May 9, 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 9, 2008"

Dear all, it is raining and icky outside, so today's a good day for a buzz roundup. Enjoy. ;)

Landing Page Load Time: Check

Your Google AdWords Quality Score now factors in your landing page load time. If you have a fast landing page, you'll get a great score. In other words, get good hosting!

Google Adwords Enforces Display URL

It only took a few months since Google wanted to enforce the URL display policy so that the landing page URL would match the display URL in Google AdWords campaigns, and now the policy seems to be in full force with pretty much accurate reporting.

Strange Google Rankings Still Plaguing the Internets

Barry likes to coin phrases, and in this case, floating four seems pretty accurate. He mentions that some results in position 4 seem to be floating around -- they show up on the first page, 4th ranking, but then later disappear. There are at least two people who noticed this strange behavior and we're not sure what to make of it.

The minus 60 penalty is not an illusion, according to Google. Google has admitted that it's a real penalty, and that this penalty usually involves cleaning up spam.

In our May 2008 Google SERP update, we're seeing some big traffic declines, which may be related (or not) to the aforementioned symptoms.

Google AdWords and AdSense Reports Displaying Incorrect Data

Earlier this week, AdSense and AdWords data was not being properly recorded and Google's engineering team took a looka at it. The next day, Google acknowledged that they fixed the problem but some people are still reporting inaccurate data.

Microhoo is Not in the Future

After all that anticipation, Microsoft has decided not to buy Yahoo. So long, Microhoo.

Setting Your Geographic Location in Google Webmaster Tools May Not Work

It seems that setting your geographic location in Webmaster Tools may not necessarily give you the rankings you're hoping for. For example, if you have a .com and you're in the UK, and you set your site to the UK geographic region, you're probably not as lucky as the person who has the .co.uk domain, it seems. UK people, give the US folks your .coms (I'm talking to you, Tamar!) :)

Please Tell Me that This is a Joke

If Google AdWords are really going Comic Sans, I'm going to puke. Worst. Font. Ever.

Yahoo's Universal Search is Here

It's time for Yahoo Universal Search, at least in India where Glue Pages are in beta. My verdict: very nice.

Monday is the Best Day for Google AdSense Payouts

Want Google AdSense money? Yoru best bet is to focus on monetizing your Mondays. We polled you, our valuable readers, and found that most of you are making the most of your dough on the first day of the week. I guess that's when people get click-happy from work boredom.

SEO Debate is Back

We love SEO. Seriously. Every day, there's another debate about SEO, and a bunch of people always come up to defend it. I am waiting for Danny Sullivan's post on how SEO is here to stay. I know he's working on it.

Win a Date with Barry

We're having a reader survey, and the winner gets some schwag and a free dinner with Barry. Now this guy is a fun date, so I suggest that you all participate right now!

A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from "shady" places. Why, then, can't he do the same thing on his smaller site?

Some forum members believe that the age and authority of site matter in this case. Some sites just always get inbound links. Others don't unless something is up.

A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there's tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.

So be careful when you build your links, because you can find a dent in your rankings, but as forum members note, the rankings will generally improve.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A High Rankings Forums member wants to know if header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4...) are weighted on search engines.

The answer is probably not, but some people think that there's minimal weight from search engines. The point is that header tags are for user readability versus focusing on search engines. If you wanted to test the theory, you could remove the header tags and instead use CSS to see how it performs.

Additionally, it's important to note that if this is something spammers start using more heavily, chances are search engines will devalue it even more (if header tags are even a metric in the algorithm). That said, do your own testing and come up with some results, but the skepticism is pretty obvious from the post.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

In the middle of the week, my good friend Jeremy Schoemaker, aka Shoemoney, blogged that SEO has no future. He believes that personalized data will be more important, especially from the toolbar, user history, and analytics data. Social voting is becoming more important, and he explains that his sitelinks are the most trafficked pages on his site.

Well, the SEO community did not really want to hear that, so there have been at least three individual posts on Sphinn about it.

Marketing Pilgrim writer Greg Howlett says that search engines are getting too smart and that search engines won't want to reward companies for playing SEO games.

In one rebuttal, Ian Lurie talks about how SEO really does have a future. Smart SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It helps create a long term content strategy. It keeps good businesses out of trouble. It ensures the discoverability of content on your site. SEO isn't about looking for loopholes but for keeping search engines happy.

In another response, Michael Gray also says that SEO has a future. SEO will have to clean up the mess of visual elements, especially flash and other technologies that are not search-engine friendly. SEOs have to explain viral marketing, content creation, and more. SEO is here to stay, he says, and there's nothing that anyone can say to stop that.

In a third response, Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search engines.

On one hand, forum members think that this is a great thing to start saying because then there will be less competition as newbie SEOs don't actually participate in SEO. Others say that SEO is not going to die but become more important, especially as big companies start partnering up with SEO firms and consultants for work.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn, Sphinn, Sphinn, and Sphinn. ;)

I reported this later last night at Search Engine Land but this is very important news for Google AdWords advertisers. Google will be introducing into the quality score component of your ad rank, the speed at which your landing pages load. If you have a slow page load time, your AdWords ads will cost your more.

Last night Google AdWords began showing your landing page load time, on each keyword level, in your Google AdWords keyword diagnostic section. Here is a screen capture from one of my test campaigns:

Right now, Google is showing you this data so that if your page load time is poor, you have time to make changes to speed things up and improve your quality score. Because starting sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will impact your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared. How do you look up your landing page load time scores?

(1) Sign in to your account at https://adwords.google.com.
(2) Click a campaign.
(3) Click an ad group.
(4) Click the 'Keywords' tab above the Ad Group Details table.
(5) Click the magnifying glass icon beside any keyword and then the 'Details and recommendations' link to launch the Keyword Analysis page. You can also see an overview of your Quality Score and ad visibility by pointing your cursor over the icon.

Here are our past articles on the Google AdWords landing page load time factor:

• Landing Page Load Time Will Impact Google AdWords Quality Score
• Google Confirms Page Load Time As Future Factor in AdWords Quality Score
• Test Your Page Load Time Before Google Tests it For You

Overall, most Google AdWords advertisers are excited about this change. The true winner are the searchers. But there is some backlash about the change.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

An older Google Groups thread was just updated by Jeff Posnick the AdWords API Advisor, an official Google representative in charge of the AdWords API development and support. The Googler explains that the API Sandbox should now support the creation of video ads.

Now, simulating the addition of video ads may be supported in the AdWords Sandbox environment. Jeff Posnick explained:

Could you try your attempt to create a video ad in the Sandbox environment again? The engineering team made a config change that *should* have enabled folks for it.

So it should work, may not, but should. We know Google is at least working on making it work.

Also, Google released the NET Client Library 1.0.0 for the AdWords API v11 and v12.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Back in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site, using a .com domain - Google would often not give the site any preference in the Google UK search results, unless it had a co.uk TLD. The Set Geographic Target option was suppose to give Google more clues about the site and help it rank better in the local that was specified with the tool.

A Google Groups thread leaves me to believe that it might not be the case. Susan Moskwa, an official Google representative said:

Using the tool to target example.com to the UK may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won't be the same as having example.co.uk. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).

Wait, so are you saying setting your geographic target may or may not have an impact on how your rank in a localized version of Google? Let me bold Susan's response, " Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs."

Hmm and I not understanding the response? I am not sure. I have seen dozens of posts complaining that the tool doesn't improve their ranking in the localized Google version. In fact, respected SEO, David Naylor just posted a blog post with the title, Google Webmaster Tools smoke n mirrors. In that post, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the tool and describes how it simply doesn't work for him.

Does it work for you? Please do comment with your feedback, if you have any.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

First, congrats on your wedding - I like to personally wish you both a long happy life together.

Now, let's get down to the money... You make a lot of money with Google AdSense. But now that you are married and you are taking on your spouse's name, you want to get the checks made out to your new last name. How do you go about changing your name on Google AdSense, so that you and your new spouse can share in the huge amounts of money you are making with Google AdSense?

That is the question asked at a Google Groups thread. AdSensePro Stephanie offers a link as aid on changing one's payee name. The process is fairly simple, you simply fill out the Change Payee Name AdSense form and wait. But here are some of the rules behind changing the payee name:

• According to our program policies, AdSense accounts cannot be transferred or sold. If this is your reason for requesting the change, we will not be able to update your payee name.
• You won't be able to change your payee name if you already have another AdSense account under that name.
• Once we've updated your information, you'll need to re-enter your tax information and form of payment.
• If you've received a payment to the old payee name that you're unable to deposit, you'll need to request a reissue after the 25th of the month following your payment.
• We start processing payments on the 16th of each month. If you're scheduled to receive a payment this month and the payee name in your account is updated after the 16th, your payment will be issued to your old name.

Again, to change your AdSense payee name to your new spouse's name, use the Google AdSense Change Payee Name Form and congrats!

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Image sourced from Steena on Flickr