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Daily Search Forum Recap: June 19, 2009

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Forum Recap

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.

(Text) Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: June 19, 2009

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 4:25pm CEST by rustybrick

I am skipping the video this week, simply because I am a bit sick and my new iPhone is arriving anytime now. So here is the text recap of what we covered at the Search Engine Roundtable over the past week. We covered possible evidence that Google penalizes on a page by page basis. Google began truncating URLs to one line and removed the file size from the search results snippet. Matt Cutts chimed in about the PageRank sculpting with nofollow. Will you add the common tag to your site? Google changes linkage data reports in Webmaster Tools. Bing does instant translation. Google AdSense gives us font control. AdSense publishers may be losing out from translate and cache. Google is working on a mobile AdWords interface. Microsoft sends a $750,000 warning to click fraud. Our poll on if SEOs are seen as criminals is live.

Hopefully, we will be back next week with the video recap. Have a great weekend and happy Father's Day!

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

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Google Sometimes Truncating URLs to One Line

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 3:11pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Sandip Dedhia from BlogsDNA for spotting this and also Vertical Leap noticed a bit later. It Google seems to be truncating the display URL in the search results to a single line. So I decided to test this and it is not always consistently true.

A search for iphone 3.0 os does truncate URLs longer than one line, here is a screen capture. Notice how Google adds ... to shorter the URL in the middle portion (not at the end).

It is very nice how they keep the keywords in the display URL and truncate the less keyword specific components of the URL, i.e. "article/166311."

But when I do a more complex search for site:cgi.ebay.com test, which I know has longer URLs, it seems like those display URLs act like the old way of how Google truncated URLs to two lines:

Notice the ... added to the end of the display URL.

Clearly, the site command search I conducted is more of an advanced search. But I don't think the URL truncating is based on search query but rather the URL structure. For example, if I search for Electrical Test Lead Set you will see two results that have long URLs. One is truncated to a single line and the eBay listing is only truncated to two lines:

Interesting to see how this works, don't you think?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Google Working on Mobile AdWords Management Interface

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 2:38pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

A WebmasterWorld thread complains that the AdWords management interface at adwords.google.com does not rendered on the iPhone (and possible Android). In fact, I tried it and it booted me out after several seconds. I managed to take a screen shot of the page trying to load.

In addition, if you try to use the AdWords interface with Safari 4.0, Apple's latest release of their browser, you get the following message:

Support for Safari 4 is coming soon. Until then, please use an earlier version of Safari when viewing the new interface.

AdWordsAdvisor did comment specifically about a mobile AdWords interface. Let me quote what the Google representative said:

This is understood to be very important, Kobayashi, and though I can not predict a timeline (mainly since I don't know it) I do know this is being worked on.

So it seems like a mobile version of the AdWords interface is coming in the future. When exactly is the million dollar question.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Do You Like The Bing Commercials?

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 2:31pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion around Microsoft's commercials for Bing. I saw a few on TV several days ago, and they are pretty unique. But some people love them and some people hate them.

Bing finally set up a YouTube channel with many of their commercials at youtube.com/user/bing so i'll post a few here and please let me know if you like them in our quick poll below.

Here is the poll, please take it:

Do You Like The Bing Commercials?(survey)

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google News "Article Too Long" Webmaster Tools Errors

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 2:20pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

We have covered Google Webmaster tools errors with News sites in the past. But this is the first time I am seeing reports of Webmaster Tools errors specific to News sites that read "Article too long" as the error. "Article too short" errors are common for News errors, but "too long?" Well, that is new to me.

I spotted two threads at Google News Help Forums with complaints from various publishers.

Google News representative, Inbal, said:

Yes, I see many "Articles too long error" messages for your site indeed :( We'll look into the weirdness in Webmaster tools. Meanwhile, we've updated your site's information in our system. We should begin to crawl more articles with videos embedded between the headline and the summary from your site within a few weeks.

Thing is, it seems like they need to conduct a manual fix for each site with this error. So if you are seeing these errors for your publication, make sure to submit a thread at the forum.

Forum discussion at Google News Help Forums.

Poll Results On How Google Views SEOs (Innocent or Guilty)

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 2:07pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

A week ago, we asked our readers to vote on their thoughts on if Google sees SEOs as criminals. If you remember, this is based on the double-standard that some bloggers feel Google is placing on some groups over another group.

With just under a 150 responses, I wanted to share how we (SEOs) perceive how Google sees us.

Question: Does Google See SEOs as Criminals?

:: Only Some Groups of SEOs said 77 respondents or 52%
:: Yes said 43 respondents or 29%
:: No said 25 respondents or 17%
:: Other answer... said 3 respondents or 2%

It is very interesting looking at how SEOs perceive how Google sees SEOs. Kind of a circular statement there, but you know what I mean.

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn (Lisa), Sphinn (Michael) and Sphinn (Susan).

Most Our Readers Like Yahoo's New Home Page

Posted: June 19th, 2009, 2:01pm CEST by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

A few weeks ago, we asked our readers if they like the new Yahoo home page? With 127 responses in, I wanted to share the results.

Most of our readers do like the new home page. 73% said they like the new home page, while 25% said they do not like it. That is a pretty good distribution. Here is the pie chart:

The "other" responses were pretty much in the nature of "I don't care, either way."

Are you surprised by these results?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » June 19, 2009

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