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)
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
SEO
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Emily Chang (347 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (8 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 7, 2009
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google AdWords Downtime on January 10, 10am-2pm PST
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 3:02pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
Just a quick heads up that the Google team has posted a notification at Google Groups that the AdWords team will be conducting maintenance this Saturday.
Both the AdWords login console and the API will be offline between 10am and 2pm pacific time. Here is the message from Jeffrey Posnick, AdWords API Team:
We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, January 10 from approximately 10:00am to 2:00pm PST. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API during this time frame, but your ads will continue to run as normal.
Forum discussion at Google Groups.
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Tips on How to Get Indexed Faster by Google, Yahoo, & Live Search
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 2:57pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
A WebmasterWorld thread asks for tips on how he can get his site indexed and crawled faster by Google. The thing is, most, if not all, of these tips apply not to just Google, but any search engine, such as Yahoo, Live Search and others.
Here are some of the tips for faster indexing via the thread:
- Submit an XML Sitemap
- Have a clean navigation structure
- Get quality links
- Go hot on Digg or other social networking sites
- Make unique and helpful content
- Use social bookmarking
- Verify your sites with Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Webmaster Tools
- Remove Canonical domain issues
For more tips and discussion go to WebmasterWorld.
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Request Reinclusion If Site is Ranking Well in Google?
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 2:49pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A Google Webmaster Help thread asks a very interesting question. Should a webmaster consider submitting a reinclusion request if the site is still ranking well in Google?
The question seems obvious. Why would you bother submitting a reinclusion request when you are ranking well. But in this case, it is not so cut and dry. This webmaster received a notification from Google that they are hiding text. The notification came about a year ago, and they didn't really care so much back then. Now that they are boosting their web efforts and revamping their site, they have removed the hidden text. They believe they have good rankings, but they wonder if submitting a reinclusion request will improve their rankings in Google.
Googler, Wysz, suggested that they play it safe and submit a reinclusion request in any case. He said:
Over time it's possible that we detected a violation of the webmaster guidelines was removed, but as Autocrat said, it's probably best to play it safe and let us know that you've made changes to your site to fix previous violations. Don't worry about any downsides to requesting reconsideration. We don't bite. :)
Just be upfront about what you did, when you did it and what you changed. Google doesn't "bite," at least according to Wysz. I am sure many folks would argue with the bite phrase. :)
Now, if your site is nice and white, sparkling clean, I would also suggest submitting the request. I don't see how it can hurt, unless you are hiding something or you are unaware of something that is wrong on your site.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Ranking in Google Search For Plurarls Vs. Singulars
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 2:40pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
There is a nice old school SEO thread at HighRankings Forum on the old topic of ranking well for singular cases, when you are already ranking well for the plural version.
For example, you are in the tops of tops at Google for [buy widgets], but you want to rank well for [buy widget]. The thread goes over some SEO copywriting tips on how to help achieve your goal.
Ian McAnerin has a nice tip, let me quote it:
Here is a trick I've used (I don't know if it will help you, but it might help someone):
Original Links:
Gray Widgets | Blue Widgets | Brown Widgets
...this is fine if you are optimizing for the plural, but not helpful if you are optimizing for the singular. Just removing the "s" makes it sound/look funny. But you can fix a lot of plural singular issues by changing the sentence context:
I'm looking for a: Gray Widget | Blue Widget | Brown WidgetFor the on page stuff, you can control how your content is written. It is not as simple as removing an S at the end of the phrase. You need to make sure to rewrite the content on the page to make sure it still reads logically and grammatically correct after removing the S.
The only issue is, then you may drop in your ranking for the plural keyword phrase. Personally, I have seen many cases where either the plural version brings in the conversions or the singular case brings in the conversions, but it typically is one or the other. Of course, both would bring in conversions, but in many cases, one version brings in the majority of those conversions. This is something you need to test and fine tune over time, like most of your SEO efforts.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
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Why Does The Site Command Show More Indexed Pages Then Google's Sitemap Report?
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A WebmasterWorld thread asks why does the site command in Google not match up in the number of "indexed" URLs reported in Google Webmaster Tools. A very valid question, let me show you.
A simple site command in Google for site:www.seroundtable.com returns 17,500 results. So that means, Google has indexed approximately 17,500 pages from the www of this domain.
Now, if I login and check my Sitemap data for this site (yea, I finally created a Sitemap file), it shows about half of the indexed URLs. It says Google has indexed 8,813 URLs of the 9,086 I submitted.
For me, the answer is simple. I seem to only sending URLs of the individual blog posts here. So although I have about 9,000+ blog posts at this domain, I still have about twice as many pages on this site, due to the categories, date archives, tag landing pages and so on. Those pages are not included in my Sitemap file. So Google seems to only showing the indexed URLs of what I submitted. Of course, it is hard for me to validate that by just looking at the numbers.
What I found interesting is when I went to Yahoo's Site Explorer, Yahoo told me they h have indexed 16,498 of my pages, but crawled only 15,022 pages and thus know about 16,498 of my pages. I guess via linkage data, they can index more of my pages then they actually crawl?
In fact, Yahoo's numbers for a inurl:seroundtable.com command is almost on target to the numbers they report in Site Explorer, which is nice.
In regards to what is going on with Google... I am not sure if the results are accurate or not. Tedster at WebmasterWorld said:
I'm never surpised when Webmaster Tools information seems peculiar in some way - it happens a lot. Also note that site:example.com results are getting weirder and weirder, often omitting urls that definitely are in the index - sometimes with a simple site:example.com/directory/ query.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Trends Attacked, Again: Targets Former World Trade Center Towers
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 2:12pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Yesterday, I was tipped off by a reader that the number two listing on Google Trends was this form of "ASCII art" ✈ ▌▌. At first, I thought it was an airplane landing on a runway strip. By I was wrong, it seemed to be an attack by a group of users, targeting Google Trends. They wanted to show an airplane flying into the former World Trade Center "Twin Towers." Yes, horrible!
Since posting, we have several comments at Search Engine Land. Danny notes that this potentially stemmed from a post at eBaum's World Forum.
In any event, this is not the first time Google Trends was targeted by hate. We saw a Swastika on Google Trends about six months ago. Then Google told us it was purely algorithmic, based on a spike of searches. This time, likely the same thing. I have a feeling that this is an issue that Google's Search Quality team can fix going forward, but the question is, are the resources there for it.
You can find more coverage of this story at Techmeme.
Forum discussion at Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.
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AdWords Using Google Moderator For Feature Request Voting
Posted: January 7th, 2009, 1:57pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
A week ago, we reported that the Google Mobile team is using a new tool to track and monitor how popular feature requests are. Well, it seems like Google AdWords started their own similar tool, using Google Moderator.
A AdWords Help thread has AdWordsPro Sarah suggesting that one advertiser go to the "AdWords Wish List" at [moderator.appspot.com] and submit and vote of feature requests.
Looking at Google Moderator versus the Google Product Ideas site, it is the same thing, just with a custom URL. So, it seems like Google product lines are starting to migrate their feature request lists to Google Moderator, some getting custom URLs, so that users can vote on which ones they want to use.
It is a sort of Digg approach to feature requests, which I like.
Forum discussion at AdWords Help.