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  Daily Search Forum Recap: January 2, 2009

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 10:00pm CET 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.

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  Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: New Years 2009

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 5:05pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Buzz RoundUp  

  In this week's recap, I wish our readers and viewers a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009. Google updated the toolbar PageRank scores, but it seems like the search results both here and internationally were updated also. Live Search is using MSNBOT-Media to crawl JavaScript files. Google got hit with wildcard domain issues. Google Alerts is trigger happy. Google shows a did you mean answer for a child day care service, leading to a porn site. Google's strict image search option shows more porn than the moderate search. Danny Sullivan slaps Microsoft on their search initiatives. Microsoft's Content Ads program is doing poorly. Google AdSense is offending overweight people. Happy 2009 everyone!

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

  
  For the original iTunes version, click here

  Some Of The Topics Discussed:
  

  • Happy '09 New Years From Search Industry: Logos from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Live, Ask & Others
  • Google Confirms PageRank Update (New Years 2009)
  • Major Google Search Results Changes, January 2009
  • Google International Results Excessively 'Yo-Yoing'?
  • Live Search Begins Crawling JavaScript with MSNBot-Media
  • Google's Wildcard Subdomain Handling Issues?
  • Google Alerts Sending Out False Alerts?
  • Search For Child Day Care Site & Google Suggests Porn Site
  • Google's Strict Image Search Less Strict Than Moderate Option
  • Danny Sullivan Gives Microsoft The Hard Truth
  • MSN adCenter's Content Ads Showing Horrible Click Through Rates?
  • Google AdSense Now Pushing Fat Ads: Is this Offensive?

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

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  Weekly Search Buzz RoundUp - 01/02/09: New Year's Edition

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:51pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Search Buzz RoundUp  

  This is my last SearchBuzz RoundUp post for awhile, so enjoy it while you have a chance. This week, we rang in 2009. What happened?

  Happy New Years '09
  Very cool search engine logos have been posted this year. Google had a cool 2009 logo that still somewhat resembled "Google." Even Cre8site, Bruce Clay, and Baidu had cool logos.

  Google's Results Run Wild
  Google had a PageRank update this week, and then we saw some major changes in the SERPs. In fact, on the international side, the results are very odd to those familiar with the usual rankings.

  Microsoft Crawls Through Javascript
  Microsoft is taking a clue and is using the MSNBot-Media crawler to get the data behind Javascript. This is good and innovative -- and since Google has been doing it for awhile, it's about time the other search engines did the same.

  Google's Wildcard Domain Bug
  An interesting observation with a wildcard domain was spotted this week. I'm able to replicate it on my end too. I wish I had a site like that with all page 1 results. Just kidding. ;)

  Google Alerts Accuracy Report
  There have been reports of Google Alerts sending out irrelevant alerts to individuals subscribed to them. I've seen something similar but not 100% and it's related to the blogroll issue we reported earlier. Fun.

  Google Is Not Kid Friendly
  Don't search for child day care centers on Google. The search term for the particular search in question is so rare (and "misspelled") that Google recommends a porn site in the "Did You Mean?" column. Well, I guess I was wrong when I said that people don't primarily use Google to search for kinky stuff. Sheesh, people.

  On that note, Google's "strict" image searching is not strict at all. Don't look if you don't like nude images with your breakfast.

  Microsoft: Not So Good
  This week, Danny Sullivan smacked Microsoft with some advice they should actually take seriously. Unfortunately for my friends in the Live Search team who really ROCK, it is evident that the higher-ups don't care. And that is sad -- and that's why Microsoft deserved everything it got from Danny.

  On another note, Microsoft ContentAds are getting bad CTR. Then again, the information is now private and I'm hearing that ads are performing badly across the board.

  Fat People Should Slim Down
  ...at least according to Google's AdSense ads. People are spotting more and more ads targeting fat people and some are finding it offensive. Are you?

  Have a nice 2009 all!

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  MSN adCenter's Content Ads Showing Horrible Click Through Rates?

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:31pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  MSN ContentAds  

  Brent Csutoras published results of his Microsoft ContentAds test by accident. I wasn't able to see all the results because he pulled them after being notified that he is not allowed to share any stats because he is in a private beta. I can tell you that I tested the ads on my personal blog and actually removed them about a week ago, due to the poor results in revenue making.

  That being said, what I did see Brent post in his MSN Adcenter’s Publisher Beta vs. Google Adsense, which is now 301 redirecting to the home page. He said that the CTR (click through rate) was a fraction of what he noticed with his Google AdSense ads. I believe it was less than half, but possibly even worse.

  Clearly, a publisher program that gets paid out by click and not impression, with a low CTR is not a publisher program that publishers want to participate in. MSN Content Ads is still very new and in very limited beta. I suspect it will do much better in 2009, but it appears they still have a long way to go to earn the trust of publishers and take market share from Google AdSense.

  Note, if anyone has a cached copy of the post, please share it with us. :)

  Forum discussion at Sphinn.

  Update: I received a screen capture of the original post and posted over here. You can see that the CTR with Google AdSense was .11%, but with Microsoft Content Ads it was .01% - huge difference and it showed in the earnings.

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  Major Google Search Results Changes, January 2009

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:25pm CET by Tamar Weinberg

  Tags:  Google PageRankSERP Updates  

  A few days ago, we reported the last Google PageRank update of 2008. We're not certain if this is related, but there are a lot of interesting observations related to the PageRank update that we've seen. For once, I've noticed discussion about fewer sitelinks on some sites. In fact, I've personally been impacted by 8 to 6 sitelinks on one of my sites.

  Google is also apparently giving some browser "hijacking" domains (that is, sites that don't let you hit the "back" button) a lot more visibility in the SERPs in addition to mirror sites.

  We're also not sure if this is related but some people have spotted some big drops their rankings in the SERPs.

  Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups

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  Google's Wildcard Subdomain Handling Issues?

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 2:15pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google Optimization  

  A Google Webmaster Help thread points out an interesting bug of some sort in Google. A webmaster asks about a particular site that seems to have flooded Google with tons and tons of subdomains. Since the site is already "outed," I figure I show you this example, because I find it to be pretty interesting.

  I am going to jump you to page 33 for a set of search results that show handster.com in all ten spots. You will notice that all of the handster.com results are starting with unique subdomains. Let me show you a quick video of the results:

  As pointed out in the thread, it seems like this domain supports wildcard domains, so anything preceding the handster.com will return a page. Yes, a major duplicate content issue. For example, try http://spam.handster.com/ or http://google.handster.com/ or http://duplicatecontent.handster.com/ and so on. They all return the same page, and it also works for specific pages, such as http://barryschwartzwuzhere.handster.com/software.php?id=203&for=Yakumo+PDA.

  I see you get the point. This looks like a major oversight by the web administrator but it also shows an issue with how Google handled this problem.

  JohnMu at Google commented in the thread saying that he has "passed it on here for someone to look at."

  Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

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  Live Search Begins Crawling JavaScript with MSNBot-Media

  Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 1:49pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Microsoft MSN Search  

  incrediBILL, moderator at WebmasterWorld, noticed that one of Live Search's bots was crawling through his JavaScript. The bot is named MSNBOT-MEDIA and he noticed that it was accessing JavaScript files and AJAX functions.

  He noticed that the bot was triggering actions on a href="#" OnClick="OpenFeedback(1010101234) and he noticed the bot accessing pages that were only accessible through JavaScript or AJAX.

  This makes logical sense, as people in the thread note. Much of media content now is accessible only through forms of JavaScript and enabling a bot to access some of that content is important to building a quality media search engine.

  Last year, Google officially started crawling JavaScript forms to get to the data that was behind them. More and more spiders are going to start doing this as well.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.