September 2008 Archives

In case you have haven't watched the news in the last few days (or don't care) the US and worldwide markets have been on a steep roller coaster ride of instability as investors and politicians struggle to put together a package of relief for struggling credit markets and teetering investment banks. Amidst the struggle of this uncertain time technology companies have also suffered. There is a discussion on WebmasterWorld about Google's share price dipping below $400 by losing 10% of its value in the last 24 hours. Some are concerned about what this means for Google in the future and whether investor anxiety will translate into a larger selloff for Google and other technology companies.

Some forum members aren't concerned about the stock, saying:

Most other stocks are on their way down, some justifiably so, others not, so this doesn't tell us much...G certainly isn't past its prime despite a few gripes here and there. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it doesn't top out at well more than $750 given some recovery time.

While others have concerns:

Agree with frontpage that Google is still way overpriced. Maybe a P/E of 20 might be OK, but it remains to be a high risk stock.

The majority seem not to worried about swings in Google's stock price. As most qualified investment consultants will tell you, its not a time to panic right now and let emotion take over. This will invariably cause you loose money by selling low and not taking time to make good decisions. I guess if you have money invested in Google stock you can hunker down and ride it out, look for buying opportunities to buy low, or pull it all out and stick the money in a mayonnaise jar. Or as one forum member said..."put it in gold".

Update: A few minutes after posting Google's stock chart went back down another 10% and then back up in after hours trading. There appears to have been a computer glitch saying Google stock traded low $200.01 and then back up to $490 high today with high volume right before close. Confusing? Check out Google stock chart.

Continued discussion at Webmaster World

In another one of those "I heard it from someone else" rumors circulating throughout the Internet, a High Rankings Forum member claims that he read an article that said that using Google Analytics on his site can hurt his search result rankings. The author's example was "do you really want Google to know that your visitors have stayed on your site for only 15 seconds?"

All forum members don't believe that Google Analytics is any indicator of search result placement (and I'd love for the Google Analytics article author to actually validate his own theory rather than spit out information that drives real search optimizers batty).

Sometimes people can search for something and find it on the first page within seconds and not need to hang around. Just because someone visits a web page for less than 15 seconds doesn't mean they aren't finding what they're looking for.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

This post was prewritten and was scheduled for publication on September 30th.

On one Crea8site Forums thread, Barry Welford asks if size is a factor in SEO success. It seems from the results that bigger sites (1000+ pages, according to him) have biggest (45%) success. Smaller sites could still be improved upon, according to 27% of the respondents, and 18% actually find success with a sub-1000 page site.

In the meantime, with such few respondents (I should have mentioned that only 11 people have responded), you can't gather that much from the poll, and forum sentiment echoes that thought.

Regardless, EGOL has some interesting feedback, and I will follow that with my own experience:

I think that the measure of success is not really in how big the site is but instead with who is running the site. I have a 5000 page site that is doing great and a five page site that is doing great.

Recently, Technorati released its state of the blogosphere 2008 and Muhammad Saleem noted that high quality is still king. I'm in agreement here. My "small" (~280 pages) blog is doing darn well.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

This post was written earlier and was scheduled for September 30th.

When your business plan calls for a strict e-commerce site, you may be in a rut when it comes to building links. One WebmasterWorld forum member says that his service is superior to his competitors at half the price -- but yet doesn't have the links to validate that claim.

So what can he do? Well, he could ask his customers to give him a link back (if they are webmasters). This is echoed by another store owner who says that his store gets links because people are buying the product and are writing good things about the company. You can incentivize this also -- if someone writes something and links back to you proving something has been written, offer them a discount.

Another strategy would be to have some creativity. Think about Will it Blend? and how BlendTec was able to capture the blender search share. Here's a good quote related to this:

Basically you're looking for ways to make an "unremarkable" e-commerce store "remarkable". People love pretty charts, videos, and LOLCats.

Or, as other forum members suggest, they can just buy links. But even sites with trust are getting caught by Google nowadays, I think. I'm going to say again that yes, I speak from experience.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

This post was written earlier and scheduled for publication on September 30, 2008.

A Google Groups thread has reports from several Google AdWords API users that Google's report download feature is having some issues.

In short, if you use the API to download reports, you may be having issues. Minutes after issuing the request for a report, they are able to be fetched from getGzipReportDownloadUrl. Now, API users are reporting that the getGzipReportDownloadUrl is resolving to a "URL not found" error.

Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team said he knows the URLs do expire, but not that soon.

No, that's a new one to me. I know that the URLs eventually expire, but I don't know what the exact timeframe is for that.

Many API users are having this issue and it is likely on Google's side. One user said:

I'm actually seeing this issue quite a bit - I've just been asked to look into it because of the high number of 'URL not found' issues. What could be causing this? Too many concurrent connections / reports / logins / something?

As noted above, the URL we're getting is coming straight from getGzipReportDownloadUrl, and we're hitting the URL immediately after receiving it. We're also trying it six times before giving up, so if it were a timing issue, you'd think we'd pick it up in one of the later attempts.

Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team said he has filed a bug in the system. But he has not given advertisers an estimated time of when it will be fixed.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

This post was written earlier and scheduled for publication on September 30, 2008.

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: September 29, 2008"

Hundreds of Google AdSense publishers cannot login to their AdSense accounts right now. Derek Chew showed me that when he tried, he ends up at a URL that looks like this https://www.google.com/adsense/legacylogincallback. The error when you land at that page is "UsernamePasswdNotMatch." I personally can login to my account, but many cannot.

We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld discussing the issue.

First reports came in at about 1:07pm (EST) today and the issue seems to have lingered on for many, until at least the time of this post.

There is no official word from Google on this login issue. I do see several threads at Google Groups the AdSense forum, with complaints.

One user said the trick is to first login to Gmail and then try logging into AdSense. Give it a try.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: At about 3pm (EST), an official Google representative wrote that they are aware of the issue. She said the issue should be fixed within minutes. But then a few minutes later told people to use the workaround, which is to login to a different Google service using the your Google Account (Gmail, Google Reader, Orkut, etc), you should be able to access your AdSense account just by going to www.google.com/adsense.

A WebmasterWorld member is a bit disappointed at an email he received from Yahoo which says that Yahoo will be raising the price of the minimum credit card amount to $250, up 10x from the previous amount of $25. Here's a snippet:

Effective October 15, 2008, the minimum account-renewal amount for all credit card-funded Product Submit accounts will increase from $25.00 to $250.00. This means that you must make a minimum payment of $250.00 each time you add funds to your Product Submit account. The increased account minimum will allow you to continue to participate in the new bidded marketplace, while reducing the risk of frequently having your products taken offline because of a $0.00 account balance.

Why did Yahoo do this? One thought is that Yahoo may have had to pay the transactional fee and didn't want to. It's also thought that Yahoo is about to lose a good number of small business subscribers who are not willing to pay $250, so Yahoo's savings may also be its loss.

A number of people are looking to leave Yahoo due to this price increase. I can't say I blame them.

Forum discussion continues at WebamsterWorld.

Update: Yahoo has sent us a statement on this news:

Last week, we did announce that beginning on October 15, Yahoo! Product Submit merchants will be asked to renew their account balances in a minimum amount of $250. After careful consideration, we found that the current minimum of $25 ran out quickly, forcing the merchant to increase their account balance again, or risk having their products taken offline due to a zero balance status. With this change, we hope to reduce the number of times merchants need to replenish their Product Submit accounts and ensure longer periods of product uptime on Yahoo! Shopping. I think you'll also find that this new minimum amount is in line with the industry's competitive norm.

Google has finally acknowledged its 10th birthday with a logo that celebrates the beginning of Google and where it is today. In case you didn't notice, Google had two birthday logos, the one pictured and another one with the old Google logo donning party hats.

In case you wanted to know more about Google's 10th birthday, you can read about it here.

In a post describing Google's growth at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan explains that Google's success is called the "Google Hive Mind." He writes:

Rather than follow a rigid top-down master plan, the company's direction and success has been shaped by decisions often taken independently of how they'll benefit the company as a whole. But collectively, those decisions DO form a master plan, a hive mind that dictates what the company will do.

Danny's entire post deserves a read -- it takes you down memory lane among other things, but I'll summarize some points:

• Google has been able to "organize the world's information" and expand upon this vision with many additional features.
• Google ran into some concerns with contextual ads, but they went ahead with it anyway.
• Google bought Blogger which caused some fear among competitors.
• Gmail was relatively unplanned.

...and there's more. But all details are in Danny's writeup.

So, what are your reflections on Google's 10th birthday?

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and Sphinn.

Numerous WebmasterWorld members are reporting that they have been invited to the Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta.

If you need any help with the Microsoft adCenter Desktop beta, adCenterRep has announced that there is a community forum for assistance. If you have been added to the beta, that's a good place to go.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The Official Google Blog has announced that the Google Toolbar 5 is now available for Firefox and has many cool new features. One such feature is Autofill, which acts as a password manager and can auto-fill forms with credit card information and other personal details.

Google Gadgets has also been added to the toolbar, so you can navigate to some of your favorite Google properties quickly -- at the click of a button. The blog post explains:

For example, you can add the YouTube gadget to your Toolbar. When you want to have a quick break from work, click on the YouTube icon and search or view videos in a box that pops down from the Toolbar, without leaving the web page you are on. Close that box when you're done with it (or when your manager starts walking towards your cube).

According to the release notes, the Toolbar also comes with improved features such as Web History, Autolink, and more.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports Google is testing giving the users the ability to set the size of the search results snippets. Google is showing at the upper left of the search results page "Web: Result details: S M L" The "S," "M," and "L" letters are button like and they control the snippets.

S = No snippets
M = 161 character description in the snippet area
L = 638 character description in the snippet area

TechCrunch secured a picture:

Member iridiax at WebmasterWorld said:

I've been using it all day today on the L detail setting, and I really like it. It shows a meta description and on-page content, so it's much easier to distinguish between good pages with real info as opposed to keyword list spam or stub pages with just a deceptively nice meta description.

He is the only one that sees this, that I am aware of.

Personally, this control would make more sense to have in the search preferences, but I guess Google needs to test it out on a few people, before deciding to add it anywhere.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that eBay is back at it again, bidding on every possible search term under the sky or rather under the Internet. This is upsetting to many advertisers, who can feel a big hurt from eBay taking up an additional spot in the ad space available on the search results.

Let me take you back a bit in history. Back in June 2007, Google and eBay got in a bit of a fight. eBay pulled their ads from Google, it estimated to hurt Google at about $26 million in ad revenue, per month. eBay then decided to resume the ads but not at the level they once had it at.

Now, over a year later, there are reports that eBay has stepped up their campaign with Google search ads. Advertisers at WebmasterWorld are complaining big time, calling eBay's tactics simply unprofessional. They are reportedly running up bid prices without improving any relevancy.

Welcome back eBay - I don't think searchers or advertisers are that happy to see you, at least not from the early discussion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are reports from WebmasterWorld that Yahoo Search is shuffling their search results. This is interesting, because we normally do not have a Yahoo Search update until the first week of the month.

The last update was on September 6th and we had one on August 1st. Maybe because the Jewish new year is tonight, maybe - they did the update early?

The thread at WebmasterWorld is pretty convincing, in terms of this being a real update. We do not have a "weather report" from the Yahoo Search Blog yet confirming the update. But I am sure it will come soon enough.

There is also a DigitalPoint Forums thread discussing a spike in traffic from one webmaster. Hopefully, you saw a spike in your traffic as well!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Over the weekend, Google updated the toolbar PageRank values. In fact, Matt Cutts of Google basically confirmed the update before it happened, saying:

I wouldn’t be surprised if new PageRanks started showing up this weekend or so.

I figured, since the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah is tonight, let's name it the Rosh Hashanah 5769 PageRank Update. 5769 is the year, like it is 2008 now in the secular calendar. And I'll upload our Rosh Hashanah theme right now for it:

The disclaimer: Take these toolbar PageRank updates with a grain of salt. The toolbar PageRank values are typically months old and do not always reflect the importance and value of a site on the web or even in the eyes of Google.

That being said, you can see most of the past Google updates and PageRank updates over at our Google PageRank/SERP Updates archives. We have tons and tons of discussion on this update.

Here are the forums discussing the update:

• Google PageRank Update, This Weekend!, Sphinn
• Google Page Rank has updated, are your satisfied, DigitalPoint Forums
• Google toolbar PR Update - 27 September, 2008, WebmasterWorld
• Matt Cutts on Pagerank and Serps, DigitalPoint Forums

Google told us not to rewrite dynamic URLs into static URLs. Google ripped of their Indian publishers, by accident. Google is loving them books in the search results. How often should you submit a reconsideration request? How quick is Google at approving reconsideration requests? Don't be a victim of AdWords hacking. Did you ever see a minimum bid of $100 or more? Are you making more money with AdSense now? adCenter desktop is going to add features. Google Maps in the night. Yahoo launches APT. Lisa leaves the West coast for the East coast. Lots of holidays are coming up, so we scheduled some posts. Check out more at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Major Google SEO Change: Google Prefers You Don't Use URL Rewrites
• Google Messes Up AdSense Exchange For Indian Rupee
• Google Pushing Book Search Results in Web Search Results?
• Should I Submit Another Reinclusion Request?
• How Long Did Your Google Reinclusion Process Take?
• Increase in Google AdWords Accounts Being Hacked Into?
• How To Protect Your Google AdWords Account
• Google AdWords Minimum Bids Reach £55 or $100
• Making More Money With Google AdSense in 2008?
• New Features Coming To Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta
• Google Maps Street View Offers Night Vision!
• Yahoo Advertising Platform, APT, Launched
• "Bruce Clay Blog Without The Lisa? That's Like Peanut Butter Without the Jelly!"

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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: September 26, 2008"

Happy Friday! Are you ready for the weekend? After this week's big news, I know I am!

Google Doesn't Want You to Rewrite Dynamic URLs
What big news am I talking about? Earlier this week, we found that Google would prefer your domain to be http://domain.com/site.php?id=44&pid=42&gid=22&uid=29249 instead of using rewrites that are more human readable (!), like this: http://domain.com/site.php/tamars-profile-page. Apparently, the change is because Google wants to understand the parameters to understand site structure. But at the same time, I have a hard time liking this change especially since Google is supposed to take pride in user-friendliness. I understand Google needs to learn, and they can do so without targeting SEMs. There are plenty of unoptimized sites Google can look at. Don't you agree?

Google Messes Up Indian Exchange Rate, Owes Advertisers Money
According to a screenshot provided by a Google India AdSense publisher, Google has screwed up the exchange rates. In India, $1 is 46.555 INR. However, Google has made it so that $1 is equivalent to 1 INR. Feeling slighted? You're not alone. My thought is that it'd be fixed soon, but in the meantime, if you're one of the affected individuals, just hold tight.

Google Integrates More Properties into Search
Google Book Search has apparently been migrated over to the regular search results. It may be a test at this time -- it's hard to say. Will people click on these results? Well, will you?

Submit Your Reinclusion Requests as Many Times As You Want
Okay, the title of this section is a tad misleading. If you have been penalized from the Google directory, you should submit a reinclusion request. If Google doesn't respond, keep working at it. Eventually someone should get to you. Speaking of which, we're running a poll to see how long it took for Google to acknowledge your reinclusion request and currently it seems that it takes more than 3 months. That's a bit frightening but is all the more reason why you should try to avoid being penalized in the first place.

Google AdWords Accounts Get Hacked Into
More and more spammers are seeing the appeal and ease of getting huge clickthroughs and impressions when using Google AdWords. You don't have to wait for pages to be crawled. If you make a high enough bid, you're usually on the front page of Google on the sponsored side. This is probably why people are hacking into AdWords accounts where they can: it makes some people rich. Well, keep in mind that you can protect your Google AdWords accounts by following some basic security procedures (and then some).

Poor Quality Keywords Will Raise Your Minimum Bid
You want to rack up some incredibly high charges on your Google AdWords accounts? Don't optimize your campaign. Advertisers have seen $100 minimum bids which often means that the quality of the campaign is low. Optimize, optimize, optimize!

Are You Making More Money in AdSense This Year?
With a huge recession affecting a ton of people in the world, are you making more money this year in AdSense than in 2007? We're running a poll. Hint: it's close.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta has New Features
There are a list of new features to be introduced into Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta including the ability to spot and remove duplicate keywords and a variety of bug fixes.

Google Maps Street View in the Dark?
I'm not sure if this was intentional, but Google Maps Street View comes in two flavors: nighttime and daytime vision. The former is hardly helpful if you actually want to see where you're going. In fact, the clarity of the map image I spotted really needs work. Feature request: Google, can you please actually review the quality of images?

Yahoo APT Launched
The we-still-don't-know-what-the-acronym-means Yahoo APT advertising tool has been launched. It has some promising features, such as a larger ad inventory, a large audience, technological innovations, and more.

Lisa Barone is Going to NY
YES! RustyBrick is happy to announce its newest hire, the very talented Lisa Barone, who is leaving California and is moving eastbound. Oh, wait. Yeah, Lisa is coming to the east coast, but we're not exactly sure where yet. (Thus, in case you didn't catch it, this is a joke.)

The New Year is Next Week
In case you weren't paying attention (and most of you aren't, but that's just fine!), this is the last week of the Jewish lunar year. The year 5758 is drawing to a close and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, will be celebrated next week. What does that mean for you, our valued Search Engine Roundtable readers? Well, that means that Barry and I will be out of touch on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, but that doesn't mean we're going far -- we have already prewritten several blog posts that will be scheduled for the days we're offline. They won't be breaking news, but they will be informative and should help you with your search engine marketing strategies. We hope to have our other authors blog the newsworthy stuff, so stay tuned.

Shana Tova!

Yesterday, I went through a bunch of my feeds and saw Matt Cutts announce a new toy from Google, Google Moderator.

The idea behind Google Moderator is that questions are asked to a group of participants and these people can vote upon the question. Sounds like a social site to me. ;)

Barry suggests over at Search Engine Land that this is a bit like Yahoo Suggestions, and he may be right. But Barry also mentions that Yahoo Suggestions is specific to Yahoo feedback, and users can go crazy with Google Moderator -- it's not limited to anything.

Pretty cool tool. Check it out.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Jordan Kasteler recently published a short 14-question quiz asking whether you're a social media addict. Questions range to "do you have more friends online than in real life?" to "do you ask your real life friends if they're members on your favorite social networking site?" to "do you spend more time on social media than your family?" Other questions include "are you afraid to admit how much time you spend on social media sites?" or "do you go crazy when social media sites are temporarily down?"

I'm guilty. According to the quiz, the answer is 89%, though I take offense to such a low number. (Sorry Jordan! When you breathe, eat, and sleep social media, you're a default 100% and you wouldn't be afraid to tell the world. You're also allowed to freak out when other sites -- not Twitter -- go down! When Digg did a few times, I went NUTS.) :)

How do you fare? Take the quiz.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting seeing an spike in the number of instances Google is showing Google Book Search results within the web results. A few other members have agreed in seeing a larger number of book results in the Google web results.

Robert Charlton speculates Google may be testing if searchers like these results. And based on click data, they may decide to keep the results more prominent or not.

I think it is a seasonal thing. As one member points out, "these have been there for weeks and are increasing their density by the week." What is about this time of the year? Back to school maybe? In fact, almost exactly last year, we reported the same exact issue. Last year on September 24th I wrote, Google Book Search Results in Google.com Organic Results? It was discussing how members noticed an increase in book results coming up.

Google started experimenting with Google Book Search results in web search back in December 2004.

So do you think this is a seasonal thing for back to school season or just a test?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Andy Beard started a Google Groups thread asking why Google seems to be handling tagged pages (tag cloud results) in a "fairly random fashion." Andy goes through examples of how Google sometimes indexes these pages, sometimes shows a cache page, sometimes ranks them well and sometimes not.

Google's JohnMu has a fairly long response on the topic. In short, John said he does not believe that Google treats tag pages any different than any other page on the Internet. Let me quote John:

I'm not aware that we're treating this kind of page any different than other pages. A tag page can be a good resource for users, at the same time it can also be that it would make sense to send the users to an article directly instead of having them take the "detour" through a tag page (I imagine it depends on the actual query). In most cases, I would assume that these tag pages are more of value to us in helping us to find the content that is linked from them. If a new article comes up and is listed there, we'll want to go grab that article as fast as we can.

But tag pages can be problematic in many cases because:

• They don't often have very much unique content from your other pages
• Some tags may be very close to others, where the only difference may be punctuation or capitalization
• In a sense, they are a form of search results - kind of

We went through this dilemma when adding our tag cloud about a year ago. Honestly, I find my tag cloud here incredibly useful and relevant for my search experience - so I am glad I allowed it to be indexed.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A Google Groups thread asks the question on why when a advertisers sets his AdWords campaigns to "Rotate: Show ads more evenly" in the campaign settings, does it not always rotate 100% evenly?

The advertiser asked:

The "% served" is skewed as follows:
Ad 1 75%, 25%
Ad 2 58% 42%
Ad 3 35% 65%

Why are these ads not displayed 50/50?

AdWordsPro Steph said that there are other factors involved when it comes to when ads are rotated evenly. Here are some reasons why an ad may not be served evenly with others:

For example, if an ad is created late in the day, it will have a lower ad served percentage at the end of the day than the existing ads. This difference will lessen as the ad gains new clicks and impressions.

Also, if an ad has yet to be reviewed and approved by AdWords Specialists, it'll only appear on Google.com. If it isn't yet generating impressions on the Google Network, an ad will have a lower ad served percentage.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a three page thread on the topic of Google messing up yet again with the exchange rate given to publishers. This time Google equated one US dollar to one Indian Rupee. The true current exchange rate is $1 US to 46.555 INR. Yes, a huge difference.

The main questions Indian AdSense publishers are asking themselves are:

(1) Is this just a reporting glitch?
(2) If not, how long will it take for them to get the difference they are owed?

We have seen this happen in the past. First with Australian publishers and then with Canadian publishers, every time - it benefited Google.

I know the US dollar is at risk, but $1 US to 1 INR?

Honestly, don't panic, I am sure Google will make things right.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Google is aware of it and will let us know what they will do to fix the issue.

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: September 25, 2008"

People using Google Reader who rely heavily on keyword shortcuts aren't happy. A Google Groups thread has a few forum members baffled. The documented behavior follows:

I noticed that the "n" and "p" keys, used to scan down and up through the posts in list view, now causes the selected post to move to the top of the view's window whenever pressed. Prior to this, the displayed posts did not move, allowing movement through the displayed posts.

Many forum members echoed this sentiment. Roger of the Google Reader group says that the keyboard shortcuts will be replaced. I'm a bit curious myself as to why the behavior changed, especially since so many people are dependent on keyword shortcuts and are used to status quo, but I'm glad that the Google Reader team has opted to make the changes and listen to the feedback.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

What happens when you're running a search query performance report on Google AdWords and you get the result "2 other unique queries?" What is Google saying here?

According to AdWordsPro.Sarah, the issue is that Google's computers are only able to process so much information and usually they put the relevant information (the higher trafficked keywords, that is) in one category with data. Anything else -- the outlier keywords -- are grouped together and not treated distinctly. To Google, those are the low traffic keywords, and Google denotes them as "other unique queries."

Sarah explains:

I like to think about it like this: If I am running on the keyword 'purple socks' a user might search 'where can I find a new pair of purple wool socks near me?'. This query would trigger your ad, but it is a highly unique search that is unlikely to happen more than once. I usually tell people that, if the keyword is lumped into 'other unique queries', is very low traffic and not a keyword you would want to add to your account. This also helps you figure out which keywords are the right ones to add without cluttering your account.

At the same time, while Google doesn't see it as such, your low traffic keywords may be your best converting keywords, especially if they are long tail keywords. Therefore, perhaps having them in the search query report is useful .

What do you think? Do you think Google should give us a report for outlier keywords?

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

The Yodel Anecdotal Blog talks about the launch of APT from Yahoo, a new digital advertising platform that advertises "quality inventory" and "drive[n] results."

Here are some features of APT for Yahoo, according to YahooPete:

• For publishers, this platform is designed to open up access to large demand and help improve yield from all inventory, while simplifying ad management. It is also designed to help publishers create new revenue opportunities by cross-selling with other sellers to increase supply.
• Advertisers and agencies will be able reach a large scale of quality audiences across multiple properties on a single platform, and harness insights on those users, helping to drive better performance as they simplify media buying. It will also broaden the offerings that agencies can offer to their clients.
• Ad networks will gain access to more audiences and demand--including Yahoo! and the largest ad exchange--in one place, simplify the process of doing business with all of these partners, and expand revenue opportunities.
• Partners and developers will be able to easily bring their technologies, solutions and innovations to a vast marketplace, and help all buyers and sellers do business more effectively.
• Users will benefit as well, with a more relevant online experience. They'll see better targeted and more engaging ads.

Will you get APT immediately? No -- it's currently being rolled out slowly to Yahoo users and this will probably continue though 2009.

Now guys, what exactly does APT stand for?

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

As a result of many Google AdWords account hijackings and the false charges that are often associated with such an intrusion, netmeg at WebmasterWorld has suggested some procedures to keep yourself in the clear and away from hackers. The list includes changing your password to your Google AdWords account and changing any associated client account passwords. Following that, especially for AdWords account managers, contact your clients and make sure that they are aware of the dangers of Google AdWords when accounts are being hacked into.

The above steps can help you have a "clear mind" with regards to your account, but the next step is to review who already has access to the account and cleaning out users who don't need to be there (or who aren't active).

Now, review those charges you have. Netmeg says that you should run a report on the account and review all charges to ensure that you know exactly where they are coming from. Do this on a regular basis (weekly, monthly, or whatever).

Since security is important and you definitely don't want to rack up thousands of dollars of charges due to AdWords break-ins, it is important that you have some sort of security strategy in place.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A couple days ago TechCrunch reported that a man named Hubert Chang claimed to be the third co-founder of Google. Yes, not just Larry and Sergey, but now, Larry, Sergey and Hubert (has a ring to it).

Here is Hubert's video:

Google truth, the truth of Google's birth from googletruth on Vimeo.

Both Google and Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani has denied that he founded Google. Here is Google's statement:

There is no substance to Hubert Chang’s claims - he had no involvement in the creation of Google. Neither Larry or Sergey have any recollection of meeting him - however, given the number of people they’ve met in the last decade it’s impossible to say categorically that they never have. Rajeev Motwani, the Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Stanford, believes he may have shared some emails from Mr. Chang with Larry and Sergey in 1997 or 1998. But in any case PageRank had already been developed by that time, and Larry and Sergey had already decided to start Google.

Here is Rajeev Motwani's statement:

To the best of my knowledge, his claims about being a founder of Google, coming up with the name and/or the business plan etc, are completely unfounded in reality. I am sure I would have noticed a third founder, if one existed, since I was working closely with Larry and Sergey at Stanford the time.

I do recall receiving a couple of emails from Hubert Chang in 1997 or 1998. Its been such a long time that I don’t have any recollection of their contents but it’s probable I shared those emails with Larry and Sergey. In any case, by that time the basic idea of PageRank was already in place and there was a clear intent of building a company around this. I am pretty certain that none of the three of us actually met with Hubert Chang during that time period.

So, do you believe Hubert is a co-founder of Google? Take our poll:

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

About a week ago we reported about the news that Yahoo is testing a new home page design. Since then, we have really not heard any chatter about people actually seeing the design in place. I personally see the old design and that is expected because Yahoo is testing out the new design on a test group.

Last night, a DigitalPoint Forums thread started, telling members that he saw the new design. This user was using Internet Explorer and was automatically redirected from www.yahoo.com to m.www.yahoo.com. Clicking on m.www.yahoo.com will not load the new design for everyone, because most users who tried it, including myself, do not see the new design.

Aurora Brown, the individual who saw this new design, posted a screen capture at AuthorityDomains.com:

It is a simpler design, but will Yahoo users like it?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

We have been tracking a Search Engine Watch Forums thread on feature requests for Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta. That thread has just been updated by adCenterRep with a promise of new features.

The new features coming soon to adCenter Desktop Beta includes:

• Enable us to change the status of an ad group from "draft" to "active" within Desktop. If there is a way to do this, I couldn't find it - I had to log in to adCenter to activate my draft ad groups - a major pain!
• Find duplicate keywords and allow easy de-duplication (select highest/lowest clicks/imps/avgpos/CTR/avgCPC, etc.). See AdWords Editor.
• Search based on criteria like clicks, impressions, cost, CTR, avgpos, avgCPC etc. Again, see AWE.
• cannot search for more than one keyword at a time. As far as I can tell, adCenter Desktop only allows searching for one keyword at a time. I need to routinely perform bulk searches of a few hundred keywords at a time. See AdWords Editor for how they implement bulk searching in their Advanced Search.
• I cannot specify if I am searching for keywords that match my search string exactly, or keywords that contain my string, or keywords that contain my string as a full word. See AdWords Editor's Advanced Search.
• adCenter Desktop fails when trying to download a large account with tens of thousands of adgroups and a hundred thousand keywords. A desktop editor is especially useful for advertisers with large accounts, so it's disappointing that it can only handle relatively small accounts.

All these issues should be addressed in the next update to adCenter Desktop.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch 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: September 24, 2008"

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread suggests that Google AdWords is not monitoring landing pages. Discovery caught a screenshot of a deceptive landing page with Javascript that tried to make a user go to a page that he/she hasn't tried to access.

Doesn't Google have an obligation to stop this? Perhaps better phrased, doesn't Google say that it looks for these violations of its TOS?

The thought, perhaps, is that these are relatively new landing pages and Google hasn't crawled them. But still, perhaps they should whenever a new URL is entered into the system to avoid giving off the perception that there is some sort of deception going on. Regardless, it looks like a flagrant violation that needs to be addressed, and in most cases, it would be seen as Google's responsibility to clean them up.

What are your thoughts?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

With all the hype about the new Google AdWords Quality Score, Google Groups is providing useful tips on how to improve your score and to keep it high.

It's helpful, AdWordsPro.Sarah suggests, to do an account cleanup. Look into your keywords and clean up those that are not performing well. They shouldn't be there.

If you have keywords that also have 0% CTR and a few impressions, you should also remove those.

All of these should help improve your Quality Score and also to make account management easier. In fact, it may just prevent your minimum bids from increasing to $100.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

A WebmasterWorld discussion (paid subscription required) touches upon the fear of penalties with too many inbound links. As many people realize that original content and original research really does help garner those inbound links, sites that provide exhaustive information can really get a lot of inbound links in a short period of time. The webmaster in question is seeing about 100 links a day. Could that raise a red flag and mess with rankings?

Most people agree that it's a matter of time until Google sees this behavior and filters out the site for the abnormal activity, especially since it's not a high profile site. Age and trust of domains are important for the Google algorithm and penalties, according to forum members.

Last week, we blogged about a patent that explains this whole phenomenon. Too many inbound links is perceived as spamming the search engines.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld (paid subscription required).

Most SEO companies out there have been involved in submitting and waiting on at least one reinclusion or reconsideration request with Google. Not to say that you had a client that was penalized by Google but maybe you had a new client that switch to you after being penalized and you had to 'clean up the mess.'

How long did it take you to get reincluded after submitting the reconsideration request with Google? If you submitted several of these requests and each took a different amount of time, do let us know. Here is a poll that I hope fills most possible answers. Please round to the nearest number and select all that apply:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Groups thread has a webmaster questioning the date shown in Google Webmaster Tools that shows the "Home page crawl" summary. In short, the data may be older and slower to update than other tools you have in your arsenal. Google's JohnMu, confirmed that.

Here is a screen capture of Google Webmaster Tools for this site:

Here is a screen capture of the Google cache for this site:

Both were taken almost exactly the same time, but as you can see, the Google cache has a more recent date. Of course, for most SEOs, this is nothing new. But for those that do not know about this, it is good to know that you have nothing to worry about.

Even the cache date above is a bit slow, because I know Google crawled and indexed articles from this site after that time listed. The date may mean a few things, but it does not 100% mean the last date Google crawled and indexed you content.

Alternatives? I'll quote John:

Sometimes it can take a bit of time for Webmaster Tools to update this information. Checking the cached version of the URL (or checking your server logs) may be more accurate if you need to find an exact date.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A Google Groups thread reported a minor scare from some advanced AdWords advertisers. They noticed that Google's AdWords API all of a sudden stopped returning data for the KeywordMinCPC. Advertisers were nervous that they would no longer be able to see a keyword's minimum cost per click.

Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team reassured us it was a minor and short bug. He said that it was excluded for a bit, but did not explain why Google excluded that data. Some theories have to do with the new quality score that went into place last week. But he said it was back and back to stay.

I've just received assurances from the reports team that KeywordMinCPC will remain a supported column.

Advertisers love this data and for reporting, it is an important metric for many advertisers.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports some advertisers are seeing minimum bids in their Google AdWords account as high as £55 or $100 US. Didn't AdWords drop the minimum bids with the new real time quality score? Yes, they did, but Google, as they said, did not remove that column from AdWords Editor or their API - just yet.

I have a screen capture of this in action, provided by AdWordsProfessional.com:

Pretty high those bids! Why are they showing? Well, as the real time quality score said, all keywords will be active now but most likely won't show if their quality score is very low. That is what you see with these keywords, I presume.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint 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: September 23, 2008"

The Google blog has officially said that they prefer that in most cases, you should not use rewrites to change your dynamic URLs to static looking URLs. In my opinion, this is a major 180° on basic SEO practices. SEO 101 is to make sure your dynamic URLs are search engine friendly. But now, that has all changed with this blog post and even well before this blog post.

Back in October 2006, we told you, Dynamic URLs? Google Is Officially 'OK' With Them. But even then, Google still recommended, "rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions" as good practice. Recently, in the past few months, we have covered many dynamic topics that all implied issues with using static URLs in place of dynamic URLs. Here are those blog posts:

• Google Webmaster Tools Warns Of Spikes in Bandwidth Fees
• Google: Duplicate Content Penalty Does Not Exist
• Google Sitemaps "Too Many Redirects" Warning

Why the change of heart from Google? For one reason, they can now better understand the purpose of the page from the URL structure. JohnMu explained:

One of the reasons for that is that we can use the information provided through the parameters to better understand what your site is doing with those parameters. For instance,the URL http://www.mysite.com/search.php?q=keyword can give us information about what is happening, it could even allow us to recognize that this is a search form and perhaps let us attempt other keywords that might lead us to content that we haven't seen for your site. On the other hand, a URL like http://www.mysite.com/search/keyword does not give us any information at all about what the "file name" is used for.

You see, Google can learn more information about the page and what it is suppose to deliver based on the URL structure.

But should you go ahead and undo all those dynamic URL rewrites? That is the question I asked but had no easy answer for at Search Engine Land. JohnMu said,

There is no "penalty" for switching URL formats, though it might take a bit of time for everything to catch up. One thing I would recommend is that you set up 301 redirects from all old URLs to the new ones (this is something that you should do in any case when changing URLs).

But, still, hundreds or thousands of URLs can take Google a long time to pick up on. Transferring that link popularity and indexing those new URLs can be a huge task for Google. And your site can suffer during that process. So what should you do?

I think it depends on the size of your site, the number of rewrites, how well those pages are ranking now and your analytics. Possibly, start slow - with the low performing URLs, see how switching those URLs may help. This can be a huge task and that is why god created SEOs and webmasters. :)

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

The Bruce Clay blog has had one of its most shocking blog posts in awhile -- The Lisa is moving on. Lisa has decided to move back to the east coast (she's from Long Island and she went to school in Boston!)

Since Lisa is like my favorite SEM blogger ever, I know I'm going to miss her Bruce Clay contributions to the SEM community. As Rhea Drysdale says on Sphinn, "Bruce Clay blog without The Lisa? That's like peanut butter without the jelly!" Similar sentiment is echoed on the blog post's comments, where Melanie Nathan says "This blog will *not* be the same without you."

Eric Lander describes the type of blogger Lisa has been on the Bruce Clay blog:

For as long as I can remember, Lisa, you've defined search industry blogging.

While other exceptional writers are in our space you have always written with a flow and style that no one else could touch. Your writing was the perfect way to infuse life to what I'd say is a pretty plain site design. That's not a knock either... Bruce Clay's blog remains one of the few that I refuse to read via RSS.

I'll miss your honesty and values the most. Search writers often try too hard to please the masses, kiss up to the personalities or just write what's safe for others to regurgitate. You've never seemed to be afraid to take an unfavorable stance and back it up with legitimate points

[snip]

Matt Cutts also bodes his farewell:

Hey Lisa, you've been an honest, authentic voice in the search world and I have an enormous amount of respect for you. Trust and credibility can be hard to come by on the net; it has to be earned over time. I'm not sure you realize just how much cred you have with so many people in the search community. All that and a great/entertaining writer to boot--that can be even harder to pull off, but you do it with style.

Well, at least the East Coast gets her now. In fact, I think Search Engine Roundtable would love to steal Lisa for some conference liveblogging. Are you up for that, Lisa?! :)

Best of luck, Lisa!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Are you making more money with Google AdSense in 2008 then you did in 2007? That is the question asked at a WebmasterWorld thread.

The answers are pretty much across the board, with only several responses. I figured, since we have a large AdSense publisher readership, that I ask you. So take the poll below:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Typically, TLDs (top level domains) that end with country specific IDs cannot be geo-targeted in Google Webmaster Tools. For example, if you own domain.co.il, you typically cannot set the Geographic target of that domain to England or the US. But there are some exceptions.

A Google Groups thread documents, at least, two exceptions to the rule. A .TV and .ME domain can be geotargeted using Google Webmaster Tools.

Here is a screen capture of a .com domain, cause I don't have a verified .TV or .ME domain to show you:

Do know that most ccTLDs (country level TLDs) do not allow you to set your geographic target.

Google's JohnMu explained:

You can set a geographic target for .tv domains (this is one of the few exceptions that we make regarding country-code top-level-domains). Also, keep in mind that sometimes local domain names can be popular globally just as well as generic top-level-domains.

I do wonder what the full list of ccTLDs are on that exception list?

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Over the past month or so, I have been noticing a larger volume of reports of advertisers claiming their AdWords accounts were compromised. Here is a recent thread at WebmasterWorld plus Jeremy Mayes, a seasoned PPC guy, was also compromised. There are many other newish threads with people reporting this issue and one of my accounts was even compromised a couple weeks ago.

Google handles this process very well. In fact, they alert you of the weird charges. They pause your account and ask you to change your passwords. They calm you and guide you through the security steps you should take. Also, they credit you for the false ads that the hackers created to generate leads to their sites.

But the number of these reports, from advertisers who I know are extremely careful about browser security and password security, has been climbing recently.

Tamar wrote a post about a month ago, named Google AdWords Account Hacked: False Ads & False Charges and Jeremy's PPC Discussions has an excellent roundup on what to do when you have been compromised.

My concern? That there is a loophole that gives someone access to your account, without knowing your password. Maybe through the API, maybe through AdWords Editor or maybe through some type of web security exploit. I might be a bit over dramatic on this concern but I just have a feeling (that is all I have, a feeling, no evidence) that there is some type of loophole, somewhere.

Forum discussion at 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: September 22, 2008"

Patricia Skinner is a hard working SEO with a dilemma: she has run into a few clients who never paid her for her services. She spent hours working on website development, design, and SEO strategy only to be promised fees that she never received. She found profitable keywords to help companies rank well against their competitors.

But her clients never actually paid up.

Sure, you probably had your own clients like this, and most of us are in a position where we could do something that would require them to hire a reputation management firm to fix. She's not entirely happy, and she's likely within her rights to expose them as bad clients, but instead, she ends her article with a good piece of advice:

If you’re reading this and you know you’re a shifty-eyed little bugger who owes someone money for work they’ve done, be a human being and pay them before your karma catches up with you.

The discussion has moved onto Sphinn where there's a lot of good feedback with regards to what should be done.

Barry Welford says that with the Internet being more open, we're held to higher standards and that "[i]t's better to create a good reputation than to have to manage your reputation in order to control damage caused by less than honorable acts."

Another suggestion is to strongly enforce contracts. If that fails, there's a small claims court. IncrediBILL gives some pretty good advice about the courts:

If you're in the US, small claims court is your friend. It's cheap, no lawyers involved, and most people settle right away once they know it's serious. Forget online reputations, most people don't want a judgement against them screwing up their credit.

Barry adds that credit agencies will also go after people who don't pay up, and they'll take a percentage. That's also useful to know.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Last week, I was looking for a business in NYC. I knew the location, but I wasn't 100% sure of the name of the business. Instead of guessing local businesses, I relied on Google Street View for some assistance. After all, you could see the local businesses after they've been captured by Google's Street View cars by going to Google Maps.

Or so I thought.

I went to the location I needed to be at, and I found Google Street View in the dark:

View Larger Map
(backup image link)

Naturally, this was hardly useful to me. I could make out Staples (who couldn't?) but the business, which is located right next to it, was not visible.

Meanwhile, if you still start going along same street, eventually, you'd see the building in daytime. However, at that angle, it hardly helps.

View Larger Map
(backup image link)

That leads me to ask: what is the benefit of having Google Street View at night? Who thought such a shoddy quality image would help us anyway?

On a related note, in one Google Groups discussion, it seems that people want Google Street View at night -- with a daytime option as well. Just be advised that there sharpness of the images at night is not as ideal.

I'll stick with high quality daytime images. Thanks Google. ;)

In a PC World article, Google has increased its market share, up to 63% from 61.9%. Yahoo and Microsoft both experienced drops from July.

The article states that "[t]he slipping market share of Yahoo and Microsoft doesn't speak well for their efforts to invigorate their online services and brands."

So is all hope lost? Not necessarily. One forum member writes that it's likely to see additional decreases in market share until Yahoo or Microsoft "make some major improvements to their sites or their search results." He suggests that they "make some new partnerships or buy out other companies as MSN has started doing."

Some also feel that Google's foray into the browser market may have contributed to the figures from last month.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

So, you have been penalized by Google. You think you cleaned up your site and you submitted a reinclusion (reconsideration) request. But you have not heard back from Google. Do you submit another reconsideration request? If so, how soon? That is the topic of discussion at this Google Groups thread.

A webmaster was penalized by Google. He submitted a reconsideration request, but has not heard back. So he continued his/her work to clean up any violations the site may have received. When asked, if he should send another reconsideration request, Google said yes.

JohnMu of Google said:

I would definitely submit another reconsideration request - it might be that there were still issues on your site when it was last processed. I would mention the things you have mentioned here and perhaps even link to this thread.

Based on how John wrote this, I personally would not be shy about submitting a second reconsideration request. If you believe you cleaned up all your issues, then go for it, even if you have not heard back from Google on your first reconsideration request.

But don't submit your reconsideration request when you know you still have issues. It just doesn't look good. It also is a waste for your time and Google's time.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that several webmasters have noticed that even though they are redirecting their non www to the www version, Yahoo is still listing their non-www as the main result.

This comes even after months of redirecting the non www using a 301 redirect, permanent redirect, to the www version. Here are some comments from the thread:

www.example.com redirects to example.com and has done so for quite some time now. Yet when I do a search for a two word primary key phrase, Yahoo shows www.example.com. A search for my domain name returns example.com.

I was at #1 for a few years but lost some ranking in August for this search phrase. I'm not sure if the ranking loss is related.

Is it a backlink issue? Doesn't appear so:

I looked, and can't find any backlinks at all to non-www but the homepage shows up both with and without for different searches.

So what is going on with the latest Yahoo update? Good question.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has primary used two sources of data for their Google Maps product. Google announced in a Google Groups thread, that they are going to be sticking with just one source for the foreseeable future. That source is Tele Atlas.

Maps Guide Adam explained that Tele Atlas powered Google Maps API and Google Maps for Mobile fully and will now power Google Maps fully. Adam explains that you should see many improvements, but there may be some issues with some locations.

While most of the map will look the same, and in many areas it will improve, there may also be some cases where the data may not be optimal.

If you find issues, Google recommends two things to help improve the map tool:

(1) Use the community edit feature.
(2) Tell Tele Atlas of bugs or mistakes over here

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Live Search had a major update. Google launched their new real time quality score. Google doesn't believe in a duplicate content penalty. Google updated a patent, and we learn a ton. Google Webmaster Tools is generating fake HTTP errors, while Google dropped the hidden site search feature. Google Mobile Maps gets new street views and walking directions, but not in Israel. 96% of you, Google yourself. United Airlines poll results are back. Google and Yahoo to proceed with search ad deal on October 11th. Yahoo is testing a new home page design. Friday was Talk Like a Pirate Day! Check out more details at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Live Search September 2008 Update Underway
• Google's New Dynamic Quality Score Now Live
• Google: Duplicate Content Penalty Does Not Exist
• Updated Google Patent Hints At Linkage Penalties and Site Expiry
• Google Webmaster Tools Generating False HTTP Errors
• Google Disable the "Hidden" Site Search Feature?
• Google Mobile Maps New Street Views & Walking Directions Not 100%
• Google Maps Adds Streets to Israel & Mobile Coming Soon
• 96% of Search Marketers Have "Googled" Themselves
• Survey Says: United Airlines (UAL) Stock Price Drop Blamed On
• Google & Yahoo's Search Ad Deal Kicks Off October 11th
• Do You Like Yahoo's New Site Design?
• Search Industry Celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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: September 19, 2008"

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! We're celebrating here and we hope you are too. It's year 13 of the holiday, and uh, I don't get it, but AHOY!

Microsoft Search Update Underway

If you visit the Live.com site frequently to check your rankings, you should have observed a search update. Most people are viewing some changes that seem to be pretty substantial.

Google's Biggest Quality Score Change Ever

Your Google Quality Score is now out of 10. If there's anything wrong with your keywords, ad copy, or landing page, you may see lower scores. Want a perfect 10? You can try this.

Google Says that Duplicate Penalties Don't Exist

We all know about the awful duplicate content issue. But did you know that Google has made a stance and said that it doesn't exist? Now you do. It's not really a penalty; instead, Google is essentially choosing the best content to be indexed.

But You Need to Worry About Other Penalties

Google has a patent that shows link penalties, like when you get too many links too quickly. That can happen legitimately, so Google has addressed that concern as well.

Google's Reporting Glitch

Many webmasters were bothered when Google showed HTTP errors but it's been confirmed as a problem. I even think it's fixed now :)

Google Disables the Invisible Site Search Feature

It seems that earlier this week, Google had hidden the site search feature probably because it was a feature that you used to circumvent the site: operator and was invisible to the user this entire time. However, we just discovered that it's working again, so cynics need to be silenced. ;)

I Want Updated Google Maps

I like Google Maps on my phone. I really do. When Google announced updated maps mobile with Street View and Walking Directions, I installed it but it didn't work. Does it work for anyone?

By the way, when it does work, hopefully it will have data for Israel. I'd love to see street view from afar!

What Are the 4% of You Doing?

I really do believe that the 4% of you who claim you never Googled yourselves are full of it. The other 96% of you are normal people. Congratulations.

Google Causes Stock Decline

Last week, the local paper in the city where I grew up was picked up in Google's news archives and caused a huge stock decline. Whose fault is it really, though? Well, we asked you, and most of you blamed it on Google. I must say I disagree; I believe it was the newspaper's fault for putting a story from 2002 on the front page, and they should've immediately addressed it. When they didn't, it became Google's problem, according to 34% of you. Uh, no.

Google Hearts Yahoo and Yahoo Hearts Google

Will Google ads be on Yahoo? It looks like October 11th will be the day that we'll see it live. Will the SEC review it? Maybe before then, maybe afterwards, but there will probably be no flexibility with that start date at this time.

Yahoo Redesign "Live" but Nobody Sees it

Yahoo will be getting more personalized with its new redesign which has been rolled out to select users, or so they say. It looks nice, but I want to try it!

G'day mates!

Reuters reports that Yahoo is doing an overhaul of its homepage, but that not all users can see it yet (like me. I never get the good stuff early). According to the Reuters article, this change is intended to "give users a personalized view of the wider Web."

Here's their screenshot:

I'm not entirely sure who is seeing the new redesign, as Yahoo says less than 15% of users have been exposed to it. Thus far, there's been no forum discussion on the impact of the redesign.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

On the Inside AdWords blog, the Google AdWords team says that the AdWords Site Stats logo is no longer mandatory. The post says that there was a "Google Site Stats" text area that would be displayed when a conversion occurred which gave visitors information about AdWords conversion tracking (and instructions on how to remove it if you never wanted it).

Given a variety of negative feedback, like this WebmasterWorld thread, for example, Google has now given you the opportunity to remove it.

If you want to remove it, you will have to actually opt out manually. This is not an automatic process. Instructions for doing so are here.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

We've briefly seen search tool Powerset in action at SES just a month ago. They were acquired by Microsoft around that time and are already being integrated into search results. The Powerset blog explains some of the feature offerings: Freebase Answers, improved captions for Wikipedia results, and new related searches using the Factz engine.

The blog also shows a screenshot of a relevant search. Unfortunately, I can't reproduce it just yet.

From what I see so far, these new features look quite promising.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, one of the geekiest days of the year. Yes, our geek companies are loving up the day!

Google Pirate Search interface, via Google Blog:

Dogpile pirate looking dog:

Facebook's translation via TechCrunch:

FriendFeed's logo:

Our, Search Engine Roundtable's theme:

Finally, I dressed up for the day!

Last year Flickr had a pirate logo, but not this year. And Ask.com in 2005 dressed up Jeeves as a Pirate, not since.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

To continue our coverage of Google ads on Yahoo Search, where advertisers are both happy and sad about this deal...

The SEC has been sitting on reviewing the deal and requested more time. Google CEO said that with or without SEC's review, they will be launching the deal on October 11th.

"While we have been talking to regulators, we don't know what their position is," Schmidt said. "We don't know if they think it's a good deal or poor deal."

There is some leeway on that date, but not much, said Schmidt.

This is very important for search marketers.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing an updated Google patent named Information retrieval based on historical data. This is one of the more popular Google documents over the years, where much of the Sandbox theories came from.

In any event, Tedster pulled out several abstracts that are new in this document. I will highlight only two that I find would be very valuable to our readers.

(1) How does Google know when a site has changed enough where they should drop all the past trust and link popularity associated with that site?

...if the content of a document changes such that it differs significantly from the anchor text associated with its back links, then the domain associated with the document may have changed significantly (completely) from a previous incarnation. This may occur when a domain expires and a different party purchases the domain... All links and/or anchor text prior to that date may then be ignored or discounted.

So it is not just about changing the domain name registration information. That is why many folks who buy sites, try to keep the same style and category of content on that domain.

(2) We heard it before, "Don't get links too quickly" because it seems unnatural. Well, here it is on paper:

The dates that links appear can also be used to detect "spam," where owners of documents or their colleagues create links to their own document for the purpose of boosting the score assigned by a search engine. A typical, "legitimate" document attracts back links slowly.

A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links.

Yes, for most sites, you don't get 50,000 links overnight. But for some sites, it is possible for several reasons. So how does Google determine which sites naturally received these links so quickly? Well, if I understand this correctly, they look to see how quickly those links go away and the "dynamic-ness of the links." Here are those explanations from the document:

According to a further implementation, the analysis may depend on the date that links disappear. The disappearance of many links can mean that the document to which these links point is stale (e.g., no longer being updated or has been superseded by another document). For example, search engine 125 may monitor the date at which one or more links to a document disappear, the number of links that disappear in a given window of time, or some other time-varying decrease in the number of links (or links/updates to the documents containing such links) to a document to identify documents that may be considered stale. Once a document has been determined to be stale, the links contained in that document may be discounted or ignored by search engine 125 when determining scores for documents pointed to by the links.

According to another implementation, the analysis may depend, not only on the age of the links to a document, but also on the dynamic-ness of the links. As such, search engine 125 may weight documents that have a different featured link each day, despite having a very fresh link, differently (e.g., lower) than documents that are consistently updated and consistently link to a given target document. In one exemplary implementation, search engine 125 may generate a score for a document based on the scores of the documents with links to the document for all versions of the documents within a window of time. Another version of this may factor a discount/decay into the integration based on the major update times of the document.

Tedster goes a bit deeper into signs of the old supplemental index, which I did not go into over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Recently, maybe a few weeks or months ago, Google Maps added street data for Israel. Before, they only had limited Satellite data for the country. But now, you can get street outlines with very limited street names in the map product.

Here is an static image of the map of the "Old City" in Jerusalem. The blue markers represent where I stayed and learned for about 4 months of my life. The green patch at the bottom was a place we played soccer. The outline with the square box and circle in the middle, is the Western Wall and Temple Mount.

Notice the interactive version still has no street data. Here is a live embedded map, which will likely change to show streets in the future:

View Larger Map

In any event, a Google Groups thread asks when the street outlines will be coming to the mobile version. Google Maps Tom hinted that it would be soon, he said:

Map data that appear on the desktop version Google Maps generally makes its way over to the mobile version. I don't have an exact timeframe for when roads in Israel will be updated, but you can expect that they'll appear eventually :)

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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: September 18, 2008"

Are you a heavy user of Google Maps for Mobile? Google has announced that both Street View and Walking Directions have been added to the handheld application. If you want to see it in action, go to google.com/gmm from your mobile browser and then download the application for your phone.

While this is promising and I'd love to see it myself, some forum members are reporting issues with street view. There are three separate reports that street view is not available on the new version for Windows (2.2.0.19). I just downloaded 2.0.2.0 for my Palm OS (yeah, sorry Google, I'm that old school) and I, too, don't see it.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Earlier this month, Bill Slawski wrote about how search engines use images to rank web pages. He explains that search engines often look at text, alt tags, and similar contextual elements to rank images. He also refers to a Microsoft patent that uses image scores to aid in rankings. This system considers the contents of an image (whether it has a person, is a photograph or not, etc.) with its position on a page and then its site level features (which may distinguish between navigational images versus one-time-only images).

On Cre8asite Forums, iamlost wonders if there are other elements that will impact the rankings. For example, do page layouts impact these rankings? Do CSS or HTML resizing of image dimensions impact the scores?

I suppose these could have open-ended questions at this time. However, yannis has responded with some good image optimization techniques.

• He says that you should enclose your images in divs (defined by a photo class).
• Image titles should be in h3s or larger.
• Images that you want search engines to know about should be 35-40% of the page size and should be on the top of the page.
• The image name is still important.
• Captions should be added to images.
• Never forget those ALT tags (but TITLE tags are not as important).
• You don't need LONGDESC.
• You can refer to the image from somewhere in your content to boost its relevance.
• EXIF information from images may be important in the future but it is not being used now.
• Search engines are getting smarter at figuring out what is in images (face recognition, for example).
• Use aesthetically pleasing images.

There's a pretty valuable ongoing discussion over at Cre8asite Forums with more member follow-up, so check it out.

Last year, Matt McGee wrote the 2007 version of 21 reasons why you need a break from SEO. This year, Matt shares 21 more reasons why you may need to take your SEO break. Reasons include:

* searching for social media avatar photographers (instead of wedding photographers)
* having your spouse keep track of your conference schedule (and adding SEX to the calendar!)
* communicating with your spouse via blogs
* finding marketing potential for Google's new virtual world
* syncing Matt Cutts's vacation schedule with your own personal calendar

...and more. Matt's list always gives a good laugh, so read it before you finish swallowing that coffee.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

About a week ago, we asked Who's To Blame? Google or Tribune for United Airlines Stock Drop. We unfairly only gave really two options, Google or the Tribune. When I posted the poll, many (16%) responded with the "other" option, citing either the brokers are to blame and reporters are to blame for not doing proper research. True, there are many to blame for this.

But let me share with you the full results:
:: Google is to blame said 33 respondents or 34%
:: Both is to blame said 29 respondents or 30%
:: Tribune is to blame said 20 respondents or 20%
:: Someone else is to blame said 16 respondents or 16%

We know the SEC is looking to pin this on someone. The question is whom? Clearly, our poll shows that there is a lot of uncertainty on who is to blame for this.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Ever since Google launched their AdSense contextual ad program, publishers had a theory that Google had a cap on how much publishers can make. Some believe the cap is a certain dollar amount, some believe it is an equation based on percentages and some don't believe in this cap, at all.

A WebmasterWorld thread has recent discussion around the AdSense Glass Earnings Ceiling theory. If you read the thread, some swear by Google instituting a cap of some kind, while others said they never experiences such a cap. The seniority of members who believe in the cap are mixed also, so who really knows?

Let's poll our audience, do you believe in the cap?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Buy links, trade links, sell links, request links, links, links, links - what does an SEO or webmaster do? You can't live without them, you can't live with them. A WebmasterWorld thread has a fun thread that somewhat sums up the "conundrum" SEOs and webmasters are in, when it comes to building link popularity.

Here is the post that sums it up for many SEOs:

We're paying an SEO firm some big bucks. They have recommended that we buy links to our website from directories including Yahoo!, BestoftheWeb, Family Friendly Sites, Gimpsy, Business.com, GoGuides and several others. They also mention in their report that paid links are frowned upon by Google. Yet they still think it will help our rankings a lot.

I've been under the impression for some time that Google will actually penalize a website, and even remove it from results if you pay for links -- due to intentionaly manipulation of their search results.

It all seems a bit odd. I mean what do you do? Anyone who is performing any sort of SEO is surely attempting to manipulate Google search engine results. So if they frown upon paid links they should frown upon all SEO (after all time is money essentially).

It seems odd that Google would ban a site for paying for links, yet they don't ban sites that perform any other SEO tactics, that are performed purely for the sake of improving rankings (artificially manipulating SERPs).

My boss is asking whether it's safe to buy these links. I'm pretty sure Yahoo! is safe and a few of the others on the list. But what makes one paid link safe and another not, excluding a no-follow?

And don't say it's because they refiew your site -- only a total idiot would pay $300 for someone to review their site. We're blatantly only interested in the link. And we only want that to improve our rankings right?

As senior member, Wheel, said, "You've completely encapsulated the conundrum we're all in."

Can't place blame anywhere. Google wants sites that have earned trust naturally. Webmasters want their sites to be trusted quickly.

Forum discussion at 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: September 17, 2008"

On WebmasterWorld, netmeg did a test with a bunch of blended ads. Other ads, however, weren't as blended in with the theme of the site. Surprisingly, after viewing analytics, netmeg learned that blending hurts: the non-blended ads performed better than the ones that fit in too well with the site design.

netmeg is not alone. Other people notice that unblending is yielding better click throughs and cost per impressions.

How does this make sense? Here's a quote from the thread:

Ive always believed and used a 'third' colour to 'highlight' the ads as blending too much makes them look like the rest of the 'content' that gets skimmed rather than read, the third colour stands out, I tested it a while ago using CTR as a benchmark, the results were as you found netmeg.

So what do you conclude from this? First and foremost, if you're monetizing consistently, check your statistics to see how you can improve your campaign. Avoid blending a little too much. Above all, test and retest your copy and colors.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

In case you didn't know, you can upgrade your Feedburner URL to feedproxy.google.com. However, some people noticed that feedproxy.google.com is actually disallowing robots.txt -- odd, huh? In fact, the problem has been breaking some feeds.

Fortunately, Google has been paying attention to the relevant discussion and will be adding the following code snippet to the robots.txt file for feedproxy.google.com:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /~a/

Google has updated the issues page to confirm this update has been completed. Google said this will fix the issue: "This should permit all readers/crawlers that previously retrieved feed content, but now get a blocked response, to start working properly again. Our apologies for any inconvenience you may have encountered! "

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Want a quality score of 10? Here's an easy way to do it. On Search Engine Watch forums, abbotsys explains the procedure that was attempted.

Take a 2 word keyphrase (e.g. word1 word2). Register a domain with word1word2 in the name, like word1word2.com. Build a simple page for the domain with word1 and word2 in the title tag. In the actual content, talk all about word1 and word2. When abbotsys says simple, he means it: there are no ads, no navigation, and absolutely no links.

Run that page as the landing page for the keyphrase with word1 and word2.

What happened next? Google gave abbotsys a 10/10 quality score and the ad cost a mere $0.01 per click!

Will that perfect quality score last forever? The next step is to see whether the quality score of the landing page, with zero incoming links, will be reduced over time.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting early signs of a major Microsoft Live Search update. The rankings, indexing and algorithm seems to have updated.

First reports came in from senior member, textex, at 9:30am (EST) yesterday. Since then, other members began to confirm the update. Old time member, Marcia, said:

A ten place drop from first to second page for the first site I checked isn't looking too appealing right now.

It looks like sites with a LOT of backlinks have risen to the top, I'm seeing some that have been ranking at Google for similar search terms, and have checked their link profiles in the past.

It'll take more looking, but I'd say it's definitely an update.

I checked my analytics and I see a major change for many keywords overnight from the Live Search referrals data. So I also can confirm seeing changes with Live Search.

The last major Live Search update we reported on was in July 2008.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread uncovers a very interesting occurrence that is taking place when using a site command feature, known as the "hidden" or "invisible" site command search.

If you want to search with a site command but don't want the referral data to show that you are using a site command while searching, you use to be able to use a flavor of a Google Custom Search Engine to get at it. The example given is:

http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft&sourceid=webmasterworld&num=100&sitesearch=webmasterworld.com

Notice that when you search using that command, up come videos from YouTube.com or video.google.com, included in the webmasterworld.com results. A site command is suppose to restrict the results, only to results from that site, i.e. webmasterworld.com.

The same issue happens when you change it to sitesearch=seroundtable.com. But it is not an issue when using the Google Custom Search Engine that I placed on this site, see here.

At first, I thought it may be an issue with Google Custom Search Engines. Because last night, TechCrunch reported that there was a major outage with the Google CSE. But Google said they fixed that, so that is not the issue.

Maybe the thread creator is right:

I suspect google have deliberately broken this method of site searching precisely because it is invisible to the user, and they would rather people use the Custom Search Engine system instead. But that's just the cynic in me.

Who knows, maybe this is the wrong query string in the first place?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Webmaster Tools seems to be generating a lot of fake errors. About a month ago they fixed the false 404 errors and now this month, they are reporting false HTTP errors. Here is a screen capture of the overview report from my Webmaster Tools login area for this site:

There are a dozen or so reports on this issue at Google Groups with others complaining about this issue. It worries webmasters to see this issue. For me, I just brushed it off, but I can see how it can really worry e-commerce sites and publishers.

JohnMu of Google has confirmed the issue, calling it just a reporting glitch that will be fixed shortly. He said:

This appears to be an issue in the reporting side of things in Webmaster Tools. As far as I know, the "General HTTP errors" should be gone soon :-). Thanks for bringing it to our attention, you guys are the greatest!!

True, the feedback in the groups is an invaluable tool for Google to improve and fix issues.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

David Naylor asked if Google is starting to hate blogs, based on his blog having indexing issues. He gave several forms of evidence to support the issues Google is having when indexing his blog.

Well, blog owners and writers, do not worry, Matt said that Google still loves blogs. In a Sphinn thread, Matt said:

We still like blogs, I promise.

The issue with Dave's blog seems to be just that, an issue. Matt commented at Dave's blog saying:

I mentioned this post to the crawl/indexing team, so they may check it out–thanks for mentioning this.

So I assume things will get better for Dave's blog soon.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

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: September 16, 2008"

As we know, algorithms are very powerful in influencing the search results. However, we also know that Google has human evaluators -- thousands, in fact. In a recent blog post on the Official Google Blog, one of Google's engineering directors shed some light into the role of human evaluators. The relevant piece of information is here:

Google makes use of evaluators in many countries and languages. These evaluators are carefully trained and are asked to evaluate the quality of search results in several different ways. We sometimes show evaluators whole result sets by themselves or "side by side" with alternatives; in other cases, we show evaluators a single result at a time for a query and ask them to rate its quality along various dimensions.

Tedster at WebmasterWorld is pretty interested in these results; the fact that human evaluators actually look at results side by side to help improve the quality of its search results is pretty reassuring.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

James Duthie at Online Marketing Banter is celebrating his one year anniversary at Sphinn. After spending a year on the social news network, he's been able to tell which kinds of Sphinners exist. There's the Sphinn hater (who ironically spends too much time on the site and calls for attention about how much they hate Sphinn and awfully resembles my relationship with Digg), there's the inane comment spammer, the flamer, the purist, the voting whore, the eager newbie, the star, and the leech.

I'm not even sure where I fit, and I'm not even going to give this a go. ;)

So which one are you?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Have you created a video recently? Did it have a video transcript? The Google Video Help document actually suggests one; in fact, you should also code it appropriately like so:

HH: Hours starting at 00
MM: Minutes starting at 00
SS: Seconds starting at 00
mmm: Milliseconds starting at 000

But is it helping the user? In response to the Cre8asite Forums post by Barry Welford, iamlost says that this time coding is beneficial for Google's data-mining process but not so much for a general user. In a way, I'm compelled to agree. I'm the kind of person who would rather read a transcript, but in the format that Google suggests, it's not as user friendly as I'd prefer.

Li Evans says, however, that transcripts have really helped her -- they've produced "amazing results." There are a few open ended questions directed at her about how she applied video, so check out Cre8asite Forums for the continued discussion.

About a week ago, we polled you on if you Google yourself. And we received just about a hundred responses from the Search Marketing community. The results were what I expected. Only 4% said that they never have "Googled" themselves, while 96% said they do or have.

Here is the break down:
:: On Occasion said 61 respondents or 37%
:: Often said 58 respondents or 35%
:: Rarely said 32 respondents or 20%
:: Never said 7 respondents or 4%
:: Rarely said 6 respondents or 6%

The "Other" comments were basically, yes, they do, but they use Google Alerts. I would classify those as "Often."

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

I cannot tell you how many times we see threads that are either reporting or questioning if there is a Google PageRank update. We try to document all "real" toolbar PageRank updates here, but often, very often, there are smaller updates or not updates at all, of the PageRank bar, reported in the forums.

I figured I highlight one such thread, because Google's JohnMu adds some insight into why people might see a PageRank 0 or update before its time.

A Google Groups thread has one member worried that his PageRank dropped from a 4 to a 0. John, from Google came in to ease this webmaster's concern. He said:

Keeping in mind that we only update PageRank for the Toolbar a few times a year, it might be that there was just some "fluke" with regards to your site right when we updated it. For example, it could be that at that moment, the www- or non-www version was more relevant, now that other version is. At any rate, I don't think you need to worry too much about that :). Two things that you could do are setting a preferred domain name in Webmaster Tools if you haven't done so already and setting up a canonical redirect to that preferred version.

In summary:

• Toolbar PageRank is updated every few months
• Other updates are likely flukes due to canonical issues or issues contacting Google's servers.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google announced last night that the real time quality score algorithm would be live within days. Many are now reporting that they are seeing it live in their campaigns. I personally logged into a few of my accounts and noticed it was live for me also. Here is a screen shot:

I'm 100% sure it's live in my account and it's ugly.

I bet this causes Google to lose money, not make more money. People are really getting fed up with all this quality score BS and lack of transparency.

I bid on my own @#$@!#$@ brand/site name and my quality score is Poor. Whatever google!

It seems to me to be a dilution of the QS as it allows more ads to be shown.. The previous non dynamic thing was a take it or leave it kind of a thing.. This allows more options for Google to use up ad inventory.

I'm seeing the new QS now on my accounts. No more MinBids, or inactive keywords, just an "estimated bid to show on first page". So far there are no surprises, all my ads are running as expected and ad ranks are unchanged. Pretty much transparent so far. Will continue to monitor.

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: September 15, 2008"

Jeremy Schoemaker recently blogged that DMOZ may be acquired by the great guys at BOTW. While BOTW has no comment regarding the possible acquisition, personally, I think the BOTW guys would be the most ideal group to take upon this project. They're dedicated and really have worked on building a solid product, which is why so many people stand behind them.

Sphinn members agree. As we already know, DMOZ has been suffering a slow downfall for the past few years, and it's time for a good replacement to come in. I wholeheartedly support this if it happens, and I hope it does!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Google Analytics is a good platform for statistics, but you really can't drill down to specifics and get hourly breakdowns of your conversion data. That's okay -- almost -- because there's a workaround that SteveLaLonde presents at Search Engine Watch Forums.

He says that he implemented a duplicate web site profile in Google Analytics and then applied a filter which shows AdWords data only. Of course, it doesn't you real detailed data, but you can gauge overall trends.

As always, it would be great if Google would actually incorporate this data without a workaround (hint hint, Google), but if you're looking for something to hold you over until Google actually does enhance their Analytics, this is a reasonable solution.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There's a big problem in the SEO industry and that's the fact that people are not using SEO terms correctly. Jill Whalen has written a great post on Search Engine Land to this effect -- she says that due to there being no industry definitions, lack of knowledge (or laziness), and "old wives tales" (where people misinterpret something happening due to something else), SEO terms are not really understood at all times. She closes her great wirteup with a powerful statement: "After all, if the very people who make up our industry can't get it right, how will others?"

Would you disagree that this is a problem? Most Sphinners think that Jill is spot on the money. Here's a great response to the article from SEOAly:

Part of this problem comes from a combination of ignorance and being cheap on the part of site owners and designers opting for SEO consultation, rather than hiring an SEO to do the work. Some aspects of SEO can't be dumbed down into a bullet point list of tasks for those who will actually be making the changes. Hence the common reference to ALT tags, headers, title META tags, etc. - they don't understand enough about the concept of SEO as a whole to know what the terms actually refer to.

Aly also makes a rational follow-up "argument" that I personally identify with -- a lot. A lot of people, she says, claim that they know SEO when they don't. Those who know SEO don't usually say "hey, I know SEO!" There are a lot of charlatans out there.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

You're an SEO. You are tweaking client pages and billing your clients at the end of the month. Is there a standard industry practice of what you should actually put on your client bills, such as work completed?

There is no "industry practice" from what many of us have heard. However, in the event of any work completed, this is something you need to judge for yourself. If it's a small invoiced amount, typically, you don't need to do a breakdown of work completed. If it's a lot larger, however, you may want to tell your client exactly what work was performed.

Torka makes a good statement regarding acceptable billing practices that work for you and the client. Your results may vary:

I think the goal should be to achieve balance so the client feels comfortable they're getting what they pay for, and you aren't overly burdened with recordkeeping and reporting requirements.

If in doubt, discuss with your client.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

The New York Times has a story about an AdSense/AdWords arbitrageur, a webmaster who makes money off getting visitors to his site through AdWords to have them click on his AdSense ads. The story is named Stuck in Google's Doghouse, where Dan Savage who runs SourceTool.com has sent a nine-page, 4,000-word letter to the antitrust division of the Justice Department over Google's business practices.

We have discussed the topic of arbitrage in this sense, even before it was coined that in the SEM world. But in May 2007, when Google decided to shut down arbitrageurs from what some may call, sucking the life of of the search results, it had a major hit for many small website operators. Including Dan Savage who made his money on making a few pennies of profit on those clicks.

Every since Google introduced the landing page quality score components, advertisers have been complaining big time. I wrote a pretty good summary of the history behind these AdWords Slaps in July, so you can read up about it over there. In short, while advertisers may have been paying $0.10 per click to get traffic, they may now be paying $10.00 for the same click, due to "quality score" factors that rose their bids.

Dan Savage is calling this move as monopolistic, at least in his case.

Google, he believed, didn’t like his Web directory because it was a search engine itself — though much more narrowly focused than Google’s search engine — and Google found it a competitive threat.

What’s more, Sourcetool competed directly with business.com, which was one of Google’s “content network partners,” meaning it gets additional advertising revenue because Google directs AdWords ads to the site as well as AdSense ads.

My thoughts? I am torn. I honestly don't think Google is going after business they find to be competitive. Heck, we see Yahoo advertising on Google, Ask.com advertising on Google and visa versa. But I do believe Google went after "arbitrageurs" because they felt the quality of those ads and results lead to a poor search experience. That is my thoughts and I can be wrong.

The debate is pretty wild in some of the forum threads:

• Is Google A Monopoly And Doesn't Know It?, The NY Times explores, Cre8asite Forums
• Adword Arbitrageur fights back?, WebmasterWorld
• NYT: Stuck in Google’s Doghouse, DigitalPoint Forums
• NY Times Background Story on DOJ AntiTrust Investigation, WebmasterWorld

Friday, Google posted a blog post named Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty". The blog post basically describes what many of us have been saying for a long time. Google does not typically penalize for duplicate content, but duplicate content can cause issues for certain pages to rank well. Non-malicious duplicate content is when you have pages that are very similar to each other, like filtered down search results or product option pages. If Google detects duplicate content they:

• When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
• We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.
• We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

So Google is determining for you, what is the "best" URL for a search query. If your pages get clustered together, it may cause an issue for the true "best" URL to come forth. Also, Google will consolidate the link popularity of those URLs but may miss some and then that can hurt a bit.

Some SEOs are arguing about the definition of a Google penalty in the threads, but I won't get into that.

Forum discussion at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.

About three weeks ago, I covered a story at Search Engine Land on Google Blogoscoped finding Google testing two video results, in the web search results, on the same line. Here is a picture:

It appears Google is continuing the test. AccuCast started a Search Engine Watch Forums thread showing two video results on the same line, for a search at Google UK for MTV awards. I personally do not see it, but I kind of like the two video results on one line.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google's Mayer talks about the future of search. How do those Google Sitelinks really work? When should I resubmit my site to Google? How do I rank my images in Google? When I move my site, how do I redirect? How does Google speak to us? Google Germany drops video porn. Is Google or the Tribune to blame for United Airlines? AdWords quality score has not changed yet, but when will it change? Search newspaper print in Google News Archive. Do you Google yourself? Check out more details at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Marissa Mayer of Google Speaks about the Future of Search
• Why Don't My Sitelinks on Google.com Match My Webmaster Tools Sitelinks?
• When Should I Submit a Reinclusion Request to Google?
• Google Answers: Why Are My Images Missing From Google?
• Using Redirects to Move Your Site to a New Domain
• 2008 Guide to Google & Webmaster Communication
• Google Germany Drops Adult Video Sites Like RedTube.com
• Who's To Blame? Google or Tribune for United Airlines Stock Drop
• Google AdWords Advertisers Anxiously Wait For New Quality Score To Hit
• Search Old Newspapers as Paper with Google News Archive Search
• Poll: Do You "Google" Yourself?

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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: September 12, 2008"

Hello from Florida! Hope you all had a nice week!

Google News Archive Release

We've seen some cool projects from Google these past few weeks, and the Google News archive is pretty impressive. In a nutshell, Google will be providing scans of old newspapers and is possibly causing libraries to cease to exist. I sometimes wish Google was as ubiquitous when I was in school. This stuff rocks.

Your Geotargeting Radius Shouldn't Be Smaller than 20 Miles

Want to target to only 57th Street in NYC? Google will tell you that you can't set your radius smaller than 20 miles, so you can't really fine grain your results that narrow. That's too bad for New Yorkers who may want to really focus on specific parts of Manhattan, but at the same time, it makes a lot of sense for those less densely populated areas.

Check if Google is Indexing All Your Pages

If you want to see which pages are in Google's "supplemental results", follow the instructions provided by Michael Gray.

When You Should Request Reinclusion on Google

Earlier this week, we asked 'when should you submit a reinclusion request on Google?' The answer is simple: when you actually know you have gotten a penalty and rectified it. If your rankings drop, that does not necessarily mean you've been penalized!

Google Lets You Communicate

Who here has complained that Google isn't being responsive? Um, yeah. Well Google lets you submit feedback and communicate with them with a variety of web forms. Use them. Use Google Groups too. They help!

Google Also Lets You Redirect

While most of you know that 301 redirects are the best way to tell search engines that your site has moved, Google interfaces with webmasters who still don't know about it. Plus, you can figure out which pages have been noted by Google as changed versus which have yet to be crawled and reindexed.

Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop App Coming Soon?

It's almost 2009, and there's still no desktop editor for Yahoo Search Marketing. We have no official word from Yahoo if it's going to happen, but people speculate that '09 is the year that it will be released. Who wants to bet when it will be released? I think Barry will give away schwag for the person who guesses the closet date; be advised that you need to get your vote in by next Friday to be counted. (This is also a way to check if you guys read the recap, so comment regardless.) ;)

Google Should Understand the Negative Impact of Reputation Management

Do the negative results in Google fluster you when your relevant brand pages are pushed down because of a more viral -- but negative -- story gets ranked higher? Well, Google seems to make reputation management a problem for many companies and brands, and Eric Lander isn't a fan.

Yahoo Search Update Gives More Traffic

The Yahoo September 2008 update has been really good to most publishers. They're reporting 30-50% of an increase in traffic. Good stuff all around.

Google Talks about Sitelinks

Ever wanted to know about sitelink consistency on Google.com versus the Google Webmaster Tools? How about how sitelinks are chosen? Or criteria for appearing in the results? Google has written answers to some sitelinks FAQ and it's pretty informative.

Find Your Google Images

With all the talk about images being indexed in Google (or not), Google has finally stepped up to the plate to let you know what you can do to find out more about it.

Get Out of the AdWords Sandbox

There's a Google AdWords API sandbox issue Images aren't being created. The two possible conclusions: Google doesn't care so much about a sandbox environment or image creation isn't really a popular method.

Google Germany Bans the Porn

Did you ever travel to Germany to find pornography on Google? Well, Google's pornographic content -- at least videos, have been removed from Google's Germany index. According to Google, there are local laws that govern what can and cannot be retrieved on Google, so you may want to visit another country to stumble upon some interesting adult cinematics.

Random Trivia: Google's Webmaster Tool Verification Code is Not that Random

Ever wanted to know how the Google Webmaster Tool verification code was generated? Well, it's based on two factors: your URL and your email. Cool.

Are You a Forum Spammer?

Do you spam forums? Perhaps you're doing it and don't realize it. In a way, this is why WebmasterWorld has a strict no-linking policy; self promotion is bad news (and doesn't leave a good taste in people's mouths). Forum moderators are examples; follow them to know exactly what you should do and should not do.

Google Satellite Takes Off

This past weekend, Google launched a satellite into orbit that should help gather high resolution images of the planet. I'm pretty excited to see these photos and hope that Google will publish them soon.

Most of You Like Googling Yourselves

Seriously -- there are seven of you who don't Google yourselves? I find that hard to believe. What's the logic behind that? :) As Wiep says in the comments, "Those who said 'never' are probably either lying or checked the wrong box." Let's hope we have honest folks here!

Logos Galore

There wasn't much of a significant holiday this week, except that we did commemorate September 11th. Sadly, Google doesn't do the "memorial" logos; instead, they do the funny and lighthearted ones. This week, Google China celebrated Teacher's Day and Google all over the rest of the world celebrated some physics project: the Large Hadron Collider. (I spelled it right this time!)

As far as Google's 10th birthday logo, it hasn't been pushed live yet. We're expecting to see it on September 27th. Anyone want to guess what it will look like?

Matt "McDreamy" Cutts

Matt Cutts is dreamy. People dream about him more often than not. One day, Matt Cutts will prepare breakfast for Barry -- at least, that's what he wants.

Also, the SEOs are squares, according to Ranked Hard. I particularly like Jim Boykin's square. Which one is your favorite?

It appears like the Google Webmaster Central team is testing a new verification process for Webmaster Tools.

A Google Groups thread reports finding the following data in his log file:

66.249.71.119 - - [11/Sep/2008:10:17:09 +0100] "GET / google38b4a154a92b0b4f.html HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

66.249.71.119 - - [11/Sep/2008:10:17:09 +0100] "GET /fdfdkll.html HTTP/
1.1" 404 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://
www.google.com/bot.html)"

Googler, JohnMu, said that this is related to Google testing a new verification process:

The accesses of "/fdfdkll.html" were made by an experimental new system that is set to complement / replace the existing Webmaster Tools verification system. In the future, the requests should change to the more common "/noexist(...)" that we're used to. I'm glad to see that progress is being made on the verification system :-), thanks for bringing it up!

Google Webmaster Tool's current verification process was always been someone awkward for webmasters to get working and share with their clients. So here is hoping to a better system soon!

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

It appears Google Germany has removed many, if not all, adult video sites from their index. A Google Groups thread reported this, where an adult video site owner said his Adult Tube site was removed from Google.de and so were all his competitors.

Googler, JohnMu, explained that a site command for at least one of the sites, such as site:www.redtube.com, returns a message from Google that it was removed due to local laws.

If you click over to ChillingEffects.org it explains:

A URL that otherwise would have appeared in response to your search, was not displayed because that URL was reported as illegal by a German regulatory body.

The same with other sites, such this message, "German Court Order against display of privatamateure.com and youporn.com."

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

On the Official Google Blog, Marissa Mayer has spoken about her role at Google and the future of search. She explains that search will be becoming more mobile, that voice and natural language search will probably be more emphasized, and that other advances will be made as well. Additionally, Mayer talks about the impact of universal search and personalization. Finally, Google will likely emphasize language using machine translation.

Mayer concludes her insightful blog post letting us know that search will be forever improved and that it is "a science that will develop and advance over hundreds of years."

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Tomorrow, between 10AM and 2PM PDT, Google AdWords will be down for maintenance. During this time, you can't log into your account, but your ads will run normally.

There's nothing special for this maintenance as far as I can gather, but Google reminds us that they run this on the second Saturday of each month, so tomorrow it is.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

If you haven't seen my coverage of the Google News Error Aids In United Airlines Stock Drop at Search Engine Land, let me bring you up to speed in a couple lines. Earlier this week, Google's news crawler crawled Florida Sun-Sentinel website to find a link to an article that discussed United Airlines filing for bankruptcy. The article was actually an old story, but had no date, so Google picked it up as a new story. Then others saw the story on Google News (not on their home page), assumed it was new, and wrote about it. United Airlines stock price feel about 12% on that old news.

A day later, Google blamed the Tribune (the owner of the web site) for not dating their article. Google explained the link was found on the home page, Googlebot crawled the link, indexed the article, and found September 7, 2008 as a date listed on the page. Tribune then came back blaming Google for the mistake, saying that the URL is old, never changed, the content is the same, and it is all the same from 2002. The only thing that happened was that the article became a "most popular" link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel website, but the link and URL was old.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the "Securities and Exchange Commission opened a preliminary inquiry into the circumstances around UAL Corp.'s stock drop, according to people familiar with the matter." John Reed Stark, head of the SEC's office of Internet enforcement said, "Anytime anyone spreads false information over radio, TV, Internet message boards or chat rooms, about a public company that will raise questions as to whether someone is committing securities fraud."

So who is to blame? That is the discussion at a WebmasterWorld. Should legal or financial action be taken against either company? Should we learn from this and improve the process and algorithm to make sure it doesn't happen, but not take any action? This is a tough call, very tough call.

Here is a poll, who do you think is to blame?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Poll results now live at Survey Says: United Airlines (UAL) Stock Price Drop Blamed On.

Yesterday we talked about how Yahoo is lacking a desktop editor for their search marketing platform. Today, there is a nice thread at Search Engine Watch Forums on the topic of improving the adCenter Editor Beta application.

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, Mel66, said offered up five pieces of advice:

1. Don't require us to hit "save" to save the changes, it is too easy to forget
2. Add help content in the tool
3. Give better warnings as to why something might not be working
4. Enable status changes from "draft" to "active"
5. Allow us to mass edit the parameter based keyword destination URLs.

Of these five suggestions, the official adCenter representative confirmed items number one and two are coming soon.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Ever ask someone to add a link to your site as part of some link building strategy? Most people have encountered link building requests every so often in this sphere. Have you ever asked? Have you had success? Wiep Knol has explained why most link requests fail.

The end result? It depends on who, what, when, where, and why. For the "who," you want to be identifiable and more transparent than the person named Kelly who has a standard email address. Use your company URL, a portfolio link, etc.

The "what" comes down to whether or not you really care to provide some useful information. If you are providing the desired anchor text, you will likely be ignored. Give a summary and let the webmaster you pitched figure out what he or she wants to do with it.

Wiep also speaks about the other 3 W's -- when, where, and why. It definitely should give you some good tips on how you can request those links.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

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: September 11, 2008"

Michael Gray has composed a post that helps SEOs find out which pages of their site haven't been crawled, which becomes increasingly more important due to Google's removal of the supplemental index. He explains that you should put a timestamp on every single page, after which you wait about 2 months. At that point, you can perform a search for the article plus the date and you should get your results.

Michael then explains how you can optimize those pages to have them become crawled and provides other informative insights as well.

Is it worth the hassle? It depends on how important this is to you. The goal should be to integrate code into the page so that you don't have to manually add timestamps to every single page. Still, if it is important to you and you want to know (but don't have the resources available to code it in the footer), it may be worth the effort to do it.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Want to see some industry figures dressed up in comics as ... erm, squares? Well, if you do, go to the Ranked Hard blog and check it out. You'll find a nude Vanessa fox, a Jim Boykin ninja, a guy named Brad Smart who I've never heard of (and who Ranked Hard says is a fictional character anyway, so I guess I'm not totally out of the loop), and more.

Check it out for your morning laugh :)

For old time's sake, this should remind you of that US game show, Hollywood Squares.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

On a Cre8asite Forums thread, a forum member is looking for the ideal link building strategy. If you had to choose one kind of quality link, which would you go for: a relevant site with a high PR but not so many indexed pages, or a site that has a low PR but many indexed pages?

That's not an easy question to answer. If you had to choose one, more people are compelled to agree that the site with more indexed pages will perform better, even though the PR is low. Of course, PR is a metric that many people still feel should be ignored, however. But perhaps you shouldn't only look at the links -- people may consider you to be a competitor if they are a high PR site. Using that logic, you may want to go with the other types of links as well.

As Ammon John points out, this is a "situational decision." You need to evaluate your goals to see which tactic and link methodology you want to take first.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Google has an AdWords Editor, Microsoft is testing adCenter Editor (beta), but there is no word from Yahoo on a desktop editor for their Search Marketing platform.

An old WebmasterWorld thread was recently refreshed with the question, when is it coming?

One member recently received a survey from Yahoo's Lori Love Vice President of Customer Solutions. The survey mentioned the editor, but had no hint as to when of if it will ever come. One advertiser was told by his platinum specialist that Yahoo advertisers may see something in the first quarter of 2009. He did add that the editor will be lacking many features that you currently find in AdWords Editor.

Yahoo has been under a lot of stress recently, primarily over their search ads division. I wonder if the editor is a priority right now for them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We discussed the value of adding a Sitemap file in Google in the past. And we also discussed the various data you can send to Google about each of URLs.

In a Google Groups thread, a webmaster created multiple Sitemap files for a single web site, broken out by category. He set the priority details for each URL based on the priority being relative to the whole website and not relative to the individual Sitemap file. But when he checked the analysis tools, he noticed that Google was warning him that that all pages are the same priority.

JohnMu of Google explained that this is an known issue for some people who submit multiple Sitemap files. John said, just ignore those errors, because Google will see the priority on the site level and not on the Sitemap level.

Technically, the priority value is relative to the website -- however, our analysis tools compare it on a Sitemap level. This can lead to situations like yours. Generally speaking, I wouldn't worry about these warnings in that case.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Many paid search programs offer a way to geotarget your search ads. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft allow you to specify a radius in X miles, for how wide or small you want to target a specific location.

I question many advertisers ask, when using such a feature, is... How small of a radius is too small? That question was posed in a Google Groups thread, where AdWordsPro.Steph suggested you want to make your radius no less than "20 or 30 miles around."

Why not less than 20-30 miles? Steph explains that if your radius is defined to such a small area, then you might miss targeting "people that are actually in your target area." She also recommends you expand the targeting feature to not just the radius option, but select specific metro areas.

For me, it all depends on which area you are targeting. If you are a bike courier service in Manhattan, you likely do not want people in Westchester County to see your ads. So, setting your radius to a smaller number might make sense. But in this case, you likely want to target the NYC metro area.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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: September 10, 2008"

Eric Lander doesn't like Google's business practices. In a recent post, he explains that Google is sacrificing relevancy for profits -- because well, money seems to do most of the talking. Eric explains that he's been getting a lot of reputation management clients who are sick and tired of seeing bad results in the top positions in the SERPs. Those companies who typically have that tainted reputation are still trying to promote ethical business practices, but it's almost "required" of them now to hire an outside consultant or company to push down those negative comments on RipOffReport and other consumer advocacy site results. Eric writes:

You’re in a position where you are being trusted to provide *factual* results and information to your users based on their search behaviors. And lately, all you care about is making that click and earning that ad revenue. ... At what point do you cross the line, create an indelible conflict of interest and eventually implode under the pressures of the investigative eye?

He has a great point. As forum members point out, Google is influential and one wonders if their goal is truly altruistic. Other forum members are a bit upset that Google has hurt them while they helped promote Google to begin with.

Is this type of behavior going to last forever? Some say it's going to end eventually. The question is "when." I'd also like to know "how."

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

When search engines were born, there was a search engine results page that almost completely mimics what we see today: a URL, a description (perhaps), and a link for related sites.

Not much has changed within 10 or so years. We still see a search result, a description, and perhaps a link to similar pages, among other options.

For the most part, things have remained the same. But Dr. Pete shows that the SERP is changing, most notably with direct access to Onebox -- without SERPs at all. This behavior can be acknowledged with the iPhone and with Mozilla's Ubiquity.

Is this the end of the favored SERP, then? Not so much. Dr. Pete suggests that you don't ignore the opportunities to adapt (and preferably early) so that you can take advantage of these opportunities.

While this isn't an entirely new phenomenon, it's important to realize the correlation of this to personalized search: that the "10 blue links" may be replaced with multimedia, maps, and more. Blended search is becoming increasingly more mainstream, so it's not something to overlook.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Do you ever check yourself on search engines to see what people can find out about you at the tap of a few keys and the click of a button? Do you find yourself checking what search engines know about you for perhaps personal gain, reputation management, or any other reason?

The last time we mentioned this topic was in December 2007 where we cited a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project that found that 47% of Americans are using search engines to find out what the Internet knows about them. Chances are in the last 9 months, that number has grown.

In our world, it's hard to envision that people are not looking for information about themselves on Google. I read every so often about how magazines encourage you to Google your prospective date so that you can find out if there's chemistry. Human resources departments typically look on Google and even social networking sites to find out about prospective employees. If you don't Google yourself, I'd be a bit shocked.

Answer the poll below honestly and let us know if you look for yourself on the search engines -- if even once or twice.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Poll results now live at this page.

A Google Groups thread has confirmed reports that the Google AdWords API image creation feature does not work properly in the sandbox environment.

When programmers try to enable the image ad feature in test mode (sandbox), they get an exception response from Google that the image could not be recognized.

AdWords API representative, Jeff Posnick, confirmed the bug in the Sandbox, saying:

It's looking like there might be a general issue with image creation on the Sandbox, yes. I'll post more when I hear back as to what might be going on.

When this will be fixes is currently unknown. I am sure it is not a huge priority, being that this is two areas which are not critical. (1) Image ads are not incredibly popular in Google AdWords and (2) The text environment (Sandbox) is not a critical area of concern for Google.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Today in China, residents are celebrating Teacher's Day. Consequently, Google has joined in by sporting a nice logo for the occasion.

On this side of the pond, though, there are no teacher's days to be seen. But that doesn't mean there are no festivities. Google has its own logo today for the Large Hadron Collider, which apparently is a particle accelerator complex that circulated its first beam today. (Yeah, if you didn't catch that, well, neither did I. However, Hitwise may help).

Here's the logo you'll find on Google.com today:

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

We have been talking about the sensitivity of Google Image Search for a while now and the topic has made it to the popular picks discussion in Google Groups.

Googler, Evan, posted a Google Groups thread discussing the various reasons why an image may not be found in Google Image Search.

The first step is to see if your images are indexed at all. So you basically need to go to images.google.com and do an image site search i.e. [site:seroundtable.com].

Then, if your images are in the index, great. If not, then change the SafeSearch Filtering from the current filter to "Do not filter my search results" in the image search preferences. Then do the search again and see if any or more images are found. If your images are now found, then you know your images are classified as not being Safe (or being adult in nature). Yes, Google has been known to be very sensitive in this area.

Evan also adds that Google indexes and ranks images on more than just your alt text and title tags. Google also looks at the "ranking of the parent or linking page," the page linking to the image. Evan also recommends that you "consider how unique and compelling the content is beyond the image itself, with the context and information surrounding it." Finally, he says you must be patient.

Be very, very patient as changes do often take some time, meanwhile continue to provide relevant content for your users and things should eventually work out.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Elections are at the top of mind in the United States and that means campaigning. Search Marketing is now a proven and important avenue for politicians to work in, to promote their brands, name, campaign and ultimately win the election.

A HighRankings Forums thread has an SEO asking for tips on working with politicians in the search engine optimization and marketing space. Here are some of the tips found within the thread, but I do recommend checking out the discussion.

• Target politician's name
• Go after misspellings, if it makes sense
• Target your competitor(s) name and misspellings
• Target popular topics, such as climate change, human rights, gun control, Afghanistan, climate change, and so on
• Test first with AdWords
• Use press releases, Wikipedia, Blogging, Social Media, offline contacts and more

The ideas go on and on.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.

Just about three weeks ago, Google told us about the new, dynamic AdWords quality score that they are testing out. We saw that some advertisers have seen the new quality score in place, and we posted screen shots of those changes found in the AdWords console.

The thing is, many advertisers are sitting and waiting for this new AdWords algorithm to hit. They are anxious and scared. How will this impact their business? Will it cost them more money? Will their ads drop in positions? Will they have to close up shop and work at the local post office (not that working for the USPS is a bad job).

Google's official representative, AdWordsAdvisor updated the WebmasterWorld thread to confirm that the new quality score is not yet live. AdWordsAdvisor said:

Please note that the Ads Quality changes being discussed in this thread have not yet launched - except to a very small number of advertisers, as was mentioned in the blog post linked-to in the first post.

There is still not estimated time of arrival for the new ad quality algorithm to go live. But we sit and wait.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google has announced that the update is coming within days of Monday, the 15th.

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: September 9, 2008"

You might run into an issue with your web site one day and find that Google may remove your web site from its index. What can you do to address this issue? Depending on the issue you encounter, there are several different options.

If the problem is a result of a technical issue with your site (URLs not crawlable because of a server issue or coding problems), you don't need Google to reconsider your site for inclusion since Googlebot will crawl your site repeatedly until the issues are resolved. In other words, reconsideration requests are only needed when you actually did something bad that ticked off the Google gods.

That leads me to my next point -- or the one that Googler Susan Moskwa refers to. What happens if you lose your rankings in Google all of the sudden? A lot of people think that if their rankings drop, they're been penalized and think it's an appropriate time to send Google a reconsideration request. Usually, these traffic drop issues are more in your control than you think.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Following another Google Popular Picks thread, a forum member asks about the effectiveness of Google communication with the general public. How do you enable two-way communication with Google about your web site? The first suggested step is to register your site with Google Webmaster Tools.

Now that you're registered, you may want some insights into what that Webmaster Tools account privilege will afford you. You can be informed from Google about malware that may be inadvertently hosted on your site, for example (see here). You may also receive messages about infinite space (too many links with no real original content as explained here).

Google's tools also let you report paid links and report spam instances in the index.

If your crawl rate has changed, you will receive a notice from Google.

Finally, if you have violated Webmaster Central guidelines, you may also receive a message.

It's great to use the Google Webmaster Tools for this communication, but one forum member (and I) feel that Google should take advantage of the RFC2142 requirement to contact webmasters via the necessary support mailbox names. By default, those names are postmaster, hostmaster, usenet, news, webmaster, nntp, uucp, and ftp. Obviously, you don't need to maintain all of those accounts; I'd prefer correspondence to go to my webmaster@domain.com address. Otherwise, you're somewhat held responsible to check your Google Webmaster Tools page every so often to see if any alerts come in -- but when a problem arises, you shouldn't necessarily be going to Google; they should be coming to you.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

In one of the detailed Google Popular Picks thread, Googlers discuss the issue of redirects.

In March, the Google Webmaster Central team talked about moving your site from one location to another. In this post, however, JohnMu gives more insight onto how you should work with redirection.

If you move your site or domain and change the structure, a 301 redirect is still the preferred tool for notifying servers about the new URL destination. If you moved specifically from an old domain to a new domain, it's helpful to use this operator:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:old-domain.com

where old-domain.com is your old domain. That way, you can see how many pages Google has in their index of your old domain only.

When you consider moving your site, you should also look into addressing duplicate content through URL parameters as the Google Webmaster Central blog discusses.

Finally, what about when you move your URLs and you have absolute URLs in the paths? That's the preferred method, but Google can parse through the relative URLs as well.

If you have any questions or want to chime in on the discussion, the Google Groups thread is still open.

As forum moderators with years of experience behind them can attest to, there are a lot of spammers on the interwebs. As Roger Montti of WebmasterWorld says, there are three different types of spammers from noticeable ones to the not-so-noticeable spammers. Here's his breakdown:

1. Users who bulk-spam forums for links. Their links are usually poor quality and they simply have no idea how to market themselves or their sites.

2. Amateur spammers who try to "spread the love" about their site and write related forum posts about their somewhat-related-but-not-really blog.

3. Users who think it's acceptable to post links that only point to their own blog posts about a newsworthy topic. Sometimes that content is good, so those posts may not necessarily be removed.

You know what they say, though -- you need to network in order to be noticed. New bloggers assume that it's safe to start commenting about their site on every single forum post so that the word spreads. (Instead, I'd argue that you should write interesting content FIRST with a signature for your site on forums that allow such a thing.) After all, it's a lot easier to detect self-promotion. On a personal note, I had a guy comment on a blog post with his "amazing" video on Twitter, complete with made-up testimonials. I sternly told him that it's not allowed, and he responded to me saying that "you act as if I'm selling something." (He was selling something: his content -- himself.) The point of forums is to participate in a community and not to abuse the audience and assume that it's acceptable to shove content down their throats that they may not necessarily have an interest in.

It's an interesting discussion and one that you may have your own thoughts on.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, Google announced that they are bringing in searchable scans of newspapers into Google News Archive Search.

It allows you to search news, headlines, content, and even ads! Here are two ads for a Ford Model T, one from April 1912 for about $750 and a more recent ad from May 1982 selling it as a vintage car (no price listed).

How incredibly useful! Google said they will continue to scan papers and make them searchable.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever wonder how Google generates the unique verification code used for authorizing access to Google Webmaster Tools? There are two ways to verify your site in Webmaster Tools. One way is by adding a meta tag code to your header file and the other way is to upload a unique HTML file.

Ever wonder how Google generates that code?

Well, a Google Groups thread discusses some hints on how it is made. Googler, Susan Moskwa, said the file is unique based on two factors:

1. The web site URL
2. The email address used to register on webmaster tools

So, if you change the email address you used to verify your site in Webmaster Tools, you will need to reupload a new verification file, because the code will be different.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A question I hear a lot is why don't the Sitelinks I see in a Google search result, match what I see when I login to Google Webmaster Tools?

For example, here are the Sitelinks I see for a search at Google.com for search engine roundtable:

Then, when I login to Google Webmaster Tools and click on "Links" then "Sitelinks," I see a slightly different set of Sitelinks:

Why are they different? Those were one of the few popular picks questions asked to Google, which received a response via a Google Groups thread. Googler, Maile Ohye said:

In search results, the sitelinks displayed are determined algorithmically based on the user's query. So, while Webmaster Tools may show 8 sitelinks for your verified site, it's possible that search results show only a subset (e.g. search results display 4 sitelinks). Furthermore, the sitelinks displayed in search results can vary according to the query (e.g. different combinations of sitelinks for different queries).

This is similar to how Google shows your snippet in the search results and even the title in the search results. So showing a dynamic Sitelink set, based on a query, does make the most sense.

Some other useful Sitelink Q&A:

• Sitelinks are displayed based on 1) a relevant structure for your site conducive to sitelinks, and 2) that sitelinks will be helpful for the user's query.
• New Sitelinks are not immediately available after you block an old Sitelink.
• Every time you visit the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools, whether or not you modify your Sitelinks settings, the blocked sitelinks will renew their blocked time for an additional 90 days.
• Your site must have at least 3 unblocked sitelinks in order for your sitelinks to appear in search results.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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: September 8, 2008"

Let's say you have a very dynamic web site and you also generate your meta keywords dynamically. Could you be penalized (or receive a warning) if those meta keywords are very similar? In a nutshell, yes, though there's a 'debate' across two forum threads.

You may receive a warning in Google Webmaster Tools, but you will probably not receive a penalty. However, as JohnMu says in a Google Groups thread, those "warnings" are mostly nudges that you should try to diversify the meta data. You should keep in mind that the terminology should "makes sense to your users." If that means you need to work with duplicate meta data, then that's how you should proceed.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups.

Over the weekend, Google did one of the bigger things in its history (in my humble opinion) by launching a real satellite into space so that it can take high resolution images of the earth's surface. The Associated Press gives some detail into the technology that powers this launch:

A Delta 2 rocket carrying the GeoEye-1 satellite lifted off at 11:50 a.m. Saturday. Video on the GeoEye Web site showed the satellite separating from the rocket moments later on its way to an eventual polar orbit.

Cool? Well, they already have the lead on street view, so why not take it a step further? Of course, the skepticism mounts for taking behavior offline (though again, I think it's cool), and forum members are quick to acknowledge that this is not a project that is owned by Google. Google is partnering with other companies to make the satellite project happen.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Due to increasing privacy concerns with Google Maps, Google has decided to blur out all identifying information, including heads and license plates. For example, see the blurred head for an example of the measures Google is taking to protect the innocent.

View Larger Map

Apparently, though, forum members think that Google is infallible -- that they could never *possibly* mess up and forget to blur some content. In this case, someone (see URL on screenshot) found a "mistake" but didn't actually remember to link to the page for Google to fix it:

I actually did some searching and found a license plate that didn't seem to be blurred either.

View Larger Map

All in all, I don't consider this to be a big deal, but some forum members consider this a big mistake.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

I am seeing major reports on a Yahoo Search update at WebmasterWorld right now. The timing makes sense, it is just about one month from the August 2008 Yahoo update. I would not be surprised if we see a post today or tomorrow at the Yahoo Search Blog announcing the update, which they call the "weather report," based Danny's request but I gave Tim Mayer credit.

This Yahoo Search update is fairly major. Senior member, BillyS, said:

Our traffic is up around 30% on Yahoo starting some time Friday night. Is anyone else seeing this too?

I've always been under the impression that Yahoo gives a lot of weight to a domain's age. We might just be hitting one of those threshold values - our site is nearly 5 years old now.

Others notice up to 50% more traffic from Yahoo.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Yahoo announced the update, a day later, as expected.

I personally found this DigitalPoint Forums thread funny, where this SEO said he had a dream about Google's Matt Cutts. In the dream, the SEO remembers the following prophecy.

Matt Cutts was Matt sitting in a car. The SEO asked Matt, "how do I get to the top of Google?" Where Matt replied, "make it look as natural as possible."

Before you call this SEO a crazy dork, please consider his/her feelings and mine. I had a dream about Matt Cutts myself, but mine was about Matt cooking eggs. Go figure...

Have you ever dreamt about Matt or SEO topics?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

This year Google will be celebrating its 10th birthday. A major milestone for any company but for a company that is arguably the most popular brand in the world, this is something very newsworthy. If you looked at almost any news site, you would have seen articles celebrating the special 10th anniversary of Google.

But why didn't Google have a special logo up on their home page for the day? Well, Google has celebrated their birthday on two specific days. On September 7th, yesterday and September 27th. In fact, Google made this question a fun fact, it depends on when "people feel like having cake." I guess since yesterday was Sunday, why not wait until the 27th? Well, the 27th is a Saturday. So who knows!?

Google's ninth birthday was celebrated on the 27th, so was Google's 8th birthday and the 7th, but not the 6th birthday, which was on the 7th.

Here is looking forward to the 27th!

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and HighRankings Forum.

Check out screen captures of the new quality score in place. Google AdWords added geographic reporting. Google launches Chrome the browser, learn where to submit feedback, why is the PageRank indicator missing and will it win the browser wars? Private domain registration won't hurt your Google rankings. Google gets sensitive on image search again. Yahoo drops tons of links in Site Explorer. Ask.com goes slap happy on Google search ads. Most SEOs rather clean their sites up then trash them. Should SEO companies offer refunds? Google fixes Canadian exchange rate issue. Search rank checking tools should now work in Google. Google Maps returns the reordering destinations feature. Labor Day logos were fashioned by many, but not Google or Yahoo. Check out more details at SERoundtable.com.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed (note: If YouTube shows a video not found message, just refresh the page and play it again, it is a YouTube bug):

For the original iTunes version, click here

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• First Screen Captures of Google AdWords New Quality Score & First Page Bids
• Where In The World Are My Search Clicks Coming From: Google's Geographic Report
• Can Google Win The Browser Wars With Google Chrome?
• Submit Your Google Chrome Feedback Over Here
• Does Chrome Signal The Removal of Google's PageRank Indicator?
• Search Community Shares Chrome Browser Stats
• Google Says Private Registration Won't Hurt Your Search Rankings
• Google Image Filter Being Too Sensitive Again?
• Yahoo Site Explorer Updates Link Data, Huge Drops Reported
• Ask.com No Longer Shy About Google Ads
• Most SEOs Will Clean Their Site Versus Start a New Site After Being Penalized
• 44% of SEO/SEMs Say Google's Chrome Won't Win the Browser War
• Should SEO Companies Offer Refunds?
• Google to Adjust Canadian Exchange Rate Used for AdSense
• Search Engine Rank Checking Tools, Such as WebPosition Gold, Are Back in Business
• Google Maps Finally Brings Back Reordering Destinations & More
• Labor Day '08 Logos Not From Google or Yahoo

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

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: September 5, 2008"

It's September, school time for many and moving time for me. I'm in the new place, baby! Now I need about a year to unpack, but I've made good progress. ;)

This week, we celebrated Labor Day and saw a bunch of new Google developments, particularly Google Chrome's debut. Let's take a look.

Google AdWords Gets Spiced Up

The new Google AdWords Quality Score has been spotted and there are some screenshots available. The Quality Score is now on a ranking of 1-10, which should give you a lot of room to make changes and optimize your ads better.

Google AdWords also launched a new feature, the Geographic Report, where you can see how your ads are performing in each geographic region. It should give you some good idea of how to make improvements and hopefully that will trickle down to improve your Quality Score.

Google Chrome Released

Google Chrome, its open source web browser, was launched on Tuesday. Google is a bit late to the browser wars, as some people suggest, but we polled the audience and 44% of you think that Google won't make any impact on the browser wars. From what I've been reading, Chrome is super fast, but that's all it really has going for it for now.

Already, though, we're seeing a large percentage of users using Chrome to surf web pages, but I'm going to assume that it's just the early adopters who will probably use Chrome and then go back to their preferred browser of choice. I may be wrong if Chrome gets consistently updated, but I'd love to hear your thoughts regardless.

Speaking of which, Barry thought of a clever title for the Google Chrome thread where we told people where to suggest their Google Chrome feedback. Of course, a lot of people who read blogs don't actually read beyond the title, so apparently that thread is more active than Google Groups where we actually tell people to go. After this weekend, I'm sure that post will have more than 100 comments. It's at 90 now. (People, learn to READ. That post isn't even long!)

Google's Image Filter Never Works

Google can't figure out the best medium for its image filter. When they tweak the algorithm for the image filter, either it lets in too much porn or not enough...oh wait. But sometimes it makes too much of an algorithm adjustment on the other end and legitimate non-pornographic images get filtered out too. I guess Google is finding image algorithms a lot more difficult since it's not text-based. In due time.

Yahoo Site Explorer Updates their Link Data

Earlier this week, Yahoo Site Explorer updated its internal data and a lot of webmasters are now seeing that the numbers of links reported by the tool is substantially lower than before. Is it temporary? We don't know yet. But since this happened in March, this is hardly the first time we've seen it.

Ask.com Flaunts its Google Image

Ask.com is showing Google ads and is happy to do so, even to the Firefox and Safari audience who is likely more technical savvy. At this point, I suppose that Firefox users don't mind the Google ads on Google's results, so why not try the same thing on Ask?

Your Private Domain Registration Won't Affect Your Search Rankings

Got your domain registration hidden behind WhoisGuard? That's okay -- it won't kill your Google rank. However, keep the information behind that screen up to date for ICANN. Also, if you're a public facing business, don't hide that information at all. It doesn't reflect well on your company.

We Ran a Few Polls this Week

In addition to the Google Chrome poll we ran this week, where 44% of you said that Google won't win the browser wars, we also asked if you should issue refunds to your clients for SEO services. So far, 75% of you do.

Would you start a new site after you get penalized? I think it'd be silly to do that, to be honest. That's why over 78% of you will clean up your site and request reinclusion. I hear that. It would be hard to create a new brand on another domain, yanno?

Canadian Exchange Rate Issue to be Resolved

If you live in Canada and use Google AdSense, you should note that Google is going to fix the issue with the exchange rate, so hopefully you'll see better payouts soon.

Check Your Rank Using WebPosition Gold

Google has addressed the problem with rank checking software and you can now use tools like WebPosition Gold to check your site rankings. Will that make all people happy? I know a previous commenter who thought rank checks are a waste of time, but I know others who will appreciate the fact that it works again.

Googlers and Yahooligans Work on Labor Day

That's the sense I get when I see no logo for Labor Day on either search engine. However, Dogpile and Live.com played along. Search Engine Roundtable did too, but most of us actually did work. :)

Have a great weekend!

With the number of scammers who try to usurp ownership of domain increasing (I got 2 letters for 3 domains last week), it's a surprise that few people really take advantage of private registration for their domain names. However, many people don't know about WhoisGuard or Domains By Proxy and instead leave their domain names exposed with all identifying information intact. It's no wonder I even got a call yesterday about my domain name. In a way, it's nice to know when people are checking on you. In another way, it's something that can be easily abused.

The obvious SEO question still hasn't been addressed though. If you have a private registration, will your rankings be impacted?

According to JohnMu, it typically doesn't impact rankings, so you need not worry if you are already implementing it.

However, if you're a business, why would you hide your identifying information? What does that say about your company? What happens if your web site gets hacked and there's no obvious or working contact form on your site? It'll be hard to get reached by Google or someone else who stumbles upon your site in that case. Thus, while it's a hassle at times to have to worry about your identifying information, losing your rankings altogether due to intrusions can be a lot more costly to your business.

Also, JohnMu suggests that you list valid contact information in your domain. This is actually required by the ICANN, not by Google. I spent a good chunk of last night updating my new address in the 40something domains I own and it was a hassle, but at the end of the day, it's better to do this than risk losing your domain altogether.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Yesterday, the Inside AdWords blog reported that Google AdWords now gives you a Geographic Performance Report so that you can get "geographic distribution of your impressions, clicks, and conversions down to the ad group level." Here's one screenshot that we were able to get from our Google AdWords accounts:

Already, this seems to be a great addition to help generate ideas. Forum members are overall very happy to see this addition but one member says to use caution when interpreting metro and city level data since the data shows an abnormally high CTR in some areas versus others.

It's also helpful to note that Google only has a little over a year of data. The reports go back to May 27, 2007.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

It's only been less than a week and a large percentage of internet folks are using the new Google Chrome Browser. (As for me, I haven't had time to give it a spin yet, but moving on...) Over at Search Engine Land, an extremely large early adopter crowd has surfaced. Barry has compiled all of the stats of the Google Analytics users and Chrome is emerging in an impressive third place position (on average).

Of the three sites sampled in the Search Engine Land post, 6.42% of site visitors are using Chrome. Barry solicits statistical feedback on Sphinn and a number of users are also seeing substantial Chrome representation. Matt Cutts, for example, finds that a whopping 19.44% of his visitors are using Google Chrome.

Here's the Search Engine Roundtable representation:

The average percentage of Chrome users among the Sphinn readership for September 3rd is approximately 3.87%. This includes a tally of 17 different responses in the Sphinn thread and includes some sites that had not reported any Chrome usage.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.