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  Daily Search Forum Recap: February 13, 2009

  Posted: February 13th, 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.

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  Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: February 13, 2009

  Posted: February 13th, 2009, 6:10pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Buzz RoundUp  

  This week was SMX West, and I shared my personal favorite sessions and our new way of live blogging them. I would love to hear your feedback on our new live blogging platform, so please let me know what you thought. The search engines announced a new tag to help with duplicate content, a canonical tag. Google Japan got penalized for buying links. Google got into pornography trouble twice with maps and once with search suggestions. Google had a bug that stopped payments to publishers. Google tells some advertisers to take a hike. Some SEO companies instill fear in their clients. Google is testing images in Google Blog Search Alerts. That recaps the news in the past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

  Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

  
  For the original iTunes version, click here

  Some Of The Topics Discussed:
  

  • Search Marketing Expo 2009 West Archives
  • Webmasters Skeptical But Loving New Canonical Search Engine Tag
  • Google Slaps Google Japan With PageRank Penalty, Webmasters Cheerfully Surprised
  • Adult Spam Makes Its Way Into Google Maps
  • Google Maps Showing Adult Images From Panoramio
  • Should Google Search Suggestions Show Adult Suggestions?
  • Google Bug Halts Payments to AdSense Publishers
  • Google Tells Suspended AdWords Advertisers Not To Try Reversing The Suspension
  • SEO Companies Continue Using Fear Tactics To Keep Clients
  • Google Testing Images In Blog Search Results?

  Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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  Google Tells Suspended AdWords Advertisers Not To Try Reversing The Suspension

  Posted: February 13th, 2009, 3:45pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google AdWords  

  I spotted an interesting exchange of words in a Google AdWords Help forum thread. An AdWords advertiser who had his account suspended due to terms of service violations asked if there was a way to reverse that.

  Google's AdWordsPro Sarah had a pretty strong response. Let me quote her:

  To be honest, its really hard to reactivate an account that is suspended because Google reserves the right to permanently terminate all AdWords activity if you ever violate the Terms and Conditions. If I were you, I would pursue other advertising channels.

  Now, I don't know the details of this specific suspension, but in general, don't you think Google should be more open to this? I mean, don't most people deserve a second chance?

  This advertiser was told to "pursue other advertising channels," now that is a bold comment. Personally, I find it a bit cool that Google would say that, but that is me.

  Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

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  Google Drops Audio/Radio Ads, Some Advertisers Care

  Posted: February 13th, 2009, 3:37pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google AdWords  

  Google started testing audio ads back in December 2006. In May 2007, they launched it to the masses and we saw some early feedback on those ads.

  But yesterday, we got news that Google will discontinue those ads and will likely fire the team of 40 people in that group.

  Since the announcement, we saw at least two sad advertisers. In two Google AdWords Help Threads we saw complaints that Google dropped the program.

  In fact, one person noticed something was wrong before the announcement when he said that he wasn't receiving any estimates from stations anymore. A Google representative was just as surprised to hear the news, saying:

  Yes - I just learned of this today, myself. I would want Kathy to note, though, that ads will continue to run through the end of May.

  It is sad to see things fail, but Google should focus on what they do best.

  Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help Threads.

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  Webmasters Skeptical But Loving New Canonical Search Engine Tag

  Posted: February 13th, 2009, 3:25pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Engine Optimization  

  Yesterday, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced together a new way to handle internal duplicate content issues with a new "canonical" header tag. Vanessa Fox does an excellent job explaining what it is all about in her piece at Search Engine Land.

  So for all duplicate pages, you insert this tag in the header elements of those pages, specifying the main URL. The tag looks like this:

  <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/true-url.html" />

  Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have detailed explanations of how they work.

  Three main things:

  (1) This works only internally, not across domains.
  (2) Treat this like you would a 301 redirect, so be careful
  (3) Search engines consider this a "hint" and do not have to abide by it (just yet)

  Outside of that, there is good recaps on this at Techmeme.

  We have a ton of Q&A on this from our live coverage of the Ask the Search Engines panel from SMX West. I am sure your questions are answered in that panel or in the discussions below.

  This tag can be confusing, because it is new. But after webmasters begin to understand where, if and how to use it, they are more likely to love it.

  JohnMu said in a forum post:

  Here are some examples where this could be used: - Web-shops (mutliple URLs depending on how you got to a page) - Sites that work with Session-IDs within the URL - Ad-tracking URLs (eg using AdWords + Analytics) - Affiliate tracking URLs - News sites with multiple URLs per article - Forums with multiple URLs per thread/page (eg "&highlight=", etc)

  Plus, Yoast already posted plugins to support this for Wordpress, Magento and Drupal.

  Forum discussion Google Webmaster Help, Cre8asite Forums, WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

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  Daily Search Forum Recap: February 12, 2009

  Posted: February 13th, 2009, 12:27am 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.