking. Others will get it when they least expect it. A WebmasterWorld member talks about how he's ranking above Amazon for his brand new site which has already been fully indexed. He wonders if this is a mistake, since he's doing so much better than the bigger competition.

That's a good question. There are a few factors that can influence high rankings. The obvious culprits include domain age (it may be a new site under his ownership, but was it a high-authority site under another's ownership?) and inbound links (if the content is good, you'll get good links, right?).

Then there's the other side of the coin. Perhaps the guy isn't ranking so well after all but his personalized results are showing up. Don't forget; you need to turn off personalized web search in order to see what the world is seeing. To do that, append &pws=0 to your search results like this (or log out of your Google account).

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Is Google Perfect? Not Always. Here are 10 Flops.

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

While everyone talks about Google's market dominance and how it's taken over the world (naturally, because it's good at what it does), most forget that like any business, Google has made erroneous decisions as a company from time to time. PC World explores these flubs, flops, and failures in an article that proves to be a very informative read.

Some examples of Google mishaps include Google X (a homage to Mac OS X which mysteriously disappeared after a single day of being public), Google Video Player, Google Catalog, Google Web Accelerator, Google Answers, Google Coupons, Google Voice Search, Google Viewer, Google Checkout (especially related to a party-crashing incident), and Orkut (at least in the US).

The question is: do you guys really remember most of these? Probably not. With success will ultimately come failure, but you can certainly gain from learning what works and what doesn't.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Blog Post About Sphinn Demonstrates the Power of Community Within Social Networks

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:05pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

A very cool post by Web Professor was published yesterday about the 11 1 most important stories about Sphinn ever. The post goes into detail about who the big community participants are, what the best posts about Sphinn are, and what kind of Sphinn discussions there have been since its launch last year.

This post goes to show the power of "social" media and how we're all united by a community bond of some sort. Plus, it's a great post that illustrates that many people share information about what they're passionate about.

If you're new to Sphinn, it's a great read. If you're old to Sphinn, it's also a great read. The links (111!) will tell you the ins and outs of who and what Sphinn is all about.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 21, 2008

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 12:18am 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.

Linkbait Shows Matt Cutts Being Electrocuted by Solar Panels

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:56pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

I didn't know that being electrocuted by solar panels was even possible, but apparently it is. Solar Dave made a really cute video about how it all went down:

The idea behind the video, as Dave explains, was to illustrate that Google is starting to see that linkbait isn't all white hat and that there may be more "shades of gray" than assumed possible before (I guess anything can turn into black hat SEO if you think about it).

In the case of this piece of "linkbait," a few forum members were taken aback by hearing that Matt Cutts died :( I can hear that. What would we do without Matt's sunshine in our lives?

Is this viral marketing? It could be within the community who knows who Matt is. But most people don't, so it's mostly just linkbait among those who know Matt.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn

What Happened At The Google Factory Tour

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

In a three hour video (but thankfully, there's a slides-only version that only features 162 slides), Google takes us through a walk of its search factory and the various components of the big search engine, from Alerts to Book Search to Experimental Products (Google Labs) and more. In the slides, you can see that Google looks to expound upon image search (and reflects upon its growth), especially with regards to image ads which are on the horizon. Google also talks about Google News (specifically how it's geotargeted) and Google Finance (how the data is visualized). Additionally, geographic targeting is important. Specifically, Google aims to use user generated content to annotate the planet. The video also talks about Universal Search and the importance of mixed results, particularly due to the growth of video.

There's a lot more, and the information is comprehensive and informative. With Google's predominance on the Internet, forum members are questioning whether Google will acquire any broadcast companies in the future (especially due to its emphasis on video and visual elements). Forum members are also interested in knowing about Google's interest in geotagging.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Microsoft to Offer Cash Back to Users

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Search with Microsoft Live, get cash back. That's the new mantra behind Microsoft's Live Search Cash Back program, which has its own dedicated homepage and works like this: you search for a product using Live, buy the product through the search engine, and then save. The site explains "Every time you make a qualifying purchase, we'll send you an email to confirm your Live Search cashback savings. When your cashback account reaches a balance of at least $5, you can claim your cold, hard cash."

Here's a screenshot of the interface:

It's an interesting system, though it does show the great lengths Microsoft is taking to get a share of the search pie. Will it work? I think it could, as long as people are using the search engine regularly for this purpose and if they're finding what they're searching for.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums and additional blogosphere discussion is at Techmeme.

Google to Run Image Advertisements in Image Search

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:36pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

In September 2005, we reported that members were seeing image ads with Google Image Results. It seems that this is on the horizon and will be tested (and possibly rolled out) anytime now. As Bloomberg reports, "Display ads may work better with image searches because they seem more natural to people looking for pictures" (according to Marissa Mayer).

There's no date on when this will be rolled out, but since Google can monetize image search, it may happen pretty soon, I'd imagine.

Would you be receptive to image ads in image search results?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld

Google Shares Information About Search Quality

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Google's Udi Manber, VP of engineering, writes a very informative piece on the Official Google Blog about search quality at Google and the steps they're taking to make sure that Google's search quality is optimal. He explains that it has taken the engineering teams over 1000 man hours to develop without any stopping, and that's because the goal is to "improve the user experience." In this regard, there are a number of elements to search quality that are discussed.

Ranking is one of the more important elements about search quality, and Manber explains the difficulty of ensuring proper rank, particularly because of language ambiguity. The ranking algorithm utilizes PageRank and other elements (but Manber suggests that he won't give too much information away; this information is Google's "crown jewels" and providing too much would mean that the system could be gamed).

There's also a team that evaluates the effectiveness of Google, especially in different languages. Another team works on features and the user interface. Yet another team fights web spam. In other words, there are a lot of different pieces of the Google pie.

Matt Cutts takes this article to another level and illustrates the team environment. (I guess a cloud is better than pie.)

For someone who has an interest in the variety of teams working together to improve upon the Google experience, the post by Manber is informative. I suggest you read it. :)

Additional discussion is at Techmeme and forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch.

More Google Floating Four Theories

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:07pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Remember the floating four story I wrote a week or so ago? Basically how a search result would be in the fourth position and then go so a lower position, then come back to four and then go back again to a lower position?

Well, the forum discussion has continued at WebmasterWorld and Tedster, WebmasterWorld's administrator, has posted a theory. I am a big fan of Tedster, so I wanted to share his thoughts with you guys.

Tedster asks, "is size of site a potentially big ranking factor?" "Then other factors would help Google decide which of the smaller sites deserve a shot at position #4 (or wherever they are currently testing.)," he adds.

He shared some of the data he used to suggest this theory:

URLS INDEXED

Position 01 -- 1,570
Position 02 -- 12,100
Position 03 -- 99,800
Position 04 -- 87,000
Position 05 -- 27,700
Position 06 -- 22,100
Position 07 -- 242,000
Position 08 -- 1,630
Position 09 -- 124
Position 10 -- 689
Position 11 -- 125
Position 12 -- 1,040
Position 13 -- 976
Position 14 -- 13,600
Position 15 -- 401
Position 16 -- 1,660
Position 17 -- 10,400
Position 18 -- 1,490
Position 19 -- 3,750
Position 20 -- 686

AVERAGE URLS INDEXED

Average (#01-05) -- 45,634
Average (#05-10) -- 53,309
Average (#11-15) -- 3,228
Average (#16-20) -- 3,597

Many members are supporting his theory, but again, this discussion is what makes SEO a wonderful place.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Still Showing Different Results Base on Case Sensitivity

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:49pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Back in February, I wrote a story named Upper Case & Lower Case Searches May Return Different Google Search Results. Since then, the discussion on that topic has died off.

But in the past month or so, more and more people have been talking about how a Google search results will change based on if you use upper case letter or lower case letters. I have received emails, saw blog posts and watched thread after thread pop up about this weird Google behavior.

Google still clearly states that case has no impact on search results. From the horses mouth:

Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.

But yet we continue to see reports about Google being case sensitive.

So I decide to go back to my trusted search on big blue pineapple chair and compare it to the same search but in word case, i.e. Big Blue Pineapple Chair. Guess, what, even though both on my searches were on the same data center, i.e. 208.67.217.231, the results differed. Here are screen shots of the first page results, at the bottom.

Lower Case Version:

Upper Case Version:

The difference is the cartoonbarry.com vs. extrasformovies.com results - yes I am not signed in, and I am using a search that turns personalized search off.

So, Google, tell us what is up.

New forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Chark Added To Google Search Quality Support Team

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

First spotted by John, a new Googler has been added to the Google Webmaster team, to help webmasters in Google.

The Googler's name is Chark, he goes by Char, and he is part of the Search Quality team. He promises to help put in the Google Webmaster Help Group.

In a post, introducing himself at Google Groups, he shared some of his personal stuff:

My foray into webmastering began with a personal photo gallery site I created years ago, which looks like it is perpetually stuck in the nineties. To redeem myself, I helped my last company bring its website out of the nineties. Currently, I co-author a personal blog and am working on setting up a personal website to host my own music fluff (domain name TBD).
In addition to creating music fluff, I also like listening to all sorts of music, trying different kinds of food, wandering around in general, and learning about people.

Welcome Char, it is great to have you part of the SEM family.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google Search Index Update: May '08 Update

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:28pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

It looks that Google might be conducting some sort of major update. Yes, I know - Google is constantly updating, constantly adding content and "improving" the algorithm. But some changes make a bigger impression in the forums then others.

I have noticed recent discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums with people either complaining or praising a major shift in their rankings over the past 24 hours.

First post came in via WebmasterWorld at around 4:30am (EST), saying "There seems to be a roll back now... seeing the same old results for a few highly competitive 2 word keywords." Several members support his findings, even senior member, nuevojefe, added:

Very interesting changes I'm seeing. Major swings in a high traffic niche, but not much different in other niches I watch.
Seems new sites of a certain criteria are being allowed to jet up more though. Surprised to see new sites able to be propped up by network linking.

The DigitalPoint Forums thread has members who are commenting about a loss in traffic. Some members have posted charts showing a major drop in traffic, possibly due to a Google update.

So I think we have sort of major Google update going on.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 20, 2008

Posted: May 21st, 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.

Link Buys & Link Exchanges: Should You Compete in a Google World?

Posted: May 20th, 2008, 3:47pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Matt Cutts wrote a blog post yesterday about how Google is noticing reciprocal link exchange requests and how the sender of the particular email tried to circumvent Google's "filters" by including a request for a link exchange within in image (so that Google couldn't "read" it). Since people are quick to report such infractions to Google, they know about it.

On that note, how do you compete with those who buy links in bulk? WebmasterWorld members attempt to tackle this question. Some typically avoid taking upon clients who are working in competitive industries unless there is money to be spent. Others look for relevant link exchange options (provided that the webmaster who is asked to give a link actually is receptive to providing the link).

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.

The Next Five Years of Search

Posted: May 20th, 2008, 3:33pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Search Topics

Mike Grehan wrote an article on the future of SEO and shared his thoughts on Search Engine Watch Forums. Perhaps most importantly, Mike talks about the personalization of search among different verticals and how social search will have a predominant impact on the future of search in the next five years. He notes in the forum discussion that there's an advantage (perhaps an unfair one at that) because of some people having access to the web over others and poses the following question:

Should search engine ranking algorithms continue to be based only on the data they have about people who happen to have web sites and therefore have text pages and can link to others. Or is the voice and opinion of the end user now being heard much more clearly?

It's an interesting dilemma, but I think having a website means that you have a vested interest in the growth of the Internet (whereas if you didn't maintain/own a website, your motives are different). But that's just me. What about you?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google Health Launches Amid Privacy Concerns

Posted: May 20th, 2008, 3:15pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Yesterday's big news was about the launch of Google Health which right now is likened to a "notebook" of your medical records (gender, age, medications, doctors, etc.)

Here's a screenshot of the portal once you're logged in:

Of course, the issue of privacy has come up in several forum discussions. It's enough that Google has other information about so many millions of users, but health is a step too far.

beu at Search Engine Watch Forums points out something interesting, though:

Some residents of New Orleans have no medical records as a result of Katrina! I'd love to know the adoption rate of Google Health in the State of Louisiana as compared to the rest of the US.

It'd be nifty to see if Louisiana adopted this system and made it mainstream.

Additional blog discussion is at Techmeme and forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums.

Possible Ask.com Search Update?

Posted: May 20th, 2008, 2:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Ask.com

We rarely ever hear of Ask.com updating their search index or algorithm. We rarely ever hear of Webmasters complaining or praising Ask.com about a recent change in the search results. But we have a solo post at WebmasterWorld from a member who has been there since 2002. The post says he has noticed a major change with Ask.com's search results.

WebmasterWorld paladin said:

Seeing some significant changes in the SERPs here. Most are positive for my sites which makes me a happy camper.

I have not seen any reports from any other forum on an Ask.com update. Also, the last time I reported about an Ask.com update was in October 2007.

I personally have been watching Ask.com over the last week or two for improvements in their index depth and freshness. I have been also testing that index for improvements in their query processor. The tests I have been running have continued to be very disappointing, to say the least. This comes after a year since announcing the Ask.com's new search technology, code named Edison.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 16, 2008

Posted: May 17th, 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.

Permalink for 'Search_Engine_Roundtable/2008/05/16/Weekly_Search_Buzz_Roundup___05_16_08__Google_Dresses_in_Green__Yahoo_Gets_Local___Laser_Games_Are_Played'

Weekly Search Buzz Roundup - 05/16/08: Google Dresses in Green, Yahoo Gets Local & Laser Games Are Played

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 6:11pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Another Friday, another rainy day. For what it's worth, though, today is a special day, as we are celebrating the first laser. I don't know if lasers are viewable through cloudy skies, though. Do you?

Mother's Day

First things first. Did you have a happy Mother's Day? (Did you even surf the internet on Mother's Day?) We did. By the way, Chris Boggs, the Search Engine Roundtable design was inspired by our graphic designer, Mabe. Glad you liked it. :)

The First Laser

Today is the 48th anniversary of the first laser. How did I know that? Google told me. Interesting logo choice for sure.

UK Yahoo Users Getting Geo-Targeted Search Page

Want to visit Yahoo.com while you're in the UK? You may be directed to uk.yahoo.com instead. Does this have anything to do with geo-targeted Yahoo ads? It's possible, as Barry suspects.

What Background Do You Like Better?

Are you a fan of green? Blue? Yellow? Well, it looks like Google is testing out green backgrounds on the sponsored results. I'm not sure I like it; it's a little "bolder" than the standard yellow. In my opinion, it sticks out like a sore thumb even though it's still a pastel green.

Get Creamed by Your Competitor?

According to a recent poll we had on Search Engine Roundtable, most SEOs believe that their competition can hurt their rankings. My question: are you saying this from experience or are you paranoid?

Google Will Let You Buy Alcohol

Okay, just kidding. Google has a rule that disallows hard liquor to be sold, and guess what, they sell materials related to vodka and hard liquor, but since their policy prohibits indexing hard liquor content, Google is not indexing the actual alcohol itself. If you want to buy Vodka on the internet, go to another search engine. Better yet, just go to your local liquor store, flash them your ID, and you'll be fine.

Is the Yahoo Search Ambassador Program Gone?

Forum members have spotted notifications that the Yahoo Search Ambassador program is being discontinued. Why now? Does it have something to do with Google?

Tomorrow: Google AdWords System Maintenance

If you use any tools based on the Google AdWords API, bear in mind that the Google AdWords system will be down for a few hours tomorrow, May 17th. That's okay. Go out and have fun. It's the weekend, after all.

Yahoo Opens SearchMonkey Doors to Everyone

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 4:45pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Are you a developer? You may be interested in SearchMonkey, Yahoo's new open developer platform, which was released to all developers yesterday.

The concept behind SearchMonkey is to empower developers to build applications that increase relevancy of search results. Developers can build Enhanced Results or Infobars under the Search Monkey API which can pull data from CitySearch, StumbleUpon, eBay, Epicurious, and more. According to the announcement, "Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a richer display. All the links in the Enhanced Results must point to the site to which the result refers. Infobars are appended below search results and can include metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (such as adding a movie to a Netflix queue)."

Yahoo is also holding a contest that enables developers to create their own tools using the new API. Winners can receive up to $10,000.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Competitors Use Long Tail Keywords To Hurt Yahoo Search Advertisers

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 4:23pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

An interesting phenomenon is occurring within Yahoo Search Marketing that has been expressed pretty intensely by affected advertisers at WebmasterWorld. According to the impacted advertisers, the quality of their campaigns have gone down because of false impressions that have been generated for long tail keywords that were often never searched upon. In the case of one advertiser, his ad campaign served nearly 120,000 new impressions (triple what it was before) because of these obscure keywords in the campaign. After digging into his statistics, he disabled these low-performing keywords, but the damage had already been done, and the overall campaign effectiveness was reduced.

In other words, "a competitor found a low traffic keyword that [was being] advertise[d] on and searched tens of thousands of times to skew your CTR, thus lowering the quality of [the] entire campaign."

Only two Yahoo PPC users have been impacted by this shift thus far. According to one Yahoo rep, it is probably due to "market fluctuations," but typically, those who run the campaigns themselves would be most abreast of any market fluctuations (am I right?) It seems, to both affected individuals that there may be something else going on here, perhaps in the sense of fraud.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Celebrates the Anniversary of the First Laser

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 4:02pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

If you've ventured to Google today, you may be wondering what in the world that logo resembles.

Fortunately, all you need to do is click on the logo for the answer. Today, Google is celebrating the anniversary of the first laser, which, according to Wikipedia, was demonstrated on May 16, 1960. Today, then, marks the 48th anniversary of the laser.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Explains The Processes & Thoughts Behind an Update

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 3:24pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Google updates their search algorithms and indexes fairly often. Results change all the time. The goal for Google is to make this transparent for searchers by providing relevant results. But when a change happens, typically the webmaster will notice and may be impacted strongly by the update. So what are the Google processes and thoughts behind an update?

Google's JohnMu has an interesting post at a Google Groups thread in response to a webmaster being upset with a recent change in which results Google is showing for a particular term. In JohnMu's response, he explains why Google makes changes, for how long the changes may appear and so on. Let me explain that we do not learn much about how the changes work technically, but we do learn the thought process behind Google making these changes.

The premise behind all Google algorithm and index updates are to "improve the users' experience on our [Google's] sites." Google's "engineers are constantly working on" that, day in and day out. So Google is often trying "new things and run experiments" to collect data to help Google come up with new ideas on how to "improve" the search experience.

John explains that these "experiments" and "new things" can "run for a day or for many months." The thing is, these experiments "generally evolve over time," so although the experiment may do one thing, it can evolve to do other things (hence the constant Google flux). These changes to the experiments are "mainly based on that data" Google collects as they run tests.

Google is constantly changing their algorithm because "world around us is changing
rapidly, our users' expectations are changing equally," as John explains. John adds that "sometimes," these experiments can "lead to changes which not everyone likes." "Not every site can be listed in all search results, or even in the top 10," John adds.

I personally don't have much to add to this. It all makes logical sense, but I thought it would be good to document and have for later.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google's Malware Review Form Now Working Again

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 3:16pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Google's Malware Review form, which was added back in August of last year had some technical issues this week. First reports came via Google Groups at about 1am on May 15th.

Webmasters trying to utilize the form received a "oops, not working" error when they tried to access it. Google partners with StopBadware.org for malware detection and handling. Reportedly, www.stopbadware.org was also having issues at the same time and they were reporting errors that read "500 - Internal Server Error" throughout the day.

Googler, JohnMu, suggested that webmasters can also submit Malware Reviews directly at StopBadware.org at this form, if the Google form does not work.

The Google form is now working, about 24 hours later. I am actually amazed at the number of complaints about the form not working. It seems like the form is used more often then I would have thought. JohnMu said, if you submitted a review, they likely re-submitted it anyway, but double check to be sure. He said:

We went through all the failed requests and submitted them again, but you may want to double-check your sites just to be sure.

Here is a picture of the malware review form:

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google Testing Green Backgrounds & Turns Directory Ads Green

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 3:02pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

The iCrossing Blog posted screen captures of Google experimenting with green in the Google user interface. In addition, Google has changed from the yellow background color for their ads to green, within the Google Directory. iCrossing actually reported this two weeks ago but I I missed it until I spotted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread on his findings.

Here is a screen capture of a search on ipods at the Google Directory:

I see that green user interface myself, but I don't see the green look at a normal Google web search, like iCrossing showed for a search on car insurance.

Here is what I see:

Here is what iCrossing sees:

It may be that iCrossing has a browser cache issue from moving from the directory to web search? Maybe? I am not sure.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google AdWords Traffic Estimator Figures From The API Wrong?

Posted: May 16th, 2008, 2:51pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

A Google Groups thread reports that the numbers reported from the traffic estimator tool within Google's AdWords API interface is reporting different numbers based on the IP calling the data.

The AdWords advertiser said that depending on which IP is requesting the traffic data, Google will show a different traffic estimation for the same keyword.

For example, if the AdWords advertiser wants to know how much traffic to expect for the keyword [car], if he/she uses the API to request the data, the data might be wrong. If the API is requesting the data from IP address xx.xx.xx.xxx, it might return one number. If the API is requesting the same data from IP address yy.yy.yy.yyy, it might return a different number.

Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team said he will investigate the issue:

Thanks for letting us know; our engineering team is currently investigating to see if there is anything that might have changed recently that could lead to varying results from the Traffic Estimator API calls. I'll update this thread with what I hear back.

I'll update you when I hear more information.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 15, 2008

Posted: May 16th, 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.

ISP to Spy on User Activity to Deliver Targeted Ads

Posted: May 15th, 2008, 4:29pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Contextual Ads

United States ISP Charter Communications announced that it will start looking at your surfing behavior to find you relevant ads.

While continuing to deliver the same fast and reliable Internet service you’ve always received, innovative new technology in the field of online advertising enables Charter to provide you with an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities. As a result of this service, the advertising you typically see online will better reflect the interests you express through your web-surfing activity. You will not see more ads – just ads that are more relevant to you.

While Charter is probably the first ISP to do this, it's already being contested as a heavy invasion of privacy as well as something heavily questionable since any ISP can swap out AdSense IDs for their own and monetize off their members' clicks.

Will anything be done? That's the question. Will Charter get away with it? Perhaps websites will need to block Charter Communications from overriding their own ads (and consequently "defacing a third party website") -- by not letting Charter in at all.

Legally, this can be a problem as well. It may be copyright infringement if they're taking a website served by another company and just replacing ads.

But this may also cause another problem for publishers: if this gains traction, more users will start using ad-blocking solutions that may not necessarily bode well for those who are trying to make a buck off of their hard-earned work. As a statement to Charter, they may install some software to circumvent the ads, but other people will end up suffering as a result.

Overall, the forum members are appalled and think that it won't pass in a court of law. I'm not a Charter Communications user (thankfully), but I'd hope they don't get away with this myself.

Forum discussion continues (and it's long and more informative than this post!) at WebmasterWorld.

Quick Bookmark URL for Google AdWords Live Chat

Posted: May 15th, 2008, 4:16pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Need help with Google AdWords? If you're afraid of picking up the phone and find email to take too long, you have another alternative: live chat.

This URL may be specific to the UK (or may fit both UK and US queries), but if you ever have a quick question related to Google AdWords, you can click here to start your chat with an AdWords representative.

Life just got a lot easier. :)

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

UK Based Yahoo Users Redirected to Yahoo UK

Posted: May 15th, 2008, 3:27pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

David Eaves reports that UK based users who go to yahoo.com are now being redirected from the .com version to the Yahoo UK domain.

David said this is brand new behavior from Yahoo. 24 hours earlier, if a UK internet user went to Yahoo.com, it would keep them on Yahoo.com. Now, Yahoo is sending UK users off to Yahoo UK.

I honestly have a feeling this has to do with Yahoo Now Showing Geo-Location Under Search Ads from two days ago. Yahoo told me that they rolled out that feature last "week with the roll out of a new “geo labels” feature." I would not be surprised if the same geo-technology was applied to this.

I am going to post screen captures of this at Search Engine Land, with the behavior of how Yahoo, Google and Live handle UK users.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo Site Explorer Mishandling HTTPS Vs. HTTP Protocols?

Posted: May 15th, 2008, 3:15pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting a possible bug with the Yahoo Site Explorer tool.

The webmaster reports that when trying to delete the https URLs of his site from the Yahoo index via Yahoo Site Explorer, it tries to delete the http version as well.

As many SEOs and Webmasters know, having both the https and http version of the same content in the search results can hurt you a bit in terms of link equity. SEOs and Webmasters want to ensure that the links they obtain go specifically to one URL and not two, and since https is a different url then http, search engines may consider them as two different pages with exactly the same content.

So when some webmasters see that Yahoo indexed both pages, they may want to force the removal of one of those pages in Site Explorer. But according to this webmaster, if you try removing https, it will remove the http versions as well.

That brings up an interesting logical observation. If removing an https version, will remove the http version, then maybe Yahoo considers https urls to be the same as http. Maybe https://www.mysite.com/abc.html is the same as http://www.mysite.com/abc.html in the eyes of Yahoo. Maybe all links pointing to the https version are automatically moved over to the http version, in terms of the link popularity component used in Yahoo? Maybe... Or Maybe not?

Maybe, it is a bug in Site Explorer as one member suggests.

I've pointed out to Yahoo that http and https are just different protocols. They suggested that this was a bug in SiteExplorer.

I would think it is a bug and Yahoo doesn't treat https URLs as http.

The quick and easy fix, 301 the https version to http, if possible. But that is not always possible.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Should Google Not Index Robots.txt Files in Search Results?

Posted: May 15th, 2008, 3:02pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

An interesting discussion is taking place at WebmasterWorld on the topic of the robots.txt file. One webmaster did not want his robots.txt file to be indexed by Google, but has no way of delisting in in Google.

The only ways of removing content is Google includes:

Via meta tags
Via robots.txt command
Return a 404 server status
Use the Remove URLs feature in Webmaster Tools
Password protect the page
Some more ideas on how to remove content in Google can be found there.

But if you implement any of those, Google will likely remove your robots.txt, and it won't follow the rules you have implemented in that file. Which can be very upsetting for webmasters. So if you block you block your robots.txt file in your robots.txt file, does Google really see the robots.txt file to block it? (Okay, that was a bit of a joke, but it makes the point).

That brings up the question, should Google list robots.txt files in the search results? In most cases, they do not contain any useful content for searchers. Well, with the exception of Brett Tabke's robots.txt blog, which is a hilarious idea. But outside of that, how is it useful?

As Tedster notes, Google has indexed plenty robots.txt files, should they?

Let me ask you, here is a poll. Should Google display robots.txt files in the search results (even for searches like [inurl:robots.txt filetype.txt])?

There is an "other" option, but try not to use it. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google's JohnMu commented below explaining how to block your robots.txt file from showing up. News to me, this is excellent news:

Hi guys, there are two ways to block your robots.txt from showing up in search results:
- disallow it in your robots.txt (don't worry, we'll still check it); you can then use the Webmaster Tools URL removal tool to have it taken out of the index if it's indexed.

- use the x-robots-tag HTTP header tag with "noindex"

On the other hand, robots.txt URLs generally would not show up in any search results where you have more relevant pages within your site, so this is probably not something you'd want to spend all too much effort on :-).

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 9, 2008

Posted: May 10th, 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.

Weekly Search Buzz Roundup: Microsoft and Yahoo Break Up, SEO Debate Back, & Dinner with Barry

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 5:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Dear all, it is raining and icky outside, so today's a good day for a buzz roundup. Enjoy. ;)

Landing Page Load Time: Check

Your Google AdWords Quality Score now factors in your landing page load time. If you have a fast landing page, you'll get a great score. In other words, get good hosting!

Google Adwords Enforces Display URL

It only took a few months since Google wanted to enforce the URL display policy so that the landing page URL would match the display URL in Google AdWords campaigns, and now the policy seems to be in full force with pretty much accurate reporting.

Strange Google Rankings Still Plaguing the Internets

Barry likes to coin phrases, and in this case, floating four seems pretty accurate. He mentions that some results in position 4 seem to be floating around -- they show up on the first page, 4th ranking, but then later disappear. There are at least two people who noticed this strange behavior and we're not sure what to make of it.

The minus 60 penalty is not an illusion, according to Google. Google has admitted that it's a real penalty, and that this penalty usually involves cleaning up spam.

In our May 2008 Google SERP update, we're seeing some big traffic declines, which may be related (or not) to the aforementioned symptoms.

Google AdWords and AdSense Reports Displaying Incorrect Data

Earlier this week, AdSense and AdWords data was not being properly recorded and Google's engineering team took a looka at it. The next day, Google acknowledged that they fixed the problem but some people are still reporting inaccurate data.

Microhoo is Not in the Future

After all that anticipation, Microsoft has decided not to buy Yahoo. So long, Microhoo.

Setting Your Geographic Location in Google Webmaster Tools May Not Work

It seems that setting your geographic location in Webmaster Tools may not necessarily give you the rankings you're hoping for. For example, if you have a .com and you're in the UK, and you set your site to the UK geographic region, you're probably not as lucky as the person who has the .co.uk domain, it seems. UK people, give the US folks your .coms (I'm talking to you, Tamar!) :)

Please Tell Me that This is a Joke

If Google AdWords are really going Comic Sans, I'm going to puke. Worst. Font. Ever.

Yahoo's Universal Search is Here

It's time for Yahoo Universal Search, at least in India where Glue Pages are in beta. My verdict: very nice.

Monday is the Best Day for Google AdSense Payouts

Want Google AdSense money? Yoru best bet is to focus on monetizing your Mondays. We polled you, our valuable readers, and found that most of you are making the most of your dough on the first day of the week. I guess that's when people get click-happy from work boredom.

SEO Debate is Back

We love SEO. Seriously. Every day, there's another debate about SEO, and a bunch of people always come up to defend it. I am waiting for Danny Sullivan's post on how SEO is here to stay. I know he's working on it.

Win a Date with Barry

We're having a reader survey, and the winner gets some schwag and a free dinner with Barry. Now this guy is a fun date, so I suggest that you all participate right now!

Does the Multiple Link Penalty Really Exist?

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 5:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from "shady" places. Why, then, can't he do the same thing on his smaller site?

Some forum members believe that the age and authority of site matter in this case. Some sites just always get inbound links. Others don't unless something is up.

A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there's tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.

So be careful when you build your links, because you can find a dent in your rankings, but as forum members note, the rankings will generally improve.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

How Important are Header Tags?

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 4:54pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

A High Rankings Forums member wants to know if header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4...) are weighted on search engines.

The answer is probably not, but some people think that there's minimal weight from search engines. The point is that header tags are for user readability versus focusing on search engines. If you wanted to test the theory, you could remove the header tags and instead use CSS to see how it performs.

Additionally, it's important to note that if this is something spammers start using more heavily, chances are search engines will devalue it even more (if header tags are even a metric in the algorithm). That said, do your own testing and come up with some results, but the skepticism is pretty obvious from the post.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Big Debate: Does Search Engine Optimization Have Long Term Viability?

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

In the middle of the week, my good friend Jeremy Schoemaker, aka Shoemoney, blogged that SEO has no future. He believes that personalized data will be more important, especially from the toolbar, user history, and analytics data. Social voting is becoming more important, and he explains that his sitelinks are the most trafficked pages on his site.

Well, the SEO community did not really want to hear that, so there have been at least three individual posts on Sphinn about it.

Marketing Pilgrim writer Greg Howlett says that search engines are getting too smart and that search engines won't want to reward companies for playing SEO games.

In one rebuttal, Ian Lurie talks about how SEO really does have a future. Smart SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It helps create a long term content strategy. It keeps good businesses out of trouble. It ensures the discoverability of content on your site. SEO isn't about looking for loopholes but for keeping search engines happy.

In another response, Michael Gray also says that SEO has a future. SEO will have to clean up the mess of visual elements, especially flash and other technologies that are not search-engine friendly. SEOs have to explain viral marketing, content creation, and more. SEO is here to stay, he says, and there's nothing that anyone can say to stop that.

In a third response, Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search engines.

On one hand, forum members think that this is a great thing to start saying because then there will be less competition as newbie SEOs don't actually participate in SEO. Others say that SEO is not going to die but become more important, especially as big companies start partnering up with SEO firms and consultants for work.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn, Sphinn, Sphinn, and Sphinn. ;)

Google's AdWord Quality Score To Add Landing Page Load Time In June

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 2:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

I reported this later last night at Search Engine Land but this is very important news for Google AdWords advertisers. Google will be introducing into the quality score component of your ad rank, the speed at which your landing pages load. If you have a slow page load time, your AdWords ads will cost your more.

Last night Google AdWords began showing your landing page load time, on each keyword level, in your Google AdWords keyword diagnostic section. Here is a screen capture from one of my test campaigns:

Right now, Google is showing you this data so that if your page load time is poor, you have time to make changes to speed things up and improve your quality score. Because starting sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will impact your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared. How do you look up your landing page load time scores?

(1) Sign in to your account at https://adwords.google.com.
(2) Click a campaign.
(3) Click an ad group.
(4) Click the 'Keywords' tab above the Ad Group Details table.
(5) Click the magnifying glass icon beside any keyword and then the 'Details and recommendations' link to launch the Keyword Analysis page. You can also see an overview of your Quality Score and ad visibility by pointing your cursor over the icon.

Here are our past articles on the Google AdWords landing page load time factor:

Overall, most Google AdWords advertisers are excited about this change. The true winner are the searchers. But there is some backlash about the change.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Video Ad Support Comes To Google AdWords API Sandbox

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 2:49pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

An older Google Groups thread was just updated by Jeff Posnick the AdWords API Advisor, an official Google representative in charge of the AdWords API development and support. The Googler explains that the API Sandbox should now support the creation of video ads.

Now, simulating the addition of video ads may be supported in the AdWords Sandbox environment. Jeff Posnick explained:

Could you try your attempt to create a video ad in the Sandbox environment again? The engineering team made a config change that *should* have enabled folks for it.

So it should work, may not, but should. We know Google is at least working on making it work.

Also, Google released the NET Client Library 1.0.0 for the AdWords API v11 and v12.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Does Setting Your Geographic Target In Google Webmaster Tools Work?

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 2:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017091.htmlBack in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site, using a .com domain - Google would often not give the site any preference in the Google UK search results, unless it had a co.uk TLD. The Set Geographic Target option was suppose to give Google more clues about the site and help it rank better in the local that was specified with the tool.

A Google Groups thread leaves me to believe that it might not be the case. Susan Moskwa, an official Google representative said:

Using the tool to target example.com to the UK may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won't be the same as having example.co.uk. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).

Wait, so are you saying setting your geographic target may or may not have an impact on how your rank in a localized version of Google? Let me bold Susan's response, " Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs."

Hmm and I not understanding the response? I am not sure. I have seen dozens of posts complaining that the tool doesn't improve their ranking in the localized Google version. In fact, respected SEO, David Naylor just posted a blog post with the title, Google Webmaster Tools smoke n mirrors. In that post, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the tool and describes how it simply doesn't work for him.

Does it work for you? Please do comment with your feedback, if you have any.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Getting Married: How To Change Your Google AdSense Payee Name

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 2:26pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

First, congrats on your wedding - I like to personally wish you both a long happy life together.

Now, let's get down to the money... You make a lot of money with Google AdSense. But now that you are married and you are taking on your spouse's name, you want to get the checks made out to your new last name. How do you go about changing your name on Google AdSense, so that you and your new spouse can share in the huge amounts of money you are making with Google AdSense?

That is the question asked at a Google Groups thread. AdSensePro Stephanie offers a link as aid on changing one's payee name. The process is fairly simple, you simply fill out the Change Payee Name AdSense form and wait. But here are some of the rules behind changing the payee name:

According to our program policies, AdSense accounts cannot be transferred or sold. If this is your reason for requesting the change, we will not be able to update your payee name.
You won't be able to change your payee name if you already have another AdSense account under that name.
Once we've updated your information, you'll need to re-enter your tax information and form of payment.
If you've received a payment to the old payee name that you're unable to deposit, you'll need to request a reissue after the 25th of the month following your payment.
We start processing payments on the 16th of each month. If you're scheduled to receive a payment this month and the payee name in your account is updated after the 16th, your payment will be issued to your old name.

Again, to change your AdSense payee name to your new spouse's name, use the Google AdSense Change Payee Name Form and congrats!

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Image sourced from Steena on Flickr

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 8, 2008

Posted: May 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.

Yahoo Launches Glue Pages ("Universal Search")

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 5:23pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

Barry at Search Engine Land points out that Yahoo India has glue pages, which some people are comparing to Universal Search, because of classic search results on the left hand column, visual information in the center column and bottom right hand corner (in addition to articles), and sponsored results.

Here's a screenshot for a search for trees. Click to enlarge.

The idea is pretty cool and sticky (pun intended) and the results page is definitely more aesthetically pleasing than the standard 10 blue links. It kind of reminds me of the current Ask.com format:

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Performing Keyword Research Without a Computer

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:57pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Keyword Research

WebmasterWorld member Receptional Andy suggests the unconventional way to perform keyword research: offline with two books.

The first book is the useful dictionary. If you do a search for "widget," for example, you may get an origin phrase, and in this case, it's "gadget."

The second book is the related reading guide: the thesaurus. You can get plenty of comparable words by using the thesaurus.

Then, you just need to write down everything on paper. No need for a computer at all.

Now I'm not sure how many people will do this, but the idea is an interesting one. :)

In fact, as one more modern member suggests, the idea of keyword research is to get information of what people are actually searching for. That said, the oldschool traditional killed-trees version just doesn't cut it.

Still, as Andy responds, some keyword research tools aren't helpful, and using a dictionary and thesaurus may add some words that you may otherwise not have thought of.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google Strives to Help Myanmar Cyclone Victims

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:45pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

After a deathly cyclone ravaged the Myanmar (Burma) region, thousands of people are still hoping for aid while the death toll rises into the six digits. Fortunately, if you go to Google.com today, you'll see that they're looking to help. A screenshot of what my homepage appears as is included:

The link takes you to the Myanmar disaster relief page which allows you to donate through UNICEF or through Direct Relief International.

Forum members believe that the poignancy of this link is a great gesture and are happy that Google is taking a proactive stance to help out the victims and their families.

More disaster relief resources from other search properties are described in Greg Sterling's very useful Search Engine Land post.

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Are Internal Links Weighted the Same as External Links by Google?

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:22pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld member notes that when he does a link: query for a specific domain, it shows only internal links and not external links -- but it depends on the size of the domain. This behavior is only observed on very large sites versus smaller ones. How come that's the case? Is there an issue of how this data is being gathered and is there extra weight being placed on these links?

Tedster believes that this isn't the case. He says that internal links pass PR around the site but that the internal linking structure is not weighted as heavily as external links:

Internal links do have anchor text influence, and they do pass PR around the site. But I'd say they are not treated "exactly" same as external links. How exactly their treatment differs is a bit of a Google secret, and it also seems to shift around a bit. For example, I'd say many internal links get a lot less individual weight than a single external backlink would, especially if they are in the page template (menus and footer links.)

On that note, some internal links can be more valuable than external links depending on PageRank, popularity, traffic, and more. Your PR5 homepage internal link will probably be a lot more valuable than a PR0 external link from a link farm. Do you agree?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

How Do You Get Your Images Out Of Google's SafeSearch Filter?

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 3:09pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has serious discussion on obtaining advice and tips on getting your images out of the Google SafeSearch filter. Basically, sometimes Google might label your images as being sexually explicit or not appropriate for the average searcher. If that is done, you shouldn't come up in Google's web search results or in the standard Google image search (unless someone changes their Google preferences).

What we have been noticing is that Google has been a bit more sensitive on image filtering recently. This has impacted a lot of webmasters, where they have noticed a major decline in image search traffic.

So what can you do to ensure your images don't fall within this filter?

I remember hearing, I believe during the Google Webmaster Live Chat session that if you move any images that might appear to be adult related into a different folder, Google will better be able to apply the filter only to those images. Google basically recommended to move pictures that might trigger the filter into a folder like /adult-images/ and have a different folder for /safe-images/.

Outside of that tip, there are some suggestions in the thread that include:

Check your on-page text content and image filenames for potentially adult words, said Tedster.
Check to make sure your outbound links are not pointing to any adult neighborhoods, recommended Tedster.
See if your hosted on the same server as an adult site, Tedster added.
Try using PICS labels, but I personally don't think that will work.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Poll: Do You Report Your Competitors as Spam in Google?

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 2:59pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Spam

Ann Smarty goes through the conflicts of reporting competitors as spamming Google search results. Yes, this is a topic we covered many times here, including:

In any event, the related Sphinn thread has discussion on if you report your competitors as spamming in Google. So I decided to run a poll here to find out if you have ever reported a competitor as spamming in Google. Simple Yes or No - hoping people don't use the "other" option, but I added it just in case.

Here is the poll:

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Google Says They Fixed AdSense Reporting Bug But Publishers Not Convinced

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 2:45pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday we reported about a major reporting bug that impacted both AdWords & AdSense users. Yesterday at about 9pm (EST), Google's AdSensePro Stephanie said the reports were now fixed. Yes, that is about 40 hours after received our first reports of the outage. Stephanie said:

This reporting issue has now been fixed, so you should now see all of your missing data from yesterday in your account. (We've also reflected this update on our Known Issues page at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92365.) I'll leave this thread pinned to the top of this category for another day, to make sure more forum members see this update.
Thank you all again for your continued patience, and our team sincerely apologizes for the delay.

Even though Google said the issue is now fixed, many AdSense publishers are not convinced. All the replies to Stephanie's post claim the reporting issues were not resolved. Of the five replies, all five said the reports still seem way off.

AdSenseAdvisor posted an updated at the WebmasterWorld thread also, this reply was at 4:06 am (EST) this morning saying the issues have been resolved. But like the Google Groups thread, the publishers in that thread are all not convinced the reports are bug free.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 7, 2008

Posted: May 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.

Monday: The Biggest Pay Day For Google AdSense Publishers

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 3:47pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

A few weeks ago, I ran a poll asking Which Day Do You Make Most Your Google AdSense Income?

We now have 92 responses, over the course of the week and most people voted that Monday they earned the most revenue on average from Google AdSense. Note that this is a very small sampling. I am not surprised that Saturdays and Fridays are the smallest earning days for publishers (being a publisher myself). I am a bit surprised by the Thursday response, but again, this is a small sampling.

Here are the results:

:: Monday - 24 responses - 26%
:: Tuesday - 18 responses - 20%
:: Sunday - 14 responses - 15%
:: Wednesday - 12 responses - 13%
:: Thursday - 8 responses - 9%
:: Friday - 8 responses - 9%
:: Saturday - 8 responses - 9%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Link Farm: How Does Google Define a Link Farm?

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

A Google Groups thread has a long discussion on how Google defines what a link farm is or is not. I have decided to isolate a Googler's comment, because who can best define what Google feels a link farm is, better then a Google employee?

JohnMu, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, posted twice in the thread. The second time he offered additional advice on how he would define a link farm. He said:

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "would I be doing this (linking there) if search engines didn't exist?"
Another way of looking at it is to think about where and how you will be linking: Do you feel fine with linking to that site with a highlighted link in your main content or would you rather have the link in 5pt gray on white in the footer? Do you want your visitors to see and use it or is it just for the search engines?

John also links to the Google link schemes page which has the official line on bad linking. Now, of course there is gray area and that is where John's post above comes into play. Even with that, people still may be confused. Well, if it feels wrong - then it might be.

John admits, even him being a Googler, it is still "hard for [him] to provide a definition of what Google sees as that."

If you need more clarification or have specific questions, you can join the Google Groups thread and hopefully be aided in the right direction.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google AdSense Test Four Text Ads In Large Rectangle Unit

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:48pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Honestly, I am not sure if this is brand new, but a DigitalPoint Forums thread reports the Large Rectangle (336 x 280) unit as having four text ads within it as new.

Here is a screen capture of the ad unit:

A typical ad unit looks like what you see listed on the Google AdSense ad formats page. I.e. four lines of ads and not four boxes of ads. Here is a live ad from my AdSense account for testing purposes:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

How Do You Tell Google that You're a UK Site?

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:42pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld member says that his .com, which has a UK IP address (and is for the United Kingdom audience), is not being recognized as a UK-specific site even though he updated Google Webmaster Tools and informed Google of the geographic location of the site. He ranks #5 in Google.com but #149 in Google.co.uk. (For reasons like this, I just wish .co.uk was the default domain in Google and that there wasn't a landrush for .com domains out there. I want tamar.com one day, and they're a UK company.) ;)

Why is this ranking occurring? There are a few reasons. While the site is UK centric, the links to the site may be from other foreign countries. The idea, then, is to get more UK links.

One forum members suspects that it may be something else, because in the past, Google has misidentified some UK IP addresses on generic .com TLDs. Furthermore, some UK hosting companies are actually not hosting in the UK.

While some forum members think that WHOIS information is at fault, that's not the case when these domains are protected by WhoisGuard or Domains by Proxy. There must be other factors in play here.

One final suggestion from a forum member comes from checking DMOZ rankings (if applicable) and ticking off the checkbox that says "this is a UK listing." Since Google uses DMOZ for data, this can't hurt at all.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense & AdWords Reporting Still Showing Incorrect Data After Over 24 Hours

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:34pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Starting at about 5am (EST) yesterday, I have been noticing reports in the forums about Google being slow to update both the AdSense reports and the AdWords reports. The two largest threads discussing the issues can be found at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups, but there are plenty of other threads throughout the forums with complaints.

Again, first reports came in at about 5am (EST) yesterday and the issues have still not been resolved. We do have reassurance from Google in the WebmasterWorld and Google Groups threads that the issue is only reporting related and all the data is being tracked. When the reporting issues are fixed, it will show correct data.

AdSenseAdvisor posted at WebmasterWorld saying:

Thanks for your comments and your patience, and apologies for the delay. Our engineering team is working to address this issue as soon as possible. Please be assured that your account statistics have still been tracked, and we are working on displaying them in your account.
I will be sure to post with any additional updates.

AdSensePro Stephanie posted twice in the Google Groups thread (and other Google Groups threads) saying:

I've escalated your reports to our engineers, and they're currently investigating the issue. I'll be sure to update this thread as soon as I have any more info -- thanks for your patience in the meantime.

She then added a little bit later:

I've just received an update from our engineers: they're still working on resolving the issue, but they have confirmed that no statistics or data have been lost from your accounts. I'll let you know when I have more info about when you might expect to see updated stats. Again, we appreciate your patience.

The WebmasterWorld thread has over a 130 posts, and the Google Groups thread has almost a 100 posts.

In addition, you can see the brand new AdSense Known Issues page for an update that shows the issue is still not resolved, as of 7:45am (EST) today.

Forum discussion on both the AdWords and AdSense side at the following threads:

Storybids Launched to Pair Creatives with Product Advertisers

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:26pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Web Promotion

RustyBrick, the company that runs Search Engine Roundtable, is pleased to announce that we finished launching the infrastructure of Storybids, a really unique service offering that enables video producers to monetize their videos through product placement techniques. In other words, those who want to get products some product placement exposure are now able to connect directly with video producers to advertise their product through the Storybids auction platform. Here's how it works.

It's a really neat idea and RustyBrick is really glad that we were part of implementing the backend and working with a really cool guy like Joe Morin who is quite popular in the SEM community.

Message from Barry: The reason we are covering this is twofold. (1) Most of the people involved in Storybids.com are from the SEM community and we would like to help the SEM community in any way we can. (2) RustyBrick, my company, built the core technology behind the company - so I want that disclosure to be out there.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo and McAfee Partner to Give Users SearchScan

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:10pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Yahoo Topics

Yahoo has announced on its blog that since security is so important, together with McAfee, Yahoo has launched SearchScan to protect web surfers from sites that contain malicious software such as viruses or software and spam.

If you do a search for a phrase like "screensaver," you'll see the tool in action:

While the solution is great for security, forum members wonder why the questionable results have to be indexed at all. There are a few possible answers to this scenario, including the possibility that the site can be mistakingly flagged as dangerous if there are enough reports about it. This solution instead lets the web owner see it before it's taken off the results completely and gives some information into what could be causing the warning.

Malware reviews aren't new. Google has had the feature since the beginning of 2007. It's very good for Yahoo surfers that they get the added security as well.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 6, 2008

Posted: May 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 AdSense Adds "AdSense for Search"

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

Tags: Google AdSense

The Inside AdSense blog talks about the newest feature available to Google AdSense users: AdSense for Search is now powered by custom search. This new feature gives you the following benefits: site search, improved indexing of pages, vertical search, the ability to fine tune search results and ads with keywords, selecting ad location, and more.

Check out the video for more information:

As someone who had an extremely difficult time trying to get Google Coop with AdSense installed on my site in the past, this was a breeze. Literally. I'm so glad that the Google AdSense team fixed it up. Thank you. :) (On that note, I *strongly* recommend that you set up your Google Custom Search Engine through the Google AdSense control panel, not through google.com/cse -- that's where my problems started!)

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Groups, and WebmasterWorld.

Google Reader Adds "Share With Note" Feature

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Want to share something you found particularly useful on Google Reader with some more information? You now can, thanks to a new feature called "Share with Note" that looks just like this:

On the bottom of any feed item, click on "Share with Note" and the screen above pops up. You can then give some feedback into why you're sharing the particular blog post or news story. In other words, it's a feature that Google Reader users have been waiting for.

On your sidebar, now you can click on "Notes" (under "Your Stuff" to see your friends' shared notes. Since the feature is brand new, none of my friends are using the notes yet, but I expect that to change in the near future.

Overall, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, but a lot of people who are testing the feature out are unable to find a "Delete Note" button (or even an option to edit the note), so be careful when adding notes -- for now, they appear permanent!

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Are Long URLs Spammy?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 4:31pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

I'm sure you've seen those URLs -- www.domain.com/4-star-hotel-in-barcelona-spain.php. The question is: is this a tactic that we consider spammy?

Not really, according to a High Rankings Forum thread. On the other hand, if it was www.domain.com/4-star-hotel-apartment-penthouse-keyword4-keyword5-keyword6-in-barcelona.php, that may raise some eyebrows. Additionally, if you think about it, unless you change the post slug of a WordPress post, thousands of these long URLs are generated every single day. (Tip: Shorter URLs are easier to remember and rock.)

At Cre8asite Forums, the question regarding dashes in a URL is discussed. Is it better than an underscore? Back on the High Rankings discussion, dashes are the default delimiter, if that gives any indication to a widespread preference, but it really doesn't matter.

But if it comes to the actual domain name, it's a lot easier (for you) to go with one that lacks the dash to make it easier for users to remember. They're less inclined to type the dash and it takes a bit of a learning curve. I found that adjustment necessary with brand new webmaster forum Webmaster Talk.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum and Cre8asite Forum.

The Floating Four At Google: Google's Position Four Seems Funky?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 3:30pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting observations, which I thought would be fun to name the "Floating Four" symptom.

In short, it seems like there are some pages that happen to float into the fourth position at Google's search results and then a couple hours later disappear. This pattern has been repeating itself time and time again.

WebmasterWorld's senior member, internetheaven, first reported this. He isolated his issue from a position 6 listing, floating to a position 4 and then back to 6. But he isn't the only one who noticed this mysterious floating four behavior. Senior member, steveb, also noticed it with rankings in the position 8 or higher, floating into the fourth position. Here is steveb's post:

Over the past week or so, I've seen the #4 spot show at least two pages that have long (years) been undervalued for the term by Google. they float in and out, and then also sometimes rank #8 while other times fall to where they have been for years (the 30s for one, nowhere for the other).

The thread is very new, but maybe we will find others noticing the same thing. If so, either comment here or discuss at WebmasterWorld. Either way, I will keep watching the space for more signs of this "floating four" behavior and keep you updated on any changes.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo Changing Product Submit Fee Structure to Auction Model?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

A WebmasterWorld thread has a copy of an email a Yahoo Product Submit advertiser received. The email basically says that Yahoo will be switching from a flat category price structure to a bidding marketplace type of structure, like we have at Yahoo Search Marketing or Google AdWords.

Why would Yahoo be switching the Product Submit pricing structure from a flat tier structure to a bidding structure? Possibly to earn more money? Possibly to consolidate the search marketing systems into one pricing mechanism?

Here is a copy of the email as posted at WebmasterWorld:

Dear Product Submit advertiser,
We are pleased to announce the upcoming launch of a bidded marketplace. With this change, there will be modifications to your Master Terms & Conditions and Program Terms, which will be detailed in a future email notice that you'll receive in the next 30 days.

We expect the bidded marketplace to have an impact on your day-to-day business. Therefore, we advise you and your team to begin planning for the transition to a bidded model.

As part of this launch, we are expanding the number of product categories and improving reporting within your Product Submit account.

These changes are designed to help you to:
- Better influence the level of traffic you receive from Yahoo! Shopping
- Gain more control over optimizing your product listings
- Gain better visibility into your category performance
Stay tuned!

The Yahoo Product Submit team

If you visit the Product Submit pricing page, you will notice that there have been no changes to the current pricing structure. At least not yet.

This is a major change for those who use Yahoo Product Submit and will require a higher level of daily management, something that many advertisers most likely won't like to spend their time on. I guess this is good news for search marketers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Screen Shots of New Google AdSense Font, Comic Sans

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 3:13pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Friday we reported that Google is testing new fonts in AdSense ads. Well, I finally found a screen capture of this in action via DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is the screen capture:

Pretty funky looking, no? If anything, this is a Google test and if they launch this new font, I hope they make it an option for the publisher. Personally, I find the font a bit unprofessional for many sites. But it may work for a specific type of site.

This may show signs that Google may be enabling the ability for publishers to pick a font style for their AdSense ads. If so, that is great news.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Fishing Out AdSense Arbitrageurs Through AdWords Accounts?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 3:05pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

A WebmasterWorld thread has speculation that Google is now seeking out AdSense arbitrageurs through AdWords accounts. The rumor is that Google is banning AdSense publishers by looking to see if their AdWords accounts are sending traffic to pages with AdSense on them.

About a year ago, we reported, Google To Shut Down AdSense Arbitrageurs. But then learned it was more focused on made-for-AdSense (MFAs) AdSense arbitrageurs. Google didn't deny that they have been going after some arbitrageurs but the topic died down a month later.

What this recent speculation is causing, is a rush for AdSense publishers to close out their AdWords accounts. They do not want their AdWords accounts to be tied to their AdSense account and possibly give Google a reason to ban them from AdSense. So many have reported that they shut down their AdWords account.

Is there sound reason for this or are publishers acting out of fear? I honestly don't know.

Hat tip to Frank for blogging this last night.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 5, 2008

Posted: May 6th, 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.

Please Take Our Reader Survey: Win Schwag & Dinner With Me

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 9:35pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Blog Administration

I have created a 15 question reader survey that I hope you can all take. The purpose of the survey is to learn more about you and what you like best about the site. I basically want to learn your likes and dislikes about the content, design and features of this site.

As you know, we have been writing here since 2003 and we continue to try to add components that add value. In addition, we try to focus on search community news and discussion. So even though some news might be hot in the search industry, it might not be important to the average SEO. We try to focus on what is important to the average SEM based on what is being discussed in the forums. We will stay true to that mission but that doesn't mean we can't do better.

I am really hoping most of you can spend the time to fill out the 15 question survey. You can access it at this link.

If you need a reason to take it outside of helping us make a better resource for you, then here you go. If you fill out your name and email address, which is optional on the survey, I will randomly choose one winner. What does the winner win? The winner will win free schwag from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and other companies. Plus the winner will win a free dinner with me and maybe a few of my SEM friends (if they are available) at a kosher restaurant. The dinner has to be at a kosher place, but the winner can coordinate with me the date and time. FYI, the prize ideas came from suggestions at my personal blog.

Again, please take the time to complete our first ever reader survey by clicking here and answering the questions.

Google Improves Semantic Search

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 5:09pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

A Google Groups member notes that Google seems to be able to stem complex plurals as of late and accurate suffixes. For example, if you search for "accredit" or "accrediting," you will see "accreditation" highlighted as well.

Forum members also observe that Google is "capable of ranking on synonyms now" from an example posed by a user who said that Google is highlighting phrases that is are not at all tied to the on-page text.

One forum member says that Google must be pulling this data from a huge depth of information -- probably a very comprehensive dictionary, if you will.

Honestly... I'm not sure if Google uses links anymore to determine relevancy... I think they just build a huge world wide word density cloud and use that to abstract the depth of information for a search term based on the frequency it appears within a community...

JohnMu from Google adds that this may be related somewhat to personalized search results.

The discussion is interesting and definitely is a good read for those interested in semantic search.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Webmasters Report May 2008 Google SERP Updates

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 4:46pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

This month, WebmasterWorld members have observed the same old shuffle in rankings that plagued webmasters in our April 2008 Google SERP Update post.

A lot of rankings are dropping, and one webmaster even reports that he's hit a new traffic low in 2008.

One member likens these drops to the fact that Google might want to emphasize their paid listings.

Looks to me that at this stage of the game where Google completely dominates the market it would be beneficial for them to have "inconsistent"/"moving" results in the natural search so people would click on the ads as those are consistent. When searchers will get the idea that they will not get the same (even though still relevant) result every time they search, they will most certainly pay more attention to the ads. Google getting richer?

That's definitely an interesting statement.

Other observations include blogs being ranked higher, link exchange websites taking a hit in the rankings, issues with relevant rankings (specifically, more relevant internal pages are now being replaced by the less-relevant home pages for search phrases), and a lot of dropped rankings.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The Importance of a #1 Google Ranking

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 4:13pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

Aaron Wall recently wrote a brilliant piece about the value of a #1 Google ranking. In his in-depth article, which is divided into 9 sections, he explains based on research and a variety of forum discussion that even small declines in ranking can break businesses. He goes on to explain the value of these rankings in financial terms, and explains how you can determine the value of your own rankings in 6 steps:

Establishing a baseline keyword value
Review Typical Click Distribution Profiles
Considering factors that modify click distribution
Tapping in the long tail
Improve monetization via scale
Take action

I won't go into the steps in depth as Aaron does an excellent job himself. I recommend that you give his incredibly comprehensive article a read and maybe even a printout :)

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Google Basically Admits to Minus 60 Penalty

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 2:58pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty:

What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to look at the -60 penalty Google Groups thread. Does he mean to imply that some sites with the -60 penalty, that deserve a number one position, will see Sitelinks in position 60, in these cases?

Well, the thread has been gaining steam since then and Googler, JohnMu, replied in the Google Groups thread once again. His reply was not specifically about the phenomenon of seeing a Sitelink result in the 60th position, which was the topic of the thread. But it was in regards to cleaning up the site from a spam perspective, in order to improve the site's ranking for its own name.

In fact, that webmaster came to our site and commented explaining things were getting better after he has cleaned up some problems on his site.

In short, this discussion seems to imply to me that Google is admitting to the minus 60ish penalty. Which likely comes to no surprise of many SEOs out there, but it is always nice to point to evidence like this. In fact, this is not the first time a Googler replied to a minus X penalty. Google's Matt Cutts replied to a minus 60 thread a couple month back, offering advice on cleaning up the site.

But yet, in a recent poll we conducted, 25-percent of SEOs feel the minus X penalties are not link related. Whereas, 47-percent said they feel they are link related.

Forum discussion continued at Google Groups.

Poll: Can A Competitor Hurt Your Google Rankings with Links?

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 2:52pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Forums have been buzzing and buzzing about the possibility of a competitor being able to hurt your Google ranking for the past few years now. We have covered this topic time and time again, just see here for some of the many times we covered it. In fact, we even covered a thread that listed how to penalize your competitors in Google.

I thought it would be fun to see if you guys believe it. Do you think it is possible for someone to hurt a competitors by using links as ammunition. I am not talking about hacking into someone's site. I am talking about just using external links, that a webmaster cannot control, as a method of hurting one's Google rankings. Here is the poll:

There is discussion on this topic at WebmasterWorld now. Most feel that, yes, you can hurt someone's ranking in Google with external links.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Part Of Your Site Needs a Google Review? You Need To Verify That Section With Google Separately

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 2:45pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Let's say, you have a subfolder on your domain that gets hacked. The hack causes your subfolder to be penalized by Google, due to the hack. Did you know that in order to issue a request for a review from Google in Webmaster Tools, you will need to individually submit and verify that subfolder to Google Webmaster Tools - even if you have the main domain listed and verified in Webmaster Tools?

A Google Groups thread discusses just that.

Googler, Susan Moskwa, explains:

If only a certain section of your site has been affected by malware (such as the /blog subfolder), you'll need to add that section specifically to your Webmaster Tools account in order to see the malware review notice. A great way to figure out which section(s) have been affected is to do a site: search and see which URLs have the malware label in search results.

Susan went on to agree with webmasters that it would be nice to be able to handle some of these requests at the top level domain, as opposed to having to register additional sub-directories or sub-domains with Google. But, as you can imagine, it makes sense why Google currently requires the individual registration - to handle third part hosting sites like Blogger, and so on. This is what Susan said:

I agree that it would be nice to bubble this up to the top level of the site (so that you can look at the Overview page for example.com and see that there's malware on example.com/blog), and I've passed your feedback along to our team.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Permalink for 'Search_Engine_Roundtable/2008/05/02/Weekly_Search_Buzz_Roundup___05_02_08__Google_Ad_Scores_Revealed__PageRank_Update___META_Keywords_Don_t_Matter'

Weekly Search Buzz Roundup - 05/02/08: Google Ad Scores Revealed, PageRank Update & META Keywords Don't Matter

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 6:01pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Is it really May already? I guess time flies when you're working hard. Or something. The latter part of the week was a bit slow, but we still have a lot of great news for you, starting with a PageRank Update!

Google PageRank Update

That's right, my friends, we've observed a Google Toolbar PageRank update and some people are very happy to see it. Still, as commenter Rob Abdul points out, it really doesn't mean much.

Google Sitelinks Update

Along with a PageRank update came a Google sitelinks update. Other people are happy to see this too. A few problems have arisen, but nothing too serious, so carry on.

Google Leaks Ad Scores

Earlier this week, a few people reported leaked Google AdWords scores by the name of Pscore, mCPC, and thresh. We're not really sure what they mean and Google has no comment, according to Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal. What we do know is that they're related to ranking.

Google's Spider is Tired

As am I. But computers are supposed to work harder than humans. Yesterday, we reported news of Googlebot not crawling as often. But in this particular case, it was actually not an issue of the spider in general but the person's website. If your site is not easy to access, Googlebot won't come as often. That said, good hosting is critical! However, we're also quick to note that this may not necessarily be isolated to one guy's slow website. It may be an overall issue where we need word from Google.

META Keywords: Who Cares?

The verdict is in for a META keywords case: they don't matter, according to the US courts. The word used is "immaterial." But that's really a ruling that they made based on Google. What about other search engines? Did they forget? Or were the lawyers on the case not well-educated in area of search?

Get Your Google TV Ads Today

All US advertisers: your time on TV is coming up. Google has opened TV ads to those of us American people and there's a promotion where you can get up to $2000 off. What a bargain!

Mapping the World with Googoel and Yahoo

Yahoo has added circles to local search, and Barry has a video explaining how it's done. Ask.com has had this for awhile; I remember Gary Price explaining it to me over the phone. That man was really passionate about the technologies Ask has had to offer. :(

On the other hand, you know that a person like me loves schwag, but I'd never hide schwag forever. But the stickers are now gone! It seems like we'll never get these cool pieces of Google history. Google, it's time to print out more, mmkay?

And finally, Google has combined driving directions with street view so you can see where you're going before you get there.

VisualRank is Coming

We had PageRank. Now we're going to see VisualRank, Google's new way of weighing similar images. Will it kill SEO? Nah. Two out of three commenters think it's a good idea but wanted it earlier.

Search Conference Controversy Ensues

The battle of SES vs. SMX is continuing on Sphinn. Kevin and Danny are head to head with commentary that has been updated as recently as this morning. I love both SES and SMX guys, so obviously, I'm keeping my head out of this, but for the record, we reported on it here because the thread itself had a lot of comments and we thought it'd be relevant to the search industry at large.

Artist? Check iGoogle Themes

Google is pushing out artist themes for iGoogle to personalize your search experience even more. Not a bad idea.

Have a great weekend!

Google Combines Street View and Driving Directions

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 5:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

In order to make it easier to get driving directions and see an intersection or area before you actually get to your desired location, the Google Maps team has integrated driving directions with Street View.

For example, take a look at this:

When you first click on the map, you get the driving directions.

More specifically, in this new update, click on the camera next to the driving directions to see the specific place where you'll need to make a turn:

Cool stuff. :)

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Update by Barry: More specifically, you can click from directly within street views to your next turn. Plus it shows you what turn to make from within the street views overlay:

Are Forums "Social Media" Sites?

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 5:02pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Before reading on, would you consider forums "social media?" This is the question that is posed on a High Rankings Forum post.

Many people find that the answer varies. Forums, after all, are inherently social -- they bring people together on common ground. But others disagree. Forums are not "social media" because they don't like the negative connotations of social media (such as being "poked" like on Facebook). In other words, the person finds social media as meaningless but forums are meaningful. Your mileage may vary.

Forums really do predate social media. If I'd give my insights, I think forums are not "social media" per se (the way we social media folks see it), but they certainly were a stepping stone and precursor to "real social media." However, of course, there's the other side of the coin: social media is, after all, the technology that people use to share their opinions and insights, and forums definitely provide that.

Yay or nay? Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt Interviewed by CNBC

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 4:42pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

CNBC interviewed Google's CEO Eric Schmidt earlier this week and the informative interview is now live for everyone to read. Video is available in three parts: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

In a nutshell (thanks to engine and nomis5), Eric Schmidt says that he is not aware of the specifics of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. We know what he knows -- whatever the press people are telling us.

Additionally, Schmidt mentions the difficulty Google is facing when looking to monetize on social media. On the other hand, mobile growth looks promising. The scariest challenge for Schmidt in the future is language translation.

Finally, he says that there's dramatic market growth in the Japanese, Chinese, and European markets, and that Google is a very strong brand in Europe.

In other words, really good stuff. Sit down and give it a listen or read the 6-page interview that I found that nobody posted on WebmasterWorld. ;)

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.

Cool Keyword Research Tool: Search Radar

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 4:21pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Keyword Research

Want to do some keyword research? Check out this cool tool that Cre8asite Forums member eKstreme found: Search Radar and take a look at it in action:

The tool looks like it pulls a variety of resources, so there may not be good results, for, say, search engine optimization. As iamlost points out, of the 4 main results there, only two (Bruce Clay and SEOBook) actually knew how to define SEO. But you can't count that as a real fault for Search Radar; it's what they're querying from the internet and the error of other firms that define SEO as "cultivating professional relationships especially with small to medium businesses." (Say what?!)

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums

Google Adsense Testing New Font Styles?

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:24pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Google AdSense publishers are reporting via WebmasterWorld that Google is testing new fonts for the ad titles of the Google contextual ads.

The new font styles seen include:

Comic Sans
Times New Roman

The folks in the forum find the Comic Sans font to be funny. FYI, I am really font blind - if that is a real eye condition. :) In any event, this is what Comic Sans looks like, via Wikipedia.

Seems somewhat curvy and cartoon-like. I personally have not yet seen this test on ads that I have been looking at. But this is not the first time we had reports on Google messing around with the title fonts. Google tested italics font titles in the AdSense ads in the past.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Advertiser Dreams May Come True: Yahoo May Boost Google Ads Again

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:16pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

Last night, the big news was again Microsoft/Yahoo/Google business dealings. You can see all the headlines at Techmeme, including (1) Microsoft might start the hostile takeover today (tomorrow) and (2) Yahoo might announce they will continue to carry Google ads on the Yahoo search network. Greg Sterling has a post on that news at Search Engine Land.

I know that many advertisers would be delighted if Yahoo used Google's AdWords network as their ad base. We have positive feedback from when Google powered Yahoo's ads just a couple weeks ago. So, if Yahoo continued this test and made it a full deal, I know many advertisers who would be delighted.

I am sure there would be many who would be upset, but I think more would be happy. Out of curiosity, let's poll our readers on this. Would you be happy if Google powered Yahoo's search ads in the future?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

SEOmoz's Web Developer "SEO Cheat Sheet"

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:09pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

The SEOmoz team released a two page PDF based SEO Web Developer Cheat Sheet that I personally printed out and gave to my RustyBrick developers.

I did make a couple changes to it, nothing major. For example, as a matter of style, I personally like to reverse the suggested "Recommended Title Tag" from having the web site name go last, instead of first - or even not show the web site name at all. Update, it seems like SEOmoz updated their PDF to have the title tag start with "Keyword" then go to "Category" and then show Web site name. That is exactly the change I made when I printed it out and gave it to my developers. In addition, I typically would tell my developers to add the first two lines of content from the database into the META description field.

Overall, this cheat sheet, should be on all web developers desks. It is a great guide and it looks pretty.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Google Crawl Rate Drops: Google Responds?

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:00pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Yesterday I reported that GoogleBot is crawling less pages then they once were, based on a large WebmasterWorld thread. Now, I spotted a response from a Googler at a Google Groups thread with similar complaints.

This time, I decided to login to Google Webmaster Tools and check my crawl stats, which can be found under Tools and then at "Set crawl rate." I noticed the same thing for this site, as well as my other sites. Here is a graph from this site:

John, the Google representative, blamed the Google Groups thread specific example on a slow site:

Looking at your graphs, it looks like the number of pages that we're crawling has gone down because it's taking so long for us to get each page. In general, there could be any number of reasons why that could be and I think that it may make sense to diagnose it properly, as the others have suggested. Having a slow site is not only bad for search engine crawlers who can't crawl as much as they would like, it's also something your visitors won't be happy about.

But the issue seems way more wide spread then what is in that thread alone and maybe we really do need a response from Google? My traffic referrals from Google seems to be about the same as it was throughout the crawl patterns. But SEOs and webmasters become concern that slow crawl rates and mean slow traffic from that engine in the future.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups.

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 1, 2008

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 1:00am 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's Vending Machine - Verdict: Cool

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 5:05pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Search Engine Journal has a very cool photo of a vending machine in Google's Japan office.

Since I'm not sure who took this photograph (update: it was Loren Baker!), I'm showing you a small size image here:

More photos of Loren's cool Google Japan journey are on Search Engine Journal.

Are you really surprised at such a welcoming vending machine? ;) Google, after all, is the best company to work for!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Would Your Website Pass a Google Review?

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 4:45pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

Aaron Wall wrote a very good piece on whether your website will pass a Google review and says that human reviews can potentially bring your site down. He mentions tactics you should use to avoid such reviews, including building quality content on your site, creating quality signals, and avoiding making drastic changes to your site so that you don't get flagged for review.

The discussion moves to Sphinn where most people think that their websites would not pass a quality review. Furthermore, they are not exactly sure they agree with how Google's reviewers handle sites at times. Since Aaron mentions that Marissa Mayer employs 10,000 reviewers, that's a hefty number (of individuals who likely aren't trained in any way). What's to say that these individuals don't really know what they're doing?

Best, perhaps exclusive content is the way to go. That way, you're not repeating what other people say and you're actually adding value for your visitors.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Do You Engage in 3-Way (Triangular) Link Exchanges?

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 4:18pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

As the link building strategy becomes more and more difficult (at least by some), people are seeking out alternatives to the standard two-way linking practice. In a WebmasterWorld thread, a member is looking at a triangular link strategy which wouldn't be directly reciprocal but he's hoping that he'll still benefit.

Would you do it? If you're looking for reciprocal links, three-way linking isn't much better. Furthermore, if the goal is to outwit Google, Google knows (a lot).

Ask yourself why you're even engaging in 3-way linking. Is it to help you or is it to help your audience? Again, you need to consider what your users want first.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense Publisher Prepping Site For New York Times Feature

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 2:51pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has the owner of a Google Maps mashup named Speed Trap get ready for being mentioned in the New York Times. The publisher said his site will be featured in the NY Times online site and in the physical paper and he wants to prep his site for the traffic.

On one hand, he is worried about the traffic raising a red flag and possibly, as he puts it, getting him "dinged" in Google. But at the same time, he would like to optimize the AdSense ads on his site to ensure he places the ads where they will get the most valid exposure and make the most money.

So the other AdSense publishers are offering him advice on ad placement, server requirements, general usability and giving him a shout of support during this exciting time for him.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

GoogleBot Getting Tired? Google's Spider Crawling Less Documents

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 2:42pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread reports from dozens of Webmasters that GoogleBot, Google's web crawler has not been crawling as many documents as they have in the past. Many webmasters are noticing reduction in crawl rates as much as 90-percent, relative to historical numbers.

I am not sure how wide spread the issue is, or if it is an issue at all. It might be just more efficient crawling or it may be something else.

But this can cause a lot of concern for SEOs and webmasters. Here are some quotes on that concern:

Almost had heart attack when I saw the graph drop off to nothing.

Those three days starting 4/22 had me tearing my hair out.

Again, I don't know yet if it was a Google issue or just new behavior that should be expected from GoogleBot. Maybe a Google rep will chime in via the comments. But if you see a slow down in crawling from GoogleBot, I would not worry just yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 30, 2008

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 1:00am 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.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » May 2008

Feeds

Search Engine Roundtable

Posted: May 28th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:23pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:16pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 4:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 3:50pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Conferences

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:56pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:30pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 27th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 4:11pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 26th, 2008, 3:33pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Posted: May 25th, 2008, 5:28pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: May 24th, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 7:23pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 6:00pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:44pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 4:16pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdSense

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 2:22pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 2:00pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 1:55pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 1:50pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 7:46pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:56pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 4:05pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Social Search

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 12:18am CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:56pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Link Building

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:28pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 5:03pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:36pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google AdWords

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:17pm CEST by Tamar Weinberg

Tags: Google Search Engine

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 4:07pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:49pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 3:28pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

Posted: May 21st, 2008, 12:00am CEST by Tamar Weinberg