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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Daily Search Forum Recap: November 27, 2009
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Major Google Search Thanksgiving '09 Update? Caffeine Related?
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 3:11pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates
Update: Matt Cutts from Google confirmed that Caffeine is live 50% of the time in the 209.85.225.103 data center. See below for more info.
There are several threads reporting major changes in the Google search results, starting yesterday. We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and an updated WebmasterWorld thread.
In short, people are noticing major changes in the search results. Some believe it is a Caffeine index rolling into their search results. Some believe it is just a normal update and not Caffeine related. We do know that Matt Cutts promised not to roll out Caffeine until after the holidays and a roll out at this time would be the worst possible time for online retailers (unless you rank very well in Caffeine.
We also know Google is eventually rolling out Caffeine to a single data center, which can be why many people are noting an update. But again, it might be that these folks are on this single data center or that this is not a Caffeine update. I certainly hope this was not a mistake and Google released the Caffeine update prematurely.
The data center people are talking about now is 209.85.225.103.
People are saying that their traffic is down because of it, but some are also noting that it is/was Thanksgiving yesterday, which can result in people not being on their computers searching Google - thus less traffic from Google.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and an updated WebmasterWorld.
Update from Matt Cutts:
My plane landed and I had time to check. 209.85.225.103 as an IP address currently hits the Caffeine data center about 50% of the time, so that's probably what the person at DP was seeing.
I think it's really risky to take a few threads and turn that into a "major Google update." For example, one of the links you pointed to was asking about the rankings for their site webtlk.com. Given links like http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:iwkj8P8xoSEJ:teqtonik.com/+http://teqtonik.com/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a talking about data recovery and pointing to that site, I'm guessing that Google just got better at determining how much weight should be given to links to that site.
So 209.85.225.103 does hit the Caffeine data center more often than other IP addresses, but it's always been the plan that Caffeine would roll out at one data center (no more data centers will get Caffeine until at least January).
But I would avoid generalizing, at least as going by the one report that mentioned a specific site that I looked into. Of course, on a lot of the webmaster forums you can't tell what site they're talking about, so it's hard to do any debugging on what might have happened to individual sites there.
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Google Maps Bug Disables Searching My Maps for User Created Content
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 3:04pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
A Google Maps Help thread has confirmed reports that searching for user generated content via My Maps seems to no longer be returning results.
ehg, a helpful Google Maps forum member helped debug this. He said, all of my maps of MyMaps created until 20 Oct 2009 are still to search. Here a sample map "GRZG" which is still to search [1] when searching "related maps" and "GRZG". Here searching for a user- created content ("ghghgh5656") of the same map [2] I created the map 10 Oct 2009. And here a search for the last map I can search & find (created 20 Oct 2009 - the second map is a copy of the first one I created at this date) [3].
Googler, Brian B, said, "I'm looking into this and will give an update here. Thanks for escalating."
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
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More on How Google News SEO Works
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 2:59pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google News SEO is a fun topic for me because we are included in Google News. Two recent interviews were published on how Google News ranks articles and yes, it is very different from rankings in Google Web Search.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and Eric Enge at Stone Temple both ask the tough questions with Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News.
I suggest reading those interviews and then joining the WebmasterWorld discussion on the topic. Some really good analysis is going on there on these interviews.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Tracking Phones & Devices For Traffic Data: Crowdsouring Traffic
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 2:43pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
This is old news, back in August Google told us they are now crowdsourcing traffic data in order to provide better and more accurate traffic reports on Google Maps. Let me quote Google:
When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers.
Yep, Google Navigation for Android 1.6 or 2.0 I am sure does this as well.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, a Google Maps Help thread has one Google Maps user asking how Google has traffic data for local streets? He said, "Just curious as to how google maps aggregates the data for traffic conditions of local surface streets, not freeways. Is it through the sensors in the streetlights?"
Useful, but a tad scary. I tested it on some of my local roads that I know are always congested and it does indeed work.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
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Google: Comment Spam Can Hurt Your Site's Ranking
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 2:33pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Spam
Google wrote a blog post named Hard facts about comment spam. I'll sum it up for you quickly. If you do not protect your site against comment spam, Google will trust your site less and it can ultimately hurt your rankings.
Most blogs these days have automatic comment spam solutions, but you need to make sure your blog is handling it correctly. I check comment spam here several times a day. Although most gets caught, some leaks through and I need to take care of them manually. Yes, I have them all nofollowed anyway, but comment spam looks bad and it distracts from the content on this site. I am more concerned with it distracting from the content here then Google trusting me less - too be honest. But most bloggers are more concerned with Google trust over reader trust, so either way, this is something you need to take care of.
How does this hurt your rankings? Well, if Google trusts the links on your site less, then your internal linking power dwindles down and you rank lower.
Google offers these tips:
- Disallow anonymous posting.
- Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
- Turn on comment moderation.
- Use the "nofollow" attribute for links in the comment field.
- Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
- Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.
There is a lot of discussion around this blog post at Google. Some seem surprised by this, while others do not.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and HighRankings Forum.
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Rich Snippets Now in Google UK & Other Non-US Properties
Posted: November 27th, 2009, 2:17pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
First blogged at BigMouthMedia, Google's Rich Snippets feature which went live in the U.S. in May is now showing up in other Google properties, such as the UK, Canada and other English based language countries.
When it first launched, it was only based in the US. But now if you try to bring up sites that provide rich snippets to Google outside of the US, some show them. For example, Google UK, Google Canada and Google Ireland all show them, but Google Israel, Google Mexico and Google Italy do not. I believe it has to do with the language of that country.
A screen shot of Rich Snippets now showing in the Google UK:
A screen shot of Rich Snippets not showing in Google Mexico:
This was first spotted in a thread we covered earlier that felt rich snippets were coming to smaller sites, still not sure if that is true.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.