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: January 25, 2010
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Can Too Much Keyword Density Be Interpreted as Boiler Plate Text?
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:38pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
I spotted an interesting Google Webmaster Help thread where a webmaster was asking why the most used words on his site is not showing up in the keywords report in Google Webmaster Tools. It seems like, at least for this report, Google may consider certain usage of a keyword to be over usage and would consider those keywords either boiler plate text or common words.
Jonathan Simon of Google said in that thread, and let me quote:
The Keywords list will sometimes exclude words that we determine to be boiler plate text or common words. This varies from site to site. The Keywords list is a starting point to see how Google is interpreting your site's content. This list should be evaluated in tandem with what's listed in the Top Search Queries report for your site as well as how your site appears in the actual search results for the keywords you're targeting.
He goes on to explain that although it may not show up in the report, due to possible Google issues, this should not impact the site in a negative way. He said:
Boiler plate and commons words (excluded from the Keywords list) vary from site to site. It sounds like for your site we could be doing a better job here.
The more important question though is if this negatively impacts your site's ranking as you mention. It doesn't. That's why I said the Keywords list is a good starting point and that it should be considered in conjunction with other information.
The question I have, is this not helping your site? I guess not.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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More Google Caffeine Sightings Over Weekend
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:28pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates
An ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has sparked up some heat over the weekend when more people are claiming to see the Google Caffeine results out in the wild.
WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, said on Friday night, that he seems them on six IP addresses. He said:
I'm seeing the Caffeine data-set being served via this set of IP addresses: 64.233.169.147, 64.233.169.105, 64.233.169.103, 64.233.169.104, 64.233.169.99,64.233.169.106
It seems to take 5 IP addresses to build the complete SERP, where in the past it often took only 3.
Here are links to them:
Senior member, Whitenight said:
Well, just tripled checked with offices/employees in Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. All 5 "control" keywords/sites showed live Caffeine.
Does this mean it is live? Not necessarily. Does it mean that Caffeine is coming soon? Not necessarily.
I guess we wait on Google to say something.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Search Continues to Grow: Showing 46% Growth YoY, comScore
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:19pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
comScore released their search growth report and it showed searches have grown 46% worldwide. The U.S. grew 22% from December 2008 to December 2009, with 22.7 billion searches. China followed with 13.3 billion searches, but only grew 13% year over year.
Google took account of 66.8% of those searches, with 87.8 billion searches worldwide, and a growth rate overall of 58%. That is not too bad, although little Microsoft saw a spike of 70% in search share from last year to this year. Here are the charts and also make sure to read Search Engine Land for more analysis:
Forum discussion at two WebmasterWorld threads.
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Kaspersky Blocking Google Ads Again
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:09pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Two months ago, we reported that Google AdSense was being blocked by Kaspersky Internet security software. That was fixed pretty quickly. But now, we are hearing new reports that the latest Kaspersky update is blocking Google ads again.
The alert people are seeing from Kaspersky is:
Virus detected Severity: Critical event Application: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 for Windows Servers Enterprise Edition Version number: 6.0.2.555 Task name: Real-time file protection Computer: DRxxxxxxx Group: xxxxxxx Time: 25 January 2010 09:26:00 Description: Threat detected: Trojware Trojan.JS.Redirector.ar. Object name: C:Documents and SettingsxxxxLocal SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5CGQQTE3Hshow_ads[1].js
They are being triggered by pagead2.googlesyndication.com.
We have threads on the issue at WebmasterWorld, Kaspersky Forums and Google Web Search Help.
I have not seen a comment from an official Google represenative or Kaspersky representatives as of yet.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Kaspersky Forums and Google Web Search Help.
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The Google Webmaster Tools iGoogle Gadgets Are Broken
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 2:01pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
For those of you who use iGoogle and use the Webmaster Tools Gadget, you may have noticed that no information is flowing to the gadget. Here is a screen shot from my iGoogle dashboard, which I honestly never go to:
It seemed like the issue became a big issue starting on the 20th. A Google Webmaster Help thread has several webmaster reporting it. Then Jonathan Simon of Google came in and confirmed the bug. He said:
We are currently looking into this issue and hope to have it resolved soon.
There is not estimate time for a fix, but Google is aware of the issue.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Google "Answer Highlighting" Upsets Webmasters
Posted: January 25th, 2010, 1:42pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google announced two new features in their web results. First is called "Answer Highlighting" and the second is an enhancement to the Rich Snippets feature.
Answer Highlighting in short basically uses Google Squared technology to highlight in the search snippet the answer to your search query. For example, and I don't see this in the live Google results right now, if you search for [empire state height], in the past (current) you would have seen this:
With the enhancement, you would see the answer:
Getting the answer in the search results, is a goal of Google, but that means, or can mean, less click throughs from Google to your web site. Webmasters often live off traffic and conversions, so this can be a bit upsetting to many webmasters.
Brett Tabke said in a WebmasterWorld thread:
Taking another page out of the WolframAlpha play book, Google introduces Serps with answers. You may never need to visit any site again.
The other enhancement is allowing event data in rich snippets. How does that improve the feature? Just look at this snippet:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.