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As many of you know, Microsoft is conducting a major ad blitz in the UK in order to capture market share for Bing, their search engine.
Bing's product manager sent me a link to one of the new commercials, which is now on YouTube. Here is a video of the new commercial:
What do you think? It looks similar to the US commercials, just with UK accents.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
If you visit MSN.com today, you may notice a new look and feel for the site. The beta design is now the new official look for MSN. Like it or not, this is the new look for now.
Greg Sterling reports that about 50% of the Bing search queries are driven from the MSN portal. So this new design may or may not have an impact on that. 50% is major and clearly Microsoft is aware of that.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I am finally back from my trip to Israel and one thing that kind of bothered me while I was there was that whenever I went to Google.com, it redirected me to Google.co.il. I know, that is how it should work, but imagine being in a country, like the U.S. and being directed to a localized or regional version of Google. It happens every now and then, to both Google and even Bing.
But there is something you can do about it at Google. A Google Web Search Help thread has a Googler named Rubie saying there is a specific form to fill out at Google to report the issue. Rubie said:
We have a nifty tool you can use if you think your IP address is not being detected correctly. Click on the link below to report your issue.
The link below takes you to this page that can be used for this specific issue. So if you run into this issue, you can report it to Google and hopefully they will fix it.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
There are reports that Microsoft is going to do a huge ad push in the UK in an effort to capture market share there. Currently, Microsoft's Bing has a 3% share of search, whereas Google holds about a 90% share.
Here is the news:
Microsoft is to launch a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign for its search engine Bing, as part of a major marketing push designed to challenge Google's dominance of the UK search market, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.
Microsoft will certainly have its work cut out winning over consumers – it currently holds about a 3% share of the search market while Google controls about 90%.
"This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath," said the managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers.
A WebmasterWorld thread has some comments, here is one:
In the UK I believe there is a large number of people who do not like Microsoft and unless they can hide their identity as far as Bing is concerned, I doubt they will make any great inroads however much money they pour into Bing. And that mention of taking out their slingshots and taking on Goliath is a joke! Who is the real Goliath between the two companies?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I was browsing the various Google forums and spotted several complaints in the Google Web Search Help forums and Google Webmaster Help about there being no International Women's Day Doodle on March 8th, yesterday.
There are literally dozens of complaints, some calling Google anti-women. Google is a very women friendly company, I know that. So what is going on, why no Doodle for International Women's Day?
I initially thought Google just doesn't always celebrate every event every day. They are human, they can forget. But then I saw someone mention that a logo was live on Google Russia. It linked to 8 марта, which is March 8 but in the URL parameter it had "&ct=womensday10-hp&oi=ddle", i.e. a doodle for women's day. Here is a picture of the doodle:
What is weird is that I don't see it live on Google.com. But I do see it linked to at google.com/logos/womensday10-hp.gif - so why not on the main Google.com?
In any event, I wrote this post on March 8th and scheduled it for tomorrow. I hope by then, the logo would have been posted. But I won't be able to check until later, because I will be on a plane.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Webmaster Help.
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.
We rarely ever talk about Bing's outstanding image search, but I spotted a thread today in the Bing Community forums on that topic.
In short, one webmaster complained that Bing had about 50% of the images from his site, when compared to Google. So Google had about 50 pictures from this guys site in their index, coming up for a site command. Bing had about half that.
Brett Yount forwarded the complaint the the image search team at Bing and when he received a response, he copy and pasted it in the forums. This is what they said:
All in all I would say we have ok coverage for this site. We do not include all images that we know about in our index -- it is quite plausible that we decided to not include certain images from this site due to better relative ranking of other sites during crawl time. We should see its image search rank go up (and our coverage of it improve) as the site gets more popular and the images get reused and referred to by more sites.
This is really no different than web search - Google, Bing and other search engines may not consider a page worthy of crawling or indexing due to it's popularity or lack there of. This works the same way with images, according to Bing.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Yahoo announced they have removed the BETA from the Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop client.
Yahoo Pete, Yahoo's search ad representative, said in both a WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums thread:
Just wanted to make you aware that our desktop editing tool, Search Marketing Desktop, is now available to most of our advertisers (eligibility is based on minimum monthly spend and a few other factors). Using SMD, it takes just a few clicks to modify multiple campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads at the same time.
For more details, please visit our blog [ysmblog.com] or the SMD sign-up page [advertising.yahoo.com]. We're also hosting a free webinar about SMD this coming Thursday--you can sign up through the link in the blog post.
Obviously, towards the end of this year or early next year, this tool will be terminated due to the Microsoft Yahoo deal - but hey, remove the beta label, why not.
For more information about the tool, please see here and for Thursday's webminar click here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums.
Yesterday was the second ever SphinnCon event, a small Search Marketing Expo, ever. The first one took place about two years ago in Israel and the second took place yesterday in Israel. The second event was a bit larger than the first in terms of the number of sessions, speakers and attendees. Overall, the networking and educational event was a huge success and we look forward to hosting one again next year.
The even took place in the Jerusalem College of Technology's new lecture rooms. The rooms hard larger capacity than the first time we held the event there but we were still limited to only about 200 or so attendees. In any event, the university was incredibly welcoming to us, they not only partnered with us for this event by giving us a place at their home, but also had their own speakers at the event.
We had sold out the event a couple months prior to yesterday and had a waiting list of about a hundred people, hoping to get a spot. We also had people show up at the door, waiting to see if they can get in. Ultimately, I believe we began letting people in an hour or so after the show began. I honestly believe we could have had 400 or more people at this event. So for next year, I hope to work that out the accommodations with JCT to make this possible.
We started off the event with Avi Kay from the university, who introduced me to give the welcome address. In my five minute welcome, I thanks the sponsors, which included Compucall Web Marketing, Answers.com and Whired Rhino. We had additional requests for sponsors, but we had to turn additional sponsors away at a certain point.
I also thanked all the volunteers who put tons of hours into the event. They either ran around getting the caterer scheduled or printing the conference banners and handouts. Or they dealt with helping formulate the conference agenda and organizing the 30+ speakers. Acted as the front door bouncer and speaker organizers during the event. Or they helped organize the after hours party or provided Israeli hospitality to our out of town speakers. They include, but are not limited to Olivier Amar (@olivier_amar) of WhiteWeb, Ophir Cohen (@ophirco) of Compucall, Eli Feldblum (@Feldbum) of RankAbove, Roi Hildesheimer of Tens Technology, Charlie Kalech (@charliekalech)of J Town, Itay Paz (ItayPaz)of Affilicon, Mayer Reich (@mayerreich) of RankAbove, Branko Rihtman (@neyne) of WhiteWeb, and Gilad Sasson (@algoholic) of Nekuda. So thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.
There were four speakers, at least that I am aware of, that came from outside of Israel, excluding myself, to make it to this event. Vanessa Fox of Nine By Blue came all the way from SMX West (but native to Seattle), with what appeared to be bronchitis. Dixon Jones from Receptional and Magestic SEO flew from the UK to speak about one of his favorite topics, links. Ariel Sumeruk from Click2Customers came from SMX West (but native to South Africa) to speak on paid search. Finally, Tomer Honen from Google, came from the Ireland Google office to represent the Google Webmaster team in Israel. Thank you all for coming from so far to make it to this special event - the Israeli SEM industry deeply appreciated it and you all made a huge impact yesterday.
I would also like to thank all the speakers. I heard some great, unique and fun presentations yesterday. This was event definitely lived up to the quality of the SMX name. Here is a list of our speakers for SphinnCon Israel 2010:
After the presentations, some of the attendees travelled up to Tel Aviv to hit the party at the Dancing Camel. The party was sponsored by 888.com and Gammon Empire. Here is one of my favorite pictures from that event:
Thank you all so much for making this such a successful event! If some of you were unable to make it, there were tons of tweets and pictures of the event. We have some greatest hit recaps and live blogging of the event. Here are some of the pictures from people mentioned above, including a Flash embed from TENS Web Marketing.
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.
I am still in Israel, so no video recap this week again, I apologize but here is the text alternative.
Google dropped SearchWiki for Starring search results, which makes me very happy. Yahoo celebrated it's 15th birthday. We posted the March Google webmaster report. Is there such a thing as a seven day indexing delay with Google? Google Webmaster Tools added better notifications, sharing capabilities, Sidewiki control, but had bugs with setting the crawl rate and verification through AdSense. Bing recommends validated HTML for better indexing and dislikes chain redirects. Google is showing "related commercial searches" in the AdWords spot. AdSense publishers from Brazil may not get paid this month. Google Maps has an avoid tolls feature that doesn't fully work every where. Google posted a Doodle for St Davids Day & Vivaldi. Finally, SMX West was this week and Keri and Brian did a great job with the excellent coverage. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Select Topics For This Past Week:
Google Search:
Yahoo News:
Google SEO:
Bing SEO:
Google AdWords:
Google AdSense:
Google Maps:
Google Doodles:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
The past three days was three days filled with great SEO and SEM related content from the SMX West show. I am happy to say we had two outstanding and giving volunteer bloggers to help bring a piece of the show to you via this site.
Keri Morgret of Strike Models and Brian Ussery of Beu Blog spent a tremendous amount of time and energy live blogging the event. Please give them a huge thank you - and please also thank the SMX conference for allowing us to provide this coverage.
Here is a recap of the sessions we covered. I believe one of the sessions had a technical quirk where all the notes were some how lost, so I apologize.
Thanks Keri and Brain! See you at the next one!
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.
Below is live coverage of the Conversion Ninja Toolbox from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the Ask The SEOs from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the Analytics Action Plans from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the Ask The Search Engines from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the PPC Tune Up Clinic from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the Bringing SEO In House from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
A Bing Community thread talks about Bing's crawlers and indexers ability in following chains of redirects. A redirect chain is when you have two or more URLs that are being redirects to another URL. For example, if I have domain.com/pageA redirect to domain.com/pageB and then from domain.com/pageB to domain.com/pageC - that is a redirect chain.
Search engines typically crawl them fine, if they are done using 301 redirects. But it takes them a longer time to figure multiple redirects in a chain of redirects. I believe most search engines can handle them, but your job as an SEO is to make sure to limit the number of redirects to one or so, so there is not a long chain.
Brett Yount from Bing even said they do not like redirect chains. In the Bing Community, he said:
While we do not like redirect chains, we are able to follow them. But if you have a 302 redirect in the chain--even if there is a 301 after it--expect that the page may not get all of the potential rank or may not get indexed at all.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Google announced they have added stars to the search results for sites you have starred in the past. Google said:
With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant. That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]. Here's what the new "Starred results" feature looks like:
Here is my picture:
I don't always say, "I told you so" but here, I got to say it. When Google made SearchWiki the default, I thought they were crazy. As part of this announcement, Google said:
Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of Google's organic search results. With stars, we've created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content.
I really knew it and I am glad Google made the decision to remove this feature. Kudos.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
If you visit Google today, you will see a special logo for Antonio Lucio Vivaldi. Vivaldi was born today, 332 years ago, on March 4, 1678. He was a Venetian baroque composer and priest, as well as a famous virtuoso violinist and nicknamed il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest").
Here is the Google Doodle for Vivaldi:
So far there are no complaints about the Google Doodle in the Google Web Search Help forums, but I suspect there will be. Yes, we often have lots of controversy around Google Logos or Doodles as Google refers to them.
It is a very nice and artistic Doodle, don't you think?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Below is live coverage of the Optimizing Your Content on YouTube from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Optimizing Your Content on YouTube
Below is live coverage of the Free Ways to Market on Facebook from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Free Ways to Market on Facebook
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.
Below is live coverage of the Paid Search Bullseye from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
A Bing Community thread has a Microsoft Bing representative telling SEOs that W3C complaint code can help with indexing content.
Brett Yount, the program manager at Bing Webmaster Center, said:
Clean code can help quite a bit in indexing on all the SEs. If you are just starting out, I suggest finding a W3C compliant template.
We all know that Google said time and time again that validated code does not get a ranking boost, but they never said it wouldn't help with indexing and crawling. Clean code, which can be validated through the W3C's tools, can make for more efficient crawling and possibly faster indexing.
This is at least according to Bing.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Below is live coverage of the The Current State Of Social Search from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
The Current State Of Social Search
Below is live coverage of the Supercharging your Descriptions with Sitelinks from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Supercharging your Descriptions with Sitelinks
Below is live coverage of the Google's Personalized Search Revolution from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Google's Personalized Search Revolution
Below is live coverage of the Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Keyword Research: Beyond the Ordinary
Below is live coverage of the Not Your Father's AdWords from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
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.
Below is live coverage of the Mobile Paid Search Ads from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Below is live coverage of the Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Yesterday, Google has a special logo up on one of their local portals to celebrate St Davids Day. Here is a picture of the cute and fun looking doodle (logo).
But one person found the doodle insulting and distasteful. He said, "its like celebrating the Hanukkah with a picture of Auschwitz."
He goes on to explain:
While it is very nice that Google celebrates St David's Day by adapting its front page, its very insulting that it uses a castle built by the English king who wanted to prove his power over the Welsh!
The castle looks very similar to Caernarfon castle, which was one of a series built by Edward 1. While most people know that Wales is full of castles, it is not the Welsh that built them - it was the English!
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help forums.
March 1, 2010 was Yahoo's 15th birthday. 15 years - wow! Yahoo has a special doodle up for the day, a birthday cake. Here it is:
Yahoo has several blog posts about the birthday. One from Jerry & David, the founders, plus they posted a Twitter challenge for the birthday.
Happy Birthday Yahoo!
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
Hat tip to Michel.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google announced they added a new search refinement to "show options" section. The refinement allows you to filter results by results relevant to being nearby your location. Google explained:
Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. Starting today, we've added the ability to refine your searches with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don't have to worry about adding "Minneapolis" to your query and missing webpages that only say "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities." Check it out by doing a search, clicking on "show options" and selecting "Nearby."
I personally do not see it, maybe because I am in Israel right now. But here is a picture from the Google blog:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
This week, I am currently in Jerusalem, Israel, so I won't be producing a video. Here is a text recap instead of the video recap.
The European Union has opened an investigation to make sure Google isn't stepping over their boundaries by penalizing potential competitors in the web results. Google said they will launch the Caffeine index in the upcoming months. Google had a Webmaster Tools bug in the index URL report. Google may verify your web site in Webmaster Tools without you specifically requesting it. Google has updated the Jazz interface slightly and more people are seeing it. MySpace (and also Facebook) is now in Google's real-time search results. Bing is having trouble with their spiders again. Twitter users don't click on AdSense. Google AdWords has a new "target" CPA feature. AdWords is closing their old API in less than 60 days. Yelp was sued for allegedly removing negative reviews. SMX West is next week, I won't be there, but we got the coverage for you. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Select Topics For This Past Week:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the allegations that Yelp has been burying negative reviews in exchange for advertising dollars.
MediaPost writes:
A California veterinary center has sued review site Yelp for allegedly promising to bury bad reviews in exchange for purchasing $3,600 worth of advertising on the site.
"Yelp frequently exercises its control over the Yelp.com listing application to modify business listing pages to the advantage of businesses that purchase Yelp advertising subscriptions, and the disadvantage of those that decline," Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital owner Gregory Perrault alleges in a complaint filed in federal district court in the central district of California.
Greg at Search Engine Land writes:
Two class action law firms have filed suit in Los Angeles federal court claiming that Yelp has attempted to “extort” money from small businesses by offering to remove negative reviews in exchange for payment.
The truth will out of course but I would be stunned if these claims were based in truth rather than the frustrations and misunderstandings of the plaintiff in this case.
I hope Greg is right - we covered reports of this via the forums back in November 2008. Back then, I was told it:
Reviews are purely algorithmic and that only one positive review can be emphasized. Reviews can come down if the person writing the review closed his/her account or the account was terminated due to violations. A third reason why reviews would be hidden is due to suspect behavior; the review is removed from the actual business but not from the reviewer's profile page.
I guess time will tell us if this is true - unless this is settled out of court and no one really finds out the truth.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google has been experimenting with the Google Jazz Interface (I know Google doesn't call it Jazz internally) since November of last year. It appears that Google has slightly updated that look from what we originally saw.
A Google Blogoscoped Forums thread has a picture from one user of the new Jazz look.
Here is the new look:
Here is the old Jazz look:
They are very similar but there are slight differences.
In the thread, they also share how you can get this user interface on your Google. Here is how:
Go to Google.com (Press Go to Google.com if you are brought to a localized version of Google, this won't work for localized versions evem if you change the code to .google.ie or whatever instead of .google.com)
Put
javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=496cfd992ab9f273:
U=a77c3a4da3815c1d:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1260896352:
LM=1267013388:DV=8atQZBunt08B:GM=1:IG=1
:S=1ebLUyXkRkBnJMYi;path=/;domain=.google.com")into your addressbar (NOT the Google Search Box) and press return.
Searches on Google.com should now use the new layout.
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.
Hat tip to Michel.
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.
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.
SMX West 2010 is next week, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th to be exact. We are thrilled to be able to bring the event to you, even if you cannot make it, through our live blogging coverage.
I personally will be in Israel during SMX West, so this live blogging coverage will help me stay on top of what I will be missing. I am sad I won't be there, but I am hosting a small SMX event, SphinnCon, in Israel the week after. So that should be fun and yes - we (Israel) have been sold out for a month now.
Live blogging SMX West are Keri Morgret of Strike Models and Brian Ussery of Beu Blog. These are both seasoned and experienced live bloggers - so I am very confident you will love the coverage! Thank you both for volunteering to cover the conference for the industry!
Here is out SMX West 2010 Live Coverage Schedule:
March 2, 2010
9:00am-9:45am
Keynote Conversation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer by Brian Ussery
10:45am-Noon
Mobile Paid Search Ads: Real Opportunities by Keri Morgret
1:15pm-2:30pm
Not Your Father’s AdWords: The New Google Ad Formats by Keri Morgret
3:00pm-4:15pm
Keyword Research: Beyond The Ordinary by Keri Morgret
Google’s Personalized Search Revolution by Brian Ussery
4:30pm-5:45pm
The Current State Of Social Search by Brian Ussery
Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks by Keri Morgret
March 3, 2010
10:45am-Noon
Paid Search Bullseye! Reaching and Closing Your Ultimate Customer by Keri Morgret
1:30pm-2:45pm
Free Ways To Market On Facebook by Keri Morgret
4:45pm-6:00pm
Optimizing Your Content On YouTube by Keri Morgret
March 4, 2010
10:00am-11:15am
Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful! by Keri Morgret
11:30am-12:30pm
PPC Tune-up Clinic with the SMX Mechanics by Keri Morgret
Ask The Search Engines by Brian Ussery
1:30pm-2:30pm
Analytics Action Plans For PPC & SEO by Keri Morgret
Ask The SEOs by Brian Ussery
2:45pm-3:45pm
Conversion Ninja Toolbox – A Review of Tools & Technologies by Keri Morgret
That is our live blogging schedule - it is subject to change last minute.
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.
Yesterday, Google updated us on what is new at Google. One of those updates confirmed the images site command change we reported last week. Another update confirmed that Google is now showing MySpace results in their real time search results.
Google wrote:
Also in real-time news, starting this week we officially added MySpace content to real-time search. Now you can tap into the pool of news, photos and blog posts that MySpace users have chosen to publish to the world. These updates are all ranked to reflect the most relevant, freshest results, many of which are just seconds old. In all, real-time search includes more than a billion documents and processes hundreds of millions of changes daily. We're quite excited to offer this enhancement so that real-time search becomes even more useful. You can find the MySpace updates in our real-time mode by clicking on "Show Options" and then "Updates."
Want to see those results yourself? Click over here to see them or here is a quick screen capture:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A Bing Community thread reports from one webmaster that someone is masking MSNBot around as a browser, either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. Here are the reported IPs and UserAgent's being reporting by this webmaster:
The following IP addresses are from MSN's search bots, but use what appears to be just normal user agents.
65.55.109.22
65.55.109.106
65.55.109.118
65.55.109.119
65.55.109.120
65.55.109.162
65.55.109.209
65.55.109.212
65.55.110.16
65.55.110.21
65.55.110.41
65.55.110.88
65.55.110.107
65.55.110.121
65.55.110.132
65.55.110.164The user agent looks like this "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SLCC1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)"
This is not the first time Microsoft Bing has been accused of masking their bots as browser useragents. We had a similar report back in September where MSNBot was using Mozilla by way of UserAgent.
Brett Yount, Bing's representative, said, "Could you send this information to bwmc@microsoft.com and I will have the crawling team investigate?"
So currently, this is not confirmed, but it is weird.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Google does not stop with the insults, they insulted Michelle Obama, then Jesus and now also the name "Christ."
A Google Web Search Help thread has one person complaining that a search in Google Images for [Christ] leads to an image done named Piss Christ, the image is both number one and two on Google Images for that search. The story behind this image, as the poster says it "is the so-called artwork of a man who peed in a bottle, put a crucifix in, and called it the "pisschrist"."
Here is a picture:
Now, I am not Christian, but I even find this insulting and totally inappropriate. It is not nudity or illegal, but should this be there? I guess Google won't remove it, since they didn't remove the above insults, but does Google need to rethink their policy on this type of stuff - especially since this is coming up more and more often?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
In this week's recap, we cover the big news that Microsoft and Yahoo received approval to move forward with their search deal - which means the end of Yahoo Search to me. Bing is crawling and indexing faster. Bing is going to fix their search filter in March. 60% of publishers say their earnings are down with Google AdSense. AdSense seems to be testing in-line video ads. Is Google mixing paid with free listings? Yahoo Search ads are not sending enough traffic to advertisers. Google Image Search is faster with their filter. Google changed how they show image sources. Are you Google PageRank Certified? YouTube will no longer support IE6 users on March 13th. We got your logos from President's Day, Valentine's Day and the Winter Olympics. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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Search Topics of Discussion:
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It is official, Yahoo and Microsoft have approval to move forward with their search deal and they are not wasting any time with that. You can read many of the stories on Techmeme to catch up, but let me quote the official press release, at least a snippet:
SUNNYVALE, Calif. & REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - News) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO - News) announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.
Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.
Important Facts for Webmasters & Advertisers:
Of course, most of you know my thoughts about where this puts Yahoo. Yahoo, in my opinion, is out of search now. And most of you agree, the poll we ran a week or so ago, has over a hundred responses (see poll pie chart above) and 60% said Yahoo is not in search, 20% are hoping they are but are unsure. Just sad.
Forum discussion at many places:
Yes, I know Yahoo and Microsoft got approval to move forward with their search deal (I'll link to my post on that, when I write it, in about 10 minutes from this post), but Yahoo Search Marketing has been a failure for many in the past few months. And since Yahoo Search Ads will likely continue to be powered by Yahoo until December of this year, this is still important.
A WebmasterWorld thread has posts from several disgruntled Yahoo Search advertisers. They are all pretty much complaining about the same thing - search volume. Yes, the number of people seeing and clicking on their search ads, compared to the previous years, has dropped significantly. Let me pull out some quotes:
This year we notice Yahoo PPC struggling to generate decent volume for us. Its getting worse and worse, and all the new measures they are taking to ensure good quality traffic are infact killing our traffic.
I think part of your PPC woes are exemplified in that YPN payouts completely died for me, removed it, which I'm sure many others have done, thus eliminating millions of page impressions previously available.
For the last two months we underspent our budget, so I have noticed this too.
Yahoo has been fully aware of the Microsoft deal - so why invest? Yes, Yahoo has added features recently, but those features should have been added over a year ago. In any event, by years end - this likely won't matter anyway. More on that shortly.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I do not watch Google Images all that closely, but there is a guy in the WebmasterWorld forums who said Google images changed how they display the source of the image. I believe what he is saying is that if you use site:domain.com in Google Images, in the past, it would display not just the images hosted on that domain, but all images used on that domain and also show the source of it under it, i.e. like flickr.com and so on.
This is probably best explained using pictures. Let me first show you that a search for site:seroundtable on Google Images only shows images on the web site, but those images can be hotlinked (i.e. sourced) from off the web site:
Let's take the first picture as an example, that image is actually from searchmarketinggurus.com:
Google knows it, a similar images command returns the proper source:
Same with Flickr Images for standard searches. It will show the site the image is on but not where it is sourced until you click through:
By the way, that is a picture of me, not Lee Odden.
The original poster described it as follows:
Tonight I noticed a change in the image-search. Until yesterday google shows with the question "site:www.site.com" all pictures that are sourced in that domain.But now it shows only pictures that link to the domain.
Again, I am not sure if this is new behavior of if am seeing the new behavior or not.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A Bing Community thread has reports that when webmasters authenticate domains within Bing Webmaster Tools, the next day, the domains are no longer listed. Supposedly there are several reports about this in the past week or so.
Here is one report:
I (for the very first time) submitted several URL's, and I also authenticated my website by adding a LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml to my website sites, and I also submitted a sitemap.xml. They all showed yesterday.
But when I login today, I don't see any of my URL's from yesterday.
Brett Yount from Bing said that he is really not sure what is going on but he doesn't seem to be the only one reporting the issue. Brett said:
This is the third or fourth post I've seen today regarding this problem. I'm contacting our devs to find out more information.
This is not a confirmed report yet, but there seems to be something fishy going on here.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
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.
A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting that Bing is advertising their search engine on Intellitxt. Intellitxt are those ads you see inline articles, where you mouse over a word and an annoying ad pops up. I personally find those ads to be incredibly annoying, intrusive and invasive. But many publishers use them and according to the WebmasterWorld post, Bing is using it to advertise their search engine.
The thread said:
At a very popular UK website I noticed an Intellitxt ad featuring a Bing Search of the phrase in the ad. Good idea by Bing.
I do not have a screen shot, but if you see one, please send it my way.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
A WebmasterWorld thread has some positive news for the Microsoft Bing team! The thread is praising Bing for speeding up their indexing and ranking of new pages, updated content and new web sites.
This comes several weeks after Bing declared they were slow at indexing new sites. So I am happy that webmasters, at least some, are happy with the speed of Bing's crawler and indexer.
Mack, the forum moderator summed it up, saying:
Bing is getting quick! Even when it comes to new sites/domains.
Two additional webmasters agreed. To be fair, I have seen a slow down of complaints in the Bing forums about complaints of their sites not being indexed. But that can be for many reasons.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld .
A Google Book Search user is upset that Google has dropped the search within your Google Book Search library feature. He expressed his complaints in a WebmasterWorld thread. He said:
Then a couple of weeks ago, I logged in and I can no longer restrict my search results to items in My Library.
For me, this is the primary way I use Google Books. First search my library. If I don't find it, search more broadly. If I find something good in general search, add that book to my library. If you will, it's like manually controlled personalized search.
It's true, I do not see a way to search only my library, even within the advanced search feature.
This must have changed when Google updated the My Library feature in late January.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
If you want to find out the conversion of kelvin to celsius, do not use Google. A Google search for [kelvin to celsius] returns the wrong calculation. Google returns 1 kelvin = -272.15 degrees Celsius.
This issue was brought up in a Google Web Search Help thread. Since I do not know the first thing about these types of conversions, I decided to see what Wolfram Alpha had to say about the calculation. The same search on Wolfram returns the correct calculation:
272.15 is wrong, but 273.15 is correct.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
A few weeks back, Google started testing enhanced Google Maps results. Now, Silicon Valley Watcher noticed it and said that Google was doing something new, by not separating out paid results from free results. Truth be told, and as Danny explains very well at Search Engine Land, Google has been mixing those results, but labeling them.
Here is the search result in question:
The thing is, this is not guaranteeing the top position. Just change the query slightly and you will get that same result, pushed down, because Google's ranking algorithm still determines the spot.
There is a lot of debate at WebmasterWorld that this is either a form of paid inclusion or not at all. I see both sides and I am not sure what to think, which is why we have forums.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A complaint from a Carpet store owner in the Bing Community shows how Bing is sending his customers to his competitors. If you search for [carpetswarehouse.com] on Bing, and mouse over the "Best Match Information" arrow on the right of the result, Bing will show the wrong information.
In fact, Bing is showing the phone number to his competitor. Here is a picture:
The Carpet guy said:
Bing is showing. "Customer service 800-686-2442." That is my competitor's phone number. How do I change to my number 1-800-565-5021.
Now, Google has had this problem in the past with Google Maps. In fact, this comes up on occasion with Google.
Bing's community manager, Brett Yount, explained how this can be fixed at Bing. He said:
Please contact support using the form located at:In the drop down box, please select, "Change Best Match Information"
I wonder how long this change will take? I also wonder how Bing got his competitor's phone number.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Update: Nice, Bing fixed it the same day.
Compete released statistics, which I do not see published on their site yet, saying that Facebook is now sending more traffic to major portals such as Yahoo and MSN, than Google sends to those portals. You can read about this at SFGate.com but here is a quote:
According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.
This trend is shifting the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps to move into the social-media world.
There is a lot of discussion around this report at WebmasterWorld. Some find this really hard to believe and some do not. Some fault MSN's and Yahoo's SEO efforts (no offense to the SEOs there). Here are some quotes from the thread:
How many links have you clicked on that a friend has added into their Facebook status? Not that many I guess. Maybe Yahoo and MSN need to focus more strongly on their own SEO?
Not all traffic is created equal.
In fact I don't even want the looky-loo type of visitor costing me money by clicking just to have a look. An interested buyer who's taking the time to search for something on the other hand, yes please.
Compete let's you compare traffic of sites, here is an embedded chart comparing visitors to Google and Facebook. Look at the growth:
Personally, I still think Google will dominate the traffic to most sites. The major portals have more "real time" content that is privy to Facebook clicks. But most web sites depend more on Google for less real time content - not that Google does not handle real time content - but you get my point.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
The 2010 Winter Olympics kick off tonight in Vancouver and some of the search engines are already sporting their special logos for the event. Google, Yahoo, Bing and others have their logos up. We will post what is live now below and continue to add to them as other search engines create their logos.
Google:
It may be the widest Google logo in their history at 760 pixels wide.
Yahoo:
Bing:
I am sure more search engines, like Ask.com and others will begin to post their logos. I hope to post our theme later today as well.
Search Engine Roundtable:
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help & WebmasterWorld.
This site has always been about the community. I try to share educational insights, news details, plus have fun when appropriate. I also have shared sad events that impact significant people in our industry, because - we are one large community that is impacted by the people around us.
Recently, I asked where did the Bing webmaster representative, Brett Yount, go? He basically went off the forums and we didn't hear from him for a few weeks. It turned out that Brett lost his father in January and he took some bereavement time off.
In a Bing Community thread, Brett shared this very personal event with the community. He wrote:
Hi all,
I was given some bereavement leave after my Father passed at the beginning of January.
Thank you for your concern.
Firstly, I would like to wish you and your family condolences on behalf of the search industry.
There are times that I have personally said some negative things about what you say in the forums. So I would like to apologize, if any of that was taken personally. You were sorely missed during the leave and it shows how important your work is to the community at large.
Thanks for everything and may you only have happy occasions in the future.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
A week ago today, we reported Google News was testing a new home page design. Since then, I have been begging those who have seen the test to post a picture so the rest of us can see what they see. Finally, yesterday, someone posted an image in the Google News Help forum.
Here is that picture:
Extremely different from the current Google News home page. You can click on the image to get a larger size or just click here for it.
What do you think? Most people writing about it in the forums are not happy.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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.
A Bing Community thread has Bing's program manager, Brett Yount, saying that they do not index the destination pages of a 302 redirect. Let me quote you what he said:
We do not index 302 redirected pages, so this is probably the main issue for not indexing your home page.
The site in question here is www.kerala.travel. As you can see, as I write this post, the site is not indexed by Bing.
Now, I assume Brett meant to say that a 302 redirect to a page will not block the page from being indexed. But rather, if the only way for Bing to crawl to the page is via a 302 redirect, Bing will not index it. If there are other links to the destination page, then Bing will likely index it.
Or maybe I am wrong and Bing will not index 302 redirected pages.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
Yahoo is trying to convince everyone that they are still a search company. Honestly, if you do not power your own search results, if you do not crawl the web and own the ranking algorithms, you are not in search. Ask.com is more in search than Yahoo, in my opinion. Well, let me step back just a second.
When the Microsoft & Yahoo deal goes through, Yahoo will not power the search results on Yahoo Search anymore. They will power the look and display of those results, as far as I know. But in my opinion, if you do not crawl the web and index content and then power those ranking algorithms - you are not in search - you are a aggregator of some sorts.
If I said Ask.com isn't in search because they use structured data, for the most part, then the same applies to Yahoo.
Do you agree? Here is a poll:
Will Yahoo Really Continue in Search?(online surveys)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Microsoft's search engine, Bing, announced they have revised the Webmaster FAQs into a single 28 page PDF document. The document can be downloaded over here.
It has 82 detailed questions and answers, organized into 12 categories. The questions and answers are ironically hyperlinked in the PDF document, but not available as a web page. I guess those Q&As won't be indexed too well by their own search engine (yes, search engines do crawl PDFs, but you know).
Brett Yount, Bing's forum rep, posted a thread in the Bing Community announcing this as well. He said, "our Technical Writer, Rick Dejarnette, combined our FAQs into one PDF for easy reference."
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
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.
I just love it when people make assumptions about political, race and other forms of bias and negativity based on the Google search results. We had political bias examples, race examples, a bit of both and so many examples of either Google search results or search suggestions implying a bias on Google's part.
Next up, Google is now being matriarchal biased. How so? A Google Web Search Help thread has one person who is feeling hurt by a search result. One guy said:
I just typed in "slavery and fatherhood" in Google, looking for a book of that name. On the page it says, "did you mean slavery and motherhood?" When I put in "slavery and motherhood" it doesn't ask "did you mean slavery and fatherhood.". Why is that?
It is true, give it a try with [slavery and fatherhood]:
I personally find this funny - which is why I bring it to your attention.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
I spotted a very weird Google Webmaster Help thread that I honestly do not fully understand. If you search for URLs containing the words "Save Us From Berlusconi" in that order, in Google, you will find almost 4 million matches.
The webmaster who reported the issue, didn't first realize that this was beyond his web site. He wanted to know why GoogleBot was crawling all his URLs with adding on /?q=Save+Us+From+Berlusconi to the end of the URL. Some sites do not 404 or 301 redirect URLs that add on variables to the end of the URL, so he was suggested to do so in this case.
But the question goes beyond just a single web site. Is this some form of political message being sent around by those who do not like the curent Prime Minister of Italy? Anyone want to venture a guess?
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
When Google announced support for the canonical tag just about a year ago, webmasters were excited for the possibilities of a serving a 301 redirect to spiders but not users. But when should you not use it?
A Google Webmaster Help thread has Google's JohnMu explaining some situations as to when you should or should not use it.
In summary, think of the canonical tag as a real 301 redirect for spiders. If a spider is redirected away from new content, then that is an issue. When it comes to paginating content, such as product category pages or article archives, you really need to give a way for search engines to find that content. If you set the canonical tag to redirect spiders from page 2, 3, 4, etc of your product category pages to page one, then the spiders might never be able to index the products on page 2, 3, and 4.
John explained this well, saying:
Pagination: this is complicated, I personally would be careful when using with rel=canonical with paginated lists. The important part is that we should be able to find all products listed, so at the very least those lists should provide a default sort order where we can access (and index) all pages. Since this is somewhat difficult unless you really, really know what you are doing, I would personally avoid adding rel=canonical for these pages. One possible solution could be to use JavaScript for paginated lists with different sort orders, for example, that way you would have a single URL which lists all products.
This is something to keep in mind when building out the canonical tag within your content management system.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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.
If you do not like images of dead people, then maybe you should shy away from this post. A Google Web Search Help thread reports that if you search for [sláma], which means straw in Czech, up comes an image of a dead old lady in the web results.
Here is a picture:
(FYI, I did crop the picture a bit)
I personally reported the image as offensive. Often we have issues with porn in Google but this is yet another issue that hopefully can be addressed soon.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
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.
This week, the bulk of the discussion in this recap is Google related. I talked about more Google Caffeine discussions, is it going live? Use a 410 status code for really strong 404s. Google launched answer highlighting in snippets. Google also released social search. Kaspersky blocked Google AdSense ads, again. Google is paying publishers less and less - and we try to figure out why. Search grows at 46% worldwide, Google grew even faster. Google Maps search added personalization, but does it slow you down. Google Reader tracks even non-RSS pages. Google messed up the Kuwait doodle and had controversy over Australia's Doodle 4 Google competition. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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Search Topics of Discussion:
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A funny WebmasterWorld thread has an SEO scratching his head in wonderment as to how he ranks so well in Bing, without really having any SEO reason to be. Let me quote what he said:
Right now my two-month-old site, with NO backlinks established but good internal content and linking (not SEO'd, just logically laid out), is #1 in Bing for a term that surprised the heck out of me... related, yes, but seriously American Express or Mastercard or any number of established entities should be #1 on these terms. They are #2 and #3.At first I thought it was maybe some kind of local thing... that those companies are nowhere near me, but my site IS near me and therefore it's showing local relevant results first? But nope, if I remote into a server in a datacenter on the other side of the country and run a search from there it's #1 there too. Crazy...
In Google, the site is half way down page 3 for the same term, about where I expected it would be given its age and competition.
I'm certainly not going to call up Bing and complain about it, but it's freakin weird.
I was hoping, like for me, the thread would make you smile after a long week.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
This week, Google added personalization to help you find your "favorite locations faster." The issue is, it slows you down in finding your most favorite location - your home!
A Google Maps Help thread has complaints from people who have saved locations labeled as "home." Whenever they wanted directions, they typed in "home" or "my home" and bingo, it came up. Now it does not and it requires them to enter in their address, which in turn, slows them down.
The searcher said:
It appears the Google Maps team has replaced the "saved locations" feature with the "personalized search results". The problem is, when I created my "saved locations" I included some additional information in the names of those entries so they could be easily found by personal names. For instance, if my friend Steve lived at a particular address, I'd save his address into "saved locations" and include the name "Steve" or "Steve's home". Then, I was able to start typing "Steve" and it would automatically bring up this saved location.
This is no longer the case. His address is still flagged in my web history and it autocompletes if I start typing in his address... but I can no longer start typing "Steve" to bring up his location.
Any chance we can still get to our "saved locations" data to at least backup the data before you nuke it all for good?
The thread seems to be heating up with angry Google Maps users. The thing is, Google is listening, so it will be interesting to see what changes, if any, they make based on this feedback. Google Maps Linda said:
This is great feedback guys. I'll be sure to share this with the team. I don't have an answer right now, but hopefully I will be able to share more later.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
Clearly, Google News has it's own algorithms and techniques in ranking stories and articles. Danny has one of the most comprehensive articles on ranking stories in Google News that I know of. But I spotted an interesting thread at the Google News Help forums about how possibly some stories can, over time, hurt your trustworthiness in Google News.
The person is trying to somehow communicate to Google that some of his stories are press releases and wants to tell Google not to index or add them to Google News. Why? Simply because he doesn't want to impact his "trusted source status" with Google News.
Inbal, the official Google News rep in that forum replied:
Thanks for your honest feedback. I encourage you to submit your press release hubs to our team; this should not have any implications on your current news site's ranking.
I believe you can even do this type of labeling in the new sitemap format for Google News, which is going to be required soon. Not sure why she didn't mention that as a solution.
But what takeaways do you get from this? Don't abuse your Google News access, because Google can drop your rankings in it easily.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
Google has launched the very neat social search feature yesterday. I am honestly surprised there is not more discussion around it in the forums. We covered it three times, first for the demo, then when it went experimental and then with some technical issues.
Well, it is now live. On by default. Honestly, I don't believe it impacts normal searches unless you specific choose, "show options" and click on the social feature.
But when you do, it opens up a world of new searches based on your online social profile (which you may or may not have).
Here is my social circle as found by Google:
Here is my social content:
Here is a detailed look at the "paths" on how I am associated to one of my contacts, JohnMu at Google:
Video Demo:
Pretty neat!
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
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.
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.
The Google News Help forums has a couple of reports that Google News RSS feed is not working properly. Some are complaining they cannot subscribe to Google News searches and some are complaining they are not validating properly.
I know that my tests seem to work just fine and I am able to subscribe to Google News searches via Google Reader. However, when I plug in those RSS URLs into FeedValidator.org, the feeds are not valid, according to them. Here is a sample showing the errors of the Google News rss searches.
There is no word from Google on this as of yet. We know Google News had issues with RSS feeds in the past.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
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.
comScore released their search growth report and it showed searches have grown 46% worldwide. The U.S. grew 22% from December 2008 to December 2009, with 22.7 billion searches. China followed with 13.3 billion searches, but only grew 13% year over year.
Google took account of 66.8% of those searches, with 87.8 billion searches worldwide, and a growth rate overall of 58%. That is not too bad, although little Microsoft saw a spike of 70% in search share from last year to this year. Here are the charts and also make sure to read Search Engine Land for more analysis:
Forum discussion at two WebmasterWorld threads.
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.
In this weeks recap, we go a bit all over the place to get through the most important topics we covered in the past 7 days. We talked about a study that showed the minor impact Google personalized search has on SEO. There may have been a Yahoo Search update this week. Microsoft says they will purge their search data within 6 months. Bing's auto-search suggestions get more current. Bing also shows search results for related queries. Google increased the Sitemaps limit. Google AdWords now has four professional exams. Yahoo released the network distribution feature, finally. SEOmoz built Open Site Explorer, a neat new useful tool. Google Maps lets you add real time content to your business listing. Don't use the same phone number as your competitor, if you don't want issues on your Google local listing. Search for Jesus on Google Images and you'll catch him smoking and drinking. Google continues to cash in, they announced awesome 4th quarter earnings. SEO is being trademarked again, but the story is different. Martin Luther King day was this week, we have the logos for you. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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Search Topics of Discussion:
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Yesterday, the HuoMah blog uncovered a new person trying to trademark the term SEO. Yes, this was not the first person, see here for the other. I then wrote about it, with Danny Sullivan, at Search Engine Land.
It turns out that this guy is not looking to trademark the term SEO as Search Engine Optimization. Even though this guy's company is under the DBA of "Search Engine Partner." Instead, he is claiming that he coined the acronym SEO for the term Strategically Elevating Optimization back in September 23, 1996 with first commercial use on September 24, 1999.
So there you have it, from now on, when you say SEO you cannot think Search Engine Optimization. Instead, he wants you to think SEO means Strategically Elevating Optimization.
Either case, I doubt this guy will win a trademark on that term, but what do I know.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
If you missed Matt Cutts at PubCon this year and you didn't catch our coverage you are in luck. He "re-created" his presentation given at PubCon in November 2009, on the State of the Index 2009.
Here is the 25 minute video:
Here are the slides:
As a bonus, here are Matt's predictions for 2010 (3 minute video):
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
Earlier this month, we reported on a rumored Yahoo Search update. Although it appeared to be an update, the consensus was that what people were seeing was the paid inclusion being weeded out of the organic search results.
But the thread at WebmasterWorld has been updated by BillyS, who often tracks Yahoo. Billy thinks that Yahoo is now updating, for real, this time. He said:
Yahoo tweaked something today around 1:30 until 3:00 Eastern time. We had a huge spike in traffic. Anyone else see this?
Yahoo updates typically don't get as much reaction as a Google update. And over the past year or so, Yahoo updates have received a lot less attention then they have in the past. This is likely due to them losing search market share and giving up to Bing.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Ever since Yahoo launched their new search marketing platform in 2006, advertisers wanted more control of where their ads were showing.
Yesterday, Yahoo launched a feature named Network Distribution that gives advertisers that control. I wrote up a detailed analysis of the new feature about a week ago at Search Engine Land. Here is a copy of that:
The network distribution settings can be found in a couple places, such as under campaign settings. When you go to those settings, you will see the “Network Distribution” settings above the targeting settings. When you click on that it breaks out the options by content and search networks, in addition to breaking it out by the entire network versus Yahoo Search or Yahoo Partners only. It will also show you the past 30 days of campaign activity based on those sections, to see how many clicks, impressions and costs were associated to those areas. From that screen you can adjust your bid, plus or minus, a specific percentage for each area.
Here is a video from the YSM Blog explaining it a bit more visually:
New Year, New Search Enhancements @ Yahoo! Video
Threads at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld seem to be very happy with this addition. One person said:
This really makes my day.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.
SEOmoz announced the launch of a new valuable tool named Open Site Explorer. I will not go over the features, every other blog did that.
The tool is extremely powerful, but it is not completely "open" or "free" as the name implies. Either way - the tool is impressive and for the most part, the SEO industry is very pleased with it. That includes Aaron Wall who called it slick, despite being Rand Fishkin's biggest critic.
Read more about the tool at the SEOmox blog and test it out at opensiteexplorer.org.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
A new HighRankings Forum thread asks if there is any downside in terms of SEO for using JavaScript that disables the ability to right-click on the page. The thread asks:
One of my company's sites has right-click functions disabled (yes, I realize this doesn't really stop people from stealing content - it wasn't my choice). I've noticed when I use a spider emulator (seo-browser.com) that our image alt tags appear to be invisible to the spiders. I can see the alt tags on the actual site, and I've verified that they are in the code, but they don't seem to show up for spiders. Could this be caused by our right-click disabling?
Most people in the thread say that it should have no impact on spiders crawling the site.
I then saw an older thread from Google Webmaster Help where Googler, JohnMu, said the same thing. He said and I bolded the key point:
Personally, I find the use of right-click-blocking JavaScript slightly annoying because there are many legitimate reasons why you might want to use the context menu (eg to bookmark the page) and it doesn't really stop people from viewing the source (Ctrl-U brings it up if you don't want to use the main menu). That said, this is not something that would bother Googlebot :-).
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum & Google Webmaster Help.
The Bing Search Blog announced that they have now made their search suggestions more current. Now, Bing will update the search suggestions every 15 minutes or so, to take into account breaking news and current trends.
For example, the Australian Open is going on right now and here is me typing [aus] into Bing:
Google already does this with their search suggestions, so it is nice to see Bing go this route as well. Now, Bing will have to deal with questions about censorship of trending topics.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
If you search for [Jesus] in Google Images you may notice that the first image has a picture of Jesus smoking a cigaret, with a can of beer in his hand. Here is a picture of the search result:
A searcher complained about this at the Google Web Search Help forums yesterday. So far, there has been no reply by anyone, including a Googler.
I doubt Google will remove the image result. These types of issues come up fairly frequently. The latest one was when Michelle Obama's image was racist and Google did not remove it, but rather bought an ad explaining why the result was not removed. So I doubt Google will make changes to this image result.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
Every year, the search engines post special logos for Martin Luther King, Jr. This year is no different, we have logos from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, Dogpile and others. MLK, Martin Luther Kind, Jr needs no explanation. It is a legal US holiday today and a day celebrated by many around the world. Here are the logos:
Google's MLK Logo:
Yahoo's Flash MLK logo:
Bing's MLK Theme:
Ask.com's MLK Theme:
DogPile:
Search Engine Roundtable:
Also see the 2009 MLK logos and 2008 MLK logos for a bit of the history with these logos and doodles.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about a search on Bing for [digital camera]. If you search on Bing for that query, you will not only see search results that match [digital camera] but Bing will show you other related queries and their search results.
Bing will show you 3 additional results for each of the following related queries, they include: Digital Camera Brands, Digital Camera Types, Top 10 Digital Cameras, Digital Camera Repair and Digital Camera Accessories. Here is a video showing this:
The interesting part here is that this is somewhat like the Google knows best but not fully. Here Bing is showing you what you queried for first and then shows you other search results that they think would be useful.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
This week we covered topics from SEO to topless Playboy girls. We discussed how to rank high in the Google real-time results with Twitter. We asked, when is Google launching the Caffeine index? Google added favorite icons to Webmaster Tools. Google added Fast Flip to Google News and we spotted a topless Playboy model on the home page. Google search spelling feature stole traffic from a web site. AdWords says your click through rate should be about 2 percent or higher. A new AdWords display URL policy requires subdomains for hosted domains. Google can transfer the campaigns you set up for clients, to their own accounts and leave you in the dust. If and when the Microsoft Yahoo deal goes through adCenter will take of Yahoo Search Marketing. Yahoo killed Shopping Search and outsourced it to PriceGrabber. Google changed home page fade in affect for the Haiti relief message. Google stood up to China and won't censor their results, the world is supporting Google. 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:
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Search Topics of Discussion:
Google SEO:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
Everyone knows about the horrible events that happened in Haiti this week. The world has come together to help out, and that includes Google. A few days ago, Google placed a link on their home page, giving people information on how they can help out. The link said, "Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake." If clicked on, it took them google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/ with more information on how to help out.
But a day ago, that link was not included in the pre-fade portion of Google. By that I mean, Google's home page shows the search box, logo and search buttons by default and then fades in the navigation links. Prior, Google faded in the information about the Haiti relief efforts but today, Google is showing this information on first load, prior to the rest of the page fading in. Here are pictures:
Pre-Fade:
Post-Fade:
Why did Google change this? Well, it was brought up in the Google Web Search Help forums by someone and Jaime from Google took notice. Jaime from Google said:
jeretik -- thanks for bringing this up. We all share your concern for the victims of this disaster and I'm currently discussing the matter of the homepage link with the rest of the team.
This is a small but major change to the nature of Google's fade in home page.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
A new bill in the UK Parliament named the Digital Economy Bill [HL] 2009-10 is proposing to give search engines, such as Google, a form of immunity against being sued over copyright infringement. It is a bit more complex than that but overall, if you want your content out of the search engines, block them - otherwise, you can't sue them over copyright law.
A Sphinn thread is pretty heated over the topic. Primarily between Michael Gray and Danny Sullivan. Let me quote some of the conversation:
Danny Sullivan in response to Michael Gray:
Yeah, yeah, simmer down there troll boy :)
So the actual article this is talking about from The Guardian says this proposal also says:
The presumption (of having an automatic license) may be rebutted by explicit evidence that such a licence was not granted. Such explicit evidence shall be found only in the form of statements in a machine-readable file to be placed on the website and accessible to providers of search engine services.
In other words, this gives robots.txt legal backing. You block that way, search engines can't index you. Fair enough. I mean, that's how things have worked for ages with the respected search engines. But if some rogue spider copied you, you couldn't easily claim a copyright violation because robots.txt had no force of law. Now, you could sue saying they'd been restricted and still indexed your content.
Michael Gray in response to Danny Sullivan:
being a troll boy ;-) and not a lawyer I may be missing something, but this seems pretty clear...
In other words, Google would be free to copy everything - but a publisherblocking search spiders with a robots.txt file would be taken as withholding that right. An explicit "fair use" provision, which Google often cites against copyright-abuse claims, does not exist in UK law.
Google can copy whatever it wants, unless you block it with robots, so if you want to retain you copyright then you do so by slitting your own throat for search engine traffic. That just doesn't make any sense for anyone ... except google.
The debate goes on and on in the thread, so if you are in a troll/rant mood or if you just find the topic interesting, do check it out.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
If you search at Google UK for keywords such as [search engine optimisation] or [personalised napkins] or the like, you will get US based spelling suggestions from Google.
Here are some screen captures:
The old S vs Z in US vs UK English.
As you can imagine, this is not just annoying for UK searchers but also can be a bit insulting. So far, Google has not commented in any of the threads I have seen report this.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums & Google Webmaster Help.
Update: Google seemed to quietly fix this in the past 24 hours.
Update 2: Here is a statement from Google over 24 hours later:
We recently introduced a change to the spell correction feature on the google.co.uk domain. This change introduced a bug where we were suggesting American English spelling refinements. We have temporarily rolled back the change while we fix the problem.
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.
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.
Yahoo quietly announced they are discontinuing their Yahoo Shopping API, because they are going to be outsourcing the Yahoo Shopping component of their site to PriceGrabber.com. Greg Sterling has excellent questions and observations about this decision. The main question is why isn't Bing going to power this search feature?
On a webmaster note, just look at the first comment in the Yahoo announcement:
This is very disappointing to me. Several of my web apps depend on the API it for their real-time data needs. Pricegrabber is not a replacement. I suppose this means I'm collaterally going to shut down my own services as well. A big sarcastic "thanks" goes out to the Yahoo team for this.
A WebmasterWorld thread both sympathizes with those in this trap and also somewhat mocks them. For example one said, "This is yet another lesson for lazy or naive webmasters that build their sites around the services provided by third parties (mostly by Google in these days)."
incrediBILL adds, "The most amusing part is it probably requires no maintenance to leave the API function as-is." httpwebwitch explained the other value in this API:
The Yahoo! Shopping API is/was a really good product, too. Well designed, with massive amounts of excellent data. One of the best data API's out there, IMHO - I've often used it as an example when teaching others about APIs and XML.
I have several apps out there that depend on it, and projects in development that also rely on it. All those projects will be scrapped.
This is not the first time some webmasters were 'burned' by using a free and open API.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Imagine going to Google.com and seeing that it has been hacked and taken over by hackers? That is what happened to Chinese searchers, with their favorite search engine, Baidu. @mranti snapped a picture of the Baidu home page, when it was hacked:
The news can be found on Techmeme, but in short, it seems like they took over Baidu's domain name for about four hours. Now, when I go to Baidu.com it redirects me to http://202.108.22.5/, which is a server operated by Baidu.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
We asked earlier today if Google should censor non-adult search suggestions. Google does censor out adult-oriented or illegal suggestions. But often they do not get censored unless someone really points it out in a public setting.
A Google Web Search Help thread points out the next upsetting search suggestion found on Google. Now, it isn't upsetting to me that Google is showing it, it is upsetting to me why Google is showing this. I'll explain in a bit. Here is a picture showing the search suggestion for [14 year old stripping].
Yea, Google is showing a search suggestion for [14 year old stripping.] Why? I guess because it is a popular query associated with the number 14. People who enter in 14 into Google are very likely to search for [14 year old stripping]. That is what is sad to me.
In any event, Google will remove the both adult-oriented and illegal search suggestion soon enough.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Update: Google has removed the search suggestion and updated the forum thread explaining why:
Thank you for alerting me about this inappropriate query suggestion. The phrase that you reported falls into the category of pornographic terms that we'd consider for filtering from query suggestions. Will let you know if there are any updates to share.
Ever since Google suggest became the default at Google.com back in 2008, the search suggestions had led to some controversy. Most recently over religions suggestions such as Christianity or Islam. Plus a month or so back, we had the Climategate controversy. We do know that Google censors out adult search suggestions and I don't think anyone would argue with that.
However, do you think Google should censor out non-adult negative search suggestions? Such as those that appear negative to religious beliefs or make companies look bad. For example, a WebmasterWorld thread is discussing a French ruling which required Google to remove the search suggestions that had the word 'scam' when you entered in a company name. Should those also be censored?
Take my poll:
Should Google Censor Non-Adult Search Suggestions?(opinion)
I for one believe adult content should be censored there, as Google does. But I do not believe Google should remove the others.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
This week, I try to get fancier with my video set up and integrate multiple video sources, including my monitor - let's see how that goes. I posted the Google webmaster report for January. There were rumors Caffeine went live, but it did not. More people are seeing the Google blue Jazz interface. Malware is becoming a bigger and bigger issues. Was there a Yahoo Search update or was it the paid inclusion results being removed? Google's local business privacy blunder caused some overall concern. Google may return the SEO and web design local pack? Bing says they are slow and recommends you spam Digg or Yahoo Buzz. Microsoft adCenter offered free clicks, well - not really. AdWords tests a CPA lead form and also click to call on mobile phones. Also, most PPCers have participated in bid wars, while most advertisers are not afraid to make changes to their accounts. Finally Googlers were working on New Years and Google animated their logo for Issac Newton. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Search Topics of Discussion:
Google SEO
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
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.
Most search engines find new pages by crawling links from other sites. At the same time, the more links to a page and the quality of the pages linking to a page, drives the quality of the page being linked to. These are all basic SEO principles.
This is why many SEOs place links to their most important internal pages, right off of their home page. Why?
(1) They want them indexed faster and typically one's home page is indexed more often than other pages (not always). So having a link from your most popular page to other pages, help the other pages also get indexed faster.
(2) Also your home page normally has the most amount of links to it, so typically has the higher link equity of all your page (not always), so linking to pages off your home page will funnel some of that high link equity to the pages you are linking to. This may result in a higher ranking for those pages linked to from your home page.
Again, all basic SEO principles.
The myth is having pages based in the root directory of your server results in higher ranking. That is not true, it is all about the click path.
That being said, does it ever make sense to require people to click and click, five or more times to get to an internal page? Since search engines will have to do the same clicking, it might take them longer to find the page and it won't pass the majority of your home page's link popularity.
JohnMu, a Googler, in the Google Webmaster Help forums discussed just that in less than a sentence. He said:
I'd have no problem clicking through 5-6 links to get to highly specific content if I needed it and your site had it.
Google knows that there is a logical site hierarchy. Google knows that there are deeper pages on a site that is important. As an SEO, it is not just about linking to them off your home page, but also about getting external links to those pages. And it is also about utilizing your other internal pages to get the search bots to bite them.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
When you ask someone what time is it, you normally don't have to second guess them. But when it comes to asking Google, Yahoo, Bing or Ask.com what time is it, you have to second guess them.
If you search [bangladesh time] at the four search engines, you will have Google and Yahoo telling you one time, while Bing.com and Ask.com telling you a different time. Who do you believe?
Google & Yahoo:
Bing & Ask.com:
So who is right?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
I am using an extreme title here to illustrate a point. We have a searcher come to the Google Webmaster Help forums and complain about the search results for a search on Google for [christianity is]. The results are mostly informational but you have a few results which are negative. I cropped this image to show only some of the negative-like results:
The person said, "I have never been so mad in my life. We have enough problems in the United States without Google slamming Christianity!"
When will people learn that this is not Google slamming Christianity? Well, maybe what set this person off is that Google wouldn't say Merry Christmas on Christmas? But still, these are the Google search results. Brin, Page and Schmidt aren't sitting down and saying, hmm - I hate Christians and I want to place these results there simply to tick them off.
There are just so many cases like this, for all religions. It comes down to education, which is a hard thing to do.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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.
One of the latest comments to come from Microsoft's Bing representative in the Bing Forums was that they consider themselves to be "fairly slow." Fairly slow at indexing new sites and new pages, that is.
Brett Yount, the Program Manager at Bing Webmaster Center, said in a Bing Forums thread:
It is well known in the industry that MSNbot is fairly slow.
Did he just say that? For real?
So what is Microsoft's solution to get new sites into their index? Well, either spam Digg or Yahoo Buzz to be discovered or post a message in the Site not in index thread at Bing Forums and they will manually add you. Yes, there is a forum thread pretty much acting as a URL submit form. How 1995 of them.
Forum discussion at Bing Forums.
I love it when you have the old geezers (in the SEO world, that means 10 years old), take a look in the past at how the industry has evolved. Danny Sullivan has done it and so have others. I personally have only been covering search for over six years, but I have been involved in the web development since I was 16, which was in 1996 (yea, I turn 30 this year).
In any event, Jill Whalen posted her A Decade of 21st Century SEO. She goes through each year, starting in 2000, and pulls out her notes of SEO thoughts and best quotes for that year. I cannot summarize them all, and although it is 10 years long, it is a quick and fun read. So make sure to check it out.
There is a Sphinn thread on the topic as well. Danny Sullivan let the cat out of the bag that his decade in search post will be out over the weekend. He is currently up to 2007.
I'll just end this post with a quote from her ending remarks:
It's important to note that my ideal of SEO even before the year 2000 has always assumed that search engines will someday be perfect. Through the years, Google has given credence to my mantra during the times when they haven't allowed the crap-hat SEO stuff to work. By the same token, they have also made me look silly at the times when it does still work. My hope is that Google (or any other search engine) never gives up trying to find the best, most relevant results for their users – the searchers – because my SEO methods are based on that ideal.
There are only a few in this industry who have stood up, given themselves to the community for as long as she has. I won't name them all, but Jill deserves huge credit for not just practicing SEO for over 10 years, but for being involved in the industry, actively, every day, for the past 10 years plus. You can't say that about many people in the industry.
Thank you Jill.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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.
There is a single report at a WebmasterWorld thread of a possible Yahoo Search update. Senior member, textex, is noticing changes in the Yahoo Search results, but clearly, the Yahoo Search Blog has not posted anything since December 15th.
Typically, when it comes to Yahoo Search updates - we normally see it being reported in the forums before Yahoo posts anything on their blog about it. Also, we typically see Yahoo Search update every quarter or so and the last update was in September 2009, so we are do an update.
Do you notice any ranking changes in Yahoo or a shift in your Yahoo referrals?
Note: As Yahoo loses market share, less and less webmasters and SEOs are concerned about Yahoo. So it doesn't surprise me to see such little activity in the thread at this point. I do hope the thread picks up.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
In November, we reported on the Google Blue Jazz interface, a new Google user interface Google hopes to push sometime this year. Technically, it is not named Jazz, but I think that is the name that might stick. Only a few Google users saw the interface. But ever since the New Years period, I have been seeing more and more reports of users seeing the interface.
Here is a picture of the front page:
Actually, a reader sent me some crisp pictures of the various pages. You can see them all at [twitpic.com].
Anyway, the main thing here is that it is not "new" in that it was announced a few months back. But expect more and more people to see it in the upcoming weeks and/or months.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand DigitalPoint Forums and many other threads which prop up at Google Web Search Help.
Yahoo's paid inclusion program was suppose to end on December 31st. But some are reporting in a WebmasterWorld thread that the paid inclusion results are still in the Yahoo Search index.
I have not looked myself, but this person is saying the paid inclusion (search submit) URLs are still in the index. He said:
I still see all the paid spots working.
This can be for two reasons:
(1) Yahoo's Search Submit product is still indeed active.
or
(2) Yahoo indexed the special search submit URLs and they show up in the free listings as free?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
No one will deny it, not even Google. Viruses, malware, spyware and so on, is currently a major issue on the Internet. Google and other search engines has stepped up how they detect and block malware from showing up in their index. But now, in 2010, expect it to get a lot worse. Expect those who produce malware to not look to just infect computers, but to look to get around Google's malware detection techniques and infect even more computers.
A WebmasterWorld thread has reports of more and more malware getting through Google's filters. For example, we reported a major malware breach using the keyword phrase blackberry news via CNN as some sort of 302 redirect malware hack. Google finally removed it, but I wonder how many computers were infected by that?
The WebmasterWorld thread is discussing several people's experiences with recent malware infections they or friends received via a Google search.
I know Google is doing what they can to prevent this, but it is hard to keep up. So just be wary of what you click on via email, Google, Facebook and so on. The best prevention is being smart.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
If you visit Google.com today, you will see a Google Doodle (logo) of an Apple tree. If you wait a couple seconds, you will notice that one of the apple's falls off the tree. Yes, it is Issac Newton's birthday, 367 years ago today, and it is also the first ever (I believe) animated Google Doodle (logo) in history.
Here is a picture of the logo:
Want to see how it was/is animated? Here is a short video:
Everyone, I think, knows the story behind Issac Newton's theory of gravitation. So hence the apple falling off the apple tree. It is great to see Google have a Doodle for Issac Newton. But you got to believe there will be two points of controversy with this Doodle.
(1) Like always, there are plenty of other important events that occurred on January 4th
(2) Google has never really animated their logo in the past. Why now? They did recently have a neat I'm Feeling Lucky easter egg. Too see that click here.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.
In our New Years day video recap, I covered the last week of 2009 in search at the Search Engine Roundtable. I first showed off the various logos for New Years by Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com and many others. Google also had a PageRank update on New Years eve. Google uses ccTLDs over server location. Google slapped SEOs by dropping them and web designers from the local pack. Bing's MSNBot is up to no good again, crawling fake file names. Google AdWords advertisers feel paralyzed. Increase your click through rate with women in thongs in your Google ads. Google launched the advertising professional search feature. Google had a weird bug related to the September 11 attacks. Finally, Google's porn filter had some issues this week. That was the last week of 2009 in search at the Search Engine Roundtable! Happy & Healthy 2010!
FYI - Sorry for the volume, you will have to crank it up to hear me.
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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Search Topics of Discussion:
New Years:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
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.
Typically, I compile the New Years logos from the various search engines and search industry on New Years Day, but most of the search engines, with the exception of Google, have the logos out already. So here are the 2010 New Years logos. If any of them update and when Google adds there logo, I will update this post.
Google:
Yahoo (Animated):
Yahoo (Static):
Bing:
AOL:
Ask.com:
DogPile:
Baidu:
Clicker:
Sogou:
Zuula:
Cre8asite Forums:
Search Engine Roundtable (that's us):
For the past year's logos, see: 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.
Forum discussion currently at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Bing Forums, HighRankings Forums, Google Webmaster Help, WebmasterWorld and Cre8asite Forums.
Update: Remember the I'm Feeling Lucky Google Countdown feature? Well, at midnight, when you click it, this is what it looks like: Via websonic.nl...
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.
A HighRankings Forum thread asks an interesting SEO question. The question is, can you optimize for stop words in Google or other search engines?
His particular example seems flawed, in that he is calling IT a stop word and it is stopping him for optimizing for the query [it companies]. However, when I search for [it companies] in Google, it does seem to figure out, IT here stands for information technology.
But in general, is there a need to optimize for stop words? Do we have more examples of cases? If so, can it be done?
Here is a poll:
Can you SEO for stop words?(polls)
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
Update: See Jill's comment below for the issue this SEO has in the thread.
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.
Everyone talks about how liberal Google is and how it may bias their objectivity in the search results and their other agendas. But every day, I check the Google News Forum and see complaints from "liberals" that Google News shows Fox News, a very conservative news source, in the Google News search results and home page. The more I see the complaints, the more I see that Google is not politically bias in their search results.
Just take a quick scan of the Google News Forum and see how many complaints there are about Fox News being included:
I find it a bit comical to be honest. I did think it would be nice to give searchers an option about how liberal or conservative they want the news to be. I asked they create a liberal & conservative news slider control that allows users to adjust how liberal or conservative the news gets. Of course, if Google did that, they would have to label each news source as liberal/conservative or pick up words on a page that make a news source liberal or conservative. That can get a bit hairy.
I just thought I point out the daily activity in this Google News Forum.
Forum discussion at Google News Forum.
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.
A WebmasterWorld thread and an older Bing Forums thread has discussion from webmasters over the issue of Microsoft Bing's web crawler, MSNBot, crawling file names that do not exist on a specific site.
This reminders me of the ongoing issue of Bing creating fake referrals in webmaster log files. This has been going on for years, where Microsoft claims they have fixed it, but never really has.
In this specific case, it seems like Bing is creating file names on a specific site to crawl. Wel, they are not creating files, just trying to fetch pages that do not and never have existed on a specific site. I am not sure if this is a Bing issue or a webmaster issue.
A long time WebmasterWorld member explained the issue:
In what is apparently a rather old bad behavior, msnbot has a practice of regularly requesting totally manufactured URIs that appear to be designed to trigger 404 errors. Here are two sample log entries of the two styles of bogus URIs msnbot requests:
'65.55.207.126'¦Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:39:49 -0500¦'msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)'¦'*/*'¦'/ADBF3C7AB534E8356F30D8AC05291640_00000.temp019f.html'¦''
'65.55.207.28'¦Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:46:22 -0500¦'msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)'¦'*/*'¦'/000166709_00001.temp00be.html'¦''The requests ALWAYS take on one of the formats above starting with either a 32byte GUID or a nine digit integer.
In the Bing thread, another person said:
For many many years, msnbot has been crawling my sites looking for files that have never existed... i'm trying to figure out why...
the filenames have changed slightly in recent times but they have been similar in structure since the beginning... they are something like 000092601_00002.temp0001.htm... in other words, 9 numbers underscore 5 numbers dot temp 4 numbers dot htm... the search for these is all over my server's directory tree...I'll emphasize once more that these files have never existed on my site and i have no clue how msnbot may have picked them up...
Honestly, I feel bad that I am always beating up on Microsoft. I know they are new to the game, when you compare them to Google. But I have to report these issues.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Bing Forums.
A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that a search on (beware before you click) [cricket talks] in Google Image search returns a pornographic image. It happens both on standard safe search and strict safe search, but goes away completely when you turn off the safe search feature.
Here is a picture, which I cropped a bit to show the result here:
I personally see the image on the 3rd row when strict search is on and the second row when safe search is in standard or moderate mode.
What is interesting is that it is hosted on a pretty bad domain, i.e. asianteenmovieslesbiananal.info. OpenDNS for me blocks the domain due to the domain and network containing pornography and nudity. I guess Google got mixed up with this one.
On a related note, a Google News Help thread reports that Google News had an image of a PlayBoy teaser on their most viewed section. I personally did not see it, but it would not have been the first time seductive or nude images showed up on the front page of Google News.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & Google News Help.
Merry Christmas everyone! This week at the Search Engine Roundtable was a fairly slow week, due to the holidays. Some of the news I wanted to cover includes that Googlers are working on Christmas. Also, I posted the Christmas logos and themes from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, Baidu, and so many others - so check it out. Google sent out e-cards saying they will be giving $20 million in charity in exchange for sending out schwag to advertisers and publishers. Brett Tabke felt we got stiffed and was pretty upset. Brett later explained he feels Google is cutting on webmaster and advertiser support and relations. Also, Bing really has zero support for the canonical tag and I explained why that upset me. QuickMark QR scanner fixed their bug, which caused a major headache for Google's favorite places decals. That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable - Merry Christmas!
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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
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!
Merry Christmas! Although I have about five items to write about today, I figured I hold off on them until Monday. Trust me, I know how it is to be swamped and buried in feeds and news to catch up on while I am celebrating a Jewish holiday - so I will spare you all. Plus, I finally am making the move to Google Chrome, using Chromium on my Mac - so it is nice to take it slow to get up to speed on it.
If you are reading today, make sure to check out our Christmas logos for 2009, which I just updated this morning to add several more logos from other search engines. In short, there are logos from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, and many others - so check it out.
In addition, I caught Googlers working on Christmas again. For the past few years, I have caught Googlers helping webmasters in the forums. This year is no different. JohnMu from Google posted in at least two threads on Christmas eve. One was the Merry Christmas Google thread and the other was a more technical webmaster question. Googlers did the same in 2008, 2007 and 2006. They also worked on New Years last year and the year before.
Finally, I will be working on my weekly search video recap today. Expect it to go live later today and you can watch (or just listen to) it at your leisure.
Merry Christmas and in our tradition, forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Google Toolbar Help, HighRankings Forums, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Google Maps Help, Google AdWords Help & Google Webmaster Help.
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.
There is this old and upsetting thread in the Bing Forums about how Bing handles the canonical tag. The thread is filled with misinformation. Matt McGee's post at Search Engine Land a week ago says it clearly.
Bing says it's still working on supporting the canonical tag on a single domain, and suggests webmasters should rely on other means to manage duplicate content.
You got that right, 11 months ago, Google, Yahoo and Bing announced support for the Canonical tag. As far as I know, only Google really uses it and they even added cross domain canonical support this month. Where is Bing at this? Well, in the next several months they hope to support a single domain use of the canonical tag and hopefully soon after the cross domain support. So it would have taken Bing over a year since they announced support of this tag to actually support it?
I am not too upset about that, to be honest. What I am more upset about is that official Bing support representatives are pretty much lying in the Bing Forums. Brett Yount, the Product Manager of Bing Webmaster Center said:
accourding to our blog post, http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx, the canonical tag is used as a hint only.
No, it is not used as a hint or anything. It is not used period, not yet. Maybe in four months, but not yet.
Forum discussion at Bing Forums.
Merry Christmas Search Engine Roundtable readers! I believe most of the search engines have their special logos or themes live today. They include a handful of logos from Google, an animated logo from Yahoo, an awesome picture from Bing, a sweet Ask.com theme, DogPile's fun dress up and more from the industry.
Google began their logo blitz on the first day of Winter. While, we had Winter themes from YouTube, Bing and others, Google started with "the holidays." Calling it "The Holidays" made some Christians upset, mostly those in the U.K. Also, Google did not have a Chanukah logo like Bing or Ask did.
In any event, here are pictures of the Christmas logos, but this time I will end with Google, since they have so many:
Yahoo (animated) Christmas logo:
Yahoo (static) Christmas logo:
Bing's Christmas Theme:
Ask.com's Christmas Theme:
DogPile's Christmas Theme:
Baidu's Christmas Logo:
Quintura's Christmas Logo:
Clicker Christmas Logo:
Sogou Christmas Logo:
FriendFeed Christmas logo:
Zuula Christmas Logo:
BruceClay Christmas Logo:
Cre8asite Christmas Logo:
Search Engine Roundtable Christmas Theme:
Google's Christmas / Holiday Logos (so far four):
I'll update this post when I find more logos from the search industry.
For the past year's holiday and Christmas logos, see our posts from 2008, the 2007 logos, plus Google's five logos, 2006 logos, Cre8asite in 2005, also '05 Search Engine Roundtable and '05 Google, Yahoo and Ask, plus we have 2004 and some of 2003 archived for you.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Google Toolbar Help, HighRankings Forums, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Google Maps Help, Google AdWords Help & Google Webmaster Help.
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.
This is a hoax, this is not true, but it spread around the internet over the weekend and I found it pretty funny. Again, this is a comic, who did a skit of some sort. Microsoft confirmed this is not a real employee or ex-employee at Microsoft.
The video portrays a disgruntled ex-Microsoft employee describing how he was fired by Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, over not saying "Bing" with enthusiasm.
If you know the jokes about Ballmer, this is pretty funny.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
I am seeing random reports, now a total of three individual reports, in the Google Web Search Help forums where users are reporting that Google Images search results are going off the page.
One user posted a picture, which describes the issue. Here is a picture:
It seems like the first row of images is shown on the far left side of the browser and then the rest are displayed down the row, but under the fold. One person explained:
All the images are on the left side of the page going down the page. You can bearly see the image and it is very anouying!! How do u make it so it is back to the normal way, were the images go across the page instear of going down????
Googler, Jem thinks this is some type of browser bug. Jem asked the users to clear their cookies and try again. Jem is also asking users for more feedback so they can debug the issue.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
An early WebmasterWorld thread is discussing the topic of Google One Box "blindness." Google One Boxes are those enhanced results you see at the top or within the search results of Google. When they first came out, there were hard to miss, but now SEOs and maybe some searchers are subconsciously blocking them out, like they would ads?
Here are some examples of "one boxes":
Get the point?
Do you think all this injection of special "universal search" results, as well as Google owned content (i.e. YouTube, weather, google groups, blogspot, definitions, etc) is going to eventually suffer from "one box blindness"?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
The next two weeks are typically the slowest two weeks in the search industry (and probably most other industries). It is the holiday week, with Christmas and New Years coming, as well as it being the first day of Winter today.
Google already started their holiday logo blast, although Google missed Chanukah this year, they are calling the logos "Holiday logos". You will be able to see a new one every day and Google will archive them at google.com/logos/holidays-2009.html. Here is the first one:
Like I said, Google will have a new logo each day (maybe I will update this post here or make a new one for those).
Google # 2:
Yahoo is running a flash based logo also for the past few days:
But today is actually the first day of Winter here on our side of the world. And for the day, we have a nice theme from Bing, YouTube and from ourselves as well:
Search Engine Roundtable Winter:
Happy holidays, cold winter and relaxing/healthy next two weeks.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums and Google Web Search Help.
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.
This week in search, I announce that I am hosting SMX SphinnCon Israel on March 7, 2010 in Jerusalem. Google announced the support for cross domain canonical tags. There may have been a Toolbar PageRank penalty earlier this week. Google may add PDF support to fetch as Googlebot. Google dropped Answers.com for their own definitions. Google is testing infinite scroll in image search. Bing might add "page score" to their toolbar. MSNBot crawls pages twice, once for compressed http and one for uncompressed. Google's new QR codes on the favorite places maps decals are sending users to wrong business, likely because of QR scanners and not Google. Google messed up the AdSense reporting again. Yahoo Search Marketing ads went down for a short period of time. Google is now in the URL shortening business with goo.gl. Google may buy Yelp for $500 million. Google is inviting publishers for Christmas lunch. Google's Im Feeling Lucky button does the New Year countdown. Google did a Doodle for Zamenhof. Google forgot about The Simpons 20th birthday, a shame. 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:
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Search Topics of Discussion:
Misc:
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Earlier this month, Google dropped Answers.com as their definitions provider. A month ago or so, Google would link from the word "definition" to Answers.com, now Google links to themselves.
For example, a search for [definitions] shows a hyperlink named "definition". Here is a picture:
When you click on it, it now takes you to Google Definitions at Google.com/Dictionary. In the past, and since early 2005 it took you to Answers.com.
I have not seen a thread or complain about this until today - so I guess most people didn't take much notice. The thread is at Google Web Search Help and it reads:
The "definition" feature Google has in its search page includes lots of features including comprehensive dictionary, pronunciation of words, translation to many other languages, all this gone, I have noticed its format was changed recently to a very simple uninformative format, very very disappointing! I was using it quite a lot.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
There are a few reports in a Bing Forum thread that adding a site to Bing Webmaster Tools might not work. Specifically, if the URL or domain contains a hyphen (dash) such as www.best-domain.com.
Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster team confirmed the bug, saying:
Currently, we are having a few difficulties which I just received confirmation from the indexing team. They are currently working on it, but said that if you try a couple times, it should work. If not, and your site isn't in the index at all , please post on the not in index thread and I will work to get your home page (only) into the index.
I personally tried adding a domain with a hyphen and it worked for me on the first try. So maybe it is resolved or maybe those specific domains have other issues?
Forum discussion at Bing Forum.
Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster Team dropped a hint in the Bing Forums that they may add the Bing Page Score (similar to Google's PageRank) to the MSN Toolbar.
Bing has what they call Bing Page Score when you login to their Bing Webmaster Center. Someone asked in the thread, "is it possible to enable page rank in bing toolbar?"
Soon after, Brett Yount from Bing responded saying:
We might once we complete the rework of that tool, which will be Fall earliest. Good news is, there are some changes in the works due in May/June to many things important to the webmasters frequenting these forums.
So there are two things here:
(1) Bing's Page Score may come to their Toolbar.
(2) They will be reworking "that tool," which I believe is talking about Page Score specifically.
Forum discussion at Bing Forums.
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.
Here is one more oddity to add to Microsoft Bing's web crawler, MSNBot. Why on earth are people reporting that MSNBot is crawling the same page twice, once for the compressed version and then once again for the uncompressed version? Technically, it should probably only crawl once and it should opt for the compressed, gzip version - don't you think?
We have two threads complaining about this, one oldish one at WebmasterWorld and another at Bing Forums. Let me quote the Bing thread:
I've notice that bing is crawling each page of my website twice, first making an HTTP 1.1 request and getting a compressed response then immediately issuing an HTTP 1.0 request to receive the same page without gzip compression
The following lines from my log show the issue (there are thousands more similar occurrences):
65.55.207.74 - - [13/Dec/2009:14:58:42 +0000] "GET /specimen/235698/ HTTP/1.1" 200 1742 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.207.74 - - [13/Dec/2009:14:59:06 +0000] "GET /specimen/235698/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4259 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.106.209 - - [13/Dec/2009:15:03:08 +0000] "GET /specimen/250262/ HTTP/1.1" 200 1733 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
65.55.106.209 - - [13/Dec/2009:15:03:14 +0000] "GET /specimen/250262/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4164 "-" "msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
This seems a waste of bandwidth and completely defeats the point of supporting http compression.
Indeed a waste of bandwidth and yes, it defeats the point of supporting HTTP compression.
A Bing representative, Brett Yount said:
could you please mail this information to bwmc@microsoft.com and I will get our crawling team to check it out?
But we have no confirmation from Bing on why this issue is occurring or when it will be fixed. Like I said, just one more oddity to add to MSNBot's crawl behavior.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Bing Forums.
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Yahoo Search Marketing is down for some. When some advertisers are trying to use Yahoo's pay per click ad system, they get an error.
The error reads:
We are currently experiencing a technical issue that is causing the ads of some advertisers to not be displayed properly to users. This may cause your account to receive a lower volume of clicks than normal. We are aware of this issue, and are working diligently to resolve it as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
So far, we have two confirmed reports of this bug in the WebmasterWorld thread.
I am not sure how widespread the issue is or if it is resolved yet.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Yahoo updated the thread, saying:
I can confirm that this issue was resolved at approximately 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time on December 15, and ads should be displaying normally since then. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
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.
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.
If you go to Google.com and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, Google will show you a countdown to the new year. You cannot type anything into the search box for this to work, just click on the button with an empty search box.
Here is a video of it working just minutes ago, on my screen:
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and DigitalPoint Forums.
Just a reminder, we did not do a video recap last week, we did a text one - so if you missed it, check it out. This week was the SES Chicago conference and we covered tons of sessions. Google switched personalized search on by default and SEOs are freaking out. Google and Yahoo both added real time Twitter results to the search results. Google launched image based search with Google Goggles. Google will add a trustworthy indicator to the page speed report because webmeisters aren't sure if it is accurate. Why? Well, both Google AdSense and Analytics have long page load times, but AdSense will be fixed and Google told us to ignore Analytics. Bing will crawl a 301 two or three times before registering it. We also posted our December Google webmaster report. Google is taking Google Money scammer to court and AdSense Pirates are becoming more of a problem. Ruscoe from Google Blogocoped is joining Google next month. Being an AdSense publisher doesn't mean Google will be a job reference for you. Don't search for 123456 in Google, you might get slapped in the face. Yahoo closed their deal with Microsoft, now they wait on the regulators (sorry, did not cover in video). Google had a Popeye logo this week. Tonight is Chanukah and Bing and we have themes live. Happy Chanukah everyone and have a great weekend. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Search Topics of Discussion:
Conference:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
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.
Chanukah (Hanukah) starts tonight, technically, in Israel it is already Chanukah. It last for eight days and this year it does not overlap with Christmas. Currently, the only major search engine to have a logo or theme up is Microsoft's Bing. Google (even Google.co.il), Yahoo, and Ask.com do not have a theme up yet. Maybe they will wait for tonight or tomorrow, but for now, here is Bing's theme:
We also have theme, sporting driedels with SEO spelled on them out of our name, the Search Engine rOundtable.
Also, Cre8asite Forums plans on uploading this logo shortly for the holiday season:
We will update this post with more logos if they come out. For the past years, see 2008, 2007 and 2006.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
Update: Ask.com posted a theme on Saturday, December 12th, see Nick's comment below:
No logo from Google, Yahoo or others.
Not to be outdone by Google, Yahoo also added real-time Twitter results for "buzzing" keyword phrases. I tried to replicate any results on Yahoo, but I was not yet able to see them. Maybe it is still rolling out.
The industry is discussing the Yahoo roll out at WebmasterWorld.
Meanwhile, sometime mid-afternoon yesterday, the real time results Google previewed a couple days ago, went live in the main Google search results. SEOs and Webmasters are now playing with it, looking for ways to exploit take advantage of it. There is discussion on it going live at WebmasterWorld.
Both Rae at OutSpokenMedia.com and Danny at Search Engine Land covered how the results can be exploited and get a be "mad."
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld (Yahoo) and WebmasterWorld (Google).
A Google Web Search Help thread reports that he was testing to make sure his boss's computer network had connectivity, so he searched for [123456] in Google and up came a porn video hosted on Google Video in the top result.
Here is a picture:
The video on the right is complete adult pornographic material - so don't click on it (unless you want porn, then click on it).
The person who spotted this was very disturbed. He said:
I was assisting our CEO's secretary today, and to test whether she had connectivity, I did a quick search on google for "123456".
She thought I was being disgusting, but I eventually convinced her it was a freak occurrence.
Can you imagine that, this woman thought this guy was playing a trick on her or something. How sad.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
I spotted a useful tidbit for SEOs in the Bing Forums today. Brett Yount from Bing Webmaster Center team explained how Bing picks up on 301 redirects.
Brett said it can take two to three crawls from Bing to register a 301 redirect in their index. Brett said:
By design, our crawler usually takes 2-3 crawls before it registers the redirect.
I wonder how many crawls Google takes to do the same thing? I can see why you would want to wait at least for a second crawl to confirm a 301 redirect is indeed legit.
We had some reports recently that Bing is handling 301s much better now than they have in the past.
Forum discussion at Bing Forums.
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.
Below is live coverage of the Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
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| Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World | (12/08/2009) |
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Below is live coverage of the Turning Simple Change into Big Profit from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
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| Turning Simple Change into Big Profit | (12/08/2009) |
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Below is live coverage of the How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively With Your IT Department to Achieve Business Goals from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Chris Boggs of Rosetta.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
/* Adjust the height to best suite your page */ /* Remove height property to have all text show without scrollbars. */ #cil_page .mainchat { position: relative; overflow: auto; } scrollpos[1]) { divtop = document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } else { divtop = scrollpos[1] - document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').offsetTop + document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.left = divleft + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.top = divtop + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'inline'; } function cil_closeLayer(){ if (document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display != 'none') { document.getElementById('cil_divsrc').innerHTML = ''; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'none'; } } function cil_replaceString(oldS, newS, fullS) { for (var i = 0; i 0) { position = [document.documentElement.scrollLeft,document.documentElement.scrollTop]; } else if (typeof document.body.scrollTop != 'undefined') { position = [document.body.scrollLeft,document.body.scrollTop]; } return position; } function cil_getCurrentStyle(elem, prop) { if( elem.currentStyle ) { var ar = prop.match(/w[^-]*/g); var s = ar[0]; for(var i = 1; i
| How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively With Your IT Department to Achieve Business Goa | (12/08/2009) |
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Below is live coverage of the Igniting Viral Campaigns from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
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| Igniting Viral Campaigns | (12/08/2009) |
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Below is live coverage of the Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins
Below is live coverage of the Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday's News from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick & Marty Weintraub from aimClear.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
/* Adjust the height to best suite your page */ /* Remove height property to have all text show without scrollbars. */ #cil_page .mainchat { position: relative; overflow: auto; } scrollpos[1]) { divtop = document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } else { divtop = scrollpos[1] - document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').offsetTop + document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.left = divleft + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.top = divtop + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'inline'; } function cil_closeLayer(){ if (document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display != 'none') { document.getElementById('cil_divsrc').innerHTML = ''; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'none'; } } function cil_replaceString(oldS, newS, fullS) { for (var i = 0; i 0) { position = [document.documentElement.scrollLeft,document.documentElement.scrollTop]; } else if (typeof document.body.scrollTop != 'undefined') { position = [document.body.scrollLeft,document.body.scrollTop]; } return position; } function cil_getCurrentStyle(elem, prop) { if( elem.currentStyle ) { var ar = prop.match(/w[^-]*/g); var s = ar[0]; for(var i = 1; i
| Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday's News | (12/08/2009) |
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Below is live coverage of the Social Media Checklist from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
/* Adjust the height to best suite your page */ /* Remove height property to have all text show without scrollbars. */ #cil_page .mainchat { position: relative; overflow: auto; } scrollpos[1]) { divtop = document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } else { divtop = scrollpos[1] - document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').offsetTop + document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.left = divleft + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.top = divtop + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'inline'; } function cil_closeLayer(){ if (document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display != 'none') { document.getElementById('cil_divsrc').innerHTML = ''; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'none'; } } function cil_replaceString(oldS, newS, fullS) { for (var i = 0; i 0) { position = [document.documentElement.scrollLeft,document.documentElement.scrollTop]; } else if (typeof document.body.scrollTop != 'undefined') { position = [document.body.scrollLeft,document.body.scrollTop]; } return position; } function cil_getCurrentStyle(elem, prop) { if( elem.currentStyle ) { var ar = prop.match(/w[^-]*/g); var s = ar[0]; for(var i = 1; i
| Social Media Checklist | (12/08/2009) |
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| 11:11 | Do you have a dedicated person to manage your social media? Yes - Employee ( 0% )Yes, Myself ( 100% )No ( 0% )Not yet, but I will ( 0% ) Tuesday December 8, 2009 11:11 |
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Below is live coverage of the Developments in Information Retrieval on the Web from the SES Chicago 2009 (official SES Chicago Site) conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog & Marty Weintraub from aimClear.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
/* Adjust the height to best suite your page */ /* Remove height property to have all text show without scrollbars. */ #cil_page .mainchat { position: relative; overflow: auto; } scrollpos[1]) { divtop = document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } else { divtop = scrollpos[1] - document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').offsetTop + document.getElementById('cil_mainholder').scrollTop + 40; } document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.left = divleft + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.top = divtop + 'px'; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'inline'; } function cil_closeLayer(){ if (document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display != 'none') { document.getElementById('cil_divsrc').innerHTML = ''; document.getElementById('cil_modalitem').style.display = 'none'; } } function cil_replaceString(oldS, newS, fullS) { for (var i = 0; i 0) { position = [document.documentElement.scrollLeft,document.documentElement.scrollTop]; } else if (typeof document.body.scrollTop != 'undefined') { position = [document.body.scrollLeft,document.body.scrollTop]; } return position; } function cil_getCurrentStyle(elem, prop) { if( elem.currentStyle ) { var ar = prop.match(/w[^-]*/g); var s = ar[0]; for(var i = 1; i
| Developments in Information Retrieval on the Web | (12/08/2009) |
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SEMs should do their best to represent search marketers in this top 100 marketers vote. There are lots of Internet marketers listed on this list, some are SEOs and SEMs, so go vote for them.
Shameless plug: If you like, vote for me, I may have the most hats on that list:
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, RustyBrick (@Rustybrick)
If you do not like me, then vote for another SEM. Keep it in the family!
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
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.
I am writing this weekly recap while on a flight to Chicago. I won't be able to do the video version, so hopefully this text version will do. I am on my way to Chicago for Search Engine Strategies 2009. SES is actually when I started this site, six years ago on December 2nd. We have written over 10,000 stories here since and almost 2,000 in the past year alone.
On the search front, Google's Caffeine index finally made it to a data center. Google added a site performance report to Webmaster Tools to show off page speed. Google also confirmed a Sitelinks bug where you can link to a competitor. On the user interface front, Google decided to go with the fade in home page. They are showing more breadcrumbs as site URLs. They also are using larger images in the search results and region tags for some of the results. Bing went offline for the first time in their short history, it latest for 30 minutes. Bing Maps showed Google they can compete by adding street views and augmented reality. There are stories that Yahoo has begun unbanning web sites from their index. Google AdSense banned a publisher for copyright infringement over their own copyright. Finally, there are tons of more AdWords bans going on right now - I called it the Big Ban of December. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Select Topics For This Past Week:
Misc:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
Bing went offline for about 30 minutes. I captured a screen shot of Microsoft's search engine having issues about mid-way through. Here it is:
TechCrunch said it was down for about 30 minutes. Twitter was buzzing about the news, and there were threads at Bing Community & WebmasterWorld.
Bing tweeted when they came back online:
This may be the first time that Bing.com has been down in its relatively short history.
Forum discussion at Bing Community & WebmasterWorld.
Update: Bing blog has a post on this.
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.
Back in October, Google began testing the fade in home page and they tried several variations over the course of the time. Google has finally decided to go ahead with this look and feature for simplistically purposes.
The Google blog announced it last night. They admitted some of those tests were failures and they even admitted they were worried making this the default look. Here is how Marissa phrased it:
All in all, we ran approximately 10 variants of the fade-in. Some of the experiments hindered the user experience: for example, the variants of the homepage that hid the search buttons until after the fade performed the worst in terms of user happiness metrics. Other variants of the experiment produced humorous outcomes when combined with our doodles — the barcode doodle combined with the fade was particularly ironic in its overstated minimalism. However, in the end, the variant of the homepage we are launching today was positive or neutral on all key metrics, except one: time to first action. At first, this worried us a bit: Google is all about getting you where you are going faster — how could we launch something that potentially slowed users down? Then, we realized: we want users to notice this change... and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed.
Here is a picture of the fade in choice selected:
So they kept the search buttons there right away. But many still hate it, I have at least five recent threads with lots of complaints about this new look. I'll link to them below.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Google announced two changes to the search results. The first is larger images in the search results for some searches and the second is region tags in the search results. Let me explain both.
The larger images may show up in the search results, when Google thinks an image should be highlighted. For example, the before and after:
Before:
After:
Google also announced a new regional tag that will show up in certain situations in the Google search results. The region tags tell the searcher that the site is from a specific country or region. This region tag will only show on about 1% of the search results, Google said. And they have to meet these criteria:
We currently show region tags only for certain domains such as .com and .net where the location information would otherwise be unclear. We don't show region tags for results on domains like .br for Brazil, because the location is already implied by the green URL line in our default display. In addition, we only display region tags when the region supplied by the site owner is different from the domain where the search was entered.
Here is a picture:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Microsoft made buzz yesterday with the announcements on the Bing Maps blog and Bing Search Blog.
Greg Sterling explains it well at Search Engine Land as "Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google."
The augmented reality comes in where Microsoft overlays data on those maps in a more social way. Microsoft explains:
Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally “stitch” together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.
The screen shots at the various blogs are neat, the only downside is the requirement to install Silverlight (I am a mac user). For more coverage of this, see Techmeme.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
Is it possible that Yahoo is unbanning web sites from Yahoo Search after years of being in the penalty box? A single post by an old time member at WebmasterWorld claims that two of his sites are now back in the Yahoo index after years.
He said:
Just noticed today two of our sites that were previously banned in Yahoo for 2+ years are now receiving traffic once again from Yahoo and are being reindexed. Anybode else noticing their sites being reindexed? Traffic was first noticed on the 25th of November.
Did anyone else notice that their sites that were banned from Yahoo is now back?
Again, this is a single post from one webmaster - so I am trying to see if this is a single incident or a larger one. Please join the thread or comment here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Yesterday, Google adjusted their First Click Free program and wrote about it at both the Google Webmaster Central Blog and the Google News Blog.
In the past, the first click free program allowed you to show subscription content to Google even if you required users to login. The only requirement was that when users clicked from Google to the article, they should be able to see the content without having to pay or login. After that first click from Google, you can require them to login. The only issue was that anyone wanting to see any article on a paid subscription site, would simply go to Google and click over to the article from Google to the site to get it for free.
Google adjusted their policy to allow publishers to limit the clicks to the "five free accesses per user each day." So after five clicks, the publisher can decide to require that user to login. Google does not determine how to calculate or code the first five free accesses per user, and leaves it up to the webmaster to figure out. So that means you will have some publishers who are more lax on that rule, allowing more than five and some might allow up to five in whatever 24 hour period they decide. Do they use cookies, IPs, or something else to track that access, that is up to the webmaster/publisher.
The first click free program is old, it dates back past 2007 or further, as far as I know. In mid-2008, there was confusion if it could be used in web search as well and the ultimate decision is that is applies both to News and Web search.
For more technical details on this program, click here.
Forum discussion at Google News Help and WebmasterWorld.
Yesterday, we highlighted a Google Suggest result for I Am Extremely Terrified Of Chinese People. Today, I spotted a new one via Google Web Search Help forums, where someone noticed that if you type in to Google, [little kids], Google then suggests the following results:
Here is a screen shot:
Jem from Google appreciated the report and said:
Thanks for reporting this to me -- I'll take a look.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Update: I am glad to see Google removed these suggestions soon after I wrote about them.
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.
Did you know that the first conference we ever covered here was SES Chicago and that back six years ago in 2003? Since then we covered this conference every year but last. And we will be covering SES Chicago 2009 this year. For our past years coverage see SES Chicago 2003, SES Chicago 2004, SES Chicago 2005, SES Chicago 2006 and SES Chicago 2007. Next week, Monday, December 7th starts SES Chicago 2009.
We have several volunteers that will be helping with the live blog coverage on the CoverItLive tool. They include Brian Ussery aka Beussery, Marty Weintraub from aimClear, Chris Boggs of Rosetta and myself.
Here is our coverage schedule, which is subject to change at the last minute:
Monday, December 7 - Day 1
9:00am-10:15am
Jeff Jarvis, Author of What Would Google Do? covered by Barry Schwartz
10:30am-11:30am
Mixed Media SERPs covered by Barry Schwartz
Search Analytics covered by Brian Ussery
Search Industry Today covered by Chris Boggs
11:45am-12:45pm
How to Turn Your Web Analytics Into a Money-Making Machine covered by Brian Ussery
Search: Where to Next? covered by Chris Boggs
1:45pm-2:45pm
Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers covered by Barry Schwartz
3:15pm-4:15pm
SEO Through Blogs & Feeds covered by Barry Schwartz
Search and the Integrated Marketing Mix covered by Chris Boggs
4:30pm-5:30pm
Customer Insights via Search Engine Tools covered by Chris Boggs & Marty Weintraub
Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production - Ethical? Does It Matter? covered by Barry Schwartz
Tuesday, December 8 - Day 2
10:30am-11:45am
Developments in Information Retrieval on the Web covered by Brian Ussery & Marty Weintraub
Social Media Checklist covered by Barry Schwartz
1:00pm-2:15pm
Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday's News covered by Barry Schwartz & Marty Weintraub
Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins covered by Brian Ussery
2:30pm-3:45pm
Igniting Viral Campaigns covered by Barry Schwartz
4:15pm-5:30pm
How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively With Your IT Department to Achieve Business Goals covered by Chris Boggs
Turning Simple Change into Big Profit covered by Brian Ussery
Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality - It's a Brave New World! covered by Barry Schwartz
Wednesday, December 9 - Day 3
9:00am-10:00am
Keynote: Dan Siroker, Former Deputy New Media Director, Obama Transition Team and Founder, CarrotSticks covered by Barry Schwartz
10:30am-11:45am
PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle covered by Chris Boggs & Barry Schwartz
12:45pm-2:00pm
Facebook Rockstars RoundTable: Marketing For the Other Internet covered by Barry Schwartz & Brian Ussery
2:30pm-3:45pm
Search Becomes the Display OS covered by Barry Schwartz
For those that will be there, I look forward to seeing you. For those that cannot make it, I hope we are covering the sessions you most want to hear about.
If you visit Google, Yahoo or Ask.com today, you will see they are all honoring World AIDS Day with a red bow on their logo or on their home page. Bing, AOL, DogPile and others seem to be missing the mention today (we may put something up later).
Google has a ribbon under the search box which links to google.org/world-aids-day-2009.html (yes, Google.org):
Yahoo has an animated logo which links to yahoo.com/worldaidsday/:
Flash Version:
Static Version:
Ask.com is the only one linking to a search result (go figure):
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
If you go to Google.com and just type in [I am] Google will then offer as the third suggestion, "I Am Extremely Terrified Of Chinese People" as a search suggestion. This is not new, it was reported back in February. But back then, you had to type in [I am extremely] to get this search suggestion, now all you need is [I am] to return the search suggestion.
Here is a screen capture:
Yes, Google's search suggestions are completely algorithmic. But Google has been known to remove search suggestions - unlike their policy for not removing search results.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
There seems to be a major Google update going on, some suspect it is Caffeine related while others do not. Google said comment spam can hurt you bad. Rich snippets are now showing in other Google properties, such as Google UK and Canada. Don't waste your time with a banned domain. Bing and News Corp try to team up to bait Google on indexing their content. Is Bing now handling 301 redirects properly? If you are banned in AdWords, you likely will never be unbanned. Google opened product ads to all U.S. advertisers and then showed off all their new ad styles. Google Maps bug removed the local pack for web design like searches. Google AdSense bug showed weird HTML characters in the ads. Google is testing related search results in the top navigation bar. The Michelle Obama racist image reappeared and Google could not remove it, so they placed an ad as to why not. Finally, we posted all the Thanksgiving logos from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com, Bing, Dogpile and others - so check it out. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Search Topics of Discussion:
Google SEO:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
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.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, it is my favorite holiday. As you can imagine, the search news (as in all news) will be slow today, so here is a look at today's special logos, themes and designs from our industry. We have logos from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Ask and others in the search industry. For the past years logos, see 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 logos.
Here are 2009's Thanksgiving Day Logos:
Google:
Yahoo (Flash):
AOL (Flash):
Search Engine Roundtable (us):
Again, For the past years logos, see 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 logos.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
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.
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.
In this week's search video recap, I try a new format, breaking the news up in segments - do let me know if you like it. I am sorry the video is so long, just lots of information to cover. We start with Google's new user interface that is now being seen by some searchers - it is pretty jazzy. Google is showing breadcrumbs instead of URLs in the search results on occasion. Google is testing Image Swirl, it is pretty tasty. Google Social Search labs is now back in action after going offline. Page load time will be a ranking factor in 2010. Is Google's Caffeine index live in a data center? Why did FeedBurner ruin the search engine friendly web? Did Google preform a hand change to the index for Michelle Obama? Microsoft Bing is updating now. Bing UK when out of beta, was it too soon? AdWords goes on another banning spree - but they now have an appeals process. Check out all that Polish Google ad spam. Google no longer allows exceptions to their 35 character display URL limit. Google expanded their product ads beta. AdSense places gold stars near featured ads. I now have access to the new AdSense beta interface. Publishers are being banned over using Tamper Data as a Firefox plugin. Yahoo added a developing news box to some search results. Finally, Danny took us back to the first ever search marketing conference. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Search Topics of Discussion:
Google Search:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
Yesterday, Danny covered a new user interface Google is testing on about 2% of their users right now. The interface is known internally (actually, it is not named this internally, but the name is catchy, so maybe we should use it?) as the Jazz UI and is much more colorful, has streamlined search options and kind of looks like the the old Ask 3D interface, just a bit. This new UI might be launched after the holiday season to everyone, so be ready.
Danny wrote (but read the all the details, if you will):
Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz.
There are some people who actually see the new interface. There are two thread at Google Web Search Help, one with screen captures, which prove to me they see it. Here are those screen captures:
This person simply asked, "can anyone help me get Google's regular look back?" The other comment reads:
I did a search a couple minutes ago and it seems like they changed their user interface to look more like a Bing or Yahoo search. For me this is a major fail because the beauty of Google was not only did it feel comfortable, it gave me a wide variety of options like the site links at the side of the page and the sposored links at the top of my search. I think Google should remain the way it was, maybe some minor tweaks but making it look sterile and utterly boring like Bing won't win fans. No other search engine has ever managed to knock Google off the top, so why are they downgrading to a less popular model?
Can't make everyone happy, now can you?
Forum discussion at Sphinn and Google Web Search Help.
There is some early discussion over at WebmasterWorld that Microsoft Bing has updated their search index. Many webmasters are discussing changes in rankings in this and other forums (which are hard to link to).
Here is what WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster wrote:
Bing engineers may need to refine their trust algos. I'm seeing a SERP where Bing is giving a poor quality subdomain a pass because the main domain has a high amount of inbound links (nearly a million). I think Bings method for determining sites likely to be authoritative needs tweaking.
Interestingly, Bing produces another result not seen in the other search engines that is actually pretty good.
For this site, I can tell you Bing sends up more traffic than Yahoo.
The last Bing update we reported was in late October.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Yahoo announced they have added a developing news box that includes news articles, pictures, videos and also tweets.
Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story on the Yahoo! News Shortcut. Many of you are already familiar with the existing Yahoo! News Shortcut, which displays headlines on our Web search results page when you look for news stories. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches.
Here are some screen captures:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
About a week ago, Bing announced they have taken Bing UK (www.bing.co.uk) out of beta. They basically said, you can now get more relevant UK results when in the UK and searching in the UK. Here is a snippet from the blog post:
When you search for Football, what kind of answers do you expect to find. Well, I guess it depends on where you are doing the asking, if you are in the UK you probably don’t want to see NFL schedules. You probably mean what we in the US call soccer. Well today, millions of searchers in the UK can rest assured that Bing knows what they are talking about. We are excited to announce today that Bing in the UK is shedding its beta tag. We want to congratulate our pals over in the UK on a huge milestone.
A HighRankings Forum thread is taking issue with this. Two searchers from the UK were not satisfied with the localized version of Bing. They said:
I did a study yesterday and the example they provided (Football) still returns the NFL - something they said that the UK 'wouldn't be interested in'. The universal search results are even worse with US today results of 'American Football' being returned (and two images of an American Football).
You are certainly right, doesn't look like Bing UK has any UK inteligence, I just did a simple search for the word 'analyse' , and the no.1 result returned was spelt with a 'z' , looks like Bing has a long, long way to go yet eh Andy!
I personally tried a search for football in Bing.com and Bing.co.uk and I am seeing tailored results for each region. Yes, NFL.com comes up in the UK, but not in the top result. Since I am not from the UK, it is hard for me to judge.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
Yesterday, Danny Sullivan wrote an article named 10 Years Ago: The First Search Marketing Conference, A Retrospective. The article is a must read for everyone who is a daily reader of this site.
In short, Danny talks about how the first search marketing conference came about. He also talks about the various sessions they hosted then. Including many of the panelists who still talk today at his conferences. Yes, the first conference in search marketing was in 1999 and Google's founders were on a panel as the "small search engine."
While the agenda listed Larry Page as speaking, Sergey was also there. He either joined Larry or replaced him at the last minute. Some conference veterans remember how Sergey rollerskated on stage. Actually, he did that a year later, joking about new Google technologies and demoing his shoes with pop-out wheels.
We didn't start covering search conferences until 2003, four years after the first search conference. Wow, has the time flown by and has this industry changed or has it?
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
A week or so ago, we reported that a search in Google images for Michelle Obama returned a racist image. The image was offensive, racist and has been removed from the search results - which is what I was hoping for. But Google responded to the thread and explained that they normally do not change the search results unless:
(1) It violates our Webmaster Guidelines
(2) If Google believes they are required to do so by law
(3) Or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the image
I am not sure if this image fell under any of those three conditions. Google was not clear if it did, nor did they specifically say which this case fell under. I don't think it violated the Webmaster Guidelines, I don't think the image was "illegal," and I doubt the webmaster asked to have the image taken down. I can be wrong on all of these points, but I am not sure.
Here is Google's full response:
If you recently used Google Images to search for the term [ Michelle Obama ], you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the image in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google.
As with Google Web Search, ranking in Google Images results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query.
Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results, or images from our Google Images results, simply because the content is in very poor taste or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the image, page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the image.
We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google Images and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it. We will continue to improve the product based on your feedback to make sure that users find the most useful, relevant images through Google Images.
-Jem
Am I missing something? Why did Google take it down? Did the White House force them to by making it a legal matter? Maybe the site was indeed in violation of the webmaster guidelines? The site itself is still live, so I am not sure.
Google is clear that they do not remove offensive, racist or anti-semitic from the search results. I am just confused in this case. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely happy the result was removed - but was this only done because she is the First Lady?
Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.
Jaime from Google reminds us in a Google Web Search Help thread about a 1.5 month old search option feature Google added, named "More shopping sites." Basically, if you conduct a search on Google, click on "search options" and then click on "More shopping sites" Google will try to show you results from sites selling things.
Here is a picture:
This kind of reminds me of Yahoo Mindset, a tool Yahoo created a while back allowing people to change the type of search results from shopping to research with a slider. Here is an old picture of the slider:
Now, personally, I'll probably stick with using Google to research products and then once I find the sku, use both Google, specialized shopping search engines and Bing Cashback to find the best deal.
Happy Holidays!
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
Ask Google who is the failure and you will see Google showing the first result as whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama.
Yes, a "Google Bomb" on President Obama and the White House. Google has to run their bomb defuse algorithm, which by the way has two algorithms to fix this issue. Just like they did for miserable failure and failure bombs.
The best place to see all the history on these types of presidential Google Bombs is at Search Engine Land.
This search was first sent to me last week by @suzukik.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
October 26th, Google launched a new labs product called Google Social Search. It is basically the only labs product I left on, by default, for my Google searches - it is that cool.
Over the weekend, I like many many others, noticed a Google notice that Social Search was "no longer available" as a Google experimental option. We all currently get this error:
There are many complaining about it on the blogs, Twitter and in the Google Web Search Help thread. So I emailed Google, asking what is up and they said:
The Google Social Search experiment is temporarily down. We are working on it and expect to restore access sometime Monday or Tuesday.
So expect this feature to return back sometime today or tomorrow. Honestly, this is a feature that I doubt Google will ever completely terminate.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
In this weeks recap, I act all tired and dazed from coming off a red eye from Las Vegas and doing the video at 8am in the morning, with maybe 20 minutes of sleep. Of course I talked about our PubCon coverage, about 40 sessions covered live. Google shut down the Google Caffeine Sandbox and is pushing it out to a single data center soon. Google enhanced the keyword report in Webmaster Tools. MSNBot is having issues respecting the crawl delay directive. Bing added the awesome Wolfram Alpha data. Google Maps has a pornography issue. Are rich snippets being displayed in Google for smaller sites? The AdWords team did a help and tip photo shoot, they also backed a cake for the one year birthday. There is some fake Matt Cutts ban spam that is not real. We also have logos for Veterans Day, Sesame Street and Berlin Wall to show you. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Some Of The Topics Discussed:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
If you conduct a search in Google Images for [Michelle Obama] you will see a racist image in the number one result. The image is hosted on buzzoverm.blogspot.com and here is a copy of the search result:
Someone reported this at a Google Web Search Help thread, but no Googler has responded as of yet.
I assume after Google sees this post, it will be removed soon.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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.
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.
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.
Seven days ago, we reported on a Bing Search index update that many began noticing. Well, it seems like the WebmasterWorld thread has been updated by a webmaster that watches Bing closely.
This webmaster has noticed a totally new update on Bing and the Bing search results. The webmaster, textex, said:
I am seeing and even different set of results now. We improved nicely in rankings only to drop down to page 2-3. Anyone else seeing this?
Have you noticed a change from last week to this week on Bing? And traffic changes? Any ranking differences?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Yesterday, we showed you a video demo of Google's Social Search. Well, now it is available for all to play with in google.com/experimental.
Personally, I think this can work well for my searchers. But for most of those who do not have Google Profiles set up, it likely won't add much. Google currently promises to only look at information you give to them via your Google Profile or via Gmail. For Google to know who your Twitter connections are, you need to share that information on your Google Profile. Then Google will crawl your social profiles and make a map of all your friends, and associate what they read in Google Reader, share, click on and produce with you, when you search.
Here are two videos explaining it all:
Here is a useful Google help document and Google Blog post, plus Danny's article and more commentary at Techmeme.
Of course, there are some worried that Google will go beyond their boundaries and figure out your social profile without you specifically sharing it. Google said they won't, but many don't trust Google.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.
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.
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.
This week was pretty busy over at the Search Engine Roundtable. We broke the news Google has dropped PageRank data from Webmaster Tools and we hope from more places. Yahoo was wrong about the meta keywords tag, they still use it. Yahoo dropped the controversial paid inclusion program. Microsoft Bing has major bugs preventing people from using their Webmaster Tools for over 3 days. Google launched a labs area for Webmaster Tools, adding Fetch as Googlebot and Malware Details. Did Google Suggest just get smarter and start figuring out abbreviations? Google Maps dropped Tele Atlas for their own data in the U.S. Google now only shows 7 of 10 local results in the "ten pack" on web search. Beware of a Google AdSense "account disabled" phishing email that is going around. AVG has labeled some of the Google search results as a security threat. Google thinks Ireland is New Zealand. Google reported earnings, revenue up 7 percent, clicks up 14 percent and cost per click was down 6 percent. A person lost their unemployment check of $405 per week for earning a dollar a day with Google AdSense. A site is conning convicts into paying $50 to remove their name from their web site, which ranks high for their names in Google. 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:
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Some Of The Topics Discussed:
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 released third-quarter earnings last night and it was a very good earnings release. Overall, Google's earnings are up 7% this past quarter compared to last years Q3. They earned $5.94 billion in revenue with operating income at $2.07 billion, or 35% of revenues. Greg Sterling has more of the business news at Search Engine Land.
Pulling out two snippets from the release, we see that search marketings are more spend conscious because the cost per click went down by 6%. But to make up for it, Google saw an increase in the actual number of clicks on their ads by 14%. Here is that part of the earnings release:
Paid Clicks - Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 14% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2009.
Cost-Per-Click - Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, decreased approximately 6% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 5% over the second quarter of 2009.
GOOG, the stock, is currently up over 3% in pre-market (after hours) trading.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
It is true, Yahoo is dropping paid inclusion by years end, as I reported at Search Engine Land. Yahoo issued a statement, I'll cut out the part where they say they are committed to search and show you the relevant part:
Yahoo! will exit Search Submit at the end of 2009. Yahoo! is providing those advertisers affected by the decision a sufficient lead time to assist in the transition. In addition, Yahoo! has recently announced a series of important enhancements to its Search advertising business and will work closely with many Search Submit advertisers to provide them with search solutions that will benefit their businesses.
There has always been confusion over the paid inclusion program at Yahoo. In fact, it changed names a few times. There were reports that banned sites were able to be included in Yahoo via this program. Like I said at Search Engine Land, accepting money to be included in a free/unbiased search engine, just seems wrong.
I for one think this is a good move, although I know many SEOs who love this program.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.
Last week, I reported that Yahoo dropped the meta keywords tag and stopped using it completely. Remember, I told you that I wasn't convinced when I heard that and I asked the Senior Director of Search at Yahoo if he was sure? Well, he said he was, but in reality, he was mistaken.
Danny and others have confirmed that Yahoo is still using the meta keywords tag when ranking. People have set up test sites that show this to be the case. Danny received an official statement from Yahoo on how they use this meta keywords tag, which they do use:
What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.
Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words. Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.
However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.
I am not sure why I didn't originally believe it. It was not like I had proof at the time. In any event, we are all human and we make mistakes. Search representatives are often seen as the single authority on SEO related questions, but in reality, they cannot know everything and are human, like you and me.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
A Google Web Search Help thread has several Google users reporting that the AVG Free virus scanner is prompting security alerts on some of the Google search results pages.
Many are claiming the Google result pages with YouTube results are triggering the security threat. The AVG warning reads:
Danger: AVG Search-Shield has detected active threats on this page and has blocked access for your protection.
Several searchers reported this but I doubt there is much Google can do to fix the situation. It seems like this would be on AVG's side.
Again, it seems to come up only when YouTube or other video results would show up in the search results.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
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 for Google Ireland in Google and you will notice that Google does not return Google.ie but rather returns Google.co.nz.
Someone should send Google a memo that Ireland is not the same place as New Zealand.
Here is a picture:
Ireland is only about 12,000 miles away from New Zealand.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help & Google Webmaster Help.
Update: This is not just Google Ireland, but also Google Egypt and other properties where Google thinks they are all New Zealand.
It kind of makes you wonder how important Bing Webmaster Tools is to Microsoft when it takes them over three days to fix a bug that completely makes the tools unusable.
Monday morning, we reported that Bing Webmaster Tools had an unexpected error which disallowed webmasters from accessing any of their verified domains. Many threads and complaints in the Bing forums, amongst others, were created.
It took two days for the Bing forum representative to acknowledge the bug in the forums. Brett Yount posted a thread at the Bing Community over two days after the first report of the bug. He said:
As you are probably aware, the tools are currently down. We are working to correct this ASAP.
Then finally, yesterday at around 10am, three days after the first report of the bug, Microsoft fixed the issue. Here is what Brett said:
I just verified that the tools are running again. Though I can't get into specifics, it looks like the problem was caused by an update to the search index. Needless to say, we are working to make sure more issues such as this do not happen in the near future.
Got that, an update to the search index caused this bug. So there was a search index update that seemed to go unnoticed for the most part. Well, there are some minor threads discussing some issues with the new index, but for the most part, it went unnoticed. That update, caused Webmaster Tools to fail and it took over three days for Microsoft to fix it.
Forum discussion at Bing Community.
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.
Michael Gray noticed that a search for [Perez Hilton] in Microsoft's search engine, Bing, returns a set of pictures and a single search result (perezhilton.com). Here is a screen shot:
The question is why is Bing hiding everything else? They show tons of results for [Paris Hilton] and other 'celebrities,' why not Perez?
Stefan Weitz from the Bing team commented on Michael's blog saying it is by design. He said:
Yes – that is by design. However, if you click on the “see other results containing Perez Hilton” the rest of the algo web results appear. We carefully monitor these “Best Match” results to make sure we aren’t firing this result type too frequently – let us know if you have feedback!
Yes, you can click on the Search for other results containing Perez Hilton to bring up standard web results. But why show only the "best match" when there are plenty of other great matches?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
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.
The Google Mobile team is calling this week, "Google Mobile Week." In celebration for the special week, Google announced in a Google Mobile Help thread that they are accepting a new set of questions for the Google Mobile team to answer on their blog.
To submit your questions or vote on existing ones, go to this page, sign in and vote and submit.
Bin from the Google Mobile team explained:
Google is doing a lot of things in mobile - a lot of products on a lot of phones - and we're sure you have some questions. Here's your chance to ask us anything you'd like to know about mobile strategy or our mobile team! You and others can then vote questions up or down. (Please continue to post your "how do I?" questions and bugs here, since we won't be answering these types of questions on the Q&A form).
You have until 11:59 PM PST on Oct 13th (that is tonight) to submit your questions. Google will answer the 5 most popular questions on the Google Mobile Blog in the near future.
Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google has been banning AdWords advertisers and warning advertisers of bans for low quality landing pages, but I think something is wrong with Google. Google fixed a low share of voice AdWords bug. Google has an image search update in September 2009. Google updated their search options with neat new filters. Google confirmed adding deeper links and named them forum Sitelinks. Bing added a link to their Visual Search on their home page. Google updated their site verification process in Webmaster Tools. Did the Google Sandbox exist? We polled our users on that. Google launched Merchant Center to help with Google Base product uploads. Google might add tons of ads to Google Maps. Google Maps got foggy over New Delhi. The fake Yahoo employee is real, but might not have Yahoo's approval to post. Google celebrated their 11th birthday on September 27th. Google celebrated also Confucius' birthday with a doodle and Gandhi's birthday with a doodle. 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 or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play & hit "HD."
Some Of The Topics Discussed:
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Google announced they have added some search refinements to the various Google search properties. The additions include past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news. To see them yourself, do a search on Google and then click "Show options" at the top.
Danny Sullivan goes through these changes in detail over here, so I won't bother with that.
Some Google users are a bit taken back and confused by the changes. One frequent Google News searcher was confused in a Google News Help thread as to where certain features were, when in reality, they were just moved. But overall, I think the additional filters and refinements are useful.
Jaime at Google posted a thread at the Google Web Search Help thread asking for comments and feedback on these new changes.
Forum discussion at Google News Help and Google Web Search Help.
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.
15 days ago, Bing launched visual search, if you haven't heard about it, click the link and watch the video demo.
Today, people are noticing that Bing has added a link to visual search directly from the Bing home page. So I compared a Bing home page image I had from a month ago, to what I see there today, and I see Bing has added two new links. They added the visual search link and also a link to "more."
Here is a picture from September 1st, ignore the arrow, just focus on the links on the left:
Here is a picture from today:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
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.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google's Mayer announced last night that the search box's size was increased. The box is bigger, the text when you type is bigger and the search suggestions are bigger. Honestly, I am surprised we did not spot Google testing this on the public, but we didn't.
There is a lot of discussion around this. Tedster at WebmasterWorld is with me on this and feels Google never really tested it (or else he or I would have seen it or someone reporting that Google is testing this). Some find the new look to be immature and worse off than the previous look.
Robert Charlton has some measurements:
OLD SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 43 px
- width of search box = 366 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.7%
NEW SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 54 px
- width of search box = 483 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.2%
Another person asked if this might lead to "more long-tail searches."
Anyway, as I said, most people are not too happy about the change - at least those voicing their opinion. Personally, I barely notice it.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.
Googler, Jem, started a thread at Google Web Search Help asking the forum members to list out some of their favorite search features.
The ones listed so far include:
* [4 miles per 30 minutes in minutes per mile]:
* [intitle:"index of" beatles ( mp3 | wma | mid )]:
My favorite queries are mostly site: command related, when I want to find content on specific web sites. I do however greatly miss inquisitor, the search toolbar, that allows me to save advanced search queries, so I can run them quickly. Snow Leopard totally removed the ability to run these types of plugins in Safari.
What is your favorite search feature?
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago.
We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log files with fake referrers. But I am seeing a new report that the log files are showing Microsoft Bing IP addresses in them but without referrer data.
An updated Bing Forum thread has one webmaster explaining the situation:
Unfortunately, the problem is back in another shape!
I have almost the same number of fake referrer hits from bing but in a different shape: no referrer. So, the stats show me the pages visited, no referrer and the IPs (microsoft's) are like: 65.55.110.21, 65.55.110.110, 65.55.107.196
So this does not generate fake keyword referrer data, but it does spike up Bing's referrer traffic for specific pages. That is assuming the webmaster who posted this is correct.
Forum discussion at Bing Forum.
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.
A Google Webmaster Help thread has an interesting discussion around blocking your site from coming up for both visitors and search engine crawlers on Shabbat (the Jewish Saturday). This is not a new topic, we discussed using cloaking for religious Shabbat purposes in the past.
In short, some observant Jews do not want their site to be accessible on Shabbat, which is sundown Friday night, to nightfall Saturday night. The issue on the SEO front is if you turn off your site, then what happens to the search engine crawlers? Do they get 404 pages and drop your site from the search index?
Phil Payne posted an answer to how one can handle this, which Googler JohnMu said was a good answer. Phil said:
Yes - a 503 is the correct server response for "We're closed". If you substitute a normal HTML page saying "We're closed" and serve a 200 it's very likely to get indexed by Google.If you give the Googlebot a 503, it will just go away and come back later without indexing what you give it.
For humans, you can serve a custom 503 page that explains the situation. Are there no other Orthodox sites you can ask, to see how they do it?
Now, Friday night here, is not the same as Friday night by you. So detecting the location of a visitor is key here. There are services like Saturday Guard that do this for you, but I am not sure how they handle search bots.
Technically, the issue, as far as I understand it (I am not a Rabbi, but I am an observant Jew) is that they do not want to earn money on Shabbat or Jewish holidays. Some hold that since the money doesn't transfer from the merchant account to the bank that day, then there is no money being earned technically that day. But some do not hold that way or some want to be extra careful. If it is a matter of money, then just turn off the "add to cart" and shopping cart features for the site.
If they do not want any activity on their site by potential customers, then I guess a 503 is a good answer. But are search engine bots customers? No. I suspect, most Rabbis would be okay with spiders or automated crawlers using the site on Shabbat. The issue then is, are you allowed to serve up a 503 page to a visitor and not to a crawler - that might be against Google's terms of service and fall within the bad cloaking policies.
If the issue is about the server actually working on Shabbat. Then a 503 cannot really be served up at all, because you would technically need to power down the server and without a server to send the 503 response code - then you got nothing.
This is a complex issue that I personally never had to deal with on sites that we have built. But it would be interesting to see what to do in the case of turning off a web server. There isn't much Google can do here.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Over the past few weeks, I have been noticing threads pop up in the Bing forums with complaints from webmasters that Bing's bot, aka MSNBot is not honoring their robots.txt directives.
It was not just one thread, but at least four. They include one from yesterday over here, one started on September 3rd over here, one from September 1 over here and one started on August 25th over here.
I ignored the first three, trying to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. Hoping it is a webmaster issue or someone spoofing MSNBot. But four threads on the same topic, all within a few weeks of each other does stand out as a possible issue.
I have personally not confirmed the issue, since I have no interest in blocking MSNBot from crawling any parts of my sites - but others don't like Bing as much as I do.
Forum discussion at Bing Forums here, here, here and over here.
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.
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of promoting the fact that you rank number one in a search engine for an important keyword. Does it make sense, in some cases or any case, to promote the fact that you are the top result in Google, Yahoo or Bing?
Clearly, if you are an SEO company and you need to show your results to prospects, it would be wise to show off your success. But do you plaster the specific search terms you rank well for on your web page for all to see?
If you are a web site that ranks number one for blue widgets, do you flaunt the fact on your web site? Or do you keep it under the radar? I would assume your competitors already know, so does it hurt? Can it help if you promote that fact to your potential customers?
As you can see, there are many variables mentioned here and many I have not mentioned.
What do you think? Is it wise to show off your success or are you asking for a beat down? Take our poll:
Should You Show Off Your Success With Search Rankings?(polls)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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.
A thread at WebmasterWorld has a webmaster who is getting a bit nervous that the 301 redirects he set up for a site won't be the best bet in the long run for his end goals. In summary, his original URL was doing "great" in both Google and Bing, with number 3 and 1 rankings, respectively. But about a month ago, he did a 301 redirect and the rankings have not recovered. He wants to know if he should reverse the 301 and go back to the previous state.
Excellent question and something that SEOs and webmasters struggle with all the time. If you have a well-ranking web site, but you need to move URLs, should you do a 301 or look for a way to keep the URL. The answer is not always in the control of the webmaster, but when it is, it is always a painstaking decision to make.
The question here is, after a month in place, should you reverse a 301 redirect? I like the response from senior WebmasterWorld member, willybfriendly, who said:
From my experience it will take a minimum of 3-4 months. Redirecting an entire successful site as you did is not for the faint of heart.
Going back to the old site will in all likelihood only increase the time it takes to get your rankings back. If you are confident that your original reason for moving was sound, then I would advise you stay true to your conviction.
It will probably get worse before it gets better if it has only been a month now. But, assuming you have done it right, it will get better...
I would likely agree with this statement. Stick to your guns, at this point in time, if possible. If after three months, things don't look good, then maybe there is another issue with the new domain.
What would you do?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
SEOMoz published a revised version of their Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. They had 72 contributors complete a long survey, including myself, answering questions specific to ranking in search engines. I am not going to bother summarizing all the details of the survey, you can read them at SEOMoz in a concise fashion.
I thought it would be fun to run a poll on this survey, asking our readers, how accurate do you find this SEOMoz survey?
How Accurate Is the SEOMoz Search Ranking Survey?(online surveys)
Please take the poll, the responses should be interesting.
Forum discussion at Sphinn and SEOMoz.
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.
Many sites feature a way to print a page of your site in a printer friendly view, by removing many of the ads, removing a lot of the navigation and so on. The issue with this, in some cases, is that webmasters creating a new URL with the same content, causing a duplicate content issue on the SEO front.
In the past, the solution was to call these printer friendly URLs in a non-search engine friendly manner, i.e. through JavaScript. But now that many search engines can find URLs within JavaScript, you can run into an issue with this method.
The best solution is to use a printer friendly CSS template. This will ensure that the URL is the same, no matter what view is given to the user or search engine. If you cannot create a CSS template for printer friendly versions of the page, then the next best thing to do is exclude those printer friendly URLs (i.e. the duplicate URLs) with a robots.txt file.
One person asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread, can they use the newish rel=canonical link element to redirect search engines to the main URL, so they pass the link equity? Googler, JohnMu, said you shouldn't. He said, "I don't think using the rel=canonical link element would be that valid here, since the two pages do look pretty differently (they're not really interchangeable canonicals)."
Let me show you a real life example of what we did on RustyBrick.com, my real business (outside of this blogging stuff, which is just a hobby for me).
In the past, we had a print URL for each page of the site, generated through JavaScript. It worked well in the past, the search engines ignored that JavaScript and it was rarely found in the Google or other search indexes. Now, you can clearly see Google indexed both URLs:
On Thursday, we launched a redesign for the RustyBrick site, a redesign and technology upgrade nine-years in the making. Part of that was to fix this issue.
In addition to that, we created a neat mobile template, which uses the useragent to change the CSS (not the URL) when you access the site on most mobile devices. And our print pages are also using the same URL and look pretty good.
Here are pictures of the same URL on a desktop web browser, on an iPhone and as a print friendly page:
Desktop Version:
Mobile Version:
Print Version:
There are some things we still need to clean up with this design and our templates, but for the most part, I am happy with the look, feel and search engine friendliness of the new site.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Oh, and to comment on the new design, go to my blog post at the RustyBrick Blog and comment there.
Over a week ago, a WebmasterWorld thread reported that Google was testing a new form of Sitelinks. These sitelinks didn't link to different URLs, but instead, linked to the same URL but with anchors (i.e. # signs at the end of the URL, which drop you down to a section on the same web page).
I skipped past the thread, not understanding it as a new feature, until I spotted a post from Google Operating System blog detailing the difference.
For example, a search for [charles darwin] shows a Wikipedia listing with those special sitelinks, here is a picture:
The links send you to, for example, [en.wikipedia.org] which anchors you down to that section of the page.
As I noted at Search Engine Land, Yahoo has been doing this for a while with their quick links.
The big SEO question is, how to you get these types of sitelinks on your pages in the search results? Does adding anchor links to pages, where it makes sense, help? I assume so, but this needs to be proven.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
In this week's recap, Google began forcing even more advertisers into the new AdWords interface, some are not happy. Microsoft said they fixed the one word query fake referrers issue, again. We have listed several tools to compare Google Caffeine's index to the current index. Google Caffeine seems to be running off of Google's new file system - do we care? Bing's search results are showing up in Google. Google News now recrawls articles within 12 hours. Why do SEO experts get a bad rep? Matt Cutts gives two wonderful presentations, it is a must see. Also, Matt might be the new "hot guy" in the search industry. Did you catch the Google logo question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? That was this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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Some Of The Topics Discussed:
Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google seems to be indexing Bing search results. Take a look at this query and you will see some of the Google search results leading to Bing search results.
So I decided to check to see if Yahoo, Ask.com or even Bing themselves were doing the same. It seems like Ask.com is also doing this, but Yahoo and Bing are not indexing Bing results.
Google doesn't like to see search results in search results so this is not common to see in Google.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A/B testing is the process of setting up two or more styles for a page, for the same piece of content. For example, let's say you had a page where you sold blue widgets and you wanted to try using a blue button versus a red button to buy the widget. What you can do is A/B test the two types of buttons against each other.
How would you accomplish this? Well, you can send 50% of your traffic to example.com/widget.html?button=red and the other 50% to example.com/widget.html?button=blue and see which page converts better. But that can lead to duplicate content, i.e. the same URL, example.com/widget.html with three URLs for the same content. Or would it? Google and some search engines are smart enough to pick up on this. There are other ways to test this using JavaScript (potential cloaking issue?) or CSS or use Google Website Optimizer.
How would you handle it? That is the question asked in a WebmasterWorld thread. Honestly, I am not sure what the "best" method to handle this is. So please join the thread or comment here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
