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
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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: September 10, 2009
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google Makes Search Bigger With Larger Search Box
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 4:04pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Google's Mayer announced last night that the search box's size was increased. The box is bigger, the text when you type is bigger and the search suggestions are bigger. Honestly, I am surprised we did not spot Google testing this on the public, but we didn't.
There is a lot of discussion around this. Tedster at WebmasterWorld is with me on this and feels Google never really tested it (or else he or I would have seen it or someone reporting that Google is testing this). Some find the new look to be immature and worse off than the previous look.
Robert Charlton has some measurements:
OLD SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 43 px
- width of search box = 366 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.7%NEW SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 54 px
- width of search box = 483 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.2%
Another person asked if this might lead to "more long-tail searches."Anyway, as I said, most people are not too happy about the change - at least those voicing their opinion. Personally, I barely notice it.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.
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Screen Shots & Videos of Google Monopoly City Streets
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 3:47pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Hasbro has created a virtual Monopoly game at www.monopolycitystreets.com that allows people to buy property, using Google Maps. It is pretty neat - but the big issue is that it is incredibly slow. It took me two days to get in and I finally have some screen captures and videos to show you.
Here is the quick video:
Here are some screen captures:
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
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Google Base Feeds Can Now Include YouTube Video Demos for Product Search
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 3:29pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base data feeds now support a new YouTube attribute that allows you to define if the product has a video demo on YouTube.
The example given is a product search for Nikon d90. If you scroll down, you will see videos from YouTube:
To add this to your product data feeds, you need to add the YouTube attribute:
The YouTube video ID for product review videos. Video IDs are case sensitive and can be located following the v= in the YouTube video URL.
Format:
Text.
Tab-delimited example:
sDDvpDNbEXo
XML example:
<g:youtube>sDDvpDNbEXo</g:youtube>Google does not promise that even if you do add this attribute to your data feeds that the videos will show, but it can't hurt.
This feature has been on many folks waiting list for a while now.
Forum discussion at Google Base Help.
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Power Searchers: What Is Your Favorite Search Feature
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 3:16pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Googler, Jem, started a thread at Google Web Search Help asking the forum members to list out some of their favorite search features.
The ones listed so far include:
* [4 miles per 30 minutes in minutes per mile]:
* [intitle:"index of" beatles ( mp3 | wma | mid )]:
My favorite queries are mostly site: command related, when I want to find content on specific web sites. I do however greatly miss inquisitor, the search toolbar, that allows me to save advanced search queries, so I can run them quickly. Snow Leopard totally removed the ability to run these types of plugins in Safari.
What is your favorite search feature?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Bing's Fake Referrer Spam Back, Now Hiding Referrer Now?
Posted: September 10th, 2009, 3:08pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago.
We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log files with fake referrers. But I am seeing a new report that the log files are showing Microsoft Bing IP addresses in them but without referrer data.
An updated Bing Forum thread has one webmaster explaining the situation:
Unfortunately, the problem is back in another shape!
I have almost the same number of fake referrer hits from bing but in a different shape: no referrer. So, the stats show me the pages visited, no referrer and the IPs (microsoft's) are like: 65.55.110.21, 65.55.110.110, 65.55.107.196
So this does not generate fake keyword referrer data, but it does spike up Bing's referrer traffic for specific pages. That is assuming the webmaster who posted this is correct.
Forum discussion at Bing Forum.