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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Google
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (6 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: June 22, 2010
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Yahoo Search 404 Handling Poor Again?
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 3:30pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Yahoo Search Optimization
A WebmasterWorld thread has several webmasters complaining about how Yahoo Search handles 404s.
There is a really good analysis by Frank Rizzo, a senior member from 2002 at WebmasterWorld, who shows how Yahoo is doing three weird things on his site, in regards to 404s. He said Yahoo is showing:
- Genuine 404s from pages which were deleted a while ago.
- 404s from what seems to be badly configured software
- 404s from what seems to be attempts at exploits.
Others are reporting similar issues as of this month and some are even thinking about blocking Yahoo's spiders over the issue.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Says Soft 404s Don't Result In Penalty, But Do They Hurt?
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 3:23pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Last week, I wrote how Google was fixing the issues with the new soft 404 errors showing now in Google Webmaster Tools.
I also went off a bit on a rant about how this is a big concern for me. I wrote:
Honestly, this really concerns me. Google clearly was using soft-404s behind the scenes for a long time. Providing this data to webmasters resulted in many claiming Google was soft-404ing pages that should not be 404ed. Now, with webmaster feedback, Google can address the issue. This is just concerning.
Now, Googler JohnMu is saying in a Google Webmaster Help thread that there is no penalty for soft-404s. He said:
To be clear: Google will not penalize your site for having soft-404 pages. Having soft-404 pages makes it harder for us to recognize new and updated content on your site, but it does not mean that we would see you site as being any less valuable in the search results :-). There's no need to rush and do something drastic here. Yes, it would be great if it could be cleaned up (that's why we have started reporting these things), but in general, it's not critical.
Honestly, I never thought there was a "penalty" but my main issue is that if Google misclassifies a page of yours as a soft-404, then by definition, Google won't include that page in their index or at least, not rank it well. It is not a penalty, it is just an issue with the page. Now, in some cases, this is the webmaster's fault and in other cases, it is Google's fault.
Either way, this is not a "penalty" but it doesn't lead to good Google search results for your pages classified as soft-404s.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Article Too Long Errors On Google News? Get Special Consideration
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 3:17pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A year ago, Google News started showing errors in Google Webmaster Tools named article too long. For these errors, Google would not include your article in Google News because it was too long.
Sounds a bit crazy, but I guess there is some logic to it. Articles that are too long may not be articles at all, they may be privacy policies and so on. It may be hard for Google to determine what is an article on a web site and what is not, so maybe length is a characteristic.
I recently spotted a thread at the Google News Help forum where Inbal, a Google News representative, said that they allowed one site to submit articles that would typically be flagged as too long.
She said:
Thanks for providing these examples for the "Article too long" error. I've updated your site's info. in our system to include more of your content in Google News.
So it seems that Google can make exceptions for some sites with this error message. If you see it happen often, reach out to Google in the forums.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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Hitwise: Google Search Share Grew, Back at 72%
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 3:11pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Engine Industry News
Hitwise released the May 2010 Search Market Share report claiming Google's search share grew 1% from April, bringing them back up to 72% of share on search queries.
Here are the charts:
By Industry:
By Query Length:
As Matt notes, take it with a grain of salt.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google Bug Prevents Clicking On Second Search Results
Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 3:03pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
There seems to be a weird bug with Google's search results, which highly discourages people from clicking on the second search result.
Typically, a searcher will search for search for something, go to the first result and if unhappy with that result, they will click the back button. After they click the back button, they may try to click on the second search result. In this case, Google is making it a bit hard for the user to click on that second search result.
What happens is that Google will push down the second search result when you click on it and load up a "Get more results from the past 24 hours" link, in its place.
Try it yourself, search for [search engine roundtable], then click on the first result. Then click your browser's back button. When the search results load again, click on the second result and you should see the "Get more results from the past 24 hours" link come up in its place.
Here is a video demo of this happening to me on Google Chrome on my Mac:
Many are complaining about this in the forums.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.