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: March 10, 2009
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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55% Of SEO Companies Won't Offer Pay For Performance Deals
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 4:38pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: SEM SEO Companies
A week ago, we polled our audience asking Are You Still Offering SEO Services Paid By Performance? For example, are you willing to exchange direct payment in exchange for payment on the basis of rankings, or traffic or on revenue earned.
The majority of respondents said they never will or have taken this type of payment in exchange for SEO services.
Here is a breakdown of the seventy-five or so responses to the question "Do You Offer Pay For Performance SEO Packages?"
:: Never said 41 respondents or 55%
:: Very Rarely said 13 respondents or 18%
:: Sometimes, Only Great Ideas said 10 respondents or 14%
:: Very Often, But Depends said 5 respondents or 7%
:: Only Do Pay For Performance said 3 respondents or 4%
:: Other answer said 2 respondents or 3%I wish we would of had more responses, I guess I should have pushed this poll more. But I do think these numbers make sense and likely represent the industry as a whole.
Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.
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Happy Purim: No Logo From Google This Year
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 3:18pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
In March 2007, Google Israel had a special logo for today's Jewish holiday, Purim. Last year and today, there is no special logo at Google Israel or Google or any of the search engines that I looked at, including Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, or even DogPile.
But that is okay, we have a special theme live for the holiday. Here is a picture of it, but you can see the whole theme live at the Search Engine Roundtable:
We also had a theme last year and a picture of that is over here.
Maybe Google will have a logo in 2010? It is a fun holiday and they can go wild with the logo, if they like.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
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Utah Law Passes Ban On Trademarked Search Ads: SEMs Discuss
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 3:06pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Legal Issues in Search
Last week at Search Engine Land, I covered an Eric Goldman story on Utah trying to pass a bill for the third time, on regulating search ads. In short, the bill finally passed in the Utah House (still needs to be approved by Senate) and it holds search advertisers liable for targeting trademarks as keywords. It does not hold the search companies, i.e. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft liable (that bill failed). To see the bill, click here.
Shorebreak at WebmasterWorld gives a good explanation of the bill:
This bill, sponsored by 1-800-Contacts, prevents search engines from being able to serve competitive ads if someone searches for a branded/trademarked keyword. So, for example, if someone Google's '1-800-Contacts', Google would not be able to serve LensCrafters' ad, even if Lenscrafter didn't include the brand term in their ad copy.
Now, most search companies do not allow the trademarked terms to appear in the ad copy, but do allow bidding on many trademarked terms, as long as they are not in the ad copy. There has been a ton of legal precedent in this area already, so that is why Eric Goldman is surprised it finally passed. He said it "barely made it through due to the fierce last-minute lobbying efforts of 1-800 Contacts."
That being said, some advertisers hate the law and some actually like it. Guess who likes it and who hates it? :)
Many don't believe this law will last, since e-commerce goes over state boundaries and because geo-targeting capabilities are often not 100%.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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AdSense Stats Issue Maybe Related To Google's Contextual Relevancy Failure
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 2:58pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
This and last week we reported issues with Google reporting up to date stats. Many publishers felt that Google had a major reporting delay and they were very concerned. Typically, it turns out to be nothing and the numbers tend to update themselves over time. But this time, it was a little different.
Google admitted to a bug in the AdSense contextual targeting system that returned irrelevant ads on publisher sites. Typically, Google AdSense ads are relevant to the content on the page, but something went wrong where Google's contextual targeting went off. On Thursday of last week at 2pm (PST) a bug for "approximately 10 hours" triggered these issues. The issue was resolved by Friday morning, according to Google.
Google admitted that non-contextually targeted ads may result in lower earnings and impact your earnings for those ten hours. Google said:
You were still credited for all valid clicks and impressions on the ads which appeared on your sites, but this bug may have impacted your overall AdSense for content revenue if you had visitors to your pages during these hours. Please note that because we're unable to determine which ads would have been viewed or clicked on by visitors to your sites in the absence of the bug, we will not be manually adjusting yesterday's earnings.
The big question was, was this a reporting glitch or were these publishers that severely impacted by the relevancy issue?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Postpones Blog Search Ranking Update
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 2:53pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Two weeks ago, we reported that Google Blog Search To Test New Link Command Features Next Week. Well, it has now been postponed a bit.
An updated Google Groups thread has Googler, Jeremy Hylton saying this has to be pushed off by a couple weeks. He said:
Unfortunately, we ran into some delays with these experiments and had to push back the schedule a couple of weeks.
I know many folks were eager to see the changes this or last week, but it seems like we may have to wait until the end of this month or early April.
In short, the changes were going to impact how Google Blog Search returns matches for blog posts for queries. Google is a bit too inclusive right now on what they return as keyword matches on blog posts. Google Blog Search is working on fine tuning their "blogroll detectors" and other detectors to make the results more relevant.
Forum discussion continued at Google Groups.
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New Yorkers Upset Google Label's World Trade Center Site as Ground Zero
Posted: March 10th, 2009, 2:43pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
If you go to Google Maps and zoom into the World Trade Center Site, you will see that Google has labeled the area, "Ground Zero."
Ground Zero was what many people started calling the World Trade Center after the terrible attack on September 11, 2001. I think most of us still remember the day vividly. But some New Yorkers (and I am a New Yorker) are upset that Google still labels the area Ground Zero.
Here is the complaint from at least one New Yorker found in Google Maps Help discussion area:
Please remove the "Ground Zero" label from the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. I realize that anyone not from New York City comes here expecting to visit the site and that this is a common reference, but that is not its real name and it should not be used. It is equivalent to awarding the attackers a marksmanship medal, and we should not be doing that, nor frankly should we be equating what happened here with a nuclear bombing reference. All NY'ers refer to the site as 'the World Trade Center site', and that's what it still is to us, and will be again, if they ever get the construction completed. Finally, as a born-and-raised New Yorker who was here htat day I find the label 'ground zero' just plain despicable, and I really wish people wouldn't use it, and people I know here feel the same way. Please stop encouraging its use.
I can totally understand this person's frustration and rational here. But from a searcher's perspective, people still search for worlds like "ground zero" and "september 11" on Google Maps. Google still wants to return those results. I guess technically, Google can hide the label on the map itself and just return this area for the search, but maybe searchers find it useful.
Tough call here. As many people know, maps and borders and what you call places can become a very touchy and sensitive topic.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.