Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
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Daily Search Forum Recap: December 3, 2009
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google Page Speed Report Comes to Webmaster Tools
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 3:23pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Like all you know, page speed with be a ranking factor in Google in 2010 and if you didn't believe it until now, maybe Google adding a page speed report to Google Webmaster Tools will convince you of that.
I figured I show you detailed screen shots of how slow this site is, using this tool.
As you can see from the chart below, this site is slower than 86% of the other sites on the Internet. The chart does slow slight improvement, but clearly, I need to clean things up here - quick.
Then Google shows me example load times for specific pages on my site:
Then Google offers speed suggestions:
I can drill down deeper on a specific page to see exactly what is suggested:
Figured I slam my own site over someone elses - why not.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
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Google Sticks with Fade In Home Page Despite Searchers Hating It
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 3:09pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Back in October, Google began testing the fade in home page and they tried several variations over the course of the time. Google has finally decided to go ahead with this look and feature for simplistically purposes.
The Google blog announced it last night. They admitted some of those tests were failures and they even admitted they were worried making this the default look. Here is how Marissa phrased it:
All in all, we ran approximately 10 variants of the fade-in. Some of the experiments hindered the user experience: for example, the variants of the homepage that hid the search buttons until after the fade performed the worst in terms of user happiness metrics. Other variants of the experiment produced humorous outcomes when combined with our doodles — the barcode doodle combined with the fade was particularly ironic in its overstated minimalism. However, in the end, the variant of the homepage we are launching today was positive or neutral on all key metrics, except one: time to first action. At first, this worried us a bit: Google is all about getting you where you are going faster — how could we launch something that potentially slowed users down? Then, we realized: we want users to notice this change... and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed.
Here is a picture of the fade in choice selected:
So they kept the search buttons there right away. But many still hate it, I have at least five recent threads with lots of complaints about this new look. I'll link to them below.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Short URLs Don't Want Google's Breadcrumb Display URL in SERPs
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 2:58pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
About two weeks ago, Google introduced breadcrumb display URLs in the search results. It was suppose to be for "small percentage of search results" but they are showing up quiet often. Google said they are doing this for URLs that are "too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information." So Google adds the useful information for you.
Not all webmasters agree that Google is improving their URL structure with the display URL as a breadcrumb. A WebmasterWorld thread has some webmasters complaining and I know, WebmasterWorld doesn't allow examples. So for you Googlers out there that want examples, I'll give you one.
A search for [rustybrick siddur] brings up this new breadcrumb URL. It looks like this:
Now, if this was smart, it would either leave my URL alone, because I feel it is pretty short and very descriptive the way it is. Or Google would show the true breadcrumb which is > iPhone Apps > Siddur as shown here:
Now, it works beautifully for [rustybrick iphone] but even there, is it really needed to change the display URL from rustybrick.com/iphone.php to rustybrick.com > iPhone Apps? I am not too sure.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Larger Google Images & Region Tags In Google Search Results
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 2:46pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Google announced two changes to the search results. The first is larger images in the search results for some searches and the second is region tags in the search results. Let me explain both.
The larger images may show up in the search results, when Google thinks an image should be highlighted. For example, the before and after:
Before:
After:
Google also announced a new regional tag that will show up in certain situations in the Google search results. The region tags tell the searcher that the site is from a specific country or region. This region tag will only show on about 1% of the search results, Google said. And they have to meet these criteria:
We currently show region tags only for certain domains such as .com and .net where the location information would otherwise be unclear. We don't show region tags for results on domains like .br for Brazil, because the location is already implied by the green URL line in our default display. In addition, we only display region tags when the region supplied by the site owner is different from the domain where the search was entered.
Here is a picture:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Bing Maps Adds Features & Augmented Reality
Posted: December 3rd, 2009, 2:28pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
Microsoft made buzz yesterday with the announcements on the Bing Maps blog and Bing Search Blog.
Greg Sterling explains it well at Search Engine Land as "Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google."
The augmented reality comes in where Microsoft overlays data on those maps in a more social way. Microsoft explains:
Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally “stitch” together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.
The screen shots at the various blogs are neat, the only downside is the requirement to install Silverlight (I am a mac user). For more coverage of this, see Techmeme.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.