March 2007 Archives

I know Lisa feels like she can steal the Search Buzz Roundup with her own take, but we won't allow for that, will we? :)

Google Time

First, we found out that Google AdSense does allow revenue sharing, and you can track your checks using a nice Google Maps mashup.

We also realized that Google AdSense publishers can get banned and that the bans are done so on an account, domain, or URL wide basis.

We found that there appears to be a domain-wide quality score in AdWords. This was also picked up by Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal and by Peter Da Vanzo at V7N and also by those witty guys over at Threadwatch -- thank you guys!

Pay Per Click and Pay Per Action seem to have been in the spotlight this week as well. On the PPC front, you really should manage your campaigns regularly. (Lisa, of course, had to chime in on this or else she would be out of a job.)

Furthermore, you can get a nice sneak peek of PPA in action on the frontend as well as on the PPA backend. Pretty cool stuff, guys.

Also, since I'm all about optimization, the nofollow tag has been questioned again regarding rankings, and there's a cool way to optimize images for long tail searches. I assume that if you have a store and host images for the products you're selling, this would be a great way to get targeted traffic for those products. Of course, make sure you're optimizing using the right white hat techniques!

Yahoo! Mail Turns 10

This may be a premature birthday wish for Yahoo! Mail, which is actually celebrating its 10th anniversary in the month of May. However, they are celebrating with us and have offered unlimited email storage and new APIs for Yahoo! Mail. You guys are so generous.

We filled it out for you!

This week, the guys using MSN search in the UK were in for something interesting: prepopulated search boxes. This has not been received well thus far, unfortunately. Most people do know how to search and don't need to guess what MSN thinks they should be searching for. However, the guy over at The Apprentice UK Blog had his knickers in a twist over the news.

Oh, and as of today, those prepopulated search phrases seem to be gone. Maybe they're onto us.

Only two more weeks!

SES New York is around the corner, and there will be heavy coverage of the event on Search Engine Roundtable. Who will be blogging for the event? Well, besides yours truly, there's an incredible roundup of talent who will be blogging the event to benefit those who aren't able to make it. Yeah, we're nice that way.

Speaking of which, Gilad covered some of the SES Munich events earlier this week. He wrote about successful site architecture, search marketing for large companies, designing a search friendly website, and blogging, social media marketing, and linkbait. Thanks Gilad!

Next week on Search Engine Roundtable

This Monday night is Passover, which means Barry and I will be off the blog on Tuesday and Wednesday. You Diggaholics will have to just wait an extra day for the Digg Digest. Lucky you, though; you don't have to listen to Barry and me chat for those two days. (I can already hear Lisa saying "Huzzah!") Our outstanding editors and guest authors will be coming in to provide fresh new articles. If you don't like them, feel free to submit your feedback in our suggestion box.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread points to a thread that Barry wrote at Search Engine Land with a sneak peek of Google's new Pay-Per-Action. We discussed the launch of Pay-Per-Action, which was announced last week. Barry then posted some Pay-Per-Action screenshots.

On DigitalPoint, the sentiment seems to be of excitement and anxiety. Many people are ready to test out the new features.

Barry shows us how the PPA ads will show up in his personal blog. A screenshot of this is below:

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Numerous reports from users in the WebmasterWorld forum say that the MSN reinclusion process is taking a long time.

One member says that he tried to email webspam@msn.com and it got bounced back. According to msndude, a Microsoft representative, that is because the address is at @microsoft.com.

Another person questions the proper way to submit a reinclusion request:

I used this form

feedback.live.com/eform.aspx?productkey=wlsearch&mkt=en-us

im guessing this is the new place to request reinclusion?

anyone know of any other way?

Another member says that he submitted a request and has not heard back:

Even with the right address, don't hold your breath. I sent in a request back on March 6th and I've yet to hear back from Microsoft.

Which way is the best way to submit a reinclusion request from Microsoft, and how long should it take? Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Yahoo offering unlimited mail storage. I didn't mention this recent WebmasterWorld finding that states that Yahoo is going to offer new APIs for Yahoo mail. According to a news report:

Late on Wednesday, Yahoo plans to deliver application programming interfaces (APIs) for Yahoo Mail, said Chad Dickerson, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. The move comes on the heels of an announcement to offer unlimited storage capacity for Yahoo Mail users starting from May.

Yahoo officials had indicated in September of last year their intention to let external developers write applications for Yahoo Mail, and the tools will now be available at the Yahoo Developer Network Web site.

The Yahoo Mail API will be added onto Yahoo's many APIs available to programmers, including Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Shopping, and Yahoo! Maps, among many others.

Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

In the Cre8asite Forums, moderator skore reports the findings that ads are coming to Reddit. He refers to their blog:

Part of the reason reddit was acquired was so that eventually it could be used to sell advertising. We wanted to delay ads until we could debut all the new stuff we're working on, but it's taking longer than expected, and the powers-that-be are getting antsy. So, sometime later this week we'll be flipping the switch to turn a few ads on.

He also adds:

One interesting thing to watch is they think they have found a way to track the ads so they can let Reddit users vote/comment on them (just like using the system).

A number of users are skeptical of this approach. Administrator Adrian does not think that ads will be well received and will be voted down regardless.

Heh, I bet a load of reddit users will down vote every ad going anyway.

Others, like moderator JoeDolson, wonder about the CTR effect of allowing ads to be voted upon:

I like the idea of voting and commenting on advertisements - but I'm sure people will also want to know the end destinations to take into consideration in their voting, which will require click throughs...

Users, like moderator eKSstreme, hope that the ads will be distinguishable from the rest of the text on the site:

I hope their ads will be clearly marked as that. Otherwise it's deceiving the community, which is not the best strategy to take.

What do you think Reddit will do? Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google just bans an AdSense Account or do they also ban domains that AdSense can be displayed on?

I am very certain that Google does ban Google AdSense accounts completely. An AdSense publisher can have four different web sites, but the ads are pulled from a single AdSense account. If that AdSense account has been banned the ads will not show up on any of the sites this publisher controls.

The thread also adds that Google does ban domains and sites that AdSense cannot be displayed on. So if I have a domain that Google has banned, the ads won't show on that domain, but they can appear on other domains.

Even more so, Google can and does ban ads from showing on specific URLs. For example, if you are accused of a DMCA copyright violation, Google will not show the ad on that specific Page/URL accused of the DMCS violation until the necessary steps are taken.

There are such things as Google AdSense Account Bans, Google AdSense Domain Bans, and Google AdSense URL Bans.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld about a site that appears to be losing ground in Google because they used the nofollow attribute for linking to some of their internal pages. For example, they nofollowed links to their privacy policy, contact us page, user agreement, terms of service and so on.

theBear, someone I really respect in the forums, responded saying something very true:

Only part of which is strictly PR related, depending on how Google looks at things the related link text should be made moot, the page that is doing the link just had an update done to it, and the page linked to should have also lost an IBL. So could this affect ranking etc? Yup.

Then WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, response with more food for thought:

Let's take a very naive look at this. The rel=nofollow attribute was introduced to combat blog comment spam. It was supposed to mean "I don't vouch for this link."

What message does that send if the link goes to one of the pages on your own site - especially to contact information which certainly you would "vouch for"? I think the message is very clear: "I'm trying to manipulate Google's rankings for my urls."

But let me add one more twist to this. In the past I reported how Google handles the nofollow attribute. Specifically, that Google will not crawl a link that has the nofollow attribute on it. Adam Lasnik of Google specifically said that. But of course, Google will crawl the same URL if it is linked to elsewhere, without the nofollow attribute.

So, if Google won't crawl a link that has the nofollow attribute associated. And if these pages are not linked to from other sources (typically a privacy policy, contact us page, user agreement, terms of service type of page), then they won't do well in the search results. Plus, those pages (the ones that are linked to using the nofollow tag) will not benefit your other pages on the site.

All in all, the theory has some substance. But I can see an argument against all three points in this article. Kind of makes for a good thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Yahoo! Publisher Network has one feature that Google AdSense does not have. Yahoo allows you to transfer your earned publisher income to your Yahoo Search Marketing account, to spend the money there.

According to a WebmasterWorld thread, AdWords advisor claims that this feature "is on our radar." But even more so, he/she explain why it is taking so long for Google to implement.

To that I'll add that, for a number of reasons, including regulatory issues with the many different currencies with which one may pay for Adwords (or be payed in by AdSense), this is not nearly as simple as it might appear to be at first blush. ;)

I wonder if this is one of the reasons why Yahoo hasn't opened up YPN to publishers outside of the United States? In any event, this would be a nice feature to add, based on the number of requests I have seen out there over time.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

According to a recent WebmasterWorld thread, Google has said that it views all bad SERP reports but may not necessarily look into them further.

In an interesting release on their webmaster PR blog, Google claims that they will investigate all bad SERP reports from inside their panel tool. Problem results claims made through the public report form are viewed but not necessarily investigated.

Not many people agree with this proposition. One person has reported a site and noticed no changes:

I have been thinking this for quite some time as I have reported a site hidding text etc for months and it has risen in the serps and not dropped.

...

Seems this a very bad move on Google's part....

This may be very true and it is an incident that has been around for over two years.

Others are confused with regards to what reports this refers to and believe that some of these reports are fraudulent to begin with:

I take it this is about the "Dissatisfied? Help us improve" link at the bottom of the results?

If so, I think that many of the "users" submiting feedback will actually be webmasters trying to get their site listed higher or get a competitor banned.

Cue: "I'm trying to find xyz.com but can't for this popular phrase", "after searching though millions of their pages, I've found two invisble links on pararpaph 5 of page 320: please can you ban them forever", etc.

I know people who send several of these per day, all pretending that they're not webmasters!

Interestingly enough, we covered something earlier about the ethics of reporting SERP spam. Initially, we reported about the best way to contact Google about such incidents.

The question on WebmasterWorld shifts in the middle of the thread: do Google's human search quality raters review these reports? Is it practical to evaluate the relevance of results manually?

Well I feel google should give importance to both for webmasters and users. Users are its client and webmasters are suppliers.

It has been a constant effort by google to provide relevent result and that is why it is trying to do so many things.

Verifying SERP is a good idea but I was wondering how practical is it to do it manually. I guess they would build a system for this.

Barry posted on Search Engine Land saying that they do investigate all authenticated spam results as reported through the Google Webmaster Central under the Tools menu:

The real difference is that anonymous complaints through Google's Spam Reporting Tool are not weighted as heavily, as Google says:

Our spam report forms are provided in two different flavors: an authenticated form that requires registration in Webmaster Tools, and an unauthenticated form. Currently, we investigate every spam report from a registered user. Spam reports to the unauthenticated form are assessed in terms of impact, and a large fraction of those are reviewed as well.

Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums member has discovered a way to optimize images for long tail searches that will yield results in both Google Web Search and Google Image Search.

He says that the best way to optimize the images is to create a separate page that is heavily targeted towards the image that you are creating and then you can link to that page and the image. In his example, he shows how to target the keyword "Black Ferrari 612 Scaglietti," which yields the following results:

• You’ve added a highly-optimised page for the keywords ‘Black ferrari 612 scaglietti’.
• Courtesy of the ‘Back’ anchor on the new page, when a visitor finds the new page through the search engines they can easily find the attached content page.
• You’ve added more content to your site, and SEs love new content & big sites.

As a photographer, this is a pretty neat way of getting the images that I post on my personal photoblog optimized for more search exposure.

We have discussed previously how to optimize images for Google as well.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A member in the Google Groups says that he is unable to link his Google AdWords Starter Edition account with his Google Analytics account. He believes that the reason for this is because he has the Starter Edition of AdWords:

I am using the Starter version of Adwords and have an Analytics account as well, all under the same Google email / password. For some reason I cannot figure out how to link the two. Is the fact I'm using Starter Edition prohibiting me from doing so?

An official Google representative confirms his suspicions. AdWords Starter Editions can not link their accounts to Google Analytics.

You're correct that your Analytics account can't be linked to your AdWords account because you're using the Starter Edition. If you'd like to link the two accounts, you can upgrade to the Standard Edition.

You can find instructions for upgrading at:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=31757

Also, here's how to link your AdWords account to your Analytics
account:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=26789

Discussion continues in Google Groups.

A DigitalPoint member writes that he originally had managed an AdWords campaign across several domains and received a "Great" quality score for his keyword groups. However, ever since he has begun consolidating his AdWords campaigns on one domain, his quality score plummets. He writes:

We want to move everything to 1 domain name and build a large site around a premium domain name, but when I try sending all of the same ad groups/keywords to the same domain name, instead of the individual one like before our Quality Score plummets. Most keywords are then rated as OK and a decent amount are Poor. It takes a few days for this to happen though. Typically when I test with a new domain name we will have a “Great” Quality Score across the board for a day or two before it tanks and then traffic is basically gone. We literally receive about 1/100th of the traffic we were receiving before, yet the same ads, same keywords, same landing page etc. The only difference is we have everything going to the same domain name instead of individual domain names.

Clearly there is a domain name Quality Score that is affecting us. It seems when using individual domains names the success or failure of an individual ad group/keyword does not affect the others, but when it all goes to the same domain name it seems tied into each other.

It is assumed that his landing pages need more work, but he says that he has had the exact same landing pages on both domains. He speculates that a "new domain definatly resets the quality score."

It is possible that this is on the page level and that it may just be something that the user will need to wait for until the Quality Score updates (which is at least monthly):

I think it's at the page level. LP QS's are not updated that often (once a month, maybe more) so if your LP gets a poor QS you may be stuck with it until it's reevaluated. My hunch is that's why you see changes in the QS after campaigns have been live for few days.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

I began tracking image searches to spot new changes reported by those in the image world. The first thing I spotted was that Google appears to have added the "Maps" navigation link to the Google.co.uk pages.

The photo I spotted was at Yandle's Flickr gallery and he notes:

Google Maps is one of the default search option in th UK (at last)

To verify, I checked some older screen captures I had and Flickr had of Google UK, and it does appear to be correct. Google has just added "Maps" to the navigation in the Google UK version. Of course, the US version (Google.com) had it for a while.

Here is a screen capture:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

The other day I reported that Microsoft Live Search Link Command Operator Offline. You can not longer use the link:, linkdomain: and inurl: operators at Microsoft's Live Search.

It is official, Microsoft has informed us that they removed it because of "mass automated usage." As I reported at Search Engine Land less than an hour ago, I believe "this is a sign that Microsoft is working on a webmaster tools section, similar to what Google has with Webmaster Central and what Yahoo has with Site Explorer."

We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries. We have a few good ideas up our sleeve on how to enable this, but want to make sure we are making the right changes that will give you the functionality you want and all of our customers the experience they deserve. Our apologies and thank you for being patient. Keep an eye on our blog for updates.

The question is how soon will webmasters be without this command from Live Search? And how much of it will change?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Tamar reported yesterday here that MSN Prepopulates their UK Search Box with "The Apprentice BBC". But it does not appear to just be prepopulated with "The Apprentice BBC". Last night they began showing "Euro 2008 results" in the search box, which leads to here and the first result goes to euro2008.com.

And I just refreshed and I see a third one. This one is for "Cricket World Cup" and looks like:

This new observation seems to me that this may not be a new type of ad. But rather a way to get MSN UK readers to notice the search box, test it out with these predefined search queries. Since these predefined searches are reviewed by Microsoft, they probably have a nice top ten subset. Possibly, this may influence Google users to switch to Microsoft's Live Search?

Or maybe it is a weird type of ad.

Forum discussion continued at DigtialPoint Forums and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

As you may have read, we've started a brand new Digg column. There are plenty of social news promotional sites out there, but a big favorite among the industry's most respected search engine folks is Digg. We've done some sleuthing to see what interests these folks in the world of search.

Google announced that it accepted applications for its summer of code , the open source project for college students. Then, once you finish coding and graduate, you might want to consider a job with Google. Jason Warner, head of staffing, tells you what not to wear on your Google job interview.

Link building is hot this season. Some fine young man compiled a list of 66 ways to build links . On that note, check out some of the same people I stalk read about talk about link building .

Can you rank higher on Google? Google's secret sauce awaits your challenge. This four-page article is an interesting read and quotes a lot of industry experts.

Did I hear traffic? Yeah, it took me a little longer to get to work today too. Well, there's been an interesting study that was released that shows that changing the structure of your URL does increase rankings, and consequently, traffic. And if you're looking for more tips to improve your rankings, you might want to consider these six tips that address redirects, subdomains, custom 404 pages, and more.

For a 18 cool ways to pimp your Google calendar, check out these hot tips .

Oh, and I'm sure you remember that last week, Google got pretty with personalization from a design standpoint. Did you know that these personalized themes also have some easter eggs ? Now you do.

Li notes that the PPC model can be affected by Google's new Pay Per Action implementation.

If you didn't catch it from us, Google has launched a new mobile search engine .

So, there you have it... fun finds from our search industry experts and people I need to keep active on Digg so I have something to write about admire.

Now that I have hired Tamar as a editor for the Search Engine Roundtable, we have more resources to provide you with more coverage of the search forums. I really wanted to expand beyond that, but at the same time, keep true to our goal of being the "pulse of the search marketing community."

That is why I am proud to introduce a new weekly column where we will be providing coverage of the top search stories at Digg. The new column is named the Digg Digest and will be authored by Tamar.

How do we figure out what are the top stories at Digg on search? Simple, we are tracking several dozen of known search faces - that we know participate at Digg. We track what they submit, what they Digg and what they comment on. We continue to track who they befriend and add new Digg profiles to our list.

So not only are we providing daily coverage of search marketing forums. We now will be tracking, weekly, the top search stories at Digg.

Each weekly Digg Digest will contain some of the stories for the past week. They will have a link to the original story as well as a link to the Digg submission. The link to the Digg submission will be marked with a Little Digg man as so .

We hope you like this new weekly column, of course, feedback is always welcomed.

You may have also noticed our new Friday Search Buzz RoundUp column.

According to threads at both DigitalPoint Forums and Search Engine Roundtable Forums, MSN in the UK is showing that the search box is prefilled with "The Apprentice BBC." This was actually spotted this morning but I was able to reproduce it just now.

The screenshot can be seen below:

Barry blogged about it on Search Engine Land as well.

Is this a brokerage deal between Microsoft and the BBC? Danny is following up with both Microsoft and the BBC.

I'm not sure I'm enthusiastic about this implementation and would hope that it does not go further than this "experiment." It would be completely confusing to users who have no intention to search for anything related to "The Apprentice" or whatever else might end up being prepopulated in those search boxes. Even newer users will wonder where they are supposed to search now.

Forum discussions continue at DigitalPoint Forums and SERoundtable Forums. Hat tip to gabs.

Update from Barry: To me, it is looking less to be an ad. More at MSN UK Shows More Prepopulated Kewyords in Search Box.

A user on the Cre8asite Forums says that he has been trying to rank for a specific keyword on Google but is currently competing with numerous .gov websites. He writes:

when i search for their terms in google the first four pages are government websites, i didn't even bother to go deeper... can i rank higher than government websites? they seem to have taken over google for the search terms i need and i'm concerned.

Moderator EGOL says that you should have a clear strategy and know your competition:

You can beat .gov sites... but check their backlinks to get some idea what you are up against.

How can you do this? Bill Slawski, forum administrator, says:

You may want to avoid a head-to-head confrontation on some of the more competitive keywords, and look for opportunities to rank for keywords that they missed. While that may mean targeting some less competitive keywords, if it brings you the audience that you are looking for, that should be fine.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

According to several reports on the DigitalPoint Forums, Gmail experienced an outage in the middle of the day. Members were seeing the following message:

Loading...

This seems to be taking longer than usual.

If you are using a slow Internet connection, you can wait a bit longer for this page to finish loading, or just use basic HTML view for now.

If you are using your normal Internet connection and you usually get past this loading step without any problems, please refresh this page in your browser. If you continue to have trouble loading your account, please visit the help center for troubleshooting information.

Not everyone was experiencing the downtime, but it seemed to have been sporadic throughout the day.

An article in PC World states that this is the third time that Gmail had experienced an outage this month. According to a company spokesperson, Google is aware of the issue and is taking it very seriously.

A Google Groups thread shows official word from Google acknowledging the problem. Their most recent message was posted last night and says:

The account errors some of you have been experiencing are now resolved for the vast majority of users. You may experience some delays in mail delivery, although we expect these to be resolved shortly. A small group of accounts, however, may continue to show errors, and we'll be watching these errors closely to ensure they're fixed as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience today and appreciate your patience.

Update from Barry: Just want to add that David Ogletree also spotted this.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Groups.

Members at DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld Forums note that Yahoo is now offering unlimited mail storage. Yahoo confirmed this on their company blog, saying that it is in honor of its 10th anniversary. The unlimited quota will kick in in May of 2007.

On DigitalPoint, many people seem happy at the news:

Clever Marketing...Unlimited really sells people...

Others hope that Yahoo will increase the attachment quota that is currently set to 10MB:

i like unlimited space but i want more than 10mb attachment filesize. hope they provide that soon.

Happy 10th birthday, Yahoo!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the only way to request reinclusion into the Google index is to admit you violated Google's terms of service. If your site has been removed from the Google index, you can then file a reinclusion request with Google within Google Webmaster Central.

But as this WebmasterWorld member noted, you must first admit that you were guilty.

I have gone to Google’s reinclusion request form to look into submitting a reinclusion request for the site. However, to submit such a request, you MUST agree to a declaration that the site has been spamming (you must agree to: “I believe this site has violated Google's quality guidelines in the past.")

Again, you must check off a box where you say, "I believe this site has violated Google's quality guidelines in the past."

If you do not believe the site has violated Google's quality guidelines, then what is an honest person to do?

Senior member, BillyS feels that "it's a rather arrogant way to approach this problem." But jomaxx says something pretty smart, "but if absolutely nothing has been identified or changed is a reinclusion request going to do any good?"

There are times where one takes over a domain that may have done something against Google's guidelines. In that case, you can easily say, yes - it is possible, the previous owner, did things that were wrong. But if not?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums member posted a screen capture of Google testing placing the navigational links above the right sponsored ads, in a box. Here is the screen capture resized and cropped to make it fit better on this site.

This is the most drastic change for the navigation links. The other day we reported Google moving the navigation links to the top of the page.

There are a ton of different reports of people noticing these changes. Here is a roundup of some of that coverage:

- Search Engine Land Coverage
- Google Blogoscoped Coverage
- Google Operating System Coverage
- PPC Blog Coverage
- Search Engine Land Coverage II
- Search Views Coverage

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if you are allowed to place two different Google AdSense ads from two different publishers on the same page? For example, you and your friend run a blog together. Can you place your ad on the top left, while his ad is on the top right of the same page?

The answer appears to be no.

According to Google AdSense Online Standard Terms and Conditions, section two, paragraph "AdSense for Content," last line:

You shall not display any Ad Unit on a page that contains Ads associated with another Google AdSense customer (e.g., Your Web hosting company), unless authorized to do so by Google.

This does not mean it is out of the question. You simply need to get special person from Google to do so.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums has a thread asking if traffic from Digg can cause problems with your Google AdSense account.

There are a few reasons for concerns when it comes to getting surges of traffic. Now this applies from Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape and other traffic sources.

First, feel free to read our write up named Is StumbleUpon Considered Auto-Surf Traffic & Against AdSense TOS? In that article, we pretty much determine that StumbleUpon traffic is not against AdSense terms of service.

The same logic applied to that argument is applied here with Digg. Digg is not an automated traffic generation tool. It is not a network that was created simply to create traffic. So in Digg's case, I doubt you will get banned from Google AdSense for getting on the front page of Digg.

In addition, many sites with AdSense have hit the front page of Digg numerous times are were not banned because of it.

As we discussed in the past, there are possible down sides to getting on Digg. But I would like to point out a comment left by Lea de Groot who said:

One day of being hit by Digg doesn't matter, but if the ad supplier (in most cases Google Adsense) evaluates the traffic to show that your page is not as worthwhile because your CTR has dropped, you may be smart priced long after the diggers have gone.

Will Google know it is coming from Digg? Probably, so yes, this may not be a huge issue, but we don't know for sure.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The twenty-fourth edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. Google officially launched the beta of Pay Per Action ads, so we had a fifteen minute discussion on that topic to lead off. Then we discussed the new anchor text reports from Google. Followed by a Microsoft Live.com Search update. Then we discussed site SEO factors versus page SEO factors. We talked about Yahoo! Search results missing the directory links, Google anonymizing data, Google testing a new user interface and much more. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file and listen at your convenience.

You can listen to the MP3 file with our new player directly below:

Topics We Covered:

1. Google Affiliate Management: Pay Per Action Ads
   
2. Google's New Text Link Ad Unit
   
3. Adsense to be Completely Replaced by Pay-Per-Action?
   
4. First Screen Shots Of Google Pay Per Action In Action
   
5. Google Webmaster Central Showing Back Link Anchor Text
   
6. Google Anchor Text Reports Updated Monthly & Not Finalized
   
7. Possible Microsoft Live Search March Update?
   
8. Google Showing More Weight Towards Site Factors as Opposed to Page Factors
   
9. Yahoo! Removes Category (Directory) Links From Under Search Results
   
10. Google To Take Steps To Anonymize Search Data After 18-24 Months
    
11. Google Testing New Alternative Search Navigation Links
    
12. 75% of Google's Blogspot Blogs are Spam
    
13. Yahoo! & Microsoft Release Papers on Web Spam
    
14. Does "Set It & Forget It" Still Work In The PPC Game?
    
15. Google Testing Yellow AdWords Background
    
16. Does Your Business School Have a High PageRank?
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 24: Google PPA, Google Anchor Text, Microsoft Live Update, SEO Factors, Yahoo! Search Directory, & More"

According to a Cre8asite Forums thread, Google has launched a new search engine specifically for mobile users.

On the Google Mobile Homepage, you now have the ability to try their new mobile search engine.

Screenshots are below:

This is what the mobile search looks like:

In this recent push, Google joins Ask Mobile Search and Yahoo oneSearch for mobile solutions.

Is it what you expected? Do you think Google Mobile Search needs more work? Join the discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Update: Another WebmasterWorld thread shows that Yahoo has launched a mobile ad Pay-Per-Click campaign today as well.

Earlier, we posted regarding that it was unclear if Google allows for revenue sharing. A member at the DigitalPoint Forums sent an email to Google asking whether revenue sharing was supported by the Google Adsense model and received the following response from a member of the Google Adsense Team:

Your members are welcome to submit an application at https://www.google.com/adsense/app-single-1 with your site as their URL. There is no cost or obligation and our review period takes just 2-3 days. If their applications are approved, they can easily set up their accounts and start displaying Google ads and AdSense for search within minutes.

Please be aware that the revenue generated from these ads will be directly
tied to the specific account(s) indicated in the ad code.

We do not have official confirmation from Google in support of this message, but the DigitalPoint members are very happy to hear these results.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks whether a business, which is showing up in the Google Local Search Results in the "A" position, has a business listing with Google. She wonders if entering the business location (which is currently blank) in the Local Business Center would affect the rankings of the business.

Bill Slawski says that this would not be the case and reinforces the information provided to Google about the business, as well as allowing business owners to provide more information about their business to Google.

Their business may be listed, Google's local search may show the correct information for the business, but their Google account is probably not associated with that business, which is why the fields are blank.

The Local Business Listing is a way for a business to either add themselves, or to verify the information that exists already in Google's Local Search, and possibly add more information to it.

Bill adds that the following information can be added when a person actually verifies the business listing:

• alternate phone
• mobile phone
• fax number
• TTY/TDD number
• Associated email address
• website (sometimes Google gets this wrong)
• A description of your choice
• choices of payment methods.

Since there were previously speculated local competitor hijackings (that were since refuted), every business should ideally register themselves in Google's the Local Business Center.

More importantly, to prevent against unwanted phone calls, this information should be accurately updated. Any errors can be reported.

Discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

A Cre8asite Forums member notes that instead of getting targeted Google ads, he is seeing a more pervasive theme of ads for Google AdWords:

It used to be that those pages had some sort of general ads on them, often four different text ads (in a banner). Most often they were fairly well targeted to the general site theme. However, since about a week or so I am really seeing a push of "full width" ads for Google Adwords.

He speculates that this may have something to do with him cutting down on his own AdWords campaign:

About a week ago I killed a lot of my Adwords campaigns (moving them to separate accounts), my normal Google account is now spending about 5% of the Adwords-costs that I used to have.

Are these personalized ads based on recent user behavior?

The user speculates that Google is advertising its own services and may therefore be bumping out other higher paying customers. Is this possible? He thinks that it is and that Google is paying for it themselves.

But by bumping off higher-paying ads they're actually paying for the space (opportunity cost). By grabbing a whole wide Adsense block instead of allowing 4 "paid" advertisements they're losing the money which a potential click would bring. It's not cheap.

An AdWords advertiser also notices that his click-through-rates are lesser than expected.

Well, something is definitely up with AdSense: for the past 4-6 weeks, my CTR has been a paltry 0.5%, with 0.1% routinely popping up. Pathetic waste of space.

My typical CTR used to be around 1.5-3%, depending on the day. Not bad for a site aimed at webmasters!

But not everyone is seeing any difference in behavior.

If you are noticing anything, add your $0.02 to the discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums member shares information about a Google Maps/Google Earth mashup that shows the current tracking status of a package, including, for his purpose, Google Adsense Checks. The service, called PackageMapping, allows you to see which cities your packages gone through in order to reach their destination.

Screenshots of this system in action can be seen below:

This is a really cool and practical purpose for a Google maps mashup, especially since I've seen some pretty interesting tracking results in the past. The only thing I noticed so far is that USPS tracking doesn't seem to be working correctly and it keeps assuming that the USPS tracking number I enter is a Fedex tracking number when it is not.

What do you think about it? Discuss at the DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks a simple question. Can a premium AdSense publisher get banned?

The simple answer is yes, a premium AdSense publisher can be banned. Yes, there is a "but".

First, a premium AdSense publisher is explained at JenSense.com.

I am a premium AdSense publisher so I can almost talk from experience.

Premium AdSense publishers get their own AdSense reps. I have slipped up in the past, and I have done things that are wrong or against the AdSense TOS. Was I banned? No.

I got warnings, personalized warnings, from my representative that I was doing something wrong. They did not ever threaten to ban me. They did remove the ads from the pages that were in violation (individual pages only, never site-wide bans). As soon as I fixed the problem, the ads were live again.

So yes, premium AdSense publishers can get banned, I assume, but it takes a lot more to get them banned then a normal publisher.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

In the old days of the Pay Per Click management days, you used to hear the phrase - "set it and forget it." Meaning, you set up your pay per click campaign in Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and others. Then you watch it for a couple weeks, make some tweaks and when things are running smoothly, you just walk away and let it run itself.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if the "set it and forget it" practice still works? With Google AdWords changing their algorithms every 6 months or so. With Yahoo! recently upgrading to a new algorithm in Panama. With adCenter launching with more features to shake a stick at... Does the "set it and forget it" methodology still apply?

It appears not.

Everyone in the thread seems to agree that for the most part, that concept is long gone. You at least have to check in weekly for even the smallest campaigns. I like netmeg's response:

I have one client who has set a rather small (in my opinion, TOO small, considering the breadth of his product line) daily budget for what he wants to spend on AdWords, and he hired me a couple years ago to fix his existing AdWords account and kind of oversee it. I added as many phrases as I felt I could within the strictures of his low budget, and then I turned the Budget Optimizer on most of his campaigns, and just let it run. He absolutely will not raise the budget, so there was a limit to what I could do with it. Once a week I go in to see if anything looks weird, and anything that has gone inactive I might have to move off to a separate campaign (that's not on Budget Optimizer) in order to raise the CPC, but that's about it. It means a lot of his positions are down in the 5-8 range, or even lower - but it probably gets him more overall clicks for the money, and all I can do is hope that when people click on the ads, if they don't buy what they're clicking on, they'll see something else they're interested in. In any case, we do get conversions, and the client seems to be fairly satisfied with it. It's not the way I prefer to do it, but it's what I could do with what was handed me.

That's the closest to auto-pilot that I can get.

Would love to hear more on this from others.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks how can he remove an AdWords account from his My Client Center.

There is step by step AdWords Help on how to add and remove accounts. To remove:

1. Log in to your MCC at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click on the client account you would like to unlink.
3. Click the My Account tab.
4. Click the Account Preferences link.
5. Under Client Manager Account Access, locate the account you want to disable in the appropriate access level ('User Interface and API' or 'API only') and click Disable manager access.
6. Click OK.

Here is what that section looks like on your screen:

Resident PPC Guru at DigitalPoint Forums, GuyFromChicago, said:

Hopefully you don't have to do that too often

I agree.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums

Update From Matt Cutts of Google:

It's definitely not related to the 302 on hotfroguk.co.uk though.

See Matts full explanation below.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has a thread about a site that appears to be hijacked within the Google results. First let me show you what I mean by being hijacked within the Google results.

A search on the site url, www.wenlockbasin.com, returns nothing from the site itself, but does return the directory hotfroguk.co.uk.

This is what a hijack may look like. Where you search for your domain, but someone else takes over the result.

Moderator, Ian Mcanerin, explains:

Hotfrog appears to link to websites using a redirection script issuing a 302 redirect. For new/low ranking sites, this can result in what is called a "hijack".

This can happen because a 302 actually tells a search engine that the original site is HotFrog and that it has been temporarily moved to your URL. Accordingly, the search engine shows the "original" if it has enough link juice.

This won't happen once you have enough links to outrank the page that it's on, but right now, it can be a real issue. It's one of the very few times when someone else can harm your site.

So he warns new site owners to "NEVER submit to a directory that uses 302 redirects for click tracking."

More on 302 Hijacks:
- Hijacking Google Results with 302 Redirects - Bait & Switch
- Google Tackles the 302 Redirect Issue
- Google Not Handling Redirects Correctly?
- Removing a 302 Hijacked Page from the Google Index
- and others, but some of these issues have been resolved.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

As reported by Kathy Sierra herself, in what could be her last post for Creating Passionate Users, severely abusive and threatening blog comments have forced her to cancel a speaking engagement.

As described in shocking detail, she has been publically verbally assualted with sexual and life threatening images and content, not only in her blog but in two other blogs.

For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you've probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).

Kathy's writings reach out to many web related industries. She's earned a large, strong, loyal readership due to her keen insights into user habits, and wonderful sense of humor.
Cre8asiteforums is discussing this sad news.

The Search Engine Roundtable will be providing indepth, virtually real-time coverage, of the Search Engine Strategies New York show. For more details on our coverage of the show, read SES NYC 2007 Coming - What To Know. We hope to fill the open slots before the conference begins, in addition, we may be syndicated sessions we miss from the girls over at Bruce Clay Blog - thanks Bruce!

Search Engine Strategies begins April 10th, hope to see you there!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

9:00 - 10:30am
"Introduction To Search Marketing" Covered by Debra Mastaler
"Video Search Optimization" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Compare & Contrast: Ad Program Strategies" Covered by Greg Meyers
"In House: Big SEO" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Ads Beyond Search" Covered by Lisa Barone

11:00 - 12:30pm
"Search Term Research & Targeting" Covered by Debra Mastaler
"Podcast & Audio Optimization" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Ads In A Quality Score World" Covered by Lisa Barone
"Big PPC" Covered by Greg Meyers
"Online Video Advertising" Covered by Li Evans

2:00 - 3:30pm
"Search Engine Friendly Design" Covered by Carolyn Shelby
"Mobile Search Optimization" Covered by Rob Kerry
"Benchmarking An SEM Campaign" Covered by Chris Boggs
"In House: Building The Team" Covered by OPEN
"Advertising In Social Media" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer

4:00 - 5:30pm
"Search Advertising 101" Covered by Carolyn Shelby
"Meet The Mobile Search Engines" Covered by OPEN
"Advanced Paid Search Techniques" Covered by Chris Boggs
"SPONSORED SESSION TBA" Covered by OPEN
"Where Are You Spending Your Clients’ Money?" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

9:00 - 9:45am
"Keynote" Covered by Barry Schwartz

10:15 - 11:45am
"Link Building Basics" Covered by Tamar Weinberg
"Web Analytics & Measuring Success" Covered by Li Evans
"Sitemaps & URL Submission" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Search Ad Buyers Forum" Covered by OPEN
"Domaining & Address Bar-Driven Traffic" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer

1:30 - 2:45pm
"Writing For Search Engines" Covered by Tamar Weinberg
"Converting Visitors Into Buyers" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issue" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Meet The Search Ad Networks" Covered by Lisa Barone
"Getting Traffic From Contextual Ads" Covered by Rob Kerry

3:15 - 4:30pm
"Fun With Dynamic Web Sites" Covered by Tamar Weinberg
"Creating Compelling Ads" Covered by Greg Meyers
"SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Putting Search Into The Marketing Mix" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Earning Money From Contextual Ads" Covered by Rob Kerry

4:45 - 6:00pm
"Successful Site Architecture" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"Landing Page Testing & Tuning" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Robots.txt Summit" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Search & Branding" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Contextual Ads & AdSense Clinic" Covered by Li Evans

Thursday, April 12, 2007

9:00 - 10:15am
"Meet The Crawlers" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Ad Testing: Research & Findings" Covered by OPEN
"Social Search Overview" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"B2B Tactics" Covered by OPEN
"Search Arbitrage Issues" Covered by Li Evans

11:00 - 12:15pm
"Images & Search Engines" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Searcher Behavior Research Update" Covered by Kim and Ben Pfeiffer
"SMO: Social Media Optimization" Covered by Barry Schwartz/Tamar Weinberg
"Local Search Marketing Tactics" Covered by Carolyn Shelby
"Search & Privacy" Covered by Chris Boggs

2:00 - 3:15pm
"Organic Listings Forum" Covered by Tamar Weinberg
"The Search Landscape" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Bookmark Strategies" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Shopping Search Tactics" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"Dealing With Affiliates" Covered by Rob Kerry

4:00 - 5:15pm
"Site Clinic" Covered by OPEN
"Sponsored Session TBA" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Wikipedia & SEO" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer & Li Evans
"Retailer Forum" Covered by OPEN
"Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues" Covered by Chris Boggs

Friday, April 13, 2007

9:00 - 10:15am
"Linking Strategies" Covered by Tamar Weinberg
"Content Is King!" Covered by Ben Pfeiffer
"Search & Regulated Industries" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"Ad Agencies: Understanding The Search Difference" Covered by OPEN
"Site Clinic" Covered by OPEN

10:45 - 12:00pm
"Link Baiting & Viral Search Success" Covered by Barry Schwartz/Tamar Weinberg
"Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price Of One" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"SEM For Non-Profits & Charities" Covered by Carolyn Shelby
"Ad Agencies: Working With SEM Agencies" Covered by OPEN
"Ad Copy & Landing Page Clinic" Covered by Li Evans

12:30 - 1:45pm
"Search Engine Q&A On Links" Covered by Barry Schwartz
"CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines" Covered by Kim Krause Berg
"Sponsored Session TBA" Covered by OPEN
"Working With Ad Agencies" Covered by Chris Boggs
"Site Clinic" Covered by Tamar Weinberg

Note: Coverage schedule may change last minute.
- 3/27/2007 at 10:40AM (EST): Added Carolyn Shelby to cover four sessions.
- 3/27/2007 at 2:20PM (EST): Added Lisa Barone to cover three sessions.

A member at the Search Engine Watch forums observes that conference presenters had to pay to speak at a recent industry search conference that he attended. He asks:

If this is common practice for the likes of SES/PubCon are the paying customers being taken for a ride?

Moderator Joseph Morin states that SES/Pubcon does not allow presenters to pay to speak:

To clarify: At both SES and PubCon, we don't accept payment FROM speakers either. The speakers are chosen by merit and their knowledge of the subject matter as a an expert in a particular niche.

Elisabeth chimes in and says that this may be the case for other search industry conferences, and that attendees should be on the lookout:

Glengara, the problem here is that you seem to be lumping in whatever it is you attended with "all" SEM conferences or organizations, but that's defintely not the case, though event formats may vary as this industry continues to grow. However, there are plenty of shows/seminars that are set up this way. So it's buyer beware really.

At Search Engine Strategies NY, there will be some sponsored sessions, and we have seen Google sponsor lunch presentations in the past.

If you're not going to make it to SES NY, there will be live coverage here on Search Engine Roundtable. Who will be there? Here is a list of people who will be covering the event.

Have you noticed other instances where speakers were paying to promote their products at search conference sessions? Join the discussion at the Search Engine Watch forums.

This is live coverage of SES Munich 2007 by Gilad of SearchMarketing.co.il contributed to the Search Engine Roundtable conferences coverage series.

Site Architecture is very close to Search Usability.

Search Usability - The ease with which site users are able to find their desired data in a website.

Web site usability:
- Measures the ability of users to complete a desired task, It is not a set of focus-group opinions.
- Web site usability is a BALANCE between business goals and user expectations
- Successful site architecture addresses all search behaviors, not only querying behavior

Continue reading "SES Munich 2007 - Successful Site Architecture"

A thread at WebmasterWorld speculates about how Google is weighing factors throughout the site rather than on a single page on a domain.

Some people are seeing that Google is placing heavier emphasis on so-called "landing pages" that might bring people to the appropriate content.

Some are seeing a strange trend toward SERPs that rank higher level pages that are actually one click away from the real "meat"

Some members see that there is an emphasis on overall site relevancy:

... the changes trigger an effect that you describe, because of (forcing) relevant site navigation....

If the internal navigation is meant to combine or further develop this relevancy, no matter what page the links and visitors land on, both the users and the algo will gladly admit that on a widgets page ( page, not site ) the internal links promote other pages to be of value about the keyword "widgets" even if the anchor of the internal navigation doesn't mention widgets all over again.

Other WebmasterWorld members are cautious to approach this purported algorithmic change, especially because Wikipedia is more-or-less a site that does not focus on any specific theme and is "disconnected" in terms of site-wide relevant content:

I see no evidence that Google is looking at sites rather than pages; it's just a weird coincidence that pages in the same site are often linked :) and so each may benefit from it's neighbor.

As personalized search continues to creep up into our world, speculation revolves around putting heavier emphasis on user behavior as observed from the Google Toolbar:

G will start looking at all their data acquired from the G Desktop & Toolbar stats to determine the quality of a "Site", and place some sort of unknown, unseen score, like PR, but based on how often users bounce back off of it, bookmark it, or time spend cruising site, or number of pages surfed, or some combination of all of the above. This will then be used somehow in the Algo to boost the trust rank, floating the quality to the top, & the crap that no-one wants to see to the bottom.

Are you noticing anything different in the search results that might show that Google is emphasizing the importance of the entire site versus a single factor?

Further speculation, including responses to a recent statement by Matt Cutts, continues at WebmasterWorld.

This is live coverage of SES Munich 2007 by Gilad of SearchMarketing.co.il contributed to the Search Engine Roundtable conferences coverage series.

This session is parallel to the spam session held in the German language, not too many people in the room (about 25) Bill presents his work at Global Strategies, IBM and others.

Enterprise Search optimization Reality
- Many brands and products
- Multiple languages
- Numerous SEM programs
- Wide range of roles need to be included

Maximizing search (shows the Google triangle http://www.enquiro.com/eyetrackingreport.asp) - showing why is it important...

Continue reading "SES Munich 2007 - Search Marketing for Large Companies"

Since yesterday morning Microsoft's Live.com has been having issues with their link command. Microsoft does have a comprehensive link command feature but right now, it appears to still be offline.

A search on link:www.seroundtable.com would normally return results but now Microsoft is returning a blank page.

The header information for the page returns a status code of 200, which means everything seems to be OK. However, the "Content-Length" is set to 0, meaning, no content is returned, hence the blank page.

The first report came at WebmasterWorld at 5:27 AM (EST).

I use MSN / Live search quite a lot to check my inbound links, since their results tend to be more comprehensive than others'. For the past 24 hours, any search on MSN / Live with the search string link:example.com gives a blank page (= a totally white page). Is is something specific to my IP / PC, or has anybody else noticed it? - Other searches do work OK for me.

So to be clear, it is just the link command, not other searches. Normal searches as well as most other special operator commands, such as site:www.seroundtable.com are working. It is just the link command.

In other news, it appears Live Search was down for about 3 hours over the weekend.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Microsoft Live Search Link Command To Remain Offline and Live Search To Offer Webmaster Tools Section Soon?.

Google sent out an announcement earlier this month about a new AdWords credit policy. The policy said that Google won't be giving promotional credits to anyone but "Qualified Individuals and Qualified Companies in the Google Advertising Professionals program". This shocked several people in the SEM community, but it did not make full sense to me, so I decided to wait it out and see.

Beginning March 31, 2007, promotional credits will only be available to Qualified Individuals and Qualified Companies in the Google Advertising Professionals program. Program participants without qualified status will no longer be eligible for promotional credits.

If you currently have promotional credits but are not yet qualified, your existing credits will be no longer be valid after this date,and no new credits will be issued unless you become qualified.

We've made this policy change to reflect the increasing levels of service required by qualified program members to deliver high-quality AdWords services to customers. By issuing promotional credits only to qualified program members, we hope to ensure that customer acquisition funds are being spent appropriately.

Is this such a huge deal? Not really, Google still gives out what they call "vouchers" to new customers, encouraging them to sign up and test out Google AdWords.

A Cre8asite Forums thread has proof that non-AdWords customers are still getting these vouchers. So yes, AdWords customers will not be getting discounts or credits under their existing accounts if they are not a Qualified Individuals or Qualified Companies but Google may still give out vouchers.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums & WebmasterWorld.

A search on google at Yahoo! Search confirms this to be true. In the past the results looked like:

Notice the category link, which links the search result directly to the category it belongs to within the Yahoo! Directory. Now that seems to be gone for all searches I tested.

Same with a search on search engine roundtable:

Old Result:

New Result:

I tried several different searches that I knew returned the category link within the listings, and all are gone. I do not know if this is on purpose, or if this is just a Yahoo! test.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Over the past week or so, Google has been messing around with their links to their other search products. What used to be directly over the search box, seems to be moving around, in a Google test.

On Friday I covered at Search Engine Land a Google Operating Systems find that shows Google moving the search product links from above the search box to the top of the page. Google Blogoscoped adds that Google is testing this within the search results page as well, and not just on the Google.com page.

This weekend, the PPC blog reports a test where Google is placing the navigation search links in a box directly above the sponsored results. Here is a cropped screen capture, but PPC blog has a full size version of this in action.

Why would Google do this? Well, we know rarely any of the searches use those top links. So maybe it is in an attempt to get those links seen more?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

This is live coverage of SES Munich 2007 by Gilad of SearchMarketing.co.il contributed to the Search Engine Roundtable conferences coverage series.

Tim presents Shari Thurow, webmaster / Marketing director from GrantasticDesigns.com , actually reads most of her bio from here - http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/munich07/sthurow.html

Define a search engine friendly web design – search engine design is NOT:
- A user friendly web design that can be easily accessed by end users, users are primary.
- Human based search engines and crawler based SE are secondary.

5 basic rules of web design:
- Easy to read
- Easy to navigate – where am I? give the user a sense of place.
- Easy to find
- Consistent layout and design.
- Quick to download
All in all: EASY TO USE

Continue reading "SES Munich 2007 - Designing Search Engine Friendly Web"

This is live coverage of SES Munich 2007 by Gilad of SearchMarketing.co.il contributed to the Search Engine Roundtable conferences coverage series.

The first English Session is moderated by Tim Cole and presented by Rand Fishkin from seomoz, We are late because of a big registration queue while The two struggle technical issues with the wifi connection (side note :~35$ a day isn't fun!)...

The room got place for about 120 attendees, we're starting with about 50 and people about 30 more get in at the first 10 minutes.

Tim Presents Rand and tells all about the famous proposition...
Rands starts with a warm Welcome, will cove 3 topics: Blogs, Social web 2.0 sites and LinkBait.

Continue reading "SES Munich 2007 - Blogging, Social Media Marketing & Linkbait"

Like Lisa's little recaps in the SEO blog world, Tamar will be covering the forums world. (Will we ever become BFF again, Lisa?)

This week was my first week blogging for Search Engine Roundtable. As part of that, I immersed myself in forums and more in Search Engine Roundtable than ever before. Have I done a good job? You be the judge.

Search Engines Celebrate

Over the weekend, a good chunk of the world had a St. Patty's Day celebration. The Big Four celebrated, and we at Search Engine Roundtable also joined in on the fun. Speaking of pretty, Google didn't want the festivities to end just there and later introduced new colors and themes into their personalized pages.

Business As Usual

Last week, it was Viacom vs. YouTube. This week, someone working for Google sued Viacom over the Viacom's decision to remove their parody video from YouTube. Also, this week in lawsuits, the Humor University is suing Google. According to the suit, Google owes the company for three moths of online ads. Do you find that funny?

If you do, keep laughing. On Tuesday, a judge threw out the KinderStart case against Google, a suit that was preposterous from the very start. Nobody should be suing Google for getting lower ranks.

In wackier news, reputation has been brought to a whole new level. A WebmasterWorld member has announced that he will only consider applying to schools that have a high PageRank. His criteria? PR9 and up. Having gone to a PR9 school myself, I would put a lot more emphasis on the quality of education, not the brand name. Sadly, this guy must think people will care once he graduates.

Big Breaks

Outsite the courtroom, YouTube will also have big things to worry about. News Corp. and NBC will be releasing a YouTube competitor this summer. This should be interesting as it plays out. Will all traditional media outlets begin embracing the modern technology that only YouTube used to offer? I'd keep an eye out.

This week, Microsoft formed a partnership with Lenovo to bundle a Live.com friendly Internet Explorer into all Lenovo desktops and notebooks. Given these compatibility considerations, we can't help but wonder: when is Microsoft going to add sitemaps support?

First, there was PPC. Well, there still is PPC, but now there's also PPA. Google released a new system this week called Pay Per Action where advertisers will only pay Google when their ads convert. Since I'm a big fan of Chris Sherman speeches where he discusses the importance of goals and conversions, I think this is a great thing for advertisers. The first screen shots of Google Pay Per Action have already been sighted.

On the same note, Google appears to be testing AdWords optimization tips, which is different from earlier reported sightings of Personalized AdSense Optimization Tips. This looks hopeful for advertisers as it continues to be rolled out to other accounts. Google, bring it on!

Yahoo's Reggie Davis has been promoted to "click fraud czar" to address any concerns regarding invalid and fraudulent clicks. According to Yahoo, twelve to fifteen percent of search ad clicks are discounted.

Oops...

A lot of people got excited a little too early in response to the announcement that Google's Webmaster Central started showing backlink anchor text. Unfortunately, not everyone saw the anchor text. Vanessa Fox confirms that some sites are still being updated with the new data and that Webmaster Central will be updated with this new information every month.

Webmasters should also be cognizant of their rankings at all times. Otherwise, you may get delisted and find a huge surprise when investigating how it all happened: spammy subdomains. Make sure your hosts are secure!

Speaking of spam, Google's Blogspot service is a primary culprit, with 3 of 4 blogs exactly for that purpose! Why? It's free! Want to be associated with more spam? Get an .info domain! "Informational," maybe. Spammier, more so.

Money, money, money

Want one dollar? Google is offering incentives, in the form of $1 to Adsense accounts of anyone who refers new users to Google Checkout. Some conditions apply.

TGIF!

It's been an interesting week. Blogging for Search Engine Roundtable wasn't too bad, all things considered. Barry says that I'm proving to be a pretty good sidekick. (Take that, Lisa!) I scored a nice little link from Andy and got Dugg. I could have scored two Diggs in a row, but some anonymous coward ripped off my article and that article instead hit the main page of Digg. For the record, this is the article that should have been Dugg.

What will next week bring? Plenty more surprises, I'm sure. Stay tuned.

A Google Guide posted at Google Groups that they released a new small version update for Google Spreadsheets. The new version number is V1.2.0i and the improvements address:

• spreadsheets not loading quick enough
• spreadsheets not loading
• Disconnect error messages
• some of you will receive a disconnect error on occasion, but you will be reconnected automatically
• for IE users, if your spreadsheets aren't loading, you'll be prompted with instructions
• "press Ctrl + F5 on your keyboard"
• Added Tab-delimited (tsv) explained for Google Base users in help section.
• hyperlinks in spreadsheets now appear as actual, working hyperlinks in published spreadsheets

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Here is that screen capture:

Let's zoom in on the types of actions we can see from the screen capture.

As you can see, this user set up a sale action, a lead action, other actions, plus deleted a purchase/sale action. You can also set up a bid (which looks to be the amount you pay when the desired action is completed) and then you have the standard stats.

Google obviously provides tracking code that you must install on your site, and it seems like Google will verify if the code is properly installed - so that publishers will get paid.

I still hope to gain access to both betas (AdSense PPA and AdWords PPA) soon and have more details for you then.

Our past coverage on Google Pay Per Action:

- Google Testing AdSense Cost Per Action (CPA)
- Google Affiliate Management: Pay Per Action Ads
- Adsense to be Completely Replaced by Pay-Per-Action?
- Google's New Text Link Ad Unit

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Kevin Gibbons spotted a new feature in his UK based Google AdWords account. On his campaign screen, he noticed a message from Google with "Campaign Optimisation" reports. They look very similar to Google AdSense Message Inbox & Personalized AdSense Optimization Tips that we reported a while back, but for AdWords.

What is nice about these AdWords reports, is that they allow you to accept their suggestions to be implemented right away.

You can accept or decline the changes at the Ad Group level. If you'd only like to apply some of the changes, accept the entire Ad Group, then go back and edit your keywords on your own.

Kevin has screen captures of this in action.

More details at:
- https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6267
- https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6253
- https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6262

I figured this would come when I spotted the AdSense tips, so this is nice to see. The question is, how good is the advice and suggestions?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums & WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld member points out that Viacom is being directly sued in a "reverse" lawsuit that claims that Viacom removed a parody of The Colbert Report on YouTube.

However, he's quick to say that:

Note - neither Google nor YouTube were mentioned in this "reverse" lawsuit. It goes directly to Viacom.

According to the lawsuit, the video which was removed was protected under "fair use" copyright provisions and should not have been taken down.

But it was. Viacom claims this is a complete waste of judicial resources. Do you agree? Should Viacom have sued Google in the first place? Wouldn't people say that Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google is a waste of judicial resources too? (I think it is.)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A member at the Cre8asite Forums asks the inevitable question: will YouTube, which is succumbing under pressure from several media outlets for publishing videos containing copyrighted material, keep its membership as the videos themselves -- which are behind the success of the site -- start to disappear? If these media outlets were to start their own competing YouTube services, what would happen to YouTube? Did Google make a mistake when they paid $1.65 billion dollars for the service?

Perhaps they did. Search Engine Land reports that News Corporation and NBC Universal are planning to launch a YouTube competitor site this summer.

I wonder if these competition sites will do much for the community of users already addicted to YouTube. There are just so many accounts that people want to have to worry about. While it is understandable that copyrighted works should probably not be on YouTube, how likely are these new competitors going to be successful at gaining and retaining YouTube members given that these competing sites are going to be construed as "just another YouTube?"

There is no doubt that the YouTube idea is huge, since Google bought them for $1.65 billion. NBC and News Corp. understand this and so do other media companies. Barry Schwartz says this "should be fun" watching "new media" play against "old media." Moderator EGOL adds that he is excited to see how traditional media is shifting to these newer technologies, which will be heavily impacted when the United States presidential race gets seriously underway.

Forum discussion continues at Crea8asite Forums.

Do you jump on the latest social media toy just because everybody else is, even if you have no idea what it's for?

An SEO at Cre8asiteforums stopped for a moment to ask, My Blog Log - Why Am I Doing This?

What am I supposed to do with it? Why is it good to have 'contacts'? I feel I'm missing something...or maybe really all it is for is the avatar thing.

While people commented on their various reasons for participating, my favorite one is the honest admission that although it may not be "mature", it's fun to see your friends' faces when they show up at your web house.

Search Engine Land reports that Yahoo has appointed Reggie Davis as "Vice President of Marketplace Quality" to address concerns regarding invalid and fraudulent clicks. Barry adds over at Search Engine Land that 12 to 15% of search ad clicks are discounted.

WebmasterWorld has forum discussion from the SEM community which overall is supportive of this move. The discussion is revolving around whether Reggie Davis is tech-savvy or if he is a great lawyer. Being both couldn't hurt either.

As one member states:

If I were an advertiser, I'd feel more comfortable if the click fraud czar was a top notch techie to protect my interests.

If I were a Yahoo! shareholder, I'd feel more comfortable if the click fraud czar was a top notch lawyer to protect my interests.

Another member has similar sentiment:

The real challenge is to detect a fraudulent click technically speaking.

But hey, if you're happy with a lawyer doing this job, good for you and good for Yahoo.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Webmaster World thread speculates whether Adsense will become an obsolete business model with the introduction of Pay Per Action ads.

Some members think that it will remain the same:

The reason CPA won't replace CPC is simply because most publishers won't go for it. It's work to hand-select ads and hand-place them on the right pages, and for what? The CPA model is tilted in the advertiser's favor, so there's really no reward for the additional work required of the publisher.

Others disagree:

On the contrary: The rewards can be much greater with CPA than with CPC, if the publisher has traffic that converts. The real question isn't whether CPA works; it's whether there's a benefit to working through a network like Google or Commission Junction instead of dealing directly with the affiliate partners.

Additional discussion, including the impact of Pay Per Action on other affiliate networks, continues on WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

I have been receiving sporadic reports of this over the paste few months, and even JenSense spotted this earlier this month. Google seems to be testing, I think in the UK, yellow backgrounds for their AdWords ads at the top of the results. Typically these top AdWords ads are blue.

Standard Blue AdWords Ad:

New Yellow AdWords Ad:

Both colors work for me, I just hope they don't rotate the colors on reloads for searchers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo! has sent out a survey, offering $25 for those who complete the 10 minute survey on the Yahoo! Publisher Network. I received the survey and I completed it last night. Most of the questions were straight forward. But as Nintendo at DigitalPoint Forums notes:

One part was a BIG pain! Where it asks how much you make per 1,000 impressions in the networks, it doesn't tell you to keep the $ out of them, yet it has it in the examples, and the error message doesn't tell you to take them out!

I agree, I did not want to spend the time figuring this out, so I made up those numbers. They should of had an easy to use JavaScript calculator or ask the question in an easier method. But honestly, I am not sure if Google AdSense publishers are allowed to share all their statistics...

In any event, this is not the first time Yahoo! sent out YPN surveys. We report it back on July 24, 2006 and February 24, 2006.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Spotted via a DigitalPoint Forums thread, you can not add a Google Checkout Referral button to your site. The image on the below shows that I see it in my account:

Here is a sample text link unit for Google Checkout:

And here is a sample banner for Google Checkout:

So what are the details? As the Google Checkout Referrals help page says; you can make a whole $1!

When a user you refer to Google Checkout has an account in good standing and completes a transaction of at least $10 (before tax and shipping) within 90 days of sign-up, we'll credit your AdSense account with US $1. To ensure new Google Checkout users are in good standing, your earnings may be delayed up to 7 days.

Honestly, that seems like a horrible deal compared to becoming a Google Checkout Merchant Referral where you can earn $25 at the start and then $5 for every $1,000 of Google Checkout sales processed by merchants you refer. So if you are going to sign up, then don't use the link above, use my affiliate link so I can make more money.

In any event, from this post we learned that Google Checkout referrals were added to the AdSense referral section and I showed you a text link unit.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Update: Now confirmed by the Google AdSense blog.

1. You place the Checkout referral button on your site.
2. Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 before shipping and tax through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to our existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)
3. You earn $1.

A webmaster posted a question at both Search Engine Roundtable Forums Search Engine Watch Forums asking what is the htdig-noindex meta tag do.

Both threads point to http://www.htdig.org/, which is an open source search engine. This open search search engine, named ht://Dig supports a noindex meta tag "htdig-noindex." So if you want to block this search engine from indexing you, just add:

<meta name="htdig-noindex">

The search engine recognizes and supports the following meta tags:

• htdig-keywords
• htdig-noindex
• htdig-email
• htdig-notification-date
• htdig-email-subject
• robots
• keywords
• description

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums Search Engine Watch Forums.

With the launch of Google Pay Pay Action ads comes a new Google AdSense ad format named "text link." This has received a bit of buzz throughout the forums and the blogosphere.

What is this new ad format?

The ad will look like a standard hyperlink (<-- as such) but it will also sport a mouseover that shows "Ads by Google". That is basically the only way to label a hyperlink an ad, by using a mouseover of some sort.

Update: I just added a post on AdSense Adds Google Checkout Referral Button and I had a text link unit as an option, so this is what it looks like when you mouseover:

In addition, the only way to add this text link unit to your pages is to take a snippet of JavaScript from the Google AdSense console and paste it into your code. So these links will not be counted towards any link popularity, as far as I know.

Is this going to be like an IntelliTXT product? IntelliTXT is a product that replaces the words of your content, dynamically, and makes them ads. Several sites you may stumble on, may have this - and I personally find them very annoying. The ads have special colored underlines (that look like hyperlinks) and when you mouseover them, they look like this:

The Google Pay Per Action text link units will not show ads when you mouseover, they will just show "Ads by Google" and if clicked will take you to a page, paid for by the advertiser. Another huge distinction is that these ads won't dynamically replace the words in your content. IntelliTXT is a contextual product that dynamically matches the words on your page, and replaced those words with keyword specific ads. Since this is a Google AdSense Referral product, the ads will not be contextual. So you have to manually replace your keywords with this ad (I am not even sure if a publisher can pick the text they want, I believe only advertisers can) so most of the time you won't be able to work the ad within your content, because the keyword phrase may not make sense to your content.

Can Google easily make an IntelliTXT product? Of course! Have they, I don't think so.

Finally, these text link units will only be found in Google's content network. They will not be used on the search network (i.e. Google.com).

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

"KinderStart had failed to explain how Google caused injury to it by a provably false statement ... as distinguished from an unfavorable opinion about KinderStart.com's importance," the judge's ruling states.

Is Google relieved? It seems so.

"We always felt these claims were unjustified, because courts have consistently rejected complaints over search engine rankings, so we're pleased that [the judge] promptly dismissed this case," Google litigation counsel Hilary Ware said in a company statement.

Matt Cutts has also updated his blog about the ruling.

With Google indexing tens of millions of sites, it would be incredibly ridiculous for a company to call suit against the search engine under the assumption that the site is being purposely ranked low and it was Google's malicious intent to to do because KinderStart is a competitor. This sets an interesting premise for any other company who wishes to do the same.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Groups thread asks how can one filter news searches by publisher. The thread creator asked:

I prefer to read certain news sources (CNN, Reuters, AP, etc.). I'm constantly scrolling past many, many reprints of (say) the same AP wire release.

Is there some way we could filter these, perhaps an option to only show sources of our choice?

Yes, there is a way Ben.

As Google News Guide said, use the ""site:" operator." So for example, you love what we write here and you would like to do a search at Google News on us.

You just search with a site command operator as so site:seroundtable.com.

If that is a bit too complicated, go to advanced search and in the "News source" enter in "search engine roundtable" with a keyword your looking for and you got it. What also works is adding source:search_engine_roundtable to the search box at Google News. Those are three ways to do the same thing.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a lot of recent discussion on a Google backlink update occurring at certain datacenters. But should we be watching these changes anymore?

We now have the Google Webmaster Central Link Tool that gives us all of our backlinks.

Does tracking link:domain.com changes at Google.com, as opposed to tracking our linkage data at Webmaster Central add anything?

In the past, link updates symbolized a Google Dance - a shift in rankings that occurred about once a month. Not ranking changes happen all the time. So is there a benefit to tracking these changes anymore?

We all know Google only shows a random sample of your links with the link command. So again, why track it?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread spots Google testing out the new AdSense logo format on the top left, as opposed to the bottom right portion of the ad.

Top Left Look:

Bottom Right Look:

To be fair, gabs posted this a week ago, after spotting the new style at my personal blog.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I covered this at Search Engine Land, Google Launches Pay Per Action Ads. Google is basically allowing AdWords advertisers to offer a flat dollar value to AdSense publishers, if the customer hits a desired goal. So instead of paying per impression or paying per click, the advertiser will only pay when a desired action is completed.

You can view more details at http://services.google.com/payperaction/. To be clear, this is a US beta only, and it is a beta for both the AdWords side (see AdWords blog) and a beta for the AdSense side (see AdSense blog). If you want to sign up as an advertiser (AdWords) go here, if you want to sign up as a publisher (AdSense) go here. Supposedly, I will be getting a beta account for both soon.

Part of this new Google product comes a new link unit named "text link format." To be clear, the text link will look like a standard hyperlink but it will be rendered with JavaScript. Google says "mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads" and "the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters."

So let's hit the forums, where most of the discussion is at WebmasterWorld.

The discussion is mostly about, is this an affiliate program or not? In many ways it is but in some ways it is not. The main distinction is that you can not offer a publisher a percentage commission on a sale. You can only offer a flat dollar fee to publishers. I wouldn't be surprised if they add a percentage and commission type of structure, so that it can be a true affiliate management product, but right now it is not.

There is a ton of blog coverage on this, see Techmeme for more.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigtialPoint Forums.

Last night I received an email from Jessica at the Google Checkout team telling me they were unable to verify my account and that they need me to email or fax them photocopies of my credit card and drivers licenses. No creditable merchant service should ever ask you for that information over email, ever.

In the Google Checkout Buyer help section it says;

What is phishing?

A message or website that tries to trick you into revealing personal information by appearing to be from a legitimate source, such as a bank (or Google!).

Messages or websites phishing for information might ask you to enter:

Usernames and passwords
Social Security numbers
Bank account numbers
PINs (Personal Identification Numbers)
Credit card numbers
Your mother's maiden name
Your birthday

Phishers often ask for personal information in an attempt to steal your Google Account, your money, your credit, or your identity.

You should always be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. If you receive this type of message, especially from a source claiming to be Google, please do not provide the information requested.

The email asked specifically for this type of information:

Please complete the following steps within five business days:

1. Photocopy or scan the front and back of the credit or debit card you used to sign up. (For security purposes, please conceal the first 12 digits of your card number, leaving only the last 4 digits visible.)
2. Photocopy the front of your driver license.
3. Write your ID (referenced above) on these documents, then fax them to 'Google Account Verification' at 650 644 0159. If you prefer, you can also attach your scanned documents to an email and respond to this message.

I have also taken a screen capture of the message headers, which seem somewhat legit to me, but I am sure I am missing something.

If you want to report such an attempt you can use this form or email it to phishing@google.com, which I will be doing right now.

Now, what is incredibly shocking to me is that in a Google Groups thread we have a similar email from a Chad at Google reported there. The thing is, Deborah (GoogleCheckoutPro) from Google tells the person to reply to the email with the information.

I know they say in brackets that I should block out part of the number, but still, they are asking for too much. They can call me if they want me to verify information.

I am unable to go into specifics about your account here. The best thing to do in this case is to respond back to the email from Chad with your questions. You can also contact our support team. They are very good at responding to emails in a timely manner.

Are you kidding me!

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: This is a real email, Jessica called me to confirm (she then replied to my forward of the email to phishing@google.com) so this is real. I am still Google handles it this way.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me over the phone today.

As mentioned over the phone to you earlier, I can confirm that the email you received is a legitimate message from Google. I apologize for any confusion.

Please follow the instructions listed in our previous email to reactivate your account.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply directly to this email.

Sincerely,

Jessica
The Google Checkout Team

On a recurring theme of Internet spam, a study discussed in WebmasterWorld indicates that three out of four blogs -- or 75% -- are spam.

According to the study (PDF link):

...14 of the top-15 doorway domains have a spam percentage higher than 74%; that is, 3 out of 4 unique URLs on these domains (that appeared in our search results) were detected as spam. To demonstrate the need for scrutinizing these sites, we scanned the top-1000 results from two queries – “site:blogspot.com phentermine” and “site:hometown.aol.com ringtone” – and identified more than half of the URLs as spam easily.

Here is a chart from the study showing the "top doorway domains and their spam percentages (among the search results in our data)":

The reason for this is the suspicion that the popular blogging service is free. One WebmasterWorld member states:

The trouble is, there's no algorithm that can automatically factor in the price of a service. It's free to set up a blog on Blogger, so it can be abused more easily. If these spammers actually had to pay for a new domain name every time they set up a splog, they wouldn't bother.

Other findings of this research showed the spam percentages for Top-Level Domains (TLDs):

• 68% of .info TLDs are spam
• 53% of .biz TLDs are spam
• 12% of .net TLDs are spam
• 11% of .org TLDs are spam
• 4.1% of .com TLDs are spam

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A user on WebmasterWorld mentions that his page rankings have dropped considerably after what appears to be a hack attempt on his server. According to the user, a vulnerability on his web host was exploited, and 50,000 new pages on a subdomain he never created (about prescription drugs) were being crawled by Google.

A similar issue occurred in October when Barry found that Jennifer Convertibles was delisted on Google due to a similar explioit.

After Barry submitted a reinclusion request on behalf of Jennifer Convertibles, the page began ranking again. Similarly, the WebmasterWorld user has acknowledged that he has submitted a reinclusion request and his pages are being crawled more frequently.

So far, the bot has been crawling a few more pages each night, now covering about half, up from 2% two weeks ago.

The obvious question remains: was the webmaster notified by Google? Perhaps they tried to contact him, as they did on several occasions in the past few years.

The user did say that he recently registered his site on Google Webmaster Central, though it may have been helpful for him to have done so earlier so that he could have recognized that his site was not meeting the webmaster guidelines.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Reports come from Google Groups that Yahoo! Group emails are not being delivered to Gmail users.

The first post came in March 16th and said:

I haven't been getting all my mail from my Yahoo groups. They're not bouncing just not getting though although I can see them on the group's message archive. Ideas?

On March 19th, GmailGuide has confirmed the issue to be on Google's side:

We have worked with Yahoo Groups to resolve this issue. You should now be able to receive messages from Yahoo Groups in your Gmail account.

Thanks for your patience,

Gmail Guide

Also, Yahoo! has confirmed it is on Google's side:

We've had reports that some users with Gmail accounts have not been receiving Groups mail since approximately March 14, 2007. This was a difficult issue to diagnose, because we were able to replicate the issue with some, but not all, of our test Gmail accounts. Some of us were missing Groups messages in our Gmail accounts, some of us were receiving them as usual. We appreciate those of you who wrote in detail about the problems your members were having on the Groups Technical Issues board and in email to Customer Care. Having detailed information helps us get to the bottom of issues faster.

The problem appears to be on Gmail's end. We have gotten in touch with the Gmail team and are working to resolve this issue. We'll post an update when this has been resolved.

Is it resolved? Supposedly not, even thought Google says it has been.

Continued forum discussion at Google Groups.

On November 15, 2006 Google, Microsoft & Yahoo! Back SiteMaps Protocol and Microsoft posted about it back then that they are supporting it.

We are 100% behind this protocol - this kind of collaboration will help improve the search experience for all of our customers, and we are working hard to release full support in 2007. We are starting to alpha test with internal partners such as MSDN and Microsoft Support now. Like all teams at Microsoft, we like to dogfood our work internally to ensure that it is working properly before it is publicly released. Watch this space for an update as soon as we’re done.

So we have been watching this space since November 15 and now more than four months later Microsoft still does not offer a sitemaps submission methodology. Google does, Yahoo! does, they have since about a week after the announcement. Microsoft, we are still waiting. Do you have plans to open up a sitemaps submission page? Even if you set up a page that didn't really work, but made us think it worked, that would be cool. ;-)

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

DigitalPoint Forums reports that Yahoo! Publisher Network reports are not reporting 100% accurately. The bottom line figures seem to be correct, but when you break out the reports by channel or domain, the numbers don't seem to add up.

The first post was on March 13th and said:

seems like it stoped tracking my channels/domains correctly if you see the TOTALS for the day its ok, but when u separate them, there like pennies insides and it suppose to be a way higher number, anyone else has this problem? with wrong channel/domain tracking? but totals are still ok?

A few others have confirmed the issue and one said they received a response from Yahoo saying:

Thank you for participating in the Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta program. We apologize for any inconvenience the problem with your URL performance report may have caused you. We are currently working on a resolution. As soon as we learn of a status or a resolution we will be sure to contact you with an update. We are unable to provide you with performance data on individual URL's until this issue is corrected. Once corrected, we will only be able to provide you with this data going forward via the portal.

I assume it is not a huge issue, since the thread is not incredibly active but it does appear to be an issue.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Yahoo! Publisher Network randomly adds polls to the YPN console for publishers. Recently, I think about a week ago, Yahoo! replaced the last poll with a new one that asks. "When developing a new web site at a new domain, how do you decide the site topic (please check one)?"

The options given are:

• I base it on an extension of an existing web site I already have
• I want a new web site based on my personal interests
• I want a new web site based on what’s getting blog/PR coverage
• I want a new web site that I think is a ground-breaking idea
• I want a new web site that I think will drive revenue
• Other (please specify)

Honestly, I would not have noticed the new poll if it wasn't for a someone pointing it out.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

It appears as if the Google Personalized Home Page now allows you to add "themes." If you visit that page, on the top right you may notice a link named "Select theme."

If you click on the "select theme" link, up comes a box of several themes you can choose. The list includes; Classic, Beach, Bus Stop, City Scape, Sweet Dreams, Tea House and Seasonal Scape.

I selected Bus Stop, which looks like this:

Google then asks you to enter in your zip code so that the theme you selected with dynamically change based on your currently weather. I suspect that if its snowing, there may be snow around the theme, and so on.

The box says:

Enter Location:
This theme will dynamically change to match your local weather conditions.

Please enter a location (your city and state or zipcode) to update this theme correctly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A thread on WebmasterWorld has discussion on the news from last week that IBM/Lenovo has agreed to pre-install the Microsoft Live toolbar on new Lenovo desktops and notebooks. The details of this partnership entitle Microsoft's Live.com page to be the homepage on all Lenovo computers, and the Internet Explorer browser will now come pre-loaded with the Microsoft Live toolbar.

While some people think that the competition is good, others are afraid that this will fail:

Most of IBM/Lenovo Customers are corporate users, the first thing a corporate IT dept will do on a Thinkpad is to wipe out all the pre-installed software and install their own!.

I really doubt MS will get a positive return for what they paid Lenova!.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

(Note – I am attending and speaking at OMMA in Hollywood this week, and will provide occasional near-live coverage.)

(Added: I just noticed after publishing that this keynote address was actually titled: Big Media’s Scramble to be Relevant in a World of Seismic Change – the above title was mine)

Arianna Huffington is the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post (HP). Jokes that her accent is real. She actually once told people she was born in Fresno and cultivated the accent – has received actual letters asking how she did it. (audience laughs)

Arianna wants to introduce how to reach the public with messages while avoiding the firewall. In recent Cannes conference, the message was that advertising should be seen as “part of content” versus “interrupting content.” She learned that she should apply this to Huffington Post. Provided the advertising is “organic” to the site, the users will accept it. Their site is set in values about responsible consumption, so the advertising has to somehow match the values if it is going to work. There is a demanding for authenticity and transparency. When those demands are met, “the magic happens.”

Some of her friends asked “why did she suddenly want to get involved with the Internet?” A lot were nay-sayers, and worse – predicting doom and destruction. Talks about the worst review she could possibly have, and showed in a recent book that if you should have bad reviews, it should never stop the goal. So often, when new ideas and products are launched, we can be stopped by nay-sayers. She feels that the women in the room might be able to better understand what she is saying about the “inner critic.” “Our worst enemies do not talk about us the way we can talk about ourselves.” To be creative in this space, you have to deal with both the inner and exterior critics, and believe you can achieve.

The most fascinating thing about the HP is the way that it matches her obsessive nature. There are two types of extremism in media: mainstream media tends to go light on content (she used a disorder but missed it), while the blogging community suffers from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Talks about how no one knows about what is going on with Kosovo, and asks the audience: no one knows. Then talks about Elian Gonzalez…the mainstream media takes a story and goes on with it, then drops it. She asks who now knows how Elian is enjoying Cuba and his new life. No one knows, because it is “past news.” Conversely, the blogosphere likes to find little nuggets and turn them into big stories.

She cites a small story in the Washington Post that spoke about Karl Rove. That was ten days ago, and she told her office to make that the headline. It grew into a huge story. As news aggregators, bloggers can very effectively turn little nuggets into big stories. She says the HP is a hybrid – a news aggregator and over 800 bloggers. People write for us for free – don’t you love our business model? (laughs). They do it because they want their views out their. This is the same thing with those that occasionally write for major publications – not to get the $150, but to get their views out there. She feels that they offer their bloggers the most accessible system – mentions that not all blogs have to be Movable Type – she even used to get blog posts via fax. Larry David would call from the set of “Curb your Enthusiasm” and dictate a blog. The dictated post she received from (?) shortly after the Mel Gibson anti-semetic remarks was on the home page of HP within 10 minutes. With a popular blog, they can get the same type of exposure from this as any major newspaper. Young bloggers are suddenly being noticed at HP and getting more opportunities thanks to it.

It will never be either-or. In the foreseeable future, there will always be magazines, blogs, newspapers, and blogs. She says “let’s have a three-way.” (big laughs) About print and new media: The print that wants to survive in the new world has to embrace the new media. It is very important for any major news organization to have a major online presence, and these should be managed by people that know the space. Those that are navigating new media: they must find people that can “swim in the media.” Some are amphibian – she feels she can walk on land as well as swim in the new media. Some will be specialized in one or the other.

She cautions that not all those you will work with may be people you want to go to dinner with. Think of it as a two-way conversation. HP will be 2 years old on May 9th, if you want to send a card. This is how long it now takes to build a brand. Now in fact it can take a year or less. As we are looking to how to bridge new and old media, it is imperative to stop looking at either-or. She talks about the NYT hiring someone from Disney engineering to help create the new personalized NYT option, but then wonders why it is so hard to get content from NYT for free! She believes content online should be free, unless it’s porn, especially weird porn. (laughs).

She describes some of the partnerships they are forging with many of the new online “masters of the universe.” She wants to wrap up by saying that fearlessness is incredibly important as we approach this new world. Need to accept a high failure rate. She spoke with Marissa Mayer from Google, who considers a 20% success ratio huge, more often a single digit success ratio is acceptable. One must acknowledge failure as a stepping stone to success. This is critical to any new adventure. Change expectations, and don’t be so easily discouraged when we don’t get something right, right away. Her second book was rejected by 36 publishers – imagine that! At about 31, she had second thoughts and was thinking about another career. When opening up a new world, we do not know what the next invention to change the world will be. 2 things: sense of humor – nothing like humor to be able to tap into consumer loyalty; and a sense of adventure. She announces that they will launch a new humor site called 23/6 (versus 24/7).

(I have to personally say that was one of the most entertaining and insightful keynotes I have seen in a long time.)

Last week we reported that Google Webmaster Central Showing Back Link Anchor Text. But when I checked some of my other sites in Google Webmaster Central, I noticed the anchor text report was missing, even from verified sites.

Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central posted in the WebmasterWorld thread telling us that Google is "working to make the anchor text phrases available for more sites, so if you don't see this data now, you should hopefully see it in the coming weeks."

In addition, she also informed us that both the anchor text reports and link reports will be updated monthly.

we update both links data and anchor text once a month

Finally, Google may also bring back the single keyword anchor text reports, for those who miss it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Groups thread reports that Google now supports Japanese in Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The Google Japan Blog has more details in Japanese.

If you want to test it, you can simply go to this URL but you will then have to change it back. More details on how to change it back is as follows:

1. After logging in to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you'll be brought to your Active Docs & Spreadsheets list. From here, click on "Settings" (found in the top right-hand corner).

2. Under "General" (default), you have the choice to change your display language setting. Choose the display language you'd like.

3. Click "Save."

Here is a screen shot:

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a possible Microsoft Search, Live.com Search, update.

Is anyone else seeing this? It seems like a BIG update, and lots of old problems fixed. Our website is finally showing #1 (after being pushed down by spam on page 2 for about 6 months).

Some agree, and some don't.

I'm seeing a few changes ( for the better ), but nothing earth-shattering.

i was wondering when someone else would notice. i'm seeing signficant changes as well, looks like an algo shift to me...for the better...

and for the record...some of mine went up while others went down...and for good reasons :)

I have seen some other chatter at other search forums indirectly mentioning Live Search updates.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ready for a laugh? A WebmasterWorld thread has someone asking if he is crazy that he is using Google's PageRank score as one of the factors in picking a business school for him to attend.

I am in the process of searching for a business school to take a masters program. I was looking around at various rankings, trying to work out where to go. Randomly, I wondered whether I should check the PageRank of the schools I'm interested in. Most of them are 9's, a couple are 8's. I'm thinking I should not go to a school with a PR of only 8... I should stick with the PR9's...

Is that crazy? Or is PR a good indication of brand/quality? How about Alexa rank?

Yea, that is a bit crazy, in my opinion.

One member says "Hmmm... guess that leaves out Wharton, probably one of the best business university's around." Wharton one of the top, if not the top, business schools in the world, has a toolbar PageRank score of 8.

Just to be clear, he posted again that he is not insane.

I am not going to make this decision based ONLY on the alexa/google rank of these pages, but certainly I would want to go to a school that is "top 10" by all rankings, including the google/alexa ranking. I think Google PR and Alexa rank are actually fairly good measures of how high profile the program is.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread points to a Digital Chosun article that reports a Korean site is suing Google for banning them in AdSense, and not paying.

Google, the U.S. web search giant, faces a W30 million (US$1=W945) lawsuit in Korea. Humor University, a local humor website, announced on Sunday that it filed a suit against Google demanding W20 million in payments and W10 million in damages. Humor University said the American firm allegedly failed to pay for three months of online ads.

Google said they are not paying Humor University because the clicks were fraudulent and have banned the account. "Humor University said Google never provided evidence to back up those claims."

I doubt Google will lose this one, but this should be fun to chat about.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The other day was St. Patrick's Day and many of the search engines had logos up for the day. Here is a run down of many of them.

Ask.com took a simple approach:

Google.com went simple as well:

Yahoo! also went simple:

Cre8asite Forums also had a simple logo but we went extreme with changing our site theme.

Let's take a look back in history at what the search engines have done in the past.

All the engines were more extreme about the look for St. Patrick's Day 2004. For St. Patrick's Day 2005 Google and Ask.com both were more extreme than Yahoo. For St. Patrick's Day 2006 Ask.com changed their home page colors from red to green, Google went extreme green with their logo and Yahoo! went simple again.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Bill Slawski started a Cre8asite Forums thread on the topic of a new patent application he spotted named Ranking blog documents. Bill expained this document in great detail at his blog post named Positive and Negative Quality Ranking Factors from Google’s Blog Search (Patent Application).

He summarized the document for the forums, which makes it perfect to quote here.

What positive factors contribute to a blog ranking well in Google Blog Search?

How many RSS subscriptions there are to the blog,
How often people click on a link to the post in search results,
How many blogrolls the blog is in,
How many "high quality" blogrolls the blog is in,
If the blog offers visitors the chance to tag posts, whether people are tagging them,
References to the blog by sources other than blogs,
Pagerank, and;
Others.

What negatives factors contribute to a blog not ranking well in Google Blog Search?

If new posts appear in short bursts or at predictable intervals,
If the content of the posts doesn't match the content of feeds from the posts,
If the content includes a lot of spam related keywords,
If a lot of content is duplicated in multiple posts from a blog,
Whether posts are the same size, or roughly the same size,
Link distribution of the blog,
If posts primarily link to one page or site, and;
Others.

Personally, I am more into the negative factors in helping blog search relevancy than I am with the positive factors.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

One of the biggest conferences on search is right around the corner, in my neck of the woods. Search Engine Strategies NYC begins Tuesday April 10th and concludes Friday 13th.

This will be one of Danny Sullivan's last SES's at a host. Lots of people are coming out just for that.

There is bit of a conflict for me, being that the Tuesday is a Jewish holiday. So I won't be making it that day. I do plan on driving in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It will be the first time I am missing part of an SES this big in years. But don't worry, we have several people from the SEO/SEM community coming in to pitch in.

I will be posting a SES Coverage Schedule in the week or so before the event. Let me give you an idea of some of the folks helping out with the coverage.

• Benjamin Pfeiffer of Rank Smart
• Chris Boggs of Avenue A Razorfish
• Kim Krause Berg of Cre8PC
• Rob Kerry aka EvilGreenMonkey
• Li Evans of Search Marketing Gurus
• Greg Meyers of Commerce360
• Tamar Weinberg of RustyBrick
• Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick
• also, we may have others pitch in...

There is a large thread at Search Engine Watch Forums discussing what to know, where to stay, what hotel is sold out, what are good alternatives, and more. So if you still have doubt, check it out. Don't worry if the main hotel is sold out (it is), there are plenty of hotels right around the corner. I am just not looking forward to the commute every day. :)

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Kevin Gibbons reports he now has an option under his "ad variations" tab that allows him to add a "Click To Play Video Ad." I have a screen capture of a click to play video ads from Google a while back.

So it appears that Google has given some advertisers the ability to add them to their account and place them on the content network.

Google also has a page on Click-to-Play Video Ads and they describe:

Google AdWords now supports click-to-play video ads – ads that combine the power of sound and motion with the precision of Google in order to provide users with a relevant and engaging advertising experience. Video ads join our line-up of text, image and flash ad formats and will be displayed on sites that are part of the Google network.

It isn't brand new, but I have never seen it in the AdWords management console. I still don't see it in my console, but Kevin Gibbons does and has a screen capture to prove it.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

The folks over at Google Webmaster Central keep pumping out more and more features. The latest feature is showing how other sites link to you, by showing the "most common words used in anchor text to your site."

How do you see the information?
(1) Login to Google Webmaster Central sitemaps
(2) Click on Statistics at the top
(3) Click on Page Analysis on the left
(4) Look at right bottom portion of the screen where it says "In external links to your site"

That report shows the top anchor text links used to point to your site. Now you can also download them all by going to the bottom of the page and clicking download this table.

In Danny Sullivan's Google Now Reporting Anchor Text Phrases he describes more on how to dig deeper into these results. But he also adds a wish list which I full support...

(1) Anchor Keywords: I know, I abused them when starting out this story. But they can be useful to see in addition anchor phrases. So let's have them both!
(2) Number Of Links: It's great that I can see the exact way people are linking to me, but how about the number of those links? Just how many more people link to me using the number one phrase versus the number two phrase? Enquiring minds want to know!
(3) Who Links? Let me drill down into any particular phrase and see the exact pages that are linking to me in that way. This I want more than anything else, especially because, as I'll explain, it's something you can't get easily from any of the major search engines.

So showing a number next to the anchor text and having that hyperlinked so that it goes over to the Google link tool would be sweet, a request I had since they launched the tool.

So what are the top 10 anchor text phrases in my report the Search Engine Roundtable?

1. search engine roundtable
2. seroundtable
3. google allows adsense publishers to click play button
4. barry schwartz
5. google mini fridge is back
6. xml
7. keyword tools
8. comments 0
9. click here to verify
10. http www seroundtable com

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread links to a December 2006 paper at Yahoo! Research named A Reference Collection for Web Spam. The paper can be downloaded as a PDF file, it is not brand new, but relatively new. Here is the abstract:

We describe the WEBSPAM-UK2006 collection, a large set of Web pages that have been manually annotated with labels indicating if the hosts are include Web spam aspects or not. This is the first publicly available Web spam collection that includes page contents and links, and that has been labeled by a large and diverse set of judges.

Gary Price of ResourceShelf linked to an updated paper from Microsoft on Web spam. The 10 page PDF file is named "Spam Double-Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with Advertisers." Here is the abstract:

Spammers use questionable search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to promote their spam links into top search results. In this paper, we focus on one prevalent type of spam – redirection spam – where one can identify spam pages by the third-party domains that these pages redirect traffic to. We propose a five-layer, double-funnel model for describing end-to-end redirection spam, present a methodology for analyzing the layers, and identify prominent domains on each layer using two sets of commercial keywords – one targeting spammers and the other targeting advertisers. The methodology and findings are useful for search engines to strengthen their ranking algorithms against spam, for legitimate website owners to locate and remove spam doorway pages, and for legitimate advertisers to identify unscrupulous syndicators who serve ads on spam pages.

So here is your weekend reading.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

One common thread you see come up a lot in Yahoo! Publisher Network forum threads, especially at DigitalPoint Forums, as partnership threads. Partnership threads are threads started by "publishers" who cannot get a Yahoo! Publisher Network account for one of many reasons and asks to partner with one who has an account.

Why can't these publisher's get accounts? Can be because the publisher is based outside the US, and Yahoo! currently does not allow any country outside the US participate in this program yet. It can be because their site was rejected. It can be because they had an account and it was suspended due to violation of the terms of service.

It worries me when reading these threads. Here is an example of a recent looking for partner thread.

I have a lot of sites and i am looking for a partner and want to get into Publisher Network

My sites get a lot of traffic from United States and Europe .
99% of content is in english .

I am ready to split my own revenue 60-40 with you .

If you are interested please PM me or post your reply here .

Typically the share may be 50/50 or in this case 60/40.

There is a thread at DigitalPoint Forums telling publishers to beware of such partnerships. The reasoning used in the thread, in my opinion, is off. My main reason why one should be worried is that it is your account on the line. If they get your account suspended, then you are left with nothing, while all they need to do is start another "looking for partner" thread.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Mihai Parparita a Google Reader Engineer posted a thread in Google Groups stating that they have released a new update for Google Reader. The most noticeable change with this update are the new buttons in Google Reader, it looks like this:

But it does seem a bit snappier on my Mac, which was the main reason I did not use it.

The update includes, as per Mihai's post:

• There is a new button style and some links have been replaced with buttons to make them more discoverable
• blip.tv is now supported as an embedded video source
• Tags are consistently referred to as "tags" (as opposed to "labels")
• The shared items page now has a clear link to its feed (it's always had auto-discovery, but that's not always discoverable)
• Oops errors after a Firefox crash and session restore should be fixed
• Some small performance improvements
• Improved behavior in nightly builds of WebKit

I asked if these do address the Apple Safari issues and if they do, I will give it another run. I suspect they do, since Mihai commented at my last post saying "things should get better with the next release of Safari" and this is the next release.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Reports come from both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums that Google has begun sending out invites to AdWords advertisers to test out the CPC Site Targeting option.

Google requested advertisers fill out a form if they would like to test the new site targeting model. Currently, the default model for site targeted campaigns are CPM (impression based). But they wanted to expand that to a CPC (click based) model.

What is site targeting? As explained, it "lets AdWords advertisers choose individual sites in the Google content network where they'd like their ads to appear. If you want to place your ad on a single international website, you can. If you want to select dozens of sites about basketball or orchids, you can do that, too. Site targeting lets you handpick your audience, big or small."

How do you set it up? As explained;

(1) Sign in to your AdWords account.
(2) On the Campaign Summary page, click site-targeted in the 'Create a new campaign' section near the top of the page.
(3) Follow the sign-up wizard instructions to target users, write your ad, and select sites for the campaign.
(4) On the page titled 'Choose a Pricing Method,' select CPC and click Continue.
(5) On the following page, enter your preferred amounts for your daily budget and maximum cost-per-click. Click Continue.
(6) Review your selections and complete the campaign creation process.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Here is another AdSense test I spotted at DigitalPoint Forums. I believe these will be called horizontal images. Google seems to be placing an image in horizontal leader-board ads. Here is a screen shot cropped, to fit better on this site, pulled from the forum.

Notice the image on the left within the AdSense unit. This does not appear to be a manipulation of the ad, especially since the one who posted the image said it came from his site and he did not put the image there.

Jennifer Slegg reported back in June 2006 that Google was testing this images in vertical banners. Jen said:

AdSense has launched a new beta test called Vertical Images, where an image would take the place of an ad within an AdSense ad unit. These images - which are generic, and not company-specific - act similar to an ad link unit, linking to a page related to the ads and image that appeared in the ad unit.

Publishers are allowed to click the images themselves (just be careful not to accidentily click the ad below it!) but you cannot click on any of the ads that appear on the results page, just as how publishers can click on ad links keywords but not on any of the results.

I have not seen this tested since.

It is funny that they are testing this since Google Officially Disallows Images Near AdSense Ads in December 2006.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google is once again testing a new AdSense format. Here is a screen capture taken from a DigitalPoint Forum ad.

You can see the bottom right corner that has the "Ads By Google" is styled differently than a normal ad.

This is not the first time Google has played with that area. Here is a rundown of how Google has tested the Ads by Google location in the past.

In March 2004 we had AdSense Ads With Graphics that looked like:

In September 2004 we had Ads by Goooooooooooogle come out, it changed from the normal "Ads by Google" and looked like this.

Several times we had Google experiment with holiday themes.

In December 2006 Google Trying Google Logo on AdSense Ads that looked like this.

and an other like this.

And now we have this one:

Anyone getting tired of these tests?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Big news last night, Google wrote they will be taking steps to further improve our privacy practices. What that means is that after 18 to 24 months, Google will begin to anonymize their sever logs to help protect it a lot better.

This has been a common concern over the past couple years. Danny pressed this issue with Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt in A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

Q: Danny brings the NY Times up about the woman who was found via token data from the AOL slip up. He said there are tons of privacy issues. What do you do to protect this? Government taking it, accidents, etc....
A: This is obviously a terrible thing. The data was not anonymized and it was a mistake. If Google were to make this mistake, it would be a terrible thing. They have lots and lots of systems to prevent this from happening at Google. They don't share everything in Google with everyone in Google. He describes a case where the government gave Google a subpoena that was over-broad, and they fought it in court. They take is so seriously that they fight it in court.

Q: Will Google destroy data they have?
A: Eric said they had this debate in Google. But they are take steps to prevent issues.

The AOL issue has undoubtedly pushed this concern to the front of the pack for Google. And I am happy that they have announced they will be doing this. Here is a PDF document of the log retention policy.

But this does not mean all your privacy will be anonymized. As Danny explains in detail you still need to be worried about several things including:

(1) Search History On Your Computer
(2) Search History & Your ISP
(3) Search History & Search Engine Server Logs
(4) Search History & Personalized Results Or Personal Search History Records

You can control number four, Google will allow you to do that. You can try to clean your computer for number one. Your ISP is your ISP and not sure what you can do about that. Same with number three.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread spots Google in violation of their own AdWords policies.

Google clearly has a policy that says:

Google does not permit multiple ads from the same or affiliated company or person to appear on the same results page. We believe that pages with multiple ads from the same company provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users. Over time, multiple ads from the same source also reduce advertiser performance and lower their return on investment.

The thread pointed out that a search for maps brought up two ads from Google. One for earth.google.com and maps.google.com. Honestly, both are different products, so I am not sure why AdWordsAdvisor said "it was a case of human error - now corrected."

But I guess this is not allowed and that Google violated their own guidelines.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A thread at WebmasterWorld tells a story of a business that had no choice but to layoff 3 of their workers recently. I normally would tell such a story, but this individual small business owner has been a WebmasterWorld member since September 7, 2001. He started his e-commerce business 1998 and been through Florida, been through 9/11, he has been through a lot. But he couldn't hack it.

We have been absolutely bludgeoned in the last couple of months - google organic referrals are down 50-70% (depending on which hour you check). Most all of our losses have come from our long tail keywords.

These are the stories that make me think. At what level has this e-commerce business utilize paid search, shopping search engines, local search and all the other verticals - in order to supplement the organic listings? It is hard to say, and I am not someone who should be judging. Someone who has been in the business since 1998 and plus, has been a WebmasterWorld member since 2001 - you have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We wish you and all those like you, the best.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The other day I took Another Look At Yahoo! "Quick Links" in Search Results. I said that some of the results in Yahoo! Search show what are called "quick links" with added links to the portions of the site.

After posting this information, we had a member come to our forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums and say that another way to get quick links is to participate in the Yahoo! Search Submit Pro program.

The member said:

Yahoo Search Submit Pro allows you to specify what quicklinks you want to appear under your ad.

After asking the member to expand on what he or she said, he/she added:

Search Submit Pro URLs have a redirect embedded in the search result. For example, a search for Sony turns up Sony.com as the first result, with a clickthrough URL that does not contain any redirect.

In contrast, the 2nd result is for SonyStyle, and has a clickthrough URL that contains a redirect through rdrw1.yahoo.com rather than directly to sonystyle.com which indicates this is a Search Submit Pro result. If you look at the quicklinks, e.g. VAIO Notebooks the rdrw1.yahoo.com redirect string appears again.

Not all quicklinks are the result of search submit pro though, for example Wikipedia entries frequently have Quicklinks. Further down the same search results page, you can see that result #6, the Wikipedia Entry for Sony, has quicklinks that do not contain the redirect. This might be because Wikipedia is an authority site, as previously theorized.

Chris Boggs also told me this is true. This, I find, to be an excellent reason to explore Yahoo! Search Submit Pro.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Yesterday I reported at Search Engine Land that Viacom Sues Google For $1 Billion Over Unauthorized Videos. Viacom said they are basically tired of Google not doing enough to remove their content from YouTube. Google said they have "not received the lawsuit but are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree." For the news type of coverage, see the link above.

What did the search marketing community have to say about this?

There are two discussions, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at DigitalPoint Forums.

Meh, that's pocket change to Google; they have over $10 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Presumably the "safe harbor" clause under the DMCA will give YouTube/Google protection, but it will be interesting to see if it can be proven that they had knowledge of the infringement and didn't act upon it.

So Youtube cost Google nearly $1.7bn and now they might have to pay out another $1bn for infringing copyright.

For another 9 Billion, Google could buy Viacom. For $5 Billion they could get controling interest, and make the lawsuit go away.

Love reading this type of chatter on big news like this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

In January, Google starting beefing up malware warnings in the search results. A Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks how does one remove the warning quickly.

Danny Sullivan replied to his question by linking to a post at Google Webmaster Central that explains the process.

In short, you need to "email appeals at stopbadware.org to request a review" and if they feel you have removed the "threats" from your pages, they will remove the flag. Then, as Danny said, it may take 2 weeks to process that and update in the Google search results.

Is there a way to expedite it for a small business? I honestly don't think so, at this present time.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & WebmasterWorld.

The twenty-third edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. We had a bit of a conversation on the link updates at Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo! Site Explorer. Chris and I also talked about Google's new guideline on not searching search results pages. We talked more about AdWords keyword tool and getting a job at Google. Plus much more... Ben was unable to join us, he is on a family vacation. 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.

You can listen to the MP3 file with our new player directly below.

Topics We Covered:

1. Google Link Update Within Webmaster Central's Link Tool
   
2. Google Link Update in Count Only - Actual Links Coming Soon
   
3. Google Now Showing All External Links in Export
   
4. Yahoo! Search Link Update
   
5. Google Officially Requests Webmasters To Block Internal or External Search Results
   
6. Google Shows Search Volumes Temporarily in AdWords Keyword Tool
   
7. How To Get A Job At Google?
   
8. Does Google Still Crawl 404 Not Found Pages?
   
9. Should You Block Well Paying AdWords Squatters From Your Site?
   
10. Windows Live Search Head To Leave Microsoft To Go Solo
    
11. Another Look At Yahoo! "Quick Links" in Search Results
    
12. Microsoft Squealing on Google Over Book Copyright Issues
    
13. Is Google's Spell Checker Biased
    
14. Google Maps For Your Business Adds Features: Set Your Mark
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 23: Google & Yahoo Link Updates, Searching Searches, Keyword Volume at AdWords, Getting a Job at Google, 404 Pages & More"

An interesting WebmasterWorld thread discusses whether a paid run of site link (ROS) is benefital or not. The thread points out some variables that may impact how the search engines will react to the ROS link.

• Age of site
• Size of linking site
• Percentage of links from trustworthy sites

If paid ROS links can hurt a site's search engine ranking, than this could make it very easy for competitors to sabotage others. As mentioned in the thread it seems more likely that the search engines will not penalize but rather discount the link benefit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if you can place Google AdSense ads on 404 pages. The thread looks at the AdSense TOS and quotes section five, "Prohibited Uses".

You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to:...

(v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or "thank you" page (e.g., a page that thanks a user after he/she has registered with the applicable Web site), on any chat page, in any email, or on any Web page or any Web site that contains any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content;

So if you have a nice custom 404 page or a nice thank you page or confirmation page or registration page, according to this, you cannot place Google AdSense on them.

But we linked back to an older thread where AdSenseAdvisor said:

As mentioned in the blog post, our policies were designed to prohibited the placement of ads on non-content pages, so you'll need to use your discretion to determine on which types of exit pages it would be appropriate to display Google ads.

For example, if "Thank you" is the only text-based content on the page, AdSense technology would not be able to serve relevant ads. However, if your sales confirmation pages also contain other text about your business or product, AdSense can provide a relevant 'next step'.

So it appears, that the above prohibited use only applies when that error page, thank you page or registration page has little to no content for AdSense to match on. But that doesn't make complete sense to me. Why would the AdSense TOS say it is not allowed and then AdSenseAdvisor say it is OK in these cases? I guess they turn their head towards certain implementations, which I think is perfectly fine.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Since Sunday, some are reporting at WebmasterWorld sporadic issues with Google AdWords. When you log in, some are noticing that the campaign summary data is missing from the page. They then log back out and then log back in, and it reappears.

Normally I would dismiss this type of bug, but we have several people over the past three days confirm this to be an issue.

Google is aware of the issue and said they will look into it. But it does not seem to be wide spread, nor does it seem to be a persistent issue.

At first, I thought it could be related to the U.S. time zone change but who knows.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

When upgrading to Yahoo!'s new Panama release, many are opting to use their Google AdWords structure as opposed to converting from their Overture campaigns. Why? Because AdWords, in structure, is more similar to Panama than is Overture. So the first step is to export your Google AdWords campaign and then send it off to Yahoo! to import for you.

How does one export their ads from Google? A WebmasterWorld thread has the answer.

The first step is to download Google AdWords Editor because this desktop product gives you the best ability to export your data from Google.

Then you can follow these steps to export your data from Google. I assume you use the export to CSV option.

Use Export to CSV to show your account and changes to someone without AdWords Editor, or if you simply need access to a file with your current account data, including your unposted changes. To export as a .csv file, follow these steps:

1. Go to the File Menu > Export to CSV. You can either download the whole account or the campaign or ad group that is currently selected in the tree view.
   
2. Select the location where you'd like to save your snapshot, change the file name if desired, and click Save.
   
3. For the best view of your account data, open Excel, then go to the File Menu and open your exported file.
   

Then you ask Yahoo! to upload the data for you. If they say no, show them that they said they would at Yahoo! To Offer One Time Free Bulk Keyword Upload To Customers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if it is possible to achieve a perfect, five out of five, quality score in Yahoo!'s new Search Marketing PPC engine.

The simple answer is yes, it is possible and many have already noticed a perfect 5 out of 5.

What is interesting is that some have seen a 5 out of 5, but have not seen any bid drops.

I've got several groups with 5/5, but can't find any bids dropping.

This is possible, I suspect, if this ad has always been a five out of five.

Based on some of the feedback, the click through rate is not the only thing determining your quality score.

I have a couple of 5/5 keywords, but also some that have 1/5 and CTRs of 20%+!

As you can see from this document the quality score is made up of several but I always assume CTR was the most important.

More discussion on Yahoo!'s quality score here and here and here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks how does one get their ads to show up in Gmail. As we know already, Google's Gmail Does Show Thematic Ads At Top but how do those ads get there?

The answer is relatively simple, in that Gmail ads are pulled from Google's content network. Google does matching on the text of the email, much like how they match the text of the content of a page on the AdSense network.

The Gmail help page says "ads in Gmail are placed in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through the Google AdSense program, on content pages across the web."

So if you opt your ads into Google's content network, your ads may appear in Gmail, as per.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Matt Cutts posted an interesting write up he named Search results in search results. In that post, he located a Google Groups thread started by Philipp Lenssen asking:

Is there any official Google statement regarding that search result on one's own site ought to be disallowed from indexing (e.g. via robots.txt)?

He cited an example of YouTube search results (a search page at YouTube) coming up in Google Web search results.

Over the weekend, Kevin Gibbons started a thread at Search Engine Roundtable Forums asking why do Google Maps results show up as indexed in the Google search results. His example search was bondi beach via Google UK, that shows this page from Google Maps listed in the search results. As you can see from the robots.txt file, Google disallows crawling of that file. So why is this page listed in the Google results? Well, it is not really listed. Someone must of linked to the page, so Google has the linkage data in the search results, which is normal on some searches.

Back to the YouTube case, Google's Matt Cutts said "YouTube added a “Disallow: /results” line in its robots.txt file." And Vanessa Fox has added a line to the Google Webmaster Guidelines stating:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.

So there it is. Google does not want to show their own properties search results in the Google search results. Nor do they want your search results to come up, if they don't add value. So I suspect, I should disallow searchinternal.html from this site to show up, because at least one result has been indexed.

In some cases, site navigational elements are in a sense a search feature. You have ways to filter your results for your products, using links to do so. Let me give you an example. Footlocker.com has a Men's Basketball sneaker section. I can then refine my search by filtering down, via link navigation, to Men's Nike Basketball sneakers, I can then refine it a bit more by selecting the $50 - $74.99 price range. Are those the type of search results Google is talking about? I doubt it, because they add value.

But what about my example above of showing all my posts via internal search feature for reputation management is that bad? I found it useful, so I linked to it. Maybe other's looking for online reputation management rather see several examples from this site, as opposed to just one? I think in this case, Google would rather show one or two results and offer the "More results from www.seroundtable.com »" link, if they deem it necessary. So in this case, I should really disallow that page. But I have yet to add a robots.txt file, so maybe one day. :)

Danny Sullivan also has a great post at Search Engine Land on this topic from this morning. Danny, in part, looks at Shopping Search Engines and should Google index the search results page of shopping engines, when they don't index their own Froogle results.

Forum discussion at Google Groups & Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Bill at WebmasterWorld started a thread saying Google launched a Chinese Directory at http://daohang.google.cn/. He adds that the directory "has a lot of AJAX that will let you move sections around so that you can customize the layout."

Here is a screen capture:

It is hard for me to make out what the pages mean, and how to operate the directory. But clicking on those down arrows do show you some of the AJAX features. If you know Chinese, you can read the FAQ for more information.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The adCenter blog announced last week that they will be expanding the content network, to allow more Microsoft adCenter advertisers to bid in the content network.

The thing is, if you get a notification of your account being upgraded into this test, you will have to manually opt out, if you do not want to participate.

Your campaigns will automatically be upgraded to include distribution on content pages within the Microsoft network.

If you want to participate in the test, US advertisers can requested an invite here.

If you don't, and you are upgraded, make sure to disable it within your account.

This does not mean Microsoft is accepting publishers like Google's AdSense or Yahoo!'s YPN program. It means Microsoft is accepting invites from advertisers to advertiser on their content network.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Almost every day, there is a post in the YPN DigitalPoint Forum asking when is YPN (Yahoo! Publisher Network) going international.

Some speculate that the fact that Yahoo! is taking Panama international, that it means, YPN is also going international by next quarter.

This is not the case. As far as I know, Yahoo! has never come out and said, YPN will be offered in Canada, UK, or any other country, outside of the United States, ever.

We are still waiting for an official statement from Yahoo! on the international roll out dates for YPN. I suspect, the Panama roll out will happen first, and then when that is settled, Yahoo! will work on the YPN roll out.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, here and here.

Are you a huge fan of Google's link tool? Would you like to see more details on the page, such as:

• PageRank score
• The anchor text of a link
• Which links are nofollowed
• Are the links still live
• Which links are images

If so, you can add a Greasmonkey script to your browser and the Google Webmaster Central Link tool page will automatically add this data to your reports.

Joost created this code, it is not supported by Google, but it seems cool to me. It adds many but not all, of the features I requested to be added to the Google tool.

You can get more information about the script here, I have yet to try it out myself.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Back in September of 2005 we reported that Quick Links Added to Yahoo! Search Results. Based on a Yahoo! Blog announcement they showed off a walmart result that looked like:

Yes, this is very similar to Google's sitelinks but it appears Yahoo! has downplayed the Quick Links a lot.

For a search on walmart, now you get a link that reads Wal-Mart near you, taking you to Yahoo! Local. Back then, you saw they gave you a few Quick Links to store locator, online catalog and in-store now. Why did it change? Maybe based on their research, people only used the store locator link, so they figured to take them to Yahoo! Local instead of Walmart's store locator page.

A search on walmart at Google brings up sitelinks, but not really showing me things like store locator, which I would feel to be more useful then an electronics section.

So Yahoo! feels local results are what searchers want when they look for walmart, and Google feels searchers want to click deeper into a walmart department.

Back to Yahoo! Quick Links. Why did they change them? I still see "quick links" categorized for wikipedia results.

And also for some other type of searches, like group travel:

But what makes these happen? With Google, we believe it has to do with some authoritative status, plus a clear internal linking structure. What about with Yahoo!? I am not 100% sure.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Yesterday I wrote a very detailed write up on Google Local Business Center Adds Photos, Attributes, Maps Corrections & Stats. The features include (1) upload images to be displayed on the map, (2) add more attributes to your listing, (3) reset your Google Maps pin/marker and (4) see your stats for your business listings.

One of the cool interactive features I like is how you can easily set the marker location (i.e. the Google pin) to a new spot on the map. Here is a quick screen cast of it in action. Look at it bounce, how cute...

So make sure to read my Google Local Business Center Adds Photos, Attributes, Maps Corrections & Stats at Search Engine Land for all the new features.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

An interesting WebmasterWorld thread asks if he should block this "AdWords Squatter" who has been using up all the blocks of his AdSense ads on his site. He said that he currently outbids all other advertisers but he does not like how the advertiser runs his business.

I have this squatter. He buys the entire ad block, so I'm getting just one ad shown at a time, he is there almost constantly...

This guy has outbid every other company normally bidding for that keyword.

I find him objectionable. He is the 180 flip of my idea of ecommerce the opposite of my motto. The site has practices I personally find questionable, though from what I can tell, not illegal or unethical, according to the majority.

We are all in this for the money, and you know, I spent an entire night researching him, looking for any concrete reason to block his ad. Had I found even one, he would be gone, and I would not be posting here. So, I'm saying now, this is about the money. Just the money.

Interesting dilemma! Personally, I would block him, but that is me.

There is a great forum thread discussing it. Does this impact CTR of the ad? Does it make you, as the publisher, look bad? All these types of questions....

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does Google send out their crawlers to a page that has been removed (i.e. a 404 error not found status)?

The simple answer, as mentioned in the thread is, forever.

Google will continue to try to see if the 404ed page has ever been reinstated as a live page.

Google even provides these errors in Google Webmaster Central, where you can see web crawl errors including 404 not found errors. (note to Vanessa, fix the link on here for the 404 link to go to here).

Why does Google continue to try to access these pages? As g1smd said:

Say you bought a domain name from someone and put up a new site. Say that Google refused to pick up your /about.html and /contact.html pages, and that eventually you found that it was all because once a page went 404 Google refused to ever look at that URL again.

You would think that was a bad policy. That is why it doesn't work like that.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Adamap posted a screen capture of Google showing actual search volume numbers in the Google AdWords keyword tool. I honestly was not sure if this was a doctor'ed up screen shot, but I reported it anyway at Search Engine Land. I am glad I did, it appears that this is in fact being tested.

Here are some of the comments from the blog posts and forum discussions backing this finding.

I believe it's been in limited trial since January 23rd. Very cool.

I saw that the other day I could have had a scoop???

It only came up this morning and I have not seen it since.

So if this is true and if this is going to happen, this can be huge for keyword researchers.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

March 7th we reported Google Link Update Within Webmaster Central's Link Tool. But Vanessa Fox informed us the update was not fully complete, that we saw the link count update only and not the actual links update.

Meaning, Google showed you has X links. But when you download the details, it did not have all the links in the file that were reported.

I logged in this AM to check two sites and both sites had the new links in the export file. One site was slightly off, but I suspect that is possible.

So I figured I do a compare and contrast of which articles are the most popular (in terms of links reported via Google) from the last time I documented it. And there is a difference, a big one, why? Google said they were not fully done gathering the data for these reports when they launched, so things will change.

What I find very unusual is that the pages with the most amount of links are all from February 2007 and even more unusual is that a bulk of them are from February 20th. Something just seems wrong with that.

Continued forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Over at the Google Groups Google Co-op forum, a Google Co-op engineer was replying to someone worried about using their Google Custom Search Engine on a site without his approval. Why was he worried? Because if that site has bad people who click on ads in a bad way, it is his AdSense account that is at risk for being banned.

It is interesting to see how the Google Co-op Engineer replied:

But regarding adsense abuse, our fraud team is pretty thorough. We wouldn't automatically assign culpability to the account holder, as we know where clicks are coming from.

I have read time and time again, that people have been banned because (they feel) that someone stole their AdSense ID, and put it on a bad site. Heck, I can run hundreds of sites, apply my AdSense ID to one of the sites. Does Google really know which site I own versus which site I don't own? How does Google know in this case if a 3rd party site is really yours or not?

That is why you see Google sometimes ban a site and sometimes not.

So is the next step of AdSense abuse related to the Google Custom Search Engine? Some are worried about it.

But as the Google rep said, "people are not allowed to transplant the code to their site without your permission; if someone has used it without your consent please let us know."

So if some does snag your code, and you know about it, report it asap to Google.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Microsoft is just not doing all that well, and honestly, I am surprised by how poorly they are doing. I learned this morning that Chris Payne, corporate vice president of Windows Live search, is leaving Microsoft to start up his own business. Chris Payne, his bio is still live, is the top guy at search man Microsoft.

As corporate vice president of Windows Live™ Search at Microsoft Corp., Christopher Payne focuses on delivering the best search experience for customers and helping them find the information that is important to them. Payne also oversees Windows Live Shopping, which enables customers to better discover, compare and decide what they would like to buy online. His previous role was vice president of MSN.com, where his team consisted of MSN® Search, the MSN.com home page, MSN Autos, MSN Entertainment, MSNBC, Slate and the MSN Channels properties.

Payne was with Microsoft since 2001, prior to that he was at Amazon but before Amazon - he also worked for Microsoft.

This is another big hit to Microsoft. Right now, we have no word on who will replace him and no details on what his other business might be.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld administrator engine introduced a new moderator to the Google News forum at WebmasterWorld. The new moderator is a long time WebmasterWorld member and very involved in many of the SEM forums. He is Robert Charlton and he is a kind and respected member of the community.

As many of you know, WebmasterWorld's Google News forum is pre-moderated. That means all threads added have to be preapproved by a moderator before they are posted in the forum. It is a huge task, mostly handled by Tedster these days, and now he has some help.

Nice addition by WebmasterWorld and good luck Robert!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if others agree that Google's spell checker is biased towards American English.

The example given is if you search on rumors at Google UK, you are not given a "did you mean? rumours." But when you go to Google.com and type in rumours, for him, Google will return a "did you mean? rumors" link.

The discussion in the forum thread is fun but also educational.

If you look at Google Help and scroll down to the spell checker area, you will see Google does bias the results based on most common usage.

Google's spell checking software automatically looks at your query and checks to see if you are using the most common version of a word's spelling. If it calculates that you're likely to generate more relevant search results with an alternative spelling, it will ask "Did you mean: (more common spelling)?". Clicking on the suggested spelling will launch a Google search for that term. Because Google's spell check is based on occurrences of all words on the Internet, it is able to suggest common spellings for proper nouns (names and places) that might not appear in a standard spell check program or dictionary.

As you can clearly see, Google's spell check feature is based on "occurrences of all words on the Internet," so if the Internet is biased towards American English, so will Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks for tips in his job interview at Google. But how does one actually get a job at Google? Honestly, I never worked at Google, so I don't know, but how would I go about getting a job at Google?

Applying for a Job at Google:

• First look for job openings in the location that suits me best. For me, that would be the New York location.
• Then I would look for my area of expertise. Hmm, I know how facilities work and I am a safe guy, so maybe the Security and Safety Manager.
• I would then read the requirements of the job and make sure I fit them to a dime. If I don't, which I don't here (I don't have "8 years experience with physical security, workplace safety, investigations and executive protection"), then I would keep looking.
• After I find the job that fits me best, I would apply.

If you are lucky enough, then you get a job interview. I suspect typically via the phone first.

The Google Phone Interviews:

• Do a ton of research on those who already work at Google, specially in that department.
• Know who is interviewing you and know the recent topics of discussion that he or she may have dealt with recently.
• Know the job and how to answer questions about it.
• Read about Google's company culture and be gun-ho about it.

After that, if you are lucky, you probably will get other phone interviews, again, stay on top of the ball. I assume if you are good enough, you may get an in person interview.

The Google In-Person Interview:

• Everything above applies
• Be natural and yourself, don't try to be something your not - it will look bad
• I think you would most likely dress casual, but it depends on the job you are going after.
• Be curious, ask a bunch of questions - it will show you are into Google.
• Of course, don't smell bad, look clean, and the generic stuff there.
• Read about past in-person interviews.

There are plenty of blog entries and articles out on the web about past job interviews at Google. You can learn a lot from them. I am sure I missed a ton of items, but I never applied for a job at Google - so I wouldn't know.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Postscript: Wired has a blog post explaining How to Dress for Your Google Interview, which may be helpful for those reason this article.

Yesterday I reported a Google Link Update Within Webmaster Central's Link Tool but I did not dig deeper.

Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central left a comment explaining that this is just an update in the number of links reported. The linkage details, the actual links in the reports, have yet not updated, but will be updated in the next few days.

She said:

We are indeed updating links data. So you should start to see updated counts listings soon. In the cases where webmasters are seeing updated counts and not updated listings, they should see the updated listings within the next day or so.

DigitalPoint Forums picked up on the discrepancy between the count of links reported and the number of actual links in the reports. So hang tight, it is coming shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Google AdWords Professionals get a seal after meeting the requirements set forth by Google. But how long does their verified seal last for?

There was some confusion if it was a year or two.

According the Google AdWords help the qualification expires two years from the issue date.

Valid exam status for program qualification expires two years (24 months) from the date you passed the Google Advertising Professional Exam. For instance, if you passed the exam on May 1, 2005, your valid exam status expires on May 1, 2007. Those who passed the exam before June 30, 2005 receive an additional 90-day grace period after the original exam expiration date to re-take and pass the exam without losing valid exam status for program qualification.

If you forget, don't worry, Google explains how you can re-qualify.

To re-qualify at the Individual level, you'll need to have at least one valid exam status listed on your Pro Center page (you must re-take and pass the exam again if you have no valid exams listed), and meet the other requirements for Qualified Individual status. Qualified Companies whose status lapses must employ at least two Qualified Individuals and meet the other Qualified Company requirements to re-qualify for the program.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Very early reports via WebmasterWorld about a possible Yahoo! Search link update. Funny that Google seems to be doing a link update today as well.

Anyone notice a charp reduction in backlinks? Mine have dropped from almost 6,000 to about 2500.

No idea why. I really hope 3500 sites didn't suddenly decide to stop linking to me :)

I've seen a sharp increase in backlinks today. I wonder if it will stick?

To check your back links in Yahoo!:

1. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
2. Enter in the domain name and click Explore URL
3. Click on the "Inlinks" link
4. Select from the drop down, "Except from this domain" and "Entire site"

I definitely see an increase for this site. On February 6, 2007 I documented I had 197,153 external links (except from my domain to entire site) and now I see I have 259,217 external links (except from my domain to entire site).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last week I reported that More Yahoo! Publisher's Noticing Compliance Manager Warnings. Well, that was a mistake, Yahoo! did not mean to send out all those warnings to all those publishers.

YahooSarah said in the updated DigitalPoint Forums thread:

We were experiencing some problems with the compliance manager status page but we resolved it yesterday. For anyone who got an email regarding YPN's compliance policy, you should log-in to the portal to double check and make sure you do not have any outstanding actions.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks
YahooSarah

So log back into Publisher Network and check to make sure you don't have that compliance manager warning.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google gave us a new link tool about a month ago. Now people are noticing a massive update in the number of links reported in that tool.

Two very new threads, one at DigitalPoint Forums and the other at WebmasterWorld report these updates.

One person at DigitalPoint said:

It looks like there is a link update going on in the webmaster tools new links section. At least it apears that way. I noticed that the number of pages linked and the number of links to prior pages has increased tonight by a significant ammount. However, when clicked it seems to be the same number of links prior. So maybe they're in the process of updating.

For example one of my sites forums front page had three links prior. Now it says 129. However when clicked it's still at three. Something to keep an eye on in the coming days I guess.

One person at WebmasterWorld said:

Just logged into google webmaster tools and to my surprise the backlinks for the sites I manage have gone through the roof! I suppose we are in for a backlink update, pr update earlier than usual as it's probably already complete on google's end...reasoning we are seeing shifting in SERP's.

So have fun checking your links.

Update: I remember I documented the number of links this site had via Google a month ago. We had 131,280 external links then, and today we have 178,137 external links. So looks like it did update on our side.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

The twenty-second edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. We started off with a short discussion on Google's click fraud numbers. We then talked about the NOYDIR tag, followed up with discussion on index updates from Yahoo!, Ask.com, and Google. We also discussed legal issues in search, Microsoft's adCenter bug and much more. 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. Click Fraud is 0.02%, Invalid Clicks 10%, $1B Lost To Click Fraud Yearly
   
2. Yahoo! Adds NOYDIR Support To Exclude Yahoo! Directory Titles in Yahoo! Search Results
   
3. NOYDIR Tag By Yahoo! Does Not Impact Rankings
   
4. Global Yahoo! Search Index Update
   
5. Possible Ask.com Search Index Update?
   
6. Google March 2007 Image Update
   
7. Google March 2007 PageRank Update?
   
8. Google Updating Site Command For SEOs & Webmasters
   
9. Search Engines Can Choose Not To Run Your Ads
   
10. Paused Google AdWords Ads Still Running
    
11. Google Ranking Well in Yahoo! Search UK For "Buy Viagra"
    
12. Microsoft adCenter Conversion Tracking Reporting Inflated Figures?
    
13. Microsoft Refunds adCenter Advertisers Too Much
    

Continue reading "Search Pulse 22: AdWords, Yahoo Directory Tag, Google Update, Ask.com Update, PPC Legal Issues, Microsoft adCenter & More"