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 4, 2009
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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(Text) Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 4, 2009
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 6:27pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Buzz RoundUp
I am writing this weekly recap while on a flight to Chicago. I won't be able to do the video version, so hopefully this text version will do. I am on my way to Chicago for Search Engine Strategies 2009. SES is actually when I started this site, six years ago on December 2nd. We have written over 10,000 stories here since and almost 2,000 in the past year alone.
On the search front, Google's Caffeine index finally made it to a data center. Google added a site performance report to Webmaster Tools to show off page speed. Google also confirmed a Sitelinks bug where you can link to a competitor. On the user interface front, Google decided to go with the fade in home page. They are showing more breadcrumbs as site URLs. They also are using larger images in the search results and region tags for some of the results. Bing went offline for the first time in their short history, it latest for 30 minutes. Bing Maps showed Google they can compete by adding street views and augmented reality. There are stories that Yahoo has begun unbanning web sites from their index. Google AdSense banned a publisher for copyright infringement over their own copyright. Finally, there are tons of more AdWords bans going on right now - I called it the Big Ban of December. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Select Topics For This Past Week:
Misc:
Google Webmaster:
- Google Caffeine Index Now on a Google Data Center: 209.85.225.103
- Google Page Speed Report Comes to Webmaster Tools
- Google Confirms Bug With Sitelinks Where You Can Link To Competitors
Google User Interface:
- Google Sticks with Fade In Home Page Despite Searchers Hating It
- Short URLs Don't Want Google's Breadcrumb Display URL in SERPs
- Larger Google Images & Region Tags In Google Search Results
Bing:
Yahoo:
AdSense:
AdWords:
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Webmasters Wary of Google Public DNS
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 1:53pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Google announced the launch of the Google Public DNS service, which is a free public domain name system. It is a lot like OpenDNS, but without any of the administrative controls for blocking sites or redirecting mismatched domains to a special landing page (which is where OpenDNS makes their money).
Google's DNS IPs are pretty sweet, they are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. If you want to use it, here are the configuration instructions.
Google said they are doing this for one reason and one reason alone. To make the web faster. Google knows which sites are the most popular out there and they will precache those pages so it doesn't have to be done at the time of the DNS request. Most DNS servers cache sites based on the last time a user of theirs accessed it, Google will anticipate that without usage - at this point. Google likes speed, as we discussed time and time again over here.
Google is convinced you will like their DNS server because it will speed things up, make things more secure and they won't do any type of redirection at all.
You think Google will use the data to track you? Well, Google very specifically detailed what they will be tracking and for how long. The "temporary logs" contain IP level information, but Google will destroy "temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours." However, Google will be storing specific information on an aggregate level, those details can be found here.
As I said, webmasters are wary and there is a long WebmasterWorld thread with comments:
With it being such an easy way to track who goes where, I'm surprised Google is just getting into this now.
Would this really benefit anyone besides Google?
Reading their gumph, they claim that having a large, common caching database will mean faster performance for all, but is it really worth the slight boost in performance in exchange for giving Google even more of your data?
Google claim that their service will attempt to send users to their geographically closest data centre.
But I still reckon it's wisest to just stick with your own ISP's DNS offering, unless you know what you're doing.
Personally, I use OpenDNS because of the security and the ability to block access to specific sites on the DNS level - which is nice. Would I switch? Who knows. But I do like how the OpenDNS blog responded to this Google news, "to think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive." Now that is classic!
Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.
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Where the Google Holiday Gifts for 2009?
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 1:47pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Every year Google gives some of their AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers holiday gifts. Typically, the gifts are delivered by now - but not one advertiser or publisher have posted in a forum or on a blog about receiving a holiday gift from Google this year.
A WebmasterWorld thread wonders if there will be any gifts this year or not. This year was the "great recession," but Google is clearly back in spend mode (if you watch their business activities closely, you would notice this).
In the past four years, the gifts were typically received by this week. Last year, the gifts were received by December 3, 2008, then by December 4, 2007, in November 2006, the latest was the second week of December 2005, but typically, we get them by this week in December.
Do you think there will be holiday gifts from Google?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Got Ideas for Google AdSense? Let Them Know Here
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 1:42pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Are you frustrated with Google AdSense? Do you love them? Do you have ideas that you think would improve the product or service? If so, Google is now asking for feedback on Google AdSense. Do not submit the ideas here, you have to go to a Google Moderator area and submit your ideas there.
AdSense Pro Jennifer said in a Google AdSense Help thread:
I just wanted to let you know that we've launched an AdSense Product Ideas page on Google Moderator. It's a great way to get your ideas heard, vote on other publishers' suggestions, and share your thoughts on AdSense product updates. As the blog announcement says, "While we aren't able to guarantee that all the ideas on this page will be implemented, we can guarantee that we'll take the top ideas (as voted by you), and bring them to the AdSense Product Management team for review. By submitting an idea, you agree that Google may use the idea to develop and enhance Google's products and services."
Again, if you have ideas for Google on AdSense, don't comment here, go to the Google Moderator area and submit your ideas or vote on ideas.
Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.
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Google Begins Banning AdWords Advertisers Again: December '09 Big Ban
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 1:05pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
As you know, Google promised to ban AdWords advertisers at a higher rate and began doing so in late September and throughout November but promised to really step it up later last month.
I spotted a new thread at Google AdWords Help which has what appears to be dozens of advertisers who started getting banned yesterday, December 3rd, at the stroke of midnight. So when it turned into December 3rd, it seems like a bunch of automatic bans just went out and impacted tons of advertisers. There are also ongoing discussion about these bans at WebmasterWorld.
So it looks like a new Google strike on AdWords advertisers has come down.
Here is a copy of a ban email from Google these days:
Dear advertiser,
We are writing to let you know that your Google AdWords account has been disabled due to one or more serious violations of our advertising policies related to Landing Page and Site Quality. As a result, your ads will no longer run through the Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in the future. Please note that future accounts you open will also be disabled.
As part of our commitment to making the AdWords experience safe and effective for our users and our advertisers, we routinely review the landing pages that our advertisers promote through our search and content networks. If we find that an advertiser has submitted a landing page that egregiously violates our policies, we reserve the right to take immediate account-level action.
Landing pages advertised via AdWords must have relevant, original content, and must be transparent about the nature of the business being promoted. Further, advertising certain types of sites will lead to immediate account disabling. These types of sites include, but are not limited to:
* Sites that charge users or collect personal information in exchange for a product that is never delivered
* Sites that charge for "free" software
* Sites that trick users into paying for fake or poor-quality content
* Sites that charge users for information that makes unrealistic promises of financial or personal gain
* Sites that install malware software on a visitor's computer
Please note that this action is related to sites that have recently been advertised through your account. In a review of your account history, we found that your account had submitted a least one site that egregiously violated our advertising policies. Although you may have removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to account-level disabling.You can review our Advertising Policies, including our Landing Page and Site Quality guidelines, by visiting: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs
You may also review the complete AdWords Terms & Conditions here: https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder
In addition, our FAQ about Account Disablings can be found here: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed by our policies or help center, you can contact support by replying to this email.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords team
Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help & WebmasterWorld.
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Bing Goes Offline for 30 Minutes
Posted: December 4th, 2009, 4:23am CET by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
Bing went offline for about 30 minutes. I captured a screen shot of Microsoft's search engine having issues about mid-way through. Here it is:
TechCrunch said it was down for about 30 minutes. Twitter was buzzing about the news, and there were threads at Bing Community & WebmasterWorld.
Bing tweeted when they came back online:
This may be the first time that Bing.com has been down in its relatively short history.
Forum discussion at Bing Community & WebmasterWorld.
Update: Bing blog has a post on this.