SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » November 3, 2010

Feeds

5540 items (5015 unread) in 3 feeds

Google (325 unread)

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)

SEO (4690 unread)

• Emily Chang (347 unread)
• Search Engine Roundtable (4343 unread)

Search Engine Roundtable (6 unread)

• 

  Daily Search Forum Recap: November 3, 2010

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Search Forum Recap  

  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.

  
  

• 

  Google Webmaster Tools Says "You Have More Sites" To Add

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 2:03pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google Optimization  

  If you login to your Google Webmaster Tools account, you may be prompted to add more sites to your account.

  When I logged in this morning, I saw:

  You have more sites!

  You're also a verified owner of these sites. Would you like to add them to your Webmaster Tools account?

  This was followed by a list of domains and then two buttons:

  • Add selected sites
  • Always add

  Here is a picture:

  I should note that many of these were the non-www equivalent of sites I have already added to my Google Webmaster Tools sites list. It is best practice to add both the www and non www.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Google Brings Back Call Tracking: AdWords Call Metrics

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 1:46pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google AdWords  

  In May 2009, Google discontinued their call tracking phone numbers, which was supposed to be used for Google Audio Ads, but often used by search AdWords advertisers instead.

  Now, Google is bringing them back and naming them "AdWords Call Metrics." Greg Sterling has a great write up on it, and he explains that although calls are free now, Google may begin to start charging for them, maybe as a CPC basis.

  Here is a picture of the ads now live:

  Here is a video demo:

  Here is a screen shot of the ad set up in the AdWords console:

  Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

  
  

• 

  Google Adds Rich Snippets Support For E-Commerce Sites

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 1:37pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google Optimization  

  Rich Snippets must be working out for Google, they continue to expand the use of the feature. In short, rich snippets let webmasters markup their HTML and content to give Google a bit more meta data so Google can enhance the snippets to displayed in the Google search results.

  Google has now enabled rich snippets for shopping sites. Google said:

  In time for the holiday season, we now support rich snippets for shopping (e-commerce) sites! As many of you know, rich snippets are search results that have been enhanced using structured data from your web pages. Our new format shows price, availability, and product reviews on pages offering a product for sale.

  Here is an example of a rich snippet used for a shopping site in the Google search results:

  How does it work? Well, you can read the help document on this which explains you have two options.

  
  Option 1: Provide a Merchant Center feed.

  Option 2: Add markup to your site.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  More Publishers Seeing New Google AdSense Interface

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 1:27pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Google AdSense  

  I'll be honest, I really thought virtually all Google AdSense publishers were part of the new AdSense interface, known as V3. They have been beta testing it for over a year now and I personally have been using it for a year or so now.

  A year of beta testing a beta? Yea, Google is known for keeping things in beta - but they do deliver the beta to everyone sooner than a year. Meaning, they may be known for keeping the beta label on products, but it doesn't typically shy them away from releasing the beta to more and more people. A year long beta push, to me, seems long.

  In any event, there are tons of threads from Google AdSense publishers on the AdSense beta console. Like I said, I have screen shots from a year ago, and yea - they have slightly changed. Some threads are at Google Blogoscoped Forums, Google AdSense Help, and WebmasterWorld.

  The main questions I have seen are what is the "coverage" metric and the "RPM" metric. A thread specifically about the coverage metric has Googler Guillaume explaining that:

  This is a good question. Unfortunately the documentation is not complete yet, so here is a temporary explanation:

  Coverage is the percentage of ad unit impressions or queries that showed ads:

  - A coverage of 100% means that AdSense was always able to provide ads to match the content of the page (Content) or the query keywords (Search).

  - A coverage of less than 100% means that AdSense was not able to find ads for some ad units or search queries, which didn't show ads as a result.

  RPM is calculated by adding up the price charged to advertisers (CPM) for each ad block on the webpage, then subtracting the cost of delivering that advertising.

  Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums, Google AdSense Help, and WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Google Analytics Suffering Data Outage : November 2, 2010

  Posted: November 3rd, 2010, 1:20pm CET by rustybrick

  Tags:  Tracking Conversion Measurements  

  If you attempt to check your traffic today, November 3rd, for yesterday's data, November 2nd - you will be surprised to see that you have had no traffic to your site.

  There is a wide spread bug or delay in the Google Analytics reporting tool.

  There are dozens of reports of this bug at the Google Analytics Forum, and threads at WebmasterWorld and Google Blogoscoped Forums, amongst others.

  Here is a picture of my report for this site:

  There is no word from Google yet on the issue, but I am sure they will fix it by tomorrow.

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Forum, WebmasterWorld and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

  Update: Within 30 minutes of writing this, Google has fixed the issue. We all know should see data in our analytics account.