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Daily Search Forum Recap: November 20, 2009

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 10:00pm CET 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.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: November 20, 2009

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 9:55pm CET by rustybrick

In this week's search video recap, I try a new format, breaking the news up in segments - do let me know if you like it. I am sorry the video is so long, just lots of information to cover. We start with Google's new user interface that is now being seen by some searchers - it is pretty jazzy. Google is showing breadcrumbs instead of URLs in the search results on occasion. Google is testing Image Swirl, it is pretty tasty. Google Social Search labs is now back in action after going offline. Page load time will be a ranking factor in 2010. Is Google's Caffeine index live in a data center? Why did FeedBurner ruin the search engine friendly web? Did Google preform a hand change to the index for Michelle Obama? Microsoft Bing is updating now. Bing UK when out of beta, was it too soon? AdWords goes on another banning spree - but they now have an appeals process. Check out all that Polish Google ad spam. Google no longer allows exceptions to their 35 character display URL limit. Google expanded their product ads beta. AdSense places gold stars near featured ads. I now have access to the new AdSense beta interface. Publishers are being banned over using Tamper Data as a Firefox plugin. Yahoo added a developing news box to some search results. Finally, Danny took us back to the first ever search marketing conference. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."

Search Topics of Discussion:
Google Search:

Google SEO:

Google Other:

Google Removed Negative Search Result Michelle Obama, Should They Have?

Bing:

AdWords:

AdSense:

Yahoo:

Yahoo Adds Tweets In New Developing News Box

SEM Industry:

Danny Sullivan Looks Back at Starting Search Marketing Conferences

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Google Jazz User Interface Out In The Wild

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 3:06pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Yesterday, Danny covered a new user interface Google is testing on about 2% of their users right now. The interface is known internally (actually, it is not named this internally, but the name is catchy, so maybe we should use it?) as the Jazz UI and is much more colorful, has streamlined search options and kind of looks like the the old Ask 3D interface, just a bit. This new UI might be launched after the holiday season to everyone, so be ready.

Danny wrote (but read the all the details, if you will):

Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz.

There are some people who actually see the new interface. There are two thread at Google Web Search Help, one with screen captures, which prove to me they see it. Here are those screen captures:

This person simply asked, "can anyone help me get Google's regular look back?" The other comment reads:

I did a search a couple minutes ago and it seems like they changed their user interface to look more like a Bing or Yahoo search. For me this is a major fail because the beauty of Google was not only did it feel comfortable, it gave me a wide variety of options like the site links at the side of the page and the sposored links at the top of my search. I think Google should remain the way it was, maybe some minor tweaks but making it look sterile and utterly boring like Bing won't win fans. No other search engine has ever managed to knock Google off the top, so why are they downgrading to a less popular model?

Can't make everyone happy, now can you?

Forum discussion at Sphinn and Google Web Search Help.

Microsoft Bing November 2009 Search Update?

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 3:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

There is some early discussion over at WebmasterWorld that Microsoft Bing has updated their search index. Many webmasters are discussing changes in rankings in this and other forums (which are hard to link to).

Here is what WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster wrote:

Bing engineers may need to refine their trust algos. I'm seeing a SERP where Bing is giving a poor quality subdomain a pass because the main domain has a high amount of inbound links (nearly a million). I think Bings method for determining sites likely to be authoritative needs tweaking.
Interestingly, Bing produces another result not seen in the other search engines that is actually pretty good.

For this site, I can tell you Bing sends up more traffic than Yahoo.

The last Bing update we reported was in late October.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

GoogleBot Can Also Crawl Too Much & Be Nasty

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 2:52pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

The other day, I noticed a thread at Google Webmaster Help where a person was complaining that they were being hit hard by GoogleBot. In short, Google's spider was crawling his site in a very aggressive manner. He said:

After setting a custom crawl rate using webmaster tools (and robots.txt for good measure) GoogleBot's crawl rate slowed to the specified 1 request per (approx.) 60 seconds. However, as of a few hours ago the crawl rate has increased to an inexplicable 1 request every 2 to 3 seconds which is unacceptable - I've had to take the drastic response of adding a site wide disallow until I can get this resolved. Why would the crawl rate increase in speed so and how can I get it to return to the values specified?

Googler, Jonathan Simon, replied and said there was a temporary bug that cause the issue. He apologized and said it was now resolved. Jonathan said:

I took a look into what you've reported and it turns out that there was a temporary issue in the processing pipeline of the crawl rate settings which caused them to not take effect. This issue is now resolved so crawl rate settings should once again behave as expected.

I often give Microsoft a hard time about MSNBot being too aggressive and not listening to webmaster directives. So this time, I felt I point out an issue with GoogleBot.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Now Enforcing 35 Character Display URL Policy

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 2:43pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

First spotted by Kim at AdWords Help Experts Blog, a Google AdWords Help thread has reports that Google is now enforcing the 35 character display URL limit set on AdWords ads.

One advertiser asked for an exception, which Google did allow advertisers to do in the past, and received a reply that read:

Initially for URLs exceeding character limit we used to give exception on a case-by-case basis. However, please note we've revised our guideline on short display URL exception and sorry to inform you that we no longer provide exceptions to the display URL policy for domains that exceed the character space, which is limited to 35 characters for text ads and 20 characters for mobile ads.

There also use to be a way to use dynamic keyword inserting techniques to trick Google into giving you a longer title, but that no longer seems to work for the keywords I have tested. Yes, display URL and ad title are different, I just noticed this as well, when looking back at the history on this topic.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Yahoo Adds Tweets In New Developing News Box

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 2:37pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

Yahoo announced they have added a developing news box that includes news articles, pictures, videos and also tweets.

Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story on the Yahoo! News Shortcut. Many of you are already familiar with the existing Yahoo! News Shortcut, which displays headlines on our Web search results page when you look for news stories. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches.

Here are some screen captures:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Updates iPhone & Android Gmail & Calendar Interface

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Gone mostly unnoticed, Google has updated their Gmail and Google Calendar interface on iPhone and Android mobile devices. Google did announce a new mobile news look for these devices, but no word on the Gmail interface.

I spotted this update via the Google Mobile Help forums, where Googler, Ethan, confirmed the update. He said:

Gmail updated its look & feel in the browser on Android and iPhone devices today. Some of Google's other mobile apps, like Calendar, have also gotten the new look. Other than the 're-skinning,' features are unchanged for now.

Here is what the new 'skin' looks like on the iPhone:

Here is the old one:

Small difference, but someone noticed.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » November 20, 2009

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