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  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.

  
  

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  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.

  
  

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  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.

  
  

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  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.

  
  

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  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.

  
  

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  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.