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 23, 2010
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Wrong Post & Author Information In Google Snippets? Tell Google
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 3:40pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
You see it often, especially in the forum or blog type of search results. Google shows the post count and author counts near in or above the search result snippet. Here is a picture to illustrate what I am talking about:
We first saw this in October 2008.
But we really never saw a way to complain about this information being inaccurate, which it often is.
Today, I spotted a thread at Google Webmaster Help thread where Googler, Sagar, replied to a person complaining asking for their URL.
Sagar said:
Can you please provide the URL to your site, I can forward it on to the appropriate individuals?
The user then posted URLs and Sagar said "No problem. I will forward these on to the team."
So if you are upset with how Google shows this data in their search results for your web site, then maybe join the thread and say so.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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More Reports of Google Referrals Down Despite Top Rankings
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 3:28pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Back in May we ran a poll asking if your Google referrals were down and 43% said they were.
There was some speculation if the poll was valid, because of although there was a new Google design launched in early May, there was also the MayDay update. I told people to take the poll based on their rankings not changing, but you never know if people listened.
Today, I spotted a new WebmasterWorldthread with more webmasters complaining about the same situation. Many are saying that they still have top rankings but the traffic from those rankings have plummeted recently. One person said:
We're back to a position we used to hold a good year ago. However, we're actually seeing traffic drop - we know what these positions should bring, but it's no where near old traffic levels.
Another person said:
I have a similar experience ..very stable serps but huge traffic drop..i am hoping it is world cup related as the globe seems a little distracted at the moment and the traffic drop coincides with the world cup period...fingers crossed.
It does seem to be related more to the new design than world cup, in my opinion but who knows.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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WordPress System Admin Calls Out Google's Evil Spiders
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 3:20pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one of the system administrators from Automattic, the company behind the most popular blogging platform out there, WordPress, complaining about GoogleBot's recent behavior.
He said recent GoogleBot behavior is similar to that of a DoS attack. He explained that "starting around 6:57 EDT today, one of our user's site started getting hammered by dozens if Google Bots instances concurrently, coming from dozens of legitimate IPs in the 66.249.71.n range."
He verified it was from Google's IP range and is concerned that there is a "bug" with Google's crawlers. He then warns Google that WordPress may need to block Google from crawling the blogs if they don't act fast. He said:
We of course do not want to block the Google bot from crwaling this or any of the public content on any of the WordPress.com sites, but since it does not support any of the crawl throttling directives others do (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2caa38cb3d55bfa0&hl=en), I'm at a bit of a loss on how to effectively stop this from happening again without taking some drastic measures I'd like to avoid.
JohnMu of Google replied pretty quickly saying:
Thanks for posting -- I'll pass it on to the team here to review. If this is just for one site, using Webmaster Tools would probably be the best way to solve this problem, but it might be useful for our engineers to take a look to see what caused it in the first place.
We have not heard back from Google if it was a bug or if anything changed. Nor did we hear from WordPress if it has been resolved.
But it is pretty cool that WordPress posted this.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Google's Maile Ohye On The MayDay Update
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 3:06pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
In our continued coverage of the Google MayDay update which we have been tracking since May 3rd, I wanted to share another Googler's statement on it.
We already heard from Matt Cutts, but what about Maile Ohye, a Tech Lead at Google mostly responsible for Webmaster Tools.
Maile was the keynote at SES Toronto and TopRank covered that keynote. Here is his coverage:
Mike Grehan: After a previous update, we heard a story of someone ranking #1 who lost positioning (and was previously making $10,000/month just from that one ranking). The same thing again seems to be happening with the Mayday update. What exactly is that it?
Maile Ohye: We tweak little things in our algorithm all the time. Mayday was a significant update that really impacted long tail terms. A lot of people were leveraging long tail phrases for lots of traffic but it was frequently done via automated methods. We’ve looked to eliminate spam, and that’s been a big priority for us. At the same time, there were people developing not quality content (not a violation of guidelines, but also not providing value). What it does is for long tail queries, is we now just consider them queries like anything else. We are going to put as much value in those search results as all search results.
So, you can’t just add a bunch of keywords on a page and expect results just on that. This type of update is continuing and it’s a focus we have. We have other projects too to help continue making long tail traffic highly relevant.
Mike Grehan: Are you saying with long tail terms, are queries getting longer?
Maile Ohye: Yes, people have evolved as searchers. With Google when you search for over 3 terms, the snippet link increases in importance as people expect to find long queries and we want to deliver a better experience.
As you can imagine, the folks over at WebmasterWorldare chewing, digesting and then dissecting each and every word from this live blog coverage.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Google One Box For Sunrise & Sunset
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 3:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Search Engine
I have no idea if this is old or not, but I have never seen it myself until today. When you search for [sunrise] or [sunset] on Google, Google will give you a onebox result with the sunrise or sunset time for your current location.
It will also work to tell me when [sunrise los angeles] is this morning:
This is nothing advanced and Ask.com and Wolfram Alpha do it, I don't think Bing or Yahoo does - but I had no idea Google did this until today.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Bing Upgrades Design & iPhone App & Pushes Entertainment
Posted: June 23rd, 2010, 2:50pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
Microsoft announced their new look yesterday, with a big push in entertainment and also a revamped iPhone App.
Matt McGee has a pretty detailed look at the Bing design changes, Elisabeth Osmeloski took a look at the expanded entertainment features and dug into the Bing iPhone app changes at Search Engine Land.
I wanted to show you a search result from before and after. The before picture is from the end of March, so fairly recent:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Things seem more tightened up and cleaner. Overall, it seems people are happy with the new UI, new features and new refinements.
Forum discussion at Bing Community, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.