May 5, 2008 Archives

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: May 5, 2008"

I have created a 15 question reader survey that I hope you can all take. The purpose of the survey is to learn more about you and what you like best about the site. I basically want to learn your likes and dislikes about the content, design and features of this site.

As you know, we have been writing here since 2003 and we continue to try to add components that add value. In addition, we try to focus on search community news and discussion. So even though some news might be hot in the search industry, it might not be important to the average SEO. We try to focus on what is important to the average SEM based on what is being discussed in the forums. We will stay true to that mission but that doesn't mean we can't do better.

I am really hoping most of you can spend the time to fill out the 15 question survey. You can access it at this link.

If you need a reason to take it outside of helping us make a better resource for you, then here you go. If you fill out your name and email address, which is optional on the survey, I will randomly choose one winner. What does the winner win? The winner will win free schwag from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and other companies. Plus the winner will win a free dinner with me and maybe a few of my SEM friends (if they are available) at a kosher restaurant. The dinner has to be at a kosher place, but the winner can coordinate with me the date and time. FYI, the prize ideas came from suggestions at my personal blog.

Again, please take the time to complete our first ever reader survey by clicking here and answering the questions.

A Google Groups member notes that Google seems to be able to stem complex plurals as of late and accurate suffixes. For example, if you search for "accredit" or "accrediting," you will see "accreditation" highlighted as well.

Forum members also observe that Google is "capable of ranking on synonyms now" from an example posed by a user who said that Google is highlighting phrases that is are not at all tied to the on-page text.

One forum member says that Google must be pulling this data from a huge depth of information -- probably a very comprehensive dictionary, if you will.

Honestly... I'm not sure if Google uses links anymore to determine relevancy... I think they just build a huge world wide word density cloud and use that to abstract the depth of information for a search term based on the frequency it appears within a community...

JohnMu from Google adds that this may be related somewhat to personalized search results.

The discussion is interesting and definitely is a good read for those interested in semantic search.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

This month, WebmasterWorld members have observed the same old shuffle in rankings that plagued webmasters in our April 2008 Google SERP Update post.

A lot of rankings are dropping, and one webmaster even reports that he's hit a new traffic low in 2008.

One member likens these drops to the fact that Google might want to emphasize their paid listings.

Looks to me that at this stage of the game where Google completely dominates the market it would be beneficial for them to have "inconsistent"/"moving" results in the natural search so people would click on the ads as those are consistent. When searchers will get the idea that they will not get the same (even though still relevant) result every time they search, they will most certainly pay more attention to the ads. Google getting richer?

That's definitely an interesting statement.

Other observations include blogs being ranked higher, link exchange websites taking a hit in the rankings, issues with relevant rankings (specifically, more relevant internal pages are now being replaced by the less-relevant home pages for search phrases), and a lot of dropped rankings.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Aaron Wall recently wrote a brilliant piece about the value of a #1 Google ranking. In his in-depth article, which is divided into 9 sections, he explains based on research and a variety of forum discussion that even small declines in ranking can break businesses. He goes on to explain the value of these rankings in financial terms, and explains how you can determine the value of your own rankings in 6 steps:

1. Establishing a baseline keyword value
2. Review Typical Click Distribution Profiles
3. Considering factors that modify click distribution
4. Tapping in the long tail
5. Improve monetization via scale
6. Take action

I won't go into the steps in depth as Aaron does an excellent job himself. I recommend that you give his incredibly comprehensive article a read and maybe even a printout :)

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty:

What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to look at the -60 penalty Google Groups thread. Does he mean to imply that some sites with the -60 penalty, that deserve a number one position, will see Sitelinks in position 60, in these cases?

Well, the thread has been gaining steam since then and Googler, JohnMu, replied in the Google Groups thread once again. His reply was not specifically about the phenomenon of seeing a Sitelink result in the 60th position, which was the topic of the thread. But it was in regards to cleaning up the site from a spam perspective, in order to improve the site's ranking for its own name.

In fact, that webmaster came to our site and commented explaining things were getting better after he has cleaned up some problems on his site.

In short, this discussion seems to imply to me that Google is admitting to the minus 60ish penalty. Which likely comes to no surprise of many SEOs out there, but it is always nice to point to evidence like this. In fact, this is not the first time a Googler replied to a minus X penalty. Google's Matt Cutts replied to a minus 60 thread a couple month back, offering advice on cleaning up the site.

But yet, in a recent poll we conducted, 25-percent of SEOs feel the minus X penalties are not link related. Whereas, 47-percent said they feel they are link related.

Forum discussion continued at Google Groups.

Forums have been buzzing and buzzing about the possibility of a competitor being able to hurt your Google ranking for the past few years now. We have covered this topic time and time again, just see here for some of the many times we covered it. In fact, we even covered a thread that listed how to penalize your competitors in Google.

I thought it would be fun to see if you guys believe it. Do you think it is possible for someone to hurt a competitors by using links as ammunition. I am not talking about hacking into someone's site. I am talking about just using external links, that a webmaster cannot control, as a method of hurting one's Google rankings. Here is the poll:

There is discussion on this topic at WebmasterWorld now. Most feel that, yes, you can hurt someone's ranking in Google with external links.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Let's say, you have a subfolder on your domain that gets hacked. The hack causes your subfolder to be penalized by Google, due to the hack. Did you know that in order to issue a request for a review from Google in Webmaster Tools, you will need to individually submit and verify that subfolder to Google Webmaster Tools - even if you have the main domain listed and verified in Webmaster Tools?

A Google Groups thread discusses just that.

Googler, Susan Moskwa, explains:

If only a certain section of your site has been affected by malware (such as the /blog subfolder), you'll need to add that section specifically to your Webmaster Tools account in order to see the malware review notice. A great way to figure out which section(s) have been affected is to do a site: search and see which URLs have the malware label in search results.

Susan went on to agree with webmasters that it would be nice to be able to handle some of these requests at the top level domain, as opposed to having to register additional sub-directories or sub-domains with Google. But, as you can imagine, it makes sense why Google currently requires the individual registration - to handle third part hosting sites like Blogger, and so on. This is what Susan said:

I agree that it would be nice to bubble this up to the top level of the site (so that you can look at the Overview page for example.com and see that there's malware on example.com/blog), and I've passed your feedback along to our team.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Since early February we were warning Google AdWords advertisers that Google would be enforcing the display URL policy, where the display URL must match the destination URL. The policy enforcement was suppose to begin on April 1st. On April 10th, we asked why Google wasn't enforcing this new policy? But we had no answer.

That all changed this weekend. A WebmasterWorld thread has reports from several AdWords advertisers reporting that Google has finally begun enforcing the policy. One advertiser said the automated method of detecting and penalizing ads for breaking the display URL policy is fairly accurate, for the most part. He said:

The software has made the odd false negative, but otherwise doing great.

Other advertisers have confirmed the new policy has been enforced for them. We have yet to see a major backlash from advertisers who are upset about this policy - yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, Microsoft finally backed off Yahoo and has decided to pull their offer to buy Yahoo and also decided they would not pursue a hostile takeover of the company. That sums it up basically. Now, if you want to read more, let me send you to Search Engine Land where we covered the news extensively.

• Microsoft Yanks Its Offer For Yahoo
• Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?
• Yahoo Next Steps: Google Deal, AOL Purchase & Pleasing Investors

Yes, this weekend's news is still dominating Techmeme's front page. So again, if you want to read Microsoft's letter to Yahoo or Yahoo's response or future thoughts, check out those links.

Many now believe Yahoo will begin outsourcing their search ads to Google. The advertisers want it based on the past test, it seems like Yahoo and Google both enjoyed it. So we should hear some news on that this week.

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