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 28, 2010
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Google Officially Launches "Pages Similar To" Feature
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:57pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
Monday I noticed a new Google showing a one box like result at the bottom of the search results for navigational searches, such as for [search engine roundtable]. Here is a picture of the "pages similar to" feature that shows at the bottom of the results:
Note, you may not see it yet, because Google is rolling it out, but it is now officially live and a feature Google is pushing out. Google said:
We launched a search feature that helps you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones with which you're already familiar.
We hope this feature helps you discover many useful websites that you didn't know about before and get a better understanding of all the choices the web has to offer.
Do you like it?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Bing Updates Language Detection After One or Two Crawls
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:52pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
I've never been happy with how Bing handles geo-location detection of web sites. They use and rely mostly on the meta language tag to determine if the site should be in Bing US versus a localized version of Bing. Google's Matt Cutts somewhat mocked how Bing handles this by saying:
Historically, meta tags for language and country have been less reliable than inferring the language or country directly. For example, lots of webmaster also just copy/paste from a friend's template without checking the meta tag values. The unreliability of the meta tags is why Google tends not to use them or give them less weight.
That being said, this is how Bing handles it and if you see your site in a regional Bing that doesn't make sense, you can change it by updating your meta language tag.
Brett Yount said in a Bing Community thread that once this is updated, Bing should update your site within one or two crawls. Brett said:
Change that and the issue should be corrected within one or two crawls.
So overall, if your site gets crawled once per day, you should be fine within a couple days.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
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When Will Google Deal With AdSense Issues On Their Cached Pages?
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:46pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
A new WebmasterWorld thread brings up an old issue with Google's AdSense ads rendering on the Google Cache results. Some ads, depending on the site's layout and html, won't render properly. Let me quote the complaint in the new thread:
When showing the cache of URLs of a site I see something strange. A lot of public service ads or no ads at all as well as ads not related to the content appear. Using the adsense preview tool everything looks fine.
I have checked the cache of a different site in the same niche, it has 100% better CTR and the ads in the cached version look completely on topic without any PSAs.
This is something we reported a year ago and a year before that on some level. Here is what incrediBILL, the moderator of the WebmasterWorld AdSense forum said:
I posted about a year ago about the ads in cache displaying improperly most of the time, not always but frequently, and Google acknowledged there was a problem, it was escalated, and we never heard about it again.
Another problem I raised was whether we got credits for ads on those cache pages because I use allowed sites and there was possible an issue there too, no resolution has been heard on that topic either.
We've been abandoned.
Did Google abandon us?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Dropping External Keyword Tool For New Keyword Tool
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:33pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
In September 2009 Google unveiled their new AdWords keyword tool. Since then, both the External Keyword Tool (Old Tool) and the new one (which required you to login) were available. Now, it appears the old External Keyword Tool is the new tool with a CAPTCHA.
Here is a picture of when I go to this NEW external keyword tool:
Here is a picture of the old tool, currently available in Google's cache:
A WebmasterWorld thread has one advertiser saying he will miss the old one because the new one is missing:
- Categorization of results under broad keyword headings
- Keyword suggestions from a specific URL
- More than 100 results for a specific keyword
- A trickier interface
Out with the old and in with the new!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: I spoke with Google and they told me that the old tool is still available via a link at the top right of the page. They will ultimately phase out the old tool, but do not have an ETA for when that would happen.
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Google Sitemaps Bug : Reporting 0 Indexed URLs
Posted: April 28th, 2010, 3:17pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Do not panic, there is a global bug with Google Webmaster Tools where Google is reporting that your site has zero pages indexed. This is currently a confirmed bug impacting all sites in Google Webmaster Tools. Google posted this in the known issues area saying:
The indexed URL counts for Sitemaps that you have submitted in Webmaster Tools may be showing zero (0) indexed URLs for some sites. We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. This will have no effect on your site's performance in search results.
So don't worry - Google will fix it and you do not need to do anything.
There are literally dozens and dozens of threads with complaints. Here are just a few of them.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster He Help and so many more.
Update: At about 1pm (EST), I checked back to see if this has been resolved and I am seeing indexed counts at normal levels now.