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:
- September 2009 Google Webmaster Report
It has been a somewhat slow start to our typically monthly report based on a WebmasterWorld thread that tracks day-to-day changes with Google's web results. Overall, it seems like people are discussing two main things. (1) The Caffeine preview, Google's new index, is expected to be launched in the main Google results sometime this month. Google has not confirmed this, but webmasters are expecting this. (2) The Minus 6 Penalty, which was a Google bug, - Yahoo Search September 2009 Update Official
Last night, the Yahoo Search blog warned us of a search index update that is currently taking place. Dan Rampton from Yahoo said, "We're rolling out a web index update over the next few days. During this process, you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index." Originally I thought it may have been a delayed confirmation of the unconfirmed August Yahoo Search shuffle but maybe not. A WebmasterWorld thread has one - Google's Matt Cutts On Using Different Interfaces For Mobile Users
The topic of cloaking or IP deliver or useragent delivery is always a very touchy topic in the SEO industry. I am not going to get into the history, but in short, webmasters can use various methods to show GoogleBot one piece of content and the user a different piece of content. Now, there is a gray area in that space. For example, hiding certain links or content from GoogleBot, while showing it to searchers, - Linking Badly? There Is a Tool to Check That
There are hundreds of SEO tools out there, we have covered just a few. I recently saw a short thread with a person complaining his site has been removed from the Google index. In the Google Webmaster Help thread, a top contributor suggested they use a tool to see if they are linking to bad sites and getting links from bad sites. The tool was built by Michael VanDeMar and can be accessed at bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Rich Snippets Testing Tool, Google Webmaster Help
- Our sites were dropped from the google index, Google Webmaster Help
- When will interstitial pushing sites be taken away?, Google News Help
- Why does Firefox fire a web forgery alert on my site even though the diagnostic tool indicates site is not suspicious?, Google Webmaster Help
- Digg Adds No-Follow to Combat Spam, Sphinn
- Digg adds nofollow to some links, How does this effect Google SEO, DigitalPoint Forums
- Get "Special Price" to Appear in Google Maps, now!, Sphinn
- How to Diagnose the Reason of Google Penalty, Sphinn
- Judge: Google trademark policy is "remarkable" Interflora vs Marks & Spencer, Sphinn
- New updates in Spreadsheets and Forms, Google Docs Help
- The Importance Of A Domain Name, HighRankings Forums
