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Daily Search Forum Recap: December 31, 2009

Posted: December 31st, 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.

2010 New Year Logos from Search Engines: Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com & Google

Posted: December 31st, 2009, 2:48pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Typically, I compile the New Years logos from the various search engines and search industry on New Years Day, but most of the search engines, with the exception of Google, have the logos out already. So here are the 2010 New Years logos. If any of them update and when Google adds there logo, I will update this post.

Google:

Yahoo (Animated):

Yahoo (Static):

Bing:

AOL:

Ask.com:

DogPile:

Baidu:

Clicker:

Sogou:

Zuula:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable (that's us):

For the past year's logos, see: New Years 2009, New Years 2008, New Years 2007, Google's 2006 logo, Search Engine Roundtable's 2006 logo, Ask's 2005 logo, and Cre8asite's 2005.

Forum discussion currently at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Bing Forums, HighRankings Forums, Google Webmaster Help, WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.

Update: Remember the I'm Feeling Lucky Google Countdown feature? Well, at midnight, when you click it, this is what it looks like: Via websonic.nl...

Google Toolbar PageRank Update (New Years 2010)

Posted: December 31st, 2009, 2:06pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates

Almost exactly like last year, Google is pushing out a New Years PageRank Update now. Mid-December we reported PageRank shifts or penalties and today, there are wide spread reports of a PageRank update in the Google Toolbar.

It is a bit funny, because last New Years, we reported in mid-December a PR shuffle and then on December 31, 2008 we reported an official PageRank update in the toolbar. It is almost exactly the same way this year. Today, December 31, 2009, we are reporting the 2010 New Years PageRank update.

The last toolbar PageRank update before today was in October. Like I always say, Toolbar PageRank is not of great use to SEOs. It is often months out of date and does not determine a rank of a web page. So please do not obsess over Toolbar PageRank.

For those who saw their toolbar PageRank go up, congrats on the 'badge' and here is to an even higher PR in 2010!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster Help, Search Engine Watch Forums and DigitalPoint Forums.

Sphinn Closes Submissions Over New Years Weekend

Posted: December 31st, 2009, 2:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: SEO Forum News

Sphinn announced they are closing the site to submissions from 5:00 pm PT on December 31st through about 9:00 am PT on Monday, January 4th.

Matt McGee, the Sphinn Editor, explained the reason for them taking down the submissions capability:

Over the Christmas weekend, we found that just about the only things being submitted to Sphinn were spam. Since we're expecting the New Year's weekend to be similar, we've decided to just turn the submission form off for a few days.

Also, it means - just relax - enjoy the down time and rest up for an awesome 2010! Easier said then done, eh?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Google Removes SEOs from Local One Pack in Search Results

Posted: December 31st, 2009, 1:48pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

In an updated Google Maps Help thread, Joel H. from Google said Google has dropped most of the local results in the Google web search pages for SEO and Web Design related queries. Yes, you heard me right - Google has decided to intentionally not show a local pack for queries that are related to SEO or web design and include a local qualifier. Example searches include [web design 10010], [web design suffern], [seo 90210], [new york seo companies] and so on.

Google first removed web designers from the local pack in November. Then they claimed it was a bug related to a fix for an Orlando Dodge dealership, but that is not true, according to Joel.

Yesterday, Joel from Google said:

Earlier thread, Brian (BB- baseonballs) [a Googler, btw] noted that this may be related to a known issue regarding the display of local search results on google.com. After further investigation, they are slightly different, and I'll explain our intent.

Today, we're intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn't display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I'm sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

I'll give the usual disclaimer that we're constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we're doing today.

Yea, Joel said that. Of course, the logical thoughts by SEOs on this matter is that Google really does hate SEOs. This may be the last Google vs. SEOs controversy of 2009.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 30, 2009

Posted: December 30th, 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.

Can You Optimize for Stop Words in Search Results?

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 2:39pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

A HighRankings Forum thread asks an interesting SEO question. The question is, can you optimize for stop words in Google or other search engines?

His particular example seems flawed, in that he is calling IT a stop word and it is stopping him for optimizing for the query [it companies]. However, when I search for [it companies] in Google, it does seem to figure out, IT here stands for information technology.

But in general, is there a need to optimize for stop words? Do we have more examples of cases? If so, can it be done?

Here is a poll:

Can you SEO for stop words?(polls)

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Update: See Jill's comment below for the issue this SEO has in the thread.

Tracking Back Links: How Do You Do It?

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 2:29pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Link Building

There is an excellent thread at HighRankings Forum on the topic of how you should or could track one's link building efforts. The topic in this thread started off about how to track links accrued due to a link building contest. However, the topic moved into how to track link building efforts for a site in general.

Many are of the opinion that no tool can accurately measure the links acquired over time. Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and the various other tools, to many, are not that accurate. As Rosemary said in the thread, "one month Yahoo would show 10,000 inbound links and the next month only 300." It is hard to rely on tools that you don't know how it works and when there is a bug, you cannot fix it yourself.

Others say that when they build links, they store the information in a spreadsheet to report back to the client. I have seen this done. I am a firm believer that if you are hiring a link building company, they should provide you with an organized means of knowing what links they acquired for you, from where and when they acquired them. I have said this before, so I say it again.

Others in the thread said they just gave up on collecting and monitoring this data.

How do you track your back links?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Reporting Google Maps Business Listing Spam to Google

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 2:20pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Mike reported how Google likes you to report Google Maps business listing spam to them. Google Maps, especially the local business center, has been a target for spammers in the past couple years. Google has tried numerous ways to have people report spam to them.

I guess recently, Google changed it to ask people to report a problem with the business listing via the "report a problem" link either on the map itself or on the business's place page. As Mike said, Maps Guide Cecelia noted that the "time frame [for spam removal] most likely varies based on the number of reports we receive."

To report spam on a business's places page, you go to the "more info" link on the search results of that listing and then click on the "more" link. The more link will open up options, such as "report a problem":

After you click the "report a problem" link, a form pops up asking for more information:

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Google Promises to Fix Google Webmaster Tools API Verification Process in January

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 2:08pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Those of you who are patiently waiting for Google to fix the verification tag in the Webmaster Tools API for the past two months just has to wait a bit longer.

In short, those who are tying to use the Webmaster Tools API to verify their sites with Google Webmaster Tools are running into issues. The reason is, the meta tag being generated via the API is wrong and needs to be updated by Google. This has been going on since October 2009.

Dennis G. from Google promised he will finally update it to work in January, sometime. He said:

We've partly updated the API already. The rest will be fixed in January. Sorry for the delay.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google 302 Hijack Attempt on CNN for Blackberry News?

Posted: December 30th, 2009, 1:59pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Conduct a search for [blackberry news] (Note: I wouldn't click on those results, they may infect your computer) in Google and see page two and three of the results. The results are inundated with weird results from random domains that redirect to CNN.com. The redirect is a 302 redirect and the header looks like:

HTTP/1.1 302 => Date => Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:58:52 GMT Content-Type => text/html Connection => close Server => Apache Content-Length => 0 Location => http://cnn.com

Here is a picture of just two of those results:

For a full page of results, see this screen capture.

Now, I do not know much about hijacking search results in Google. I know this was somewhat of a major issue in 2005. Then in 2008, we reporting page hijacking wasn't an issue in Google anymore, until about six months ago, when it popped up again.

So maybe this is a new example of a 302 hijack attempt. This time targeting the popular news source, CNN and going after the keyword phrase [blackberry news]?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 29, 2009

Posted: December 29th, 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.

Google AdWords Images With Girls in Thongs Allowed?

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 7:34pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

I was searching for a logo of a company, I searched Google Images for [compucall logo] and I was presented with an AdWords ad, but one of those product image ads. Google began allowing these ads a few months back, they are called product image ads in AdWords.

But what stood out was that this image was of a woman in thong underwear. Here is a picture:

I wonder what type of click through rate this ad gets?

I wonder if Google has a policy against these types of images on their search pages? I don't really see anything in the Google FAQs on these product extensions, but I can be missing it.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Google Movie Search Returns Weird 9-11 Message

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 2:48pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A search in Google for [movie: nine nyc] directs you to a Google Movie results page. It shows you the typical movie theaters in that area and movie times, as you would expect. However, it also shows "Showtimes for September 11 attacks" in the blue bar under the search box.

That, to me, is incredibly weird. Here is a picture:

Also, others are reporting a search in Google for [movie: nine ny] directs you to a Google Movie results page. It shows you the typical movie theaters in that area and movie times, as you would expect. However, it also shows "Showtimes for US Airways Flight 1549" in the blue bar under the search box.

The US Airways Flight was the one that safely emergency landed in the Hudson River in New York.

I am not sure why these weird, cryptic messages are coming up in Google Movie search.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

How to Find a Google Advertising Professional with Google

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 2:35pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Five years after launching the Google Advertising Professional program, Google is giving users a way to search and find these professionals.

Tim Cohn first spotted this, a new page Google launched named Google Advertising Professionals Search beta. You can basically plug in some variables, such as monthly spend, location and type of AdWords related help you are looking for and hit search.

Here is a screen capture:

I covered this yesterday at Search Engine Land and one person found the search to be poor, an advertiser said he already got a lead from this feature.

Note: Google has not really publicized the feature yet - so hopefully Google will place this feature in the for front of where customers would look for it.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Blogger & Webmaster Tools Verification Bug

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 2:29pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A Google Webmaster Help thread, written in Italian, has confirmed reports of a bug between Google's Blogger and Google Webmaster Tools.

Dennis G. from the Google Webmaster Team, who is specifically involved in the verification process, wrote in a Google Webmaster Help thread:"

It looks like we have a bug in our blogger integration. I'll go fix that. In the meanwhile, try verifying by meta tag instead.

It seems like he is the man that actually goes in to fix the "bug." How cool is that?

In any event, if you are having problems verifying your Blogger blog with Google Webmaster Tools, know that you are not alone.

There is no ETA for the fix, but Dennis made it sound like it is a quick fix.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Uses ccTLD Over Server Location for Localizing Search Results

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 2:20pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Whenever an SEO talks about geo-targeting your site to a specific region, so it ranks well on that localized version of Google they tell you to do a few things.

(1) Host in the country you want to rank well for
(2) Try to use a ccTLD for that country, i.e. domain.co.uk for UK
(3) Set the geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools

However, instead of using a ccTLD, I often see sites deploy a subdomain or subfolder to specify a different language or geographic target. A ccTLD is best, in my opinion. Of course, there are times you want to use a localized language by target the main Google - so that does apply.

JohnMu from Google replied to a Google Webmaster Help thread stating that a ccTLD is much more powerful than hosting your site on a server in that country. Specifically, John said:

Yes, we do try to find context from these two factors (I think this article is being updated to be a bit more clear though :-)) -- however, if your site has a geographic TLD/ccTLD (like .co.nz) then we will not use the location of the server as well. Doing that would be a bit confusing, we can't really "average" between New Zealand and the USA... At any rate, if you are using a ccTLD like .co.nz you really don't have to worry about where you're hosting your website, the ccTLD is generally a much stronger signal than the server's location could ever be.

Google will use the ccTLD over the server location to geotarget your site. This makes sense to me, but I do not think this has been covered here. We covered the overal topic dozens of times, but not specifically which factor is more important.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Hate Fox on Google News? Join the Google Club

Posted: December 29th, 2009, 2:11pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Everyone talks about how liberal Google is and how it may bias their objectivity in the search results and their other agendas. But every day, I check the Google News Forum and see complaints from "liberals" that Google News shows Fox News, a very conservative news source, in the Google News search results and home page. The more I see the complaints, the more I see that Google is not politically bias in their search results.

Just take a quick scan of the Google News Forum and see how many complaints there are about Fox News being included:

I find it a bit comical to be honest. I did think it would be nice to give searchers an option about how liberal or conservative they want the news to be. I asked they create a liberal & conservative news slider control that allows users to adjust how liberal or conservative the news gets. Of course, if Google did that, they would have to label each news source as liberal/conservative or pick up words on a page that make a news source liberal or conservative. That can get a bit hairy.

I just thought I point out the daily activity in this Google News Forum.

Forum discussion at Google News Forum.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 28, 2009

Posted: December 28th, 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.

Google AdWords Paralysis: Advertisers Afraid to Change Campaigns

Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:55pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

I've been holding on this topic for after the holiday break. A new and long WebmasterWorld thread has great discussion over the topic of AdWords advertisers being afraid to make change to their accounts. Why are they afraid? Well, they are afraid of being banned or their Quality Score dropping where they cannot compete and so on.

So what do they do? They slowly die out. As one advertiser explained:

We are afraid to do anything. We are not adding ads. We are not taking advantage of the new stuff google is offering. We just delete ads as they drop in QS. We are paralyzed and slowly dying.

The thread moved into the discussion of how Google treats affiliates in the AdWords space. Now, we discussed that often and maybe only affiliates feel paralyzed in AdWords, I am not sure. But I wanted to get a good feel from the AdWords advertiser base, if you feel this way also.

Please take my poll: AdWords Advertiser: Do You Feel Paralyzed?

AdWords Advertiser: Do You Feel Paralyzed?(surveys)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bing's MSNBot Crawling Fake File Names?

Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:41pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

A WebmasterWorld thread and an older Bing Forums thread has discussion from webmasters over the issue of Microsoft Bing's web crawler, MSNBot, crawling file names that do not exist on a specific site.

This reminders me of the ongoing issue of Bing creating fake referrals in webmaster log files. This has been going on for years, where Microsoft claims they have fixed it, but never really has.

In this specific case, it seems like Bing is creating file names on a specific site to crawl. Wel, they are not creating files, just trying to fetch pages that do not and never have existed on a specific site. I am not sure if this is a Bing issue or a webmaster issue.

A long time WebmasterWorld member explained the issue:

In what is apparently a rather old bad behavior, msnbot has a practice of regularly requesting totally manufactured URIs that appear to be designed to trigger 404 errors. Here are two sample log entries of the two styles of bogus URIs msnbot requests:
'65.55.207.126'¦Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:39:49 -0500¦'msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)'¦'*/*'¦'/ADBF3C7AB534E8356F30D8AC05291640_00000.temp019f.html'¦''
'65.55.207.28'¦Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:46:22 -0500¦'msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)'¦'*/*'¦'/000166709_00001.temp00be.html'¦''

The requests ALWAYS take on one of the formats above starting with either a 32byte GUID or a nine digit integer.

In the Bing thread, another person said:

For many many years, msnbot has been crawling my sites looking for files that have never existed... i'm trying to figure out why...
the filenames have changed slightly in recent times but they have been similar in structure since the beginning... they are something like 000092601_00002.temp0001.htm... in other words, 9 numbers underscore 5 numbers dot temp 4 numbers dot htm... the search for these is all over my server's directory tree...

I'll emphasize once more that these files have never existed on my site and i have no clue how msnbot may have picked them up...

Honestly, I feel bad that I am always beating up on Microsoft. I know they are new to the game, when you compare them to Google. But I have to report these issues.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Bing Forums.

60% of U.S. Government's Data on Google Servers? Nope

Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Sherri Davidoff posted an article named Our Google Government after seeing one of those Google Docs ads on a site. The ad reads, "Over 60% of the U.S. state governments have gone Google." Here is a picture of it:

Of course this worries many, including myself. But you have to understand that while maybe 60% of the U.S state government has "gone Google" it doesn't mean that the U.S.'s most sensitive data is on Google's servers. It is possible that some small government offices have switched to Google Apps for email or document management. But to house sensitive intelligence on a hosted Google owned server? That has not happened.

How am I so sure? Well, I am not. But I recently watched a 60 minute show (or something like it, I forget, it was a few months back), which was about how countries are hacking into other countries to steal intel and money from each other. One of the concerns was using Google to host the information. A top government official said that while many governments use Google for everyday use, the most sensitive information is stored on government built and maintained hardware and software.

In fact, the official said that they cannot trust hardware or chips made in some countries because they have seen cases where those chips actually are programmed to secretly send over data from the computer to a remote location. So to trust Google with that information, simply doesn't make sense. And that is what the official said. It costs the government a lot more than it would if they outsourced it to Google, but in some cases, it is not about saving money.

Of course, some U.S. offices might receive sensitive information in their Google hosted applications. And the risk of that increases daily as more data is sent back and forth and more offices "go Google." But this all needs to be kept in perspective.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google & Lightbox JavaScript: Can GoogleBot Index Images in Lightbox JS?

Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:07pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around getting Google to index a popular image feature sites use to show off images on their web site. It is called Lightbox JS and it basically uses JavaScript to open up a neat larger view of the image on the page.

I use it on many sites, but you can see a quick example on the RustyBrick Mobile Portfolio. Just click on the image and it opens up a larger picture of that image. Here is a screen capture showing the larger image as it overlays on top of the page:

The issue is, GoogleBot is having a tough time capturing these images in their index. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, explained:

I've been up against the same challenge. Even though regular Google search is aggressively discovering URLs and content by spidering JavaScript, apparently the image bot is not so inquisitive at this point. This surprised me, because there are many images being displayed through Lightbox scripts these days.

Yes, GoogleBot is able to execute JavaScript, but is GoogleImageBot able to at the same pace?

Tedster is exploring other ways to get GoogleBot to index Lightbox JS. He tried the following method, but it doesn't seem to work:

My latest attempt involves making the anchor part of the link a thumbnail image - but the thumbnail is not just a smaller version of the larger image. I use the same exact image file for the anchor, but I resize it on the the page with the HTML width and height attributes. This means that the page loads more slowly, but at least the image bot gets a direct <img src=[url]> style mark-up.

If you have a solution, let us know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Porn on Google Image Search with Strict Search On

Posted: December 28th, 2009, 1:53pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that a search on (beware before you click) [cricket talks] in Google Image search returns a pornographic image. It happens both on standard safe search and strict safe search, but goes away completely when you turn off the safe search feature.

Here is a picture, which I cropped a bit to show the result here:

I personally see the image on the 3rd row when strict search is on and the second row when safe search is in standard or moderate mode.

What is interesting is that it is hosted on a pretty bad domain, i.e. asianteenmovieslesbiananal.info. OpenDNS for me blocks the domain due to the domain and network containing pornography and nudity. I guess Google got mixed up with this one.

On a related note, a Google News Help thread reports that Google News had an image of a PlayBoy teaser on their most viewed section. I personally did not see it, but it would not have been the first time seductive or nude images showed up on the front page of Google News.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & Google News Help.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: Christmas Day 2009

Posted: December 25th, 2009, 4:10pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Merry Christmas everyone! This week at the Search Engine Roundtable was a fairly slow week, due to the holidays. Some of the news I wanted to cover includes that Googlers are working on Christmas. Also, I posted the Christmas logos and themes from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, Baidu, and so many others - so check it out. Google sent out e-cards saying they will be giving $20 million in charity in exchange for sending out schwag to advertisers and publishers. Brett Tabke felt we got stiffed and was pretty upset. Brett later explained he feels Google is cutting on webmaster and advertiser support and relations. Also, Bing really has zero support for the canonical tag and I explained why that upset me. QuickMark QR scanner fixed their bug, which caused a major headache for Google's favorite places decals. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable - Merry Christmas!

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:

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

Merry Christmas All & Googlers Working Today

Posted: December 25th, 2009, 2:22pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Merry Christmas! Although I have about five items to write about today, I figured I hold off on them until Monday. Trust me, I know how it is to be swamped and buried in feeds and news to catch up on while I am celebrating a Jewish holiday - so I will spare you all. Plus, I finally am making the move to Google Chrome, using Chromium on my Mac - so it is nice to take it slow to get up to speed on it.

If you are reading today, make sure to check out our Christmas logos for 2009, which I just updated this morning to add several more logos from other search engines. In short, there are logos from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, and many others - so check it out.

In addition, I caught Googlers working on Christmas again. For the past few years, I have caught Googlers helping webmasters in the forums. This year is no different. JohnMu from Google posted in at least two threads on Christmas eve. One was the Merry Christmas Google thread and the other was a more technical webmaster question. Googlers did the same in 2008, 2007 and 2006. They also worked on New Years last year and the year before.

Finally, I will be working on my weekly search video recap today. Expect it to go live later today and you can watch (or just listen to) it at your leisure.

Merry Christmas and in our tradition, forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Google Toolbar Help, HighRankings Forums, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Google Maps Help, Google AdWords Help & Google Webmaster Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 24, 2009

Posted: December 24th, 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.

Bing Doesn't Support the Canonical Tag At All Right Now

Posted: December 24th, 2009, 3:02pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

There is this old and upsetting thread in the Bing Forums about how Bing handles the canonical tag. The thread is filled with misinformation. Matt McGee's post at Search Engine Land a week ago says it clearly.

Bing says it's still working on supporting the canonical tag on a single domain, and suggests webmasters should rely on other means to manage duplicate content.

You got that right, 11 months ago, Google, Yahoo and Bing announced support for the Canonical tag. As far as I know, only Google really uses it and they even added cross domain canonical support this month. Where is Bing at this? Well, in the next several months they hope to support a single domain use of the canonical tag and hopefully soon after the cross domain support. So it would have taken Bing over a year since they announced support of this tag to actually support it?

I am not too upset about that, to be honest. What I am more upset about is that official Bing support representatives are pretty much lying in the Bing Forums. Brett Yount, the Product Manager of Bing Webmaster Center said:

accourding to our blog post, http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx, the canonical tag is used as a hint only.

No, it is not used as a hint or anything. It is not used period, not yet. Maybe in four months, but not yet.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

Did Google Pull Back on Webmaster & Advertiser Support in 2009?

Posted: December 24th, 2009, 2:41pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

As a continuation of Brett Tabke calling out Google for stiffing webmasters over the Christmas gift this year, Brett explains more of why he is a bit upset with Google in 2009. Brett lays out what he believes Google is moving towards and it seems to really upset him and other webmasters. Brett explained:

Google retracts almost every webmasters/siteowner outreach program it had in 2009.
They left the trade show circut. Other than what they had contracted a year earlier, they eliminated their participation in trade shows.
Left their own speakers to pay for their own way to industry conferences. (denying expense receipts).
Eliminated AdWords account support.
Layed off hundreds (thousands according to some reports) temp advertising support reps.
Canceled the Google customer support party (Google dance).
Eliminated the vendor appreciation programs for AdSense and Adwords.

Brett said "Everything Google has done in the last year has screamed, 'AdSense and AdWords markets are maximized or tapped out. Put it into maintenance mode and lets go see where else we can make money.'"

Is it true? Well, Google only held one Webmaster Chat session this year, which was last month, before that, in 2008 and 2007, they held tons of these. It seems like Google limited their sponsorship of conferences in 2009, including not sponsoring PubCon and did limited sponsorships for SMX and SES events this past year (i.e. sponsored sessions) I believe. I also know they cut back on sending representatives to shows, but I do not know the extent of that. They have cut AdWords rep support, laid off temp workers, did not hold the annual Google Dance, cut gifts in exchange of the donations they give anyway, and so on.

However, I did notice a step up in the support forums. They upgraded the support forum software (slowly) and added representatives to them. They added features to Webmaster Tools, posted a ton on the Webmaster Blog, Matt produced tons of support videos and so on. So it does seem like overall, they may have spent a lot less money on webmaster/advertiser relations and focused on the less expensive routes. 2009 was a recession for many businesses, but was Google recession proof? Should they have not made these cuts? I am not really to judge.

I do believe Google will be sending more reps to conferences this year, and that they are less concerned about the economy in 2010 then they were in 2009. Maybe sponsorship of events will grow in 2010? Maybe the Google Dance will come back? Maybe?

I hate to judge how other companies use their money. 2009 was an extremely tough year for many businesses. It seemed to us that Google sailed through the year with no problems at all. But who knows what decisions they made early on to help with that? This is a very sensitive topic but being that Google is a public company, I guess these questions can be asked.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Offends the Dreadlocks Hairstyle

Posted: December 24th, 2009, 2:31pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A search for [dreadlocks] sports one of those Google definitions links at the top right of the page that leads to an 'offensive' categorization of those who have dreadlocks as their hairstyle. The Google Definition of dreadlocks uses it in a sentence as, "He was turned down for a driving job when he refused to cut his dreadlocks."

Now one person takes offense to this and posted his dissatisfaction in a Google Web Search Help forum. He wrote:

While it's true that this kind of thing (unfortunately) does happen, is it crazy to anyone else to be in a dictionary? It'd be like having the definition for Asian American being "He was turned down for the driving job because he was Asian American."

Here is a picture of the definition:

If Google stayed with Answers.com as their definitions provider, they might not be taking flack for this.

Personally, I find these types of posts funny - which is why I am highlighting this one.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Christmas Logos From Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask & Others

Posted: December 24th, 2009, 1:31pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Merry Christmas Search Engine Roundtable readers! I believe most of the search engines have their special logos or themes live today. They include a handful of logos from Google, an animated logo from Yahoo, an awesome picture from Bing, a sweet Ask.com theme, DogPile's fun dress up and more from the industry.

Google began their logo blitz on the first day of Winter. While, we had Winter themes from YouTube, Bing and others, Google started with "the holidays." Calling it "The Holidays" made some Christians upset, mostly those in the U.K. Also, Google did not have a Chanukah logo like Bing or Ask did.

In any event, here are pictures of the Christmas logos, but this time I will end with Google, since they have so many:

Yahoo (animated) Christmas logo:

Yahoo (static) Christmas logo:

Bing's Christmas Theme:

December 24th:

December 25th:

Ask.com's Christmas Theme:

DogPile's Christmas Theme:

Baidu's Christmas Logo:

Quintura's Christmas Logo:

Clicker Christmas Logo:

Sogou Christmas Logo:

FriendFeed Christmas logo:

Zuula Christmas Logo:

BruceClay Christmas Logo:

Cre8asite Christmas Logo:

Search Engine Roundtable Christmas Theme:

Google's Christmas / Holiday Logos (so far four):

#1:

#2:

#3:

#4:

#5:

I'll update this post when I find more logos from the search industry.

For the past year's holiday and Christmas logos, see our posts from 2008, the 2007 logos, plus Google's five logos, 2006 logos, Cre8asite in 2005, also '05 Search Engine Roundtable and '05 Google, Yahoo and Ask, plus we have 2004 and some of 2003 archived for you.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Google Toolbar Help, HighRankings Forums, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Google Maps Help, Google AdWords Help & Google Webmaster Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 23, 2009

Posted: December 23rd, 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.

QuickMark iPhone Update Fixes Google Favorite Places QR Code Decals

Posted: December 23rd, 2009, 2:55pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A few weeks ago, I was the first to report about Google decals going to wrong places and then we saw a flood of people complaining about the issue.

It turns out that the primary iPhone app recommended by Google for scanning these decals was made by QuickMark. QuickMark had a bug that was introduced just about the time these decals came out. The bug impacted where users were taken after they scanned a QR code.

The bug was fixed yesterday and it now works perfectly for me. The bug fixes included:

Fix incorrect URL bug
Allow Move & Scale for Take Photo method

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

WebmasterWorld's Tabke: Google "Stiffed" Webmasters on Christmas

Posted: December 23rd, 2009, 2:45pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday we reported that Google donated $20 million to charity instead of giving out their typical holiday gifts to publishers. We initially thought Google would not send out gifts this year, and we were somewhat right. They did not give publishers, advertisers or webmasters anything really - outside of what they earned.

Brett Tabke, the owner of WebmasterWorld, commented in a WebmasterWorld thread with his true feelings. He felt Google stiffed webmasters, advertisers and publishers this year. Let me quote him:

Lets get real. A $20m tax write off to charity has nothing to do with AdSense or AdWords swag gifts. If you were expecting a gift from Google - you got stiffed. Your "gift" did not go to charity. If it did go to charity in your name, then ask Google for documentation to that effect so that you can take it off your taxes. To even mention the two in the same breath is a disservice to the charities and to AdSense operators. Google gives money every year to charity - so do alot of businesses. $20 million isn't even good pocket changes to google. These two events are totally unrelated. Nothing but political pr slight-of-hand at work.

Do you agree with this?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense Tests Searching For Targeted Ads in Console

Posted: December 23rd, 2009, 2:34pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Last night I received an email from Google about a new feature available in my AdSense account, as a beta. The feature basically allows me to search for ads that are targeted towards my site. Searching for ads makes it a bit easier to find and block or allow these ads from being shown on my pages.

Here is a picture of the new feature:

Here is a copy of the email:

Subject: Announcing Search in the AdSense Ad Review Center

Hello,
As a beta tester of the new AdSense interface, you'll soon be able to use the Ad Review Center to search for ads that are targeted to your site. This new search functionality is designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review, based on feedback we've received from publishers.

To start searching for ads, sign in to your AdSense account. If you're presented with the previous interface, click the "Try new AdSense" link in the upper right-hand corner. Then, visit the "Allow & block ads" tab. You'll find the "Search ads" link in the left-hand navigation bar, where you can search by keyword text or ad URL. Learn more about search in our Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?answer=167309.

We invite you to provide us with your feedback about this new beta feature, using the 'Provide feedback' link in the upper right-hand corner of your account. Thanks in advance for your input, and we look forward to incorporating your suggestions into this new feature.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

The feature doesn't seem to work fully for me yet, but I suspect it to be very useful for many publishers once it goes fully live.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Permalink for 'Search_Engine_Roundtable/2009/12/23/Top_Questions_Asked_on_Google_AdWords'

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 22, 2009

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

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.

Google Cutting Personalized AdWords Representative Support?

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:51pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google has cut a few the personalized AdWords representatives from big spend advertisers. The recent report comes from a long time WebmasterWorld member, cline. Cline said he lost his representative because he stopped taking on new clients and Google said they will only provide him a rep if he brings in new clients.

However, others have reported they lost their reps, and soon after, they were banned from AdWords. Some suspect that it is only a matter of time until Cline gets banned, because they feel it is a sign that he will. People in the thread said they know other advertisers who spend over $100,000 per month, lost their Google representative and a month later were banned.

I am not sure if Cline is in the same boat here. Let me quote him:

My agency has had a dedicated Adwords support team since about 2004. I just got notified that we're losing dedicated support. The reason is that even though we're managing ever-increasing spend levels from our existing clients, we're too busy with our existing clients to accept new clients. Adwords only wants to give dedicated support to agencies bringing in new clients and who need help with strategy. We only have technical issues.

In any event, the AdWords bans continue. You can read all about that over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Funny Ballmer Firing Bing Employee Hoax

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:45pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

This is a hoax, this is not true, but it spread around the internet over the weekend and I found it pretty funny. Again, this is a comic, who did a skit of some sort. Microsoft confirmed this is not a real employee or ex-employee at Microsoft.

The video portrays a disgruntled ex-Microsoft employee describing how he was fired by Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, over not saying "Bing" with enthusiasm.

If you know the jokes about Ballmer, this is pretty funny.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Christians Upset Google Logo Doesn't Say "Merry Christmas"

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:33pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

There are dozens of complaints from Christian Google users with their dissatisfaction over the wording of the Google Holiday logo. In short, the complaint is that Google is saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Christians are asking why Google is saying "Happy Holidays" when no other holiday overlaps with Christmas this year. Chanukah was earlier this month and the other holidays don't seem to fall out during Christmas, so why not say it as it is?

Here are pictures that illustrate the 'politically correct' holiday message from Google:

You can see the logos at google.com/logos/holidays-2009.html.

Here is one of the many complaints in the forum:

For the entirety of Google's history (including this year) they put up a variety of Christmas-themed logos between approximately December 22 and December 25, but they say "happy holidays" and not "Merry Christmas"!!
What other holiday occurs between Dec. 22 and 25?? Why must Google be so politically correct? "Merry Christmas" is one of the most popular greetings in the world! This is ridiculous, why is Google forcing me out of the Christmas spirit?

Forum discussion at several Google Web Search Help threads.

Google Images Bug Shifts Images Off Search Results Page

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

I am seeing random reports, now a total of three individual reports, in the Google Web Search Help forums where users are reporting that Google Images search results are going off the page.

One user posted a picture, which describes the issue. Here is a picture:

It seems like the first row of images is shown on the far left side of the browser and then the rest are displayed down the row, but under the fold. One person explained:

All the images are on the left side of the page going down the page. You can bearly see the image and it is very anouying!! How do u make it so it is back to the normal way, were the images go across the page instear of going down????

Googler, Jem thinks this is some type of browser bug. Jem asked the users to clear their cookies and try again. Jem is also asking users for more feedback so they can debug the issue.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Sends Out $20 Million Worth of Holiday Presents in 2009

Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:07pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

We thought Google was notgoing to give out holiday gifts, and in exchange, inviting publishers to lunch. But starting yesterday, Google began sending out a holiday e-mail card to both advertisers and publishers. The card basically said Google is doing something a bit different this year and instead of giving out presents, they are giving $20 million to charity on our behalf.

Here is a picture of the e-card which leads to google.com/advertising/holiday2009:

Here is a picture of the landing page:

Overall, people are happy with this as their gift this year. We have thread at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Want to see the previous years gifts? See 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 21, 2009

Posted: December 21st, 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.

Google One Box Blindness

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 3:02pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

An early WebmasterWorld thread is discussing the topic of Google One Box "blindness." Google One Boxes are those enhanced results you see at the top or within the search results of Google. When they first came out, there were hard to miss, but now SEOs and maybe some searchers are subconsciously blocking them out, like they would ads?

Here are some examples of "one boxes":

Get the point?

Do you think all this injection of special "universal search" results, as well as Google owned content (i.e. YouTube, weather, google groups, blogspot, definitions, etc) is going to eventually suffer from "one box blindness"?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Introducing The Google Mapping Tool Availability Matrix

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 2:50pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Google Maps has tons of features, but some of those features are not available in all regions due to many reasons. In order to help document what is and what is not available in certain regions, Google created a page named the Mapping Tool Availability to help you see which Google tools are available for mapping your area.

Google breaks the page down by several regions including Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, Middle East, North America, Oceania and South America. When you open a region, Google shows you a matrix of what features are available in that area, features such as the Local Business Center, Community Edits, My Maps, Map Maker or Building Maker. Here is a screen capture of the North America matrix:

This will come in handy for the folks in the Google Maps forum and for local business consultants.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Do You Compete in PPC Bid Wars?

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 2:40pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Pay Per Click Engines

A WebmasterWorld thread has new discussion around the topic of pay-per-click (PPC) bidding wars. A PPC bidding war is when two or more advertisers want to out bid each other in the search ads in order to either deplete the funds of the competition or to secure a certain position in the search results.

With the PPC ranking models these days, it is often hard to just compete on price for the top search ad - although it is possible. But bidding wars are somewhat more frequent amongst new advertisers and large brands with large budgets.

The question I have for you is, do you do this? Do you ever compete in PPC bid wars? I doubt I got all the possible options below, but try to not use the "other" option if possible.

Do You Compete in PPC Bidding Wars?(trends)

Tell your friends and colleagues to take this quick poll.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Rendering Google AdSense on iPhone or Android Has Minor Quirk?

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 2:33pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that when you try to login to Google AdSense using your Android device or an iPhone it rendered the reports all weird. I tried to reproduce this on my side, but I am currently not able to.

What many are reporting is that the report seems to load in an iframe below the login box, after you login. Let me quote one of the reports:

I typed my username and password.
The report appeared just at the place where I typed in username and password.

It seems like the report is in a not scrollable IFRAME starting at the position of the input for username and password

I think I am not having the issue because I am logging in automatically. Google AdSenseAdvisor replied to the thread saying:

I'm investigating. I'll let you know when I hear something back. Thanks for flagging this.

We have no ETA for a fix or even a solid confirmation what type of bug this is.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Removing A Competitor's Google Maps Listing

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 2:22pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A local mover reported in a Google Maps Help thread that his competitor has successfully removed his listing from Google Maps by having hundreds of people report his address as "inaccurate" in the Google search results.

Back in October, Google added a link to the map results found in the results to enable users to mark a business listing as accurate or not and this person is claiming that his competitor was able to use that to remove his listing in Google Maps. He said:

He has now used those same fake user accounts to report my addresses as invalid - probably hundreds of times with the number of ID's that he has. The likely automated trigger at Google goes off and the map spammer with the 40 fake address and hundreds, if not thousands, of fake reviews from from bogus accounts wins the day. It's easy to report a bogus address.

Now, I am not sure if this is indeed possible. You can always try to reproduce it, but that might be a bad thing to try to reproduce.

A Google Maps representative, Maps Guide Linda, did reply to this thread saying:

Thanks for reporting this instance of spam to us. We will effectively deal with this user since they are violating our Business Listing Quality Guidelines. Please take a look at our guidelines yourself to make sure your listings comply.

I am not sure if she is referencing the abuse of the "inaccurate" reporting feature or the abuse of this mover posting dozens of duplicate companies in Google Maps.

So can you use the "is this accurate" link to remove competitors from Google?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google Holiday Logos, Also Yahoo, Bing & YouTube Winter Logos

Posted: December 21st, 2009, 2:04pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

The next two weeks are typically the slowest two weeks in the search industry (and probably most other industries). It is the holiday week, with Christmas and New Years coming, as well as it being the first day of Winter today.

Google already started their holiday logo blast, although Google missed Chanukah this year, they are calling the logos "Holiday logos". You will be able to see a new one every day and Google will archive them at google.com/logos/holidays-2009.html. Here is the first one:

Like I said, Google will have a new logo each day (maybe I will update this post here or make a new one for those).

Google # 2:

Yahoo is running a flash based logo also for the past few days:

But today is actually the first day of Winter here on our side of the world. And for the day, we have a nice theme from Bing, YouTube and from ourselves as well:

Bing Winter:

YouTube Winter:

Search Engine Roundtable Winter:

Happy holidays, cold winter and relaxing/healthy next two weeks.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums and Google Web Search Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 18, 2009

Posted: December 18th, 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 :: December 18, 2009

Posted: December 18th, 2009, 9:54pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

This week in search, I announce that I am hosting SMX SphinnCon Israel on March 7, 2010 in Jerusalem. Google announced the support for cross domain canonical tags. There may have been a Toolbar PageRank penalty earlier this week. Google may add PDF support to fetch as Googlebot. Google dropped Answers.com for their own definitions. Google is testing infinite scroll in image search. Bing might add "page score" to their toolbar. MSNBot crawls pages twice, once for compressed http and one for uncompressed. Google's new QR codes on the favorite places maps decals are sending users to wrong business, likely because of QR scanners and not Google. Google messed up the AdSense reporting again. Yahoo Search Marketing ads went down for a short period of time. Google is now in the URL shortening business with goo.gl. Google may buy Yelp for $500 million. Google is inviting publishers for Christmas lunch. Google's Im Feeling Lucky button does the New Year countdown. Google did a Doodle for Zamenhof. Google forgot about The Simpons 20th birthday, a shame. 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:
Misc:

Announcing SMX SphinnCon Israel 2010: March 7, 2010

Google Web Search:

Bing:

Google Maps:

Paid Search & Contextual:

Misc Google:

Fun Search Topics:

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

Happy 20th Birthday The Simpsons

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 3:27pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Blog Administration

I wanted to wish The Simpsons a very happy 20th birthday. I have been personally watching the show for 20 years, crazy to believe. I am surprised to see none of the search engines doing a logo for the special day.

That won't stop us from posting a special theme. Here it is:

I know this has no search relevancy at all - so I apologize.

Happy 20th Birthday!

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Google Drops Answers.com For Google Definitions

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 3:13pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

Earlier this month, Google dropped Answers.com as their definitions provider. A month ago or so, Google would link from the word "definition" to Answers.com, now Google links to themselves.

For example, a search for [definitions] shows a hyperlink named "definition". Here is a picture:

When you click on it, it now takes you to Google Definitions at Google.com/Dictionary. In the past, and since early 2005 it took you to Answers.com.

I have not seen a thread or complain about this until today - so I guess most people didn't take much notice. The thread is at Google Web Search Help and it reads:

The "definition" feature Google has in its search page includes lots of features including comprehensive dictionary, pronunciation of words, translation to many other languages, all this gone, I have noticed its format was changed recently to a very simple uninformative format, very very disappointing! I was using it quite a lot.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Bug: Bing Webmaster Tools Not Accepting URLs with Hyphens

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 3:03pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

There are a few reports in a Bing Forum thread that adding a site to Bing Webmaster Tools might not work. Specifically, if the URL or domain contains a hyphen (dash) such as www.best-domain.com.

Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster team confirmed the bug, saying:

Currently, we are having a few difficulties which I just received confirmation from the indexing team. They are currently working on it, but said that if you try a couple times, it should work. If not, and your site isn't in the index at all , please post on the not in index thread and I will work to get your home page (only) into the index.

I personally tried adding a domain with a hyphen and it worked for me on the first try. So maybe it is resolved or maybe those specific domains have other issues?

Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

Google Favorite Places QR Codes Taking Many Customers to Wrong Location

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 2:44pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

On Friday afternoon, I reported My Google Favorite Place Decal Was Hijacked. In short, it turned out the QR code was indeed correct, but if the QR code scanner reads it wrong, it can take you to a different business. Which is what happens when I use certain scanners or if the lighting is poor when I scan using certain apps.

Here is a quick video of how this went down on Friday afternoon:

Now, I am not the only one experiencing these problems. I have spotted at least four threads (I know there are more) with complaints about their QR codes not working.

Let me pull out the various complaints from the four Google Maps Help threads I found:

The card I received in the mail from Google indicating we are a "Favorite Place" takes the user to the wrong business. Hundreds of miles away.

My card takes users to the generic google mobile home page?!?!?!

Same issue, mine goes to the generic google home page.

I got someone with an iPhone to test it out and it goes to info on some store in New York City, not my store, Epic Biking (www.epicbiking.com), in Saratoga Springs UTAH.

Once our Favorite Place decal is scanned it directs to the Double Tree Marriot in Palm Beach Gardens, FL as opposed to our listing Land Rover Palm Beach.

We're having the same exact issue. Except, ours is Starwood Hotels in New York when it should link to OK4WD. I scanned the thing probably a good five or six times too

When I had my issue, Ryan Hayward from Google contacted me immediately. I learned from him that in my case, it was not a data issue on Google's side, but rather an issue with the scanner reading the code incorrectly or missing pieces of the code. From what I understand, the code itself stores data in it, such as addresses, URLs, names and so on. So technically, I do not think Google printed these codes with a specific unique identifier in them for your business to match up in the Google Local Business Center. I think Google printed these codes to have address information and that is all. I can be wrong, but I think this is how it is working.

The overall issue here is that the codes are not working for many many businesses and searchers. It doesn't matter if it is a Google bug or a scanner bug, it is not working for a lot of people and lot of the time.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help threads.

Microsoft Might Add Bing Page Score to MSN Toolbar

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 2:35pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster Team dropped a hint in the Bing Forums that they may add the Bing Page Score (similar to Google's PageRank) to the MSN Toolbar.

Bing has what they call Bing Page Score when you login to their Bing Webmaster Center. Someone asked in the thread, "is it possible to enable page rank in bing toolbar?"

Soon after, Brett Yount from Bing responded saying:

We might once we complete the rework of that tool, which will be Fall earliest. Good news is, there are some changes in the works due in May/June to many things important to the webmasters frequenting these forums.

So there are two things here:

(1) Bing's Page Score may come to their Toolbar.
(2) They will be reworking "that tool," which I believe is talking about Page Score specifically.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

Google Invites AdSense Publishers For Christmas Lunch

Posted: December 17th, 2009, 2:21pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

It appears that Google is not giving out holiday gifts this year, as expected. But in a surprise twist, AdSenseAdvisor in a WebmasterWorld thread basically invited all 'good standing' AdSense publishers out for lunch at Google.

First, AdSenseAdvisor explained that she/he doesn't "know about gifts this year," and added that she/he "haven't heard anything" about it. AdSenseAdvisor then goes on to invite AdSense publishers out for Christmas lunch!

AdSenseAdvisor said:

If you're a publisher in good standing with AdSense and you're ever in the Bay Area, shoot me a private message and I'd be happy to invite you to lunch at Google.

So, if you are upset you didn't get a holiday gift from Google and want to go out for lunch with AdSenseAdvisor, you know what to do. Go to the WebmasterWorld and send AdSenseAdvisor a private message.

In related news, WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster, said he sent Google a thank you Christmas card. He explained in a WebmasterWorld thread:

I sent the AdSense Team a Christmas Card to thank them for hanging out in this forum, for listening to our feedback, for acting on our feedback. 2009 is the year that the AdSense Team kicked butt on a number of fronts, including rolling out new ways for us to block unwanted ads, decreasing the time for ads to stop showing once we add them to our filters, for being responsive during the several glitches we have experienced and correcting them swiftly.

So if you want to mail holiday cheer to Google, you can send it to:

AdSense Advisor
c/o The AdSense Team
1600 Amphitheater Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043

How nice!

Forum discussion at Webmaster World.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 16, 2009

Posted: December 16th, 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.

New: Cross Domain Canonical Tag Google Support

Posted: December 16th, 2009, 2:50pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

The canonical tag was jointly introduced by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft earlier this year. Google hinted they would soon support cross domain canonical tag and they officially announced it last night. What is a canonical tag? It basically allows you to communicate to Google that a page has moved to a new location, without you using a server side 301 redirect.

Why is this important? A few reasons:

(1) Some hosts don't allow webmasters to deploy 301 redirects
(2) Some site owners aren't technical enough to implement a 301 redirect
(3) In some cases, webmasters do not want to redirect users but rather only search engines (i.e. pagination, weird filtering, tracking parameters added to URLs, etc).

Initially this was launched to work within a domain only. So you could only say that domainA.com/pageA has moved to domainA.com/pageB. Now you are able to do this across domains, so you can say, domainA.com/pageA has moved to domainB.com/pageA or even domainA.com moved to domainB.com.

Google made this cute graphic to explain it:

There is a lot of technical detail on how to implement this tag over here but in short, you just add this tag to the head section of your HTML of the page you want to redirect. Make sure the URL you specify is the URL you want GoogleBot to be redirected to:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/true-url.html" />

JohnMu, who wrote the Google blog post also put some FAQs, and note the "hint" he keeps referring to. I assume the "hint" will become less of a hint and more of an "instruction" as time goes on.

Q: Do the pages have to be identical? A: No, but they should be similar. Slight differences are fine.
Q: For technical reasons I can't include a 1:1 mapping for the URLs on my sites. Can I just point the rel="canonical" at the homepage of my preferred site?
A: No; this could result in problems. A mapping from old URL to new URL for each URL on the old site is the best way to use rel="canonical".

Q: I'm offering my content / product descriptions for syndication. Do my publishers need to use rel="canonical"?
A: We leave this up to you and your publishers. If the content is similar enough, it might make sense to use rel="canonical", if both parties agree.

Q: My server can't do a 301 (permanent) redirect. Can I use rel="canonical" to move my site?
A: If it's at all possible, you should work with your webhost or web server to do a 301 redirect. Keep in mind that we treat rel="canonical" as a hint, and other search engines may handle it differently. But if a 301 redirect is impossible for some reason, then a rel="canonical" may work for you. For more information, see our guidelines on moving your site.

Q: Should I use a noindex robots meta tag on pages with a rel="canonical" link element?
A: No, since those pages would not be equivalent with regards to indexing - one would be allowed while the other would be blocked. Additionally, it's important that these pages are not disallowed from crawling through a robots.txt file, otherwise search engine crawlers will not be able to discover the rel="canonical" link element.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Bing's MSNBot Crawls Twice, Once For Compressed HTML & Again For Uncompressed

Posted: December 16th, 2009, 2:38pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

Here is one more oddity to add to Microsoft Bing's web crawler, MSNBot. Why on earth are people reporting that MSNBot is crawling the same page twice, once for the compressed version and then once again for the uncompressed version? Technically, it should probably only crawl once and it should opt for the compressed, gzip version - don't you think?

We have two threads complaining about this, one oldish one at WebmasterWorld and another at Bing Forums. Let me quote the Bing thread:

I've notice that bing is crawling each page of my website twice, first making an HTTP 1.1 request and getting a compressed response then immediately issuing an HTTP 1.0 request to receive the same page without gzip compression

The following lines from my log show the issue (there are thousands more similar occurrences):
65.55.207.74 - - [13/Dec/2009:14:58:42 +0000] "GET /specimen/235698/ HTTP/1.1" 200 1742 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.207.74 - - [13/Dec/2009:14:59:06 +0000] "GET /specimen/235698/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4259 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.106.209 - - [13/Dec/2009:15:03:08 +0000] "GET /specimen/250262/ HTTP/1.1" 200 1733 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.106.209 - - [13/Dec/2009:15:03:14 +0000] "GET /specimen/250262/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4164 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"

This seems a waste of bandwidth and completely defeats the point of supporting http compression.

Indeed a waste of bandwidth and yes, it defeats the point of supporting HTTP compression.

A Bing representative, Brett Yount said:

could you please mail this information to bwmc@microsoft.com and I will get our crawling team to check it out?

But we have no confirmation from Bing on why this issue is occurring or when it will be fixed. Like I said, just one more oddity to add to MSNBot's crawl behavior.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Bing Forums.

When Will Google Fix the Web Design Local Pack Bug?

Posted: December 16th, 2009, 2:29pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

Over a month ago, there were reports in two Google Maps Help threads that the local pack for searches in the flavor of [web design], [web development] and so on, were not triggering local pack results. We covered this about three weeks ago with our story named Google Bug Removes Web Designers in Local Pack and it is still not fixed.

Back then, a Googler said the reason for the bug had to do with a one box local result bug being fixed to show a local 7 pack. That bug was fixed, but it triggered a new bug with queries such as [web design], [web development] and so on. Even if you add a local qualifier to such queries, i.e. [web design new york] or [web design 10010] the local pack is not triggered at all.

Google never offered an ETA for when this would be fixed, but it has been a month since a Googler responded to the issue and we have yet to get an update, while the bug lingers on. Google, when will this bug be resolved?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Yahoo Search Marketing Down For Some Advertisers

Posted: December 16th, 2009, 2:25pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Marketing

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Yahoo Search Marketing is down for some. When some advertisers are trying to use Yahoo's pay per click ad system, they get an error.

The error reads:

We are currently experiencing a technical issue that is causing the ads of some advertisers to not be displayed properly to users. This may cause your account to receive a lower volume of clicks than normal. We are aware of this issue, and are working diligently to resolve it as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

So far, we have two confirmed reports of this bug in the WebmasterWorld thread.

I am not sure how widespread the issue is or if it is resolved yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo updated the thread, saying:

I can confirm that this issue was resolved at approximately 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time on December 15, and ads should be displaying normally since then. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 15, 2009

Posted: December 15th, 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.

Announcing SMX SphinnCon Israel 2010: March 7, 2010

Posted: December 15th, 2009, 4:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: SphinnCon Israel 2010

Search Marketing Expo's SphinnCon is coming back to Jerusalem, Israel on March 7, 2010. The premier networking event is being hosted by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land's News Editor at the Jerusalem College of Technology, a premier sponsor the event. To learn more about the event, visit searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon.

Make sure to register quickly over at searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon before it is sold out. The last time we held this event, it was sold out several weeks in advance. You won't want to miss out on jammed packed half day of sessions on SEO, PPC, Web Analytics, Social Media and much more. With both global and local experts in search marketing, including representatives from Google, Search Engine Land and other well-known companies - there is nothing like this event anywhere.

SphinnCon is an intimate and 1-day event. Conference tickets are priced at only $50 per attendee, but it is limited to only 200 attendees. So make sure to register quickly, before all the seats are taken.

The low price is only made possible from our gracious sponsors, including the Jerusalem College of Technology. I must thank the Jerusalem College of Technology for providing the venue, video equipment, and so much more. "The Jerusalem College of Technology is proud to once again host this important event. I believe that the institution is a natural home for this type of activity as it has long been at the forefront of both the high-tech world and technological management," said Dr. Avi Kay, Chair of the Department of Technological Management and Marketing.

Our current speaker list includes both global and local experts, such as Barry Schwartz, President of RustyBrick, a Google representative from Google Israel and the webmaster team, Vanessa Fox, Author of Marketing in the Age of Google, Ophir Cohen, CEO, Compucall Web Marketing, Branko Rihtman, SEO & R&D Specialist at WhiteWeb, Gilad Sasson, Director of Search & Online Marketing at Nekuda, Eli Feldblum, Founder & CTO at RankAbove and many others.

Our current sponsors include the Jerusalem College of Technology, Compucall Web Marketing and Answers.com. If you are interested in sponsoring please visit searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon for more information.

Want to speak? Again visit searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon.

I urge you to register as soon as possible before all the seats are taken. Register at searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon by clicking on the "Ready to Register? CLICK HERE" icon at the top right. You will be taken to the MeetUp website and asked to register and pay over there.

Don't miss out, register today at searchmarketingexpo.com/sphinncon.

Event Quick Details:
Date: Sunday, March 7, 2009
Time: 11:30am to 6pm
Venue: Jerusalem College of Technology
Location: 21 HaVaad Haleumi St, Givat Mordechai, Jerusalem
Cost: $50
Max Attendance: 200 people

Google Doodle Remembers L. L. Zamenhof, Inventor of Esperanto

Posted: December 15th, 2009, 2:42pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

If you visit Google today, you will see a special logo that celebrates L. L. Zamenhof's 150th birthday. Zamenhof was born on December 15, 1859 and died on April 14, 1917. He is known as the inventor of Esperanto, a constructed language designed for international communication.

Here is Google's special Doodle for his birthday:

Google has a special page just searching for this language at google.com/intl/eo.

Zamenhof was Jewish and died in Warsaw, Poland. You can read his full bio at Wikipedia.

With almost all Google Doodles, there are always complaints. We have two Google Web Search Help threads. One is thanking Google for commemorating L. L. Zamenhof life, while the other is upset Google picked L. L. Zamenhof over the ratification of the U.S. Bill of Rights, which happened on December 15, 1791 (218 years ago).

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Does URL Shortening: goo.gl

Posted: December 15th, 2009, 2:30pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

The big Google shock from last night was that they are launching a URL shortener using goo.gl. Currently, it only works by using the Google Toolbar or within FeedBurner. You cannot simply create a short URL by going to goo.gl, you need to do so via the Google Toolbar or FeedBurner.

Why is Google doing this? They want to make it easier to share within the Toolbar and FeedBurner. Why not use Bit.ly or Tiny URL? Google said they have an infrastructure that they trust is stable, secure and speedy.

I see why SEOs are a bit skeptical. But flip it around. SEOs have been recommending that we build our own URL shorteners ourselves. Heck, I did for RustyBrick, for example we use rb.tc, so rb.tc/barry goes to www.rustybrick.com/barry.

Google hasn't yet opened it up for use outside of the Toolbar or FeedBurner, but trust me, it will be used plenty that way and shared tremendously. Google said, "if the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future." So, how long do you give it? A month, two?

Many just feel bad for the url shortening services out there.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Upcoming AdWords API v2009 Hack Days in San Francisco & New York

Posted: December 15th, 2009, 2:22pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Developers who code for the AdWords API do not want to miss the upcoming AdWords API v2009 Hack Days. There is one in San Francisco on January 7, 2010 and on in New York on January 14, 2010. The event is free and runs most the day, plus you get a free Google lunch. Keep in mind, the event is only for developers.

Eric Koleda from the Google AdWords API Team extended the invite in the AdWords API Forum. Eric said:

Have you been putting off migrating to v2009? Not sure where to start? Been way too busy? Well it's time to jump start your v2009 development with some in-person help from Google. Join us in Mountain View or New York for a full day of non-stop v2009 hacking.
To keep things interesting throughout the day, we'll do some coding demos of the cool things you can do with v2009 that weren't possible in v13, like asynchronous calls, dynamic ad parameters, and more. Non-engineers beware! This is a developer-only event, and there will be no content or activities for attendees who don't plan to write code.

Space is limited, and signups are on a first come, first serve basis. We ask that you limit attendees to two people per company. If you are based in Europe please don't register yet, as a similar EMEA event is in the works and will be announced shortly.

More information and the signup form are available here: [sites.google.com]

Event Details include:

Dates: San Francisco - January 7th or New York - January 14th
Time: 10am until 5pm
Locations: 345 Spear St, San Francisco, CA 94105 or 75 9th Ave, New York, NY 10011
Topics: Migrating a sample application to v2009, Using AdParameters to bring your text ads to life, Asynchronous Jobs: massive changes made fast and easy, Effective local advertising with Local Ad Extensions, And more!

Sign up over here.

Forum discussion at AdWords API Forum.

Google To Build Phone

Posted: December 15th, 2009, 2:17pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

If you are living under a rock, you might not have heard this yet, but then why would you be reading this site? The buzz over the weekend was that Google confirmed they will be building and distributing a real Google phone. Right now, Google has Android which is the Operating System for many of the "Google phones" currently out there. But the hardware is developed by someone else.

It appears that Google is designing their own device on the hardware level. Which, I guess, would compete directly with the iPhone - which is what is currently happening with the HTC, Droid and comparable devices.

Anyway, that is all I have to say about this. You can read the news stories on Techmeme and then join the forum discussions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 14, 2009

Posted: December 14th, 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.

Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" Button Counts Down To New Year

Posted: December 14th, 2009, 3:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

If you go to Google.com and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, Google will show you a countdown to the new year. You cannot type anything into the search box for this to work, just click on the button with an empty search box.

Here is a video of it working just minutes ago, on my screen:

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

Bug When Updating Google Maps Local Listing

Posted: December 14th, 2009, 2:48pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Starting over the weekend, if you tried to update a Google Maps business listing in the Google Local Business Center, you would get a weird error. We have many reports in the Google Maps forums, many.

The error sometimes looks like this:

System Error

We're sorry, but we are unable to serve your request at this time. Please try back in a few minutes.

Try again document.write("|nx3ca hrefx3dx22/local/add/businessCenter?hlx3den-USx26amp;glx3dUSx22 onclickx3dx22history.go(-1); return false;x22x3e

Return to previous pagex3c/ax3e"); | Return to previous page

Google Maps Guide Linda replied to many of the threads with the same message, it read:

Hi,
We're aware of this system error issue and we hope to have this fixed by next week. Please check your account again next week to verify your business listing.

Thanks for your patience.

Best,
Maps Guide Linda

The Google Maps threads include these four help threads, but I believe there are many more.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help Discussions.

You Can Now Block Your YouTube Subscribers

Posted: December 14th, 2009, 2:40pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Liz from YouTube Support announced in a YouTube Help thread that a long requested feature is now available - the ability to block subscribers from your channel.

Why would you want to block specific subscribers? Maybe you got 'pervs' watching your videos? Maybe you don't like certain commentators on your videos? Maybe you are anti-social?

How do you do it?

1. Sign into your YouTube account
2. Go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=[YOURUSERNAME]&view=subscribers
3. On this page you'll be able to see the users who are subscribed to your channel and the thumbnail icon from their channel. Below the thumbnail image you'll see a "Block" button.
4. If you click the "Block" button you'll remove the user's subscription to you, and you'll also block them if their account is active on YouTube.

After that, Liz explains:

You'll receive a confirmation asking you whether or not you want to remove the user from your subscribers list first before you actually remove the user. This is just in case you accidentally click the "Block" button. We all know accidents happen.

Here is a picture of the block button:

I won't block you, so feel free to subscribe to the RustyBrick YouTube Channel which is what I use to do my weekly search videos, amongst other videos. I still need to make that page look better, one day - one day.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 11, 2009

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 10:01pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp

Just a reminder, we did not do a video recap last week, we did a text one - so if you missed it, check it out. This week was the SES Chicago conference and we covered tons of sessions. Google switched personalized search on by default and SEOs are freaking out. Google and Yahoo both added real time Twitter results to the search results. Google launched image based search with Google Goggles. Google will add a trustworthy indicator to the page speed report because webmeisters aren't sure if it is accurate. Why? Well, both Google AdSense and Analytics have long page load times, but AdSense will be fixed and Google told us to ignore Analytics. Bing will crawl a 301 two or three times before registering it. We also posted our December Google webmaster report. Google is taking Google Money scammer to court and AdSense Pirates are becoming more of a problem. Ruscoe from Google Blogocoped is joining Google next month. Being an AdSense publisher doesn't mean Google will be a job reference for you. Don't search for 123456 in Google, you might get slapped in the face. Yahoo closed their deal with Microsoft, now they wait on the regulators (sorry, did not cover in video). Google had a Popeye logo this week. Tonight is Chanukah and Bing and we have themes live. Happy Chanukah everyone and have a great weekend. 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:
Conference:

SES Chicago '09 Live Coverage Recap

Google & Yahoo Search Results:

Google Misc:

Google Goggles & Other Mobile Announcements

Webmaster/SEO for Google & Bing:

AdWords & AdSense:

SEM Industry:

Tony Ruscoe, Popular SEM Personality, to Join Google

Funny Search:

Business:

Yahoo & Microsoft Complete Search Deal, Now Waiting on Regulators

Logos & Events:

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

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 11, 2009

Posted: December 11th, 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.

My Google Favorite Place Decal Was Hijacked

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 7:31pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Update: Google reached out to me and asked me to try a new app to scan it, such as Barcode Scanner for Android of QuickMark for iPhone. I tried it and both QuickMark and Barcode Scanner return my business. So a poor quality QR scanner will return a bad listing. I guess technically, this is not a Google bug.

We are aware of Google Maps listings being hijacked, that is nothing new. But remember Google is sending out favorite places decals? Well, I got mine today and I decided to try it out.

Guess what? When you scan the QR bar code it takes you to a different business!

RustyBrick is my company and here is my Google Place:

Here is a video with proof:

Here is a link to the Citrus Grille which is what comes up after you scan my code.

Here is a video of me "unboxing" the decal today:

I am not sure how Google can fix this? Either:

(1) Send me a new decal with new bar code?
(2) Update their database so they do not have to send me a new decal?

The thing is, I just hope I don't get calls from the Citrus Grille, that would be annoying!

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Chanukah 2009 Logos from Bing & SERoundtable

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 3:13pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

Chanukah (Hanukah) starts tonight, technically, in Israel it is already Chanukah. It last for eight days and this year it does not overlap with Christmas. Currently, the only major search engine to have a logo or theme up is Microsoft's Bing. Google (even Google.co.il), Yahoo, and Ask.com do not have a theme up yet. Maybe they will wait for tonight or tomorrow, but for now, here is Bing's theme:

We also have theme, sporting driedels with SEO spelled on them out of our name, the Search Engine rOundtable.

Also, Cre8asite Forums plans on uploading this logo shortly for the holiday season:

We will update this post with more logos if they come out. For the past years, see 2008, 2007 and 2006.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: Ask.com posted a theme on Saturday, December 12th, see Nick's comment below:

No logo from Google, Yahoo or others.

Yahoo Adds Twitter to Search Results, Google's Twitter Results Now Live

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 3:06pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine

Not to be outdone by Google, Yahoo also added real-time Twitter results for "buzzing" keyword phrases. I tried to replicate any results on Yahoo, but I was not yet able to see them. Maybe it is still rolling out.

The industry is discussing the Yahoo roll out at WebmasterWorld.

Meanwhile, sometime mid-afternoon yesterday, the real time results Google previewed a couple days ago, went live in the main Google search results. SEOs and Webmasters are now playing with it, looking for ways to exploit take advantage of it. There is discussion on it going live at WebmasterWorld.

Both Rae at OutSpokenMedia.com and Danny at Search Engine Land covered how the results can be exploited and get a be "mad."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (Yahoo) and WebmasterWorld (Google).

Google AdWords My Client Center (MCC) Phishing

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 2:52pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Google AdWords account phishing attempts is nothing new. We reported them numerous times in the past, and then stopped reporting all the cases. Even Yahoo Search Marketing has their share of this issue.

A new type of AdWords phishing attempt has been reported at WebmasterWorld. This one is targeting My Client Center accounts, which are accounts that have control and access to multiple AdWords accounts. So if someone gains access to a My Client Center account, they can potential damage a multitude of accounts.

The domain they are taking unsuspecting users to is google-ob.com. So please Beware!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Don't Search Google for 123456

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 2:46pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that he was testing to make sure his boss's computer network had connectivity, so he searched for [123456] in Google and up came a porn video hosted on Google Video in the top result.

Here is a picture:

The video on the right is complete adult pornographic material - so don't click on it (unless you want porn, then click on it).

The person who spotted this was very disturbed. He said:

I was assisting our CEO's secretary today, and to test whether she had connectivity, I did a quick search on google for "123456".
She thought I was being disgusting, but I eventually convinced her it was a freak occurrence.

Can you imagine that, this woman thought this guy was playing a trick on her or something. How sad.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Tells AdSense Publishers, Your Earnings are "Estimated"

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 2:40pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Yesterday at about 3:30pm (EST) Google changed the AdSense console overview page to show the word "estimated" by "Today's Earnings." So now it reads, "Today's estimated earnings" instead of just "Today's earnings." A WebmasterWorld thread was started to ask questions about this change, and then the Google AdSense Blog confirmed the change.

Here is a picture highlighting the change:

Google explained:

In order to be more transparent about how our system calculates earnings, we've added the words "Estimated" and "Finalized" next to "Earnings" throughout your account. Rest assured these terminology changes don't reflect a change to the way your finalized earnings are calculated. It's simply intended to give you a clearer idea of what's our estimation of your earnings and what's finalized.

Don't like it? Not happy? Got more questions?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Job Applicants, Google AdSense Can't Be Used As a Job Reference

Posted: December 11th, 2009, 2:31pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

A person seeking new employment asked in a WebmasterWorld thread if he can use Google as a reference for his interviews. Why does he feel he might be able to use Google in this way? Well, he never really worked as a Google employee, but he did get checks from Google via their AdSense program.

AdSenseAdvisor, from Google said:

I love that AdSense has been your primary source of income. Sadly, I don't personally know enough about you or your work to provide you with a reference.

Yes, it doesn't work that way does it? How can Google vouch for someone that they do not directly manage?

Ironically, this is not the first time we covered this topic. We said it clear with Google AdSense Publishers Are Not Employed By Google over two years ago. You simply cannot put down Google on your resume, even if you made money with Google AdSense. That doesn't mean you cannot show interviewers how much you made and what tactics you deployed to make your sites successful.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 10, 2009

Posted: December 10th, 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.

Google Promises to Speed Up AdSense for GoogleBot

Posted: December 10th, 2009, 2:46pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdSense

Since Google has released the Site Performance reports in Webmaster Tools and page speed is Google's 2010 ranking factor promise, Webmasters have been somewhat obsessed with speeding up their sites.

Webmasters are concerned with scripts they do not control. Such as Google Analytics slowing down their page load times. In fact, we just reported that Google is going to add a trustworthy indicator to site performance reports in order to alleviate some of the webmaster stress over speed performance.

Now, we see reports that Google AdSense is slow. But instead of Google just telling us not to worry about it, which they have told us for this. Google is actually going to speed up the AdSense load time specifically for GoogleBot.

AdSenseAdvisor said in a WebmasterWorld thread two things. The first was not to worry about it and the second was that they will be improving the speed of AdSense specifically for GoogleBot.

Let me quote AdSense Advisor:

(1) "The Page Speed suggestions on Webmaster Tools are based on the content served to Googlebot. In this case, AdSense serves the javascript uncompressed to Googlebot, but does actually compress it with gzip for regular users. So, the AdSense javascript is already optimized for your site's users. AdSense works very hard at making sure that it doesn't slow down the page load."

(2) "We are changing AdSense to send compressed content to our Googlebot so that the recommendation in Webmaster Central accurately reflects how AdSense works."

Now some may ask if this is a form of serving different content to GoogleBot versus a human - i.e. cloaking. I don't think this falls under that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bing Requires 3 MSNBot Crawls To Register 301 Redirects

Posted: December 10th, 2009, 2:40pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Microsoft MSN Search

I spotted a useful tidbit for SEOs in the Bing Forums today. Brett Yount from Bing Webmaster Center team explained how Bing picks up on 301 redirects.

Brett said it can take two to three crawls from Bing to register a 301 redirect in their index. Brett said:

By design, our crawler usually takes 2-3 crawls before it registers the redirect.

I wonder how many crawls Google takes to do the same thing? I can see why you would want to wait at least for a second crawl to confirm a 301 redirect is indeed legit.

We had some reports recently that Bing is handling 301s much better now than they have in the past.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

Vote For The Doodle 4 Google UK Winner

Posted: December 10th, 2009, 2:35pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Voting is open for the UK's edition of the Doodle 4 Google competition. Google has run this competition in both the US and UK for four years now.

This years competition:

We're asking young people aged 5–16 from across the UK to design their own doodle. This year's theme is 'My Hero'. We'd love to see the figures young people look up to represented in their doodles, whether family, friends, people in the community, or world figures. We're interested in the people considered heroes for the 21st century and how entrants represent them using images.

To vote, go to this page. You can vote for each of the four brackets, 5-7 years old, 7-11 years old, 11-14 years old and 14-16 years olds.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google To Add "Trustworthy Indicator" to Site Performance Tool

Posted: December 10th, 2009, 2:26pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A Google Webmaster Help thread has reports of page load time speeds spiking up to ridiculous numbers in the new Google site performance reports. Google's response to these reports was pretty interesting, I'll get to that soon, firs the context.

A Top Contributor in the forum wrote:

After about 6 months of "flat line" Site Performance reports of averagepage load time around 1 or 2 seconds, I am now seeing in Tools a report that: "On average, pages in your site take 83.1 seconds to load (updated on Dec 7, 2009)." and of course the graph has shot up and I'm tol that my site's average page load time is "slower than 100% of sites".
However, the only two pages listed in that report both show load times of 1 to 2 seconds.

Now a Googler with the code name "sreeram" replied saying:

The 83s number is bogus. Your site's toolbar traffic dropped by more than an order of magnitude in the last few days. You should ignore the average for now. We'll soon be showing site owners some indication of how trustworthy the numbers are, so you can decide when to ignore it and when not to.

Not all URLs may have toolbar traffic, so it's possible to have many URLs indexed, and even visited by users, but only a couple may show up on Site Performance. In addition, when there's very little data for a given URL, we won't display it (for privacy reasons), though it will be included in the overall site average.

So in this case, the site's traffic as seen by the Google Toolbar dropped significantly, which caused a weird spike in the webmaster's site performance reports. Thus, Google promised to provide an "indication of how trustworthy the numbers are" in this report.

Clearly, some of these numbers are not trustworthy, such as factoring in Toolbar fluctuations or Google Analytics speed.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Update: John Mueller from Google sent me a note about this:

The Webmaster Tools team is constantly working on ways to improve the product as well as the data provided there. In general, we prefer not to comment on possible future releases. The Labs section in Webmaster Tools allows us to easily try out and iterate on new and innovative features, which is one reason we launched the Site Performance tool there. Personally, I found the data provided there quite actionable and have seen a lot of positive feedback from webmasters around this tool. To fine-tune a website with regards to speed, it can be useful to start with the information provided here and then to look into the details using browser-based tools such as Page Speed and Speed Tracer.
We're always looking into ways we can take our products and services to the next level. We appreciate all of the feedback and coverage that you provide! I'll get in touch with you once I have more information that I can share.

Google Images "See Full Size Image" Frame Missing For Some?

Posted: December 10th, 2009, 2:18pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

A Google Web Search Help thread reports several users not being able to see the frame at the top of the Google Image searches. I initially thought it had to do with frame busters of some sort, but it seems more wide spread than that. Maybe Google is dropping the framed image feature? I am not sure.

I personally see the frame with the "see full size image" option link:

It really seems to be that this is a frame buster type of thing going on. Frame busting is code that prevents other sites from framing you site in their site, like Google Images does after you initially click on an image result.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 8, 2009

Posted: December 9th, 2009, 12:30am 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.

Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World from SES Chicago '09

Posted: December 8th, 2009, 11:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Engine Strategies 2009 Chicago

Below is live coverage of the Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

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Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World

(12/08/2009)

Close

4:03

Barry Schwartz: We start here in about 10 minutes.

Tuesday December 8, 2009 4:03 Barry Schwartz

4:03

Barry Schwartz:

Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World!
User migration to a mobile environment is driven not only by information and communications requirements, but also a host of applications that are useful, quirky, or just plain fun. App developers and experts explain how these apps hook users, demonstrate their rapid growth trajectory, and explore what might be in store for the future.

Moderator:
Mike Grehan, SES Advisory Board Co-Chair & VP, Global Content Director, Incisive Media

Speakers:
Cindy Krum, Chief Executive Officer, Rank-Mobile, LLC
Bryson Meunier, Associate Director of SEO, Resolution Media
Colleen Curtis, Midwest Regional Director, Yelp
Barg Upender, Founder, CEO, Mobomo
Mark Dixon, VP, Product Management, NearbyNow

Tuesday December 8, 2009 4:03 Barry Schwartz