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Search Engine Roundtable (133 unread)

Google: Spam Links To 404 Pages Won't Hurt You

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google's John Mueller said in a Google Webmaster Help thread said that if you have bad or spammy links pointing to 404 pages, it should have no negative impact on your overall site's rankings.

John said not only should it not happen, he has never seen it happen. He said:

To be clear, I have never seen a case where bad links pointing to URLs that return 404 have ever caused a website any noticeable problem in web-search. 404s are a part of the internet, they're expected to be seen when a non-existent URL is crawled, there's no reason that I can think of where it would make sense to count 404s against a site.

What if you do find a case? Then John says, let him know.

That said, if you ever feel that you've run across a case where it is really causing a problem, I'd love to take a look at the details. Feel free to send me a note directly on my Google+ profile ( http://johnmu.com/+ ) with the details that you've found. In this particular case (assuming you mean the site mentioned in the original post), those 404s are really not having any negative effect, and any changes in ranking that you're seeing definitely have other causes.

I don't get why a link to a dead URL would have any positive or negative impact anyway, but I guess anything is possible.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock.

Jef Poskanzer ACME Banned From Google AdSense

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Google is constantly banning AdSense publishers but this new ban is very interesting.

About two weeks ago, Google banned Jef Poskanzer, a computer programmer, known for being the first person to post a weekly FAQ to Usenet, and the owner of acme.com. He is incredibly well known in the Internet world - so this is ban is a big deal.

Yesterday, he informed the world of his AdSense ban and explained how he has no idea how it happened. Google basically told him that his site generates too much invalid clicks and Google needs to protect their AdWords advertisers. But in the 8.5 years of his site running AdSense, he never had an issue before like this.

Even Google's Matt Cutts got wind of the news and posted it on his Google+ page where you can see he is torn. He wrote:

I just saw that we terminated Jef Poskanzer from AdSense, which caused Nelson Minar (former Googler and one of the creators of the Ads API) to give up on defending us. . I can't easily imagine Jef Poskanzer was click-spamming AdSense, while at the same time I trust the judgment and abilities of the AdSense team. +Jef Poskanzer , I hope someone digs into the case to investigate deeply and reaches out if there's any more info we can share.

Yea, read the post by Nelson Minar at somebits.com - he writes "Google is too powerful, too arrogant, too entrenched to be worth our love. Let them defend themselves, I'd rather devote my emotional energy to the upstarts and startups. They deserve our passion." I rarely ever see a former Googler badmouth Google but it is happening more and more these days.

Anyway, I wonder if Google will reverse their decision on this quickly or share more information. This is pretty huge.

Forum discussion at Hacker News and Google+.

Google SPY World: Search Plus Your World

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

A couple weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World and they are getting a lot of negative feedback on the over personalization, especially after all the privacy policy changes.

That being said, a WebmasterWorld pointed out that the "Search Plus Your World" can be shortened as an acronym that doesn't look too good for Google - SPY World!

WebmasterWorld Moderator, Travelin Cat, said:

Have any of you noticed that Google's new "Search Plus Your World" can be shortened to SPY World?
You would think that a billion dollar company would do a little acronym study before a major brand announcement.

I have not seen the term used elsewhere yet but I assume it is only a matter of time until it catches on.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, added, "Now that you bring it up, you may have started a very embarrassing meme for Google."

Google launched SPY World!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to bitchcakes, an image we used in Search Pictures two weeks ago for Google Graffiti.

Google Engineer Explains Why Your AdSense Earnings May Drop

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Guillaume, a outspoken Google AdSense engineer, has spent a lot of time replying to complaints about pricing in a Google AdSense Help thread.

He goes through why a site may see a reduction in the dollars they make per click even after the estimated earnings are a certain price.

Of course he posts the "Smart Pricing" video:

But he also adds a lot of detail about how the AdSense pricing algorithms 'think.'

From a technical point of view, the question is ill defined. Google does not "consider traffic from social media sites" to be anything. Instead, quality is an intrinsic property of the traffic:
1) Invalid clicks. Google examines individual clicks and impressions, and tries to figure out if they are valid or not. A source of traffic is not low or high quality because Google considers it is, but the reverse: Google's algorithms try to reflect the quality of the traffic by detecting invalid clicks accurately.
2) Conversions and smart pricing. Are users genuinely interested in the ads they click? Are they generating conversions to advertisers? Again, Google does not decide in advance that a kind of traffic is high-value. Instead, Google measures the conversion rate, and applies Smart Pricing accordingly.
There might be patterns emerging from this, for instance related to social media sites. As an engineer, I have no idea. Personally, I believe that there is no such general rule, all depends on the specific case of each publisher.
I think that trying to correlate general problems and disconnected symptoms with rumors or the experience of a few other publishers who are probably very different, then extrapolating what could have happened, is not a successful approach in general. Instead, publishers should try to understand their own traffic in isolation. Measuring, gathering facts, looking carefully at reports (like I did with all accounts I looked at so far) works better, because it does not rely on statistics. Most of the time, the questions of the publisher can be answered by a report showing a peak or an anomaly. (Then the problem is often that publishers think or hope that their traffic is high quality, and refuse to admit that it may not be the case all the time, and that the problem is not Google's fault but their's.)

If you have been hit by something like this, I strongly recommend you read the Google engineers posts in the Google AdSense Help thread and see how you can change your content and traffic to drive better quality users to your site.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Behind The Scenes On President Obama's Live Google Hangout

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 30, 2012

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google: Robots.txt Files Must Be Smaller Than 500KB
Google's John Mueller reminds webmasters on his Google+ page that Google has a limit of only being able to process up to 500KB of your robots.txt file. This is an important point, if you have a super heavy robots.txt file, and it is beyond 500KB...
Did You Get Your Taxes From Google AdSense?
Google has begun sending out the 1099 tax forms to qualifying Google AdSense publishers last and this week. A WebmasterWorld thread has some publishers claiming they have received theirs. Not every publisher gets one. You have to be U.S...
Google News Publishers Urged To Use Report An Update Form
A few days ago, Erik from the Google News team posted a thread in the Google News Help forums asking Google News publishers to please use the report an update form when making changes to their site...
Google Rich Snippets Showing 3rd Party Results
A WebmasterWorld thread has someone noticing that Google is showing rich snippets under a site but those rich snippets are coming from a different set of sites, not from the listed site's source code. The search result is for [coldplay]...
Yahoo Images Busts Your Framebusters Also
We know Google Images deploys framebuster busting techniques to prevent sites that use framebusters from sending the user directly to the site. Yahoo does something similar. For example, this picture of a flower on Yahoo Images is from flowershopsflowers...
Bubbly Bing Drink
We had shown cans of the Bing energy drink, no relation to the Microsoft search engine, before. But we never showed what it looks like when it is poured into a glass. TheFoodJunk snapped a picture o
Largest Snowflake World Record As A Google Logo
This is a bit weird for a Google logo but weird does not surprise me for Google. Today's Google logo celebrates the day of the sighting of the largest snowflake every spotted. Google says it is the world record for the largest observed snowflake...

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Facebook Files Clickjacking Lawsuit, WebmasterWorld
Has the "Download Data for All Sites" Option Within Site Configuration Been Removed Completely?, Google Webmaster Help
Report: Facebook May File For IPO As Early As Next Week, WebmasterWorld
AdSense Contextual Targeting Has Changed, WebmasterWorld

Google: Robots.txt Files Must Be Smaller Than 500KB

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google's John Mueller reminds webmasters on his Google+ page that Google has a limit of only being able to process up to 500KB of your robots.txt file.

This is an important point, if you have a super heavy robots.txt file, and it is beyond 500KB, then GoogleBot can get confused. If GoogleBot gets confused with your robots.txt it can cause serious issues with your site's health in the Google results.

Google's John Mueller said:

#102 of the things to keep in mind when working on a big website: If you have a giant robots.txt file, remember that Googlebot will only read the first 500kb. If your robots.txt is longer, it can result in a line being truncated in an unwanted way. The simple solution is to limit your robots.txt files to a reasonable size :-).

John links to this Google document on the robots.txt controls for more information.

If you have any questions on Google's robots.txt handeling, John is answering questions on his Google+ page.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Did You Get Your Taxes From Google AdSense?

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Google has begun sending out the 1099 tax forms to qualifying Google AdSense publishers last and this week.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some publishers claiming they have received theirs. Not every publisher gets one. You have to be U.S. resident, the income has to be paid to an individual and you have to earn over a certain threshold I believe.

Google has some of their AdSense tax information over here, if you are curious on the details.

Here is a sample 1099, and yea, I wish, of my earnings. :)

I mocked this up myself.

In any event, I hope your 1099 looks excellent for 2011!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google News Publishers Urged To Use Report An Update Form

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago, Erik from the Google News team posted a thread in the Google News Help forums asking Google News publishers to please use the report an update form when making changes to their site.

Erik said that if you make any changes to your site including but not limited to your site's name, domain, URL structure, site layout, and whether you've set up a News Sitemap - let them know via that form.

This is a great way to communicate the changes to Google News and help any transitionary time go smoothly with Google News.

Erik said:

Just a quick reminder: whenever you've made any update to your site, be sure to check whether the change will affect how Google News crawls the site. This includes changes to: your site's name, domain, URL structure, site layout, and whether you've set up a News Sitemap (and whether you'd like us to exclusively crawl the sitemap rather than sections of your site that you've submitted to us.) If you've made an update that we should know about, please contact us through the link below.

You only have to gain if you inform Google News of your changes. Well, unless you are doing things you don't want them to find out about.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Google Rich Snippets Showing 3rd Party Results

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has someone noticing that Google is showing rich snippets under a site but those rich snippets are coming from a different set of sites, not from the listed site's source code.

The search result is for [coldplay], a popular band. The result loads their home page and then what appears to be event rich snippets below the search listing. Here is a picture:

As you can see, the event information is coming from third party sites such as ticketmaster.com, vividseats.com, and others. How did they manage to get listed under a web page for such a popular brand? Is this specifically being pulled from these third party site's rich snippets data? I guess these sites are more trusted than others?

I assume this happens with other rich snippets?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo Images Busts Your Framebusters Also

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine SEO

We know Google Images deploys framebuster busting techniques to prevent sites that use framebusters from sending the user directly to the site.

Yahoo does something similar.

For example, this picture of a flower on Yahoo Images is from flowershopsflowers.com/nature-flowers, which has framebusting JavaScript on the site.

Yahoo breaks the framebuster and places in the window below the image a message that reads:

Loading the page might take you away from Yahoo! Image Search (Not recommended). Continue Anyway

This message really upsets those who use the framebusting script. These are webmasters who specifically dislike that the search engine is showing a higher resolution version of their image on the search engine as opposed to sending the user to the site to view and download the image.

Here is a picture:

A WebmasterWorld thread has some users calling this out right stealing:

I can't believe that Yahoo image search is stealing my images

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bubbly Bing Drink

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Largest Snowflake World Record As A Google Logo

Fetched: January 29th, 2012, 8:20am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

This is a bit weird for a Google logo but weird does not surprise me for Google.

Today's Google logo celebrates the day of the sighting of the largest snowflake every spotted. Google says it is the world record for the largest observed snowflake.

Here is the Google snowflake logo - how huge?

Here is a video of it:

Wikipedia has the largest snowflake as 38 centimeters (15 in) in diameter observed in Fort Keogh, Montana on January 28, 1887.

Why would Google have a logo for a snowflake?

Hard to say, Google did tweet:

We couldn't flake on this one... twitter.com/GoogleDoodles/â¦
â" Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) January 28, 2012

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 27, 2012

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Buzz video Round Recap

Busy week in search this week - with Google confirming a Panda update, which I labeled 3.2. Bing seems to really love regional sites in their regional indexes. Google added a bunch of new features to Webmaster Tools, from testing sitemaps, new reports for sitemaps, a new definition for "average" position in the reports and new and improved download options. Google also added a spam report form for rich snippet spamming. I asked a question that got me in trouble, I asked, is on page SEO dead. Google added public alerts to Google Maps. Microsoft pubCenter has a bug where it shows some payments as undeliverable. Google has a new consolidated privacy policy, but it does look scary. Will the privacy policy lead to people canceling their Google accounts? I doubt it. That was this week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Pay To Get Business Photos In Google Places With Trusted Photographers

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

Back in May, Google launched Google Business Photos to help businesses make their Google Places listings more attractive by showing off the inside of your stores.

Google said their has been such high demand that they have decided to open up a new program to let any business participate at a fee.

Google now lists trusted photographers in many locations around America where you can call them and schedule an appointment. But you have to pay the photographers and negotiate the price with them. These are not Googlers, they are third party photographers that Google "trusts."

Several photographers want to know how they can get on the list of trusted photographers. The way to do that is to fill out this form and wait.

Google added:

This self-serve model makes for easier scheduling and quicker turnaround, while also supporting the local photographers in your community. During the hour it should take for the shoot, you can collaborate with the photographer about how best to display and capture your business. When finished, the photographer will upload the images to Google, and shortly thereafter, youâll see 360-degree panoramic views of your business on Google.com, Google Maps and on your Google Places listing.

Google Users Don't Seem Upset With New Privacy Policy

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Google announced a new privacy policy earlier this week that goes into effect in about a month. The news sites and stations are having a field day with it - covering how "evil" it is. In fact, I just saw something on the local news with my wife about it and it was pretty serious.

But outside of all the news coverage and bloggers acting very upset with Google about it - are Google users all that upset?

The Washington Post ran a poll for their users asking if you will cancel your Google account and 65% currently are saying yes.

As Chris Sherman notes that the "picture isn't so clear." He looks at Google suggestions to see if people are searching on how to cancel their accounts and it appears not.

I checked the the Google Web Search Help forum and there are barely any complaints. Which I find to be a really good indicator if the actual user is upset or not. I actually found a single complaint in the Google Web Search Help forum - that is it.

So are Google searchers really upset? Maybe they aren't fully aware? I would be surprised by that. Google is blasting the news on every page a Google user visits. The news and media are plastering the evil nature of this everywhere. How can they not be aware? Maybe I don't give the Google user enough credit. :)

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Bug: pubCenter Payments Marked As Undeliverable

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Microsoft ContentAds

There are several reports in the Microsoft Advertising Forum that publishers think they are not going to be paid because the payment area shows their payments as "undeliverable."

These publishers use Microsoft pubCenter to monetize their sites and applications. pubCenter is Microsoft's version of Google AdSense.

Do not worry, says Microsoft representative Ricky Poole, this is just a user interface bug and you will be paid in time. Ricky Poole said:

We are aware payments are showing as undeliverable within the pubCenter UI for most of our international developers; this is unfortunately an error within the UI. If your account has been processed successfully for payment, you should see this reflected in your selected payout method by Friday, February 3, 2012. If after this time, you do not see the payout come through to you, please contact psupport@microsoft.com with your account number to determine if there are additional items needed to validate your payment methods.
It is our goal to provide you with clear guidance and information as we work to enhance our platform. We appreciate your feedback on how we can work together to create a positive, sustainable monetization experience.
Thank you and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

So if you see this - relax and be patient and you should get the money due to you.

Forum discussion at Microsoft Advertising Forum.

Google Disappoints Users Again With Story Of Illegal Ads

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Google, once a loved and respected company, is starting to lose that love, respect and trust from their users. From privacy issues to openly selling illegal ads and now to being busted by a con man.

The Wall Street Journal had a story named Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions. Here are some excerpts from the story:

Wearing leg irons and guarded by federal agents, David Whitaker posed as an agent for online drug dealers in dozens of recorded phone calls and email exchanges with Google sales executives, spending $200,000 in government money for ads selling narcotics, steroids and other controlled substances.

Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting. "We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on," he said in an interview after the August settlement.

You have to read the whole story - it is pretty shocking and eye opening.

Google - you need to go back to your roots and give people a reason to love the culture of the company again.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for con cartoon.

Google's Brick Desk

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 26, 2012

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

New: Test Sitemaps & Googlebot Mobile In Google Webmaster Tools
I believe there are two new features now in Google Webmaster Tools. They are the ability to test sitemaps before submitting them to Google and testing crawlers specifically for Googlebot-Mobile...
Spam Reporting For Google Rich Snippets
A month ago, we reported an issue with fake rich snippets showing up more often in Google's search results. In short...
Google Updates Average Position In Webmaster Tools & Analytics
As I reported last night at Search Engine Land, Google has changed their definition for the "average position" as used in Google Webmaster Tool's search query reports and Google Analytics SEO reports...
Google Maps Public Alerts
Google announced a new feature for Google Maps where they overlay public alerts on the map. So now if there are public alerts, such as weather issues and other issues, Google will overlay them on the map. In addition...
Got Google Webmaster Questions: Join Today's Hangout
Today at 10:30AM New York time or 3:30PM UK time, Google is holding one of their first English language webmaster hangouts of the new year. Pierre Far announced it on his Google+ page, saying the topic is anything webmaster related to Google...
F#$% Google Shirt Behind Me
Ziv Dascalu has this 'shtick' with his aggressive SEO presentation that he gives where he wears this special t-shirt, puts on a black winter hat and gets all tough. I was moderating the panel at SMX I

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Apple Reports Highest First Quarter Revenue, Ever, $46.33 Billion, WebmasterWorld
Businesses May Face Fines of 2pct of Sales For Breach of New E.U. Privacy, WebmasterWorld
MSN AdCenter Newsletter - Explains Match Types?, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords - Valentine's Day Advertising Best Practices, Google AdWords Help
Has anyone else noticed the SPAM that is being allowed in Google?, WebmasterWorld

New: Test Sitemaps & Features In Google Webmaster Tools

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

I believe there are two new features now in Google Webmaster Tools. They are the ability to test sitemaps before submitting them to Google and testing crawlers specifically for Googlebot-Mobile.

Testing Sitemaps

Don't you hate it when you submit a sitemap to Google and you have to wait to see if there are issues with the sitemap file? Google now lets you test your sitemap files before submitting them!

Here is how it works, you go to Sitemaps under the Site Configuration link in Google Webmaster Tools. At the top right there is a new button that reads "Add/Test Sitemaps". Click on it and you can plug in a URL and then click on the "test sitemap" option:

Then Google will run the test:

When the test is complete, you can view the results:

And then here are the results:

This is incredibly useful!

Googlebot Mobile Crawler Test

Google also added to the Crawler Access a way to test your site with Googlebot-Mobile. I am not a 100% sure if this is new (I am told this actually isn't that new but they did add Googlebot-Mobile for Smartphone), but I am told it is:

New Design With More Details

Now statistics from Web, Videos, Images and News are featured prominently. This lets you see how many items of each type were submitted (if any), and for some content types, we also show how many items have been indexed. Sitemap errors and warnings are now grouped.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Spam Reporting For Google Rich Snippets

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

A month ago, we reported an issue with fake rich snippets showing up more often in Google's search results. In short, some webmasters were faking their rich snippets and spamming Google with it.

Today I see Pierre Far from Google posted on his Google+ page that you can now report rich snippet spam to Google. To do so, you go to this page and fill out the form.

Pierre said:

While rich snippets are generated algorithmically, we do reserve the right to take manual action (e.g. disable rich snippets for a specific site) in cases where we see abuse, deception, or other actions that hurt the experience for our users.
If you do find such rich snippets that hurt the search quality, you can submit a spam report at this page.

Google asks you to fill out two things:

(1) The URL of the web page listed in the Google results and

(2) The search query you used when searching in Google.

So I guess now if you see rich snippet spam, you can report it to Google, if you want.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google Updates Average Position In Webmaster Tools & Analytics

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

As I reported last night at Search Engine Land, Google has changed their definition for the "average position" as used in Google Webmaster Tool's search query reports and Google Analytics SEO reports.

Google is now using the top positions and averaging those, as opposed to using all the positions and averaging them. Google explains it best with this:

Let's say Nick searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Jane also searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we'll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Nick's search and 5 for Jane's search), for an Average Position of 4.

Google said that the old reports won't change - instead, the new reports will, so historically this won't make much of a difference.

Google's John Mueller said on Google+, "I think it makes more sense this way." I guess it does.

Either way, this is a big change to the reports with little impact to you or I.

Here is how they look in the Webmaster Tools and Analytics section:

Forum discussion at Google + and Google Webmaster Help.

Google Maps Public Alerts

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

Google announced a new feature for Google Maps where they overlay public alerts on the map.

So now if there are public alerts, such as weather issues and other issues, Google will overlay them on the map. In addition, you can go to google.org/publicalerts to see any public alert happening now.

Here are some pictures:

Then if you zoom in and mouse over an alert, this is what it looks like:

Clicking on the result will take you to a more detailed page, here is the awesome snow storm hitting Vermont.

The data comes from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Carolyn a Google Guide for Google.Org, said at the Google Maps Forum:

I'd like to give you a heads up about a new addition to Google maps called Google Public Alerts. Google Public Alerts is Googleâs platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and also everyday alerts such as storm warnings. It is a project of the Google Crisis Response team, supported by Google.org. On Google Maps, alerts will appear at the top of relevant search results and can be identified with a red target icon. Google Crisis Response has also set up the Google Public Alerts page where you can view all current alert information on a map. We hope Google Public Alerts provides the public with information they need to make better decisions in times of crisis, and ultimately help save lives.
Please keep your eye out for Google Public Alerts on Google Maps. We would love to hear your feedback on relevancy and accuracy of the alerts we are displaying, as well as any other feedback you may have. You can provide direct feedback on Google Public Alerts via the feedback link on the Public Alerts homepage and on every alert details page.
If you would like to learn more about Google Public Alerts please visit the FAQ and helpcenter or read the Lat Long Blog Post.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Forum.

Got Google Webmaster Questions: Join Today's Hangout

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Today at 10:30AM New York time or 3:30PM UK time, Google is holding one of their first English language webmaster hangouts of the new year.

Pierre Far announced it on his Google+ page, saying the topic is anything webmaster related to Google. He said:

Anything webmaster related like crawling, mobile, indexing, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Webmaster Tools, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc.

So at 10:30 EDT check out his Google+ page and feel free to ask those very hard questions.

Thanks Google for doing this.

Forum discussion at Google+.

F#$% Google Shirt Behind Me

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 27, 2012

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 27, 2012
Busy week in search this week - with Google confirming a Panda update, which I labeled 3.2. Bing seems to really love regional sites in their regional indexes. Google added a bunch of new features to Webmaster Tools...
Pay To Get Business Photos In Google Places With Trusted Photographers
Back in May, Google launched Google Business Photos to help businesses make their Google Places listings more attractive by showing off the inside of your stores. Google said their has been such high demand that they
Google Users Don't Seem Upset With New Privacy Policy
Google announced a new privacy policy earlier this week that goes into effect in about a month. The news sites and stations are having a field day with it - covering how "evil" it is. In fact...
Bug: pubCenter Payments Marked As Undeliverable
There are several reports in the Microsoft Advertising Forum that publishers think they are not going to be paid because the payment area shows their payments as "undeliverable." These publishers use Microsoft pubCenter to monetize their sites and applications...
Google Disappoints Users Again With Story Of Illegal Ads
Google, once a loved and respected company, is starting to lose that love...
Google's Brick Desk
About 6 months ago, when we started looking for new office space, the idea of making our entry area out of all bricks came to mind, including the front desk. Avinash Kaushik posted pictures of Google

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Google Maps for Android - Update 6.2, Google Maps Help
Google+: new safety enhancements, now available for teens â¦, Bradley Horowitz - Google+
Give Feedback and Ask Questions: New Video Manager, YouTube Help
Twitter Can Now Withhold Content From Users In A Specific Country, WebmasterWorld
Update: Videos Not Buffering While Paused, YouTube Help

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 25, 2012

Fetched: January 26th, 2012, 1:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Panda 3.2 Update Happening Now?
It has been over 9 weeks since we had an official Google Panda update. Now I am seeing some chatter in the forums of a possible sign that Google had updated the Panda algorithm and pushed a new one out - this would be version 3.2 or higher...
Google's New Privacy Policy Is Easier But Scarier
Google announced they are updating their privacy policy, switching from more than 60 different privacy policies to one single privacy policy across all their products. Google said this "new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy practices...
Google AdWords Rep Too Honest In Forums?
It is rare to see Googlers really speak their minds in a forum post but sometimes they do and you get to appreciate it. A Google AdWords Help thread has one AdWords representative giving a bit too much honest feedback to an advertiser...
Bing Favoring Regional Sites In Country Specific Versions
WebmasterWorld administrator, engine, feels Bing has upped the weighting of local domains and how well they rank in the localized version of Bing search.
Urchin Before Google Analytics
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was a huge fan of Urchin. From the features down to the people. So when Google bought them in 2005, I was both shocked and extremely happy for the Urchin peop

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Today's new Google algorithm change - penalized, Google
Adsense resolutions for 2012, WebmasterWorld
Doodle Chinese new year, Google Blogoscoped Forum
Doodle Plecnik's b.day, Google Blogoscoped Forum
Sold domain - should I notify Google?, WebmasterWorld
v8 campaign management REST api is down ?, microsoftadvertising.com

Confirmed: Google Panda 3.2 Update

Fetched: January 26th, 2012, 1:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

It has been over 9 weeks since we had an official Google Panda update. Now I am seeing some chatter in the forums of a possible sign that Google had updated the Panda algorithm and pushed a new one out - this would be version 3.2 or higher.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some uptick in discussion around ranking changes, indexing changes and so on - specifically on Panda suffering web sites. One webmaster said:

Yeah, some movement on one of my pandalized subdomains. Not for sure until the stats settle, but it looks like on the 19th of January Google "accidentally" gave back the traffic they took on February 24th, 2011. An increase in traffic of about 80%!

Others recently responded saying:

40% traffic increase for me today, not sure if it is thanks to hundreds of small changes made on my website or some one big lucky change in algo.

There is always a bunch of Panda rumors floating around, but it seems like there was an uptick recently in that discussion. Of course, this doesn't mean it was a Panda update - but in this case, I am thinking it might be.

Past Panda Updates:

Panda 3.1 on November 18th
Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
Panda 2.5 on September 28th
Panda 2.4 in August
Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
Panda 1.0 on February 24th

There was a rumored Panda 3.2 update during the holiday season but Google never confirmed it.

Matt Cutts is in India now, so I am not sure if we will see a confirmation or not from him until much later.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google sent me a statement confirming there was an update in the past week or so. It was a minor update, with no new ranking signals, but rather just a data refresh of the Panda update. Google added:

We're continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the over 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.

Google Panda 3.2 Update Happening Now?

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

A WebmasterWorld thread has some uptick in discussion around ranking changes, indexing changes and so on - specifically on Panda suffering web sites. One webmaster said:

Yeah, some movement on one of my pandalized subdomains. Not for sure until the stats settle, but it looks like on the 19th of January Google "accidentally" gave back the traffic they took on February 24th, 2011. An increase in traffic of about 80%!

Others recently responded saying:

40% traffic increase for me today, not sure if it is thanks to hundreds of small changes made on my website or some one big lucky change in algo.

Past Panda Updates:

Panda 3.1 on November 18th
Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
Panda 2.5 on September 28th
Panda 2.4 in August
Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
Panda 1.0 on February 24th

There was a rumored Panda 3.2 update during the holiday season but Google never confirmed it.

Matt Cutts is in India now, so I am not sure if we will see a confirmation or not from him until much later.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google's New Privacy Policy Is Easier But Scarier

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Google announced they are updating their privacy policy, switching from more than 60 different privacy policies to one single privacy policy across all their products.

Google said this "new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy practices." But yet, it is scaring a lot of people. Why?

Well, watch the video, around 1 minute and ten seconds in:

Google will be able to tell you when you will be late for a meeting based on your calendar, location, local traffic and weather conditions.

Now, I find that to be cool. But the privacy folks?

Danny Sullivan posted his detailed thoughts on the change.

A WebmasterWorld thread suggesting that to use the Google services they will make you sign in and if you sign in to every property, Google will be able to track your every move, likes, dislikes, searches, etc. Honestly, I doubt they will require you to sign in to do a search but it doesn't mean they won't cookie you and track you to YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, your Android phone and so on.

In any event, see the updated privacy policy page over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google News Help, Google Web Search Help, Google Maps Help and Google Places Help.

Google AdWords Rep Too Honest In Forums?

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdWords

It is rare to see Googlers really speak their minds in a forum post but sometimes they do and you get to appreciate it.

A Google AdWords Help thread has one AdWords representative giving a bit too much honest feedback to an advertiser.

The issue here is that the advertiser is already upset he was banned from using AdWords due to a violation. So keeping that in mind, offering advice on how ugly his site is, probably isn't something the advertiser wants to hear.

The rep said:

For what it's worth, your site doesn't look good to me. It's visually unappealing (like it came through a time warp from the late '90s :-), has several pages with no content yet, a forum with almost no posts, etc. I'd probably hit the back button pretty quickly if I had clicked an ad that took me to it. But I don't see any actual policy violations at first glance. As far as I know, the "Yuck, hit the back button!" factor should be handled by low quality scores, not disapprovals.

That is some harsh but good advice. How does the advertiser respond?

As for your opinion on the design... I didn't ask. So, I don't understand the point of all writing that whole paragraph as if someone actually cared about your opinion.

Ouch! But honestly, he does have a point.

Googlers are human and answer angry customers all day can get to you. But was this rep's advice overboard?

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for scared guy image.

Bing Favoring Regional Sites In Country Specific Versions

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Bing SEO

WebmasterWorld administrator, engine, feels Bing has upped the weighting of local domains and how well they rank in the localized version of Bing search. He posted this at WebmasterWorld saying:

When using bing uk i'm noticing uk domains getting prominence over generally better ranked and better linked .com, despite being hosted in the uk.

So I used my umbrella query and tested Bing US vs Bing UK and I saw the same thing. Here are those results:

Bing US	Bing UK
umbrellas.com	wikipedia.org
umbrellas.net	simplyumbrellas.co.uk
totes-isotoner.com	umbrellaheaven.com
umbrellas-source.com	brolliesgalore.co.uk
wikipedia.org	discardedumbrellas.com
strombergbrand.com	umbrellaworld.co.uk
mjjsales.com	umbrellas.net
peerlessumbrella.com	allgoodideas.co.uk
target.com	fultonumbrellas.com
amazon.com	easy-umbrella.co.uk

Have you noticed this?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Urchin Before Google Analytics

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

New iGoogle Layout Live For Some

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Other Google Topics

Back in September, Google began testing a new iGoogle design and now it seems more are seeing that test.

A Google Web Search Help thread has one person stating he sees the new design. Even the Google Operating System posted about it with detailed screen shots of how it looks.

Here is one of the many screen shots:

As you can see, the new iGoogle is less colorful, and more the new bland white dull feeling of the new Google look throughout the various properties.

One of the users who is now seeing it said, "center the search bar at the top of the page! and why have a collapsible left nav, if all it does is hide 'chat' which no one uses anyway?" Clearly, they are not happy with it, but the ones that do post about this stuff normally are upset about something.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google's Blocked Site Feature Missing For 13 Days

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

In March 2011, Google enabled a blocked sites feature, allowing users to block sites they do not want to see in the search results. That feature went away for some when Google introduced Search Plus Your World about 13 days ago.

This is a known issue, we reported it at Search Engine Land as part of the Search Plus Your World launch.

Those who have switched over to this new and more personalized search experience lose one big personalization factor, the ability to block results. Those who are still on on Search Plus Your World will still be able to benefit from the blocked results feature.

Here is how it works:

People are complaining about it at the Google Web Search Help forums - although there aren't a tremendous number of complaints.

On Friday, Albert from Google said:

Thanks for that update. I've brought up the issue, and we're actively working on a fix. I'll keep this thread updated as we can come up with a solution.

There is no ETA for a fix, but Google has been aware of it for 13 days and counting now.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for blocks image.

Is On Page SEO Dead With Google?

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

There is an interesting thread taking place at WebmasterWorld.

In short, a very respected and senior member at the forums said he made on-page text changes to his pages about 10 days ago and those changes had zero impact on his Google rankings. He was wondering the value of on-page text and SEO have in 2012. He said, "I have always have this suspicion, that text on site is just for google to what its about, but almost zero value for rankings."

Maybe it will take more time, but Google already indexed his new content.

WebmasterWorld administrator said he is dead on - that on page text is less of a ranking factor these days and more of a relevancy factor. Read what Tedster wrote:

The way I see it, on-page text today is for the "relevance" part of the total algorithm. The whole algorithm is, in broad strokes, "relevance + connectedness + quality". After you've clearly stated the relevance of the page, then the rest of your ranking power comes from elsewhere.
I've added on-page bold tags with no effect. I've added or changed h1 elements with no effect. Not too long ago, those might well have done something, but that's not the game anymore.
And moving from a table layout to a CSS-P layout today might get you nowhere, too. It all depends how deeply complicated the table layout was, I think.

Is on-page SEO dead? Or is it a timing thing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Focus On The User: Facebook Don't Be Evil Google Tool

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Social Search Engines Optimization

The big news from yesterday was from Facebook who built a bookmarklet tool that aims at changing how Google shows Google+ results in the new Google Plus Your World launch.

It is fairly simple, you install the bookmarklet, click it when on the Google results, and the Google+ results will change to either Twitter, Facebook or another social network.

The campaign is named Focus on the User and they write:

How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Googleâs own relevance measure-the ranking of their organic search results-to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.
All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

Here is what it does:

Pretty clear? It does more but those are to examples, many more examples over here.

Danny Sullivan has a great write up over here and here is a video demo:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Search Results Change Based On Device

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

This likely comes as no surprise to anyone, but when you search on your desktop vs smart phone vs feature phone, Google will give you different results. For the most part, I think the desktop results are very similar to the smart phone results - depending on the nature of the query. But feature phone results can differ greatly.

A WebmasterWorld thread says not only do the results differ but the number of the results displayed differ also.

It is known that Google has a different index of sites for feature phones but it is my understanding that the same index is used for smart phones and desktop users. The search results may change based off of Google determining intent of the smart phone user differently than a desktop user - which makes sense, but the index I believe is the same.

So why would the number of results be so drastically different between desktop and smart phone search? My tests didn't show a huge difference in the number of returned results between the two. So maybe it is a test or maybe it is a bug? I am not sure - but we do know Google added a new mobile bot for smart phones, so maybe Google is building a special smart phone index?

I did run one additional test, a search for umbrellas:

Web Desktop Results	Smart Phone Results
umbrellas.net	umbrellas.net
totes-isotoner.com	totes-isotoner.com
umbrellas.com	umbrellas.com
amazon.com	peerlessumbrella.com
target.com	amazon.com
overstock.com	target.com
wikipedia.org	overstock.com
macys.com	wikipedia.org
umbrellasandbeyond.com	macys.com
mjjsales.com	umbrellasandbeyond.com

Only one slight difference in the results and who knows if that difference will go away in an hour from now.

Bryson Meunier posted a nice report on Influence of Mobile Sites on Google Smartphone Search Ranking. Worth a read.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Maps Reviews Help Guide

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

One of the more popular questions found in the Google Places Help forum is of reviews going missing from the Google Map business listing. I see complaints all the time.

Vanessa from Google went ahead and built out a single post containing a bunch of the FAQs regarding reviews in Google Maps listings. The post can be found on Google Places Help and answers questions on technical issues with the reviews on your listing.

Here is it just in case it changes in the future:

Where did my reviews go?
You may have seen reviews suddenly disappear from your listing. A few reasons why that may be the case: - Reviews from third-party websites are no longer displayed on Google Places listings. Below the reviews by Google users, we may link "Reviews around the web" on third-party sites.
- Reviews are removed from Google Maps because they exhibit spammy behavior. We can't share specifics about what signals we use, but our goal is to provide end-users with high-quality information they can trust and use that info to make informed decisions. We also remove reviews that violate our content policy guidelines. We know that sometimes our algorithms may flag and remove legitimate reviews in our effort to combat abuse, but believe that overall, these measures are helping to ensure that the reviews appearing on Place pages are authentic, relevant and useful. Here's our reviews posting guidelines and policy: [goo.gl]
- We have data spread across multiple databases, and we bring all that information together to create your local listing. Reviews can sometimes be dropped from Place pages when we're trying to reconcile all that information. As we mentioned at the beginning of this note: This is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.
Occasionally, there is a technical issue that causes Place page reviews to drop from Google Maps for a short period of time (a few days) and then reappear on your listing. This happens every several weeks, when we push out a giant housecleaning update to our listings database. Again, this is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.
How do I know which of the above reasons is affecting my listing?
There's not much you can do to troubleshoot this â" it requires a deeper dive into our system's backend.
How do I get them back on my listing?
There's no way currently to quickly, easily and absolutely get your reviews back on to your listing. If we dropped them during a reconciliation process, you'll see them reappear after a few days. Other than that, there's not much our support team can to do to ensure they get reinstated. Fixing this is a priority for us, and we're working on long-term solutions to resolve most of these cases.
Where are my owner responses?
This has been a hot topic in the forum lately. Here's the deal: Google Places allows multiple people to own a listing. So you may have claimed your account, but someone else may have claimed it before you and is still considered an "owner" of the listing. The last person to have updated the listing is considered the main owner, and only responses from that account will appear live on the listing (so, if the other owner updates the account after you had left your response, your responses will be removed from the listing). Here's something you can do to make sure you're the most recent owner: Go into your Places account, click to Edit your listing, don't touch anything, and hit "Submit." That should ping our system, to let us know you're the most recent owner. Now try again to leave a response. If you're still not seeing the option to write a response, start a new thread here in the forum, and provide us the link to your Places listing.
Why are the reviews on my listing not related to my business?
Reviews can sometimes get reassociated to another, similarly related listing. If you're seeing reviews on your listing that are not related to your business, please use our Help Center troubleshooter to get in touch with our team, and we'll work on getting it removed. Here's a link to the troubleshooter:
[support.google.com]Select: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from our team.
One of the links in "Reviews from around the web" is wrong â" it's going to a page of reviews about an unrelated business. How do I get rid of it?
Those links are generated algorithmically, and sometimes we get it wrong. If you see an incorrect link, please use our Help Center troubleshooter to get in touch with our team, and we'll work on getting it removed (note: it takes several weeks to fix). Here's a link to the troubleshooter:
[support.google.com]Select: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from our team.
Why can't my customer leave a review?
Say your customer tells you that they've gone to your listing, but were unable to submit a review. It's very difficult for us to troubleshoot and investigate secondhand reports. Ask them if they've created an account to review on Google (they should get a prompt when they go to leave the review, and they should be logged in to their own Google account before selecting a reviews nickname). Ask them to try posting a response in a different browser. Ask them to wait a few minutes and try again.
How can I report spammy reviews?
Use the "Report as inappropriate" button next to the review to tell us you think it's spam, and we'll look into it. If you're seeing a large network of spam, too many for you to individually mark each one, start a new thread in the forum. We're looking out for those reports and investigating.
I've reported a review on my listing, but it's still there. Why won't you remove it?
Note that we very rarely remove reviews. You can read our removal guidelines here:
[support.google.com]
But none of these questions address the issue I'm experiencing?
The information above addresses almost all the issues you can experience with reviews on your listing. But we know that sometimes, new bugs can crop up. So if none of the information above applies to you, start a new thread in the Places forum and we'll investigate.

Forum discussion at Google Places Help.

Google's Susan Wojcicki With David Beckham

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 23, 2012

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google's Blocked Site Feature Missing For 13 Days
In March 2011, Google enabled a blocked sites feature, allowing users to block sites they do not want to see in the search results. That feature went away for some when Google introduced Search Plus Your World about 13 days ago...
New iGoogle Layout Live For Some
Back in September, Google began testing a new iGoogle design and now it seems more are seeing that test. A Google Web Search Help thread has one person stating he sees the new design
A Google Quality Rater Interviewed
Matt McGee published An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater this past Friday, it is the most detailed write up on a quality rater I have seen to date. It goes through the various tasks, how they got the job...
New Improved Download Options For Google Webmaster Tools
On Thursday, the folks over at WebmasterWorld noticed a visual change to the download buttons within Google Webmaster Tools. The new buttons were basically moved up higher onto the page on the links...
Publishers Want Refund For Google AdSense Outage
This Friday, dozens of reports came from the Google AdSense Help forum that Google AdSense ads were simply not loading. The reports continued throughout the day and publishers were not making money, at all...
Bing Bar at Sundance
Here is a picture of Gary Clark Jr. playing at the Microsoft Bing Bar at Sundance a couple days ago. He played during the Spin Happy Hour Ses. Jason Lester took the picture and posted it on Flickr.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Google Accounts Push Plus, Cre8asite Forums
Google Drive may be released soon, Google Blogoscoped Forum
Someone threatened to have my site "blackballed with Google" for political reason; how can I pre-empt this?, Google Webmaster Help
Webmaster Tools 500,000 Inter Website Links, HighRankings Forums
E.U.'s Tough, New, Data Protection Rules Proposed, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords Best Practices - Why should I run mobile ads?, Google AdWords Help
How are these 3 sites ranking so well, but are essentially duplicates?, Google Webmaster Help
Tips and Tricks for Hangouts on Air +Felicia Day just…, John Mueller - Google+

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 24, 2012

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Is On Page SEO Dead With Google?
There is an interesting thread taking place at WebmasterWorld. In short, a very respected and senior member at the forums said he made on-page text changes to his pages about 10 days ago and
Focus On The User: Facebook Don't Be Evil Google Tool
The big news from yesterday was from Facebook who built a bookmarklet tool that aims at changing how Google shows Google+ results in the new Google Plus Your World launch...
Google Search Results Change Based On Device
This likely comes as no surprise to anyone, but when you search on your desktop vs smart phone vs feature phone, Google will give you different results. For the most part...
Google Maps Reviews Help Guide
One of the more popular questions found in the Google Places Help forum is of reviews going missing from the Google Map business listing. I see complaints all the time...
Google's Susan Wojcicki With David Beckham
David Beckham visited Google the other day to do a live Google+ Hangout with Shimrit Ben-Yair and an interview with Marvin Chow. Here is a picture of Beckham walking with Google's Susan Wojcicki at

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

https google when signed in, but also when signing out, WebmasterWorld
Have any sites recovered from previous Panda updates on Jan 19th?, WebmasterWorld
Site Hit by Panda for Several Months, Can a Google Engineer Please Review This?, Google Webmaster Help
it is chinese new year, why there is no chinese new year special logo on google homepage?, Google Web Search Help

A Google Quality Rater Interviewed

Fetched: January 23rd, 2012, 2:41pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Matt McGee published An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater this past Friday, it is the most detailed write up on a quality rater I have seen to date.

It goes through the various tasks, how they got the job, what interaction at all they have with Google and so on. Matt also posted the short version at Marketing Land:

Raters are only hired after passing two tests, the second of which includes rating more than 140 different Google search results and demands a 90 percent score in order to pass.
Each rating task is completed by multiple raters and, if they disagree in their ratings of Googleâs search results, thereâs a formal discussion and debate process that may involve higher-level moderators making the final decision on whoâs correct.
Raters donât only look at Googleâs organic results, they may rate Googleâs paid search results as well as search results from News, Maps and other Google âuniversal searchâ products.
Raters may also have tasks that involve grading the design and layout of specific web pages.
One of the key considerations in those tasks involves the balance between content and ads on a page. (Thatâs reminiscent of Googleâs new page layout algorithm that was just announced on Thursday.)
Tasks are not tailored to the Raterâs skills or interests.

There is discussion on this interview on Matt McGee's Google+ page where some SEOs are diving into what they learned.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Image credit: Maxx-Studio / ShutterStock.

New Improved Download Options For Google Webmaster Tools

Fetched: January 23rd, 2012, 2:41pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

On Thursday, the folks over at WebmasterWorld noticed a visual change to the download buttons within Google Webmaster Tools. The new buttons were basically moved up higher onto the page on the links, keywords and other data reports.

But what changes is a lot more significant than just the position and look of the download buttons.

Vanessa Fox posted a deep dive on the new changes at Search Engine Land, saying the new download feature "significantly add to the usefulness of the data."

Here are the changes in a nut shell:

Search query data now with filtering options to drill into specific data or date ranges.
Option to view up to 500 rows at once

Vanessa says that the ability to download this data in the new form give you "a much more accurate understanding of what the data actually."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Publishers Want Refund For Google AdSense Outage

Fetched: January 23rd, 2012, 2:41pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

This Friday, dozens of reports came from the Google AdSense Help forum that Google AdSense ads were simply not loading.

The reports continued throughout the day and publishers were not making money, at all.

The reports were sporadic, not all publishers saw their ads as being offline, only some.

Google confirmed the issue at Marketing Land and in the Google AdSense Help forums. Chris from Google said:

Thanks for posting about this here. I'm working to get you more info on what happened, but in looking at many sites it does appear that ad serving has been restored.
I'll try to post here as soon as possible, as well as updating the Known Issues page.
Thanks for your patience.

Then later on in the day, he said it was fixed:

I just got confirmation from our engineering teams that ad serving is back to normal for all partners at this point. Thanks for your patience and attention here!

But even after that post, some publishers said there was still an issue. But now, a few days later, it seems everyone now is serving up ads properly. It is however still listed on the known issues page as an issue.

One publisher asked a legit question:

Our ads are back too and working fine but we've lost income. It means that our lost on that day is not recoverable?

Yep, if no one saw the ads - I doubt you'll be getting paid for it.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Bing Bar at Sundance

Fetched: January 23rd, 2012, 2:41pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 20, 2012

Fetched: January 22nd, 2012, 5:41am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 20, 2012
This week, we cover the major news that Google is now penalizing sites for having too many ads on their pages - yea, a bit hypocritical. Google blacked out their logo for SOPA but Bing and Yahoo did not. Google even slowed down their spider, GoogleBot...
Google Page Layout Algorithm & Penalty
Google announced a new algorithm change that looks at your page layout and if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results...
Advertisers Also Upset With Google's Q4 2011 Earnings Report
Google announced their fourth quarter earnings for the 2011 year and it really didn't make wall street all that happy. Their stock sunk almost 10% in after hours trading...
Google Expands Hacked Sites Label In Search Results
A year ago, Google began labeling hacked sites and sites with malware as sites that may compromised in the search results snippets. Yesterday...
Google Latitude For Desktop Updated
I rarely ever use Google Latitude, although I do use Foursquare, so when Google announces new changes to Google Latitude, I am not always a 100% sure what is new and what is not...
Google+ With 90 Million + Users
Google+ lead, Vic Gundotra posted a picture of a person holding a business card saying Google+ has over 90 million people. Google announced this number in last night's earnings report. The number is

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Apple Launches iBooks 2 Textbooks for iPad: Now Anyone Can Be An Author, WebmasterWorld
Facebook Launches Apps For Timeline, WebmasterWorld
See how #Google users may experience your #website; an…, Kaspar Szymanski - Google+
Will Using Anchor Links With The Full URL Cause Problems For googlebot, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords Display Network: Contextual Targeting Tool - Share your best practices and successful strategies, Google AdWords Help

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 20, 2012

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Buzz video Round Recap

This week, we cover the major news that Google is now penalizing sites for having too many ads on their pages - yea, a bit hypocritical. Google blacked out their logo for SOPA but Bing and Yahoo did not. Google even slowed down their spider, GoogleBot, to protect these sites. Google listed out SEO considerations for clacking out your site. Google expanded their hacked sites feature for search results. Google AdWords added up to a hundred automated rules with an undo feature. Google updated their impression share metrics algorithm and is adding it to the ad group level. We have a post on the 2012 link building tools. Yahoo's Jerry Yang resigned from Yahoo this week. Google announced earnings which also had paid clicks and CPC changes. Google had a logo for Martin Luther King day. SMX Israel was this past Sunday and I posted the big recap. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Google Page Layout Algorithm & Penalty

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

Google announced a new algorithm change that looks at your page layout and if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results.

This comes with no surprise to me and others, because 10 weeks ago, Matt Cutts announced that this is something Google is working towards.

Google wrote:

We've heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it's difficult to find the actual content, they aren't happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn't have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the siteâs initial screen real estate to ads, thatâs not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

Google released a special tool at browsersize.googlelabs.com to help you visualize if your site may or was impacted by this. Here is how this site looks (click on it for a larger view):

We seem to be okay, but what about Google's own search results. Well, Google won't let you plug in their own URLs into the tool, so it is hard to tell but I doubt they would pass the test.

Danny Sullivan, as well as many others, go through the hypocrisy with this new penalty and how Google is doing the exact opposite. Not only that, they recommend to their AdSense customers to place ads top heavy so users click on them. Here is their ad map:

That being said, the algorithm is out, if you were hit, you would probably know by now. To fix it, remove some of those ads, and wait and wait until Google pushes out an update. It can takes weeks.

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

Who is affected? Google said 1 in every 100 searches are.

If you read the forums, almost every thread talks about how Google is doing one thing and saying the other.

Forum discussion at Google+, HighRankings Forum, Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Advertisers Also Upset With Google's Q4 2011 Earnings Report

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Google announced their fourth quarter earnings for the 2011 year and it really didn't make wall street all that happy. Their stock sunk almost 10% in after hours trading, now hovering at a little over 7% under closing yesterday.

But Wall Street is not the only group of people upset.

As I reported at Search Engine Land last night, the paid clicks and CPC results were also announced.

Paid clicks grew 34% year over year but the cost per click dropped 8% year over year. Now this may look good, advertisers are getting more clicks for less, right? But not all advertisers see it that way, some suspect Google is sending less traffic to advertisers and more traffic to themselves (Google).

A WebmasterWorld thread has one advertiser saying:

That provides one answer, yes indeed Google is funneling more clicks towards their own interests, be it to their products or simply moving a search engine user onto a paid result instead of a natural result.
The value of Google is sinking, wall st is catching up to what webmasters have been saying all year imo. I don't think Mr Schmidt knows how not to continue breaking a good thing, he keeps doing what not many ever asked for or wanted from Google.

Or you can look at it the other way, that there are more customers using Google, finding your products and it is costing you less per user. Or not?

Paid Clicks â" Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 34% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and increased approximately 17% over the third quarter of 2011.
Cost-Per-Click â" Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 8% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and decreased approximately 8% over the third quarter of 2011.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Expands Hacked Sites Label In Search Results

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

A year ago, Google began labeling hacked sites and sites with malware as sites that may compromised in the search results snippets.

Yesterday, Google's Matt Cutts announced on Google+ that Google has expanded that feature. Matt said the change they just launched will "expand our [Google's] coverage of labeling search result pages."

Matt said:

We just launched a change which will expand our coverage of labeling search result pages that we believe have been hacked or compromised. We initially rolled out this type of labeling just over a year ago (See for more details). We aim to continue working to notify webmasters of their site issues and alert users to avoid these compromised sites in our search results. As a reminder, if your site receives this label in our search results, be sure to clean up your site and file a reconsideration request. Here's info on how to do that.
Lastly, after you register your site in Google's webmaster console at http://google.com/webmasters/ don't forget to enable email alerts so that you'll get emails about messages like this.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google Latitude For Desktop Updated

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

I rarely ever use Google Latitude, although I do use Foursquare, so when Google announces new changes to Google Latitude, I am not always a 100% sure what is new and what is not.

Daniel from Google announced this in the Google Maps Forum the other day, saying Google Latitude users have a new home on their desktop at google.com/latitude. He said the new features include:

Check out the new way to access your friends list, personal location history, and more.
Manually update your location from a computer by pressing 'Update' next to your name
In Location History, playback your location history from a select range of dates by pressing the play button on the bottom left hand corner of the map

Here are screen shots:

Forum discussion at Google Maps Forum.

Google+ With 90 Million + Users

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 19, 2012

Fetched: January 20th, 2012, 7:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Pulse Podcast

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

A Successful SMX Israel 2012
This past Sunday, January 15, 2012, I chaired SMX Israel in Jerusalem at the Inbal Hotel. I have to say, the conference just felt good. People were networking, sponsors were showing off their wares...
GoogleBot Completely Stop Crawling Yesterday For SOPA?
Did you notice that your visits from GoogleBot, Google's web crawler, slowed to virtually almost nothing yesterday? The reason for that was because of the SOPA protests and Google slowed GoogleBot activity in order not to hurt those sites in their search results.
AdWords Impression Share Metrics Algorithm Update & Ad Group Level
Google announced that the impression share metrics reports is coming to the ad group level in order to provide advertisers with data to help them "identify high performing ad groups that aren't capturing the majority of available impressions...
Pinterest Sending Webmasters Lots Of Traffic
I've been hearing chatter throughout the industry on a new social sharing site, specifically for photos named Pinterest. A Cre8asite Forum thread has webmasters and SEOs claiming it send a nice number of traffic...
Google AdWords Now With 100 Automated Rules & Undo Option
The Google AdWords blog announced you can now set up to a 100 automated rules, up from 10. Plus...
The Vic Gundotra Google+ Cadbury Bar
Back in November, the chocolate maker, Cadbury, made custom Google+ chocolate bars. They put Sergey and Larry on the bar wrappers. Now they sent Google+ lead, Vic Gundotra on the package.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

World IPv6 Launch Day June 6 2012, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords Community Account Development - New Advertiser Pauline needs help getting started, Google AdWords Help

A Successful SMX Israel 2012

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2012 Israel

This past Sunday, January 15, 2012, I chaired SMX Israel in Jerusalem at the Inbal Hotel.

I have to say, the conference just felt good. People were networking, sponsors were showing off their wares, speakers were educating and the attendees were absorbing information and asking questions.

We never had so many people, so many speakers and honestly, I was nervous it would take away from the personality of the previous events. But if anything, it made the conference so much better. Planning it was an exhausting few months, but it paid off!

Let me share with you some of the news/blog coverage I found across the web from the event:

Best of SMX Israel 2012, managinggreatness.com
SMX Israel 2012 - Google Panda, Freshness and More, State of Search
SMX Israel: What You Missed, WebProNews
Live Blogging SMX Israel 2012 with Kahena Digital, Kahena Digital Marketing
The Morning After: Top Highlights from SMX Israel 2012, Kahena Digital Marketing
SMX Israel 2012 – you’ve come a long way, baby!, illuminea.com
SMXIsrael 2012 Review - In Rhyme, debi-z.com
Takeaways from SMX Israel, Majestic SEO Blog
Analytics & Landing Page Optimization, Nekuda
Legal Issues in Search – SMX Israel Summary, Nekuda
SMX Israel 2012 Highlights, Nekuda
Social Media on SMX Israel 2012, Nekuda
What I Learned at SMX Israel, contentandcommunities.com
×"××¦×'×ª ×©×× ×' – SMX Israel 2012 ×"××" ××××£!, SEORI

There is even forum coverage of it in Hebrew at SEOForums.co.il.

Here is an outstanding video of how things looked from the event by Natan Epstien who produced the film an Israel Tech Company.

You can catch a lot of the buzz, pictures, slides and so on from #smxisrael on Twitter. Plus, the Real Streets of Jerusalem posted a ton of pictures on Facebook in three parts. They include SMX Israel Part I, SMX Israel Part II and SMX Israel Part III.

Hillel Fuld shared a picture of the Google shwag at the event, Yaniv posted a picture of his badge and Nekuda posted one of my favorite pictures.

Of course a huge thanks to our sponsors: Majestic SEO, Analytics Ninja, Universal McCann Search, Mad Mimi, Go Internet Marketing, Rapid Fire, Responder.co.il, SEO Genie, Sorezki, SEFO, iSEO and Viruous Online.

Our outstanding speakers rocked (in no specific order): Olivier Amar, Point Up Media, Eli Feldblum, RankAbove; Roman Zelvenschi, RomanZ Media Group; Branko Rihtman, RankAbove, Ophir Cohen, Universal McCann Search, Adam Tal, adamtal.com; Thomas Bindl, Refined Labs; Dan Perach, PPC Proz; Mayer Reich, RankAbove Daniel Rostenne, EyeCarePro.Net; Amir Yarkoni, Seperia; Alex Chernorudsky, Maxi Services Ltd.; Yehoshua Coren, Analytics Ninja; Adam Tal, adamtal.com; Ariel Hochstadt, Google Israel; Adir Regev, Go Internet Marketing; Daniel Waisberg, Online Behavior; Barry Schwartz, RustyBrick Eli Feldblum, RankAbove; Aviv Manoach, Universal McCann Search; Dixon Jones, Majestic SEO; Gil Reich, Managing Greatness; David Mirchin, Meitar Liquornik Geva & Leshem Brandwein; Yoram Lichenstein, Yoram Lichtenstein, Attorneys at Law; Uri Breitman, TBWA; Sharon Aloni, Goldfarb, Levy, Eran, Meiri, Tzafrir & Co.; Ofer Dascalu, Wise Impact; Menachem Rosenbaum, Matan Media; Michael King, iPullRank; Yam Regev; Adir Regev, Go Internet Marketing; Nichola Stott, theMediaFlow; Gilad Sasson, Nekuda.co.il; Uri Breitman, TBWA; Oren Shatz, SEO Israel; Ori Golan, SEORI; Ziv Dascalu, Wise Impact; Marty Weintraub, aimClear; Nancy Shapira, shapira Marketing; Miriam Schwab, illuminea; Shira Abel, Hunter & Bard; Miriam Schwab, illuminea; Mark Ginsberg, Matan Media; Sam Michelson, Five Blocks; Shira Abel, Hunter & Bard; Jon Sumroy, National Positions; Itay Paz, Revenue Seminar; Gilad Sasson, Nekuda.co.il; Charlie Kalech, J Town; Ofer Dascalu, Wise Impact; Gab Goldenberg, SEO ROI; and Tomer Honen, Google.

And of course, the SMX Israel 2012 advisors Olivier Amar, CEO, PointUp Media www.pointupmedia.com, Michael Barnett, VP Marketing, RankAbove www.rankabove.com, Ophir Cohen, CEO, Universal Mccann Search www.usearch.co.il, Roi Hildesheimer, Director of Marketing, SiSense www.sisense.com, Mayer Reich, CEO/Founder, RankAbove www.rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson, CEO, nekuda www.nekuda.com, Branko Rihtman, Senior SEO Analyst, RankAbove www.rankabove.com, and Hillel Fuld, Tech enthusiast at Tech Nâ Marketing.com.

Thank you all!

Forum discussion at Google+ and SEOForums.co.il.

GoogleBot Completely Stop Crawling Yesterday For SOPA?

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Did you notice that your visits from GoogleBot, Google's web crawler, slowed to virtually almost nothing yesterday? The reason for that was because of the SOPA protests and Google slowed GoogleBot activity in order not to hurt those sites in their search results.

There are several threads where webmasters claim GoogleBot didn't crawl their sites at all yesterday. Google said they "slowed" the crawling behavior of GoogleBot but I guess in some cases, they stopped crawling for some sites completely. You have to assume they continued to crawl news sites?

A Google Webmaster Help thread and WebmasterWorld thread have webmasters and SEOs claiming they saw zero GoogleBot activity on their sites at all.

One webmaster said:

For some reason, googlebot is not accessing my site since 3 hours ago. Normally, I get thousands of googlebot visits per hour (and that ok for me), but since las 3 hours I'm not getting any googlebot visit.

Another said:

Well Googlebot seems to have all but disappeared on my main site. It may be on all sites then?

In response, Google's Pierre Far explained again:

We realize many webmasters are concerned about the medium-term effects of today's blackout. As a precaution, the crawl team at Google has configured Googlebot to crawl at a much lower rate for today only so that the Google results of websites participating in the blackout are less likely to be affected.

In any event, things should be back to normal today.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for robot turtle.

AdWords Impression Share Metrics Algorithm Update & Ad Group Level

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdWords

Google announced that the impression share metrics reports is coming to the ad group level in order to provide advertisers with data to help them "identify high performing ad groups that aren't capturing the majority of available impressions." Not only is Google bringing the impression share data to the ad group level, but they are updating their algorithms for coming up with that data.

Google said in the upcoming weeks, likely early February, you will see three new columns that are available in the ad group reports. They include:

Impr. Share: the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.
Lost IS (Rank): the share of impressions lost due to your Ad Rank. Note that Lost IS (rank) will not be shown if you were at or near your budget for part or all of a given day (a.k.a. were âbudget constrainedâ) during the date range being examined.
Exact Match IS: (Search Network only) the percentage of impressions you received for searches that exactly matched your keyword divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible to receive.

Pam at Search Engine Land posted some pictures, here is one:

Part of this, Google announced they updated how they calculate the impression share. They said the new updated algorithm will make the results more "accurate campaign impression share metrics." With that, you may notice two changes when this is launched:

Refined campaign-level statistics: Since we are improving our algorithms, we will update all campaign-level impression share metrics back to May 2011. As a result, you will no longer be able to see campaign-level historical impression share metrics before May 2011. If you wish to preserve a record of the pre-May 2011 campaign impression share data, you will need to download a report before January 30, 2012.
Once-a-day updates: In order to calculate your impression share metrics with a greater degree of accuracy, we will update all impression share metrics once per day (approximately noon Pacific Time [GTM-8]). As a result, the impression share data that you see will not reflect impression share for the current day, and may not include the previous day's impression share as well (depending on what time of the day you run your report).

One advertiser is excited, saying, "This is great new for us and should help boost performance of lower spending accounts much more easily."

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help and WebmasterWorld.

Pinterest Sending Webmasters Lots Of Traffic

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Other Search Engines

I've been hearing chatter throughout the industry on a new social sharing site, specifically for photos named Pinterest.

A Cre8asite Forum thread has webmasters and SEOs claiming it send a nice number of traffic, when you are featured well on the site. I've personally have not seen much traffic from it, but some sites claim as high as 900 unique visits in a single day - and the site is still in an invite only beta.

One person said:

Yep, had some. Busiest day saw around 900 visits. Been playing with it for a week or two now, interesting to see what sort of images work best.

The SEOs have their sites on this service, it better be careful now.

To see which images of yours were posted to the service, you can do something like this: pinterest.com/source/seroundtable.com/ and replace seroundtable.com with your domain.

For more on this service, see pinterest.com/about.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Google AdWords Now With 100 Automated Rules & Undo Option

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdWords

The Google AdWords blog announced you can now set up to a 100 automated rules, up from 10. Plus, Google added a way to undo a specific automated rule when the outcome is not as expected.

Google increased the limit of automated rules to encourage AdWords advertiser to "easily try out new rules."

Plus, when an automated rule goes bad, Google added an easy way to undo the effect. Here is a help document on how to use this feature but here is how it looks:

For more details on using AdWords automated tools see the help center.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Vic Gundotra Google+ Cadbury Bar

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 18, 2012

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Acts For SOPA But Bing & Yahoo Don't
Google has blacked out their logo to protest SOPA and PIPA. But Microsoft Bing and Yahoo have done nothing to protest loudly on their home pages. Google's logo takes you to this landing page with some details on the regulations and a way to take action and fight against it...
Yahoo's Co-Founder, Jerry Yang, Resigns
Yesterday, I was shocked to learn that Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang has resigned from Yahoo effective immediately. Yang told the Yahoo board: My time at Yahoo...
GoogleBot Slows Down For SOPA
Pierre Far from Google announced on his Google+ page that Google has seriously slowed down the GoogleBots, Google's web crawlers...
adCenter 2+ Month Data Bug
I believe we reported this in November 2011, where advertisers using Microsoft adCenter haven't seen updated search volume data since early November...
Google Graffiti: We're Watching You
A spotted a picture on Flickr taken by bitchcakesny and posted just recently of graffiti on the Pulaski bridge. The picture is Google's logo, replacing the Os with video cameras, as if Google is alwa

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Will Paid-for Links Jeopardise Your Search Engine Ranking?, HighRankings Forums
AdWords Community Account Development - Aashish's SIM card business needs community help., Google AdWords Help
AM I BEING MADE A FOOL OF!, Google Webmaster Help

Google Acts For SOPA But Bing & Yahoo Don't

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Google has blacked out their logo to protest SOPA and PIPA. But Microsoft Bing and Yahoo have done nothing to protest loudly on their home pages.

Google's logo takes you to this landing page with some details on the regulations and a way to take action and fight against it. Like I said, Yahoo and Bing are pretending nothing is happening.

Here is the Google Logo:

The only other search engine doing anything, as far as I know, is DuckDuckGo:

Ask.com has an ad:

Wikipedia was the most vocal about this protest:

Reddit also:

I should note, Yahoo owns Flickr and Flickr does allow people to darken their own images as a protest, but Flickr is not doing it automatically, which I guess they should not do.

Even Search Engine Land went a bit dark, not completely, to protest SOPA:

And we have our own theme, kind of like Search Engine Land:

So Bing and Yahoo, what is up with you?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help, Google Web Search Help, Google Blogoscoped Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo's Co-Founder, Jerry Yang, Resigns

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Yahoo News

Yesterday, I was shocked to learn that Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang has resigned from Yahoo effective immediately.

Yang told the Yahoo board:

My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future.

This comes a couple weeks after Yahoo hired a new CEO, Scott Thompson. Yang took over as CEO of Yahoo in 2007 and then a year later was ousted from that position.

In any event, it is sad to see an internet legend leave the company he helped co-found. Yahoo was a great company and in the past several years have not found their way. Will Yang stepping down help Yahoo find their way - I don't think so but maybe it will give it a clear headspace?

Google's Bradley Horowitz, former Yahoo employee, but now head of Google+, said on Google+ a very passionate thing about Yang:

Wow. I didn't expect this, and wouldn't have expected this news to matter to me... but it does.
I worked at Yahoo for four years, and had an amazing, life-changing experience. Much of this was due to Jerry's support and enthusiasm for what I was trying to get done. Most of the projects under my purview (Flickr, Brickhouse, Yahoo Research Berkeley, Hack Days, etc.) flew against the grain of "Yahoo as Usual", and would have failed without Jerry's explicit endorsement. That he not only allowed me to do this, but encouraged me to (and funded the efforts) is something I deeply appreciate.
Best wishes to whatever is next for you Jerry. Thank you for giving me a chance to be part of Yahoo's history.

Thanks for sharing this Bradley! Best wishes to Jerry Yang for helping to build the internet as we know it.

Forum discussion at Google+ & WebmasterWorld.

GoogleBot Slows Down For SOPA

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Pierre Far from Google announced on his Google+ page that Google has seriously slowed down the GoogleBots, Google's web crawlers, to reduce any of the negative impact sites that are blacking out would have in Google's search results.

Google laid out the SEO considerations for blacking out your site yesterday - for those who wanted to do what Wikipedia and other sites are doing by preventing access to their site. Wikipedia did it a search engine friendly way, kind of the same way we did our April Fools joke a couple years ago, but just overlaying using JavaScript a black cover page. Technically, it might be against Google's terms of service but I am sure Google will let it slide. The reason this works well is because GoogleBot won't see the JavaScript overlay and crawling will remain fine.

That being said, many other sites are blacking out their sites and not even thinking about what type of impact this may have on their sites in the Google rankings. So Google decided to drastically slow down how active GoogleBot is today only. So this will help sites who are not taking into account SEO.

Here is what Pierre said:

Hello webmasters! We realize many webmasters are concerned about the medium-term effects of today's blackout. As a precaution, the crawl team at Google has configured Googlebot to crawl at a much lower rate for today only so that the Google results of websites participating in the blackout are less likely to be affected.

This is a pretty serious move from Google but in all likelihood is the best possible thing they can do today.

Oh, the picture above is Google's official picture of GoogleBot, but I made him all dark for SOPA.

Forum discussion at Google+.

adCenter 2+ Month Data Bug

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Microsoft Bing adCenter

I believe we reported this in November 2011, where advertisers using Microsoft adCenter haven't seen updated search volume data since early November.

The issue is specifically with the Excel Ad Intelligence plugin, where there is no new data since November and the November and October data was "questionable" to many advertisers. Since then, Microsoft said they are working on the problem, but two months later, still no fix.

Ricky Poole from Microsoft updated several forum threads saying:

I will reach out to the engineers and try to get an ETA. Please note, they are working on this fix and it is definitely a priority to have MAI functioning correctly.
More info to come.
Thank you for your patience :-)

How much longer do they have to wait? Who knows but not a good thing for advertisers looking for more ways to spend their budgets with adCenter.

Forum discussion at Microsoft Advertising Help.

Google Graffiti: We're Watching You

Fetched: January 19th, 2012, 7:09pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 17, 2012

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Will Google Blackout Site For SOPA Wednesday?
A Google Webmaster Help thread has about 60 posts from searchers and webmasters asking Google to join the SOPA protest by blacking out the Google search home page...
SEO Considerations For SOPA Website Blackouts
Many sites are taking a stand with the SOPA movement by blacking out their web site for a 24 hour period on Wednesday, tomorrow. Wikipedia is probably the most vocal one doing this, where they wrote:
comScore Search Share December 2011: Google Up & Yahoo Down
comScore released their December search engine rankings report, showing Google increasing share a little while Yahoo dropping share a little. Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in December with 65.9 percent market share (up 0...
Google+ Circles T-Shirt
Stefan Keuchel posted a picture of his newest t-shirt on Google+. It is a Google+ t-shirt that reads, "I added you on Google+." Then followed by a circle that reads, "people who read my shirt: 23."

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Do automated programs still work ?, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords Display Network: Interest Categories - Share your best practices and experiences, Google AdWords Help
SOPA Set To Be Shelved After Obama Says He Won't Support It, WebmasterWorld

Will Google Blackout Site For SOPA Wednesday?

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

A Google Webmaster Help thread has about 60 posts from searchers and webmasters asking Google to join the SOPA protest by blacking out the Google search home page.

One searcher said:

Please, Google, blackout your site in conjunction with other interested parties (paypal, amazon, etc) to demonstrate the potential consequences of SOPA to the general public. You already know how important defeating, or at least getting time for discussion and revision to, SOPA is.
By blacking out your site, you will make many people angry. I, and many people like me, will help by explaining to anyone and everyone what is going on. Then we can help the general public understand what is at stake.
SOPA is draconian and backwards, if not entirely corrupt. SOPA is a treatment worse than the disease. SOPA sells out our civil liberties to protect so called intellectual property but cannot indeed protect that property. SOPA is a step too far in a misguided direction. SOPA has not been given the time it deserves to be discussed and created on behalf of the people. SOPA is being swept past us by moneyed interests in hopes that we won't notice.
Holding a blackout in conjunction with other internet services that have become integral to the daily way of life will have an exponentially more profound effect.
Do it. I'll back you up.

It is a calculated risk. How much money can Google lose by doing this on a single day vs how much Google can lose if SOPA is implemented?

What I expect Google to do is darken their logo and place a link under the logo for users to learn more about the downsides of SOPA. I do not expect them to do a complete blackout of their site like others.

But should they?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

SEO Considerations For SOPA Website Blackouts

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Many sites are taking a stand with the SOPA movement by blacking out their web site for a 24 hour period on Wednesday, tomorrow.

Wikipedia is probably the most vocal one doing this, where they wrote:

The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate - that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and itâs a decision that wasnât lightly made.

So you want to make a stand but don't want to lose your shirt by doing so? Google offers advice on how to blackout (turn off) your web site for a day without hurting your short-term and long-term rankings in the Google search results.

Pierre Far from Google posted the advice on his Google+ and John Mueller from Google posted them at Google Webmaster Help. Here it is and I suggest you follow them carefully if you are blacking out your web site for SOPA.

tl;dr: Use a 503 HTTP status code but read on for important details.

Sometimes webmasters want to take their site offline for a day or so, perhaps for server maintenance or as political protest. We're currently seeing some recommendations being made about how to do this that have a high chance of hurting how Google sees these websites and so we wanted to give you a quick how-to guide based on our current recommendations.

The most common scenario we're seeing webmasters talk about implementing is to replace the contents on all or some of their pages with an error message ("site offline") or a protest message. The following applies to this scenario (replacing the contents of your pages) and so please ask (details below) if you're thinking of doing something else.

1. The most important point: Webmasters should return a 503 HTTP header for all the URLs participating in the blackout(parts of a site or the whole site). This helps in two ways:

a. It tells us it's not the "real" content on the site and won't be indexed.

b. Because of (a), even if we see the same content (e.g. the "site offline" message) on all the URLs, it won't cause duplicate content issues.

2. Googlebot's crawling rate will drop when it sees a spike in 503 headers. This is unavoidable but as long as the blackout is only a transient event, it shouldn't cause any long-term problems and the crawl rate will recover fairly quickly to the pre-blackout rate. How fast depends on the site and it should be on the order of a few days.

3. Two important notes about robots.txt:

a. As Googlebot is currently configured, it will halt all crawling of the site if the site's robots.txt file returns a 503 status code for robots.txt. This crawling block will continue until Googlebot sees an acceptable status code for robots.txt fetches (currently 200 or 404). This is a built-in safety mechanism so that Googlebot doesn't end up crawling content it's usually blocked from reaching. So if you're blacking out only a portion of the site, be sure the robots.txt file's status code is not changed to a 503.

b. Some webmasters may be tempted to change the robots.txt file to have a "Disallow: /" in an attempt to block crawling during the blackout. Don't block Googlebot's crawling like this as this has a high chance of causing crawling issues for much longer than the few days expected for the crawl rate recovery.

4. Webmasters will see these errors in Webmaster Tools: it will report that we saw the blackout. Be sure to monitor the Crawl Errors section particularly closely for a couple of weeks after the blackout to ensure there aren't any unexpected lingering issues.

5. General advice: Keep it simple and don't change too many things, especially changes that take different times to take effect. Don't change the DNS settings. As mentioned above, don't change the robots.txt file contents. Also, don't alter the crawl rate setting in WMT. Keeping as many settings constant as possible before, during, and after the blackout will minimize the chances of something odd happening.

Forum discussion at Google+ and Google Webmaster Help.

comScore Search Share December 2011: Google Up & Yahoo Down

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Industry News

comScore released their December search engine rankings report, showing Google increasing share a little while Yahoo dropping share a little.

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in December with 65.9 percent market share (up 0.5 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.1 percent (up 0.1 percentage points) and Yahoo! Sites with 14.5 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.

The folks at WebmasterWorld are expecting Microsoft Bing to increase search share at a much larger rate in 2012. I am not too sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google+ Circles T-Shirt

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 16, 2012

Fetched: January 18th, 2012, 12:59am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

The Google Traffic Tease
Most SEOs and webmasters have experienced this on one of the sites they've worked on. Many call it the Google traffic tease...
2012 Link Building Tools
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around which tools you should consider using to make the link building process easier in 2012...
Google's Martin Luther King, Jr. Logo For 2012
Today is 83rd birthday, and Google has a special logo for the day. Well, actually, it is the 83rd and one day birthday - but America celebrates today as Martin Luther King Day...
Google News Misquotes Ron Paul With Racist Quote
In short, Google News has a section for Ron Paul News and at the top, places a recent quote. Back then, the quote they pulled was extremely racist and misquoted...
Google Boxer Shorts
Google's Louis Gray posted a picture of Google boxer shorts on his Google+ page. He said they are the official Google boxer shorts. Maybe this means he wears boxers and not briefs. In any event, I...

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Does google monitor & reward links in gmail as social signals?, WebmasterWorld
Looks Like This Site is Scraping the Whole Internet, WebmasterWorld
Webmaster Tools internal link counts are wrong, WebmasterWorld
Word file (noindexed) showing first with site: command, WebmasterWorld
Doodle children's day, Google Blogoscoped Forum
Doodle Taiwan elections, Google Blogoscoped Forum

The Google Tease

Fetched: January 16th, 2012, 8:02pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Most SEOs and webmasters have experienced this on one of the sites they've worked on. Many call it the Google traffic tease, where you are doing okay and then Google sends you a ton of traffic for 3 or so days, then you go back to your normal traffic levels.

A WebmasterWorld thread has many webmasters talking about their Google tease experiences. One even posted a chart of the traffic increases and decreases over time, showing an almost double increase in Google traffic that went away soon after.

Here is the picture:

Tedster, Webmaster administrator, said:

A big but short-lived boost in traffic (real organic traffic) is also something that I see happen from time to time. Yes, it can feel like a tease. I don't know for sure, but it sometimes looks like Google is giving the site a test to see if their users respond well to it.

Have you experienced this recently?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for image and carrot image.

2012 Link Building Tools

Fetched: January 16th, 2012, 8:02pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Link Building tips SEO

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around which tools you should consider using to make the link building process easier in 2012.

With Yahoo Site Explorer dying int 2011, what other options do we have.

Here are the tools I pulled out of the WebmasterWorld thread:

Majestic SEO
Open Site Explorer
SEOmoz Tools
ScrapeBox
SEO Spyglass
SEOBook Tools
Blekko
Raven Tools
Ontolo
Excel (Good Old Microsoft Excel)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

2012 Martin Luther King Google Doodle

Fetched: January 16th, 2012, 8:02pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Today is 83rd birthday, and Google has a special logo for the day. Well, actually, it is the 83rd and one day birthday - but America celebrates today as Martin Luther King Day.

For the day, Google has this logo with the "I have a dream..." speech around it.

The design and artwork was from Faith Ringgold, an African American artist who is best know for her painted story quilts. She was born 81 years ago in Harlem, New York. You can learn more about the artist at Wikipedia and more about Martin Luther King, Jr. on Wikipedia.

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Google News Labels Ron Paul As Racist

Fetched: January 16th, 2012, 8:02pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

This Google News Help thread is a couple weeks old but I just spotted it today.

In short, Google News has a section for Ron Paul News and at the top, places a recent quote. Back then, the quote they pulled was extremely racist and misquoted.

It read, ""If you have ever been robbed by a black teenage male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be."

Here is a picture:

You and I know that Google pulls these quotes via an algorithm and this was not done maliciously by Google. We know sometimes algorithms aren't perfect and can pick up text that is not proper. This is one of those cases.

But to people who do not understand that, both as Ron Paul supporters and non-supporters, this can look really bad.

One person said in the Google News Help forum:

This was never spoken by Ron Paul, and should not be displaying Inaccurate and Misleading racist quote to Millions of Google users. Can anyone post a news article with "questionable content" and then have Google use it to deface an individual just because of one authors prejudice? Please remove this, it has been showing for days, I would hope Paul himself would take legal action against Google for something of this nature.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Google's Louis Gray Wears Boxers, Not Briefs

Fetched: January 16th, 2012, 8:02pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 13, 2012

Fetched: January 14th, 2012, 11:15am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 13, 2012
This week, I do my video from a far off land named Israel. Can you guess who the picture is of behind me? In any event, I go through...
Google Explains Why Your Title Tag Might Not Show In Search Results
There are often complaints in the forum that Google is not showing your title tags in the search results properly. Yesterday, Google wrote..
Google Upgrades Android Search App
Google announced that they have made several improvements to the search app for Android. The changes include...
Google Cockroach Costume
Caroline McCarthy from the Google New York City office posted a picture on Google+ of a cockroach costume. Basically, Google NYC wanted to clean up the office and have a give away. She found this as...

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Google Suggest and the term "scam" threatens to harm organization's reputation, Google Web Search Help
Google AdWords Display Network: Remarketing Strategies - Share your best practices and successful strategies, Google AdWords Help
Google Maps on Android 6.1 now available!, Google Mobile Search Help
Site not indexed - google is crawling, Google Webmaster Help

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 13, 2012

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 6:12pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Buzz video Round Recap

This week, I do my video from a far off land named Israel. Can you guess who the picture is of behind me? In any event, I go through some of the new stuff with Google Search, Plus Your World Google update. I talk about how someone emailed a Googler asking for a link exchange - it didn't help improve that person's rankings. Google passes value of links in an iframe. Microsoft may soon make the adCenter console compatible with Macs. Microsoft banned adCenter accounts by accident. The Kindle Fire won't load Google AdSense ads. Google had two special logos this week, one for Nicolas Steno, the father of Geology and the other for Charles Addams of "The Addams Family." Finally, this Sunday is SMX Israel - we are sold out and looking forward to the awesome day! That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

How Google Picks Your Title In Search Results

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 6:12pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

There are often complaints in the forum that Google is not showing your title tags in the search results properly.

Yesterday, Google wrote a blog post named Better page titles in search results. Here, Pierre Far, explains why Google may pick a different title tag.

In a Google+ post he gives the short version:

Our algorithms generate thee alternative titles so that your page is no longer constrained with having just the one title for all the different queries your page ranks for. This has the nice side effect of making the result look more relevant to our searchers and...
On average, the alternative titles increase the clickthrough rate on the results, i.e. more traffic for you.
The <title> tag is still a primary source for titles we show so all our advice about make them concise and useful and enticing still very much apply. Keep an eye on the HTML Suggestions page in the Diagnostics section in Webmaster Tools for title suggestions.

For a more detailed walk through of this, see the Google Help document on this topic.

Forum discussion at Google+ & Google Webmaster Help.

Google Makes Android Search Faster & Easier

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 6:12pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

Google announced that they have made several improvements to the search app for Android.

The changes include:

Faster, smoother performance, with an updated and simplified user interface.
Suggestions for your search grouped by type, with web suggestions at the top.
Country-specific suggestions and search results for all countries with Google domains.
Long press to remove history items.

This week I am using Android, since I am in Israel and I have a bunch of unlocked Android devices. I'll make sure to play with this a bit.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Life Size Google Cockroach

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 6:12pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 12, 2012

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 3:02am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

How Googlers Respond To Link Exchange Requests
That is a picture of Susan Moskwa, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, who works with the search quality team at Google. Someone sent her an email requesting a link exchange.
Pornography Set To Google Home Page Background
A Google Web Search Help thread has a disgruntled Google user complaining that his Google home page contains an image of a naked woman.
Google In Trouble Over Ads Leading To Fake London Olympics Tickets
The BBC reports Google admitted to profiting from selling ads to scammers selling illegal and fake Olympics tickets for the summer 2012 Olympics.
Googlers Drink Red Bull, Starbucks, Mug Root Beer, Energy Drinks & Macallan
Chris Schrier, a Googler who works on Linux Administration, posted a picture on Google+ of the drinks on his desk after a long work day. The drinks include Red Bull, Starbucks, Mug Root Beer, Energy.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

University campus Street View, Google Blogoscoped Forum
AdWords Community Account Development - Eric's law firm needs community help., Google AdWords Help

Did You Really Email A Googler For A Link Exchange?

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 3:02am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

That is a picture of Susan Moskwa, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, who works with the search quality team at Google.

Someone sent her an email requesting a link exchange. In fact, it is fairly common for Googlers, including top well-known Googlers like Matt Cutts, to receive link exchange requests via email.

Susan posted on Google+ the email she received and the response she sent back. Her response was, you and your site violated Google's guidelines and will be reported as such.

Link exchange email request:

Hi, my name is Mary. I came across your website, THEDAME.NET, and would like to propose a link exchange between your sites and [redacted].com. Did you know, exchanging links will generate more traffic to both of our sites. Best of all it's FREE; there is no cost or hidden fee. We simply ask for a link back from a page on your site. Simple enough, don't you think?

Here is Susan's response:

Seriously, Mary? You sent a link exchange request to a member of the Google search team, for a domain that isn't even hosted?? You didn't even look at the site, did you. MAJOR LINKSPAM FAIL. I'm reporting your site to Google for violating our Webmaster Guidelines.

Serious response!

John Mueller from Google said that he gets between 3-4 a week of these a week.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google Background Image Of Naked Women

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 3:02am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

A Google Web Search Help thread has a disgruntled Google user complaining that his Google home page contains an image of a naked woman.

He said, "How do I remove this image from my google homepage. My kids are too minor to see this." He added the image was of "naked women."

The only way to get a custom background image on Google's home page is to manually add it. Unless there is a weird bug or even worse, malware going around doing this to people's computers.

But what I think that happened was that one of his kids did it or a kids friend. Someone is playing a game here.

Or it can be malware?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for shocked elderly people.

Google Keeps Money For Illegal Olympics Ads

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 3:02am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

The BBC reports Google admitted to profiting from selling ads to scammers selling illegal and fake Olympics tickets for the summer 2012 Olympics.

The report says that Google "keeps any money it might make from companies advertising illegal services before such adverts are removed."

Google did remove the ads after the BBC reported them to Google. But that money stays in Google's pockets.

In short, the scammers pay Google to place the ads on the Google search results or Google content network. Google takes a per click fee on each ad click. Google then was notified the ads were a scam and removed them. Google is not returning that money back to the scammers.

The question is, should they?

Selling fake tickets to the Olympics is a criminal offense, but was Google selling them? If they were not, should they give money back to the criminals? It would be nice if they gave some of those funds to those who were scammed but honestly, I wouldn't expect that from them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

What Googlers Drink While Working

Fetched: January 13th, 2012, 3:02am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 11, 2012

Fetched: January 12th, 2012, 3:04am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Places Mobile Hides Owner Review Responses
A new Google Maps / Google Places bug was reported at Google Places Help the other day. It appears that owner responses to reviews on Google Maps show up fine for desktop users but not for iPhone...
Webmaster Reaction Towards Google Search, Plus Your World
Yesterday, Google announced one of the biggest changes to their search results, maybe ever. The results, when logged in, will be extremely personalized with a high level of integration with Google+...
Nicolas Steno Google Logo: Geology Google
Today, Google is celebrating the 374th birthday of the founder of modern geology, Nicolas Steno with a special logo. As you can see...
Submit Your Questions For Google's Tomer Honen For SMX Israel 2012
As you know, SMX Israel 2012 is this Sunday and part of the agenda is to have a Meet Tomer From Google. Tomer Honen was at one of our early Israel shows and has returned this year as the official Google search quality representative to answer webmaster and SEO questions...
Google's Mediratta New Beer Pong Desk
Bharat Mediratta posted a picture of his new desk. Yes, his desk is now a beer pong table. He was on vacation for a month and returned to this. He posted the picture on Google+ for all to see. Good

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

AdSense English Forum Is Moving to Google Product Forums!, Google AdSense Help
AdWords Community Account Development - Allen's online travel agency needs community help., Google AdWords Help
Google AdWords Display Network: Targeting Strategies - Share your best practices and successful strategies, Google AdWords Help

Google Places Mobile Hides Owner Review Responses

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

A new Google Maps / Google Places bug was reported at Google Places Help the other day.

It appears that owner responses to reviews on Google Maps show up fine for desktop users but not for iPhone, Android or smartphone users.

Here is a screen shot of this maps listing which clearly has a owner response to a review on the desktop version but it is completely missing from the mobile template version.

Vanessa from Google responded to the issue in the Google Places Help forum saying it is a bug and they will work on it. She said:

Hmmm interesting! I've sent this along to my team, looks like a bug.
Thanks for reporting this.

Forum discussion at Google Places Help.

Webmaster Reaction Towards Google Search, Plus Your World

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

Yesterday, Google announced one of the biggest changes to their search results, maybe ever.

The results, when logged in, will be extremely personalized with a high level of integration with Google+. Google described it as being "able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they've shared with you, as well as the people you donât know but might want to... all from one search box."

The three core and new features include:

Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts - both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people youâre close to or might be interested in following; and,
People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

This sparked a bit of a debate around various communities on the internet. Obviously the privacy community, the social community and of course, the webmaster/SEO community. I wanted to share some of the feedback from SEOs and webmasters in the forums.

Overall, they are worried, like they have been with Google's previous personalization attempts. The one good thing, as Danny Sullivan explained in his detailed write up on this release was that searchers now have a clear toggle on and off switch for personalized results - will they use it and will Google keep that toggle, remains to be seen.

Here are some of the Webmaster comments:

It is, on first appearance, a bit unsettling. I reserve judgment for now, because a lot of times my first reaction to any change is resistance and suspicion - and then over time I can appreciate it.

keep screwing with the sauce........

Yet another way of squeezing out the small publisher. Google now has an excuse to manipulate search results however they want for each individual user. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times...Don't count on Google to continue to bring you new users forever.

Since the "your world" results can be toggled on and off, I'd think it won't make too big of an impact. But then again, I just finished typing "ostrich - meet sand" so maybe my mindset is affecting everything at the moment.

Then you have Twitter calling this a bad thing and Google defending themselves by saying "We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer, and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions"

Matt Cutts touches on how it is not just Google+ content shaping the results, but also Flickr and they want to add more, if the social networks allow.

Here is a video on it from Google:

In any event, there is a tremendous amount of discussion and coverage on this at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Cre8asite Forums, Google Web Search Help, Google on Google+ and Matt Cutts on Google+.

Nicolas Steno Google Logo: Geology Google

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Today, Google is celebrating the 374th birthday of the founder of modern geology, Nicolas Steno with a special logo.

As you can see, the logo looks like exploration of the ocean to the earth and its inhabitants. It is a great symbolism of Nicolas Steno work.

Nicolas Steno was born on January 11, 1638 in Denmark and died on December 5, 1686 in Schwerin, Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

He had a very interesting life, which you can read about on Wikipedia.

I personally like the Google logo, aka Doodle, very much. Kudos to the Google Doodle designer on this.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Submit Your Questions For Google's Tomer Honen For SMX Israel 2012

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2012 Israel

As you know, SMX Israel 2012 is this Sunday and part of the agenda is to have a Meet Tomer From Google.

Tomer Honen was at one of our early Israel shows and has returned this year as the official Google search quality representative to answer webmaster and SEO questions. Even better, he was born in Israel and speaks Hebrew fluently.

Want to ask him a question? Please add comment below with what you want me to ask him during the hour and 15 minute open Q&A panel. We will allow questions from the audience, but I want a bunch of seed questions prior to the session.

Please tell your friends to submit questions here or in the Google+ thread linked below.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google's Mediratta New Beer Pong Desk

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 10, 2012

Fetched: January 11th, 2012, 3:20pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Microsoft To Allow Macs & iPads To Use adCenter
Mac and iPad users are in luck - or will soon be in luck - if they want to work with Microsoft adCenter to advertise on Bing and Yahoo Search...
Kindle Fire Android Don't Show Google AdSense Ads
Did you know that your Google AdSense ads won't show up for Kindle Fire users? Don't you find that interesting...
SMX Israel Ticket Prices Increase Tomorrow
SMX Israel is this Sunday and I need to give the hotel a final count of attendees tomorrow. To encourage the people who always 'wait until the last minute' to do things, especially like this...
Bing Maps Driving Directions Improved
The Bing Maps blog announced that they have revamped their algorithm for determining driving directions. They went from the "Dijkstra" algorithm as their routing engine to a new one they named "Customizable Route Planning...
Google Webspam Team's White Elephant Gift Game
Matt Cutts of Google posted on Google+ a picture of what he was awarded to wear in the Google's webspam team's annual white elephant gift exchange. Matt was the luck winner of wearing a horse head ma

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Doodle Oskar Luts b.day, Google Blogoscoped Forum
Chrome Beta Release, Now Prefetching Faster, WebmasterWorld
Google AdWords Display Network: Managed Placements - How do I get started?, Google AdWords Help
Panda-loved website: What does it look like?, WebmasterWorld

Microsoft To Allow Macs & iPads To Use adCenter

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:23pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Microsoft Bing adCenter

Mac and iPad users are in luck - or will soon be in luck - if they want to work with Microsoft adCenter to advertise on Bing and Yahoo Search.

A Microsoft Advertising Help thread has Ricky Poole, an Microsoft adCenter Web Support Specialist, saying they are actively working on making the adCenter console compatible with macs and iPads.

If you read the complaints in the advertising forum, you will see the frustrated Mac users. Ricky from Microsoft said:

Thank you for your feedback. I also apologize for your frustration as I can understand you needing to be able to work on different platforms. The good news is we are working on this and will be fixing this. :-)
Please stay tunned to our blogs for further announcements.

This is the first time a Microsoft representative said they are actually working on this issue. I am not sure how soon we will have a Mac compatible adCenter console, but it is on their radar.

Forum discussion at Microsoft Advertising Help.

Kindle Fire Android Don't Show Google AdSense Ads

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:23pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Did you know that your Google AdSense ads won't show up for Kindle Fire users? Don't you find that interesting? The Kindle Fire runs Google's Android OS but when you try to view AdSense ads with them, you won't get them.

A Google AdSense Help thread has reports from AdSense publishers and those advertising using AdSense that the ads do not render on the Kindle Fire.

I snapped a picture using my iPhone of the iPad next to the Kindle Fire and showed how the iPad loads the ads but not the Kindle Fire:

Chris from Google said in the thread:

Thanks for posting about this here. I will investigate and get back to you as soon as I can.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

SMX Israel Ticket Prices Increase Tomorrow

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:23pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Marketing Expo 2012 Israel

SMX Israel is this Sunday and I need to give the hotel a final count of attendees tomorrow. To encourage the people who always 'wait until the last minute' to do things, especially like this, I have to increase the price of the ticket from $150 to $200 tomorrow.

If you plan on attending SMX Israel, then please register now over here.

Why now?

(1) Prices up to to $200. So you can save $50 by registering now.

(2) We have less than 70 seats left and likely will sell out, so register now.

If you have friends thinking about coming but are not sure, encourage them to make a yes/no decision today.

Once the price goes up, I will not be doing any "favors" for anyone.

Huge thanks to our sponsors: Majestic SEO, Analytics Ninja, Universal McCann Search, Mad Mimi, Go Internet Marketing, Rapid Fire, Responder.co.il, SEO Genie, Sorezki, SEFO, iSEO and Viruous Online.

The Inbal Hotel has done some huge network upgrades to make sure they can handle the bandwidth requirements of our 500+ attendees. Please thank them when you see them at the event. They are sponsoring the Wifi for free.

Again, one last request, register now.

Bing Maps Driving Directions Improved

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:23pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Bing Search

The Bing Maps blog announced that they have revamped their algorithm for determining driving directions.

They went from the "Dijkstra" algorithm as their routing engine to a new one they named "Customizable Route Planning." The new algorithm is twice as fast in calculating driving directions - try it, it does seem incredibly snappy and also offers alternative routes, up to three.

Chris Pendleton from Microsoft said, "for any of our route calculations weâre now processing requests twice as fast as we ever have." "We exposed a feature in the API for alternate routes, so when youâd like to see additional options for the route you can request up to 3 routes in one request using the maxSolutions method,:" Chris added.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Webspam Team's White Elephant Gift Game

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:23pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 9, 2012

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:48am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

When Will Google Panda's Update Start Rolling?
In July we asked if the Google Panda update was a rolling update...
Links In IFrames Pass Value In Google
Michael Martinez posted a thread at High Rankings Forums basically confirming earlier reports that Google will see and pass value of a link within an iframe. Michael said he ran his own independent test...
adCenter Bans Accounts By Accident
On Thursday there were some reports in the Microsoft Advertising Forum that advertisers were complaining they were not able to manage their accounts. In short, they were banned from using Microsoft's adCenter product...
The Google Schemer Shirt
James Lawson-Smith, a Googler/YouTuber, posted a picture on Google+ of his new t-shirt. It is of Schemer, a new Google social local tool that is currently in an early beta.
Charles Addams "The Addams Family" Google Logo
Today would be the 100th birthday of Charles Addams, best well known for his The Addams Family characters. He was born today, a 100 years ago Westfield, New Jersey and died at the age of 76 on September 29...

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Bing Index Explorer "Block Directory and Cache"?, WebmasterWorld
Google Thinks My Site Is In English - But It's German ?, Google Webmaster Help
What would it take (seriously) for my wife's B-Day to be the front page on Google search page for one day?, Google Web Search Help

When Will Google Panda's Update Start Rolling?

Fetched: January 10th, 2012, 8:48am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

In July we asked if the Google Panda update was a rolling update? Meaning, did the algorithm update dynamically by itself without having Google hit a button to push out an update.

The answer was no - at least back then.

But it is expected that the Panda algorithm would one day be part of Google's rolling and continuously updating algorithm - working in almost real time, when possible.

At this point in time, I do not think Panda is a rolling update. But some are thinking it is.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some asking if it started to be a rolling update yet.

Tedster said partially:

I expect that eventually Panda will become more dynamic. Since it's now a third essential leg of the ranking algorithm (relevance+connectedness+quality) having it only update manually every few weeks or worse doesn't sound like a Google-style long term solution to me.
The only areas of the algo that update slowly, as far as I can see, are things like automated taxonomy generation and n-gram identification. Those areas do not need rolling updates because they are global characteristics of the entire web and those don't change in a fast sweeping fashion.
So what we're seeing in some cases are reports that new pages on a Pandalyzed website can sometimes rank well, even though established pages stay demoted. I'm not sure if that means a rolling update, or just a less oppressive application of the Panda score.

So what do you think? Are we rolling now? If not, partially? How soon?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Links In IFrames Pass Value In Google

Fetched: January 9th, 2012, 2:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Michael Martinez posted a thread at High Rankings Forums basically confirming earlier reports that Google will see and pass value of a link within an iframe.

Michael said he ran his own independent test.

Michael said:

So I designed a simple two-stage test in December to see what would happen. The test is such that if the link passes anchor text in the first stage there is no need to try the second stage.
I embedded an iframed page on one of my older sites. It is well-indexed, has never been penalized, and has sufficient inbound links that I was confident it would be recrawled and re-indexed within a short period of time. It is also a low traffic site (it used to have more traffic a few years ago) so I felt it was probably a safe place to run a link test without attracting too much attention.
The iframed page only contains one in-body HTML element, a link pointing to HighRankings.com with the anchor text of "jill whalen says search engines crawl iframes". This was, until I ran my test, an expression that did not appear in Google's search results (when you wrap quotes around it).
I let the test be through the holidays and checked it today. The expression now appears in Google's search results.

He is extremely confident about his test that Google can crawl iFramed pages and follow the links within them.

Forum discussion at High Rankings Forums.

Image credit via ShutterStock for links and frames.

adCenter Bans Accounts By Accident

Fetched: January 9th, 2012, 2:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Microsoft Bing adCenter

On Thursday there were some reports in the Microsoft Advertising Forum that advertisers were complaining they were not able to manage their accounts.

In short, they were banned from using Microsoft's adCenter product, which places search ads on Bing and Yahoo Search.

The reason they were banned was because their ads and sites were mistakenly labeled as serving up malware.

Ralph David, adCenter Community Team, said this was a mistake and they are working on fixing it. He did not specify how many accounts were effected, but he said:

We have identified an intermittent system error which has caused some accounts to be incorrectly flagged as 'Malware' and have been temporarily suspended. This issue has been escalated to our Technical Engineering Team with the highest priority in an effort to get your account up and running again as quickly as possible.
Please be aware that the Technical Engineering Team are in the US, so we may not have a resolution today. We do have support staff in the office on Saturday, so should anything come in from the Technical Engineering Team overnight, they will let you know in the morning.

As of now, I am not sure if it is fixed or not.

Forum discussion at Microsoft Advertising Forum.

The Google Schemer Shirt

Fetched: January 9th, 2012, 2:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Charles Addams "The Addams Family" Google Logo

Fetched: January 8th, 2012, 9:04pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Today would be the 100th birthday of Charles Addams, best well known for his The Addams Family characters.

He was born today, a 100 years ago Westfield, New Jersey and died at the age of 76 on September 29, 1988.

He was a cartoonist who created many of the characters of The Addams Family. That became a couple TV shows, movies, cartoons and even more. I personally remember growing up watching a couple versions of The Addams Family on TV.

Google today featured a special logo to remember his work and contributions to America.

To learn more about Charles Addams, see Wikipedia.

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 6, 2012

Fetched: January 7th, 2012, 10:58am CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 6, 2012
Happy 2012 everyone...
Google's 30 Most Recent Search Quality Changes
Google provided an update with the 30 or so most recent search quality updates. They also added in the code names, when applicable, used internally at Google for each of these updates. They include words like concepts, leaf, simple, greencr, Megasitelinks, foby...
My Site's Ranking Dropped, It's Google Panda
This happens with every Google update - when a site owner feels their site was downgraded in Google, they blame the most talked about and recent Google update. Heck, I even see people blame the Google Sandbox for their site ranking issues. With Google Panda...
Can White Hats Use Black Hat Tactics?
A Cre8asite Forum thread has a nice deep discussion around the use of black hat SEO techniques while being a so called "white hat...
Yahoo's Past CEO Line Up
Aaron Parecki posted a picture on Flickr of the Wall Street Journal's cover showing Yahoo's past CEOs and their bios. It has Tim Koogle from 1995 to May 2001, Terry Semel from May 2001 - June 2007, J

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Has Panda Created an Era of New Domain SPAM?, WebmasterWorld
MS declares IE6 Dead, WebmasterWorld
Vint Cerf: Internet Access is Not a Human Right, WebmasterWorld

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 6, 2012

Fetched: January 7th, 2012, 10:58am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Buzz video Round Recap

Happy 2012 everyone! This week we posted our January Google webmaster report, which sums up the past month of Google changes. Google was caught buying links for Chrome promotion, so they ended up penalizing themselves. Google posted their 30 most recent search quality changes. Google's CEO and co-founder, Larry Page was named CEO of the year. Meanwhile, Yahoo has a new CEO, Scott Thompson from PayPal. We also have the happy New Years logos. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Google's 30 Most Recent Search Quality Changes

Fetched: January 7th, 2012, 10:58am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

Google provided an update with the 30 or so most recent search quality updates.

They also added in the code names, when applicable, used internally at Google for each of these updates. They include words like concepts, leaf, simple, greencr, Megasitelinks, foby, baschi and many many more.

I tried to categorize the updates for you below:

Rankings:

Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename âsimpleâ] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.
Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename âleafâ] This change improves our spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms we already use for our main search results.

Search Results:

More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename âconceptsâ, project codename âMegasitelinksâ] We improved our algorithm for picking sitelinks. The result is more relevant sitelinks; for example, we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.
More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename âgreencrâ] On domains other than .com, users have the option to see only results from their particular country. This is a new algorithm that uses several signals to better determine where web documents are from, improving the accuracy of this feature.
More rich snippets. We improved our process for detecting sites that qualify for shopping, recipe and review rich snippets. As a result, you should start seeing more sites with rich snippets in search results.
More accurate byline dates. [launch codename âfobyâ] We made a few improvements to how we determine what date to associate with a document. As a result, youâll see more accurate dates annotating search results.
Google Instant enhancements for Japanese. For languages that use non-Latin characters, many users use a special IME (Input Method Editor) to enter queries. This change works with browsers that are IME-aware to better handle Japanese queries in Google Instant.
Related query improvements. [launch codename âlyndsyâ] Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are related to the original query but have fewer words. We made several changes to our algorithms to make them more conservative and less likely to introduce results without query words.
Tweak to +1 button on results page. As part of our continued effort to deliver a beautifully simple user experience across Google products, weâve made a subtle tweak to how the +1 button appears on the results page. Now the +1 button will only appear when you hover over a result or when the result has already been +1âd.
Better spell correction in Vietnamese. [project codename âPho Vietâ] We launched a new Vietnamese spelling model. This will help give more accurate spelling predictions for Vietnamese queries.
Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename âmatterâ] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, youâll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.
Improved Hebrew synonyms. [launch codename âSweatNovemberâ, project codename âSynonymsâ] This update refines how we handle Hebrew synonyms across multiple languages. Context matters a lot for translation, so this change prevents us from using translated synonyms that are not actually relevant to the query context.
Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but itâs not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr.
Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename âold possumâ, project codename âSkip Redirectâ] Many websites redirect smartphone users to another page that is optimized for smartphone browsers. This change uses the final smartphone destination url in our mobile search results, so you can bypass all the redirects and load the target page faster.

Webmaster:

Soft 404 Detection. Web servers generally return the 404 status code when someone requests a page that doesnât exist. However, some sites are configured to return other status codes, even though the page content might explain that the page was not found. We call these soft 404s (or âcryptoâ 404s) and they can be problematic for search engines because we arenât sure if we should ignore the pages. This change is an improvement to how we detect soft 404s, especially in Russian, German and Spanish. For all you webmasters out there, the best practice is still to always use the correct response code.

Backend:

Better infrastructure for autocomplete. This is an infrastructure change to improve how our autocomplete algorithm handles spelling corrections for query prefixes (the beginning part of a search).
Improved dataset for related queries. We are now using an improved dataset on term relationships to find related queries. We sometimes include results for queries that are related to your original search, and this improvement leads to results from more relevant related queries.
Safer searching. [launch codename âHoenggâ, project codename "SafeSearch"] We updated our SafeSearch tool to provide better filtering for certain queries when strict SafeSearch is enabled.

Answers:

Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename âLive Resultsâ] Weâve added new live results for NFL.com and ESPNâs NCAA Football results. These results now provide the latest scores, schedules and standings for your favorite football teams.
Better lyrics results. [launch codename âbaschiâ, project codename âContraâ] This change improves our result quality for lyrics searches.
Upcoming events at venues. We've improved the recently released places panel for event venues. For major venues, we now show up to three upcoming events on the right of the page. Try it for [staples center los angeles] or [paradise rock club boston].

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

My Site's Ranking Dropped, It's Google Panda

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

This happens with every Google update - when a site owner feels their site was downgraded in Google, they blame the most talked about and recent Google update. Heck, I even see people blame the Google Sandbox for their site ranking issues.

With Google Panda, this is no different. Every time there is a Google shuffle or a site drops in the Google search results, more often than not the webmaster will call it an issue with Google Panda.

A new WebmasterWorld thread has some folks claiming there was a Google Panda update recently while others say no.

Could have been, who knows. But now, whenever there is a Google shuffle of any kind - fingers point at Panda.

Who is to blame? Google? Me? You? We all are.

Who wins? No one really - it doesn't really help either way.

The best SEOs are able to analyze the site's issue, target a fix and get the site working well in Google - be it Panda or a Sandbox. :)

So don't just assume it is Panda - give yourself some credit and dig deeper.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for cute Panda cartoon.

Can White Hats Use Black Hat Tactics?

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: SEO Search Engine Optimization

A Cre8asite Forum thread has a nice deep discussion around the use of black hat SEO techniques while being a so called "white hat."

The question at hand is can a white hat SEO use some black hat tactics and still call themselves a white hat SEO?

As the conversation went on, the discussion went into definitions, as you can imagine.

What is black hat? Is it hacking? Is it stealing? Is it just using automated tools? Is it buying links? Writing a ton of content that isn't quality?

At the same time, some say that learning from black hats make you a better white hat SEO. Moderator, iamlost, said they are "pushing the envelope" and you can learn from that. But is it the black hat who is "pushing the envelope" or just the savvy marketers? Some black hats don't do anything smart, but rather use brute force. While others think up new techniques that can often not be classified as black hat at all and thus maybe they aren't black hat.

As you can see, the discussion gets into many areas, as do most of these type of threads.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forum.

Image credit via ShutterStock for white/black hat.

Yahoo's Past CEO Line Up

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 5, 2012

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

January 2012 Google Webmaster Report
December is normally a slow month for Google updates and SEO discussions and this December was fairly slow. Google promised not to do any major Panda updates and for the most part, it seems they did not...
Similar Title Tags & Self SEO Competition
A WebmasterWorld thread has a common SEO question. Should you have the same keyword phrase that you use on an internal page, placed also on the home page?
Scott Thompson Is Yahoo's New CEO
Yahoo has announced their new CEO. The new CEO is Scott Thompson, the President of PayPal. Thompson starts his new job at Yahoo on January 9th. He replaces the interim CEO, Tim Morse, who will go back to his position as the CFO...
Android Cake
We've seen real ice cream sandwich versions of Androids in the past but nothing this big that can be eaten. Sivan Rehan created a large cake for a birthday, it looks like an ice cream sandwich - just
Poll: Is Google's Response To Chrome's Paid Links Enough?
Google was caught buying links to promote Chrome - well, it wasn't directly Google...
More Searchers Seeing Google's New Top Bar
I've been seeing more and more reports from around the search space of searchers now seeing the new Google top bar. This began rolling out back in November but not everyone has it yet...
Weird Android Obsession
Louis Gray, a relatively new Googler and well known blogger, is somewhat obsessed with Android. He posted a picture on Google+ of his home office that shows that borderline 'weird' obsession with Anr

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Google AdWords Display Network: Let's see success together - What are the 4 main steps to get started?, Google AdWords Help
HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable and 500 Internal Server Error recently, YouTube Help
Tools You are Using for 2012?, WebmasterWorld
Verified Account Mistake By Twitter, WebmasterWorld

January 2012 Google Webmaster Report

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

December is normally a slow month for Google updates and SEO discussions and this December was fairly slow. Google promised not to do any major Panda updates and for the most part, it seems they did not. Although, a few days ago, Google got in trouble buying links so they penalized themselves again.

That being said, currently there is some discussion about a possible Panda update that struck down on January 4th or 5th - but I am not seeing enough chatter on the topic, yet, to make an assumption on if it is real or not. But many folks feel that soon enough SEOs will stop talking about Panda and start talking about Google's next beast to hit the algorithm. Good assumption there, don't you think?

In any event, to read last month's Google webmaster report, click here.

Here are the more important Google webmaster related stories we covered this past month:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Similar Title Tags & Self SEO Competition

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has a common SEO question. Should you have the same keyword phrase that you use on an internal page, placed also on the home page?

The example given in this case was:

Example Home Page Title = "Blue Widgets and Widgety Items For Your Foo Bars"
Internal Page Title = "Blue Widgets and [widget synonym] products and accessories"

Worse case scenario is that one of the two pages doesn't rank for the keyword. I guess the worse case is none of them rank, but if one ranks, you want the internal page to rank. If not, then more clicks are required by the consumer.

Best case scenario, you get those wonder indented results, which Google is doing less of these days.

Tedster replied to the concern in the thread saying:

I've definitely seen this kind of thing be a challenge for the internal page's ranking - especially if it is reinforced with internal anchor text on the home page pointing to the internal page.
In one case, I was working with a home page that used the title "[Business name] offers widget books, widget software and widget courses" - and the actual landing page for "widget software" didn't rank well until it accumulated a number of good backlinks. Until then, only the home page ranked.

Do you worry about these things?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for moving targets image.

Scott Thompson Is Yahoo's New CEO

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Yahoo News

Yahoo has announced their new CEO. The new CEO is Scott Thompson, the President of PayPal.

Thompson starts his new job at Yahoo on January 9th. He replaces the interim CEO, Tim Morse, who will go back to his position as the CFO. Tim stepped in when Yahoo fired Bartz, who replaced Jerry Yang in January 2009. Yang of course replaced Terry Semel in 2007.

I wonder if he will last more than a couple years. I hope so. I'd love to see him bring back Yahoo's investment in search but I doubt that will happen.

Here is the PR pitch:

Thompson served most recently as President of PayPal, a division of eBay, where he continued his established track record of growing businesses by driving customer engagement built on strong technology platforms. Under his leadership, PayPal solidified its lead as the global online payment service, expanding its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users in 190 countries worldwide, increasing the number of merchant partners to more than 8 million globally, and growing revenues from $1.8 billion to $4+ billion in 2011.
"Scott brings to Yahoo! a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth, precisely the formula we need at Yahoo!," said Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board. "His deep understanding of online businesses combined with his team building and operational capabilities will restore the energy, focus, and momentum necessary to grow the core business and deliver increased value for our shareholders. The search committee and the entire Board concluded that he is the right leader to return the core business to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation."
"Yahoo! is an industry icon and I am very excited about the prospect of working with one of the great teams in the online world to deliver Yahoo!'s next era of success," Mr. Thompson said. "Yahoo! has a rich history and a solid foundation to build on, and its continued user engagement is one of the many reasons for my enthusiasm. With the ultimate goal of delivering the value our shareholders expect, my immediate focus will be on getting to know the entire team and hearing more from all Yahoo!s, working closely with the engineers and product teams, and diving deeply into our products and services to learn more about what our more than 700 million users find most engaging and useful. I will also be working directly with our region leaders and sales teams globally to get a clearer understanding of the needs of our advertisers and publishers. Clearly, speed is important but we will attack both the opportunity ahead and the competitive challenges with an appropriate balance of urgency and thoughtfulness. I cannot wait to get started."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Android Cake

Fetched: January 6th, 2012, 2:46pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Poll: Is Google's Response To Chrome's Paid Links Enough?

Fetched: January 4th, 2012, 5:18pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google was caught buying links to promote Chrome - well, it wasn't directly Google, it was a third-party Google marketing company doing it without their knowledge.

Google has responded by:

(1) Dropping the ranking for Chrome for the keyword [browser] to well beyond page 7 or so.

(2) Dropping the PageRank of the Chrome landing page.

Is this enough? Take our poll below.

Matt Cutts responded on Google+ saying:

Sorry that it took me until now to comment on the situation that Danny wrote about at http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 . Iâm in Central America this week and my ability to reach the internet hasn't been great.
Iâll give the short summary, then Iâll describe the webspam teamâs response. Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didnât actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players werenât flowing PageRank to Google either.
However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos--not link to Google--and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Googleâs Chrome page and passed PageRank, thatâs still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3 .
In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also wonât trust outgoing links from that page.

Now, please vote:

Are You Satisfied With Google's Response On Chrome?

In a WebmasterWorld thread, one user said, "Really they probably had no choice with the FTC on their back."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google+.

More Searchers Seeing Google's New Top Bar

Fetched: January 4th, 2012, 5:18pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

I've been seeing more and more reports from around the search space of searchers now seeing the new Google top bar. This began rolling out back in November but not everyone has it yet, including myself.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some users saying they are now seeing it.

Here is what it looks like if you do not see it yet:

So if you start to see it soon, don't be surprised - more and more users are getting this new design, which is over a month old now.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Weird Android Obsession

Fetched: January 4th, 2012, 2:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 3, 2012

Fetched: January 4th, 2012, 2:40pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Caught Buying Paid Links Again
Aaron Wall caught Google buying paid links and reported it yesterday. Danny Sullivan did a deep dive on this campaign, concluding the only purpose behind it was to get links to try to "influence rankings" of the search results...
Google AdSense Publishers Excited For 2012
A WebmasterWorld thread has several Google AdSense publishers already excited to kick off the new year in anticipation for strong earnings in 2012. Publishers are expecting 2012 to be their best year in terms of earnings with the Google AdSense product...
Google's Page CEO Of The Year
Investor's Business Daily named Google's new CEO and co-founder, Larry Page as the CEO of the Year. That is right, the late Steve Jobs was outranked by Larry Page in this report. Yes, Steve Jobs turned around Apple years ago to make one of the most successful companies today...
Google Recommends Reporting Mass Porn In Forums
Spammers are always looking for ways to get their content in front of Google's searchers. When spammers try to promote their pornography, it makes it a bit more upsetting. Because when they do so...
The Knitted Android Holder
Adriene J posted a picture of a knitted sleeve she made, at least I think she made it, for her HTC Android phone. The blogger and Android lover wrote, "Check out the phone sleeve I knitted today!"

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Buying Facebook Likes / Fans: Is It Worth It?, WebmasterWorld
Over a Million links over a couple weeks., WebmasterWorld

Google Caught Buying Paid Links Again

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Aaron Wall caught Google buying paid links and reported it yesterday. Danny Sullivan did a deep dive on this campaign, concluding the only purpose behind it was to get links to try to "influence rankings" of the search results.

As you all know, paid links in this fashion is against Google's terms of service.

So what happened?

We are not a 100% sure yet, nor do we have any statement from Google on this, but it appears that Google hired a marketing company to run a campaign to promote their browser, Google Chrome. One of the marketing company's, Danny Sullivan thinks it is Unruly, paid bloggers with a $40 Amazon gift certificate to write sponsored posts on Google Chrome.

The thing is, this campaign not only was about paid links in sponsored posts but also generated a tremendous amount of junk content indexed by Google. The same content Google is trying to get rid of with their search algorithms.

That being said, Danny and Aaron do an excellent job uncovering this case and picking it apart.

We still do not have any reason or explanation from Google. I suspect they will end up banning their Google Chrome page for the next month or few. Just like they did when Google penalized themselves for cloaking AdWords help, cloaking AdWords support and the Google Japan PageRank penalty.

The folks at WebmasterWorld are not surprised anymore. Google is huge and one hand doesn't communicate with the other, especially for third-party marketing companies. It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Here is a statement from Google:

Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We're now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.

Google AdSense Publishers Excited For 2012

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

A WebmasterWorld thread has several Google AdSense publishers already excited to kick off the new year in anticipation for strong earnings in 2012.

Publishers are expecting 2012 to be their best year in terms of earnings with the Google AdSense product.

One publisher said:

Must admit I've had a very fine AdSense year in 2011, and I am working on building my site so that next year is even better! Looking to hit my first triple digit day in 2012, came very very close in 2011, I'll work hard to see it does in the next year.

Another said:

I had a good run in 2011 - managed to add one more figure to my monthly AdSense earnings.
January historically is not a bad month for me. What are your hopes and plans for January and the new year?

So what are you planning to do to maximize your Google AdSense earnings?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit on ShutterStock for 2012 growth image.

Google's Page CEO Of The Year

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Investor's Business Daily named Google's new CEO and co-founder, Larry Page as the CEO of the Year.

That is right, the late Steve Jobs was outranked by Larry Page in this report. Yes, Steve Jobs turned around Apple years ago to make one of the most successful companies today.

Larry Page, however, took a successful company that he co-founded, regained his right as CEO and then made drastic changes over the year. The success of Google did not slow a beat over his time as CEO at Google.

IBD said:

He reorganized the company's management structure, redesigned the face of the company's products and pushed forward with a multibillion dollar deal to acquire a cellphone manufacturing outfit.
He also launched two other products aiming at Groupon, the leader of online coupons, and Facebook, the top social networking site.
Google (GOOG) in the past two quarters blew away analyst views while boosting revenue by 32% and 33%, respectively.

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Google Recommends Reporting Mass Porn In Forums

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

Spammers are always looking for ways to get their content in front of Google's searchers. When spammers try to promote their pornography, it makes it a bit more upsetting. Because when they do so, it leads to a tremendous amount of porn in Google for a single search term.

In the past week or two, I've seen a large uptick in reports of pornography in both Google Image search and video search. Google has a utility to report offensive images the only issue with that, when a spammer gets their images in the results, it can be somewhat overwhelming and take hours to report all the porn or offensive images.

Jeff from Google said in a Google Web Search Help thread that in those cases, it is best to report mass abuse of pornography in the Google forums instead of using the report offensive image feature. Jeff said:

Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to suggest the "Report Offensive Images" link as an additional option for users. I agree, however, that it can be a bit cumbersome for a query such as [IGA]. In that case, the best option is to report it here in the forum so that myself or someone else on my team can quickly look into the matter.

Do not search for [iga] in Google Image search if you do not want to see pornography.

A bigger issue is a report that went unanswered about video porn. I tried to click the "Report offensive videos" link at the bottom of the results but that link doesn't even work in Google's own browser, Chrome.

In any event, if you do find mass amounts of offensive images, take it to the Google forums.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The Knitted Android Holder

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 2, 2012

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

AdWords Email Entry Box Is Not New
TechCrunch falsely reported that Google is testing a new ad format for email subscriptions - it is not new. Search for [crate and barrel] or other terms and you may see it come up. The deal is...
Google +1 Button: A Geo Signal?
A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster asking if it would be dumb for him to remove the +1 buttons from his web site...
Googlers Working On New Years
I was working and I am sure many of you were, but most likely, we own our business. Googler who work for 'the man' are also known to work on major holidays, like New Years and like we covered, Christmas. This year...
Embarrassing: Naked Site Looking For Attention
I often do not cover crazy rants found in the SEO/Webmaster forums but I figured I start off the new year with showing you how a single post can ruin the future of a web site forever. A post in both the Google Webmaster Help and Google News Help forums has a complaint from a site owner...
Bumper Sticker For Google Self Driving Car
Dave Bersbris posted on his Google+ page a picture of a bumper sticker I've never seen before. It is a bumper sticker promoting the Google Self Driving car. It says, "my other car drives itself."
Search Engines Logos For Happy New Years Eve 2012
Happy New Years everyone! The search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, Baidu, Sogou and others all have their logos up for New Years...

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

.htaccess detect subdomain, WebmasterWorld
SERPS showing IP address and not site domain, WebmasterWorld

AdWords Email Entry Box Is Not New

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdWords

TechCrunch falsely reported that Google is testing a new ad format for email subscriptions - it is not new. Search for [crate and barrel] or other terms and you may see it come up.

The deal is, this is something Google has tested for two years now and made official a few months ago.

In any event, have any of you tried it? Is it something you recommend other advertisers give a try?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google +1 Button: A Geo Signal?

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster asking if it would be dumb for him to remove the +1 buttons from his web site.

The reason he is nervous about removing the button is because he is worried that Google might use it for geotargetting sites or as another personalized ranking feature, combined with localized content.

We all know that +1s are currently used for personalizing the results. If you friends +1 something, it can and does affect the results you see in the Google search results. But what about at an aggregate? Currently, they do not.

The webmaster asked:

My site sells 99% to the US market. The US market users on my site really don't use +1 at all. International users do use it a good bit though. So basically I'm getting All of my +1s for outside my target market.
Should I just scrap my +1 buttons or will it help my target market rankings? I haven't heard anything about the geotargeting of plus one.

Tedster replied:

Well, I doubt that +1 would ever become the only factor, or even the strongest factor. But I can see it being one of hundreds of factors.
This thread asks the question if the effects of +1 are to be geo-targeted. I haven't seen anything official about that, and no experimental testing either. So I'll hazard a guess that they will eventually become one of many geographic signals. But before that happens, I'm sure Google will make an attempt to normalize the +1 data in some way.

Agreed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Googlers Working On New Years

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Other Google Topics

I was working and I am sure many of you were, but most likely, we own our business.

Googler who work for 'the man' are also known to work on major holidays, like New Years and like we covered, Christmas.

This year, I spotted several Googlers posting in the Google help forums. But I wanted to highlight three who posted in the Google Webmaster Help forums.

Albert C. posted several times over the New Years break.
Gary Illyes posted several times over the New Years break.
John Mueller posted several times over the New Years break.

The one constant is John Mueller year to year posting on these holidays. The rest sometimes posts and sometimes does not.

In any event, they deserve credit for posting and helping out on a non-work day. The rest of us, well...

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for fireworks.

Embarrassing: Naked Site Looking For Attention

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

I often do not cover crazy rants found in the SEO/Webmaster forums but I figured I start off the new year with showing you how a single post can ruin the future of a web site forever.

A post in both the Google Webmaster Help and Google News Help forums has a complaint from a site owner.

He wrote:

After finding my website off google index over the last 2 months, I have decided that a little one on one time is needed in the google office in Tel Aviv, I think I need to personally discuss the reasons that my website has been de indexed. I have redone my website, re hosted it 3 times and thrown lots of money at it only to be told piss off, by google. I dont like being told to piss off.

He is upset his site was not accepted into Google News or Google's main web search index.

He said he put a ton of money into it, switched hosts 3 times but still after 2 months, he is not included.

So I took a look at the site, which is named yadisrael.org. The name means hand of Israel but if you look at the site, there is a total of two sentences written on the site, which references a third party site. This is suppose to be a "news" site but it has no content, nothing on it at all.

Here is a picture:

The site looks like it was designed right but it looks like whom ever is responsible for content has not done a thing.

Google wants sites with content, not empty sites. What should Google do with a site like this?

Sure, he isn't doing anything against Google's terms of service, but the site is doing nothing at all. It is like being found naked in front of your whole class.

A post like this, in a public forum, can seriously impact the reputation of the site in the future and the reputation of the owner of the site.

It is embarrassing but I hope this encourages more content and the link helps a bit.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and Google News Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for embarrassed woman.

Bumper Sticker For Google Self Driving Car

Fetched: January 3rd, 2012, 8:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Search Engines Logos For Happy New Years Eve 2012

Fetched: January 2nd, 2012, 1:43am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Happy New Years everyone! The search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, Baidu, Sogou and others all have their logos up for New Years!

It is New Years Ever in New York now, just about two hours until 2012 here. I wanted to share these logos with you, like I have done that past several years. Including 2011 New Years logos, New Years 2010, New Years 2009, New Years 2008, New Years 2007, Google's 2006 logo, Search Engine Roundtable's 2006 logo, Ask's 2005 logo, and Cre8asite's 2005.

Yes, we posted Google's logo Friday afternoon but here it is again.

Google changed the logo a bit for New Year's Day:

Bing has an outstanding video home page now:

Yahoo's flash logo:

Ask.com:

Dogpile:

Baidu:

Sogou's logo was a game!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Web Search Help.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » January 2012

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Search Engine Roundtable (133 unread)

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Fetched: January 31st, 2012, 5:08pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdSense

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Yahoo Search Engine SEO

Fetched: January 30th, 2012, 6:42pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Fetched: January 29th, 2012, 8:20am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Logos

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Buzz video Round Recap

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Microsoft ContentAds

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Maps

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Fetched: January 28th, 2012, 10:29am CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Fetched: January 26th, 2012, 1:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Fetched: January 26th, 2012, 1:35pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google PageRank Algorithm Updates

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google News Finances

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google AdWords

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Bing SEO

Fetched: January 25th, 2012, 5:13pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Search Engine Photo Of The

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Other Google Topics

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Google Search Engine Optimization

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz

Tags: Social Search Engines Optimization

Fetched: January 24th, 2012, 11:44pm CET by Barry Schwartz