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: June 18, 2009
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Evidence of Page Level Google Penalties?
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 2:41pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Richard at SEO Gadget showed how Google seemed to have penalized specific pages of his site from ranking in the Google index. The penalty seemed to be fair, in that there were nasty comments that slipped through his comment spam filter.
The drop in traffic can be seen by the keyword phrases that page ranked well for. He noticed a ~70% drop in traffic for that phrase, which in his case resulted in a 15% drop in his Google traffic and a 5% drop in overall traffic.
What I find extra fun is that a Google Search Quality Analyst, @filiber, tweeted:
Google Page level penalty for comment spam – rankings and traffic drop http://bit.ly/JNAly (via @AndyBeard)
Of course that is not admission to this as a fact, but it wouldn't be too hard to believe that bad comments caused such a decline.
Now, I don't think this would be considered a keyword-specific penalty, which most SEOs believe in, but rather a specific page being penalized.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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Google AdSense Gives US Font Size Control
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 2:24pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Back in February, Google gave us font type selections for our AdSense ads. Now Google announced the ability to control the size of those fonts.
Here is a screen shot of the three sizes you can pick:
Google has been testing both larger fonts sizes and smaller ones here and there, so this was expected, and it is now here.
To learn more about this, see the AdSense blog post and chat about it at WebmasterWorld.
One important note that AdSenseAdvisor said in the thread:
I also wanted to give you a heads up that soon we'll be setting the default font size a little bit bigger based on your feedback that sometimes the text ads on your page are hard to read. I'll keep you posted.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google's Top Search Quality Supports Question Google's Team
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 2:13pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
I have been watching a Google Webmaster Help thread for about a week now. The thread was started by a 3rd party individual who volunteers a lot of his time helping webmasters in the Google Webmaster Help forum. He was even promoted (no pay of course) to the position of "Webmaster Help Bionic Poster" as a top contributor.
Autocrat, the name this person goes by, questioned Google's search quality team, to give them more insight in how to help Google. He said:
It would be nice to know; * What sort of "activities" we should be reporting * What hte chances are of seeing any form of action on a report * What sort of "crimes" could we expect to see action on * Whether you have to make multiple reports - or have multiple reports made against you before action is taken * how is it that some of the most blatant stuff gets to stay on line and escape the "algorythm"
I hate to ask - but I'm tired of seeing some of the * in the SERPs - and I now fail t osee why I should bother reporting some of hte cheating * * when I know that I have a less than 1 in 20 chance of seeing them get punished!
So please - would the Spam Team please step forward and have a chat with us?We all waited, and waited for a response from an official Google representative. But a week later we have yet to see a response.
It is tough when your top volunteers ask tough questions, but it is even tougher when your top volunteers have to ask some of these questions.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Are AdSense Publishers Losing Out from Google Translate & Cache
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 2:06pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that in some cases the Google AdSense ads will not render when using Google Translate or viewing the page on Google Cache. We reported about the Google Cache issue about a year ago, and back then I believe it was temporary.
The issue is that in some cases, people use Google Translate to view web pages and if Google doesn't show the ads, these publishers (as well as Google) is missing out. The same with the Google Cache. Some sites are hit up worse than others and it isn't impacting all ads.
WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster thinks it might be a simple issue of miscommunication:
Possibly and if that is the case, hopefully an AdSense representative will chime in on the thread.It's been noted that the teams developing these tools don't always communicate with other parts of Google. This may be an instance of that.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google News Hit By Spammers
Posted: June 18th, 2009, 2:31am CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google News is the life blood for many people who try to stay on top of news. It is also fairly hard to be included in the Google News index. So when Google News gets infected with spam, people take notice.
We have a WebmasterWorld thread with complaints and ShoeMoney posted specific details with the Google News spam.
Here is the reaction from the person who posted at WebmasterWorld:
Recently I noticed spammy news in a lot of google results. In fact, a google news article now takes the #1 position for a VERY popular search term..when you click it, the page redirects to an affiliates landing page. I thought this was just a quirk until I noticed spammy news in more search results and then I read a blog where they are also complaining about the recent surplus in spammy google news results.
Boy this is just getting bad. Whatever kind of update this is seems to be doing more harm than good. For all the work that google has done to prevent spam in their index, this is a real shame. I really hope google knows what its doing as I am just about fed up because I clicked on one of those google news results and it redirected me to somewhere and I now have a virus on my computer that hijacks all my search results. It forwards all my search results to affiliate programs. Thanks google.
If the spam sticks, rest assured people will stop using Google News.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.