Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Forgets to Renew Gmail's SMTP SSL Certificate
Google's SMTP server, smtp.gmail.com, has just expired a couple minutes ago. Here is the SSL certificate expiration notice: It appears Google has forgotten to renew the certificate, even thought a Google Groups post had a warning to Google that it would be expiring today: Is Google planning on updating the certificate for smtp.gmail.com port 465? I noticed that it's expiring today which could cause a lot of issues with email clients sending email today and - Can You Optimize Your Site with Just Links?
Shimon Sandler wrote a controversial post about the options available to sites who cannot actually make code changes to optimize their site. He explains that you can build links, and that's perfectly legitimate as it's called "off site optimization." The question is: does that really help "optimize" the site at all? If the website was poorly coded, will those links really help? Probably not. Sphinn forum member JohnHGohde notes that this is not SEO at - Can You Benchmark Traffic from the Google Keyword Tool?
Using the Google Keyword Tool, since search volume numbers are now available, you can estimate (with a degree of success) the kind of traffic you'd get for key phrases that you optimize for. In a particular webmaster's experiment, he ranks 1 and 2 for a specific phrase. The keyword tool reported 2500 monthly visitors. In reality, the webmaster only gets 600 visits (which is about 25% of what the Keyword Tool reports). In another experiment, - Google News Older Than 30 Days? Look at Google News Archives
Numerous webmasters are learning that Google News considers freshness of stories first and foremost. Google News only shows 30 days of news, and once that 30-day window has passed, your news gets dropped into the archives. But not always. According to the folks at Google, if your news stories are older than 30 days, they don't automatically get archived. In fact, you need to request that Google archive the stories for you. Should you want - Google Maps Street Views Privacy Concerns Hits Home
Google Maps Street View feature has always been on the to-do list of privacy advocates. Over a year ago, Google gave us a way to report images to be removed from Google Street Views. Tamar did a great job walking us through the Report Inappropriate Image feature in Google Maps. Does it work? I am not sure - but I suspect it does. We do know it doesn't work too well with Google images. In - Google AdWords Search Updates Design
WebmasterWorld's founder, Brett Tabke, noticed Google changed the design for the AdWords ad search feature and posted a thread about it at WebmasterWorld. Before, when you used google.com/sponsoredlinks to find ads, Google will list out the ads in one long column, left aligned. You can see pictures of the old layout over here or here. Now, Google lists out the ads in three columns and four rows, with a total of 12 ads per page. - Is The Google "Yo-Yo Effect" Due to Universal Search?
About 15 days ago, I reported on the Google Yo-Yo Effect. This yo-yoing is a lot different then the typical ups and downs of Google's rankings. I know many of you are going to say, Google's results always differ. Trust me, I have been covering search a long time, this is different. Over the course of the weeks, I have obtained results that are experiencing this "yo-yo effect." I am sorry, but I promised not
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Another Quality Score Policies Update...?, DigitalPoint Forums
- Google Maps Coupons for different locations, Google Groups
- Needy Karma Turning Off Casual Plurkers?, Sphinn
- Newsnight editor Peter Barron to join Google in communications role, DigitalPoint Forums
- Which Industry Is The Toughest To SEO?, HighRankings Forums
