May 8, 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 8, 2008"

Barry at Search Engine Land points out that Yahoo India has glue pages, which some people are comparing to Universal Search, because of classic search results on the left hand column, visual information in the center column and bottom right hand corner (in addition to articles), and sponsored results.

Here's a screenshot for a search for trees. Click to enlarge.

The idea is pretty cool and sticky (pun intended) and the results page is definitely more aesthetically pleasing than the standard 10 blue links. It kind of reminds me of the current Ask.com format:

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

WebmasterWorld member Receptional Andy suggests the unconventional way to perform keyword research: offline with two books.

The first book is the useful dictionary. If you do a search for "widget," for example, you may get an origin phrase, and in this case, it's "gadget."

The second book is the related reading guide: the thesaurus. You can get plenty of comparable words by using the thesaurus.

Then, you just need to write down everything on paper. No need for a computer at all.

Now I'm not sure how many people will do this, but the idea is an interesting one. :)

In fact, as one more modern member suggests, the idea of keyword research is to get information of what people are actually searching for. That said, the oldschool traditional killed-trees version just doesn't cut it.

Still, as Andy responds, some keyword research tools aren't helpful, and using a dictionary and thesaurus may add some words that you may otherwise not have thought of.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

After a deathly cyclone ravaged the Myanmar (Burma) region, thousands of people are still hoping for aid while the death toll rises into the six digits. Fortunately, if you go to Google.com today, you'll see that they're looking to help. A screenshot of what my homepage appears as is included:

The link takes you to the Myanmar disaster relief page which allows you to donate through UNICEF or through Direct Relief International.

Forum members believe that the poignancy of this link is a great gesture and are happy that Google is taking a proactive stance to help out the victims and their families.

More disaster relief resources from other search properties are described in Greg Sterling's very useful Search Engine Land post.

Discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld member notes that when he does a link: query for a specific domain, it shows only internal links and not external links -- but it depends on the size of the domain. This behavior is only observed on very large sites versus smaller ones. How come that's the case? Is there an issue of how this data is being gathered and is there extra weight being placed on these links?

Tedster believes that this isn't the case. He says that internal links pass PR around the site but that the internal linking structure is not weighted as heavily as external links:

Internal links do have anchor text influence, and they do pass PR around the site. But I'd say they are not treated "exactly" same as external links. How exactly their treatment differs is a bit of a Google secret, and it also seems to shift around a bit. For example, I'd say many internal links get a lot less individual weight than a single external backlink would, especially if they are in the page template (menus and footer links.)

On that note, some internal links can be more valuable than external links depending on PageRank, popularity, traffic, and more. Your PR5 homepage internal link will probably be a lot more valuable than a PR0 external link from a link farm. Do you agree?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has serious discussion on obtaining advice and tips on getting your images out of the Google SafeSearch filter. Basically, sometimes Google might label your images as being sexually explicit or not appropriate for the average searcher. If that is done, you shouldn't come up in Google's web search results or in the standard Google image search (unless someone changes their Google preferences).

What we have been noticing is that Google has been a bit more sensitive on image filtering recently. This has impacted a lot of webmasters, where they have noticed a major decline in image search traffic.

So what can you do to ensure your images don't fall within this filter?

I remember hearing, I believe during the Google Webmaster Live Chat session that if you move any images that might appear to be adult related into a different folder, Google will better be able to apply the filter only to those images. Google basically recommended to move pictures that might trigger the filter into a folder like /adult-images/ and have a different folder for /safe-images/.

Outside of that tip, there are some suggestions in the thread that include:

• Check your on-page text content and image filenames for potentially adult words, said Tedster.
• Check to make sure your outbound links are not pointing to any adult neighborhoods, recommended Tedster.
• See if your hosted on the same server as an adult site, Tedster added.
• Try using PICS labels, but I personally don't think that will work.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ann Smarty goes through the conflicts of reporting competitors as spamming Google search results. Yes, this is a topic we covered many times here, including:

• Reporting Spam: Is It Ethical
• How Can I Report Spam to Google?
• Google Spam Reporting Working
• Does Google Investigate Spam Reports?
• Quick Spam Reporting Tool

In any event, the related Sphinn thread has discussion on if you report your competitors as spamming in Google. So I decided to run a poll here to find out if you have ever reported a competitor as spamming in Google. Simple Yes or No - hoping people don't use the "other" option, but I added it just in case.

Here is the poll:

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Yesterday we reported about a major reporting bug that impacted both AdWords & AdSense users. Yesterday at about 9pm (EST), Google's AdSensePro Stephanie said the reports were now fixed. Yes, that is about 40 hours after received our first reports of the outage. Stephanie said:

This reporting issue has now been fixed, so you should now see all of your missing data from yesterday in your account. (We've also reflected this update on our Known Issues page at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92365.) I'll leave this thread pinned to the top of this category for another day, to make sure more forum members see this update.

Thank you all again for your continued patience, and our team sincerely apologizes for the delay.

Even though Google said the issue is now fixed, many AdSense publishers are not convinced. All the replies to Stephanie's post claim the reporting issues were not resolved. Of the five replies, all five said the reports still seem way off.

AdSenseAdvisor posted an updated at the WebmasterWorld thread also, this reply was at 4:06 am (EST) this morning saying the issues have been resolved. But like the Google Groups thread, the publishers in that thread are all not convinced the reports are bug free.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.