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.
Feeds
5540 items (5015 unread) in 3 feeds
Google
(325 unread)
-
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
SEO
(4690 unread)
-
Emily Chang (347 unread)
-
Search Engine Roundtable
(4343 unread)
Search Engine Roundtable (9 unread)
-
Daily Search Forum Recap: December 19, 2008
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Search Forum Recap
-
Weekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: December 19, 2008 - Google's Enhancements, Yahoo's Data Retention & YouTube on Google Maps
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 4:30pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp
It's almost the holidays! PARTAY! But until then, I have a recap for ya without any special frills. This week, we have some reports from SES Chicago, some news from Google, Yahoo's 90 day data retention policy, and then some. Keep reading for more.
Blackhats = Whitehats
After SES Chicago last week, Doug Heil is starting to see more like a black hat (or so he's changed his vision from 4 years ago when he may have thought differently about buying paid organic links). Today, he calls that paid advertising. He also considers some very well known blackhats in this industry "whitehat." Are the lines blurring? Maybe with the big players, we suspect, but there are definitely other blackhats out there who will practice until they realize that their strategies are not going to last.Microsoft Live Search Update
There's really nothing to see here, but there was a Live search update that let a lot of spam on the top of the SERPs. This is why Microsoft isn't really getting that search share it wants, I suppose.Google's Enhancements
Google will soon be sporting page enhancements, such a pagelinks (contrary to sitelinks, they link to your internal anchor text on one single page), reviews, and spelling correction (misspelled options plus the rightly-spelled option). Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that Google wants to add ads to Search Suggest. Ugh.On the other hand, we're still wondering about the post counts we see in the SERPs and how inaccurate they seem. JohnMu, we're counting on you to help us figure this out.
Finally, some sitelink URLs are cut off and some people want to know why. In these particular instances, it seems to be related to a period in anchor text (or title tag). Apparently Google thinks that's the end of a sentence even though it refers to ASP.NET or VB.NET. Whoops.
Watch Your Videos on Google Maps
Cool stuff for videophiles: find more about a specific geographic region using Google Maps now via YouTube. You can now get a lot more information about a specific region with Google Maps's integration of YouTube. Search for something famous and look at what Google/YouTube offer you. Cool stuff.[On a separate note, yesterday I realized that YouTube gets way too much attention and Google property GrandCentral is languishing. How about Google think about these other awesome properties that really can have potential? Or maybe Google can let someone who wants to invest their time in the property take the reigns on it instead. Please?]
Yahoo's 90 Day Data Retention Plan
Yahoo has decided to retain data for 90 days which is way shorter than other search engines. This will put pressure on Google, perhaps, but I don't think people will switch to any specific search engine for a data retention reason. Surprisingly, nobody is buzzing about it like they were last year.Google AdWords Editor 7.0
Google took advantage of a holiday month to release AdWords Editor 7.0 but it doesn't come without bugs. That might be why nobody is really talking about the new release -- 6.5's release was announced, a lot of people downloaded it, and it was also laden with major bugs.Google AdSense Not Faring Well Lately
There are two negative reports about Google AdSense lately. The first is that Google AdSense is targeting the wrong ads to sites -- including children's sites -- and people are pulling out of the program. The second is that the Google AdSense team is supposedly sending out holiday cards that look no more fishy than spam. Nobody wants to even come close to the emails. I'm not sure what's happening there but Google's desire not to embrace publishers because they appear to need money is starting to upset people a lot.Cuil is Not Comment Spamming
Cuil says that they are not spamming your blog comments but some people believe that they may have hired someone to do their dirty work. In fact, why would anyone go such lengths to make the search engine look so bad (unless, of course, they WERE hired?) I don't know, but something smells fishy.Does the ALT Attribute Improve Search Rankings? YES
We polled you and you said that the ALT attribute improves rankings. Well, 20% of you didn't agree with that, but the rest of you did. I'd love to know if either side has empirical evidence for backup.That's all. So much for holiday cheer this week. Maybe next week. :)
-
Is Social Media Really a Viable Link Building Option?
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:37pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Link Building
Michael Gray has written a great piece at Search Engine Land on how stories promoted in a social media site have actually translated to higher rankings. He takes a bunch of unpopular domains (e.g. not Forbes, Jalopnik, or other known car sites) and shows how their rankings have improved after the particular stories have been submitted to a site like Digg. Then he looks at the keyword rankings for each of these stories. It becomes obvious that social media is an alternative to link building but that it's imperative to use your keywords that you want for ranking in the Digg submission.
Of course, there are links to be gained, but there's obviously a lot more -- direct sales, awareness, and then some.
So why is it that you haven't tried social media marketing yet?
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
-
Does Google Throttle Domain Traffic?
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:26pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Other Google Topics
If you get a really high ranking on Google, should you see less traffic? A WebmasterWorld user says that he's getting much higher rankings than before (increases to the first page from page 11) and he's still not getting a traffic boost ("I'm now getting traffic from hundreds more great keyphrases -- but the total traffic at the end of the day is the same as it has been for the past three months.") The thought is that Google is not giving him that boost (but why?)
Some say that this is because even great rankings for very popular keywords do not necessarily bring great traffic. The user argues that his popular keywords ARE bringing him traffic (and they are GREAT keywords), but he's still not sure. The suspicion lies in a correlation between Google AdWords and organic results, but there's absolutely no relationship between the two.
It's still an open ended question. My thought would be to have a good look at analytics and compare the before-after results of the rankings change.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
-
Analysis of Sphinn Front Page Success to Determine How to Get There
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 3:14pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Social Search
The Searchlight Digital blog has a detailed analysis of three weeks of Sphinn frontpage success. The analysis takes a look at the top contributor and the categories in which the stories became popular.
From looking at that data, the conclusion (besides being a power user) is obvious:
If you want to kick ass on Sphinn, there are specific topics you should be writing on, namely SEO, social media and Google.
Well, that may be true, but the Sphinn discussion says that the other sections (e.g. Usability) have less submissions overall so there's a higher percent change that the usability stories will frontpage versus a SEO submission (among submissions in the same category). At the same time, those topics don't have submissions in them because there's a lot less interest compared to more general topics.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
-
Poll: SEOs Say Alt Attribute Does Improve Search Rankings
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 2:21pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
A few weeks ago I ran a poll asking does the alt tag improve rankings in search engines. We have now received over a hundred responses from our readers, who I assume are mostly SEOs.
About 80% said, yes, using an alternative attribute on images does indeed help improve rankings. While about 20% said it does not.
Here is the breakdown:
:: Alt Tag improves rankings said 86 respondents or 79.63%
:: Alt Tag does NOT improve rankings said 22 respondents or 20.37%With most these polls, sometimes people look too much into the question. I am surprised about 20% said no.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
-
How Much More Valuable Is Rankings At Yahoo Over Google?
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 2:14pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
John Honeck asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread how much more valuable is a number one ranking in Google, when compared to the likes of Yahoo.
He asked it in the form of, "Is being #1 in yahoo as good as being #50 in Google? #100, or?" But let me place a poll below and ask you it in a different format.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
-
Google AdSense Sending Out Scary Christmas E-Cards?
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 1:58pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
So, we all know Google AdSense is cutting off holiday gifts this year. There were many insulted publishers. So, I figured Google would at least send out e-cards before the holidays. And some are now receiving these e-cards.
But those receiving the e-cards are afraid they are sent by spammers. In fact, one AdSense publisher said, "it looks like spam, what are they thinking?" Another said that he will "just delete instead of download" the email. Here is what the email said, and it came from the Google Sydney team:
Dear {this bit was blank},
You have just received a message from Google AdSense Team at Visual Jazz.
To view your message, please visit the following address: {redacted, but the domain included a subdomain 'marketing' and a domain appropriate to the company name above, followed by a long alphanumeric pagename}
To unsubscribe, reply to this email and change the subject to be: unsubscribe
E-cards can be done very nicely or they can be done not so nicely. It is sad to see the beloved Google getting so much bad karma towards them over the holiday season.
I did receive an e-card from a good PR person at Yahoo, it looked like this and led to here.
Hope to hear more happy news next week.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
-
Links In JavaScript & Flash: Damned If You Do & Damned If You Don't
Posted: December 19th, 2008, 1:52pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Link Building
A Google Webmaster Help thread asks, can Google read links in Flash files or JavaScript? The simple answer is yes, they can. But it is not that simple.
Some people want to know the answer to this question because they want to know if their content will be indexed or not. Some want the links in those files to be found, while some don't. In fact, years ago, if you did not want a search engine to crawl a link, typically a duplicate content page, you would use JavaScript. Now, you are no longer safe, you must nofollow the link or noindex those duplicate pages or take other action.
The thing is, Google won't always crawl links in JavaScript or Flash either. So if you want your links to be found, be safe and put them in standard html format. But if you don't want your links to be found, putting them in JavaScript or Flash won't guarantee that.
Top contributor, Webado said:
1) don't rely on discovery of text and links in flash or javascript - ensure proper html content and navigation are available as well.
2) don't rely on Google NOT discovering text and links in flash or javascript either if you don't want them to. Ensure robots are clearly disallowed from all such content, otherwise they can be really nosy :)
JohnMu of Google confirmed that post.
As you can see, in this case, your damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.