The pulse of the search community

In this week's video recap, we discuss the July Google webmaster report, a lot has happened over the past 30 days. Google may have had a PageRank quirk. Google penalized the porn industry and then reversed it. Google is messing with international search filters. Many of you like the new Bing commercials. Bing tries real-time search with Twitter answers. Microsoft adCenter has a quality based ranking team. Google announces the new AdWords API, v2009. Google has payment issues with Australian AdSense publishers. Selling SEO before the site is developed, is not easy. Google insults their top forum help contributors. Have a wonderful July 4th 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 at hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• July 2009 Google Webmaster Report
• Google's Recent PageRank "Technical Quirk"?
• Google Search Spanks The Adult Porn Industry?
• Google Reverses Adult/Porn Site Penalties
• Searchers Want "Pages From [Country]," Google Might Drop It
• 60% Of Our Readers Like The Bing Commercials
• Bing Adds Tweets Answers But How Real Time Is It?
• Bing's Quality Based Ranking Team for adCenter
• Get Ready For The Google AdWords API v2009
• Google AdSense Australian Payments Not Being Issued
• Offering SEO Before The Site Is Developed
• Google's Support Forums Member Status Glitch

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.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: July 3, 2009"

We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks.

The overall theme is that there is a lot of ranking fluctuation taking place over the past few weeks. There are some rumors that Google has adjusted their link algorithm to look more at how "relevant" the link is to the page it is linking to. What exactly that means and if the rumor is true, is incredibly hard to validate. But the thread is getting a lot of traction and if you are noticing unstable shifts in Google for your search phrases, you might want to take a look at that thread.

Overall it has been a busy month, from adult sites being penalized and restored, to a couple PageRank updates and new Webmaster Tools features - Google has been up to a lot of things over the past 30 days. Here is a rundown of our Google specific coverage over the past thirty-days.

• Google's Recent PageRank "Technical Quirk"?
• Google Reverses Adult/Porn Site Penalties
• Google Search Spanks The Adult Porn Industry?
• June 2009 Google PageRank Update: Kind Of Early
• Why Google May Shorten Your Long URL in the SERPs
• Google Webmaster Tools Link Reports Change
• Google Finally Adds Domain Change Tool & Launches New Webmaster Tools Design
• Google Now Notifying Webmasters After Reconsideration Request Review via Email
• Google UK Search Shake Up - June 2009

For last month's report, see the June 2009 Google Webmaster Report.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It seems like there are several threads around the SEO forum space that have discussion on a recent PageRank update. Yes, even more recent then the June PageRank update.

There is a WebmasterWorld thread, a few DigitalPoint Forum threads and a few Google Webmaster Help threads. I will only link to two, but there are plenty out there.

In the Google Webmaster Help, Googler, JohnMu, replied to one webmaster saying that he/she should not worry about the last PageRank change because it was likely a "technical quirk."

The way John said it, made it sound like the error was on Google's side. Here is what John said:

You have a nice-looking site :). As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about.

So I am wondering if the recent PageRank update noticed by a small percentage of webmasters, was a technical bug on Google's front?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if DMOZ is still relevant in 2009? DMOZ is a legendary web directory and has a ton of history. But is it still a critical or what it ever a critical part of your overall SEO or link building strategy?

I don't often see discussions around DMOZ (Open Directory Project) these days. In the past, the SEO forums were more likely to have an active discussion around the value and tips for submitting to DMOZ. Nowadays, I don't see it too much.

So I decided to create a poll and hope to get some responses from you on how important DMOZ is to you, as an SEO. Here is the poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Shaun, aka Hobo, has released a 157 page PDF guide on SEO. You can download the book over here.

There are many SEO books out there, some free, some at a price. I would list some that I recommend, but I honestly don't want to leave any out. So I'll just list a few, but please don't be insulted if I don't list yours.

• Google SEO Guide (PDF)
• SEOmoz SEO Guide
• SEOBook.com (not sure if they still got the book)

Those are just a few and now we have this new one.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

There are some countries that simply do not like Google or they simply don't get along with Google. If you are in one of those countries and you try to access Google AdSense or possibly other properties, you may see a message from the provider.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a copy of that message. Here it is:

Unable to access AdSense homepage

A connection has been established between your current IP address and a country sanctioned by the U.S. government (for more information, see http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/ ).

We're unable to grant you access to the AdSense homepage at this time.

I personally never saw such a message, so when I saw a thread about it, I found it interesting.

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.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: July 2, 2009"

On June 30th, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5. On June 30th, we had the first complaints at Google AdWords Help that the Google AdWords interface was not supported in Firefox 3.5.

The error message being displayed to AdWords advertisers was:

Support for Firefox 3.5 is coming soon. Until then, please use an earlier version of Firefox when viewing the new interface.

Google fixed it a day later, and we have confirmed reports in that thread that the new AdWords interface is fully operational in Firefox 3.5. Oh, and by the way, it is also now working in Safari 4.0.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help .

We knew Google was going to discontinue the 800# call tracking feature "shortly after May 5, 2009." Well, it seemed to have continued to work, until yesterday.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports from one advertiser who religiously used these free 800#s that they no longer seem to work. He said:

At this moment it looks like the numbers are dead. If you were waiting to swap them out, do it right now. I am trying to confirm when they turned off. It has to be within the last 3 or 4 days.

It is a shame but maybe Google Voice will come up with 800# support soon. The call tracking was a nice feature, but there are plenty of companies that offer that as a paid service, if you really love it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

So Gabs spotted last week that Google was testing removing the "pages from UK" radio search button at Google UK. He was the only one I saw mention that until now, but I blogged it at Search Engine Land, because I knew it would come up again.

Today, I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help with complaints from some searchers that Google South Africa is no longer showing the radio button "pages from South Africa" only. They are pretty upset about Google dropping this. Keep in mind, it seems to be a limited test and Google might not go this route.

Here are some screen captures from Gabs:

Google UK With the Country Specific Filter:

Google UK without the Country Specific Filter:

To make up for the lack of the radio button, Google will add a link to the bottom of the search results page that shows: "Show only results for United Kingdom."

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion around a topic I can relate with. My company, RustyBrick, builds out custom web software and sites, including iPhone apps. I often get new customers coming to me with their request to build them a web site. They are clueless about SEO and honestly, don't have the time or care to learn about it.

So we build the site for them, whatever it might be (e-commerce, CMS, social networking, etc), to the best of our ability. It is incredibly search engine friendly, with all the nice link structure, proper coding, dynamic 301s, 404s, XML sitemaps, and so on. So they got themselves a nice search engine friendly web site without knowing it.

My company does not do the content development, we just build the code and the design and make a working site structure. So when it comes time for the client to build out unique, useful and superior content, in most cases, they do not. They either don't understand the value, are too lazy or too dumb.

Some get the whole SEO thing right away, but many do not. Many will come to me later and ask about ways to get traffic. I will then explain to them the whole SEO bit. If I see the client doesn't get it, I'd recommend they seek out an SEO company.

You see, for companies like mine that build sites up from scratch, it is not easy to explain the value in SEO, before the site has potential to get traffic. But for SEO companies to show value in a site that sits without traffic, it is a tad easier.

HighRanking moderator BBCoach said the same thing that I did. Do you find the same issue with new site builds and clients?

Forum discussion at HighRanking Forums.

It is amazing how many blogs are buzzing about Bing adding Twitter results for some "prominent and prolific Twitterers." It works by searching for name tweet/twitter or the @username.

So for example, @rustybrick returns my "latest" Tweet.

The thing is, I took this screen shot five minutes after making a new Tweet. Here is that new tweet:

So we know that Bing must pull from the public Twitter API, not in real time, but on set intervals. A lot of people are touting this Bing/Twitter search answer as "real time." If it was literally real time, the Bing search results that contain tweets would have the potential to fail too often. Twitter is known for their downtime and to pull Tweets in real time from the API can fail also. So clearly, Bing is storing these Tweets in a local data source and serving them up in close to real time, but not exactly real time.

FYI, it is now 10 minutes after tweeting and the tweet does not show up in Bing.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, if you viewed a video on YouTube in HD format, it would display in a large format. It would basically move down all the content on the right of the video and increase the video size to the full browse width. Here is a picture:

YouTube seemed to have changed it now. When you view a video in HD, it no longer increases the video size to the full width of the browser, instead it just keeps the current video size. Here is a picture:

I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it is being noticed by several YouTube viewers. A YouTube Help thread has a couple people complaining about the change.

The way to force the full width, is to append &hd=1 to the end of the URL, so for my last video recap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0tTyJG9SA&hd=1.

Also, YouTube has increased the file size limit from 1GB to 2GB the other week. In fact, I was the first to notice this change, and some sites credited me, while others did not.

Forum discussion at YouTube 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.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: July 1, 2009"