October 20, 2006 Archives

I reported this morning at Search Engine Watch that YouTube Deletes 30,000 Japanese Media Files & Deals With Record Labels. Basically, they were hit with a copyright infringement notice and YouTube complied.

It has drum up some discussion in the search forums, specifically making a featured thread at WebmasterWorld.

Most of the comments are simply jokes but many also feel Google has made a "1.6 billion mistake."

Time will tell, time will tell.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A great thread at DigitalPoint Forums asks member to post what is "Google best unknown feature." There aren't too many posts yet, but pretty much all the answers are unique.

Answers include:

• Google Alerts
  
• Google Spreadsheets
  
• GMail
  
• GTalk
  
• Googles Webmaster tools
  
• Google Analytics
  

So what is your favorite Google service?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports some changes to the rankings of Google images. One member reports;

Last Monday Google image search was giving me 32% of all referrals. Today it's 16%. So definitely a big change.

I also noticed some changes in my referrals from Google Image Search.

Some believe the changes are due to Google being better able to categorize images with Google Image Labeler but it seems too new to me to be already a piece of the algorithm.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

You ever go to Google.com, conduct a search, and think, wow those results are bad. Or maybe there was just one result you didn't like? Or maybe, you feel that your competitor should not be in the top spot, but you should? :-)

A WebmasterWorld thread asks;

Is there anyway to "complain" about a result that I don't think is of benefit to searchers or is it a case of tough luck?

Well, yes, you can complain as tedster explains. Just scroll to the bottom of the results and click on "Dissatisfied? Help us improve."

So if you search on the keyword [google] at www.google.com and you don't like the results, you just click this and tell them why.

Now, does that suggestion go to a person or be sent to the trash can? I cannot answer that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A featured WebmasterWorld thread goes over the technical issues specifically with WordPress blogs and how they are very susceptible to duplicate content issues. But it is not just WordPress, it is most blog formats, even this one.

This single article I am writing right now can be found in a number of different pages all on the same site. You will be able to find this article on the home page, on the search engine optimization category page, on the 10/20/2006 page, on the October 2006 page, on the individual entry page. Also, if I placed this article in multiple categories, you would find the same content on those pages as well.

Is this a problem? I don't see it to be a huge problem. I have always been an advocate of Google figuring out the problem and not having webmasters figure it out, because most outside of the SEO world have no idea that this is an issue. And for the most part, I think for the most part they do a good job with blog software used widely.

But if you are worried, the WebmasterWorld thread has tips and other discussion on what to do.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.