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.
Feeds
5540 items (5015 unread) in 3 feeds
Google
(325 unread)
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
SEO
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Emily Chang (347 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (4 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: April 9, 10 & 13, 2009
Posted: April 13th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Case Study Shows Pushed SEO Works Better Than Natural Site Development
Posted: April 13th, 2009, 3:49pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
A very helpful WebmasterWorld thread shares insights from a long time SEO who decided to pin two sites, competing in the same industry, with each other. He took two different strategies for each site. One site was pushed using old school SEO tactics, including doorway pages, paid and reciprocal links, content development and so on. The other site was to build a site with no paid links, unique content, no doorway pages, but add videos, blogs, rss feeds, Twitter integration and so on.
Let's call the first site the "SEO'ed Site" and the second site the "Quality Site." Guess which one is earning money and getting quality Google traffic? You got it, the "SEO'ed Site."
The member said:
Site 1 (AKA "SEO'ed Site"): after just 3 months it was skyrocketing past some pretty hefty competition with traffic increasing well each month. The site was making £10,000+ a month for the last six months we had it and just sold for a rather nice figure.
Site 2 (AKA "Quality Site"): has struggled to rank anywhere, even for it's own name, and traffic has been stagnant since the outset - it made a loss for the first 8 months and made just under £3000 in it's best month which was last month.
So what is a webmaster to do? Of course, this is just one single case study. To see exactly what tactics were used on each site, see the WebmasterWorld thread.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Releases Maps for Mobile Update to Resolve Bugs
Posted: April 13th, 2009, 3:41pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Google has announced a Google Maps for Mobile update in the Google Mobile Help discussions area that fixes the bugs with version 3.0 for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.
Googler, Christopher, said:
A new version of Maps for mobile is available to download. This update includes many fixes and updates for both Maps and Google Latitude based on your feedback here in the Help Forum.
Please see the following Release Notes for more details about what's been changed in this version or go directly to m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser to download it now: [www.google.com]
It seems like early feedback on this release shows that some users of these applications on the devices are still having some issues. If you are having any issues with Google Maps for Mobile on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices this is the place to be.
Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.
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Yahoo's New Local Targeting Feature Showing Poor Quality Traffic?
Posted: April 13th, 2009, 3:36pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing
A month ago, Yahoo made some serious enhancements to the search marketing platform, improving the local targeting capabilities amongst other features.
WebmasterWorld moderator, werty, has been gathering local data since the feature has been released and has posted the somewhat disappointing results. werty said in a WebmasterWorld thread:
Currently we are using "North American YSM" and should only be getting North American traffic, but if I look through our logs I can see that 29% of the traffic is coming from foreign countries.
I could see how maybe 2-3% could come from proxies or things like that, but this traffic is highly suspect.
Werty goes on to share:
Of those 2061 that we received we were billed for 1894. This is roughly 8% of "bad traffic" that is being caught or screened by Yahoo!
There is another 21% that is not being caught, screened or refunded.
The scariest/funniest part of this is; Of the 2061 clicks, only 43 came from Yahoo! or ca.search.yahoo.com. That is 2.1% of traffic we received or 2.3% of traffic we paid for.
These are some serious insights and hopefully this is only a bug that is impacting this individual advertiser. I do highly doubt it though and I wonder if Yahoo will respond to this.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Yahoo responded in the thread asking:
werty, are you using the Blocked Continents tool? It allows you to select the continents from which you do not wish to receive traffic. (Our lawyers make me say this next part: The accuracy of the Blocked Continents feature is not guaranteed, and may vary depending on a number of factors, such as the quality and type of data in the traffic stream that we receive. For example, if a searcher is using a product or service that makes the IP address "anonymous," our systems will be unable to determine his/her location, and therefore will be unable to apply continent blocking.)
Follow these steps to turn on or modify Blocked Continents:
- Click on the “Administration” tab.
- Click on the “Account General Information” link
- In the Blocked Continents field, select the checkbox for each continent to block. You cannot block your own continent, meaning the continent included in the market of your account.
- Click “Save Changes”.