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 (7 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 15, 2009
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Survey Says: Google Sitemaps Gets Credit For Faster Indexing
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 3:19pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
About a week ago, we ran a poll asking Who's To Credit For Faster Indexing? The options included Google Sitemaps or FeedBurner, due to the topic we were discussing. The results are now in and the majority said, Google Sitemaps, in this case, gets the credit for increasing the indexing speed of these sites in Google.
Here are the results of the 80+ responses:
:: Google Sitemaps speeds up indexing said 49 respondents or 60.49%
:: FeedBurner speeds up indexing said 26 respondents or 32.1%
:: The remainder responded with "Other" but did not comment said 6 respondents or 7.41%Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.
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Google Showing Longer Descriptions For Longer Queries
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 2:51pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
There have been more recent reports of Google showing longer descriptions (aka snippets) in the search results. We have reports from ThatsSEO.com, Holistic Search and SEMVironment.com with examples and screen captures. I was able to reproduce it for a search on fill empty cells with specific value openoffice.
A typical search shows a two line description or snippet:
But with the query above, you can get a three line description or snippet:
Or four line description or snippet:
Now, it seems like the longer your search query, the longer the snippet might get. But I have not fully tested this theory.
We have seen incredibly long Google descriptions in the past, plus we have seen Google test snippet size controls.
Forum discussion at Sphinn 1 and Sphinn 2.
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How Did Tele Atlas Improve Google Maps?
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 2:30pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Maps Guide Adam created a new thread in the new Google Maps Help discussion forum clarifying how Google's Tele Atlas maps distribution deal has helped improve Google Maps.
The two main points Adam made were:
(1) You can see blocks of addresses, notice in the embed map below around Baruch College, that there are numbers on the streets that show you the house numbers. So if you need to go to 153 East 25th street, you know where to go. Zoom in to see:
(2) Roof top markers, so you now which building you are looking for. Zoom in to see:
(4) Easier getting updates and sending update due to their shared data agreement.
Finally, you can submit feedback about the data to mapinsight.teleatlas.com/.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
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Google Starts Cutting Projects, Employees & Offices
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 2:19pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Seems like the economy is getting to everyone, including the all mighty and recession proof Google. In summary, Google has begun cutting out services they provide, they have cut 100 recruiters (i.e. less hiring) and they are closing offices, which might lead to 70 engineers losing their jobs.
Danny has a great article summing up the Google product and services slashes, which include Google dropping Google Video uploads, Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Jaiku and Dodgeball. Danny concludes, "neither products nor engineers seem to have a protected status, as Google goes into the grim economic times predicted for 2009."
On the job front, Google has laid off a 100 recruiters and is closing three offices; the ones in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. That may lead to 70 engineers losing their jobs but Google promises to refill those positions, if those engineers cannot relocate to Google's headquarters. But clearly, dropping 100 internal recruiters will mean less hiring in 2009.
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and Sphinn.
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Does Google's Supplemental Index Still Concern You?
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 2:08pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
August 1st of 2007, Google dropped the supplemental tag from their search results. The main reason why they did this was because their supplemental index was fresher and deeper then it was when it first launched in 2003, plus, in my opinion, to reduce all the confusion is caused.
Google said back then:
The current system provides deeper and more continuous indexing. Additionally, we are indexing URLs with more parameters and are continuing to place fewer restrictions on the sites we crawl. As a result, Supplemental Results are fresher and more comprehensive than ever. We're also working towards showing more Supplemental Results by ensuring that every query is able to search the supplemental index, and expect to roll this out over the course of the summer.
Since then, there has not been much discussion around the supplemental results, due to it being out of sight, which makes it out of mind. But are SEOs and webmasters still confused and worried about this supplemental index?
A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion on that topic. It seems at least one person is still considered over this index. In fact, the SEO wants to know, which of her pages are in this index. Like I proposed when Google dropped the tag from the results, Google might want to consider adding a report to Google Webmaster Tools to aid the webmaster in knowing how many of their pages are in this index, this way they can work on getting them out.
Does it matter if those pages are out of the supplemental index? I think most SEOs would agree, yes, it matters. But now that we have our heads in the sand, we really don't know exactly how to improve those pages, outside of the "holistic" approach. :)
Here is a poll, are you still concerned about Google's supplemental index?
Are You Concerned Over Google's Supplemental Index?
( polls)Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
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Did Google SMS Search Die Again?
Posted: January 15th, 2009, 2:04pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Just last week, we reported major issues with Google SMS not returning search results. It was fixed about two days later. But now I am seeing more reports of Google SMS issues, so I decided to try it out myself.
I sent three SMS messages to Google and now it is 10 minutes later, and still not a single response. Here is a picture:
Google has confirmed issues with specifically requesting sport scores from Google SMS. In a few Google Mobile Help discussion forums, we have confirmation from Google that there are issues with this request. You can find those threads here, here and here.
But there is a bigger problem, it seems like some people, including myself are simply not getting any response from Google's SMS search, at all. Like I showed in my screen capture above, not a "no results found" or any type of error message. Is it being blocked by the cell provider or is Google's SMS server down?
Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.
Update: Over an hour later, I got a response from Google, the response didn't have any results, but at least it told me so. Note, that it should have results: