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.
Feeds
5540 items (5015 unread) in 3 feeds
Google
(325 unread)
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
SEO
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Emily Chang (347 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (7 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: May 25, 2010
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Something Is Up (Or Down) With Google's Search Algorithm
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 4:11pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google PageRankSERP Updates
It has been a really long time since covering SEO in the forums where I have seen so much stress and discussion amongst webmasters and SEOs about a possible change in the Google algorithm. We wrote about the Google May Day update twice, people suggesting this is a self improving algorithm that impacts the mid-long-tail keywords.
But the discussion continues to go on at WebmasterWorld, already on it's 3rd thread on this single topic this month. That is huge in terms of one topic of discussion at WebmasterWorld. Plus, I see random short threads at various other forums with SEOs and webmasters complaining about rank changes this month at Google.
Of course, the issue with WebmasterWorld is that they don't allow examples.
In any event, some are still wondering if this is Google Caffeine related, even though Caffeine is not an algorithm update, but rather an index structure update. Anyway, it is really hard to tell.
But if you noticed, 43% said traffic is down since the launch of the new design earlier this month. Some say it is related to the design and some say it is related to May Day. The distinction is, are your rankings the same and traffic down or is it both? If it is both, then call it May Day if it is just traffic, it is design related. If it is both, you want to check out the links above and the WebmasterWorldthread.
There is a blog said Matt Cutts of Google did mention the May Day update but didn't provide any details. The blog writes Matt as saying, "Mayday is an algorithmic change in Google (should find out more about this)." The blogger added in the comments, "Matt did not provide any details or specifics on Mayday. It was brought up during the Q & A part of the session and Matt said it had to do with changes to the algorithm to make it more accurate. I believe he said most sites would not be affected, but I'll have to review the audio I recorded."
I cannot find a video of this nor has Matt made any more comments on May Day.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google News Shows Publishers How To Optimize YouTube Videos
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 4:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Inbal from the Google News team posted a Google News Help thread linking to a blog post explaining how to optimize your YouTube videos to show up well in Google News.
Here are the tips from the blog:
1. Timely uploads
Videos should be uploaded as quickly as possible -- this will help them reach the news homepage faster and be grouped with the most recent articles.2. One story per video
Instead of having one video that contains multiple segments covering several different stories of the day, it's a better user experience (and easier for us to index), when there is one story per video, and the video title is specific (not something generic like “Breaking News”). At the very least, the description of the video should match the first story in the video.3. Categorization
If you are providing general news coverage, select YouTube category “News & Politics” (which is youtube_category_id 25) when uploading your video. If you have multiple channels, clearly identify each category (politics, business, entertainment, sports, etc.).4. More detailed descriptions
Similar to the first paragraph of a news article, descriptions of the news video should convey the who, what, when, where, and why of the story in a few sentences -- the more detail you can supply, the better.5. Rich tags
Another way to convey the content of the video is using the keyword tags. Providing keywords that might not be in the description gives us more knowledge of what the video is about. Especially helpful are proper nouns: the names of the people, places, companies, etc. mentioned in the video.6. Make it Embeddable
Be sure your video is embeddable on other sites since this is currently a technical requirement for being displayed in Google News. Additionally, if your videos are geo-blocked in certain regions, they will not appear in Google News.They also posted this older video with additional tips:
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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Upcoming AdWords & AdSense Webinars
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 3:51pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
There are two upcoming webinars on Google AdSense and AdWords.
The AdSense seminar is tomorrow and is being discussed in the Google AdSense Help. The topic of this AdSense webinar is AdSense Top Tech Tips and is tomorrow, Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 5:00pm GMT/ 9:00am PDT. The topics include:
- How to determine which ad variations perform best for you
- How to use HTML/CCC to wrap text around ad units
- How to ensure your best-performing ad units are defined first in your ad code
- Using Google Analytics to better understand your users and make your ad implementations more effective
- Using Webmaster Tools to increase the index and rank of your site
Register over here.
The AdWords webinar is not run by Google, but rather a top contributor, MrsC. The webinar is going to be done by Kim Clinkunbroomer and Tim Ash on Friday June 4, 2010 at 11:00am PST and it is free. To register for it go to adwordshour.com. Forum discussion on this webinar at Google AdWords Help.
Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help & Google AdWords Help.
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Should Newspapers Sell SEO Services?
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 3:42pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: SEM SEO Companies
Matt McGee at Search Engine Land reported that U.S. newspapers are now selling SEO services. Honestly, I am not surprised for a few reasons:
(1) They are in the content business and most content businesses should know how valuable SEO is.
(2) Newspapers sell ads, and many of them have sold text ads or been asked to. So they know something about SEO.
(3) I would hope newspapers have in-house SEO teams they can put on client projects.I deal every now and then with newspapers for my clients and I often have my clients forward me SEO details (both good and bad) from their newspaper contacts. So again, this does not surprise me.
Should newspapers sell SEO services? A Sphinn thread's comments seem very against it. Jill Whalen said in a joking maner, "Since they can't make any money in the publishing biz, I guess they figured they'd jump onto the SEO bandwagon. After all, anyone can do SEO, right?"
But honestly, if they know SEO, why not sell it? What do you think?
Should Newspapers Get Into Selling SEO?customer surveys
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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Google AdSense Now Displaying Revenue Share in AdSense Console
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 3:30pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Yesterday, Google revealed the revenue share of their AdSense program. They said within the upcoming months they would be adding the revenue share figures to the AdSense console. But it is actually in there as of yesterday.
AdSenseAdvisor, or Google's Rohit, said in a WebmasterWorld thread:
The AdSense for Content and AdSense for search revenue numbers mentioned in today’s blogpost are now being displayed in the new AdSense interface (still in beta). These numbers will also be available in the existing interface soon as well.
My first instinct was to check the AdSense reports and see a new column for revenue share, but it was not there. A Google AdSense Help thread aided me in finding it under the "account settings" section of the AdSense console.
Here is a picture:
As you can see, Google lists the revenue share by product under the "Active products" section. They only list the revenue share for "AdSense for Content" and "AdSense for Search," the others they are not sharing the information on yet.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google AdSense Help.
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Google Launches AdWords API Sandbox Account Viewer
Posted: May 25th, 2010, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
What if you had a way to visualize all the API calls you made during your development and integration with the Google AdWords API? Wouldn't that make coding and integrating your software with that API just a bit easier?
As expected, Google announced a new tool to "visualize the effects of a request on your account and to retrieve information such as IDs that are needed when running examples." It is called the Sandbox Account Viewer and it displays information exactly as it is returned by the API. You can download the source code for it over here.
Here is a picture of the Java application:
Forum discussion at AdWords API Forum.