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: October 13, 2010
Posted: October 13th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Did Google's Marissa Mayer Get Promoted or Demoted?
Posted: October 13th, 2010, 3:24pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Other Google Topics
Bloomberg broke the news that one of the most respected and visible Google personalities, Marissa Mayer, is switching roles in the company. She will no longer be Google's vice president of search products, instead she is moving into overseeing location and local services.
The article, as do others, claim how important those areas are in Google's future. And thus, it is a promotion. In addition, Marissa is joining Google's operating committee, the company's senior most management group.
But other's believe the move was a step down. Claiming Marissa has failed to compete with Bing on the user interface side and to innovate at a faster pass, on the UI side, compared to Bing. Rational? Today is a day full of Bing announcements.
Personally, I am not sure what to believe. I know mobile/local is really an incredibly important part of search. Most of the growth in search over the next years will be via that avenue. But I am a bit surprised to see Marissa not lead up both local and web desktop. I mean, I can see her doing both.
A WebmasterWorld thread has Brett Tabke's comments, Brett is the founder of WebmasterWorld and PubCon. Brett said:
Well gosh - the new serps didn't go over very good with the public. Google instant was rolled out to much fanfare, and quickly ignored by everyone. Essentially every UI change in the last year has been viewed as 'bing'alike. It was clearly time for a major shake up at the UI dept of Google. Lets just hope, Udi believes in stability above all else. If it aint broke - don't fix it.
The real interesting thing to me is how hard Google PR is trying to spin this as a promotion. Ya, that's the ticket. She moves from the look-n-feel director of the top webpage in the world, to a bean counter shuffling map checkins. This does not seem like a promotion to me. She got set down...
So he clearly thinks this was a demotion of some sorts.
But I do not agree with the "if it aint broke - don't fix it" attitude. If you don't innovate, you will die, in my opinion. Especially in this business.
Anyway, what do you think? Do you think Google demoted Mayer or promoted her?
Was Google's Marissa Mayer Promoted or Demoted?online survey
Forum discussion at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.
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AdWords Customer Asks Google For More Exclusions Control
Posted: October 13th, 2010, 3:16pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
I love it when really advanced search advertisers submit their feature wish lists. It shows how far a platform has come and how much further it can go. I wanted to highlight Jerry Nordstrom's feature request list, noting he is very happy with the controls he has from Google AdWords today, but wants more.
Jerry listed them in a Search Engine Watch Forums thread.
What more?
- Ad formats: Some of the worst performing ads on the content network for us are from sites that exclude our domain name. Or only display the ad title. Allow us to control ad format publishers.
- TLD Control (domain name extension): It is very clear that a TLD can help determine the legitimacy of an advertiser. All us to exclude domains based on. Their TLD .com, .In, .Au, .UK etc.
- Domain Name Control:Exclude content partners based on a keyword or special character within their domain name. ie: exclude all domains with "free" or "government" or "obama" in them.
- Language: If there is any bit of language on the page not compatible with my ads, I don't want my ad run there.
- Percentage of Ads to Content on a page.: Asking a lot here, but man, I am tired of having to exclude the thousands of pages containing 90% ads and 10% cheap scraped content modified to fool Adsense matching.
Those are just some of the items on his wish list.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
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Can You Lose Your Job If Your SEO Doesn't Translate To Conversions?
Posted: October 13th, 2010, 3:04pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: SEM SEO Companies
Many of you work as SEOs in-house, many as independent contractors and many for yourselves on your own web sites. Those who have to answer to a boss, does your SEO work get judged on ranking of pages or based on if those rankings ultimately lead to a conversion?
Kim Krause Berg posted a thread at the Cre8asite Forums asking this question. She asked, "Does Your Job Depend On Conversions?"
She asks specific questions based on her experience working for management:
- Is your dependent on ROI? In other words, if your SEO work does not translate into a certain set of criteria, do you lose the job?
- What are the criteria for ROI as managers see it? Is it higher revenue, rank, traffic, what?
- Anyone: What are the typical expectations for meeting ROI? For ex., if an organic plan doesn't seem to be working, how long does it take to decide this?
- Anyone: Are conversions just something SEO's make happen or does user experience web design play a part in the overall marketing plan?
Let me make it simple. If you rank your client/boss in the first position for all the keywords he wants to rank well for, but ultimately the conversions are not there, do you think you'll still have a job in a year for now?
Here is my more basic poll:
Does Your SEO Job Depend On Conversions?online survey
Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.
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Chinese Web Sites Back Infected Google's Search Results?
Posted: October 13th, 2010, 2:55pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that some are seeing web pages hosted in China infiltrating the Google search results.
Unlike the last major Chinese search spam attack, this time they are reportedly using non-Chinese TLDs. In the past, they used forms of .CN TLDs, now they are using .COM, .NET, .ORG, and so on. But the web pages are hosted in China and the whois data is owned by someone in China.
Tedster, WebmasterWorld's administrator, said:
Sounds like quite a cooperative network going on. I've seen something like this in one SERP a while back, but it didn't last too long.
Personally, I haven't seen them myself but another SEO said:
For lesser brands in our industry the top five spots are filled by Chinese knockoffs. The manufacturer in the US ranks well below the sites overseas. New and disturbing trend.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.