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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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 (6 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: August 26, 2009
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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When Should You Undo a 301 Redirect?
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 4:10pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
A thread at WebmasterWorld has a webmaster who is getting a bit nervous that the 301 redirects he set up for a site won't be the best bet in the long run for his end goals. In summary, his original URL was doing "great" in both Google and Bing, with number 3 and 1 rankings, respectively. But about a month ago, he did a 301 redirect and the rankings have not recovered. He wants to know if he should reverse the 301 and go back to the previous state.
Excellent question and something that SEOs and webmasters struggle with all the time. If you have a well-ranking web site, but you need to move URLs, should you do a 301 or look for a way to keep the URL. The answer is not always in the control of the webmaster, but when it is, it is always a painstaking decision to make.
The question here is, after a month in place, should you reverse a 301 redirect? I like the response from senior WebmasterWorld member, willybfriendly, who said:
From my experience it will take a minimum of 3-4 months. Redirecting an entire successful site as you did is not for the faint of heart.
Going back to the old site will in all likelihood only increase the time it takes to get your rankings back. If you are confident that your original reason for moving was sound, then I would advise you stay true to your conviction.
It will probably get worse before it gets better if it has only been a month now. But, assuming you have done it right, it will get better...
I would likely agree with this statement. Stick to your guns, at this point in time, if possible. If after three months, things don't look good, then maybe there is another issue with the new domain.
What would you do?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Public Service Announcements (PSAs) Ads Showed On All AdSense Sites Yesterday
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 3:59pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Yesterday, for about five minutes during the day, any site that had AdSense ads on them, showed what is known as Public Service Announcements (PSAs). PSAs are ads that are free and don't earn money, and are shown when Google cannot find a contextually relevant ad.
AdSenseAdvisor confirmed the issue in a WebmasterWorld thread, saying:
We experienced a very brief (under 5 minutes) issue that caused Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers diagnosed and resolved the issue immediately, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience.
This also seemed to impact publishers who use Google Ad Manager to serve up their ads (which is what we use on this site). Steve from the Google Ad Manager team said in a Google Ad Manager Help thread, "We experienced a brief issue that caused PSAs to appear on publisher pages for a few minutes this afternoon. Our engineers quickly diagnosed and resolved the issue, and your ads should now be back to normal. Thanks for reporting this, and we appreciate your patience."
This is not the first time PSAs invaded the bottom-line for publishers. We reported a similar issue back in 2004 and also earlier this year, in January.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google Ad Manager Help.
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Google AdWords Doing Sitelinks Also
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 3:51pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
My old time buddy, Darrin Ward (founder of SEOChat back in the day), blogged about noticing Sitelinks in the Google AdWords ads. Here is a picture, which I can see myself, for a search on staples.com.
Notice the four links directly under the ad, those are commonly known as Sitelinks in the Google organic search world. They kind of look like the one line product links but these are category specific.
I am pretty sure I saw a form of this a long time ago, but I cannot find my blog post on that find.
In any event, it seems like Sitelinks are here for Google AdWords ads.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
Update: Here is the official Google statement on this test:
As part of our ongoing commitment to help users find the information they're looking for online, we are testing a feature in which links to various pages of an advertiser’s website may appear within the text ads on Google.com. Presenting multiple landing page options is intended to make specific website information such as gift registries, special deals, store locators and the like more easily accessible to users. It also offers brand marketers a new way to quickly engage potential customers. This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of advertisers.
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The Big SEO Ranking Factors List from SEOMoz, Is It Accurate?
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 3:40pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
SEOMoz published a revised version of their Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. They had 72 contributors complete a long survey, including myself, answering questions specific to ranking in search engines. I am not going to bother summarizing all the details of the survey, you can read them at SEOMoz in a concise fashion.
I thought it would be fun to run a poll on this survey, asking our readers, how accurate do you find this SEOMoz survey?
How Accurate Is the SEOMoz Search Ranking Survey?(online surveys)
Please take the poll, the responses should be interesting.
Forum discussion at Sphinn and SEOMoz.
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Google AdSense Welcomes Third-Party Ad Networks
Posted: August 26th, 2009, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
The Google AdSense blog announced that publishers in the Google AdSense network now have the option to allow "Google certified" third-party ad networks to compete for the ad space on your web site.
In short, this should help publishers earn more money, due to adding more competition into the network. But you have to opt into this and allow image ads. You might not be able to add this today, since it is "slowly roll this out over the next several months."
Here is a picture on where you will be able to activate third part ad networks in the AdSense console.
The overall impression from publishers is positive and they are eager to give this new feature and program a try.
For more details on how this works, see the AdSense Help Center.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.