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 16, 2010
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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GoogleBot Stop Crawling Your Site On June 15th?
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 4:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
There are several webmasters complaining in Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld that Google has stopped crawling their site's as of yesterday morning.
Some say the crawling has not stopped completely, but rather dipped to a tiny fraction of the crawl rate they normally see.
Even senior member, Walkman, agreed and said:
I got 50 googlebot visits, down from over 1000 normally
There was some speculation that this was only impacting European web sites, but it seems to be larger.
Another senior member said:
Same here, daily average for the last 7 days was 20,000 gbot hits. Yesterday was 150 total gbot hits. Site is a US based site so I don't think this is a European only event.
Is this related to the Google Caffeine launch? I highly doubt it, being that Google Caffeine has been rolling out slowly and slowly over time, so I doubt it is specific to that.
Maybe it has to do with some sort of malware misclassification issue where Google will stop crawling sites until they are de flagged? Maybe it is something completely different. I am not sure.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
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Reciprocal Links: Do They Still Work?
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 3:48pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Link Building
We have talked about reciprocal links dozens, maybe hundreds, of times here already. However, a new thread at WebmasterWorld tries to understand the issue, if any with them.
The overall understanding from the thread is that reciprocal links still work and work well. The issue comes up when you do it "excessively" where your links are coming from unrelated web sites and you are linking back to unrelated pages.
Senior member, Whitey is asking if there is a way to automate the reciprocal link request emails to see if they don't appear to be automated and excessive to Google.
Martinibuster, the moderator of the forum goes into the issue:
What has changed in the last five or six years is that excessive recips became a reason for scrutiny. Prior to 2005, there was a misconception that reciprocal linking was white hat- even though Google's webmaster guidelines did not state any such thing. The thinking was that as long as your linking is relevant then Google is going to love it, even if you recip with thousands of sites.
But let's be clear about recent history. There have been bannings of specific reciprocal link networks that crossed the line of "excessiveness." In general, I think it's a good policy to cycle through various link strategies so the backlink profile isn't heavy in any one kind of link.
As one member said, reciprocal links are unavoidable, in a sense.
What is your take?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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The Karate Kid Google Movie Reviews Are Wrong?
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 3:36pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
If you do a search in Google for [karate kid movie] up comes a one box result for The Karate Kid movie. But it has only a two star review on average from users. Why?
If you dig deeper and look at the Google Reviews for that movie, you will see reviews on "Bollywood movies." According to Wikipedia, "Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry."
The Karate Kid is not a Bollywood, so why is Google showing reviews for Bollywood movies here?
Here is a screen capture:
All these negative reviews make up the two star rating on the Google search result listing:
Personally, I have not seen the movie - so maybe it is only two stars. But it does seem Google is pulling in the wrong reviews for this movie.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Google Places/Maps Custom Attributes Errors?
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 3:22pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
A Google Places Help thread reports that when adding custom attributes to your Google Maps listings you get an error that reads "Your attribute value is too long."
An attorney trying to add custom attributes said:
I tried to add some the recommended custom attributes listed at URL for an attorney's Web site I'm working on. For "Years Admitted", "Professional Affiliates" , and "Law School" I got an error that reads "Your attribute value is too long." I got that error no matter what I entered in the field (even a single character.)
I have not tried to reproduce it, but Google Maps Guide Cecelia said:
Thanks for sharing madigrammedia. We're looking into this.
So something is likely wrong.
Forum discussion at Google Places Help.
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World Cup: Webmasters Complaining About Less Searches, Traffic & Ad Clicks
Posted: June 16th, 2010, 3:14pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Optimization
Some webmasters are complaining that they are noticing less traffic to their web sites due to possibly people watching the world cup. Instead of people sitting on their computers and browsing, shopping, searching - they are sitting in front of their TVs watching FIFA World Cup.
I am sure there is an incredible spike in soccer, world cup related keywords. But when it comes to your online lamp store, I doubt there is a spike in searches for that.
We have two thread at WebmasterWorld complaining about less traffic from Google, less traffic in general and less revenue and ad clicks on their AdSense ads.
Creative webmasters would use the world cup as a way to generate more traffic. For example, maybe the lighting store would write a story or have a category of specially designed lamps for your favorite country/team. Or maybe they write a post about how it is important to use proper lighting to enhance the game watching experience. Those are just two ideas off the top of my head.
Have you noticed a drop in traffic in the past week or so?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.