April 19, 2007 Archives

According to a DigitalPoint Forums post, the Google Webmaster Central team has expanded the product offering in the Google Webmaster Central toolset. Vanessa Fox has provided the Google community with information on these new features, which include:

• The number of phrases shown has been increased to 200.
• Variations of each phrase are shown (capitalization variations, as in the following screenshot):
• Siteowners who had previously not seen the anchor phrase report may have access to this data now.
• Due to popular demand, reports showing the most common individual words in anchor text are available.
• The number of common words in anchor text and common words on a website have been increased to 100 each.

A Google Groups thread also covers this new find but also discusses the downtime that Barry wrote about earlier. Vanessa Fox replied to the thread to let everyone know that data should now be available:

All the data should now be available. Please let me know if you experience any problems.

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Groups.

A Search Engine Watch Forums member asks about the tremendous discrepancy between results on three Keyword Research tools: Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, and Overture. He is concerned that these tools provide no accurate information.

One of the members provides some excellent feedback. The reason for such discrepancies is related to the source of the information, the time the information was gathered, and the keywords are processed differently as well. He suggests that you should use all of the information and get averages to resolve any inconsistencies.

The main challenge is that all three, WT - OV - KD, are very different beasts and so there can be no direct correlation between them.

For example:-
1) all three draw their data from very different sources,
2) their data is drawn over different time periods, OV one month, WT three and KD twelve months, and so the count figures would need some rationalisation
3) all three have different data cleansing systems, eg., OV de-pluralises, de-punctuates and sometimes alphbetises the words in the search phrase, so again that muddies the correlation waters,

and so on.

So you have to figure out what parameters and algorithms you are going to apply when combining the data.

I would suggest the first step would be to generate monthly equivelants (WT/3 & KD/12) and then perhaps do some averaging. Even then, the eyeball is perhaps the best filter.

Kinda like comparing Oranges, Lemons and Grapefruit in that they are all from the Citrus family but are very different and individual fruits. Combine their juices though and you have a rather interesting Citrus tasting drink with some attributes of all three.

Another observation came from a keen member who acknowledged that the discrepancies may be intentional, but that there are other factors as well. All of the tools should be used together.

I'd add that WT draws from a very small sample of web searches, so that its data isn't very useful for infrequently-searched phrases. I've seen WT skewed dramatically in certain keyword areas, probably by search marketers in those areas who wanted to muddy the waters.

OV data, on the other hand, suffers from lots of automatic rank checking, which tends to happen in more competitive and frequently searched terms, so it's exponentially skewed at the top end. OV has recently forced stemming on certain searches, I've observed, which makes it useless for assessing many phrases.

The Google External AdWords tool, another tool you should put into the mix, is skewed by the algorithms that Google is applying for AdWords buyers. It has the largest sample size, is the least likely to be skewed by test searches, and of course has demographics that come from Google.

This is some very good information. You can read more at Search Engine Watch.

Google yesterday announced that its old Froogle product has been replaced with Google Product Search, according to a DigitalPoint Forums post.

According to Google, results will "refocus the user experience on providing the most comprehensive, relevant results in a clean, simple, easy-to-use UI." They also mention something that is likely more important: ease of purchase with Google Checkout.

Search Engine Land also has more intensive coverage of Google's new offering, with screenshots of the old Froogle and the new Google Product Search. The article also shows additional perspective from Marissa Mayer, VP of Search and User Experience at Google.

On DigitalPoint, members were happy about the switch, mostly due to the name change. Personally, I thought Froogle was very clever. Were people not using it as much because of its name or because of the interface? I suppose we'll never know, but I'm looking forward to giving Google Product Search a try.

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

According to a Google Groups thread, Google accidentally deactivated a batch of email accounts. Gmail Guide of Google writes in to inform the community of the issue:

We have been actively investigating a batch of accounts that were accidentally disabled and are currently in the process of re-enabling these accounts. This error occurred in an effort to target a large network of spammers to keep them out of the Gmail system and keep your inbox free from spam. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we re-enable these accounts as quickly as possible.

As numerous users reported problems with their accounts, Gmail Guide posted an addendum:

We have been diligently working for the last few hours to identify affected accounts and we have now re-enabled access for most of these accounts. If you are still seeing a message indicating your account has been disabled, please be patient and you should be able to login again very soon.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

According to the affected users, Gmail gave errors such as "Sector 6" or "Account Lockdown." Many users had their accounts reactivated within the first 48 hours, but others had to wait about 6 days from one of the most recent messages on the thread.

The issue has not been addressed since Friday, but if you are encountering any similar issues, you may contribute to the discussion at Google Groups.

On a Google Groups thread, Google representative AdSensePro refers readers to a Google AdSense blog post stating the following:

...our program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.

We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don't recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity.

Members who have since contributed to the Google Groups discussion agree that traffic is good, as long as it doesn't encourage clicking ads. An owner of a traffic program also contributes to say that there are traffic exchange programs that do not condone clicking ads (although there are some that do). He requests that Google not serve ads on pages if advertised in an exchange. I do not know how practical that is for Google because they may not necessarily know if sites are involved in a traffic exchange program, just like they do not necessarily know if users are selling or buying paid links.

However, I think that his last concern is legitimate:

While there are some people who are out to cheat the system, most people are just looking to get more visitors to their blogs. I don't think it's right to penalize people for advertising their website.

I should also note that this should not be overly confused with social media services such as Digg. A recent study on the impact of high traffic due to social networks and AdSense showed that there are few, if any, clicks during a traffic spike as a result of these services:

Here's the thing about trying to monetize your digg traffic: don't bother. There is literally no point. Your best possible bet at getting money out of a digg article is by using Adsense. We've tried on a few of our articles, to test and see how the traffic might convert, and have seen absolutely nothing but dismal results. At best, you can probably expect to make about 1/2 a cent per digg.

Google is checking the Google Groups thread for feedback, so if you have anything to add, feel free to join in on the discussion.

Related articles: How Digg Traffic Impacts Your Google AdSense Account, Is StumbleUpon Considered Auto-Surf Traffic and Against AdSense TOS?, Encouraging Clicks of AdSense Referral Products is Allowed, and How Digg Affects Your Google AdSense CTR and Earnings

I reported earlier this week that adCenter advertisers noticed a drop in traffic, which we later found out was due to them adding a quality factor to the ads displayed in live.com.

Microsoft claimed that "this improvement will ensure that we maintain a high quality of ads and relevance to the Live Search user. But the folks over at DigitalPoint Forums disagree.

One person explained that his "quality site has plummeted in the rankings, yet there are sites where the url and the landing page does not even match up." Another person added, "the pages that do rank for advertising on certain keywords that I have also bid on have poorly broken english splattered all over them." Yet another agreed, "the sites that rank at the top are utter rubbish and with urls not even matching up."

GuyFromChicago, a respected forum personality in the PPC area, has posted examples at his blog of the relevancy issues adCenter is having right now. He explains that "the ads I'm seeing being served by adCenter now are the worst I've ever seen...on any search engine," and then provided several examples.

This makes me appreciate the quality score updates both Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing has completed in the past.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Various sporadic reports from both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld that Google's Webmaster Central Link Tool is temporarily offline.

I tried it myself, just now and it seems to be offline for me as well. I am told "Our system is currently busy. Please try again in a few minutes." Here is a screen capture:

I believe Google is doing an update of your links in that tool. When I logged in yesterday, it was up, even though some reported it as down. And I noticed my link count went up about 70,000 links or so. But I have yet to analyze the data and bring it to you. I will.

As of right now, the tool is still down.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update 8:15am: Now it is back up but shows me zero links.

Update: 8:50am: Also the top anchor text report is down, probably related...

Google has announced that they are offering a StumbleUpon type of service. Google Offers "Queryless Search" & Personalized Recommendations from Chris Sherman at Search Engine Land explains it well. In short, Google uses your search history to determine which sites you like and then if you click on the "recommendations button" in the Google button, it will take you to one of those sites, randomly.

We'll give you up to 50 new sites per day that might be of interest. Just add the button to your Toolbar. (In order to use this feature, you need the latest version of the Toolbar.)

I installed it on my Firefox browser on my Mac, and the button looks like a pair of dice. Here is a screen capture:

What if you don't have the toolbar? No worries, Nathan Weinberg explained you can just bookmark this URL and it will do the same thing (if you are logged into Google).

There is also another feature they launched that "allows you to add a "recommendations" tab to a Google personalized home page. To enable the feature, simply add a new tab, name it "recommendations" and tick the "I'm feeling lucky - automatically add stuff based on the tab name" checkbox." But honestly, I think this was available in the past.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

Cre8asite Forums moderator posted a thread named Official Google Channel On Youtube. Yes, there is an official Google YouTube channel located at youtube.com/google.

The channel has a collection of videos specific to Google. The featured one right now is a video titled "Northwestern University talks about Google Apps." But you can also find videos from "Eric Schmidt at the Web 2.0 Expo" added just under 24 hours ago. The videos date back as far as two months ago, with Gmail Theater Act 1.

Ruud says that "Google itself now less loyal to Google Video." Well, we do know Google spent a pretty penny on YouTube. We also know that Google said that YouTube will be more of their community focused project, whereas Google Video will be more focused on search. So, in my opinion, it makes sense to build a Google video channel at YouTube over Google Video.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.