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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Emily Chang (347 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: July 14, 2010
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Bug: Google Maps Pulling Wrong Star Ratings
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 4:03pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google Maps has become an extremely popular local search destination. Thus, making sure your Google Maps reviews are in order is an important part of your overall SEO and SEM routine.
A recent report at Google Maps Help forums has a confirmed bug where Google is pulling the wrong star values from third party review sites. In one case, Google is counting 4 out of 5 stars as 1 out of 5 stars - yes, that can be devastating.
Here is an example:
Look at this Google Places page review:
Google Maps shows one star, but when you click through and look at that specific review, it shows up as four stars:
Google's Joel Headley confirmed the bug and said "We're working on a fix and hope to get it resolved soon. It will likely be a multiple weeks before it's resolved."
Oh, if you are bored, feel free to drop my company a positive review. :)
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
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Are Competitors Stealing Your Links?
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 3:51pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Link Building
A paid member only thread at WebmasterWorld has outstanding discussion around the topic of competitors stealing your links.
You have sites that you work on, continuously over the past several years. You build high quality content, attract relevant and top quality links and then your competitors just take it all away from you.
The thread discusses methods used by competitors to easily take away those links through manual means. These are not hacking attempts but rather scare tactics. The thread discusses specific tactics that work at really high rates. I won't discuss those tactics here, since it is a private thread but I will discuss the advice given.
It is always a good idea to keep track of your current links and then be aware when a link you acquired over time is lost. If it is lost, you should be aware of why? Was the page removed? Did they drop all the links? Did the link swap out to a competitor? So keep tabs on your links and, in this case, be reactive to changes with your links.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (paid subscription required).
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Google Testing New Image Search Interface & Features?
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 3:45pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
I have no way of confirming this as of right now, but Google may be testing a new interface and feature set for Google Image Search.
A Google Web Search Help thread has one searcher talking as if he sees a completely new Google Image search user interface. When I asked for a screen shot, the user said it is no longer available but described what he has seen.
When I performed an image search it placed all the images side by side and grouped together. The groups were separated by bars that were titled Page1, Page 2, and so on.
It is often hard to decrypt these descriptions, but this interface sounds very unique to the basic interface we see today.
It wouldn't surprise me if Google was planning on trying out a new interface for image search. But I am surprised more people haven't seen or complained about it. Maybe this is a user bug or maybe this is a real test.
Have you seen anything like this? If so, send me a screen shot please.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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Google France Celebrates Bastille Day: fête nationale du 14 juillet
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 3:36pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Today is Bastille Day and Google France is celebrating the day with a special Google Doodle (Google logo). Bastille day is commonly referred to as La Fête Nationale or National Celebration and is always on July 14th.
Here is this year's doodle:
When you click on it, you are taken to a search result for [fête nationale du 14 juillet].
Here are some past logos for 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006, respectively.
To our French readers - Happy Bastille Day!
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.
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YouTube Down : Major Outage
Posted: July 14th, 2010, 2:48pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
For the past three hours or so, YouTube, Google's very popular video portal, has been down. It goes up here and there, but then goes back offline.
The error many people are seeing seems to be database related. Here is what I see:
There are reports of the outage at YouTube Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums. The first report I have seen was at 5am (EST).
I don't believe this is routine maintenance, but I do suspect it will be something Google is franticly fixing as we speak.
Forum discussion at YouTube Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.