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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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 29, 2009
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google's Search Partners Ignoring Match Type Controls?
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:52am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
An advertiser notes in a WebmasterWorld thread that Google's Learning Center module has an interesting piece of content, under the section 3D, Targeting/Keyword Targeting. It said:
Note: Partner sites don't recognize keyword matching options. Therefore, all keywords on these sites are treated as broad-matched keywords.
This means, that when AOL displays Google AdWords ads on AOL Search, they might not listen to if you want to only show an ad for blue shoes, as opposed to red shoes. As you can imagine, this really got many advertisers worried.
The original poster brought this to the attention of his Google representative, who told him, that note needs to be clarified. He basically said, match types do apply to the search network, including search partners, but does not include the content network.
So match type controls do not make a difference on the content network, but they do make a difference on the search network and search partners.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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How Does Google News Rank Stories
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:45am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
For Google News publishers, getting high placement in Google News can be great. Most publishers would love to see prime time placement of their stories on the main Google News home page, but many settle for ranking well in Google News for news searchers.
One such publisher asked how can he help his articles see higher placement for news searches. The question was asked in a Google News Help thread and was answered by Google representative, Inabl.
Inbal linked this publisher to an article that discusses how ranking works at Google News, but added:
We work continuously to improve this grouping technology; your feedback can help us identify areas that need work. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement.
The article isolated three areas for their Google News ranking algorithm. They include:
- Freshness of content
- Diversity of content
- Rich textual content which would help users searching for information to find your articles
Plus you need to factor in standard search engine friendly design and basic SEO principles.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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Is AOL Testing Google AdSense Ads in Messenger?
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:38am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Before starting, I am finding this very hard to believe. A fairly active member at DigitalPoint Forums, posted a thread linking to his blog, where he has a screen capture of Google AdSense showing up in place of the ad spots of AOL's Instant Messenger software.
Here is his screen capture from his blog:
I was going to dismiss this post completely, but then I looked at the members history at the forum. He has over 700 posts at the forum and has been an active member since February 2007. So it seems like this member has some history.
I am still very skeptical that this image was not 'photoshoped' to look this way.
So I will leave it at being extremely skeptical if this is a true screen capture or something that was made up. I simply do not know.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
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Did Microsoft's European adCenter Rep Boycott WebmasterWorld?
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:29am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
It has now been a year since adCenterEU, the official Microsoft adCenter representative at WebmasterWorld, has posted at the forum. His last post can be found at a thread named Microsoft To Serve Ads On WSJ Digital Network where he said:
Thankyou pageoneresults!
Nice comments like that get us all fired up!
:-)
Cheers
adCenterEU
That was on January 29, 2008 at 12:12 pm (EST). Since then, not one peep from adCenterEU.
How about adCenterEU's US counterpart, adCenter411? Well, that representatives last post was on February 18, 2008 at 11:36 am in a thread named Is it posible to split test ads with adcenter.
So why aren't adCenter representatives still participating at WebmasterWorld? I know they have launched a major initiative to education at the adCenter Community, but should they ignore where they got their start? I hope not.
Forum discussion, well - it doesn't exist.
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Google's Enhanced "Did You Mean" Now Default
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:21am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
You know when you misspell something in Google, they show a "Did you mean" with the correct spelling. Historically, Google has told us that even though they put that Did you mean in red, people still ignore it. So a a month or so ago, they decided to test enhancing the Did you mean feature. The enhanced version showed the correct spelling for the two top results and the remainder of the results were for the wrong spelling.
Here is an example of a search for matt cuttz versus the correct spelling of matt cutts.
A WebmasterWorld thread took notice that this seems to always be the case now. Google seems to always be showing the new way of showing Did you mean results. Tedster added that he has been noticing an influx of "no results" found. Here is an example for a search on mesothmioma, which is correctly spelled mesothelioma.
The above example might be a bug in Google's spell checking software. Outside of the bug, it does seem like the enhanced version of Did you mean, is sticking around for a while.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Out Dated Sites Earning More Money with Google AdSense Then Fresh Sites?
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:12am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
An interesting WebmasterWorld thread has several publishers claiming that they make more money with Google AdSense with their old, not updated sites, as compared to their larger, more updated and cleaner looking sites.
In the past, we did discuss how ugly sites earn more with AdSense and most agreed that this is true. But outdated, old sites are earning more than updated and fresh sites?
Here is a poll, which one makes you more money?
Which Site Earns You More with Google AdSense?
( polls)Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Click Fraud Rate Reaches 17.1 Percent
Posted: January 29th, 2009, 9:02am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Pay Per Click Engines
Click Forensics released their quarterly click fraud report. The click fraud rate increased 1.1 points from 16.0% in Q3 to 17.1% in Q4. Let me explain that not everyone agrees with these numbers and they are someone controversial in nature.
I normally do not cover these reports here, instead I post them at Search Engine Land, but this one is getting a lot of attention at WebmasterWorld. First, here are the key points:
- The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1% for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0% in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6% rate reported for Q4 2007.
- The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. That’s up from the 27.1% rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate reported for Q4 2007.
- Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic in Q4 2008. That’s up from the 27.6% rate reported for Q3 2008 and the 22.0% rate reported for Q4 2007.
- In Q4 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada (7.4 percent), Germany (3.0 percent) and China (2.3 percent).Folks in the WebmasterWorld are taking both sides. Some are of the opinion that this is just going to get worse and others are of the opinion that these reports are false. The discussion may get somewhat heated, but the moderators at WebmasterWorld know how to keep things level headed.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.