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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 22, 2009

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick

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.

(Text) Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 23, 2009

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 12:50pm CET by rustybrick

I am currently in Israel on a quasi vacation, so I need to skip the video part of this recap. If you are in Israel and want to meet up with me, I am heading to the Jerusalem Web Professionals meet up, this Wednesday night January 28th at 8pm (local time). It is at PresenTense Offices on 64 Emek Refa'im (1 Flight up above the Bridal Shop). You need to register either over here or on Facebook. Hope to see you there!

In terms of the recap, here are, what I feel, the most important topics of the past week. Google had a minor PageRank update that turned out to be from a canonical URL cleanup that Google was running, so the PageRank update was not real. Yahoo and Ask.com seemed to have updated as well. Google leaked site penalties through a Hyves trick. I covered Google's new "Preferred Sites" extension to SearchWiki. Also, Google and Microsoft announced earnings. Google Image search seemed to have updated. Google said the AdSense earnings were down due to cleaning up arbitrage sites. Google's new AdSense code may invalidate your web site's HTML. Google is late on paying some publishers. Inauguration day fell flat for many publishers. Google Blog Search may have issues indexing your content. Google did away with the iGoogle version for the iPhone. Google and Yahoo didn't have a special logo for Inauguration Day, but did have logos for Martin Luther Kind Day. Here are links to these stories:

Hope to see you at the Jerusalem Tech Meetup, if you are here! Everyone have a wonderful weekend!

Google's SVP Rosenberg Said AdSense Revenue Down Due To Arbitrage Cleanup

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 12:39pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

In the Google earnings call, that we reported earlier, Google's Senior Vice President, Johnathan Rosenberg, said on the earnings call:

AdSense revenue was weaker, though AdSense for content was strong. When it comes to AdSense for Search, we did a lot of arbitrage cleanup in Q3 and Q4.

This quote comes from a WebmasterWorld thread, and discusses the significance of such a statement.

Made for AdSense sites (MFAs are banking on arbitrage and Google promised to shut them down in May 2007. But stronger action appeared this past May. It seems like it has impacted Google's earnings.

In Q4 2007 Google earned 1.31 billion with AdSense (and that network), but in Q4 2008 Google earned 1.29 billion. Even in the third quarter, Google earned 1.33 billion. So there did seem to be a downturn recently in that area.

Some are using this statement to reduce their estimated tax payments in 2009.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Your Site May Harm Your Computer? Get That Google Label Removed In Hours

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 12:37pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Google will label sites in their search results as harmful, when the site is believed to have malware on it. The last thing Google wants to do, is help an unsuspecting searcher land on a web page that can infect your computer. So Google takes a proactive approach to discovery and labeling malware results.

But sometimes, your site can be found to have malware. Malware can get on your site through being hacked or through third party code. If you find this label on your site, you need to remove the malware from your site and notify Google that it has been removed.

After it is removed, go to Google Webmaster Tools and there will be a place to request a review. Go through that process and then hopefully, within a few hours, that label will be removed.

Google has a detailed post on this at the Webmaster Central Blog. That post and in a recent thread at Google Webmaster Help, it says, it typically takes hours to remove the label, but can take as much as a day.

Webmasters are eager to have a Google malware label removed from their site and often ask how long a review of the site will take. Both the original scanning and the review process are fully automated. The systems analyze large portions of the internet, which is big place, so the review may not happen immediately. Ideally, the label will be removed within a few hours. At its longest, the process should take a day or so.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

How To Use Google To Recover a Lost Web Site

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 12:18pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A Google Webmaster Help discussion thread shows a good way to recover lost web pages using Google.

First, Googler, JohnMu, recommends you take down your website down immediately. He said, "do not let the server respond to any requests. This is important because otherwise the cached pages will be overwritten by whatever content you have online now."

Second, use the Warrick Tool, which will look at Internet Archive, Google, Live Search, and Yahoo for caches of your pages. John said, it typically takes a day or two to get your content.

Finally, when you have these files, you can restore with them.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help

Google & Microsoft Announce Earnings

Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 12:06pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

In the past two days, Google and Microsoft have announced earnings. Google's announcement is over here and Microsoft's announcement is over here.

The market had time to react to Microsoft's announcement of cutting 5,000 jobs and a weak outlook on sales and products. Microsoft (MSFT) saw a 11.71% drop in their stock price based on that announcement. Google released their earnings report yesterday, after the market closed. It is hard to predict if their stock price will rise or fall but they are currently down 2.67% in the after market. Although Google's revenue was up 18%, they saw a 68% drop in fourth-quarter profit.

We have lots of discussion around the two announcements. Google discussion at WebmasterWorld,Microsoft job cuts discussion at WebmasterWorld and Microsoft earnings discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums. Plus respective coverage at Tech meme.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » January 23, 2009

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