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 (6 unread)
-
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 12, 2009
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
-
Does Google Penalize Site Wide Webmaster Tools Accounts?
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 2:17pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
There is a webmaster at DigitalPoint Forums who is convinced that Google has penalized all his sites that were verified in his Google Webmaster Tools account.
This webmaster claimed his sites are clean and he complies with Google's terms of service. But they were all penalized soon after adding them to the same Google Webmaster Tools account. I find this all hard to believe.
It is possible that they were linking together in a weird fashion, but I am not sure - since I don't know the site's URLs. It is possible they were violating the terms of service. It is possible he accidently excluded the pages in his robots.txt. It is possible he had server issues. It is possible he spammed the heck out of his pages. I don't know.
But it is common sense, if you are doing anything borderline with Google. Please don't tie those sites to others via Webmaster Tools. Even more so, why are you verifying a site that is borderline spam with Google in the first place? To me, that seems like you are testing Google, teasing them to ban you. If that is what you like, then go for it.
Do you think Google does site wide webmaster tools account penalties? I guess this is an obvious question. Google sees spam, a human looks at it, it notices the site is verified in webmaster tools, then looks at all the other sites by the same account holder and sees the same type of spam on those sites. The Googler clicks the big red blinking button and bam - goodbye sites.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
-
New to Microsoft adCenter: Custom Dates on Campaigns
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 2:05pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: MSN Microsoft adCenter
Discovery in a Search Engine Watch Forums thread reports that Microsoft adCenter now gives advertisers the basic feature of allowing advertisers to plug in custom dates into the reporting engine.
To see the custom date range option, go to the campaigns and at the top right of the report, click on "change." Here is a screen capture:
Then, it will open up to let you enter in a custom date range:
Discovery said, "Well it's one of those "features" you would expect to have because Google has had it for so long now. However, Adcenter just got this into their system."
I am sure advertisers will appreciate this small, but important addition.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
-
How Many Grams Of CO2 Does a Google Search Require?
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 1:57pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
How many grams of CO2 does the average Google search consume? That was the hot topic of debate over the weekend. The UK's Times Online reported that scientists said a typical Google search consumes about 7g of CO2, which is equivalent to the "amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea."
But Google downright denies this. They said in a recent blog response named Powering a Google Search that the average query only consumes about 0.2 grams of CO2. Clearly, Google is not agreeing with these scientists, because those numbers are way different.
Google then takes the time to explain how Google is very proactive in green causes and explains how a Google search is very green.
The folks in the forums are not happy about this study, not happy at all. Even before Google's response, member lgn1 said, "Also, I suspect those numbers, 7 grams of CO2 per search are way out to lunch. Without power comsumption numbers from google, that physicist is just urinating in the wind."
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
-
Yahoo Search Marketing Now Turning On Content Network? Yahoo Says No
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 1:46pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing
The past week has been a rough one for Yahoo, in terms of advertiser relations. First they emailed notifications of the terms and conditions, which got them in major hot water. Then even after the hot water, they had the nerve to make changes to advertiser's campaigns and keywords without permission or notification.
But it doesn't end there. Over the weekend, we are getting reports from WebmasterWorld from at least two different advertisers that Yahoo has turned on the advertiser's content network, even though the content network has been explicitly turned off by the advertiser in the master account settings. The interesting point is, that YahooPete, an official Yahoo representative said this should not be the case. Let me quote you:
I checked with the folks here who are managing the Account Optimization program, and they told me that turning Content Match on or off is not part of the program. So while I can’t say for sure why your settings might have changed, it wasn’t due to the optimization program.
As Zamboni pointed out, the “master setting” under the Administration tab in your account has the ultimate control over your account: If that account-level setting is set to “Off,” you should not receive any Content Match traffic in your entire account, no matter what the settings are at the campaign or ad group levels. We designed it this way to give advertisers more control of their tactic settings, so that certain campaigns could be set up solely for Content Match traffic, and others solely for Sponsored Search traffic.
But soon later, an advertiser claimed that this is not true. He said, "just a week or so back, I noticed that content was turned on for one of my campaigns even though content was set to off in "master setting"."
Now, it is hard to tell who is telling the truth and who is not. The bottom line, as we have been stressing throughout the week, is to make sure to check your accounts and make sure your ad dollars are being well spent.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
-
Popular Chinese Search Engine, Baidu, To Better Label Search Ads
Posted: January 12th, 2009, 1:41pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Search Engines
The Wall Street Journal reported that the very popular chinese search engine, Baidu, will be testing a better labeling and differentiating the paid results from the organic results. The article said, "The company has begun testing a new model for advertising that will place paid advertisements on the right-hand side of its page."
Over at WebmasterWorld we have some conversation on the news.
One member feels like Baidu has nothing to lose. He said, "The revenue hit is what has/will prompt changes, not public pressure. Often times public pressure is good, it draws attention and generates income on its own, but when the dollars start to fade it's time to change. I wonder how much of a black eye will linger in a year, if any."
It is about time, like many of the members think. We will see if it lasts and if it will make a difference in Baidu's ad income.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.