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.
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Daily Search Forum Recap: Decmeber 24, 2008
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google Says, Bounce Rates For Search Rankings "Spammable" & "Noisy"
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 4:41pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
We recently covered a comment from Googler JohnMu on if click data is used in Google for ranking purposes. Of course, John gave the typical Google response.
But now we have a comment from Matt Cutts of Google at a Sphinn thread, where it appears that Matt has completely denied the rumors that Google may be using click data (aka bounce rate) to rank web pages.
Matt said:
Without reading the article, I'll just say that bounce rates would be not only spammable but noisy. A search industry person recently sent me some questions about how bounce rate is done at Google and I was like "Dude, I have no idea about any things like bounce rate. Why don't you talk to this nice Google Analytics evangelist who knows about things like bounce rate?" I just don't even run into people talking about this in my day-to-day life.
So this seems to me that Google seems not to take into account people clicking from Google's search results to a web page and then clicking on the back button. This is the strongest statement on the topic I have seen from a Googler to this date.
I also recommend checking out HuoMah.com and see his analysis about all of this.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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Summary of Multiple Google Docs Bugs Reports
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:59pm CET by Tamar Weinberg
Tags: Other Google Topics
Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of bugs reported within Google Docs. Some of these have been fixed and others are still pending. Here's the lowdown of what we've found in the forums:
* A Google Employee says in a Google Groups thread that the bug that made folders visible on the left hand side of the Google Docs pane has been fixed.
* There's still an open bug (but Google is aware of it) with regards to some spreadsheets not being viewable. The error encountered is "Sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties and cannot show all of your documents." (Google Groups).
* Related to the report above, some users cannot see any of their documents with the same error. Google is also aware of this. (Google Groups)
* When Google Docs documents are being emailed, some senders choose to CC themselves to confirm receipt. However, Gmail automatically assumes that these are spam. The Google Docs team is aware of this as well. (Google Groups)
* Google is also aware that some people can only see the first 50 folders and they are working on a fix (Google Groups)
If you're affected by any of these issues, please go to the forum discussion referred to in the bullet point for more information and related discussion.
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Google & Yahoo Pay Publishers Early for Holiday Season
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Both Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network publishers are reporting getting payment early this month. Some suspect it is due to being closed during the normal pay period, due to the holidays. Some suspect Google and Yahoo are being nice for the holiday season. Some suspect it might have to do with making sure payment goes out before the end of their fiscal years (due they even go by the calendar year?).
We have a Google AdSense related thread at WebmasterWorld where many have reported already receiving the money in their bank accounts. We also have a Yahoo Publisher Network related thread at DigitalPoint Forums.
For whatever reason the payments are going out now, many publishers are finding it to be a nice holiday gift.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
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Letting of Newbie SEO Steam at Google Webmaster Help Groups
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:16pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: SEO Forum News
I see them every day, the newbie SEO post. Almost every SEO goes through it at one point. They ask a newbie question and people in the industry are nice enough to answer it. Some mock others, but overwhelming, the community responds in good kind.
I spotted a thread at the Google Webmaster Help discussion forum, where long time members are letting off steam. In short, one member writes this long post mocking, with extreme sarcasm, some of the posts he typically sees in the forum. Of course he put in a lot of exaggeration into his post, which makes it incredibly funny.
Here is a brief snippet of just part of his post, where he asks like a person seeking Google webmaster help:
My friend, who's cousin Nora, once went out with someone who's brother built the stand at Seomoz said he heard someone saying that they oveheard someone else saying that Mattt Cutts said Google are going to stop indexing websites with less than 20 pages, is this true?
A while back, I installed the seo for lemons plug in on my blog, which might have helped, so I also added the seo made ez tool, the get google by the balls widget, the mega meta tag generator and the google number one blaster. The only hitch is that my home page now has 5 titles, 10 description tags, 7128 keywords, 233 h1 tags and 300 outbound links to the tool makers sites. This was so heavy, I had to remove all the actual content, do you think this will matter?
It goes on and on and it pretty funny if you are an active forum goer. It might insult some people, but I assume these folks who reply to twenty questions per day just need to let off some steam some time.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Gift Giving Season, Great Time For Link Building
Posted: December 24th, 2008, 2:08pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Link Building
Senior WebmasterWorld member, Wheel, posted a WebmasterWorld thread explaining how now, the holiday season, is a great time to get quality links. How should you go about it?
Well, people love to give now. It is really the season of giving. So what Wheel did was give his industry niche a tip on how to get a solid free link for their sites. The people in his industry were so happy, they wanted to give back, something in return.
So he politely suggested that they can give him a link to his site, as a thank you. And many of these folks did. So he got several quality, targeted, related, one-way links to his site, for giving advice.
It is true, giving free advice gets links. We do it here several times per day and we get tons of links. So, let's see if it works. If you are happy with what we have done over the past five years, feel free to link to our 5 year birthday post with a thank you.
Happy Holidays!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.