Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 30, 2007"

It's been a long week, or at least it feels like it. TGIF is all I have to say about that. :)

Searching Blogs: Use Ask

It looks like Ask has emerged a winner lately compared to Google's Blog Search. The results are a lot better according to Barry Schwartz and Barry Welford. Two Barrys can't be wrong.

You Can't Hide 'em Lotto Winnings

A crazy guy in Miami (my hometown) decided he'd win the lottery and hide it from his wife. He tried to turn her off of everything related to the media so she wouldn't find out -- but finally, she decided to Google him, and she learned that he was keeping it a secret. The divorce proceedings should be ongoing shortly.

Google Feels Lucky Enough

Google doesn't want to remove their "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but maybe they should, because they're wasting $110 million annually on missed opportunities for AdWords. I'll give you $1.10 a year to remove the button and give me your profits.

Not a Grand Monday

On Monday, Yahoo Stores failed many small business owners. They experienced serious outages. It's horrible given that this is the busiest online shopping day of the year for many people.

Matt Cutts Explains the Google Snippet

If you've never seen a video of Matt Cutts in action (or you've never seen him in person), perhaps it would be good for you to watch this cute little video of Matt explaining the Google snippet: the part of the results that Google takes from your website.

Google AdSense Video Units: Targeting Problems

Okay, so if you've got a site about digital photography and your Google AdSense video units started displaying ads about football, you'd be disappointed, right? I wouldn't blame you. Apparently, Google is off the mark in terms of targeting appropriately from the publisher perspective.

Canadians: Don't Switch Your AdWords to the US Dollar

Even if the US dollar is weaker (unfortunately), it's not wise to open a new Google AdWords account with the US dollar. Your Quality Score might take a plunge, like it did for one Canadian who tried to experiment with this approach.

5,000 and Counting

Earlier this week, Barry hit his 5,000th post on Search Engine Roundtable. Now how is that for dedication? I should be at 1k by February at this rate. ;) Maybe I can catch up!

Google to Release New Technologies

Platypus or GDrive is around the corner, or so they say. This is Google's new online storage option, with free and paid versions available. Additionally, Google is touting a new mobile locator service which will help people find their way on cellular phones that have mapping features.

Yahoo + Adobe = <3

Yahoo is offering sponsored ads on PDF documents which is a brand new incentive for PDF authors to monetize their content. Awesome idea.

Spammers Seize Al Gore's Search Engine Traffic

It sucks to be Al Gore. His site was hacked by spammers earlier and they embedded bad HTML pharmaceutical code into the site to get ranked higher. Jerks.

Fake Google .CN Spam Continues to Plague the Internets

It appears that .CN spam on Google is still a problem: it's bringing malware to the masses. Unfortunately, it's been happening for quite some time.

Google to Identify Manipulated Articles

Google has applied for a patent that can analyze articles and determine if they're spamming the search results. Pretty cool.

YSM Gets a Tune Up

You can now tune up your Yahoo Search Marketing campaign using a neat little feature on the console. Click on the Tune Up tab and let it run; then get your results.

Google + Social Media = Results that Matter?

Google is experimenting with voting on their search results, so that you can bring more pertinent results to the forefront. This could be big.

Google Sells Links. That Means You Can Too.

Seriously, I don't get it. Why is Google selling a PR7 link when paid links are supposedly evil?

Google AdWords Diagnostic Tool Bug = Fixed (or Not)

We reported that the Google AdWords Diagnostic Tool was fixed, but apparently, it's not, so hold your horses and we'll let you know if anything else changes on that front.

Pubcon, SES, and More!

Next week, we're having an awesome conference week. A few of us will be in Chicago and a few of us will be in Las Vegas. If you're in Vegas, there's an unofficial event guide posted, a Werewolf parlor game, and shows in Vegas for pre-approved bloggers. And if you missed it, our conference coverage schedule has been posted. Don't miss out!

A WebmasterWorld member asks: how do you find out if you've been smart priced? Do you get notified?

No. It's a "big black box" as someone else says and the amount of money you earned instead is more important.

Other telltale signs:

When you receive only 1 cent to 3 cent clicks over 100's of clicks for ads which sell medium to expensive products or services, you KNOW, you have been smartpriced.

When your income falls suddenly by 50- 60 %, you know you have been smartpriced.

When you can't seem to do anything to increase the EPC, you know you have been smartpriced or capped.

Someone else suggests asking Google themselves. I don't know if that works, however.

If you want more information about it, Google has written about smart pricing in the past.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Washington Post article refers to a recent lawsuit between Dell and a number of domain registrars who are cybersquatting on misspellings of Dell's various domains so that they can profit off PPC ads.

This has been a problem for quite some time. WebmasterWorld members wonder if this suit will impact Google AdSense's domain parking advertising programs.

It could, and some folks hope that it does since they're similar victims and also suffer the typosquatting fate. Forum members hope that Google will be the ones who are held responsible (but don't count on it since Google is huge). As one member puts it:

Google is guilty as charged. They aided and abbetted the whole scam by allowing it to be monetized.

A simple fact: Google could have prevented this whole dirty business by prohibiting ads from being displayed on domains that were less than five days old. A very simple and elegant solution. They, quite frankly, deserve to get fried for their complicity in the whole affair. I am sick and tired of Google and their 'partners' raking it in on my trademarks just because I don't have the resources to play wack-a-mole at $2000.00 per shot.

Go Dell.

This is a good point indeed. Why should domain tasters profit?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Google is testing technology that will find you if you're lost, as long as you're equipped with a cell phone (and even if the cell phone doesn't have a GPS receiver).

The new tracking feature introduced Wednesday is being touted as an added convenience because it will enable people on the go to skip the task of typing a starting address on a mobile handset's small keys when they turn to Google's maps for guidance.

Using the technology, dubbed "My Location," simply requires pressing zero on a mobile handset equipped with the new software. The sender's location shows up as a blue dot on Google's mobile maps

I could see this being useful in emergency situations as well. But what do forum members think? They assume there will be more geotargeted ads. They're also a bit concerned about the privacy ramifications of such an application, but doesn't that happen every single time Google releases a new feature?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo Search Marketing has released a pretty cool feature that allows you to fine-tune your campaign and have greater control (and feedback) over your accounts. Additionally, you can now save your preferences so that when you log in, your previous view is restored.

Here's an example of the Campaign Tune-Up feature. As you notice, there's a new tab to allow you to tune your campaign.

Once Yahoo performs the tune-up, you can view your results.

Nifty.

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

A single report comes from a preferred WebmasterWorld member that Google's MediaBot, the crawler Google uses to power the AdSense ads are cutting off his URLs right after the .ht of the .html pages.

Here is an export of a portion of his log files:

211.10.xx.xxc - - [30/Nov/2007:13:05:16 +0100] "GET /some-file.html HTTP/1.0" 200 11706 "http://www.example.com/other-file.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
66.249.72.210 - - [30/Nov/2007:13:05:17 +0100] "GET /some-file.ht HTTP/1.1" 404 2390 "-" "Mediapartners-Google"
66.249.72.210 - - [30/Nov/2007:13:05:18 +0100] "GET /some-file.ht HTTP/1.1" 404 2390 "-" "Mediapartners-Google"

You can see that Mediapartner-Google is generating 404 pages on his site by breaking the filename after the extension.

Is this an isolated issue for this user in particular or more wide spread? I tried to validate it on my side but was unsuccessful.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you login to your Google AdSense account and go to your AdSense for Search reports, you should see a new warning from Google that they will be deleting AdSense for Search top query data that is older than one year.

The message reads:

Effective December 10, AdSense for Search top query data that's more than a year old will no longer be available. If you have any critical reports, please run and save them prior to December 10.

If you want that data for historical tracking purposes, I would login today and download that data as soon as possible before Google takes it away.

I don't blame Google for deleting it. They can't store data forever. Actually, as I write this, Google is well-known for wanting to store data forever. So why not keep it? They must have some technical reason for wanting to trash old data.

In any event, this is happening on December 10th, so login now and back up that old data.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday the Automated Content Access Protocol group released their ACAP Technical Framework (Extension of robots.txt format PDF).

Danny does an excellent job explaining the implications for search engines with his ACAP Launches, Robots.txt 2.0 For Blocking Search Engines?

In short, he says, let's wait and see if the major search engines adopt the new protocol which calls for more "emphasis on granting permissions and blocking" as well as additional support for "time-based inclusion or exclusion."

Will webmasters adopt the new protocol? Why should they? If search engines adopt them, then webmasters and SEOs have a reason to adopt them as well. Until then? Why bother?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday I covered the news at Search Engine Land of a new Google experimental search feature that lets you move search results up and remove results from the Google search results page.

The changes you make only impact you - your login and does not influence the overall scope of the search results. But can they? Who knows. We have been seeing Google test remove results features before and then drop the feature.

Here is a screen capture of how it works:

Google says:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

A Cre8asite Forums thread is talking about how this may or may not impact SEOs. Well, this is nothing new. We have had whole conference panels on the topic, such as Personalized Search: Fear or Not?. Plus we have shown how much the personalized results today can differ from non-personalized results. In fact, why not try turning off Google personalized results yourself and do some tests.

Is this new Google experimental test the end of SEO? Not at all. This does not add much more than what we have today with Google Personalized results. All it does it make it more visible to all of us.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 29, 2007"

Gabs reported Google has done a Sitelinks update. He is indeed correct. The first Sitelinks update was in February 2007 and then we had a new recent one where Google expanded them to 8 sitelinks per result.

Here is the new set of Sitelinks for the Search Engine Roundtable:

This is what they looked like on October 19, 2007:

So it does appear that some Sitelinks have been updated.

Forum discussion at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

This is the first time in our history of conference coverage where we are going to attempt to provide coverage of two different search marketing conferences that are overlapping on the same week. If you did not know, Search Engine Strategies Chicago is the same week as WebmasterWorld's PubCon. And yes, we will be covering both in great depth - thanks to our wonderful volunteers.

First let's thank our volunteers, who include Carolyn Shelby, Dave Rohrer, Chris Boggs, Justin Davy, Marty Weintraub, and Steve Krull. (Oh, and I, Tamar Weinberg, am writing too) ;)

Now here are the schedules:

Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2007

Monday, December 3
9:00-10:00AM: Search Around the World - Part One: Asia/Pacific & Australia (Justin)
9:00-10:00AM: Mobile Search Battle Royal (Chris)
10:15-11:15AM: The Human Equation: Giving Back Internet Style (Justin)
10:15-11:15AM: Meet the Web Analytics Players (Marty)
10:15-11:15AM: Redefining the Customer (Chris)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Orion Panel: Search, Privacy and Community in the Digital Age (Chris)
1:30-2:30PM: There's Still Money on the Table! (Chris)
1:30-2:30PM: Igniting Viral Campaigns (Justin)
2:45-3:45PM: Orion Panel: Universal, Blended and Vertical Search (Chris)

Tuesday, December 4
9:00-9:45AM:Keynote Presentation: Seth Godin (Chris)
10:15-11:15AM Shopping Search Tactics (Marty)
10:15-11:15AM Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price of One (Steve)
10:15-11:15AM: The Transformation of Local in a Search Driven World (Justin)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Landing Page Testing Overview (Steve)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Big Site, Big Search (Justin)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Are Paid Links Evil? (Marty)
2:00-3:00PM: Actionable Social Media (Chris)
2:00-3:00PM Maximum Conversion in Retail: Raising the Bar (Justin)
2:00-3:00PM Sitemaps: Oversold, Misused or On The Money? (Steve)
3:30-4:30PM: How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM Company (Steve)
3:30-4:30PM: Online Maps: Plotting the Direction of Local Search (Justin)

Wednesday, December 5
9:00-9:45AM: Keynote Presentation: David S. Isenberg "Neutral Net" Topic (Marty)
10:15-11:15AM: Podcast & Audio Search (Chris)
10:15-11:15AM: Managing Automated PPC Bid Management (Marty)
10:15-11:15AM: Case Study: Moving from Paper to Online (Justin)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Your Marketing Program in Context (Justin)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Managing PPC for Multiple Clients (Steve)
2:00-3:00PM: Calling All Clicks: PayPerCall and You (Justin)
2:00-3:00PM: CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines (Steve)
2:00-3:00PM: Retail Case Studies (Marty)
3:30-4:30PM: Last Minute Holiday Search Tactics (Chris)
3:30-4:30PM: PPC Advertising on Influential Blogs and Social Media (Justin)
3:30-4:30PM: SEM Pricing Models (Steve)

Thursday, December 6
9:00-10:00AM: So You Want to Be a Search Marketer? (Marty)
10:15-11:15AM: Landing Page Optimization Clinic (Steve / tentative)
10:15-11:15AM: Search Marketers on Click Fraud (Justin)
11:30AM-12:30PM: Dealing With Difficult Clients (Chris / tentative)

WebmasterWorld PubCon Vegas 2007

Tuesday, December 4
9:00-10:00 AM Keynote by Craig Newmark (Tamar)
10:00-11:30 AM Social Marketing 101 - The Playing Field (Dave)
11:35AM-12:50PM Monetizing Social Media Traffic (Tamar)
11:35AM-12:50PM Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads (Dave)
1:30-2:45PM Keyword Research, Selection and Optimization (Tamar)
1:30-2:45PM Link Building Campaigns and Strategies (Dave)
2:45-4:00PM Content Creation - Cranking it Out (Tamar)
2:45-4:00PM Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies (Dave)
4:00-5:30PM Link Buying (Tamar)

Wednesday, December 5
9:00-10:00AM Keynote by Richard Rosenblatt (Dave)
10:15 AM - 11:30 AM Domain Names and Trademarks - Legal Issues (Dave)
11:35AM-12:50PM Interactive Site Reviews - Focus - Social Media (Tamar is speaking!)
11:35AM-12:50PM Effective Domaining Strategies (Dave)
1:30-2:45PM SEO and Big Search (Tamar)
1:30-2:45PM Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDF's, and Blog SEO (Dave)

Thursday, December 6
9:00-10:00AM Keynote with Matt Cutts (Tamar)
10:15-11:30AM Effective Action Based Copywriting (Tamar)
10:15-11:30AM Brand Management (Carolyn)
10:15-11:30AM CSS and HTML Coding Today - (Dave)
11:35AM-12:50PM Search and Blogging Reporters Forum (Tamar)
11:35AM-12:50PM International and European Site Optimization (Dave)
11:35AM-12:50PM Responsible Web Design (Carolyn)
1:30-2:45PM Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization (Carolyn)
2:45-4:00PM Competitive Intelligence (Carolyn)
4:00-5:30PM Tools of the Trade (Tamar)
4:00-5:30PM Organic Keyword Research and Selection (Carolyn)

Again, a big thank you to our volunteers! These schedules may change, but we'll do our best to stick with them.

SEOmoz is holding a Werewolf parlor game event next week in Pubcon where registrants are able to score cool playing cards (including the one of Barry, pictured). If you don't know how to play, you can read the rules.

The event will be held on Wednesday night, Decmeber 5, from 8-10PM in the South Hall during Pubcon. Registration is limited to 200 participants and you can sign up here if you're interested.

Looks nice. Those cards are good looking. ;)

By the way, our Pubcon coverage schedule will be up later today!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

If you're a videoblogger or a blogger who might be able to write a review about some Vegas shows, you might be interested in the 500 tickets that Joe Morin scored for you. You will need to meet some criteria, however:

To participate you must be a WebmasterWorld PubCon attendee, and an active editorial or video blogger. You may attend more than one show provided that you write a separate review (i.e. separate blog post) about each show. These tickets are in limited supply and this is a first come first serve opportunity and we reserve the right to deny tickets to any blog or editorial that we deem inappropriate to host a review.

The shows available are: Blue Man Group, KÀ by Cirque du Soleil, Mystere by Cirque du Soleil, and Monty Python's Spamalot.

Very cool. In fact, as beu says on Search Engine Watch Forums, it's something that every conference should consider (and the venues themselves would probably appreciate the coverage from the blogger - social media, anyone?)

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums and WebmasterWorld (subscription required).

According to recent reports, Al Gore's website was hacked by spammers who were trying to manipulate the SERPs. The article states that deep within the code, links to "bogus pharmaceuticals" were added and brought those companies much higher in the search results than they should have been.

Barry adds over at Search Engine Land that search spam has worsened over the last few months. And unfortunately it's nothing new. One forum member believes that it's Google's responsibility to prevent this from becoming someone else's gain.

It is clear that search spammers wanted to leverage the domain to boost the rankings of their pages. We have seen it in the past with Jennifer Convertibles. But do you think Al Gore's site was hacked intentionally because of the prominence of the politician, or do you think it was simply because his code was vulnerable and thus susceptible to attack?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Adobe has announced Ads for PDF, a system they launched with Yahoo which will allow PDF owners to monetize for their content much like Google AdSense. The CNet News blog goes into detail on the partnership, explaining that it's a PPC program for contextually relevant ads that are displayed to the right of the PDF article. The ads look like Yahoo Publisher Network ads.

(Credit: Adobe Labs)

Currently, the program is in beta and only a few publishers have been invited, but it looks rather cool and Adobe is taking applications for additional beta testers. This is definitely a good move on Yahoo's part.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

When you have a title tag with an & (ampersand), how should you best structure it?

My thought would be to use "and," but some people say that the &amp; works. The W3C validator will not approve of the & sign itself.

Additionally, you should consider that if you're doing a search, you're likely not going to be pressing the & key. If you're doing exact match, you'll likely type in "and." For the ease of search, "and" is recommended.

What do you think? Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

Updated: Seems like Google was wrong, some advertisers are still experiencing issues with this tool. AdWordsAdvisor confirmed the following statement and said there is currently no ETA to a possible fix:

The support person I contacted followed up with me and told me the technical specialist they consulted confirmed the issue is still occuring for some advertisers and they are once again working to resolve it.

---

On November 7th we reported a major Google AdWords Diagnostic Tool Bug, where advertisers were noticing Google reporting their ads were not active, but in reality they were.

Yes, it was simply a reporting issue.

Yesterday, AdWordsAdvisor, has posted in the WebmasterWorld thread that the bug has been fixed.

I heard from the tech team yesterday - about an hour or so before Rehan's "It's fixed now" post - that the issue with the Ads Diagnostic tool had been resolved - but decided to hold off mentioning it in this forum, overnight, until I was certain.

Today, within the last hour, the tech folks have confirmed for me that all indications (other than the several 'not fixed' posts here) are that this issue is in fact resolved.

But many are still reporting that this is still an issue. AdWordsAdvisor asked those who still feel this is an issue to double check to make sure their ads are indeed live.

The tech team wondered whether it was possible that those in the 'not fixed' camp here might be misinterpreting the rejection reasons that they're legitimately seeing as further evidence of the issue. (I am nearly positive, for example that this will be the case for the "...all my keys incactive, i need to pay like 1$ to get it active, and my landing page are perfectly matched the keys" post earlier in the thread.)

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Remember back in September we reported about Chinese-like .CN TLDs spamming the heck out of Google's search results? Well, it appears that a study was done by Sunbelt Software that showed "27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages" found in Google for hundreds of legitimate search queries. It appears that the .CN (which were really not .CN TLDs but masked as such) are directly related to this report.

Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress is the article that most people are pointing to. I covered it yesterday at Search Engine Land placing blame on Google's Malware Filter not working properly. But it has history, as I showed above.

Here is our picture from September:

Here is a picture from News.com from yesterday with those malware results:

Look similar? Yea.

Was Google aware of this issue back in September. Yes, they were. Google is working to clean up the mess faster since this news hit the front page of Techmeme.

Do I know for sure the two are related. No, but they seem to be. Only Google can confirm the two are directly related.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

With all the debate and discussion around paid links these days, some DigitalPoint Forums members are wondering how Google can get away with selling links that are not nofollowed.

That is right, if you want a PageRank 7 link directly form Google.com, all you need to do is buy a Google Mini Search Appliance for $1,995 per year (or $166 per month) and you can get a link on this page.

Should Google slap on a nofollow tag on those links? Personally, I don't think they have to. But I think Matt would think otherwise.

Not to point anyone specifically out, but it seems like some SEO companies are already savvy to this:

Sacrificial lamb gets the link, thanks Neutralize!

I am not the first to point this out, Andy reported this way back in June of this year.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

What SEO doesn't like talking about spam? Now add a newly granted Google patent that talks about spam and an SEO is in heaven!

Bill at created a Cre8asite Forums thread about a new granted patent named Methods and systems for identifying manipulated articles. Here is the abstract:

Systems and methods that identify manipulated articles are described. In one embodiment, a search engine implements a method comprising determining at least one cluster comprising a plurality of articles, analyzing signals to determine an overall signal for the cluster, and determining if the articles are manipulated articles based at least in part on the overall signal.

Bill goes into more detail at the Cre8asite Forums thread and in his blog post at SEO By The Sea. I will not recap what he wrote, since he did an excellent job explaining the patent.

In short, Google has come up with an formula for analyzing articles, placing them in a cluster and determining based on the linkage pattern between those articles if they are manipulating the web with spamming tactics.

Here is how Bill explains it:

A patent granted to Google today explores Web spam and the manipulation of documents and links on the Web. It describes how the rankings of pages may be influenced if they are identified as “manipulative.”

The identification of manipulative documents, how they might be grouped together, and how they could be treated by the search engine is described in some detail. That treatment might include removal of pages from the search index, reductions in rankings for pages, and possibly a change in how quality scores (PageRank) are calculated for links from manipulative pages.

The patent application was filed about 4 years ago. So Google may or may not be using all or some of these concepts within their current day algorithm. The fun part is the discussion and application of the patent to current day SEO trends.

Bill ends his thread with a teaser, "Anyone want to talk about spam? Paid links?"

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 28, 2007"

Can you believe it, this post is my 5,000th article here at the Search Engine Roundtable. I started writing here on December 2nd, 2003 - just under four years ago - and have kept up with it since.

On average, I have written just about 5 posts per work-day. There are times where I have written on weekends or holidays, which skew the data slightly to show 4.7519 posts per day where I have written any posts. In fact, you can see at any time throughout the day, the number of articles our authors have written in real time. Tamar, has already written 695 articles in just about 6 months so far!

In any event, how does my article writing break down by category? Since we have dozens of categories, I will show you the top 20 categories by article count:

1. Google Optimization with 598
2. Google AdSense with 469
3. Other Google Topics with 431
4. Google AdWords with 405
5. Google Search Engine with 317
6. Microsoft MSN Search with 255
7. Google News & Press with 229
8. Search Engine Optimization with 222
9. Yahoo! Search Optimization with 189
10. Ask.com with 184
11. SEO Forum News with 180
12. Blog Administration with 172
13. Link Building with 163
14. Yahoo! Search Engine with 149
15. Yahoo! Search Marketing with 147
16. Search Engine Conferences with 140
17. Yahoo! Publisher Network with 120
18. Google PageRank/SERP Updates with 113
19. Search Engine Industry News with 110

As you can see, I am very Google focused. But I can blame the forums for that. Since I cover what is hot in the forums, Google is typically what is hot in the forums.

Who would have thought, four years ago, still going strong at about 5 articles per day on search at the Search Engine Roundtable? Consistency and reliability is huge for me.

Adding Tamar to the team has helped us average about ten stories per day, which would not be possible without her. It has helped us expand our conference coverage and keep up with the fast growing search marketing industry.

In addition to my articles here, I have done a ton of writing throughout the web. Here is a brief run down of my contributions to the search industry outside of my 5,000 articles at the Search Engine Roundtable.

• Cartoon Barry: 1,406
• Search Engine Land: 1,212
• Search Engine Watch Blog: 1,137
• Search Engine Watch Forums: 2,755
• SEO Chat Forums: 2,642
• Search Engine Roundtable Forums: 1,639
• Cre8asite Forums: 1,027
• DigitalPoint Forums: 303
• WebmasterWorld: 252
• HighRankings Forum: 124
• JimWorld: 100
• Sphinn: 58

Thank you all for reading and making this site what it is today!

Here is to 10,000 articles at the Search Engine Roundtable!

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks, can multiple hyphens in a domain name raise a red flag with a search engine?

For example, if you have a domain name that is something like www.buy-shoes-now-online-for-cheap.com, would that type of domain raise a red flag with a search engine and warrant a manual review?

In fact, we discussed specific examples of sites with this issue back April 2005 and also wrote about a mystical Hyphen Filter in May 2004, which are both dated articles.

If you want evidence that Google does index domains with multiple hyphens, click here. The first result has six, I repeat, six hyphens in the domain.

So I would say there is no automated penalty for having many hyphens in the domain name but I would still be careful.

(1) It is not user friendly
(2) It just looks weird
(3) It may raise a red flag (who knows)

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google Groups thread asks how long does it take to get an image ad reviewed and accepted within Google AdWords.

AdWordsPro explains there is no specific date or time frame for image ads. It depends on current volume, the number of submissions, the type of ad and what day and time it is.

It is hard to give a 'typical time-to-approve' answer, since this can depend on how many ads are being submitted, the content of the ad, etc. However, I'd say 'average' might be around one to two *business* days. (This means an ad submitted late Friday is not likely to be reviewed until Monday or Tuesday, since ads are reviewed on a very limited basis over the weekends.)

Image ads require more human intervention than text ads. Search engines can easily write rules based on the words used and matched on in the text ads. But with image ads, it is hard for the search engine to see what words are being used in the image. So one would imagine it would take longer to be displayed and reviewed.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

What is better? A custom 404 page or a generic one?

In 2004, Barry wrote that a custom 404 page is a "must have" for usability purposes. That's so true. But what about search engines? A forum member asks, would a generic 404 page be construed as duplicate content?

Well, first of all, if you're using a generic 404, who cares if it's duplicate content? 404 pages are not "content" though. They are "Error not found" pages.

But in all seriousness, the issue is that the return code should be 404, and if it is, the page won't be indexed. And further, 404 pages are not "content." They are "Error not found" pages.

Tedster adds:

The thing to be aware of is custom error solutions that return a 302 redirect code to get to the custom content. That can be trouble.

So make sure your pages have a 404. And as far as generic versus custom 404 pages, go with custom. It makes the user experience a lot more enjoyable (even if they can't find what they're looking for!) :)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Back in May 2004, DigitalPoint Forums opened a revenue sharing program that enabled the members share in the Google AdSense revenue earned in the forums. At that time, the idea was unique - Shawn Hogan coded his AdSense system to work with member's Google AdSense publisher IDs. If that member started a thread, his publisher ID would show up 50% of the time when ads are displayed.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members of the forums how much money they have made all time. So I decided to look up exactly how much money I made and I see from day one, I made $5.13. To be fair I only started 24 threads at the forum, so that $5.13 was from only 24 threads.

Here are some of the other responses in the forum so far:
- $46.58
- $26.49
- $2.00
- $5.00
- $14.00
- $2.80
- $0.13
- $0.33

So as you can see, it totally depends on what you put into the forum. The more you put in, the more you get out. You can earn money from revenue sharing forums, but it might not be the most lucrative thing you can do.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Rumors all over the Internet are talking about a possible Google online storage service that will be launching in the upcoming months. The Wall Street Journal reports that it will have free and paid options.

There's no confirmation from Google at all on these services, but it looks like it could possibly occur. The online service, code-named "GDrive" or "Platypus," has been seen on Googlers' desktops:

So now, what will it be? And what do you think about it?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Kevin Gibbons spotted some new changes to the Google AdWords Client Center for multiple account management. It appears that you can now create a template and share them with multiple accounts, making it easier so you don't have to port all the changes from one account to another by hand or with a software application.

I'm not even seeing this in the AdWords FAQ yet, so it looks quite new. Kevin has fortunately showed us how to use it in a screenshot step by step on his blog.

It looks pretty useful and should make managing multiple similar campaigns a lot easier.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Roundtable Forums and Sphinn.

One day, Matt McGee decided to take a deep look at Sphinn (as a moderator) and acknowledged 7 recurring mistakes that continually happen on the booming social news network. He listed them out and encouraged users to be distinct, different, and unique. Here's what you should avoid when pitching to a site like Sphinn or another type of social news website:

1. Avoid sales pitches disguised as "good content."
2. Don't submit your entire website. Social news sites don't need your "about" pages. They aren't directories.
3. Have a good headline. Seriously.
4. Make your description interesting. Don't you want people to vote on your article?
5. Give yourself a noticeable avatar. Stop blending in with the crowd.
6. Create a unique username.
7. Stay on topic and contribute articles that are pertinent to the categories you've submitted to.

(I feel like I've said much of this before and it still works quite well for other social networks. Thanks Matt!)

But what else would drive someone bonkers? Well, for a smallish site like Sphinn, you shouldn't sub