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)
-
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
SEO
(4690 unread)
-
Emily Chang (347 unread)
-
Search Engine Roundtable
(4343 unread)
Search Engine Roundtable (8 unread)
-
Daily Search Forum Recap: June 10, 2010
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2010 Seattle
-
Searchers Hate Custom Google Home Page, Want Opt Out
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 3:32pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
See my update below, Google basically pulled the background images.
At midnight of June 10th, Google flipped the home page of Google.com to automatically show a background image. They announced that this will only be automatic for June 10th, a 24 hour period.
Lots of people are calling it a Bing impersonation, which I assume Google knew and decided they didn't care about.
But at the same time, although I personally like Google really pushing people into the customized home page - I think they should have given an opt out. I think most people had no clue that this was an option until Google went this drastic route, but give them a way to opt out.
I was browsing the Google Web Search Help forums and the first 6 pages of threads in that forum, as of 8am (EST) are all complaints. Here are the first 3 pages, I ran out of room...
Google, when doing something this drastic, next time, just put an option to go back.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and i'll just link to one Google Web Search Help thread.
Update: Google removes background images early and adds a link explaining things. Google's Marissa Mayer tweeted they just removed it. But she did not explain why. I assume it has to do with the complaints.
.bbpBox15865817001 {background:url(http://s.twimg.com/a/1276063863/images/themes/theme1/bg.png) #9ae4e8;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}
Actually as of now :) @Jon_E Google search background back to normal tomorrow, says @marissamayer.less than a minute ago via webmarissamayer
marissamayerGoogle updated their blog post saying:
Update June 10, 11:31AM: Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users' choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special "doodle" that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it-in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today's series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.
-
Google Confirms Webmaster Tools Stats Delay
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 3:24pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Yesterday we reported that Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Report Impression & Click Drops. This morning, Google confirmed the bug.
JohnMu at 6:30am wrote:
Thanks for posting! We have been analyzing the situation and found the problem. The data should be visible within a week or so.
So if you are affected by this, you should be okay within a week. Google also posted it as a known issue:
The search query data shown in Webmaster Tools for the month of June may not be complete for some sites at the moment. We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. We hope to have the full data shown again in the near future. This will have no effect on your site's performance in search results. Thank you for your patience.
Forum discussion continued at Google Webmaster Help.
-
Will Twitter's New URL Shortener Hurt SEOs?
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 3:15pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Link Building
Twitter announced they will be wrapping all links through their own URL shortener. So if you post a URL, it will automatically be shortened and passed through http://t.co/ as a URL.
I tested the URLs and they are 301 redirected, which is a good thing. But many SEOs already use a URL shortener and yes, those URLs are 301ed.
The thing is, most SEOs prefer not to chain redirect URLs. By that I mean, you do not want to 301 redirect a bit.ly URL to a t.co URL and then 301 that to a final destination URL. The more 301 redirects, the slower search engines pick up and pass through.
Plus, we do know that some PageRank is lost during 301 redirecting a URL to another URL. So having it go through two redirects adds to that. Plus, it takes Googler a longer time to realize chain redirects. Finally, a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday with Matt Cutts said chain redirects are a bad idea.
So if SEOs continue to use their own shorteners and if Twitter passes short URLs through their own shorteners, then SEOs may have a problem with the chain redirects.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
-
Google Maps Navigation Comes To 11 More Countries
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 3:03pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Google Maps Navigation, a free navigation GPS device for Android devices is now available in 11 more countries. Besides for the U.S. it is available in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.
The requirements are that you are running Android OS 1.6 and have an internet plan for your device.
You can learn more about it over at google.com/mobile/navigation/.
Tom from Google Maps team posted a forum thread about it over at the Google Mobile Help forums. Tom said:
We welcome your feedback! In anticipation of questions that may come, let me reiterate that I'm unable to discuss when or if Navigation will be enabled for other countries; that said, rest assured - the Navigation team is working hard to make this feature available for as many locales as possible. Let us know what you think!
Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help & Google Blogoscoped Forums.
-
Bing Tries To Launch Social Search Improvements
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 2:56pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
Yesterday, during the Keynote with the SVP of Microsoft, Bing introduced a way to search Twitter and Facebook using bing.com/social.
As of 10pm (EST), 10 hours later, the feature which should have been live 10 hours ago, is still not live. I hope by the time this post goes live, that bing.com/social shows more than just an error page:
When it does go live, the features demoed should include:
- Status updates and shared links from Facebook fan pages
- Aggregate shared link data for non-fan pages
- New home page with trends from Twitter and Facebook data
- Better ways to filter and sort Tweets and Facebook updates
But until then, it is kind of hard to play with.
A WebmasterWorld thread has one response that doesn't seem positive:
Ugh. UGH!
Anyway, time will tell.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: It does now seem to be live.
-
SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 Live Blog Recap:
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 1:04am CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2010 Seattle
Here is our live blog coverage of the SMX Advanced 2010 show. This wasn't planned, but I did it anyway:
- SEO For Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?
- Twitter, Real Time Search & Real Time SEO
- Show Me The Links: Real Life Link Building
- The Ultimate Social Media Tools Session
- You&A With Matt Cutts (Google Caffeine Index Live)
- Keynote Q&A: Yusuf Mehdi, SVP, Online Audience Business, Microsoft
- So You Want To Test SEO?
- Search Marketing In The Facebook Zone
- Mega Session: SEO Vets Take All Comers
-
SMX Advanced 2010: Mega Session: SEO Vets Take All Comers
Posted: June 10th, 2010, 12:44am CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2010 Seattle
The last session at SMX Advanced 2010 is Mega Session: SEO Vets Take All Comers. The live blogging coverage will be real time and embedded below.
On this panel we have:
- Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
- Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street Journal
- Greg Boser, President and CEO, 3 Dog Media
- Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
- Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
- Todd Friesen, VP of Search, Position Technologies
- Rae Hoffman, Owner, Sugarrae Internet Consulting
- Stephan Spencer, VP of SEO Strategies, Covario
Here is the live blog coverage:
Mega Session: SEO Vets Take All Comers