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: June 14, 2010
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Was There a Google May Day Tweak On June 2nd?
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 3:52pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Every SEO in the world should have heard of the May Day Google update by now. I mean, we covered it on May 3rd, May 14th, May 25th, May 28th and once again on May 30th. But I am sure there are some that never heard of it.
In any event, we may have an update for you.
A WebmasterWorldthread has several webmasters reporting a ranking change in Google on June 2nd. We have several webmasters all saying the same thing. They had great rankings in Google on June 2nd and then June 3rd, the rankings are gone.
Some are saying the site is gone and some are saying just downgraded. To me, it sounds more like a link or trust penalty of some sorts. Here is one quote:
Yes I noticed a drop in traffic on all my small sites with exact keyword in domains, low in bound links or non quality.
Mine have not dropped off the map just a page or 2 from #1.
All my normal larger, older sites have been doing very well.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Bad Links: Words From Google
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 3:43pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
I often quote different search representatives from what I find they say in the forums. One of the most quoted search reps is JohnMu, a previous webmaster turned Googler. I often quote him, then try to figure out any insight into the Google black box on what he said. I am sure he finds it funny, but hey - it is what I do.
In a recent Google Webmaster Help thread, John replied to a webmaster over links pointing to his web site from a spammy site. He was concerned it was or would lead to a penalty of some sorts.
Here is what JohnMu said:
In general, bad links like that to your site will not affect your site's crawling, indexing or ranking in Google's search results. Looking at those particular URLs, it seems -- at least for the ones that I checked which were still live -- that your site's URL is only used as text on those pages, the actual links are pointing to other pages. It's fairly common for spammers to use random text that they found on the web, so I wouldn't worry about this.
That said, if you should find actual links pointing to pages on your own site, then I would double-check to make sure that your site is not hacked. It's sadly also common for spammers to link to hacked pages.. but if you are certain that your pages are ok (if the cached version of those pages is correct, that's usually a good sign), I would not worry about that :)
So what do we learn from this?
(1) Generally, bad links pointing to your web site won't hurt you. A topic we discussed and debated here over and over again.
(2) Many spammers may include links to your site, but not activate those links, so you have less to worry about.
(3) Spammers often link to sites that are hacked.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Yahoo Gaming Search Market Share or Being A Typical Publisher?
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 3:27pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
Time To End The Bullshit Search Engine Share Figures? by Danny Sullivan is a must read for anyone interested in how search market share statistics work.
In summary, Yahoo, after months and months of search market share decline, is now seeing a few months of search market share growth. Danny basically says that Yahoo, like other search players, game the system. How? Well, Danny digs into how in his article, so check it out.
This is nothing new, search engines and publishers have done this for years. It is a numbers game. For search market share, it is about the number of queries. If you can get more queries, you get more share - even if they aren't hand entered. Publishers want more page impressions, if that means you paginate articles or drive interest to click on related articles or other methods, that is how publishers monetize their sites.
Yes, this is nothing new. But the statistics we use to measure a site's value has not changed much. Yes, we have new metrics, like "engagement" and so on, but they aren't used for selling ads.
This is an issue where I really see no solution to in the immediate future.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Sphinn.
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Will Google's Index Size Increase With Caffeine?
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 3:16pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A WebmasterWorld thread asks if Google's index is indeed expanding with Caffeine or not. As you all know, Google Caffeine officially launched last week after much speculation, anticipation and confusion.
Caffeine, as we have said to exhaustion by now, is not a ranking algorithm change. It is a change to how Google stores data in their index and how they find new content for their index. It is an indexing game changer for Google, but not a ranking algorithm change.
Google said they are able to index and show that new indexed content faster in the search results. Google said they can index more and more, because the infrastructure scales better. Google said they can pull out meta data from pages at a better and more accurate rate than ever before.
So will Google's index size increase? Matt Cutts of Google said that Caffeine's index size is about the same size as the previous index. So one would have to assume that over time, Caffeine will be much larger than the previous index. Larger in size in number of documents indexed, larger in size in fresh content and larger in size in meta data captured.
I believe that once Google is more comfortable with Caffeine out in the public, they will be more comfortable crawling more and more content at rate they never did before. Will that content rank? That depends on how well you pass the May Day test.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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No Flag Day For Google or Yahoo: Bing, Ask & Dogpile Raise The Flag
Posted: June 14th, 2010, 3:02pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
Today is Flag Day in the United State of America and Bing, Ask.com and Dogpile all have logos and themes or mentions for the day. We even have a theme here, but Google and Yahoo do not. Here are pictures of the Flag Day themes I have found:
Bing:
DogPile:
Ask.com has a mention:
Search Engine Roundtable:
Now, Google does do Flag day type of logos/doodles internationally. It was Russia Day and check out this logo:
How about Philippine Independence Day:
Or Day of the Enamored in Brazil?
Google Japan also had a special logo for Hayabusa returning to earth:
An interesting mistake of some sorts also Doodle related happened over the weekend. Remember the FIFA logos, well, as reported at Websnoic.nl, Google Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Algeria showed a special Doodle that should have looked like this:
For about 8 hours, the logo looked like this:
Something was corrupt about that image. It is now fixed.
Anyway, for all American's - happy Flag day. Note, all the logos above are within the past few days, so happy days to you all also!
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.