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
(4690 unread)
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Emily Chang (347 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
(4343 unread)
Search Engine Roundtable (4 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: August 21, 2009
Posted: August 21st, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Should Google Place Advertiser's Info In AdWords Mouse Over Effect
Posted: August 21st, 2009, 3:57pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
A WebmasterWorld member thinks it would be a wise idea if Google added a new level of detail to the AdWords listings. I believe his idea is to display a mouse over control which would open up a more detailed box that shows advertiser details. This would allow the searcher to better know if he should click or not.
I decided to draw up a proof of concept, using Bing's search preview option and adding that to Google AdWords ads, here it is:
Do you think this is a good idea or bad idea? Take my quick poll:
Do You Want Advertiser's Info In AdWords Mouse Overs?(survey)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Bing Search Results In Google
Posted: August 21st, 2009, 3:44pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Google seems to be indexing Bing search results. Take a look at this query and you will see some of the Google search results leading to Bing search results.
So I decided to check to see if Yahoo, Ask.com or even Bing themselves were doing the same. It seems like Ask.com is also doing this, but Yahoo and Bing are not indexing Bing results.
Google doesn't like to see search results in search results so this is not common to see in Google.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Can A/B Testing Cause An SEO Problem?
Posted: August 21st, 2009, 3:33pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
A/B testing is the process of setting up two or more styles for a page, for the same piece of content. For example, let's say you had a page where you sold blue widgets and you wanted to try using a blue button versus a red button to buy the widget. What you can do is A/B test the two types of buttons against each other.
How would you accomplish this? Well, you can send 50% of your traffic to example.com/widget.html?button=red and the other 50% to example.com/widget.html?button=blue and see which page converts better. But that can lead to duplicate content, i.e. the same URL, example.com/widget.html with three URLs for the same content. Or would it? Google and some search engines are smart enough to pick up on this. There are other ways to test this using JavaScript (potential cloaking issue?) or CSS or use Google Website Optimizer.
How would you handle it? That is the question asked in a WebmasterWorld thread. Honestly, I am not sure what the "best" method to handle this is. So please join the thread or comment here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.