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 (9 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: June 17, 2009
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Microsoft Sends $750K Warning To Click Fraudsters
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:54pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: MSN Microsoft adCenter
The New York TImes reports Microsoft has filed suit against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia. The suit comes after a year of investigative work by Microsoft in tracking down reports of click fraud.
According to the NY Times, these defendants allegedly:
Microsoft said it found a pattern of click fraud on its search pages, where lists ranked by relevance and popularity appear alongside a handful of paid results. Advertisers bid on what they will pay to appear in the paid-search results for certain keywords. The more an advertiser pays, the higher they are in that list, and advertisers usually pay for each click on their ad.
Why is Microsoft doing this? Maybe to send a warning to those who are involved in click fraud to stop doing it or else. Or maybe Microsoft wants more buzz about their search ad network, adCenter?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Voice Search Enabled On Google Maps For Android
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:27pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
This almost wants me to switch to an Android device, even though I am getting the new iPhone 3GS on Friday. Google announced that you can now search Google Maps on an Android device by your voice, a lot like how you use the Google Mobile Search app on your iPhone.
Christopher from the Google Maps team said in a Google Mobile Help forum that the new features include
- Search by voice
- Transit and walking directions
- Business details and reviews
- Latitude Updates
Plus, Google fixed the latitude background location updates will continue to update. Previously, a bug was causing background updating to periodically stop for some users.
Here are additional notes left by Christopher:- The "Google Maps" update in Android Market will only appear for users with system updates for "Cupcake" and above (or SDK 1.5+; see Settings> About phone > Firmware version). If your device does not yet have Cupcake (v1.5), please be patient until it is available in your locale.
- If you experience the "Installation error - package file was not signed correctly" error, this is because your device is not on a user build identified as kila-user, opal-user, etc. (Settings > About phone > Build number). If your device is on a "userdebug" build, this update will not be able to be installed from Market at this time.
- Known issue: Traffic data use may cause some memory issues and turn Traffic off with an error message indicating this. We are aware of this issue and investigating possible fixes.
- Street View was not removed but is now available contextually within Maps instead of as its own map mode. For example, search for an address or business (or use the new long-press the map feature) to pick a location on the map. If Street View data is available, you'll have the option of seeing the imagery along with the rest of the options for that location (Show on map, Get directions, Search nearby, etc.).
Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.
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Matt Cutts Talks About NoFollow PageRank Sculpting
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:23pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates
A couple weeks ago, the news that Google treated the distribution of PageRank for pages with nofollow links differently then they would other pages. As explained then:
If you have $10 in authority to spend on those ten links, and you block 5 of them, the other 5 aren’t going to get $2 each. They’re still getting $1. It’s just that the other $5 you thought you were saving is now going to waste.
So Google's Matt Cutts finally wrote a detailed blog post on PageRank Sculpting that discusses what Google does and doesn't do. Go read the whole post when you have a chance, it is very important.
This has been in place for about a year and no SEO really picked up on it.
To my question of "Are Blogs Doomed With NoFollow PageRank Sculpting Issue?" Matt replied:
Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.
SEOs and webmasters are simply not happy. The bottom line is this is how it has been for about a year and I doubt it will change.
I am not going to summarize the comments in the thread, simply cause I am not feeling all that great, but I'll link them for you. There are some interesting comments in the thread and in Matt's post.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.
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Google News Releases Much Needed Publisher FAQ
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:20pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Good news for those looking to get included in Google News. Google finally released a much needed Google News Publisher FAQ to answer those common questions.
The FAQ is focused on publishers looking to get in to Google News, and also to help them with issues and technical requirements. The article is broken down into the following categories:
- Getting accepted in Google News
- Including my content in Google News
- Sitemaps questions
- Help! Something's broken!
Google News was a very mysterious beast back in the day. The Google News team has recently done an excellent job communicating with publishers and webmasters on various inclusion and technical issues.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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Google News Releases Much Needed Publisher FAQ
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:20pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Good news for those looking to get included in Google News. Google finally released a much needed Google News Publisher FAQ to answer those common questions.
The FAQ is focused on publishers looking to get in to Google News, and also to help them with issues and technical requirements. The article is broken down into the following categories:
- Getting accepted in Google News
- Including my content in Google News
- Sitemaps questions
- Help! Something's broken!
Google News was a very mysterious beast back in the day. The Google News team has recently done an excellent job communicating with publishers and webmasters on various inclusion and technical issues.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag?
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:06pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization
Several days ago Yahoo announced support for something called the common tag. In short, it basically gives developers a way to tag their content in a more unified way.
Vanessa Fox has the most detailed explanation of how this all works. In fact, Yahoo's post on the topic is almost unusable.
So please go skim her article and then come back here and let me know if you plan on giving this common tag a try. Personally, I doubt I will.
Here is the poll:
Will You Use Yahoo's Common Tag?(survey)
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag?
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:06pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization
Several days ago Yahoo announced support for something called the common tag. In short, it basically gives developers a way to tag their content in a more unified way.
Vanessa Fox has the most detailed explanation of how this all works. In fact, Yahoo's post on the topic is almost unusable.
So please go skim her article and then come back here and let me know if you plan on giving this common tag a try. Personally, I doubt I will.
Here is the poll:
Will You Use Yahoo's Common Tag?(survey)
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag?
Posted: June 17th, 2009, 2:06pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization
Several days ago Yahoo announced support for something called the common tag. In short, it basically gives developers a way to tag their content in a more unified way.
Vanessa Fox has the most detailed explanation of how this all works. In fact, Yahoo's post on the topic is almost unusable.
So please go skim her article and then come back here and let me know if you plan on giving this common tag a try. Personally, I doubt I will.
Here is the poll:
Will You Use Yahoo's Common Tag?(survey)
Forum discussion at Sphinn.