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: April 15, 2010
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google Wows Webmasters With New Search Reports with CTR
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 3:39pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google has wowed webmasters with a new feature just added to Google Webmaster Tools, the Top Search Queries report. Not only did Google add more queries and neat charts, they also added impressions, clicks and click through rate data - yes on the organic search results. Not only does this really trump keyword ranking reports, but it also unveils how important being in the top three positions on Google.com.
First let me show you an abstract of the reports for this web site.
A closer look at a specific keyword's page position, impressions, click through, and click through rate. Plus it shows this detail based on the landing page of the search result:
Here is a report where I filtered the report by a keyword phrase:
It is pretty revealing looking at the CTR between the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and then lower positions.
Like I said, webmasters are really wowed by this report. Here are some comments from threads at WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster Help and DigitalPoint Forums:
The most interesting webmaster information published to date.
Seriously, A++ move on Google's part.
Holy god that is amazing...
Forum discussion WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster Help and DigitalPoint Forums.
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AdWords Maintenance Polls
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 3:28pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
If you are a Google AdWords specialist or just maintain your own accounts for your web sites, please take the polls below. A WebmasterWorld thread asks three questions, which don't seem to be getting enough replies. So I figured I'd post them here with easy to use polls and hope to get an idea of how actively you maintain your AdWords campaigns.
Please take the three quick polls below and tell your colleagues to take them as well.
How often do you change bids for each keyword?Market Research
How often do you optimize?online surveys
How often do you change the creatives for keywords?Market Research
Please take the polls above and I will share the break down in a couple weeks.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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How To Download Your Google My Maps Saved Locations
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 3:21pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Google removed the ability to use a "saved locations" within Google Maps. Google changed how that worked a while back and gave people a way to download their locations. The way to download saved locations has now changed.
In an updated Google Maps Help thread, Cecelia from the Google Maps team wrote:
I want to update the link for downloading your Saved Locations to a KML. Please use the link below.
If you want to download those saved locations to a KML file which can open them up in Google Earth, then use that link.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
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Searching Old Tweets Got Easier With Google
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 3:14pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Twitter has a lot, a lot, of content and finding old tweets can often not be a fun task. Google just made that a bit easier with Google's Twitter Archive Search. The best description of it is to just play with it, try it by clicking here.
Here is a screen shot that shows the tweets for the keyword [earthquake] over time, with a timeline:
Also, Google placed Twitter's logo at the bottom of the search results - something I don't remember seeing on Google before. It reminds me of when Google powered Yahoo Search and we saw a logo that read, "Powered by Google".
A WebmasterWorldthread has some comments on this, including one that I really don't get:
yikes, public chat that can be archive and saved forever.
These are public tweets, you or I can read any public tweet and store it in a database. If you do not want something you say to be saved forever, then don't tweet it publicly. Yea, I know, you may want to delete old tweets, but still, someone, somewhere may have a record of it.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google To Build AdWords Sandbox API Visual Interface
Posted: April 15th, 2010, 3:07pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
A Google AdWords API thread reports that Google is in the process of working on a "simple application that will allow you to visually browse the contents of your AdWords sandbox accounts." The purpose behind this is to enable developers to see the types of requests, number of requests and so on being made by their applications. This can help developers visualize the cost and impact of their apps.
Eric Koleda from the Google AdWords API Team said in response to the question about this:
We are working on releasing a simple application that will allow you to visually browse the contents of your AdWords sandbox accounts. There is no version of the AdWords web interface however that will work with a sandbox account.
This can be great news for the AdWords developer community.
Speaking about the AdWords API, version 13 is being sunsetted in about a week, so make sure to upgrade to V200909 before April 22nd!
Forum discussion at Google AdWords API.