July 31, 2007 Archives

AccuraCast reports on the Search Engine Watch Forums that Google is testing a new ad format that has expandable local results.

Here's an example of what AccuraCast has found with additional screenshots posted on Search Daily News:

When you click on the Map, it expands to show an address.

I tried to reproduce this but was unable to do so, so they must be rolling it out to a select set of individuals.

People are wondering and hoping there's an opt-out feature -- additional map links could draw attention to the ad and cause clicks that don't convert. I hear that.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Postscript: Statement from Google:

We did want to clarify that this Google Maps plusbox experiment is not a closed beta. It's actually shown for all advertisers that provide a local address to Google. However, since this feature is an experiment, we are only showing this plusbox to a small fraction of our users. Also, advertisers are not charged for any clicks inside the plus box. We consider this experiment to be another example of how we are constantly looking for ways to improve our advertising offerings and provide additional benefit to both our users and advertisers.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks why when you do a search at Google.com on a phrase, why does Google return results with that phrase of words scattered around the page, as opposed to a page that matches that exact phrase.

The abstract example given in the thread was a search for "blue fussy widgets." Why does Google return pages that have the words "blue," "fussy," and "widgets" scattered through the document returned by Google, and not rank a document that contains the "blue fussy widgets" as one phrase, in that order. This is called an exact match, and it seems Google may not be returning exact matches in documents as highly as they once did.

WebmasterWorld moderator, Robert Charlton, shared his opinion:

In general, I've found that Google likes exact matches on the page... just not too many of them... but there are several hundred other variables. I can imagine various off-page/on-page scenarios that might cause a page containing the three-words separated on the page to rank higher... probably less likely to happen as the three word phrase is more competitive and purposefully targeted by others.

However, some people feel that this is an anti-web-spam measure taken by Google:

Nowadays I can feel like I have to use 'almost' but never quite 'perfect' keyword phrases in page titles because of Google's paranoia or increased hypersensivity to e-vil optimizers. As a perfectionist by personality, I find this rather annoying.

I am not saying this theory is true. I don't have the specific examples to reproduce these results. I tried several random searches and found some that may support this theory, while others do not. Bottom line, there are hundreds of factors why one page might rank above another page, even if exact match comes into play. The SEOs here are upset that exact match doesn't have more of a weight in making this decision.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google Docs & Spreadsheets blog announced that Google has been listening to user feedback and has added two highly requested features: the ability to hide documents from view and to sort by name, date modified, starred/unstarred, and who the documents are shared with.

Syd of the Google Docs & Spreadsheets team also updates Google Groups with this information.

He adds that this is how you sort documents:

From here, you can sort alphabetically or in chronological order.

- To sort by document/spreadsheet name, click "Name".
- To sort by document/spreadsheet owner, click "Folders/Sharing".
- To sort by date last modified, click "Date".

And this is how you hide them:

From the Docs list: to hide a document or spreadsheet, check the box to the right of the document/spreadsheet title and click "Hide" from among the toolbar options. All of your hidden documents will be available in the "Hidden" category, listed below "All items" in the sidebar.

The Hide feature works well. However, I couldn't get the alphabetical sort to work. Here's what happened when I tried an alphabetical sort:

And here's the "reverse" alphabetical sort:

I was able to reproduce this on other existing documents (that I've hidden, naturally) ;)

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

After several complaints on many forums, including DigitalPoint Forums, High Rankings Forums, and WebmasterWorld, and from the fingers of Andy Beal, Google has officially acknowledged a reporting delay with Google Analytics.

As of 5pm PST this evening, some users will start to see part or all of the data from the period between Saturday and now appear in reports. We expect updates for all accounts to continue through Monday night into tomorrow and will update this blog when reporting is fully restored.

Many forum members reported later that evening that their statistics were up to date.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums, High Rankings Forums, and WebmasterWorld.

EGOL started a thread at Cre8asite Forums asking how using the various robots.txt command or META noindex nofollow commands will impact the flow of PageRank and link popularity.

Several members go through some detailed examples and what-if scenarios. However, Ammon sums it up nicely.

Ammon explains that a page that is that is not in the Google index but the links are picked up to that page, won't count. Why? Well, the original PageRank document has a concept called "dangling links," which reads:

Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet.

Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly.

This may be a classic example of what a "dangling link" is. And if this original paragraph in the PageRank paper is still valid, then there is your answer. But is it still valid?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Over a week ago Yahoo announced a search update, telling us to expect "fresh web data and crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the last few days."

New reports are coming from WebmasterWorld of more changes to the Yahoo Search index.

The ones chatting right now are not too thrilled with these changes.

Seeing some more changes that look really bad. A major step backwards.

I think (hope) that this newest change reverts back to the original update. What I am seeing today, I saw for a few hours last week.

Although the current update is not the greatest, it is much better than what I am seeing today. The top ten for some competetive terms are flooded with suspended free hosting accounts.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.