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.
Feeds
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Google
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (305 unread)
SEO
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Emily Chang (334 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: August 24, 2010
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Some Clues On Making Unique Content From Google
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 3:53pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
I spotted an interesting thread at Google Webmaster Help where a manufacturer is upset that his vendors outrank him for his own products. The manufacturer provides an XML feed for their vendors and resellers to use and sell, but it is the same content the manufacturer uses on his own site.
He asked what he can do to make sure Google knows that his site is the source of this content and thus rank higher than his resellers? In that, Google's JohnMu replied offering a glimpse of insight into how to differentiate his content and make it unique enough for Google to find it rank worthy.
JohnMu spoke a bit about the Google algorithms, saying:
Our algorithms don't count characters, but they try to find unique content in a sense. I wouldn't worry too much about the length, I'd just make sure that you have pages about your software on your site that do not contain just the content that you're syndicating via the XML file. Adding a sentence or two is one way to do this, even better would be to make it completely unique. Keep in mind that the unique content is not only for Googlebot -- your visitors will want to see it too. As the developer of your software, I'd assume that you would know it much better than the other sites, so as a user, I would expect to find more and more detailed information on your site. I bet that's already the case, so perhaps you're already all set :).
Key take-aways?
- Character count not important
- Unique "sense" is important
- Two unique sentences may do the trick
- Use content your not sending to resellers
None of this is crazy, but we do see Google saying things that they may not have said in the past. Such as the length of the content is not important, a sentence or two may be enough to make it unique enough and something about "unique sense."
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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GoogleBot Crawling From Different Locations At Same Time
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 3:47pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
The obsessed SEOs at WebmasterWorld have noticed that for the first time in watching how GoogleBot (Google's search crawler) spiders their sites, they are now crawling from a few different IP addresses at the same time.
Long time WebmasterWorld members said this is the first time they have seen GoogleBot crawl their site at the same time from multiple IPs. Several have noticed GoogleBots crawling from three different IPs at the same time. One member said:
We had lots of crawler activity today on a newer site, google hit the site from 3 different ip addresses throughout the day. Hoping it's a good sign, never seen them use different ip addresses in the same day before.
Another senior member added:
Yea they went berzerk on our big site last thursday and friday. their fast activity notified me so I took a peek to see who was scraping the site... I've never seen Google spider so fast and from so many IP addresses, they were all valid Google ip's but there was like 10-20 of them running at once.
Have you noticed this behavior?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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Reporting Search Spam To Bing
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 3:37pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Microsoft MSN Search
Now that Bing owns about 30% of the U.S. market share by gobbling up Yahoo's search share, some people may want to know how to report search spam to Bing.
Now, we know most SEOs won't report competitors to spam. The topic of spam reporting is nothing new:
- Reporting Spam: Is It Ethical
- How Can I Report Spam to Google?
- Google Spam Reporting Working
- Does Google Investigate Spam Reports?
- Quick Spam Reporting Tool
That being said, if you wanted to report serious spam that you are afraid your children or grandparents would be hurt by, then here is how.
Go to Bing.com and on the bottom right, there is a link for "Tell us what you think." Click it and select "Found Spam" in the drop down on the form. Fill it out and pray they do something.
The "Tell us what you think" is found on all the search result pages as well, so it is always in the bottom right hand corner of all the pages.
You can also try this form or the Bing Webmaster Forums.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & Bing Forums.
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Google AdWords Issues: Invalid Clicks Bug, Billing Tab Inaccessible & Snapshot Date Off
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 3:26pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
There are several new known issues with the Google AdWords system. The issues are being worked on by Google and you should know that they will be taking care of them.
(1) Invalid Clicks & Invalid Click Rate Wrong:
Due to a technical issue, the Invalid Clicks column and the Invalid Click rate column from the campaigns management tab are showing 0 for all the campaigns in your account. Our engineers are working on resolving this issue.
Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.
(2) Billing Tab Is Inaccessible For Some:
Some customers might not be able to access the Billing tabs in their Adwords account. A workaround is to go directly to the pages once you have logged in to your AdWords account, and go to the 'Billing Summary or the 'Billing Preferences.'
Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.
(3) Wrong Message On Account Snapshot:
There is a message on the account snapshot page about a system maintenance showing the incorrect dates. The system maintenance will take place from August 21, 2010 10:00 AM through August 21, 2010 2:00 PM Pacific Time. Please disregard the dates that are posted for 2005 and 2015, apologies for the inconvenience.
Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.
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Google Places Image Upload Broken?
Posted: August 24th, 2010, 3:17pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
There are several users recently reporting that they are unable to upload photos to their business listing in Google Places. The reports come via the Google Places Help forum and there are dozens of complaints in the past week.
The first recent complaint said:
Image uploads are broken. I have tried valid JPG images both from the web and my computer and they all show up as broken links.
Then we have several, "me too" posts, such as:
I am having the same problem. I have tried uploading photos from my computer as well as from my flickr stream and they all show up as broken links.
The thing is, I personally just tried it and it worked fine. No errors:
Maybe all these users are uploading them wrong? There are specific format requirements for photos, but can this many people not be following those requirements? Maybe it is a browser specific issue?
Forum discussion at Google Places Help.