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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Google
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (6 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: March 23, 2009
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Advertisers, Publishers & Affiliates Scared Over Proposes California Tax Law
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 1:18pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Legal Issues in Search
There are two different threads at WebmasterWorld that show publishers, advertisers and affiliate's concern over a new proposed tax law in California.
The law, as understood in the thread, would potentially tax any seller who using AdWords to market their product or service. Moderator, incrediBILL, explained:
The conclusion I drew after reading the law is that since AdSense directly refers customers via links, as do the AdWords ads showing in the SERPs, it's therefore theoretically possible that anyone using Google as an advertising vehicle could be subject to CA tax.
If people advertising in Google are suddenly subject to collecting and paying CA tax then people will most likely stop advertising on Google.
You can see the details about this tax proposal named AB178 and the hearing won't be until April 13, 2009.
Some are very skeptical over the bill and they are not worried too much about how it might impact them.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: 5 Star Affiliate Blog has very good coverage of this concern. Well worth a read.
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Proof Google Treats Underscores & Hyphens Differently?
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 1:10pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Over a year ago, almost two years ago, there were rumors that Google would treat underscores in the URL the same way they treat hyphens in the URL, as word separators. Matt Cutts squashed the rumor back then, suggesting that Google was not treating them the same.
Historically, underscores (i.e. domain.com/file_name.html) was treated as a single word (i.e. filename) and hyphens (i.e. domain.com/file-name.html) was treated as two words (i.e. file name).
A new WebmasterWorld thread asks more questions on that. Senior member, internetheaven, noticed, and I quote:
I have a URl: www.example.com/folder/file_name.htm
and if you search for:
allinurl: file site:example.com
or
allinurl: name site:example.com
you get 0 results. Whereas if you search for:
allinurl: file_name site:example.com
the page shows up in the results fine.
I thought underscores were the same as hyphens these days?
Well, they are not the same these days, and that might be proof. Technically, I do see results that do match on sites I tested for these types of queries. What I mean is that Google will still highlight and display results for a keyword that is in part of the underscored URL. I am not sure why it did not show up for this member. Maybe it is something happening at Google.com and since I am currently in Israel, I am getting a different data set.
Receptional, WebmasterWorld moderator, explained:
In certain cases, Google may figure out that underscore is being used as a word separator (similar to the process for conjoined words). But an underscore is not a word separator - treating it as such would at a minimum cause a lot of developers to be frustrated when using Google, as many function names etc. use underscores.
Underscores and hyphens have never been treated the same - if you want a guaranteed word separator in a URL, always use a hyphen.
For now, until we hear from Matt on a change in underscores and hyphens, Google treats them differently.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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iGoogle Signing You Out?
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 1:08pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Personalized search and personalized home pages can be great for most users. The only issue is that you need to be signed in, most of the time, to get personalized results from Google. And if you love those personalized results and home page from iGoogle, being automatically signed out without requesting to be signed out, can be a bit frustrating.
Over the past week, I have seen dozens of threads pop out in several Google forums on the topic of Google automatically signing them out of iGoogle. I ignored it as being a recent security patch that deleted cookies and thought it would be resolved soon.
Google recently posted an announcement on this exact issue, saying:
Several users have reported that they're getting signed out of iGoogle several times each day. This is not the way it's supposed to work, and we're investigating the issue on our end.
If you're affected by this problem, please first check to make sure this isn't a problem with your computer or network; instructions for checking are located in this Help Center article. Once you've eliminated those possibilities, if you'd like to discuss this further please post in this thread.
So if you are also being signed out from Google, don't feel left alone.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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AdSense Publishers Not Happy With YouTube Earnings
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 1:03pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
There are two threads at Google AdSense Help discussions with AdSense publishers who are simply not happy with the earnings they have been reported to receive from their YouTube content.
Let me quote you some upset publishers:
My revenue is down more than 50%. There were people who were expecting to earn $200 in January and instead earned $80. I was expecting $1000-$2000 and earned a little over $80.
Received my report. 1/5th of my Content Host earning. Shame.
63. Wow. Just as we're writing about it, the amount posted. And it ain't pretty. I had $67 in Content Host earnings (63,600 views/1000 clicks) and only $17 in YouTube earnings... sheesh, that sure wasn't worth the wait!
Some feel ripped off by Google while others feel that there may be a glitch in the system. But one publisher recommends "patience," explaining:
Settle down guys. The Partner program is definitely not a "get rich quick' program. Part of the low revenue is the economy and the other part might be the simple fact that an advertiser does not want to pay a lot to run ads on your videos.
I have seen my YT amount drop to 1/20th or so what I would expect but content host amount is going up and that is fine with me.
Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.
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Google AdWords API Usage Reporting Glitch
Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 12:56pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
There are reports in the Google AdWords API Google Groups that the Google AdWords API is reporting inaccurate data from the usage tool.
First reports came in on March 19th, where an AdWords API user said:
We have just rolled out an application using API and the Unit Usage from 3 days ago is not showing up. It says on the page where this is viewed that it is updated daily. Anyone know whats going on there? Have we not been charged?
In short, Google charges for certain level of usage for the API. AdWords API users keep track of their usage reporting to stay on top of costs. The usage reporting seems to not be updating correctly and costs are hard to control without that reporting.
Jeff Posnick from the Google AdWords API Team said:
I have a bug open with the engineering team to determine whether there was some underlying problem that prevented the display in the web interface from being updated. Hopefully if there is a problem we can get it resolved so that no further confusion ensues.
Forum discussion at Google Groups.