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 20, 2010
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Update: Google's Mourning White Logo Now on Google Hong Kong
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 10:39pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
If you go to Google Hong Kong, or the place Google China redirects you to, you are shown an interesting Google Logo. The Google logo is all in white. Here is a picture:
This white Google logo was also on Google Poland a few days ago.
The reason it is mysterious is that the alternative text on the image has no clue on what the white logo represents, nor does the logo hyperlink to anywhere, plus the image name reveals nothing interesting.
A Google Blogoscoped Forum thread speculated the white logo on Google Poland was a form of a memorial for certain victims. But if that is true, why is Google Hong Kong showing the special logo - I don't think there is a public memorial today in Hong Kong. Some are speculating due to the earthquake in Qinghai, China but why not link to this or something to represent what this is about.
Hat tip to Michel for pointing these out to me.
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forum.
Update: Google sent me this statement on these white logos:
From time to time we show a special colorless logo on our homepage in recognition of a current loss or tragedy. Users in Poland recently saw this muted logo, and now we're showing the logo to users in China and Hong Kong to pay our respects to the victims of the Qinghai Earthquake. We are saddened by the loss of life and great damage caused by this natural disaster, and our thoughts are with the people of Qinghai, China.
Google also confirmed that the first time they used the white or colorless logo was last week on Google Poland.
It is my understanding that Google uses this logo only when a government body declares a state of mourning.
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Google Israel Gets Independence Day Doodle
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 3:50pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
I often cover how different people are upset that a specific logo was not designed and placed on Google for an event. The complaints range from missing an important country's holiday or missing someone's birthday, amongst others. So when I was testing Google's virtual keyboard in the search results, I noticed that today, Google Israel has a special doodle.
Today is Israel's Independence Day, which technically happens every year on 5 Iyar (jewish month). It is also known as Yom Ha'atzmaut (יום העצמאות) and it happened on May 14, 1948. The hebrew date was 5 Iyar, 5708. Today is actually 6 of Iyar but Google is not wrong. In 2004 Israel changed the rule of when this day is celebrated and if 5th of Iyar is on a Monday, the festival is postponed to Tuesday.
Pretty good that Google got it right, despite the change.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Google Including Virtual Keyboards In Search Results
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 3:39pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Back in June 2009, Google introduced a virtual keyboard API that developers can use to add to their multilingual web sites. In fact, we used it on some of our web sites.
Now, Google is including this virtual keyboard directly in the search bar, within the search results page. For example, conduct a search at Google Poland or Google Israel and after you search, on the search results page, you will see a keyboard icon near the search bar. Clicking it will bring up a virtual keyboard. Here are pictures:
There is a detailed help document on Google using the virtual keyboard in the search results. Here is a closer screen shot of a virtual keyboard:
Pretty cool, don't you think?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and hat tip to Kasia and Istvan.
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Google, I'm Not a Taxi Service, Stop The Phone Calls
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
A funny but yet sad Google Web Search Help thread reports a person receiving phone calls from people looking for taxi service. In short, if you search for [taxi in postcode CT3] in Google UK up comes taxi results from Google Maps. But the number listed at the top of the page is of someone's home, who has nothing to do with the taxi service.
The person said in the thread:
If you search for a taxi in postcode CT3, the first number that come up is for Maypole Airfield with my home telephone number against it. How do I get this number off the taxi list?
The interesting thing is that this is an owner verified listing and thus the phone number was entered by the business owner.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Google: Try Not To Change URLs
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 3:17pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A Google Webmaster Help thread has a webmaster who changed pretty much all the URLs on his web site. He did set up proper redirects, but is patiently waiting for Google to reindex the site and capture the new URLs. In response to a question, Google's JohnMu replied with the following statement:
As freebeer mentioned, my guess is that this is from a time where your site did not have the proper redirects in place. You can guess to see if this might be the case by checking the crawl dates in Webmaster Tools. If you've had the redirects there for a while now, then I would check to make sure that the errors are mostly from before that time. If that's the case, then things should settle down over time.
Keep in mind that changing all URLs like this will result in changes in the crawling, indexing and ranking of your site -- since we're essentially seeing new URLs for all existing old URLs. This is not something that can change over night, so you'll have to be a bit patient and keep an eye on the logs to make sure that everything is covered, as things settle down.
Sometimes changing URLs is a must due to programmer requirements (although that is a lame excuse), due to previous duplicate content issues or due to management requirements. But changing all the URLs on a web site will have an impact, at least in the short term.
JohnMu cleverly links to a W3.org article named Cool URIs don't change. Be cool, stick with your cool URLs.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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WebmasterWorld Builds Their Own Search Engine
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 3:09pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: SEO Forum News
Brett Tabke, owner and founder of the popular WebmasterWorld forums, announced in a thread that they have built their own search engine to help forum users locate content within the forums. Brett explained that this new search engine took them about a "couple months work" and they are "very proud of it."
You can access the new search feature at webmasterworld.com/newsearch.cgi. Keep in mind, non-subscribers are allowed a maximum of 10 searches per day. According to the search page, the current size of the index is 954,078,091 bytes (909.87MB). It also is neat in that AltaVista standard boolean syntax is indeed supported.
Again, this is not WebmasterWorld competing with Google or Bing, but rather them building an internal search engine to help their users find content on WebmasterWorld. I have captured two screenshots for archival purposes.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.