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: December 7, 2007"

Wow, it's been an incredibly crazy week and I am still blogging even though I landed back in New York before the sun rose this morning (and didn't sleep on the plane. Yay!) And now I'm catching up as I have no idea what really happened outside of Vegas.

We Turned 4

Search Engine Roundtable is now four years old and we've celebrated with a temporary theme. (And if you haven't noticed, it's Chanukah, and our blog has another redesign for the rest of the holiday. Click on this link if you're reading this through a feed to see!)

Yahoo Search Updates

Apparently, there's been a Yahoo algorithm update this month. People are noticing similar things on Google.

On Paid Links

This is going to be a sore subject for awhile. Barry summarizes the Google war on paid links and I summarized statements from Matt Cutts on paid links and PageRank. In case you felt like you've missed out, there's a tremendous amount of valuable information on both posts and massive community feedback.

Google Spreads Holiday Love

Google has given AdSense publishers and AdWords advertisers a cute little gift: a 2GB USB memory card. They should've given something else, though, according to someone I know. Like a mini fridge. Now that is a good gift. ;)

Add Your Phone Number to Google AdWords Ads

Guess what? You're now able to add your phone number to AdWords ads. That's totally awesome, but I hope you have a system in place to determine whether there's some ROI with your AdWords campaign. Perhaps you should get a new phone number for AdWords referrals. Either way, finally!

Microsoft's Spam Site Referrals: Cloaking Tests

After we've been spotting Microsoft's spam site referrals, they made a statement to clarify what exactly was occurring. We were testing for cloaking, they said. Thanks for the statement, guys!

Microsoft Launches adCenter Excel 2007 Plugin

Earlier this week, I spoke with Natala Menezes who told me that Microsoft came out with a new adCenter product: an Excel 2007 plugin. Now, if anyone here has Excel 2007, it's a whole new Microsoft product and is ways beyond previous versions. This is quite cool. But the plugin is also very awesome, according to advertisers. Awesome.

Subdomains as Results in Google

Google is now testing subdomains as results in Google, but you won't get more than 2 folders per search (so don't go all out and create two billion subdomains since that will do little for you). However, it's an interesting change. I wonder how well it will be received over time. I'm sure some people will love it and others will hate it. :)

Conference Coverage

Okay, so I liveblogged a lot of sessions and my fingers and feet hurt (yes, I walked too). But so did a bunch of great bloggers and we're truly thankful for the coverage. In case you missed it, our Pubcon 2007 and SES Chicago coverage has been posted. Really, you should have been there, but if you couldn't make it, we did our best to provide you with near live coverage of everything. And thanks to all who said hello to me in Vegas. It was really nice to meet you!

Our coverage of the December search marketing conferences is now complete. We have extensive coverage, in raw-live format from SES Chicago and PubCon Vegas. Both conferences were a huge hit and lots of fun and learning took place.

Again, a huge thank you to our contributors and writers including Carolyn Shelby, Dave Rohrer, Chris Boggs, Justin Davy, Marty Weintraub, Avi Wilensky and Tamar Weinberg. Your hard work does not go unappreciated by the SEM community and industry - we all thank you.

We covered 28 sessions from PubCon and 24 sessions from SES. Here is a recap of the sessions we covered by conference:

PubCon Vegas 2007 Search Conference Coverage Recap:

1. Keynote Conversation with Craig Newmark
2. SEO 101 - The Timeless and Classic Hits
3. PPC 101 – Beginner to Intermediate Level
4. Monetizing Social Media Traffic
5. Reputation Monitoring and Management
6. Social Marketing 101
7. Link Building Campaigns and Strategies
8. Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies
9. Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads
10. Content Creation - Cranking it Out
11. Link Buying
12. Domain Names and Trademarks - Legal Issues
13. Effective Domaining Strategies
14. Web Hosting Industry Overview
15. SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
16. SEO and the Big Search
17. Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDF's, and Blog SEO
18. Brand Management
19. Keynote with Matt Cutts
20. Responsible Web Design
21. Effective Action Based Copywriting
22. CSS and HTML Coding Today
23. Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization
24. Search and Blogging Reporters Forum
25. Competitive Intelligence
26. International and European Site Optimization
27. Organic Keyword Research and Selection
28. Tools of the Trade

SES Chicago 2007 Search Conference Coverage Recap:

1. Search Around the World - Part One: Asia/Pacific & Australia
2. Mobile Search Battle Royal
3. Redefining the Customer
4. Meet the Web Analytics Players
5. The Human Equation: Giving Back Internet Style
6. Orion Panel – Search, Privacy, and the Community in the Digital Age
7. Igniting Viral Campaigns
8. There’s Still Money on the Table!
9. Orion Panel - Universal, Blended, and Vertical Search
10. The Transformation of Local in a Search Driven World
11. Retailer Track: Shopping Search Tactics
12. Are Paid Links Evil?
13. Maximum Conversion in Retail: Raising the Bar
14. Actionable Social Media
15. Online Maps: Plotting the Direction of Local Search
16. Case Study: Moving from Paper to Online
17. Managing Automated PPC Bid Management
18. Your Marketing Program in Context
19. Calling All Clicks: PayPerCall and You
20. PPC Advertising on Influential Blogs and Social Media
21. Last Minute Holiday Search Tactics
22. Just for Fun Track: So You Want to Be a Search Marketer?
23. Fun With Dynamic Websites
24. Dealing with Difficult Clients

Our top five stories across both conferences by pageviews are:

• Monetizing Social Media Traffic from PubCon Vegas written by Tamar Weinberg
• Link Buying from PubCon Vegas written by Tamar Weinberg
• SEO 101 - The Timeless and Classic Hits from PubCon Vegas written by Avi Wilensky
• Shopping Search Tactics from SES Chicago written by Marty Weintraub
• Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies from PubCon Vegas written by Dave Rohrer

That wraps up our coverage. See you all in February, for our next major conference coverage event!

A WebmasterWorld thread reports Google is being more lax about validating AdWords advertiser's display URLs.

Google AdWords affiliate policy says:

We will only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display URL. This means that if you're an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or a similar) domain in the display URL.

This member said, "lately I've noticed as many as 5 invalid Display URLs for one search term - all of which lead to the same page on the merchant's site."

Google has taken notice, where AdWordsAdvisor said "what I have been doing, though, is passing these threads along to the right teams - and I see quite a lot of attention being paid to them."

Do you think Google has been getting lazy validating their advertisers and their policies?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld administrator tedster has informed us that Google will be treating subdomains like they treat folders on a site. In short, he said, Matt Cutts said Google will roll out in a few weeks a new filter to make sure only two results of a domain (no matter subdomain or folder) will show up for a search. Here is tedster's exact quote from a WebmasterWorld thread:

News flash from Las Vegas PubCon. Matt Cutts informed us that Google will very soon begin treating subdomains and subdirectories the same in this fashion: there will be only 2 total urls from a domain in any set of search results, so no more getting 3, 4 or however many spots via subdomains. We didn't get any more information than just that basic heads-up.

Of course you can expect exceptions to this rule. For example, blogspot.com sub-domains one would think would fall under this exception to the rule. But overall, if this change happens, it can be a pain in the neck for some SEOs. It will make it a bit harder for one site to "own the search results." Plus it may make some search engine reputation management companies change their strategies.

In an other WebmasterWorld thread tedster gives us a bit more detail on how this may work, bolding for emphasis:

Here's what happens now. The first step of results retrieval for any single search still has no limit on how many urls can be returned from a domain. In the early days of Google, a domain could even have all 10 first page spots and still keep on going. It could even be embarrassing!

Today, the preliminary, raw retrieval of roughly 1,000 results still puts no limit on how many urls can be returned from a given domain. But there's a further processing step - a filter kicks in. That filter is supposed to ensure that only 2 urls maximum from any domain will actually be shown.

If those two urls happen to be on the same page, then they will cluster together on that page rather than show at their "true" algorithmically determined position. But through all the total pages of any search result, any single domain is supposed to show up a maximum of 2 times.

Now here's where we've been able to game the current situation. Subdomains are treated like a separate domain, and so you can get two results for www.example.com, two more for sub1.example.com, two more for sub2.example.com, and so on.

Matt Cutts mentioned that Google is working on code to eliminate that possibility for most domains. That is, Google plans to treat most subdomains essentially like any other url on the main domain, and they will limit that domain, INCLUDING all its subdomains, to two positions total on any given search.

At that point, the whole subdomain vs. subdirectory decision will lose most of its importance - and your wwww urls will not show up, even though they may still be causing you trouble behind the scenes.

For a practical example, here is a search on search engine roundtable, our site, that shows the top three listings from this domain:

The top two listings are from the www.seroundtable.com and the third listing is from the subdomain, forums.seroundtable.com. If Google makes this change, I will loose the second www result or loose the forum result. For relevancy, does this matter much?

Honestly, with the introduction of Sitelinks on this particular site and for this particular search, no it won't impact relevancy, because the searcher can use those Sitelinks. But for sites that do not have Sitelinks, it may make a big difference to the searcher.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: See update to this post over here.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports Microsoft's Live Search automatically regionalizing the search results of Live.com when searches are conducted in Australia.

Woz, WebmasterWorld moderator, said Live is "automatically serving results focused towards," plus they have added "an "Australia Only" tick box." Woz says there is no way for him to turn off the local preferences. Here he expresses his frustration:

If I go to live.com I expect to see global results. If I want local MSN results, then I will go to nineman.com.au and search there.

But moderator, bill said he doesn't see the same happening in Japan. So it may be Microsoft testing things out in select countries, like Australia?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last month, we provided you with November 2007 Google SERP changes, and this month, the trend continues.

WebmasterWorld members report that their rankings have been fluctuating heavily. One reports that his site was not ranked in the top #1000 on Google but then he hit #19. It then increased and the rankings got better, but it soon disappeared out of the top 1000 again.

Similarly, another person is reporting that his biggest site is jumping back and forth from the #1 result to #16-#20. This sentiment is echoed by at least two other members.

A member reports that gaming and entertainment results are popping into SERPs that have no relationship to gaming and entertainment, which is certainly an issue of relevancy for these webmasters.

Finally, the other thing noted is that .ca and .co.uk results are appearing in .com results even though the market isn't tailored to US demographics.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The Register reports about some corruption that was discovered within Wikipedia: the existence of a secret mailing list that cracks down on users why may be threats to Wikipedia administrators' power. The article goes into depth about what ensued, what happened, the reaction, and the community is pretty shocked.

Can Wikipedia still be considered a trusted source by search engines with this information known? Well, most people say that there are always flaws in these sources, but the data is still more relevant than other search terms.

The real story here seems to be the paranoia and the heavy handed treatment of dissent by the Admin group. It comes down to control. I don't think Jimbo wants to lose that.

Users will still be in control to keep the results relevant.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has been complaining about how Google's site exclusion feature works.

Discover, Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, shared a screen capture to explain the extra step you need to take to ensure you actually exclude your ads from showing up on sites (AdSense publishers or parked domains) that you do not want them to show up on.

As you can see, first you type in the domain you want to block, then you click "Exclude Sites" and then one more step, you need to click, "Save All Exclusions."

Discovery explains:

Anyhow, I don’t know if this new process has resulted in many advertisers thinking they added new sites to their list but didn’t. If you have a list as large as ours its not very easy to see what has and has not been successfully added.

I guess this is why SEMs get paid the big bucks.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.