February 2007 Archives

Part of Yahoo! announcing they have added support for a No Yahoo Directory tag, Yahoo! has issued a weather report saying they need to do an index update for this NOYDIR to work.

Before the weather report was issued there was some recent chatter in a WebmasterWorld thread this morning on a Yahoo! Search update taking place.

I definitely see some major changes. The rankings seem to go back to the old results from late 2006. Which is good for the categories I watch. The update in January definitely had some spammy sites getting rewarded. So this new update is fine with me.

Yahoo! said:

We are re-indexing content on the web to launch this change, and you should immediately begin to see the changes on Yahoo! US, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Korea. (Other regions will roll-out in the future.) This will be accompanied by the usual ranking changes and page shuffling that is typical of weather updates.

This is probably why it took so long for NOYDIR tag to be released, it seems to have required a global update to all of Yahoo! Search properties.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

OR

<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

Then next time Yahoo! Search crawls and indexes those changes (can be days or weeks or months) you will not longer see the Yahoo! Directory tag in the Yahoo! Search results.

Currently, my RustyBrick Yahoo! Search listing looks like this:

But my title tag reads:

Web Design, Web Development & Web Services New York, NY

Will I add this tag to my listing, I may or may not. I am in no rush.

Thank you Yahoo!

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

The twenty-first edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. To kick off the show we had some discussion on our new design here at the Search Engine Roundtable. We then got into the Google Presidents Day update, followed by a Google patent application discussion. Microsoft had a large adCenter bug, and Yahoo! Search Marketing also had a PPC bug. We discussed the Google AdWords algorithm and many more topics. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file here and listen at your convenience

Topics We Covered:

1. Version 3 Of The Search Engine Roundtable with Design Update For Search Engine Roundtable
   
2. Presidents Day Google Algorithm Update?
   
3. Google Patent Application On Personalization & Removing Documents From Google.com
   
4. Microsoft adCenter CPC Costs Spike: Known Bug with Microsoft Refunds adCenter Advertisers Over Weekend
   
5. Technical Glitch Charges Yahoo! Advertisers 42 Times
   
6. Google AdWords Quality Score Algorithm Update Now Live with Advertisers Speak On New AdWords Quality Score Algorithm
   
7. How Long Do You Spend "Training" A Client After SEO or Design Work Is Done?
   
8. Does Google Use Click Data For Ranking Purposes?
   
9. Google To Show AdWords Advertisers Where Contextual Ads Are Displayed
   
10. Google Not To Include Quality Score In AdWords API
    
11. Yahoo! Search Now Highlighting Keywords In Cache Results
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 21: Design, Google Update, Patent Apps, AdWords Algorithm, Yahoo! Search, Microsoft adCenter, SEO Training & More"

Digg members may despise or ban SEO's, but SEO's will get the last laugh. Digg is but a pebble in a large social media pond. Marketing and optimizing web sites utilizing social sites as tools and popularity injections requires knowledge of who the players are, the rules and policies for each one, finding logical matches and expertly manuvering many demographic groups at once.

Social media is a hot bed of debate and exploration, as evidenced by the first topics presented in the new Social Media and Tagging, forum, at Cre8asiteforums. Is YouTube breathing its last breaths? Are traffic bursts worth it? G-man asks:

Anyone got any good scripts for automating the social media and tagging process?

Thread: Automation?

New moderators, Chris Winfield and Liana Evans, host the new forum, where lively discussions have already begun.

I spotted an interesting thread at Google Groups asking how can one take over a group, when the original and only Group administrator has passed away?

The owner/administrator of our sailing group died a few weeks ago. We have a new webmaster for the website, but we need to switch over the discussion group administration. Contact info, website URL etc. has changed as well.

How do we do this? He did not leave ID or password information.

Google Groups Guide replied that it is possible but they first need to look at "your group
and account details." He asked to take it offline, so that the details are not public, which makes sense.

So what do you do? Use the Google Groups Contact Us Form, select the "Report a technical problem" option and specify the following info:

• Group Name
• the owner's email address
• and the new owner's email address

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A bug I reported almost two weeks ago now, Google Advertiser Charged For Paused Campaign in AdWords is still an issue. I have been getting messages left and right from AdWords advertisers who are still noticing this.

There is even a new WebmasterWorld thread with renewed complaints. Google has acknowledged this is a bug and has done so again.

On Feb 27, 2007 at 10:49 am AdWordsAdvisor said:

Confirmed - and my apology for the confusion and inconvenience.

AdWordsAdvisor did say that you will be refunded this information and she did make sure to giggle at a comment by heyday saying;

I guess you can look at it the other way......you get a refund....plus you got some free traffic.

So free traffic isn't bad, is it?

When will it be fixed? Who knows...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has several examples of people who say they have submitted re-inclusion requests months ago and still have not heard back from Google.

A few things here, we know Google Moves Reinclusion Request Form To Webmaster Central months ago. Also, I have tested out the reinclusion request myself with Jennifer Convertibles when they were delisted. And they got back in within a few days. Later, I did a post named Time Line To Get Reincluded in Google With Reinclusion Request where I showed examples of unanswered reinclusion requests and answered ones.

The new WebmasterWorld shows many examples of unanswered requests. I have heard Google won't answer all requests, especially those that still have violations on their sites and those that have repeat infractions - but can all those examples in the recent thread be in violation of the above? I don't know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Brett Tabke posted a thread at WebmasterWorld informing us that Yahoo! has "tweaked" their Yahoo Search Submit Basic program. The main change, he said, was that they added detailed analytics.

The new program seems to also have changed names from "express" to "basic." The new page at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssb_pr.php shows slightly different information.

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

Some of the reaction is positive and some is negative overall of paid inclusion programs. But let me point out one specific one:

Wow, this is very big news Brett -- thanks for sharing! The analytics alone would make it worth the price of admission based on what I'm seeing. I was a big fan of the old PT subscriptions. Not that Yahoo's a bit bigger, I'm all for this.

...Never thought I'd actually welcome paid submissions again with open arms, but I guess that's where we're at these days...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: YahooPete posted in the forum confirming this:

Thanks for featuring our new Search Submit program and your positive comments. Based on valuable customer feedback, we have launched a new program called Search Submit Basic. As stated in previous posts, through Search Submit Basic, customers can submit up to 5 URLs for inclusion in the Yahoo! index (of course assuming content meets Yahoo!’s Content Quality guidelines), receive essential insights and email support for a flat yearly fee of $49 per URL.

Just to clarify, Search Submit Express is still part of the Search Submit product family and will continue to be supported for existing customers who are currently in the program. We are working on enhancements to Search Submit Express, and will not be accepting new enrollments into Search Submit Express.

Yesterday at Search Engine Land I reported Search Engines Do Not Have To Display All Ads Says Court based on Eric Goldman's post named Search Engines Defeat "Must-Carry" Lawsuit--Langdon v. Google.

In short, a court ruled that Google and other search engines do not have to carry any ad submitted to them. Specifically, Christopher Langdon was upset with a company or two and wanted to buy ads to complain about them (i.e. a "griper") but Google denied him. They would not approve his ads. So he took Google to court, and the judge ruled in favor of Google saying, "some of his [Langdon] claims "specious" and "frivolous." Eric them noted three things we can pull from this case:

(1) The First Amendment gives search engines the right to reject any ad they want.
(2) "Search engine decisions to reject ads is protected by 47 USC 230(c)(2) as a legitimate decision to filter "otherwise objectionable" content."
(3) "Search engines aren't state actors and are not bound by the First Amendment, so they do not deprive advertisers (such as Langdon) of First Amendment rights by rejecting their advertising."

But these are ads, flip it around to the free/organic results and Google has often denied to remove such listings. Why? Because they want their algorithms to handle it. Heck, there is a profession to handle such organic results named reputation management.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a nice amount of discussion on the ruling, so here are a few quotes:

Seems logocal to me. Otherwise an accountancy search engine (or directory) could be sued for not listing a shoe shop. That would be absurd.

I'm not constitutional scholar, but doesn't the first amendment keep the Government from preventing free speach? I don't think it applies to individuals or business.

First amendment is clearly a restriction/limitation on government powers. Google, despite all their power, is not the government.

This case, OTOH, is quite different to the questions about whether the SE's should censor listings out of their organic SERP's. The bar for censorship should be (and is) much, much higher in that arena. Though personally, I don't think it's high enough, given the arbitrary nauture of some of the decisions from the major SE's WRT listings they are unwilling to display, relating to both content and region.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever have a question about Google AdSense? Ever need advice on the best strategy to use for your ads? Ever want to know if you should use one ad style over another? If the answer is yes, where do you go for that information?

A DigitalPoint Forum thread asks, "What's your best source for AdSense advice?" Here are some of the replies in the forums:

• DigitalPoint AdSense Forum
• Inside AdSense Blog
• SitePoint AdSense Forum
• JenSense.com
• Adsense-support[at]google.com
• AdSense Help Group
• Problogger

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Search Engine People Blog reports that now Canadian companies can be Google AdWords Professionals as well. That is right, in the past Canadians were not welcome in Google Advertising Professionals Program but now they are.

How does a Canadian firm qualify?

• Have a billing and mailing address in a country where company qualification is available.


• Employ at least two Qualified Individuals in the program. Individuals must be qualified under the main company-registered My Client Center account and not their own account. See the requirements for becoming a Qualified Individual.


• Build and maintain the minimum 90-day required total client spend ($1,000 US) for the company's My Client Center account.

So this is good news for those Canadian AdWords pros that want to be verified as AdWord Pro companies.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

Google Maps and the quality and accuracy has come up quite a few times over the past year or so. So what can you do if you need to report an issue with Google Maps?

A Google Groups thread has advice from Maps Guide Jen about how to fix map errors.

Jen explains that "map data errors - such as misspellings of town names, missing streets, etc - are often not the same as your business being located incorrectly." To suggest fixes for town names, missing streets, etc - Google uses both NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas for these things. So if you report the issues to them, Google will update the maps when they are released to them.

How do you report issues to them?
NAVTEQ
http://mapreporter.navteq.com/
TeleAtlas
http://www.teleatlas.com/MapInsight/

What if there are other issues?

Google has a Google Maps Contact Form where you can report issues with Search Quality, Feedback and Suggestions, How do I?, Report a problem, I'm a Business Owner, and Maps API Feedback.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Last Tuesday night Google announced that the Google AdWords Quality Score Algorithm Update Now Live. They said it would take 3 to 4 days for people to see the full impact. I have let enough time elapse and I figured I analyze a thread to see what happened.

In all honesty, the most active thread, I have found, is the WebmasterWorld thread. The thread is not all that active based, as one would expect with a large algorithm change. Similar to my thoughts on the the feedback on Yahoo!'s quality score change.

I will put out some quotes from those who replied:

Just got another round of QSing, raising minium bids on certain words yet again. This time from 50 cents to $1. Or in another words from barely profitable to wholely unprofitable.

Yes, it's purely a money grab. I have an account with 1250 keywords. Before the update, 700 were great, the rest ok. Most of the 700 were under 5 cents. Now, about 750 are great but the minimums have risen to 5 cents, so our QS improved overall but so did the cost. About half the oks have dropped to poor. Also, you will notice that the increments start at 5 cents. We no longer have minimum bid at price in between 5 cent increments. So greats are at 5 cents, ok, are 10,15,20,25,30 and poors are at 40,50,1.00,2.00,5.00. So maybe the algorithm does work better at identifying relevance but the minimums have been cranked up. They will keep doing this until they see a significant move away from adwords and then pull back. They are trying to find the advertiser base gouge limit.

15% of keywords went 'inactive' with a doubling of min bid. QS still 'ok'. However, ad still shows in #3 slot. I can't tell anything anymore about the state of my campaign keywords.

No reason to up min bid from $1 to $5 when the keyword is totally relevant to ad, landing page and website topic.

And these are keywords that convert the best... and no wonder!

But honestly, I thought I see a rush of posts this Monday, with tons of complaints. I have not seen that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever since the launch of Google AdSense, AdWords advertisers always wondered which sites their ads were running on. Google added opt out methods; to opt out of the content network and later to opt out of specific sites. But they never showed you a list of sites your ad would appear on.

That appears to be changing. Jennifer Slegg wrote Google AdWords To Show Advertisers Exactly Where Their Contextual Ads Are Displayed at Search Engine Land and has more details at her blog JenSense.

She explains that a New York Times article from Kim Malone says "Google will begin listing all publisher websites where AdWords advertiser's ads are being run."

In the next few months, Google’s advertiser reports will begin listing the sites where each ad runs, Ms. Malone said. She added that advertisers on the Google networks would soon be able to bid on contextual ads on particular Web sites rather than simply buying keywords that appeared across Google’s entire network.

Very cool!

Overall, most AdWords advertisers are thrilled. I suspect some AdSense publishers are not.

But I think this is a great move by Google. Who knows, maybe some of the large competitors will beat Google to implementing this?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Via a DigitalPoint Forums thread a user points to his blog post that says he spotted an ad on this page for Gmail that is in the form of a video ad.

As you can see from the screen capture, there is an embedded Google Video a Gmail logo, a video link, a secrets tip link, and previous and next video links.

Amit Agarwal explains more about the ad he saw:

» The Adsense gadget has an embedded Youtube player that serves the four videos of GMail Theater Ads directly from Youtube.

» The YouTube player is 250x200 pixels while the Adsense Ad size is 300x250 pixels.

» The Adsense Flash widget is actually served by Lab Pixies, a company that also creates gadgets or widgets for personalized pages like PageFlakes, Google Personalized Homepage and Microsoft Live.com.

» Though the images in the ad are served by LabPixies, they are redirected via gmodules.com/ - a Google owned site.

» Clicking the Tips Tab on the Ad will show the following tips:
(1) "Is any chat really complete without a flying monkey? Spice up your messages with these Gmail emoticons.",
(2) "You can make any endless email thread invisible, but just a quick search away if you ever need to catch up.",
(3) "Choose any photo as your Gmail pic and it will pop up next to your name on people's inbox and Contact lists.",
(4) "Keep your social life hopping by easily adding event info from your Gmail messages to your Google Calendar.",
(5) "To find all emails from a certain someone, type from: and their first or last name into the Gmail search box.

I personally saw several ads there on refresh, yes, one for Gmail, but not a video ad. I did see an animated ad, so I believe this screen shot above. When I clicked on the gmail ad, it took me to the Welcome To Gmail page (screen capture here).

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Cre8asite Forums launched a new forum last night named Social Media And Tagging. Kim Krause-Berg, founder of Cre8asite Forums, explains the new forum:

In light of the addition of social media and tagging as tools and methodology for SEO/M practiices, we have added a new forum on the topic of social media.

We're in the process of putting together a team of people to moderate it and provide answers to your questions, as well as educate the community on all aspects of this exploding area of the Internet.

Our first confirmed new Moderator is Liana Evans, (aka Storyspinner), who many of you know.

We look forward to some lively discussions and learning from those who are passionate about social media

Li Evans, aka storyspinner, will be the new moderator for this forum. Liana Evans runs Search Marketing Gurus and has been known to pull off some nice social media tactics in the past. Li's welcome thread is over here.

In other SEO forum news, last week, WebmasterWorld Launches SMO Forum Named Social Media Tagging & Bookmarking Optimization.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Yahoo! has added a dedicated representative in the search forums to respond to Yahoo! Search Marketing questions. The new representative was introduced by YahooSarah in both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

YahooSarah, who has been managing both Yahoo! Search Marketing threads and Yahoo! Publisher Network threads has enlisted YahooPete to focus pretty much on the Yahoo! Search Marketing side of things. Now, YahooSarah will be able to focus most of her efforts to the Yahoo! Publisher Network side of things.

YahooSarah said:

All, I’ve got some good news to share and wanted to start a thread here. Since we’ve rolled out our new advertising system, my goal was to be even more engaged in message board discussions to help you with questions or concerns. I think this community embraced that goal, because I’ve been pretty busy keeping up with posts and private emails- thanks ;-)

To help grow our involvement on the boards even more, I’ve recruited a colleague of mine to serve as a new rep for the boards, YahooPete. He will have more time to dedicate to issues specifically about Yahoo! Search Marketing, while I start to focus more on threads about the Yahoo! Publisher Network (doing both took quite a bit of time, and this is only a part of what I do for Yahoo!). I’m still around though, so you may see me chime in from time to time.

We really do appreciate all the feedback you have given us over the past few months and we look forward to continuing the dialogue. Welcome YahooPete- good luck!

YahooSarah

YahooPete said his introductory hello; saying,

Thanks so much for the kindness. I am looking forward to partcipating in the discussion threads. All my best, YahooPete

Welcome YahooPete, oh and trust me, I will be watching you very closely.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Greg Sterling reported at Search Engine Land a couple weeks ago about a Google Maps Sticker Spotted In London. Loren Baker also referenced this noting that no sightings of this sticker have been found in the US.

I finally found a thread with official confirmation from Google on this.

A Google Groups thread has Maps Guide Jen saying:

The stickers are part of a marketing campaign that Google did in the UK. There currently aren't any available for Google Maps in the US. I'll contact you individually with more information!

So I wonder if you comment in the thread, and if your in the US, can you get yourself a sticker. I will try.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread notes that a new version of Google's AdWords Editor is out. Version three has many new features including:

• Site targeting: AdWords Editor now provides full support for site-targeted campaigns.
• Negative sites: Add or edit negative sites for keyword- and site-targeted campaigns.
• Edit while you wait: If you manage multiple accounts with AdWords Editor, edit another account while your changes post.
• Count your selection: The status bar now displays the number of rows you've selected in the data view.
• Pause or resume ads, keywords, and sites: Use the Status menu in the edit panel to change the status of selected items.

And these "upload features":

• Export to HTML: Your HTML export will show or hide deleted campaigns, depending on how you've configured your preferences. The HTML export is ideal for showing your account to someone who doesn't use AdWords Editor.
• Export to CSV: In addition to account, campaign, and ad group snapshots, you can now export custom views. The CSV export is ideal for spreadsheets or other applications that can read structured data files.
• Paste to multiple ad groups: Select multiple destination ad groups via the Edit menu > Paste Special.

Well known AdWords forums guy, GuyFromChicago, said:

Go get it. It's good.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Official Google blog post is now live at the AdWords Blog.

The huge adCenter overcharging bug this past Friday was patched towards the end of the day Friday. Microsoft promised to refund all the overcharging that occurred throughout the day in their blog post.

After reviewing the threads at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld it appears that everyone has been refunded their money.

I have actually received a refund for this already. It was automatic and happend sometime on Sunday. Support also just phoned me to say everything was sorted and back to normal, but those who still have the paused campaign problem should be fixed asap. Didn't affect me so didn't ask anything more about that.

I have to say that adcenter seemed to do a good job at fixing what seemed to me like a massive problem, and fixed it quite quickly.

Yeah my account averages like $40/day and then I log on a couple of days ago and it is at like $350.

This was realtime via a report so I couldnt see why it spiked but I figured it was just adcenter trying to hit my monthly budget (which they were not even getting me close to it) but then I logged in today to look over my account and it now shows like $61 for that day.

I guess they fixed it without notification. Im happy about that!

People still want to know why this happened in the first place.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread notes how a Google search on shoes returns a YouTube result.

The YouTube video can be found here and it shows a humorous movie on shoes.

The thread wonders why anyone searching on shoes would be interested in that. But others find the video entertaining and enjoyable.

However, people are beginning to worry if this is another conspiracy theory. Google is going to begin to rank YouTube in the top results, because they now own them.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There was a lot of buzz last week with the launch of Google Apps Premier Edition and with that comes potential harm. Yes, Google Desktop has recently been reported to have two serious malicious holes, both, I believe, now patched. But what about Google Apps?

With any hack, one of the first steps is to locate vulnerable sites or computers. Google Apps requires sites to verify domain ownership within the first 30 days. They can do this one of two ways:

• Create a CNAME record
• Upload an HTML file to your server

A Cre8asite Forums thread shows how easy it is to use Google to search for sites that are potentially running Google Apps for Domains on their site. A search on inurl:googlehostedservice.html currently returns just about 700 sites. Now, I am sure many opt for the CNAME method, and I think that those can be easily discovered, but now with a simple Google search.

The thread asks, is Google asking for trouble with this? Why not make a dynamically generated file that has no pattern, that can be uploaded to your server. Instead of a standard file named googlehostedservice.html?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

I just wanted to give everyone an update that the site design for the blog is complete, as far as I know. We launched version three Tuesday night and then received some incredibly feedback.

Based on that feedback we made the following changes:

• Fixed issues in IE6 with formatting
• Bolded title fonts
• Tried to synchronize the two font styles on the site, keeping the middle fonts all neutral
• Added minimum width of 900px and maximum 1500 pixels
• Added image code verification on contact us forms
• Lightened up sponsored links
• Some minor style changes
• And some minor functionality changes

If I missed anything, please comment below or email us at contact us form.

We also maxed out our advertiser, in fact, we have a waiting list. I still have a banner to upload. So that is good news.

The forums should be migrated to the new design this week.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

When you install the Google Custom Search Engine on your pages, on many browsers, you will notice that inside the search box is read in a light font, "Google Custom Search." Here is a screen shot of our implementation on this site.

A Google Groups thread asks how can you remove the default text from the search box.

To be clear, this is against the terms of service as mentioned by a Google Coop Engineer.

2.3 Attribution. The Search Box shall conspicuously display a graphic (available at http://www.google.com/coop/images/searchbox.gif ) that indicates that the Service is provided by Google. The graphic shall link to the Google site located at http://www.google.com or such other address as Google may designate from time to time during the Term.

But if you want to take a chance and remove the attribution then according to the Google Groups you can add the value=" ", so the code looks like:

<input name="q" type="text" size="40" value=" " />

There are mentions that the AJAX implementation by default does not show the "Google Custom Search" text. If that is the case, then go with that method and you won't be violating Google's terms of service.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Update: This is a very serious issue. Continue reading below...

Reported this morning at WebmasterWorld, was a bug where advertisers reports are showing that they are being seriously overcharged for many of their keywords.

I have a bid. of $0.30 and i was charged on a click for $16.

So this user was overcharged by about 500%.

They charged me $5.10/click on something that is clearly set at $0.44/click!

My daily spend increased almost 10-fold from $140 to over $1350 yesterday!

The official adCenter representative, adCenterEU, confirmed this issue saying:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

This is a known issue and our support team are working on analysing the root cause and providing a solution.

We'll post back when we have more news.

Thanks for your patience.

Regards

adCenterEU

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Not only is there a thread at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums also has a thread with screen captures. Take a look at this:

Notice how the base bid is $0.50 and the average bid is $281.58. Nice Microsoft! Yes, Microsoft is aware of this issue and posted an update in the WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint thread about an hour ago.

The adCenter team are still ascertaining the root cause in order to implement a resolution.

We completely understand your frustration with this issue and are pulling out all the stops to bring it to a swift conclusion.

Once we have fixed the issue we will decide on which and how customers are credited for any overspend due to the error and we hope you'll bear with us while we investigate.

We'll post back in the next 3 hours with further updates.

Thanks again for your patience on this matter.

This is big!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Marcia posted a thread at WebmasterWorld informing us that Yahoo! Search is now highlighting the keyword search you have done, when you click on the cache link.

For example, if you search on search engine roundtable in Yahoo! Search and then click on the cache link under the top result, you will notice that the keywords "search" "engine" and "roundtable" are all highlighted in the cache results. Here is a screen capture:

Did Yahoo! every highlight keywords before? I am not sure if they did or not. There is a WebmasterWorld thread from November 2004 saying the Yahoo! cache does not have highlighted keywords anymore...

Marcia's posts:

I saw it for the first time yesterday evening. They're still not showing a cache date, but the words in the search term are now highlighted in bold, bright colors.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

MSGraph at WebmasterWorld posted a link to a Google Patent filed in August 22, 2005 with authors including Matt Cutts named removing documents.

The patent basically describes how you can remove documents using Google personalized search, which I described in detail with Google Personalized Search Removal of Results Feature. But msgraph points to a few specific lines in the patent application.

40. A method, comprising: aggregating information regarding documents that have been removed by a group of users; and assign scores to a set of documents based on the aggregated information.
41. The method of claim 40, wherein aggregating information regarding documents that have been removed by a group of users includes: identifying a set of legitimate users and a set of illegitimate users; and collecting information regarding documents that have been removed by the set of legitimate users.
42. The method of claim 40, wherein aggregating information regarding documents that have been removed by a group of users includes: identifying a set of users with a defined relationship; and collecting information regarding documents that have been removed by the set of users.

Now, before I explain them, look at the last question Chris Sherman asks Matt Cutts in A Keynote Conversation with Google's Matt Cutts from SES London (thanks Li).

Chris: Crystal ball time, where do you see Google going in the next 3-5 years?
Matt: Fantastic question, in my own opinion – personalization, and localization. Also if you have your data, you can store it at Google. You can almost start your own business of 5-10 business for free. Google’s ambition to organize the worlds information, this is really where its going.

Now, the patent application does seem to imply that Google may (or may not) use personalization data on the "aggregate." Which would mean that forming a collected base o trusted Google searchers, in a social aspect, i.e. Google Co Op and others, may be the future of your results. Would Google use the "remove result" feature as a way to determine what pages are more trusted than others? Um, "aggregating information regarding documents that have been removed by a group of users includes" and doing what with that?

Keep in mind, this is just a patent application. The whole or pieces of this patent application may or may not be used in the future or in the current Google algorithm.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Cre8asite Forums thread spots something I have never seen before. A search on google earth in Google brings up an AdWords ad in the sponsored results for someone using the Google AdSense Referral Program to make money. But the twist is that they are using Google Pages so that it appears that this is the official Google site.

As you can see from the screen capture above, the URL in the sponsored result is from Google.Earth.GooglePages.com/Earth. The ad title and ad copy seems legit, and I think this is fine with the Google terms of service, but I may be wrong.

I am sure the ad has a nice click through rate and a high quality score. Nice search marketing on this guy's part. Just curious how legit it is...

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

There is a relatively old Search Engine Watch Forums thread that has a new post from Discovery with some nice information. He was originally wondering why his geo targeted campaign towards Texas was sending zero traffic to his site and zero impressions on his ad.

Yahoo! informed him he was being way to specific with his campaign.

What Discovery did was created one campaign that was:

1. Geo targeted to Texas
2. Uses Texas specific keyword qualifiers
3. Created a Texas specific landing page

Yahoo! recommended that he create two different campaigns. A campaign for that was geo targeted towards Texas, using the geotargetting tools. And another campaign that uses Texas specific keyword qualifiers.

That method worked, Discovery is now getting traffic, but the traffic isn't converting as well as one would like.

Why did the previous method not work? I suspect it may have to do with it possibly being rare for some Texans to search using the word Texas. So imagine, you live in Texas and you are looking for a local auto insurance company. Would you search "texas car insurance" or "car insurance"? I am not sure - I am a bit too involved in search to be considered the typical searcher...

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

So how long do you drag out the training process after you complete SEO or design work for a client? Sometimes they just can't get enough knowledge. Other times you feel like you are holding someone's hand though a painful process of learning a technology they just don't "get". There is a good thread on High Rankings that is discussing how much training is needed after the job is done. Some are saying that it needs to be clearly defined before you start the project. Add a training fee to the bill and charge for anything after that.

The member ttw had a good suggestion, she says,

"Our contract usually official concludes when the site is uploaded to the client's server and goes live. From that point on, we offer ongoing maintenance at a per hour rate -- which includes a minimum of 1 hour for each service request."

I like that. Usually I budget training time into the project and often its very hard to expect what kind of "training" you will need to do. It takes getting to know the client before hand and what their expectations are. There are clients that just wanted it "taken care of" and then there are those that "wanttoknowitall".

The member Carolinebogart has a good point about the situation, saying:

"Trick for me was figuring out when the stop training. Joomla is huge, intelligent clients like to know stuff. I break it out into where their talents are best used, entering articles, maybe adding a menu item. "

WebmasterWorld has launched a new forum named Social Media Tagging and Bookmarking Optimization. The new forum comes to life with the recent buzz on SMO - Social Media Optimization.

What is SMO?

• Tagging
• Web based bookmarking
• Digg.com
• StumbleUpon
• del.icio.us
• Link bait content
• and so on

It is being used all over, you see we have our SMO buttons in the footer of each post.

WebmasterWorld administrator, engine, said in the WebmasterWorld thread:

With social media now paying a huge role in modern Internet life, we decided to create this forum to explore the opportunities and developments.

I am excited to watch this forum for some juicy topics.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

As I reported yesterday at Search Engine Land, Google has reverted back from the new design they launched a few weeks ago, to the older the design they had before the redesign. Here is the before and after.

Two days ago:

Now:

This overall makes everyone happy again, so Google, good job with listening on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread shares that one new advertiser just got his. Here is a picture he took.

Now, if you want one, we did report that Google Mini Fridges Up For Sale at eBay in the past, maybe you can get it that way. I did email my AdWords representative, he said he would look into it, but I have not heard of a way to buy these coolers directly from Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Apps, which launched last year, is now offering a paid model, as many expected, starting today.

The paid model is named Google Apps Premier Edition and includes:

• 99.9% uptime guarantee for email**
• 10 GB / account
• Ability to turn off ads
• Shared calendar resources
• APIs to integrate with your existing infrastructure
  • Single sign-on
  • User provisioning and management
  • Support for email gateway
• Limited Email migration tools
• 24/7 assistance, including phone support
• 3rd party applications and services
• Plus everything standards Google Apps offers

The cost is $50 per user per year, which is not too bad at all. But if you are unsure, you can sign up for a free trial until April 30th, 2007. To sign up, just go here and fill out the forms. Also there is a NY Times article out on the piece.

The big deal here is probably the phone support, I wonder if Google will manage that themselves or outsource that.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Search Engine Watch Forums Moderator, AussieWebmaster, started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums describing weird behavior he has seen in some of his AdWords accounts. The behavior is described as keywords activating and inactivating by themselves in the course of a few hours.

This is not just a one shot deal. AussieWebmaster, Frank Watson, describes this issue over a period of "a few weeks."

So imagine that, you have some long tailed keywords (three or four word keywords that have low impressions by nice click throughs). Throughout the day some of those keywords turn to inactive in your Google AdWords console. Then a few hours later they become active again. This phenomenon repeats itself time and time again over the course of a few weeks. What is one to make of it?

Some ask if it is related to some of the recent bugs in the AdWords system. But that may not be likely since this is happening over a period of a few weeks.

Perhaps Google was testing some of the new quality score algorithm out on some keywords?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Via a WebmasterWorld thread, AdWordsAdvisor said the new Quality Score Algorithm is now live.

OK, a heads up that the update has now started, and will be completed over the next three to four days - per the Inside AdWords blog post about 20 minutes ago.

AWA

The AdWords blog post says that the algorithm is now live and it will take about three to four days to fully propagate throughout the network.

If you have not enabled the quality score column, you probably should. To do that, just go down to your ad group level, click on the keywords tab on the top right, then select from the pull down menu the option to show the quality score. Here is a screen capture with arrows pointing to the relevant places but more on that at AdWords help.

Now I will sit back and watch the forum chatter over the next few days. I am sure minimum bids will both increase and decrease. I just wonder at what level. I will keep you updated on the SEM buzz on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Groups thread asks if the AdWords API will be adding the Google Quality Score figures.

The answer is no.

AdWordsAPIAdvisor said:

We currently do not plan to release this column's data via the API since minimum bids (already available via the API) provide a more accurate estimate of your Quality Score.

Why? Because the minimum bid will give you the same information. And he offered the exact translation of minimum bid to quality score.

• "Great" keywords have a minimum bid less than or equal to $0.04
• "Okay" keywords have a minimum bid between $0.05 and $0.30
• "Poor" keywords have a minimum bid that is higher than $0.30

So most API users can do the math and figure it out automatically. Note, these translation tables may change over time.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

EarlPearl at SEO Refugee Forums notified me of a Google Groups thread where an employee at Duke Medical Center named Bart said a search for Duke Medical Center in Google Maps returns "two different entries in the top 10 results, neither of which is correct."

He explains that the "numbers lead to particular doctor's offices, and they are being swamped with calls from people trying to reach the main medical center." Bart also said that he was told to update his business listing, which he did but unfortunately the "other wrong ones still remain" incorrect. So the pattern continues.

Here is a screen shot the results:

Out of curiosity, I called the first number in the list. I asked the person if they get a lot of calls asking if this is Duke Medical Center. The nice lady said yes and explained they are trying to fix the problem, but didn't know more.

The problem with most yellow page directories and even infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet like databases is that they are out of date. But they are not such an issue when they are used on a limited basis. When it comes to Google, people use Google a lot more than they use an infoUSA database.

To be clear, I am not sure if this is an infoUSA type of issue. Google can and probably does, crawl the open web to harvest these numbers. For example the Duke Health Locations page has a listing of offices and numbers to call. But they clearly label each one out. I was chatting with a friend who pointed out, ironically, Duke uses Google Maps on their hospital location page. Note, that this search shows the actual hospital (the one at their hospital location page) as letter F in the results.

There must be an easier way for medical centers, police offices, other governmental agencies and emergency agencies to update their information on Google Maps, Yahoo! Local and the like. Because right now, this is simply not working.

Solutions:

• Report error link on this page
• State on the page that the numbers may not be 100% accurate
• Educate emergency agencies on how to update all, not some, of their listings
• Be more proactive with certain listings over others

I know these listings change but there has to be a better solution.

Forum discussion at SEO Refugee Forums and Google Groups.

I was chatting with a few folks who are convinced of a major Google update. David Ogletree was the first I know to spot this. So I revisited a WebmasterWorld and sure enough, since the 18th of this month, four more pages about a possible Google update.

Now, I suspected something was lingering when I wrote about the Possible Google Valentines Day Update but Matt Cutts of Google knocked me down with his comment.

But this truly does appear to be a Presidents Day Google update.

Roel at WebmasterWorld wrote:

A big drop in traffic over the weekend / last 2 days for me. Anyone else seeing this?

Followed by dozens of responses confirming this.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster said:

I don't see this as a true rollback - some of the SERPs I monitor have a whole new configuration.

Based on this thread, I think this is the real deal.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread shares with us that an advertiser noticed his client's credit card was hit up 42 times for a charge of $1,000. So he was billed 42 time $1,000, totaling $42,000.

YahooSarah, the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Representative, came in to explain:

Yahoo! experienced a technical issue that caused the credit cards of a few advertisers to be charged incorrectly on Wednesday, February 14. Some credit cards were authorized for one or more charges in error.

We caught this early and were able to halt the process before the charges were actually completed. We’re very sorry for any issues this might have caused you and we're doing everything possible to completely resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Please keep in mind that during a credit card transaction such as this, an "authorization hold" is placed against the card (similar to when you check into a hotel, and a hold is placed against your card for potential incidental charges). These authorization holds will automatically be removed from your credit card account, usually within three to seven business days. If you are finding that the authorization hold is causing you inconvenience in any way, we encourage you to contact us at 866-YAHOO-SM (866-924-6676), and we will be happy to assist you in contacting your credit card's issuing bank to manually remove the authorization (that said, a bank may take as long as 48 hours to completely remove the authorizations).

Thanks
YahooSarah

So, the cards were not actually charged yet, but they had "authorized holds" on them that meant if this person's spend limit was $42,000, he would not be allowed to charge more items on his card until the authorization was cancelled or paid in full.

Yahoo! did say that they "automatically be removed from your credit card account," and if they have not been removed, you can contact Yahoo!

This was a serious, serious bug and it doesn't seem all that wide spread. Kudos to Yahoo! for being upfront about it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ask.com has renewed their licensing agreement with LookSmart. Via Business Wire;

LookSmart LOOK (ASX:LOK), an online advertising company, announced today that Ask.com, a leading search engine and wholly-owned business of IAC, has extended its license of LookSmart's AdCenter for Publishers through 2009. Ask.com leverages LookSmart's AdCenter as a component of its Ask Sponsored Listings PPC advertising program. Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) is an automated open-auction system that allows search marketers to purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its publisher network.

Which begs the obvious question? Will Ask.com's sugar daddy, IAC, eventually just buy this division of LookSmart?

A WebmasterWorld thread has members saying:

Like a couple of drunks leaning on each other to stay standing.

Why don't they just get married, and stop pretending they can go it alone?

Funny, but does it make sense? I guess that is up to the management team over at Ask.com.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has an image of an AdSense ad that has the titles styled in italics fonts. Here is a screen capture from the forums, you can click on it for a large image:

As you can see, this is not the standard:

Several DigitalPoint Forum member said they have recently seen these ad styles around the web. So it appears that this may be a limited Google test and not a premium AdSense publisher modification.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Barry Welford at Cre8asite Forums noticed Google using tracking URLs in the search results and asked if Google uses this for ranking purposes.

It's clearly stated that in its contextual advertising programs, Google will adjust the ordering of Adword ads based on Click-through-rates (CTRs).

I'm getting the distinct impression that the same thing is happening on Google's regular search. If a web page is near the top, then it seems as if it may gain a position or two if the title and snippet seem more appropriate in a particular keyword SERP. It would of course be only a slight extension of the way Google now is personalizing results based on what it knows of your own particular online behaviour.

Well, Google has been tracking clicks for a long long time. We caught Google tracking clicks also in the past, it is not a big deal. They do it to measure internal quality, they say.

Back then I wrote:

In all honesty, does the click data affect relevancy? You have to think so, on some level. Google is probably storing this data in order to do UI testing, relevancy testing and other kinds of testing. So on some small level, one can argue it affects relevancy and possibly a page's rank. But it is known, that clicking on your page in Google over and over again will not shoot your site up to the number one slot.

I still believe that to some extent. Now with Google Personalized Search being ramped up, click data is even all that more important. Google will use the data for you and show you sites you have clicked on more often than not - in your search results. Google will even show you the last time you viewed a web page, if your logged in.

Now does this translate to the non-personalized Google results? Hard to say for sure. I think on a very limited and abstract level. Direct Hit based the order of the search results on click popularity and they are no longer around because people just kept on clicking on their own search results.

Do I believe Google and other search engines use this data on a limited basis? I do. But I honestly don't believe they have a strong and direct correlation to how high a page my rank in the search results.

Cre8asite moderator EGOL said that "I have no doubt that these metrics are used - and enjoy the result." But again, to what extent?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks how true is it that Gmail shows ads based on the content of the email.

Well, it is very true. That is their goal and that was the big stink when they launched. Google was reading your emails and placing ads based on the email text. What a privacy violation! Well, that big controversy died down, didn't it.

In any event, the ads Google shows on the right side and top tend to be relevant to the context of your email.

Some examples for you:

An email with the term "PageRank" in it shows an ad at the top for Google Sitemaps.

An email with the term "reciprocal link exchange" shows an ad for "Automated Link Exchange."

In fact, some emails that contain "link exchange," "text links," and so on have adds leading to Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Nothing new, just not discussed much.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

We just launched a new design for the Search Engine Roundtable. All the changes are primarily design and very few functionality changes. I do hope the new design will speed up a few things including commenting on our stories and also searching our archives.

Note: Please clear your cache to see all changes.

Overall, I felt it was critical to keep the theme the same. So you can see many elements and themes from our previous design throughout the site. But now the site simply looks and fits better with our content. I am pretty tired right now, so I will sum up the major changes in bulleted list:

• New look
• Less ads
• Revised authors page
• Revised the forums page
• Archives page jazzed up
• Revised awards pages with added testimonials
• Revised seals page
• Easier to use contact forms
• Google Coop powered internal search feature
• Easy to understand subscribe page
• Added recent entries page via left side bar
• Revised advertise page
• Easier to submit threads for consideration
• Added custom 404 pages (forgot to mention this)
• and more...

Our RustyBrick designer, Skew, and I worked on the site design. I then worked with Sergio to code the site, I love his work.

Please feel free to leave comments or email me via the contact us form with bugs or suggestions. Oh, yes I know the forums still needs to be converted to new design.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: FeedBurner is having connectivity issues. Nice to have this happen when I launch a new design. It is slowing down the site right now. I hope they fix it fast.

The twentieth edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. We started off with how the search industry celebrated Valentines day, including Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and even DogPile. We then talked about Google AdWords and how they are releasing a new quality score algorithm soon. After that we dug into tons of different SEO topics. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file here and listen at your convenience.

Topics We Covered:

1. Search Industry Celebrates Valentines Day
   
2. Google AdWords Adds Quality Score, Budget Analysis & New Algorithm
   
3. Major Google AdWords Bug With Quality Score Increases CPC Prices
   
4. Google Fixes AdWords CPC Price Gouge Bug
   
5. Site Down Time Can Remove You From Google Index
   
6. 301 Redirects Pass Google PageRank & Signals in a "Couple Weeks"
   
7. Proof Google Treating Wikipedia Very Well
   
8. Internal Anchor Text - Making Site Wide Changes
   
9. Why Should You Use Unique Meta Descriptions?
   
10. How Does Google Handle The NoFollow Attribute?
    
11. AJAX & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 20: Valentines, AdWords Score, SEO Galore, AJAX, Anchor Text, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, & More"

I can make this quick. AJAX and SEO do not mix. Search engines can not read AJAX, because most search engines won't read most JavaScript. So when you implement AJAX, make sure to give search engines alternative methods of getting to the same content that is accessible via the AJAX form.

There was a nice presentation given at SES Chicago 2006 named CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines where Jim McFadyen from CriticalMass gave some nice tips and examples of AJAX and alternative solutions implemented right and wrong.

He loves Amazon's Diamond Search feature.

JavaScript turned on - i.e. AJAX version:

JavaScript turned off - i.e. non AJAX version:

This shows an example of how Amazon is using an alternative to JavaScript for their users. But a search engine won't be able to index and crawl Amazon's non-AJAX version, because it is using image maps, forms and so on.

A good alternative would to design a linked based alternative that somehow has some of these filtering options.

Forum discussion at High Rankings Forum.

We have talked about contextual ad publishers such as Google's AdSense and Yahoo's Publisher Network suffering from Click-O-Phobia. It is a common illness of publishers that are in constant fear that they will accidently click on their own ads and be banned from Google and/or Yahoo!'s contextual network program.

But we have found some relief for some Google AdSense publishers. You are are now allowed to click on some of your ads!

If you spot a Google AdSense video ad and there is a play button on the ad, feel free to click on that play button. Oh, but don't click on the ads within the video - that is still a no no.

A WebmasterWorld thread has AdSenseAdvisor advisor encouraging publishers to check out the videos by clicking play.

Actually, you're welcome to watch the click-to-play video ads that appear on your site by clicking the Play button. We want publishers to be able to check the content of video ads playing on their sites, so we only count clicks that lead a user to the advertiser's site, such as a click on the display URL or on the video while it's playing. Clicking only the Play button will let you watch the ad without generating invalid clicks.

For more info on video ads, check out:
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8832

Hope that clarifies,
-ASA

The Can I play the videos of ads on my site? question reads:

You're welcome to view the videos of ads on your site by clicking the Play button; clicks on the play button are not counted as clicks in your reports. We'll only count clicks that lead a user to the advertiser's site, including on the display URL or on the video while it's playing.

So just don't click on the ad in a fashion that will lead you "to the advertiser's site, including on the display URL or on the video while it's playing"

So enjoy the Click-O-Phobia medicine and click on those play buttons.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how Yahoo! ranks sites within the Yahoo! Directory. As I explained years ago with Yahoo! Directory Ranks Pages by Popularity, but let's look at an example close to home.

Yahoo! has a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Resources section, where they list out sites included in the directory in order of "popularity." Here is it...

What makes one site more popular than the next? Let's look at another example close to home. The Internet Consultants New York section has my business ranking number one, above Agency and Razorfish.

Let's analyze...

RustyBrick.com has 70,032 external links via Site Explorer.
Agency.com only has 7,782 external links via Site Explorer.
But Evolution.com has a whopping 152,059 external links via Site Explorer.

So why isn't Evolution.com number one?

Let's look at the SEO category:

Search Engine Watch has 213,437 external links via Site Explorer.
WebmasterWorld has 275,587 external links via Site Explorer.
SEOBook has 283,855 external links via Site Explorer.
Search Engine Roundtable has 239,111 external links via Site Explorer.

All about the same.

How does Yahoo! define popularity?

By default, Directory site listings are presented sorted by popularity and relevance. Sites that are most popular with users or the most relevant to the category appear at the top of the site listings. The order of web sites or web documents is based upon Yahoo! Search Technology. If the category is large, the listings will display over multiple pages with pagination displayed at bottom of the page.

Sagerock at the WebmasterWorld suggest it is about click popularity. But I suspect it is a bit more detailed based on Yahoo! saying, "order of web sites or web documents is based upon Yahoo! Search Technology."

They can easily apply a popularity algorithm to the Directory and order pages by that. Now if we knew exactly how the popularity algorithm worked, then you know...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

You cannot get anything past DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld members when it comes to Google AdSense.

Last night at about 10:45(EST) the AdSense overview pages that shows some quick stats went blank.

Immediately you see threads pop up at the two forums with dozens of "me too" replies.

It appears it was fixed about 11:10 (EST).

But it shows you, you can have less than 30 minutes of an issue and you are caught.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Kevin Gibbons posted a thread at Search Engine Roundtable Forums last week about how he discovered that his blog has removed "removed from the Google index." After quick review, he noticed that he had some how added the <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" /> META tag to all his blog pages.

So he dug deeper to figure out how it was added.

By default the <$BlogMetaData$> tag which seems to be the default on some templates within Blogger, automatically added that meta tag.

It basically tells search engines not to index the pages and crawl the content.

So he removed the tag and hand coded his meta data.

He is not the only one who had this problem, several commented at his post.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A Google Groups thread has some details that I have not seen before. If a site is temporarily down, I thought Google would not deindex the site, but give it some more time before they removed the page from the index.

According to this thread, that may not be the case.

Problem:

I've been having problems with downtime from my hosting company (am moving tomorrow as this is the final straw) and I've now practically disappeated from Google. I was in 3rd position for 5 of the more popular searches for my business and now - nothing.

Vanessa Fox of Google replies:

If the host is down when Googlebot tries to access your pages, then those pages may disappear from the index until Googlebot can crawl them again. In webmaster tools, do the pages you want indexed appear in the crawl errors section? If so, then Googlebot was unable to access them.

If you are moving the site to a new host and the pages are available the next time Googlebot tries to access them, then you should see them in the index again soon after that.

So Google may remove the pages from the index if your pages are not accessible to Google due to server issues.

But she explains a reinclusion request is not required in this case.

You're right that requesting reinclusion is only for sites that have violated the guidelines. This isn't the situation in your case, and there's no need to contact us to let us know that your site has moved and is available again, as Googlebot will keep rechecking for it automatically.

I have added some questions to the thread for more clarification.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Update: Besides for the excellent comments below, Vanessa replied to my questions saying:

Googlebot will try a few times before the pages drop from the index.
As for how long it takes for a page to get back in once the site is back up, that really depends on a number of factors, such as how often the site is crawled in general.

Google announced Friday that you can now pause your ads, keywords and sites in AdWords.

As of today, all AdWords advertisers can pause and resume keywords (for keyword-targeted campaigns), sites (for site-targeted campaigns), and ad creatives. As you can see from the picture below, this feature is functionally similar to the pause/resume feature on the Campaign Summary page - we've simply extended it to the keyword, sites and ad variations tabs.

Overall, SEMs are very happy with this feature. Here are some comments from a WebmasterWorld thread:

This is especially useful for those with ads in Premium Positions. You can create a new ad for your AdGroup, pause it, and then revert back to your original ad if you are unable to wait for the new one to reach a Premium Position

This is great news. I have been doing things like lowering bids to .01 to pause a keyword on a product that is out of stock. Likewise on ads, if the red is out of stock but the blue is in, I hate to keep changing the ad and loosing history and it didn't always make sense to set up different ad groups. This will help tremendously.

Both keyword and creative pauses are excellent features. Now I don't have to play around with seperate campaigns when dealing with clients 'special offers' such as Valentines day or christmas offers. thanks G-Ads team.

Good stuff Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

LeeAnn Prescott from Hitwise posted Google Traffic To Wikipedia up 166% Year over Year. She has hard stats that prove what SEOs and Webmasters have been claiming for the past year plus.

• Wikipedia Treated Too Well in Google? from August 17, 2005
• Wikipedia Results at Top of Google SERPs? from December 21, 2005
• The Rise of Wikipedia = The Fall of DMOZ? from July 26, 2006
• Wikipedia Ruling in Google Search Results? from August 11, 2006
• Google Treating Wikipeda Too Well? from January 23, 2007
• Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" Button To Be Renamed "Wikipeda Result" Button - Joke from February 13, 2007

She wrote:

The percentage of Google's downstream traffic going to Wikipedia increased by 166% year over year (week ending 2/10/07 vs. week ending 2/11/06). Last week Wikipedia was the #3 website in Google's downstream, after Google Image Search and MySpace.

That is some serious traffic. Is Wikipedia worthy of it?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Lots of buzz over the weekend on Google trying to strong arm a group of Polish Poets over the domain name gmail.pl. A news article named Google sues Polish poets over gmail.pl writes:

Google has launched legal action against a group of Polish poets, demanding that they give up their Internet domain name gmail.pl, a member of the cultural collective said.

Krawczyk, however, blasted the suggestion that the poets were looking for a fast buck.

"We didn't buy this name just to sell it to Google. As a matter of pride, we're refusing to give it up," she said.

"We bought the name legally, with our own money. Nobody gave it to us for free. We refuse to be deprived of what we consider is our property."

Krawczyk said that Google had not proposed a financial settlement.

"Their lawyer told me that his client had no intention of paying for something which belonged to him," she claimed.

This should be interesting. Since we know Google lost their claim to use Gmail in Europe and Poland is a member of the European Union, well - we will see. We just need to see the true intention behind them registering the domain name. Supposedly, the name was registered after Gmail launched.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

On Friday we reported that there was a Major Google AdWords Bug With Quality Score Increases CPC Prices. We shows how many folks with good quality campaigns were noticing an unnatural increase in their minimum bids for their keywords.

Google acknowledged it was a bug and said they are working on fixing it.

Over the weekend, reports came in that people noticed some fixes, but not full campaign fixes.

Now, this morning, people are noticing the minimum bids drop back down to where they were once before the bug.

I have checked a couple of accounts this morning and things seem to be back to normal, but who knows what will happen the rest of this week?

All my accounts are back to normal. I presume that this was just a warning, so let´s get ready for what´s coming soon. Start tunning things up! In G. we trust.

Continued forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator Discovery, started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums saying he noticed an unusual amount of traffic from Google's content network to his sites that are geo-targetted to the U.S. and English only group.

He said:

#1 - The website is from Canada
#2 - The website is under construction
#3 - The website language is in French
#4 - There is NO CONTENT other than a page that says its under construction in French!
#5 - Our campaigns are limited to the U.S. only.
#6 - Our campaigns are limited to English only.

Long time member, Mel66, also said he has been noticing an increase of international traffic via AdSense for his geo-targetted campaigns.

I've been seeing Adwords clicks from places like Peru in the past couple days. It hasn't been a large number, and with today's $10 fiasco I haven't had time to investigate it - but, like you, we're set to US only so we shouldn't be getting these clicks.

Others in the thread seem to see the same thing as well.

We know of at least one large bug and another smaller bug.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There are dozens of reports of people noticing their CPC prices in Google AdWords jump through the roof. With the launch of a new AdWords quality score, a bug has been released and verified by Google to increase the bid price of well performing keywords and ads for no reason.

There are threads at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums with examples:

I've had about 20 keywords go to the £5.00 minimum today, all others stayed the same. These keywords were ok at 15p yesterday.

I'm also seeing keywords go inactive, increase min. bids to $10.00. But these inactive keywords are still showing up for searches.

I had a group of keywords that we were spending $200/day on go inactive and require a minimum bid of $10 to reactivate. No one else is bidding on these keywords anymore so I bet they're also having the same problems.

Jeremy Mayes has an email from Google confirming the issue:

Unfortunately, due to a technical issue, you may notice that the minimum bids for some of your keywords increased dramatically, despite them being high performing, good quality keywords. This is a temporary issue that our engineers are aware of and they are working to resolve it as soon as possible. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

I have received several other reports that Google is working on this issue now.

Don't forget this bug released today: Google Advertiser Charged For Paused Campaign in AdWords.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if he should or should not change his "home" navigational link to something more keyword rich and descriptive of the site. But he is worried that such a site wide change may be a bad idea for two reasons:

I'm questioning the usability of it (perhaps I could use the title attribute "home" but at the moment I have hundreds of pages with the keyword "home" pointing to my home page and I wonder what effect i would see?

Would I risk current positions and even supplemental for such a site wide anchor text change to an important page?

Many folks caution him from the SEO side of things, telling him to make this change slowly. Even WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster says;

I heard several reports last year of lost rankings on the very keyword used in this kind of change -- so do be cautious. It seems like the trigger might have been the fact of a change, because sites that were launched with this kind of home page linking continued to do OK.

It is a valid question. Honestly, I would just do what is best for the user. If "home" is more helpful in a navigational sense, go with home. You can add the title= attribute and say title="home of product A". Or you can even add a footer link that spells it all out, "home of product A," since that is a bit descriptive.

Any more advice and practical experience on this?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The end of January we reported that Google AdWords Professional Verification Seal Not Verifying.

So if you were logged into a Google account, (Gmail, AdWords, IG, etc.) and clicked on a Google AdWords Professional Verification Seal, it would take you to Google AdWords. Now it takes you to the verification page.

Kevin Gibbons reports his verification page now works, and I am logged into my Google account.

Forum discussion continued at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Jeremy Mayes links to a DigitalPoint Forums thread where a Google advertiser paused his campaign and was still getting charged for clicks and impressions.

I paused the campaign at 3:43 PM yesterday. According to my stats I only received 25 impressions yesterday 0 clicks. Today I checked my account and have been charged for over 3000 impressions that supposedly happened today, BUT my campaign had been paused for more than 17 hours!!! Not to mention I was charged $4 over my daily budget. I have contacted Google but don't expect to hear back for a couple of days. Anyone have this happen?

After the resident AdWords Pro at DigitalPoint Forums, GuyFromChicago, drilled him with questions, he got a response from Google that read:

Thank you for your email. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with your Google AdWords campaign. I understand your paused campaigns are accruing clicks and impressions. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly. We appreciate you for your patience.

Once this issue has been resolved by the engineers, please be assured that any applicable credits will be automatically processed.

So it seems to be a bug in Google. So you as an advertiser should be aware of this. Make sure you aren't being charged as well.

I suspect Google will refund the advertiser for the impressions and clicks he accrued.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

As I reported yesterday at Search Engine Land, Yahoo Launches Suggestion Boards - Digg Community Upset. In reality, Yahoo! had these "suggestion boards" for a while, at least a few months. But Yahoo! officially announced them two days ago.

As you can see by the screen capture above. Users can submit "suggestions" and then other users can vote on those suggestions, so that Yahoo! can determine what are the most wanted suggestions out there.

Digg has the same model, but are conceptually different, in that users vote on news stories.

So if you want a new feature on a Yahoo! property, you add the idea to the list and hope others want it as well, and vote for it.

In my opinion, this is very different from Digg.

So go ahead and vote at the SiteExplorer Suggestion Board for your favorite feature requests.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

As I reported recently, Google Recommends Using Meta Description Tag but why?

This Search Engine Watch Forums thread shows the perfect example of why a unique meta description is slightly important.

If you ever do a site: command, i.e. site:www.seroundtable.com and you see:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

That is a sign you do not have unique meta descriptions.

So then you click the "repeat the search with the omitted results included." You are then presented with unique title tags (if you have them) but shown the same description snippet for each result.

Why? Because it is pulling your header information.

For this reason, Google and other search engines like when you have a unique meta description, so they have something unique to put there. Typically, a normal search would show content from the page - and not use the meta description - but in these types of cases, the top of the source code, most likely the navigation, will be shown.

So in the case of the thread:

When I enter my URL in Google I get the following result.

For example my website is http*//www.xyz.com

Results

"http*//www.xyz.com
About Us, Contact Us, Links, Sitemap Copyrights 2007 http*//www.xyz.com All rights reserved."

Yea, but is it such a big deal? I don't think so, because who searches this way? In any event, it is fairly easy to do one of two things or even both of them.

(1) Add unique meta descriptions
(2) Use CSS positioning to make your body content come up as high as possible in the source code.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I spotted a good Google Groups thread that has Google's official word on how they handle the nofollow attribute in links.

When Google began complying with the nofollow attribute, they posted this blog entry but people are still fuzzy today on how they handle it exactly.

Adam Lasnik of Google replied to this question:

Does Google crawl a rel="NOFOLLOW" tagged link and not give it credit, or does it just stop at the link and not visit that page unless it's found elsewhere?

Adam said the "latter" so, Google will not even let the spider crawl links that have the nofollow attribute. But it will crawl the link if it is found elsewhere.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

SEOs and Webmasters always wondered how long it took for a typically site to pass along a PageRank value from one URL to another via a 301 redirect. Google's Adam Lasnik answered this question, saying only about a couple weeks.

In a Google Groups thread Adam says:

301s pass PR and related signals appropriately. Usually takes a couple of weeks for things to smooth out, though.

I was a bit shocked by the statement of just "a couple of weeks" for 301s to "pass PR and related signals appropriately." I always thought it was a couple months or more.

Well, maybe Google picks up the changes within a couple weeks. I.e. the time it takes to crawl the new information and URLs. But maybe by the time all this data is processed it takes longer?

But then why would Adam use the words, "for things to smooth out." Meaning, search results to smooth out.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Vanessa Fox posted at the Google Webmaster Central Blog that they will now be opening up commenting at that blog. I believe this is the first official Google blog to offering open comments.

There is one restriction. You must use a Blogger account in order to post a comment at the blog.

I posted my first comment here, just to mark my territory. But reading the comments is a bit awkward - they can do a bit of a better job on the user interface within the commenting area.

Vanessa wrote about commenting:

Our goal is improved communication with webmasters, and while our blog, discussion forum, and tools help us reach that goal, you can now post comments and feedback directly on this blog as well. This helps you talk to us about topics we're posting. We want to do all we can to encourage an open dialogue between Google and the webmaster community; this is another avenue to do that.

A Google Groups thread has Adam Lasnik discussing the enabling of comments on the blog. He responded to the restriction of requiring a Blogger account to comment:

Believe it or not, I just had to set up my own (corporate, not personal) Blogger account, and I had the same misgivings you've shared. But -- it took less than 3 minutes, and I *didn't* have to actually create a blog... just use your same Google Account e-mail address to sign up for Blogger and voila.

This is a huge leap for Google and I hope it works out.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google is now redirecting the Google Public Service Search over to Google Custom Search Engine section.

Google posted an official announced on this last night saying:

Public Service Search is a service that enables non-profit, university, and government web sites to provide search functionality to their visitors without serving ads. While we've stopped accepting new Public Service Search accounts, if you want to add the functionality of this service to your site, we encourage you to check out the Google Custom Search Engine. Note that if you already have a Public Service Search account, you'll be able to continue offering search results on your site.

They are hoping that new non-profits and organizations will use the Google CSE instead. And only non-profit, university, and government sites can turn off ads from within their custom search engine.

FYI - we have our own Google CSE enabling you to search the search marking forums - and some people really love it. Yes, the ads are on because we are not a non-profit, university, and government site.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On January 19th we reported a Yahoo! Search Update was underway. Now, recent updates to that WebmasterWorld thread suggest that Yahoo! is rolling back that update, to the previous state.

On February 14, starting at message number 3252410, textex asked:

Seeing some rollbacks...anyone else?

Some are not considering this a rollback but a phase two of the update.

Exactly what is going on, I am not sure. I do not think this is a full new algorithm or index update. But there are substantial reports of changes taking place at Yahoo!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The big news last night came by way of the AdWords Blog about Google making two big changes. As I explained in great detail over at Search Engine Land, the two changes have to do with "transparency" and "a new quality algorithm."

In terms of the transparency, Google will be adding a quality score column, that includes a minimum bid CPC for all advertisers today or tomorrow.

It may look somewhat like these test screen shots we have reported:

This information will help you for the next big change.

The Quality Score algorithm will be updated to give the advertiser the "benefit of the doubt." So when you ad a new keyword that Google has little or not historical data on, they wil typically give you a lower CPC instead of a higher CPC (as they have done in the past.

With this, Google has launched a detail budget analysis, as Kevin notes with screen captures here.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

I know I am not in London now, but Liana “Li” Evans is and she has sent over a session from SES London for me to post.

Amanda Watlington
Video has grown explosively
Video presents optimization problems – there is no clear cut winner when it comes to video players
Most users do not know where to look for video – there is a lot of niche market video
Professionally done videos compete with user gen videos
Tip & Tactics – take advantage of major outlest such as YouTube, use rss feeds to distribute your video – create separate fee
Develop your tags as carefully as site keywords
Create video site maps and landing pages for video content
Put the branding in the video within it
Write clear descriptions,

Podcasting
On demand audio cultural distribution
Don’t finalize the name of your show, make sure that show name isn’t in use already
Podshow names are not as easy to check as domain names
Show name is in the Title you will use for the feed, or in RSS_ speak it’s the channel
Note each episode of your show will also have a title, in RSS speak this is at the item levl
Develop a key world list for the show and determine how your brand it
Write the audio tag information carefully in advance
Optimize id3 tags, web page, monitor distribution after you submit it
ID3 tags are very important = meta data for mp3, 4, wma aac or ogg vorbis audio files
39 frames including – copyright, content type dates and content information and space for files such as pictures
Odacity is free – find it on the web, can help you edit the ID3 tags
Use a separate the landing page for the audio content to limit possibility of broken links
Provide subscription information on every landing page, include length and size of the audio file
Include an abstract or a transcription of each episode
Submit your feeds!!

Continue reading "Video and Podcast SEO at SES London"

An early WebmasterWorld thread is reporting very early signs of changes taking place at the various Google data centers. Often, these types of threads tend to spot a Google update that is about to take place. But it would be cool if Google gave us a Valentines Day update.

Let me stress, this is very early and that Google always updates their results - daily. But this seems to be a larger update.

Here are some of the reports from the WebmasterWorld members:

A well known rank tracking service is showing a huge spike of changes for yesterday.

Looking at various datacenters it looks like Google is "testing or comparing" different series of SERPS, at least for the keywords I'm tracking: September set of results, late october, Christmas time and January's SERPS. Perhaps Google is comparing the filter/penalty/alogo changes we have been seeing against its results from pre-September.

Again, it is very early, but I will track it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Matt Cutts commented below that he does not believe there is an update taking place. Plus, he has a room of SES speakers who backs his opinion. :-)

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on recent news that Google's YouTube has handed over the identity of two YouTube users. These YouTube users uploaded Fox Network's 24 and other shows, prior to them being aired on Fox. This upset Fox and encouraged them to subpoena YouTube for the information of the users who uploaded the shows.

eOnline reports:

The studio said Friday that video-sharing Websites YouTube and LiveDigital have complied with a subpoena demanding the identity of the two users who allegedly posted the Emmy-winning drama's four-hour season opener, in its entirety, days before its airdate and nearly simultaneous DVD release.

"We intend to use the information provided to pursue all available legal remedies against those who infringed our copyrights," 20th Century Fox media relations VP Chris Alexander said in a statement to E! Online.

Brett Tabke feels this is actually good for Google because, "Google was not implicated in any wrong doing here - they were just the vehicle. Google comes out of this like a rose and sends a strong signal to YouTube users to shape up, or we will out you. That cuts 99% of the problem out at the source."

Other WebmasterWorld members find this funny, because all Fox is going to be getting are "the fake identity of the user or users who allegedly posted..."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The nineteenth edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. In this edition we had a bit of technical difficulty with keeping the phone lines up, but we did discuss many topics. They included Rand Fishkin's proposal on TV. We also talked a bit about the Google Sitelinks update, a Phrase ReRank algorithm, StumbleUpon and AdSense. We talked about techniques to use when re-launching a web site.
Plus many more fun topics with Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search and some SEO tips. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file here and listen at your convenience.

Topics We Covered:

1. Randfish Proposes To Girlfriend on Veronica Mars
   
2. Google Sitelinks Update
   
3. "Phrase Based Re-Ranking" Algorithm To Blame for the Google 950 Penalty?
   
4. Is StumbleUpon Considered Auto-Surf Traffic & Against AdSense TOS?
   
5. Version 2: Relaunching a Site: SEO Considerations
   
6. Google Ordered To Drop Belgian Content Again: Google Appeals Again
   
7. Google Recommends To Not Control Outbound PageRank Leak
   
8. Early Feedback on Yahoo's New Ranking Model for Paid Ads
   
9. YahooSarah Talks About Yahoo!'s New Quality Score
   
10. Google Maps Hijack Caused By Google Algorithm: Google Adds Report Map Feature
    
11. Listing of Some Free Keyword Suggestion Tools
    
12. Feedback & Suggestions For Google's Link Analysis Tool
    
13. Google Getting Stricter On The Supplementals?
    
14. When Is Search Engine Optimization Not Required?
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 19: Rand Proposes, Google Sitelinks Update, Search Algorithms, StumbleUpon, SEO, PageRank, Yahoo, Keyword Tools & More"

The Google AdWords Blog announced last night that they will be inviting a limited number of AdWords advertisers to test out a new model for site targeted campaigns. Site targeted campaigns are a way for you to place your ad on someone's site, if they are running Google AdSense - they have been offering Site Targeting since June 17, 2005.

Advertisers would pay Google based on a CPM model (i.e. impression model) and not a click model. It now appears Google will be testing a CPC (cost per click) model with the site targeted campaigns. Why? They say:

• Increased flexibility. Select the content network sites you want your ads to appear on and choose the bidding option that fits your needs. If clicks are your goal, try CPC bidding so you pay only when you get the result you want.
• Full control. Create new CPC site-targeted campaigns, or switch your existing campaigns between CPC and CPM at any time. As always, you retain full control over your budgets and bids.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night Google Checkout announced that you will now see larger and more colorful Google Checkout buttons on some sponsored results in Google.com. That means, any merchant that accepts Google Checkout, will be given a huge advantage. Plus it means, we technically have these little banner ads on the sponsored listings. As you can read, I am not a big fan of these icons. I actually liked the ones they used before.

The original icons were a green color, and a simple but tasteful shopping cart. It looks like:

Then they removed the color from the icon and it looked like this:

Last night they changed it to look like this:

Now, who will ever see the ad between those two ads with the Google Checkout icon.

Don't get me wrong, I have clients that use Google Checkout and they will most likely benefit from this. But I still think it is not fair nor helpful to the searcher. Of course, Google argues that it "help shoppers more easily identify Google Checkout merchants" but do shoppers care? I asked my wife last night and she had no idea what the icon meant.

You should be able to see these icons in action with a search for sporting goods.

In my full size screen capture, you should see the top sponsored listings still use the old icon, which is cool.

And Google also decided to officially allow Google Checkout icons on AdSense ads also (not the big colorful ones, at least not yet). We reported this several times but now it is here to stay.

Let's not forget their Froogle tests.

Thank you to everyone who emailed me about this, I can't believe the number of reports I got notifying me about it.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Like the years before, the search engines and some of the search forums have done stuff with their sites to celebrated Valentines Day. This year here is what we have to show.

+ Ask.com places a small but yet very tasteful heart button that looks like:

The past year or so, Ask.com has been known to revamp the whole home page, a drastic change. I find it cool that they took the simplistic approach this time.

+ DogPile, well who doesn't love to see two dogs with a special something?

+ Google goes with chocolate covered strawberries, yum.

+ Yahoo's is pretty funny, I think...

Over at the Search Forums, we have Cre8site Forums showing off their Valentines Day logo, it looks like:

And we have our own Valentines Day logo that looks like:

Past year's coverage can be found at 2006 and 2005.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & Cre8asite Forums.

I know I am not in London now, but Liana “Li” Evans is and she has sent over the keynote session from SES London for me to post.

Keynote Speech with Matt Cutts of Google
Chris welcomes everyone, introduces Matt

Chris: Matt you went to school on the east coast, how did you make it to the west coast and make it to google

Matt: My wife and I eloped to come to Google, he took classes in library and information sciences. Wrote to Google and asked how much do you have to pay. They finally wrote back and started negotiated for a position and he started at Google in 2000.

Chris: You’re head of the web spam team, take us through a typical day

Matt: I’m different, he really spends time in email and spotting trends. Look at bad search reports, and assess, what’s the worse things, how can we prioritize. What can we do to help the users.

Chris: Spam is in the eye of the beholder. They think it’s ok content, but it is spam. Where do you draw the line

Continue reading "A Keynote Conversation with Google's Matt Cutts"

A WebmasterWorld thread has almost 50 posts from Google AdSense publishers who have received duplicate 1099 forms. A 1099 form is a IRS form used to report earnings to the US government.

Google has confirmed in the thread that "some publishers received duplicate 1099 forms." But they assure the publishers that their "earnings won't be reported to the IRS twice."

AdSenseAdvisor apologized for stressing some publishers out over this and afford further assistance.

If you find an error in your tax form (wrong name, wrong tax ID, etc.), please don't hesitate to contact us and we'll be happy to correct it. The duplicate form issue, however, is being resolved, so there's no need for you to write in. If there are any further issues, the team will be sure to contact you.

I personally only received one 1099 form, that I am aware of.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you are an advertisers on Microsoft's Live.com adCenter, and you noticed your reports not being updated, you are not alone. A WebmasterWorld thread has details of adCenter reports not updating since 7:00 am EST on February 11th.

adCenter411, the official Microsoft representative confirmed the issue saying:

I just got word that because of the adCenter maintenance this past Saturday, reporting is behind. It may take a couple days for the data to be up to date - I will keep you posted as I learn more, including the expected resolution time for this. Thank you for your patience, adCenter411

So don't be alarmed if you see no data in your reports.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has once again been ordered to not index and display the content from a group of Belgian publishers. It started back in September 2006 with Google Cache & Google News Not Allowed in Belgium and then in late November Google & Belgium: Google Goes to Court Over News Inclusion. It appears that Google lost the case and will try to appeal once again.

Danny Sullivan has the ultimate write up named Google Loses In Belgium Newspaper Case:

A Belgium court has found that Google did violate copyright when including material from several Belgian newspapers in its search index. Google may have to pay a fine, but the ruling is far more positive for the company. Google can continue to index content without explicit permission, while content owners in Belgium must now ask for removal via email rather than using the long established mechanisms of robots.txt and meta robots tags.

Google lost, but won. From now on content owners in Belgium have to ask for removal of their content via email (not via robots.txt or meta tags).

Danny has spoken with Google on the ruling and has more insight on the details of the case, if interested.

This whole thing is still funny to many SEMs. A publisher is asking to be kicked out of the Google index. They are asking for less exposure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I know I am not in London now, but Liana “Li” Evans is and she has sent over a session from SES London for me to post.

European Case Studies

Chris Sherman introduces panel

Jamie de Valle Sansierra
Chevrolet Search Marketing in UK – triple sales in the uk
Solid e-base built in less than 3 years

Running a European web platform for 31 countries – france, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, etc.
SEM activity for 3 years
2004 focused natural search
2005 PPC Pilot – optimized existing platform
2006 Redesign plantform, PPC campaigns
2007 Holistic SEM – borrth ppc and sem

Over 50% of online auto shoppers consider search to be the most influential information sources in their purchase decision
Search is responsible for delivering and average of 19% of their traffic

SEM helps build Brand Awareness and Product Familiarity in Europe (have the big gas guzzlers reputation)
Run SEM centrally – gave them one voice for chevy – saved costs – cost efficiencies, leveraged common web platform

Continue reading "European Case Studies at Search Engine Strategies London"

Bill at WebmasterWorld notifies us that Google launched a Chinese version of Google Maps. You can see Google Maps China at http://ditu.google.cn/.

I assume ditu is maps in Chinese? :-)

Based on the thread, it appears that:

• City detail is very limited
• Major roads are available
• Cities like Shanghai and Beijing have more detail than others
• Suspicions that this map service is powered directly from a 3rd party source, possibly mapgoogle.mapabc.com.
• The main Google Maps has more details on Hong Kong then this China version

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I found a thread at DigitalPoint Forums that made me smile.

Remember all out coverage over the past years on how well Google treats the Wikipedia in the search results? If not, here is a quick summary:

• Wikipedia Treated Too Well in Google? from August 17, 2005
• Wikipedia Results at Top of Google SERPs? from December 21, 2005
• The Rise of Wikipedia = The Fall of DMOZ? from July 26, 2006
• Wikipedia Ruling in Google Search Results? from August 11, 2006
• Google Treating Wikipeda Too Well? from January 23, 2007

Well, check out this guy's funny mock up.

He replaced the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, with "Take Me to Wikipedia" because the I am feeling lucky button takes you directly to the first Google result. Enough said.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Mike Blumenthal, who runs a great Google & Yahoo! Maps Blog has dug incredibly deep on this issue. He first found the theory that this was a manual change to be wrong. He stated "I investigated it was just an overly aggressive algorithm."

Then a Google Rep came in and posted;

I understand that a competitor’s website is appearing with the business information for one of your clients. Currently, Google Maps for the US compiles information from web search results, data submitted directly by local business owners, and sources such as publicly available Yellow Pages directories.

The algorithms on Google Maps automatically select relevant web pages to appear with each business listing. These algorithms work to link each business listing with the most accurate web page the algorithm can find. However, it sometimes misses the most appropriate site for an individual business. If your client would like to display his URL with his listing, we encourage him to submit this information through the Google Maps Local Business Center at http://www.google.com/local/add

There are detailed instructions at the link that rustybrick provided:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=15391&topic=1481

You might want to note that in order to alter the business details for a listing, you have to have access to that business’ mail or phone. As rustybrick noted, the Google group is a good place to ask questions – I’m on hand to answer many of them. If you have really specific questions about your listing even after reading the Help Center page, you can submit a support ticket at http://maps.google.com/support/bin/request.py. You'll get a faster response too if you include the full name, address and phone number of your client's business in your initial ticket.

This confirmed that the "hijack" was purely a mistake by Google's algorithm.

An example of this provided by Mike is a search on the met sarasota which brings up the following result.

You can see the listed URL is kubotadayspa.com but that is not the correct one. It is, however, currently the first listing under a Google local search for web pages found. It is clear that Google puts the first match in the web pages section as the URL for the site.

Last night, Mike reports seeing a feature on the maps results that allow others to easily report incorrect information. Next to results that are unverified, he spotted a link that says "Report incorrect information." The link takes you to a page where you can give more details. For example, this local result has the link.

Clicking on that link takes you here and gives you three choices of problems to choose from:

• The name, phone number, or address is incorrect
• Business information (e.g. hours or payment accepted), reviews, or web references are incorrect
• My home phone number or address appears in this listing

This is a quick way to report issues. It is a quick response by Google to give local business owners a way out. Nice work Mike on pressing the issue that needed to be pressed.

Here is most of Mike's coverage on the topic:
- Beware: Competitor Hijacks Google Local Business Listing? Maybe, Maybe Not!
- Google’s forced choice for the Authoritative Website
- Google allows corrections to unverified Map entries

I did push these articles and stories to some folks at Google, but I think Mike's work in getting Google's map team to spot it was the reason for the new way to report issues on unverified listings.

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that smaller pages tend to rank better in Microsoft's Live Search (MSN Search), than larger pages.

Senior member, crobb305 explains:

Has anyone else noticed that very small pages rank highest in MSN? This could explain why doorways and blogspots rank so well. To test this, I reduced text on my homepage down to just a paragraph or so, with links to my internal pages. The content reduced from 22k to about 5k. Within 2 days, the page went from page 5 to page 1 for a competitive phrase.

BillyS, another senior member at WebmasterWorld wrote:

I've seen this too. MSN does not seem to care about the number of words on a page. I saw an "About" page rank very high for a competitive phrase - all the page had was about two paragraphs and the phrase was mentioned once.

Honestly, I have no idea. I am sure there are examples of this going both ways.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google AdSense was was down for about two or three hours this Saturday, February 10th. Reports are not geo-specific. They came from several places in the US, as well as overseas.

I would normally let this slide but still, some folks are reporting issues after they log in. Either error messages load up or nothing loads at all.

I personally just tried it and it seems to work for me.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: AdSense Advisor confirmed the issue at the thread:

Any outage you experienced with the AdSense homepage this weekend was a minor site issue, not system maintenance. Sorry for any inconvenience this caused, and please rest assured that the issue didn't affect ad delivery or click and impression recording.

I know it can be stressful to lose access to your reports unexpectedly, but don't worry - we'll keep letting you know about scheduled downtime in advance, both here and on the blog.

Thanks for bearing with us!
-ASA

A WebmasterWorld thread spotted, I believe, referrals from URLs that have _gwt_pg= appended to the end of the URLs. So what does the GWT and PG stand for?

Well, PG can be page. Where Google would append a page number to the URL for you.

GWT can mean Google Webmaster Tools.

This is all speculation and tedster seems to think the same.

I think it's a good guess that gwt="google webmaster tools". I don't make much use of GWT -- is there some way that you can tag specific urls from within your account?

I will track this a bit and update the post if I find out more.

Update: Martin Porcheron has commented explaining he has seen the GWT referral come from Google Web Toolkit, which makes a ton of sense to me. Thanks!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update 2: Vanessa Fox has said it is not coming from Google Webmaster Central.

I'm not sure what those parameters are, but they're not coming from webmaster tools.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread links to a contest that Google's AdWords department seems to be running. The contest asks you to submit your photo with a chance to have them displayed at Google AdWords.

We're redecorating here at Google AdWords and have decided on a theme: you! We're looking for photos that feature our advertisers and the unique nature of their businesses. If you're interested in having your photos displayed here at AdWords, send them along to adwords-photos@google.com.

Photos need to be submitted by February 28, 2007.

There are more details with photo ideas and the guidelines at http://www.google.com/adwords/photo_submit.html.

Update: Official Google AdWords Blog post on this at this URL.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I'd like to say if you report something once, it may be a fluke. If you report twice, then there may be something to it. But reporting something three times, well - to me, it is here to stay (at least for a while. This is the third time I am reporting a thread on folks spotting Google Checkout icons on Google AdSense ads.

I have still not seen them myself live on a Google AdSense site but it appears more and more people are noticing it on a daily basis.

Google Checkout icons can be seen on several AdWords ads on the top and right side of a search on sporting goods.

Scratch that, I have seen a Google Checkout icon on topix's sporting goods section. Scroll down a bit, and you may see an ad for "Dicks Sporting Goods." They accept Google Checkout and thus have the Google Checkout icon on the AdSense ad.

I think this just may stick for the near future.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

It appears as if on this Friday, Google has done an update on their Sitelinks. Google Sitelinks, first thought to be Web Categories, was officially released back in September 2006. Google has their official doc on sitelinks in their Webmaster help section.

Over the weekend, it seems like Google updated them and gave some sites that did not have sitelinks, sitelinks.

That includes us, a search on search engine roundtable or se roundtable or s e roundtable, etc. gives you the following result:

We are not the only ones to get Sitelinks, Shoemoney.com, JenSense, Problogger, Text Link Ads, SEOmoz, and BigmouthMedia all received them.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

There is a really nice thread at Cre8asite Forums about how to prepare for a relaunch of an existing site. The specific site at hand is an outdated site that is going to be completely redone. That includes the URL and directory structure. Yes, changing a directory and URL structure can be murder for sites that already rank well. So what can you do?

301. Figure out a clear and logical old URL to new URL mapping structure. This gets more complex with larger sites that are not database driven. But if a site is database driven, it should be possible to figure out a URL structure and map that dynamically to your new one. Then 301 those old URLs to the new URLs.

404. Setting up a custom 404 can be a huge help to the search engines and your users. No matter what you do, when you set up a brand new URL structure - pages will be lost. So setting up a page that gives users who land on pages that no longer exist a way to navigate to the page they want, is important. Also, this page will serve as a tool to tell the search engine that the page can now be removed from their index. They will appreciate that.

Analytics. If you can look at your web analytics and determine what are your top pages driving traffic - that would be helpful. Often when this is the case, it may be best to use a mod_rewrite on those specific pages and maintain the same URL structure for the five, ten, twenty, even hundred pages that are sending you the most amount of traffic. Changing these URLs, is also doable with a proper 301 but you can and most likely will a lot of traffic from search engines with the URL change over the short term. So it is a judgement call on a URL by URL basis - but you need those analytics to decide. Bill Slawski adds a list of what you should look for in your stats:

• What keyword phrases are bringing you traffic.
• What sites are sending you visitors.
• What audiences are being targeted on which pages.
• Which important pages on other sites are linking to which of your pages.
• What affiliates/partners/friends/advertisers are bringing you traffic.
• What directory listings might you be able to change.
• What directory listings might you be able to add.

There are things you can do prior to the switch over that should be done. Such as notify your affiliates and those sites that you know that link to you. Hopefully they can schedule in to change any links they have given you, to change to the new URLs when you make the switch. Of course, this is often wishful thinking. So garnering that data and then contacting them over and over again, maybe be something you want to do. Data is crucial here.

No matter what you do, you will see a drop in traffic. But often these URL changes are long term things and in the long run, you should see an increase. How long is long term? Could be over a year.

More tips and ideas at Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread caught my yesterday. A Google Adsense publisher received an email from Google after reportedly receiving a surge in traffic due to StumbleUpon.

That message really surprised me, because StumbleUpon is a legit source of traffic. Much like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. - StumbleUpon is a social source of traffic. So I asked the publisher to email Google back for clarification on if it was StumbleUpon.

They replied to him stating nothing:

Thanks for your email. It is our policy not to endorse or support any specific product at this time. We're therefore not able to comment specifically on the program you've noted.

However, we recommend that you read through the AdSense Terms and Conditions (https://www.google.com/adsense/terms ) to ensure that your software it is not violation of any of our policies.

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

Now, we all know StumbleUpon can send a nice amount of traffic to your site in a day. Heck, go read Danny's write up on StumbleUpon - it will open your eyes.

Other AdSense publishers say they get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and they never received an auto-surf warning from Google. So at this time, I suspect that StumbleUpon traffic is OK with Google, but we have no official confirmation as of yet.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: I got a tip from Gabs on an email from Google AdSense specifically asking this question:

Thanks for writing in. I'm not sure if I'm understanding your question correctly, but advertising on StumbleUpon.com shouldn't be a problem. You're more than welcome to provide us with more details to clarify the situation.

For additional questions, I'd encourage you to visit the AdSense Help Center (http://www.google.com/adsense_help), our complete resource center for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group (http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help).

Sincerely,

Max
The Google AdSense Team

So I guess my assumption was correct, keep on Stumbling.

You all know that Panama's quality score launched this past Monday, and now Yahoo! sponsored ads should be ranked not just on bid price but also on a quality score metric. Some of our early feedback on Panama suggests that not much, in terms of the bidding environment, has changed - which serious surprised me.

But you as an SEM would love to take advantage of paying less and getting more. How can you possibly do that? Boost your quality score.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some more explanation on Yahoo!'s new quality score. YahooSarah explains:

Remember that more than click-through rate influences the quality of an ad: The quality of an ad is determined relative to other ads displayed at the same time by both its expected performance going forward and its historical performance. Historical performance data was not purged on February 5, but as time passes, the data generated after the launch of the new ranking model will have the strongest influence on ad quality calculations.

The time it takes to take both expected and historical performance into account to measure ad quality depends on the volume of searches related to a keyword. Keywords with lots of daily searches often generate enough data in a relatively short period of time until historical performance is a stronger factor for ad quality within that marketplace.

And no, the data used to determine ad quality is not “purged” at the beginning of a new month.

Most of this was disclosed before, but it can't hurt to drive the message home.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In a WebmasterWorld thread, there is a question about how can one preserve the PageRank value they have on his pages and not spread it out to others too much.

Of course, you know my rant on PageRank, but outside of that. Look at the question again:

I have around 60 links to my other pages from my home page. Is that too much, will that cause my PR to leak? Also I need to ask you what about linking to other sites from home page, will that cause the PR to leak?

Seems like a valid SEO question but... Look how this guy is building his site. He did not ask, if we think if 60 links from his home page is too many links for his user. He did not ask if the 60 links will confuse his user. He wanted to know if it will affect his PageRank to his other pages.

Technically, yes - PageRank dilution works that way. But its bad practice to think this way. It is not a natural way of setting up a link structure.

Hence this comment from Googler, Adam Lasnik:

I wouldn't be particularly concerned about "PR leakage." It's more important to make sure that you aren't engaging in link schemes designed to manipulate your site's ranking.

Many top-quality sites feature quite a few (quality) outgoing links, and are appreciated for that by visitors.

This site tends to do well in the Google results, we have a PageRank score of seven (I believe). Does it stop me from linking outwards to either my internal pages or to outside pages? No way. It is just natural for me to do so.

What Google is saying by "make sure that you aren't engaging in link schemes" is that by focusing on your PageRank dilution, is in affect a linking scheme focused "to manipulate your site's ranking."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a concept that when teaching children you need to be careful in the way you act in front of the kid. Kids learn by example more than they learn by what they are told. This also applies to adults - really does.

A WebmasterWorld thread notes that a person spotted a a Yahoo! Publisher Network terms of service violation on a "big site." He said, hey, if this site is doing it, does that means it is OK?

No, it is not OK.

The specific violation is that Yahoo! doesn't allow you to run other contextual ad programs on the same page as a Yahoo! contextual ad. Google recently removed that clause from their TOS but added a different restriction. So Yahoo! can and would boot you, if they caught you violating this program policy.

So if you see stuff on other sites, be it contextual related, PPC related or SEO related - do not assume it is allowed just because they did it. Heck, BMW spammed they got kicked out of the index. If you would have copied them, you would have been kicked out too, if caught. Now, you are now BMW, and unlike you, they got back in within days, because they are big - but you are not. So be careful.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting many cases of people noticing the pages on their site going into the supplemental index. But even more so, they are noticing that a site:www.domain.com command returns one result and then shows you:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

And then when you click to display those results, up come pages, not necessary with the supplemental tag. Also, those pages tend to have very unique titles and content - so they are technically not all that similar.

I do have some examples validating these reports - but I cannot share them (I promised).

But then you have sites like this that do not have that problem (i.e. site:www.seroundtable.com).

Preferred member, Whitey, writes:

- Our 2nd result is not supplemental
- On some of our sites we are near 100% free of supplementals when clicking on "show more results"
- A site:tool search on a page like this site:oursite.com/Widget1/ shows the same pattern as described above.
- Meta titles and meta descriptions are unique
- Currently our traffic is increasing.

Current observations:

- Header text is sometimes being displayed in the SERP's "description"
- Sites with good "trust rank" seem to be unaffected
- Affected members reporting traffic climbed first then crashed

I have a feeling it has to do with page popularity (i.e. linkage).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google released a Link Analysis Tool this Tuesday and the forums have had a couple days to digest the tool. I went through many of the forums and gathered all the feedback I can find in terms of suggestions to improve the tool. Here is what the forums had to say.

• Add an API to access the data
• Filter option by Recent Data Found
• Filter by Last Date Found
• Sort by Link Numbers
• Filter by PageRank Score
• Integrate with Google Analytics
• Open it for competitive analysis (not sure if this will happen)

Some additional ideas from me:

• Graph those links, bar graph to show links growing over time
• Filters for those graphs, to plot only PR # to # on that chart
• Filter the report that shows you new links (to see how many new links have a PR of # versus a PR of #)
• Anchor Text reports (show most popular anchor text used for your links)
• filter those by PR also, and other standard filters
• Outlink To Inlink Ratio Report Per Page
• Show Links by IP address and C-Block

Of course, just providing enough of this data and enabling us to export the data (as they do or add an API), then we can graph it ourselves.

This is an excellent tool, thanks again Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums and WebmasterWorld.

There has been a lot of recent talk about the Google Minus-950 Penalty. It was named that because people didn't find their pages anywhere before around the 950th result. The question is what happened recently to cause such a change in their rankings at Google.com?

WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster, believes that it has to do with a new patent application by Anna Lynn Patterson of Google named Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system. There is a large conversation about that patent application at WebmasterWorld. It basically says, in short:

Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. A spam document is identified based on the number of related phrases included in a document.

Tedster broke off the original thread on the 950 penalty and created a new one at WebmasterWorld on
"Phrase Based Re-ranking." Tedster feels it is the Phrase Based Re-ranking algorithm that is the cause for the minus 950 effect. Tedster explains, "What it seems to be is some kind of "Phrase-Based Reranking" - possibly related (we're still probing here) to the Spam Detection Patent invented by Googler Anna Lynn Patterson." Let me pull more quotes from the thread to clarify his theory.

It's like getting a poor health symptom in one area of your body from not having enough of some important nutrient -- even though you've got plenty of others and plenty of good health in many ways.

In one case I know of, the signs of this problem disappeared with one solid new inbound link from a very different domain, with the problematic phrase used as the anchor text. By "very different" I mean the linking domain was not in the 1,000 for the given search.

So, not less "SEO" fixed it, but more. The purely OOP assumptions don't sit right with me, given this anecdotal result. Now it's only one case, so it's certainly not "proof" of anything, but the fix has now been stable for several data refreshes at Google, so it is a decent data point to keep in mind.

Of course this is just a theory and that is why these threads are fun. Nice work tedster!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Like I reported at Search Engine Land yesterday, Gmail Now Public Beta, Open To All. That is right, you no longer need an invite to get a Gmail account. Which rocks, people can stop leaving me comments for a Gmail invite (211 comments to be exact). So go to Gmail and sign up without an invite.

Right, it won't cost you $250 for an invite like it once went for on eBay. Oh, it is also not a hoax when it launched on April 1, 2004 (April Fools Day), it was real and no hoax.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Google has the Google Local Business Center where you can add or edit your business listing in the Google Local results. I wrote about the edit business listing process before as well as wrote a really long one on How To Add Your Local Business Ad In Google AdWords while at Search Engine Watch (but none of the images work now - not to SEW, please fix the broken urls).

But now it appears that some devious businesses are registering their competitors businesses with Google local, but placing their URL in the business listing. Gabs also blogged this... A DigitalPoint Forums thread has one such report where the individual said:

I have a client, who did not register a business listing on Google maps, but their competitor took the time to do it for them, using their own url instead of my clients of course.

The listing shows as unverified, but I imagine that could stay that way for months.

You might want to check your Google map business listing to make sure someone hasn't done the same to you.

Google recently made the local Google results larger in Google.com normal searches, so this is more important than ever.

If this happened to you, you can either report it via this form or go to the Google Maps Google Group and see if a Googler can help you.

In addition you can update the listing and verify yourself as the true business.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has links to several free and useful keyword suggestion tools that are still available to us. Remember last week, we discussed Yahoo!'s plans for a new keyword tool, Wordtracker opening a new free version of their tool and Overture keyword tool having issues. Here are some keyword research tools still available to you today, some from the thread and some I added.

• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery Free Tool
• Google Trends
• DigitalPoint Keyword Suggestion Tool
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

The eighteenth edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. In this edition we had a special guest on, Vanessa Fox of the Google Webmaster Central team, to discuss the new Google link tool available within the Sitemaps tool. In addition, we talked about Google Personalized search and what SEOs should know. We discussed the Panama rankings score release, PageRank and SEO, Site Explorer features, Google local results and signals of poor SEO sites. Plus many more fun topics with Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search and some SEO tips. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file here and listen at your convenience.

Note: Much of the Vanessa Fox interview was lost due to a technical issue with the recording machine. But we were able to preserve some of it, including Chris Boggs asking a question.

Topics We Covered:

1. Google Webmaster Central Adds Link Analysis Tool (Vanessa Fox Guest)
   
2. Your Google Search Results Are Personalized
   
3. Yahoo! Search Marketing Now Ranked by Quality Score: Welcome Panama
   
4. Why Do Some SEOs Want Toolbar PageRank To Go Away?
   
5. Forum Members Vote If Google PageRank Score Is "Overhyped"
   
6. Yahoo! Site Explorer Adds New Features: Change Your Yahoo! Password
   
7. Google Local Results in Google.com Get Larger & Opinionated
   
8. 25 Signals of Poor Quality Sites
   
9. Competing Against Google in the Google.com Search Results
   

Continue reading "Search Pulse 18: Google Link Tool & Fox, Personalized Google, Yahoo Panama Live, PageRank, Site Explorer, Local, Poor SEO & More"

The Technigma blog writes that when you go to AskX.com, Ask.com's test site, and click on the Ask X logo, you are then taken to the yay 2 do t0 logo parody Flickr page.

The Flickr page has a collection of many Web 2.0 logos, including Google's 2.0 logo, Yahoo! Music 2.0 and many others. But Ask.com's logo is missing, I think.

Cute move on Ask.com's part.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Monday night at 6pm (EST), Yahoo! launched the new ranking algorithm that brings in a quality component to ranking the sponsored ads. It has been over a day now and there is still very little feedback in the search forums on how this is affecting advertisers.

I can honestly say I am shocked by how quiet the forums are. So far I found two threads, but with just one response each, as to how their campaigns are running. I promise I will keep watching the threads and let you know what I find. But for my early findings...

A WebmasterWorld thread says:

from what i can see; i'm impressed. i'm giving this a couple weeks to give my final review..but i do have to say; so far so good. my compliments to yahoo.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread says:

Doing great, my ads have all jumped up a few places.

It helps when you see this next to your ads!

Over at Search Engine Land, Chris Sherman has a great write up named What Yahoo's Panama Update Means For Searchers, it makes for a good read.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

The Live Search Blog announced that they have renamed and taken out of beta, their search API the other day. The new name is Windows Live Search API, lovely.

They also gave it a bit of an upgrade, adding:

• More Languages
• Search results increased from the first 250 to the first 1,000.
• Added a flag to disable host collapsing (the suppression of more than two results from a top-level URL) to facilitate the development of accurate paging algorithms.
• Enhanced Search Tags to return results as a comma-delimited list or as an array of name/value pairs.
• Results can also be filtered by the Search Tag name.
• Local Search can be specified using city names and zip codes,
• Added local data support for the following markets: en-AU, en-CA, en-GB, en-US, es-US, fr-CA, fr-FR, and it-IT.
• PhoneBook Results now sort by distance and relevance
• More New Code Samples

Cool list of new features, check it out here.

Of course, the other engines have APIs as well, including the Yahoo! Search API and Google AJAX Search API (Google discontinued the SOAP API).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is a wonderful thread at Cre8asite Forums that has a theory that SEO is always not necessary or required. He gives several examples, each example can be argued with, but that is what makes it fun.

The problem I think is the underlining definition of what search engine optimization (SEO) is.

Does this site require SEO? Heck, I have not changed the the site in ages, all I do is add content. Is adding content considered SEO? Is the style of how I write make my content SEO'ed content? Since my content tends to attract a couple links per article, does that make it SEO'ed?

Here are the examples given in the thread for when SEO is not required:

1. If your website is very specific for certain group of audience and does not require too much of public intervention then yes u do not require SEO. e.g. sites of universities and organizations especially made for students and employees resp.

2. When ur site already ranking well in the search engines, due to brand name etc, and you're satisfied with the traffic n sales the u don't require SEO.

3. When you facing some business fallouts, then u need to concentrate ur resources n energy elsewhere rather than SEO.

4.If you are planning to revamp or redesign your whole site again then go for SEO only after you have restructured your site again.

EGOL, moderator, quickly gave objections to each one and they are valid arguments.

As I scroll down the thread, softplus hits it on the nail.

Of course the larger question is: what is SEO?

I think that is the root issue with the thread.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

WebmasterWorld moderator pageoneresults notes in a WebmasterWorld thread that the Google home page, www.google.com, does not validate fully. In fact, he notes they have 67 validation errors.

I did a quick check at W3C validator and returned 66 errors, including a No DOCTYPE found.

But who am I to complain, I have 131 errors, but I do have a DOCTYPE.

Should this bother you? Depends on how picky you are about HTML.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The SEO community has been seeding promotions for the My Super Proposal campaign, where a mystery guy wanted to air a commercial proposing to his girlfriend. Rand Fishkin (randfish) proposes to his girlfriend, Geraldine last night. The idea didn't work exactly as planned, but did air on his girlfriend's favorite show, Veronica Mars. Here is the commercial:

Joe Morin (his blog) is very active in the SEO community, he can be thanked big time for helping orchestrating the event. He got the press involved, he got bloggers involved and so on. But that should come to no surprise. The SEO community is very tight, they help out each other when the need arises. It is a very giving industry and I am proud to be part of it.

You have to check out her reaction, here it is:

I appreciate Rand noting that he got the inspiration from my search engine proposal. But he took it one step forward and actually video taped her response. I actually planned on doing that, but I am glad I did not - but that response is priceless. Thanks so much for sharing Rand.

The SEO community wishes you and your Geraldine all the best. We look forward to your future and you having a wonderful and beautiful marriage.

Drop Rand a wedding note at SEOmoz.org.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums & WebmasterWorld.

The Google Base blog a couple weeks ago announced that they are now requiring more fields to be filled out in your Froogle feeds (Google Base feeds). For some merchants, this is not an easy task. Here are the requirements on a generic level, but there may be more if you are within a specific product category:

* brand
* condition
* description
* expiration_date
* id
* image_link
* link
* price
* product_type
* title

You can learn more about each field and uploading instructions at http://base.google.com/base/products.html.

A WebmasterWorld thread shows that some merchants are not too happy with these requirements.

We have several thousand products listed. Our biggest hurdle with the new attributes - many of our items are hand crafted with no brand name or product id #. Expiration date? Only if our artists expire!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

JupiterResearch is running a survey named the Search Marketing Executive Survey. If you are a search marketer, it would be very helpful to the industry, if you participated in the survey.

Already more than 1,000 marketers, consultants and agencies have responded -- but we'd like to get as broad a cross-section of PPC campaign managers and Search Engine Optimizers as possible. The survey is open to novices, experts and search gurus.

Only one person per company may respond. ALL responses are aggregated. There is no personally identifiable information released. Please feel free to forward the link to other SEM and SEO professionals.

Take the survey by clicking here.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks a great question, "what if the competitor is Google itself?" Yea, what if you have a product or service you are selling, but you have to go against Google in the search results at their own engine?

The specific example given in the thread is for a search query at Google.com for mobile videos. For me, the first and second indented result is from YouTube. The third result, is an adult site. I am not sure, but that can possibly be his site. Before hand, he ranked in the number one slot and his traffic dived when Google's YouTube overtook that first and second position.

Let's take other examples:

Google bought Urchin and made Google Analytics, a search on analytics brings up Google in the number one slot. But a search on web stats brings up Google in the 7th position. Fair, I think that is fine. What about a search on news, which returns Google News in the second position. Isn't Yahoo! News way more popular? How about maps which returns Google as number one and MapQuest as number two?

There are tons of examples, but the super example is search engine where Google ranks number five for me and MSN ranks number one.

FYI - make sure your personalized results are not changing what I report above, also geo specific data may change the ranking information above. Finally, this is a dated post, so rankings change over time.

What can you do to out rank Google for products you sell that they also sell? It can be done, but it will be hard.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google has announced the release of a tool that many thought would never come but always dreamt of - a tool that shows us our links for our sites. It has been sought over since Google changed the link command. In any event, Google has given us access to see the links of our sites - if we want. How it all works and more of the history can be found at Danny's Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools (read it).

To access it, you need to login to Google Webmaster Console and verify your sites.

Now, I want to point you to Matt Cutts blog where he explains that even though the links are displayed in the link count, it does not mean Google counts all of them for link popularity components. So if you see links that are nofollowed or from penalized sites or low quality sites - it doesn't mean Google is using those links in ranking your site.

Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.

Also, Google isn't currently showing 100% of your links, but Matt says it will get more and more accurate with time.

In fact, I found several examples why reviewing it myself, of links that were removed from external sites.

I wanted to share with you the pages that have the most amount of links to this site. You can easily get this data by clicking on the "external links" report and selecting "Download this table" option. It can download up to a million data points - so if you have more, than you may not get all that data. Then open it with Excel and sort by the External Links column. Here are my most link to pages at the Search Engine Roundtable, excluding my home page.

1. A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt with 844.
2. Screen Shot Of Quality Score Metric in AdWords Console with 736.
3. Microsoft Banning Sites from Live.com For Link Exchanges with 516.
4. Vanessa & Adam Working on Christmas Day with 514.
5. Google AdSense Competitive Ad Filter Not Working? with 503.
6. Making Bidding Mistakes at Google AdWords ($0.10 Vs. $10.00) with 479.
7. Dynamic Keyword Insertion in Your URLs With Google AdWords with 472.
8. Programming Note: Vacation Until 1/17 with 433.
9. Google Toolbar PageRank Update Being Reported with 426.

Those are my top ten linked to articles - some surprised me.

When I compare Yahoo! Site Explorer to Google's new tool. I see that Site Explorer reports 197,153 external links (except from my domain to entire site) whereas Google reports 131,280 external links. So there is a discrepancy. I also tested some other sites, and Yahoo! tends to report more back links overall.

Thank you Google for providing this. Over the next couple days, I will gather suggestions and improvements from the forums and write about them.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, Cre8asite Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums and WebmasterWorld.

There is an excellent thread at Cre8asite Forums on the topic of setting up a new blog and taking into account the SEO side of things.

One thing that I would strongly recommend and agree with in the thread is that you should always try to keep your blog on your own domain. Do not use a blogspot.com domain or something similar. Try to keep it on a domain name you control and own. This way if you ever decide to move from one domain to another, you have the control to set up the proper redirects and keep all your link popularity.

On the software side, there are many options. I use MovableType, I have been for over three years and I have been very happy with it. Most people these days in our filed tend to use WordPress, which is a great option for you as well. If I started my blog today, I probably would have went with WordPress, but I won't be switching to WordPress any time soon - because MovableType does almost everything I need. You can also use Blogger, but I have heard bad things about it - although they just recently released a new version of it - so things may have changed. Wikipedia has a nice maintained list of blog software where you can read more about it.

What about the URL structure? To subdomain or to go at it with a directory structure approach? The thread is on the side of locating your blog on the main root of the URL and placing it in a directory and not a sub domain. I tend not to go that route, but it really depends on how you want to keep the site structured and divided.

The big question I get is do I host my blog on my company domain or on a new domain? I always say it depends on intent. Do you want to provide an atmosphere for an unbiased information resource or do you mind coming across a bit biased? No matter what you do, in my opinion, a new blog hosted on it's own domain, will come off as if they are influences by business factors. You have to climb a hill of showing your would-be-readers otherwise. But in the long run, it may pay off, if you climb that mountain and earn the respect you set out for.

I strongly also recommend Bill's comment about writing several posts before deciding on too much.

Before starting, it might be good to script out the first 15 - 20 blog posts, with at least some partially fleshed out topics and posts ready to go - just like a coach might do in a football game.

When I set up blogs for my clients, I tell them to leave the design alone and just write. Keep writing for a month or two. Then let's see how it goes. As you write, you learn your niche. Then you can customize the blog, change URLs if needed and even change blogging software.

Most blog software is very search engine friendly out of the box. As you see, I use a number system for my blog, but now MovableType uses the title of your post in your URLs. Want to change that, Danny has a post on Movable Type & Rebuild Safe URLs.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Microsoft officially launched their search product on November 11, 2004, almost two years and three months ago. A WebmasterWorld thread asks, "so after two years has MSN finally got it right?"

So far, Webmasters are saying no. Here are some quotes:

I get very little traffic from them because they still can't manage to find the appropriate pages in my site to return.

They haven't got it right! What they should do is to syndicate Googles, Yahoo's and Ask's result and skip trying to compete because they can't.

Every person who worked on this project should be fired ;)

I agree, they still have a long way to go. I am surprised at how far behind Microsoft is, I honestly am.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reported that Google AdWords analytics was down on Friday, along with Google Finance and other Google services.

AdWordsAdvisor confirmed this at around 2pm (EST) on Friday, stating:

Hi all - thanks for the heads up. Engineering is aware of this one, and is working to resolve it asap. No data has been lost - it's just been delayed on its way to your account. ;)

Thanks for your patience, and my apology for the inconvenience.

So no data should have been lost.

Reports of the analytics coming back up began coming in Saturday morning.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The YPN Blog posted that they have updated their program policies to limit the number of ads you can use on a page by page basis. Before, there was no specific limit on the number of Yahoo! Publisher Network ads you can place on a page. Friday, that changes to a limit of three ads per page.

The Ad page may contain a maximum of three ad units.

I am not sure how many real sites had more than three YPN blocks on their pages anyway. So this should not be a huge change for the majority of publishers.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

6pm (EST) today, sponsored ads displaying on Yahoo! Search results should be ranked based on both bid price and quality score. Today is February 5th the day the transition is suppose to happen.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a link to a NY Times article that says it should be starting around 3pm (PST) today or 6pm (EST). That is is less than 12 hours.

Are you ready?

There were reports at WebmasterWorld that Yahoo! tested the algorithm out last week. Which seems to have been confirmed by the NY Times;

Last Thursday, the company ran a test in which searches originating on the West Coast ran the new ad ranking system.

I saw the "war room" at Yahoo!'s office, and it is true what they say. Yahoo! will be watching very closely as they flip the switch.

Good luck everyone!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google Blog announced that they will be adding personalized search results by default for any person signed in to their Google Account. That means if you use any one of the following Google services Gmail, Orkut, AdWords, AdSense, Groups, Alerts, and so on... you will automatically be shown search results tailored to your past searching history. As Danny explains in great detail you can turn them off by signing out or even pause them, but Google will still hold on to this data for unspecified amount of time.

There are two clear concerns here. The most obvious is the privacy concern, but that is for a different blog. The second concern is the search engine optimization area. How can one optimize a site for a search results environment that is constantly changing, not just based on an algorithm that Google updates often, but based on personalized preferences and behavior?

Yes, Google is tracking your search history, just login and click here to see what they have tracked.

Let's compare the search term "seo", when I am logged in and not logged in.

You can clearly see (click on the image to get a full size version) how all the results are sorted differently. The Wikipedia result is number one in the standard results, but maybe Google knows that SEO Chat is more relevant to me? I actually never visit SEO Chat, so maybe Google got that one wrong? But you can see that since I visit this site, the Search Engine Roundtable, more often than SEOMoz.org (a very good SEO blog), that it ranks this site higher than SEOMoz.org for that search in my personalized results.

Imagine a slightly different ranking per user. Imagine having to explain this to a client. Why don't I rank #2 for my keyword, yesterday I did. Hey, my wife searched on my keyword phrase and I was #3 and not #2, why? Well, maybe your wife is cheating on you? :-) Get the point?

Folks in the forums have mixed feelings on it. In any event, it appears from this move, Google is serious about personalized results. More and more people are signed into Google services, without knowing it. My question is what percentage of Google search users are actually signed in during a search? I suspect it isn't more than 10%, but I can be wrong. I would love to hear the percentage.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Going to Google Finance returns a 500 error on the home page. Going to a specific stock quote, such as via http://finance.google.com/finance?q=GOOG returns a message that reads, "The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds."

Here is a screen capture:

Yesterday, Google News Was Down and having serious issues throughout the day. Sara also commented about Google Finance being down in that post.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Typically, you have threads about, how do I make my site better or what do I need to do to rank higher. Then people may discuss topics such as unique content, link building, etc. There is a thread at WebmasterWorld that takes the reverse approach. They discuss 25 things that may make a site appear to have poor signals of quality in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Here are the top 10 from the list:

1. Reciprocal link request pages.
2. No Privacy policy.
3. Outdated copyright date or last modified date visible on the pages.
4. Error pages that don't send 404 headers or send content regardless of the page requested/querystring entered.
5. Massive numbers of incoming links from link farms.
6. Dead/404ing links.
7. High link churn.
8. No published contact address, email address or phone number.
9. A high bounce rate (surfers clicking back on their browser and selecting another search result).
10. Too much duplicate content.

For the remaining 15, check out the thread.

This is one of those fun threads, I personally do not necessarily agree with everything in the thread, but I found it unique.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday I reported at Search Engine Land that Google News Engine Bugging Out. I also see a lot of discussion in the forums that people have been having issues searching at or loading content on Google News. I also have had some serious issues yesterday with Google News and Google News RSS searches.

In any event, it appears things have been resolved on all fronts.

Ruud, Cre8asite Forum moderator, posted a screen capture at Cre8asite Forums of what Google News's home page looked like to him yesterday - here is a reprint.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a post from Stefan Juhl who spotted that Google was now paying him $5 per AdSense referral and $5 per AdWords referral.

When the AdSense/AdWords referral program launched, you would get paid $5 per AdSense sign up and $20 per AdWords sign up, only after 90 days.

According to Stefan, Google changed their policy and now pay you upfront. Here is the email he received from Google:

Thank you for the email. I’m happy to say that we’ve now changed the payment model for referrals so you’ll earn more from now on. You’ll, as it has happened, get $5 when a user you’ve signed up earns $5. When the user has earned $100 and complies with the general terms of service for referrals you’ll get additionally $250 on top of the $5 - total $255. This is brand new and we’re right now updating our help center with this information.

So you earn money right away and then if the AdSense or AdWords sign up actually makes Google enough money, you earn more money. This program is much more enticing then the previous affiliate rules.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and at these two Google Groups threads.

Update: It is official, a Google Adsense blog post named new pricing structure for referrals updates on this.

At least for now, the Overture Keyword Selection Tool is now back online, I think as of yesterday some time.

Monday we reported some sporadic reports of the tool going offline for a bit. Then on Wednesday we reported Yahoo!'s statement saying that the tool is basically dying and that Yahoo! is building a new one.

I suspect they fixed some of the issues now.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has discussion on using the site exclusion tool within AdWords to block your ads from showing on some of the search network. In addition to that, you can use the site exclusion tool to block your ads from being displayed on most but not all parked domain sites.

Google runs a Google AdSense for Domains program that many AdWords advertisers find to be a waste of their money. So some like to exclude the ads from showing on those sites as well as other parked domain sites.

AdWordsRep said:

Essentially, it is possible to exclude most parked domain sites using the site exclusion tool. For technical reasons, however, some sites will currently require the assistance of the AdWords support to exclude, as you have noted.

So most of the time the site exclusion tool should work, if not, contact Google and they can make it work for you.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

SearchEngineGuide's, Jennifer Laycock, was shocked to be served with a letter threatening a lawsuit over her usage of the phrase, "The other white milk' on a t-shirt she sells to raise funds for a cause she supports, from a personal blog she owns.

Jen shares the contents of the letter and her feelings in Overzealous Big Pork Stomps on Breastfeeding Blogger. She writes:

I received a letter this morning from Jennifer Daniel Collins, an attorney at Faegre & Benson that represents The National Pork Board. It stated, for the most part, that my use of the phrase "the other white milk" violates their trademark on the phrase "the other white meat." As such, they've demanded that I remove the shirt, demanded that the image of the shirt be removed from any site I know of, demanded that I destroy any shirts that exist with the logo and demand that I not at any point in the future use the phrase in a commercially profitable way.

My favorite parts of this? She's earned all of $8 for that t-shirt, sold at CafePress, and her lactivist breastfeeding blog is targeted to mothers of little people who don't have the teeth to chew pork products.

Discussion: Cre8asiteforums

Postscript Barry: Danny Sullivan has some more detail at Search Engine Land and he suggests that if the National Pork Board does not drop it, then we should all link to Jennifer's post using the anchor text Back Off National Pork Board (remove the nofollow on February 5th, if they have not dropped their case). Also be sure to Digg Jennifer's post over here.

One of the tactics often employed in Search Engine Optimization is the naming of images to include important keywords as well as the use of a descriptive ALT Attribute, also commonly including the targeted keyword. Although the ALT Attribute also doubles as being something to provide screen readers for the visually impaired a concise description of the image, the changing of the file name would be hard to justify other than for SEO purposes, although some may argue that. Perhaps if a web page has images available to be downloaded, they may be able to increase user experience by clearly labeling the image file.

A recent discussion at Cre8asite Forums asks which has more SEO value: the file name or the ALT attribute. Some great responses follow, and provide some insight as to how to "properly" name files or images, based on the opinions of the posters. However, as usual, Bill Slawski (Bragadocchio) takes it up another level and introduces some higher level thinking on the subject, including some links to valuable tutorials and a cited patent application which supports one of his theories.

However, another poster, "Halfdeck," goes a step further to analyze how certain images appear within Google image results, or as Bill puts it:

You've set out a nice way to explore how words around an image might influence what that image may rank for.

This is one of the best threads I have read in a while, as it pushes for further research on the quantifiable validity of image labeling, and the relationship that is evaluated by search algorithms between images and text around them. Join the discussion and add your thoughts or learn something new at Cre8asite Forums.

A quick and useful WebmasterWorld informs us that if your credit card is declines by Google, your AdWords quality score will not be hurt.

In fact, AdWordsAdvisor2 replies to the forum post saying:

Being suspended for a credit card decline will not effect your quality score. Your ad will have the same value in the auction upon your return as it did prior to the decline.

It is pretty much like when you pause an AdWords campaign, your quality score should not be affected.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Like I said this morning, Google announced 2006 earnings and with that, we learn a bit on how much Google paid out their AdSense publishers.

The Q4 release says:

The majority of TAC expense is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $916 million in the fourth quarter of 2006. TAC is also related to amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $60 million in the fourth quarter of 2006.

So in short: The Distribution partners got $60 million, and AdSense partners got $916 million.

We do not know however the difference between premium publishers and normal individual publishers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld has tons of reports from various Google AdSense publishers that (1) their ads are not loading or loading incredibly slowly for them and (2) their ad stats seem way too low relative to the norm. The thing is, normally, you would see some threads at DigitalPoint Forums also, if this was happening at a very wide scale, I could not find a recent thread on the topic (I could have missed it).

The number of unique reports are well over 10 at the WebmasterWorld thread, so something must be going on.

It appears that the slow load times are happening in the UK, but I cannot confirm this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Compete.com Blog posted results for their data analysis of where do people spend most of their time online. While Yahoo! came in second with 8.5%, Google only captured 2.1%. MySpace came in first place with 11.9%. These figures include all of Google's subdomains. If you add in YouTube.com to Google's mix, you add 0.6% to 2.1% and get 2.7%.

Compete.com has some great tools by the way.

In any event, the forum reaction to this study in WebmasterWorld is "not surprising." Check out some of these quotes:

Well, that makes sense. Yahoo is mostly a portal, while Google is a search engine.

Not at all surprising, but not because of the relative values of the sites. Rather we are seeing the results of strategic placement within a default operating system setup.

When Google launches games.google.com then they could be talked about in the same context as yahoo, but its obviously no comparison now.

Cute.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday we reported that Yahoo! Publisher Network Seems To Be Showing Completely Unique Ads. then, Yahoo! posted at the YPN blog Dupe-less-ity explaining that "you and your users should see fewer duplicate ads starting today." So they confirmed it officially.

But since then, publishers have been reporting more and more irrelevant, uncontextually targeted, Yahoo! ads being displayed on their site. Is it an inventory thing? I am not sure.

Here are some of the reports:

but now I'm getting horrible, totally unrelated ads. Not happy, at the moment.

Ditto. No more duplicates, but also no relevancy.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

After writing my piece named Why Do Some SEOs Want Toolbar PageRank To Go Away? I found a thread at DigitalPoint Forums asking members to vote if "PR is Overhyped."

Here are the current results:

80% vote yes, PageRank is overhyped

20% vote no, PageRank is not overhyped

This is currently out of 71 votes.

Now, the question isn't asked in too much detail. As I discussed in my article from yesterday on PageRank, there are two sets of PageRank. The first is the score shown in the toolbar, that is way out of date. The second is the actual score Google uses in part of the algorithm to rank pages. Again, PageRank is just one of many variables used in the ranking algorithm. Does it have any importance? Yes. How much importance is that? I would say not much, but some importance. But I just worry about people looking to closely at the toolbar PageRank, more on that here.

In any event, if you have time, go over to the DigitalPoint Forums thread and vote, I would love to see a few hundred votes from the SEO community on this topic.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The bottom line is that Google's stock, GOOG, has dropped about 3% as soon as Google announced their 4th quarter earnings. The deal is, their earnings were pretty good, showing an 19.3% increase in revenues from the previous quarter and a 40.5% GAAP increase in net income. In any event, Wall Street was expecting more from Google.

Danny Sullivan probably has the ultimate write up on Google's 2006 earnings announcement, so check it out there for all the facts, links, charts and questions and answers from the conference call.

I also love how shorebreak summed up the results at a WebmasterWorld thread:

Q4 '06 #'s below, with sequential growth in () -
$3.21B Total Revenue (+19.3% sequentially)
$976M Traffic Acquisition Costs (+18.3%)
$1.006B Operating Income (+8.1%, Less R&D, Selling, G&A, etc)
$1.03B Net income (+40.5% GAAP, +22.8% Non-GAAP)
$3.29 EPS (+39.4% sequentially)
G.com = $1.98B, or 62% of total (+22%)
Network = $1.2B, or **37%** of total (+16%)
Int'l = 44%
Clicks = +22% vs Q3

Nice and to the point.

Also check out Techmeme for the tons of news and blog articles on it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.