April 2009 Archives

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: April 30, 2009"

I wanted to run a quick poll to see how many of you are employed in this deep recession. The poll is completely anonymous and it would help others gauge how safe or unsafe the search marketing industry is during this recession. Please take the poll below and tell your friends to take it.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread seems to believe that the search marketing industry is doing excellent these days. In fact, this person says that there are plenty of job openings and very few skilled SEMs to fill those positions. Do you agree?

Are you currently employed or looking for work in the SEM field? Please take the poll above and tell your colleagues and friends to take the poll.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A Google AdWords Help thread has a sad story from a new Google advertiser who seemed to have accidently run up a bill from Google that got out of control. On day one, the advertiser set up his/her campaign and came back the next day to check in. What did this advertiser find? A cost of almost $30,000 accured on the campaign over the past 24 hours.

As you can see from this person's post, the person is 100% a newbie when it comes to AdWords/AdSense. Here is the post:

I am very new to this google adsense and posting ads. Last night I wanted to do a “TEST RUN ONLY” for Google to monitor before I could run any ad for my blogger.com. This morning 04/27/2009 I see a cost bill of almost $30,000.00? Oh my GOD, how could this happen? PLEASE HELP! This is a mistake! Please fix this problem and remove this cost of almost $30,000.00 from my account. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m a single mom and I’m not even working. Please help. I look forward to your response to my request.

I wonder how Google will handle this. It seems like this was the mistake of the advertiser and Google technically is not to blame here. But will Google show mercy?

You just have to assume this new advertiser did not set up a budget. How sad.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Google offers a lot of ways to market your business. Google's claim to fame and where they make most of their money is from search ads and contextual ads. But they do offer other ways to market your products and/or services.

Google announced the launch of a new site named Google for Advertisers. The site is broken down into the fully structure:

• Online Advertising
• Search Advertising
• Website Advertising
• YouTube Advertising
• Advertising Management
• Free Marketing
• TV Advertising
• Mobile Advertising
• The Marketing Cycle
• Defining your strategy
• Creating your ads
• Planning & buying your media
• Optimizing your campaigns
• Getting Started
• Stay in Touch
• My Tool Kit

Within each section, there is additional content and links to the appropriate advertising programs. This does help organize things a bit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The first week of March, Google gave publishers the ability to view their reports in Euros and get paid in either dollars or Euros. Since then, I have noticed many threads from confused publishers asking why are their reports now in Euros. Like it happened by itself.

AdSense Pro Jen chimed in on one of those thread at Google AdSense Help explaining what is going on. She said:

I've been in contact with the Dublin office on this concern and have the following clarification for publishers seeing this announcement:

Before you opt into this feature:
- AdSense Reports will be shown in USD
- You can choose to get paid in USD or Euro

After you opt into this feature:
- AdSense Reports will be shown in Euro
- You can still choose to get paid in USD or Euro. Your payment currency is entirely up to you, and does not change after the T&C's are accepted to have Euro as the reporting currency. In other words, whatever payment method and payment currency you had before you accept the new T&C's will remain unchanged after you accept the T&C's.We apologize for any confusion that the announcement is causing and for any offense that may have been taken by the wording.

So it seems like currently, you cannot go back to viewing reports in USD once you opt in to seeing them in Euros.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Google Analytics was experiencing an issue with the "Content Data" reports where it would not show information in some cases. Specifically, if you selected an individual date from the date selector and then viewed the Content Data reports, it would show up with no data.

The issue was first confirmed by a Google representative in Google Analytics Help. In that thread, Analytics Pro Christelle said two days ago:

Thanks everyone for the posts. We are aware that the Content reports have not updated and are showing 0 data when you select an individual date for the past week. We are working on this - and, it will be fixed soon.

Then this morning, Christelle informed us it was fixed.

We experienced a temporary issue with displaying data for certain dates, which has now been fixed. You should start seeing correct content data going forward.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

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: April 29, 2009"

I found a very disturbing Google Maps issue via Google Maps Help forums. Mike Blumenthal has uncovered that Google is merging competing businesses that have nearby addresses. Let me say that again, but show you an example, that was uncovered by Mike.

Here are the results for two different hotels/motels in the same area, but that have different addresses. The map result for South Pier Inn displays the correct information, but their competitor, The Inn on Lake Superior is somehow merged into this record, showing the South Pier Inn's information and web address, while not showing the Inn on Lake Superior's information. They did however, merge both hotel's phone numbers. Here is a picture:

Googler, Nina, responded in the Google Maps Help thread saying:

Yes, the algorithm for merging changed recently. The developers who work on this have been alerted and are actively working to address this problem. They are also reading this thread.

The fix needs to be automatic - not manual. These things usually take several weeks to test and bring live. We know it's causing user pain and I know they are working really hard on it right now as we speak.

Clearly Google knows how big of an issue this is and I hope it gets fixed soon.

Mike Blumenthal has posted more information on this topic at his blog.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Update: Marty at aimClear blog wrote about this on the 21st.

Google has posted a new beta version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer over here for users to test. The new version is currently a labs project only and brings location services to the toolbar. This allows Google to determine your current location, I believe based on your ISP's data, and then serve up local search results to you.

It is called, "Google Toolbar with My Location." The help document describes the features:

• Find locally-relevant search results on Google when local information is available.
• Center maps on Google Maps around your current location.
• See your approximate current location using the Google Maps gadget.

Google allows you to enable and disable the location services. It also doesn't tie the location data to your Google account.

Forum discussion at Google Toolbar Help.

The ongoing saga of Live Search's fake referral data to possibly conduct cloaking experiments has been shut down temporarily.

The official Microsoft representative has told us in a WebmasterWorld thread that it has been shut down. He said:

I just spoke with the team. They said they are working on a fix for this, but the feature causing the problem is turned off currently, so you shouldn't be seeing any fake referrals from us.

Exactly what type of "feature" is causing this to be a problem is not clear. In the past, we know Microsoft had a bot that tested for detecting cloaking. But this time, the Microsoft representative did not mention cloaking. Is this some new type of feature or just issues with the old cloaking detection algorithm?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, the Google AdSense blog announced a several updates to the AdSense program policies agreement. The main thing is that to comply with the AdSense terms, you need to comply with the terms of service on any of the other Google products and services.

Google summed up the changes as follows:

• Google brand violations: This policy has always existed in our Terms and Conditions, but we've now brought it directly to the 'Ad Placement' section of the program policies page so that it's easier to find. According to this policy, we don't allow ads or search boxes to be placed on pages which misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google.
• Deceptive implementations: We've clarified this policy a bit in the 'Encouraging Clicks' section of the program policies - ads may not be formatted in a way that makes them indistinguishable from other content on the page where they appear.
• Ad placement in emails and email programs: This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.
• Other Google products' policies: With this new policy, publishers aren't permitted to place ads, search boxes, or search results on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the policies of that other product or service. For instance, this would include placing ads on sites which allow users to download YouTube videos, which isn't permitted by the YouTube Terms of Service.

If you look at the program policies, it says you must comply with the webmaster quality guidelines, as well as all the other Google guidelines for the other services. So that doesn't just mean they are targeting link sellers, MFAs and blended ads as JenSense says, but anyone who doesn't adhere to any of their policies.

Will Google enforce them all? I highly doubt it. But time will tell.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google has secured @GoogleWebspam on Twitter. Currently the Twitter stream is empty, but the account has over 60 followers.

Both Googler's JohnMu and Matt Cutts confirmed that this account is controlled by a Googler at the Web Spam team.

John said this morning "@rustybrick Yes, that account is legitimate, but not active." And @Harith asked Matt Cutts yesterday, who said:

@Harith, got more info. Someone on my team showed initiative and grabbed that user account, so it is a google account.

Is this account going to be used for submitting spam reports or aiding webmasters in improving their web sites? It appears that it might be for spam reports, since the web link on the profile links to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en but it is still early, so that can change.

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: April 28, 2009"

Typically, Google issues payments by the 25th of the month for the previous month and the money is then available on the 26th (if sent electronically). But many Google AdSense publishers are complaining in threads at both Google AdSense Help and DigitalPoint Forums that they have no word from Google on if the payment has been issued.

Here are some of the scared publisher's posts:

I used to get the "payment in progress" message within 24-24 of the month. And pick my payments on 26-26 of the month. Today is 27, and even no "payment in progrees" statement has appeared.

I am scheduled to receive payment through Westren union quick cash. Normaly payment is issued on 25th and can be picked on 26th. my march earning was more then $100 but i cant see any payment issued link.

Personally, I see that my payment was issued on April 24th and I should see it on the 28th. But many publishers are concerned the Google is holding payments from them for no reason.

An other, but older Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from a Googler that Google is indeed delayed on paying some publishers.

AdSensePro Obair from Google said:

If you're scheduled to receive a payment this month, you should see the following message on the payment history page of your account:

"You are scheduled to be sent a payment by the 30th of this month. If you're receiving a standard delivery check, please allow up to 4 weeks for delivery, depending on your location. If you're using EFT or secured express delivery, your payment should arrive by the 5th of next month. Learn more..."

So don't panic, your money will come, the question is when. Some publishers depend on this check and to have it delayed, can be serious for some. Hat tip to Morgan Chemij for encouraging me to write about this.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

Since March, we have been reporting about some Google AdWords ads that appear to be displaying above the 25 character title limit. Back in March, I was told by Google that this is a bug, but Google was wrong. At the end of March, I probed Google about this again and Google confirmed, that in some cases, the AdWords title may exceed the 25 title character limit.

A new WebmasterWorld thread brings this topic back to life, where we now have AdWords representatives actually telling advertisers how they can realize longer titles in the AdWords ads. For example, this advertiser wanted to have the title "Virtual Assistant Training," but it is 26 characters. So to get around this, he/she uses dynamic keyword insertion to get there. If you search for Virtual Assistant Training you may see an ad with the full 26 character title. I attached a picture, to prove it.

There are many issues with using dynamic keyword insertion. Specifically the ad simply might not work all the time, plus the title might not always match the ad description, amongst other issues. But it is worth testing this out to see if it leads to any increase in your click through rate and, ultimately, quality score.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google is currently running a survey asking AdWords advertisers if Google show make the Google Advertising Professional exam and certification harder. A Google AdWords Help thread has a post from AdWordsPro Sarah asking AdWords advertisers to take a survey on the Google Advertising Professional certification process.

The survey can be found over here and it asks questions such as:

• Do you think the Google Advertising Professionals exam should be more difficult?
• If you had the option to take a test in these elective subjects, is this something you would be interested in?
• Should the Google Advertising Professionals exam be given in a proctored environment to help control cheating?

There are other questions, but these are the most interesting questions in my opinion.

Should Google have these tests in controlled and proctored class rooms? Are you kidding me?

Anyway, it is important for Google advertisers to take this survey, this way Google knows how to take the future of the Google Advertising Professional program.

Personally, I love the idea of making tests harder, but I am weird.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Over the past day or two, I have been hearing reports from webmasters and SEOs that Google's geo targeting technology has changed in a big way over in their international or localized search engines. I have one, possibly, two threads to point you over to with more details.

A Google Web Search Help thread has reports that over the weekend, the landscape for ranking of generic keywords in Google UK has drastically changed. Searches such as web hosting, mortgage, insurance, student loans and so on are no longer as specific to UK web sites and are now showing more US based sites.

I am told by an anonymous reader that for financial terms, such as mortgages, you would never see US based results in the top ten at Google UK. Clearly that makes logical sense, why would a UK searcher, who is looking for a UK mortgage, want to find information from US mortgage companies? They wouldn't. Of course, Wikipedia type pages were the exception. I am now being told that more and more US based sites are showing for these specific UK-type queries when searching Google UK in the UK.

When I questioned if this was new, after showing that filtering them by selecting "show pages from UK" the SEO said:

For me that shows that Google knows they aren't UK sites - but is still none the less choosing to display them on queries which should really have a UK focus (UK finance products)

There have been some US based sites in searches like this before (occassionaly one might see Wikipedia) - but for so many to pop in overnight is most unusual.

The WebmasterWorld thread that is tracking Google changes in April has a post from Tedster that relates to these findings. Tedster, WebmasterWorld's administrator, said:

I'm also getting a whiff of something that's hard to document - more search terms getting the geo-targeting treatment, and the gotargeting may not be all that appropriate. When it comes to ecommerce, I don't really care where the vendor is as long as they are in the country. I don't want to see the more local vendors getting a boost and the quality vendors a couple hundred miles away tanking. For services, just maybe - but for hard goods, no.

Today I was checking something for a client in another city. They were concerned about falling to position #8 - but for me they were at position #67 or so.

This seems to be somewhat related to what is reported in the Google Web Search Help thread but not exactly.

Is Google's geo targeting technology off a bit or is Google changing how they handle certain queries in the UK?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A week ago, Google started to seriously push the new AdWords interface onto AdWords advertiser's screens. Many folks have already activated the new user interface, but not all are happy.

I was hoping to poll our audience to see if you like the new or old interface. Please take 10 seconds to complete the anonymous poll and I will post the results in the near future.

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, Discovery, posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums asking if he can switch back to the old interface. His issue with the new user interface?

Today I needed to jump in and make a few quick changes, for whatever reason I didnt fire up AE and logged in instead. The wait between each screenload and for data to appear is painful. Same issue that Yahoo has.

Anyhow, I jumped back to the old interface and felt a warm sense of calm. made the quick changes in a few graceful strokes and clicks... ahhhh. Now I think I'm pretty much decided, I will likely never use the web interface once it has been changed and opt for AE as my primary tool.

Speed is the issue for this advertiser. Again, please take the poll above and ask your advertiser friends to take it as well.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

The other day we reported on the new beta project at AdSense that let's you filter ads out by category. Back then, it was rumored that Google allowed the advertiser to specify the category of their ads. That was wrong.

AdSenseAdvisor has come into the WebmasterWorld thread to clarify, saying Google controls those categories. AdSenseAdvisor said:

Google’s adserving technology determines the category to which an ad belongs.

This makes more sense and helps avoid the issue of advertisers maliciously miscategorizing ads.

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: April 27, 2009"

One of the oldest areas of unspoken SEO blogging is the SEO Code. In short, blogging (now inclusive of Twitter) is a dangerous thing in this industry. On the one hand, you want to break stories, post something unique and different and even cause a buzz to get lots of people talking about your blog. On the other hand, you don't want to be ousted by the community for 'outing' any other SEO.

Todd (aka Stuntdubl) took the time to write a post named What's your SEO code? In that post is classifies various types of people in the industry. But I take offense to the classification of the "Journalist" and I'll quote him:

For people whose business model is based on news, hype, ratings, and traffic - they’re going to out as much stuff as they can to get the traffic. Just the same as traditional media, they are not active practicioners of SEO. The trouble becomes when you are an active practicioner of SEO and don’t respect your craft enough to have a solid code.

Todd is the same person who commented on our code, the Search Engine Roundtable Code of Ethics - which was one of the first ever code of ethics written in the SEO blogging space. Todd said then, in 2005:

Very nice to put the "unwritten rules" down on paper Barry. You've done a very nice job earning everyone's respect, and it's a tough thing to do.

Being one of the people who probably generates the most news or journalistic oriented content in this industry. I.e. I write several posts here per day and write several at Search Engine Land, including manage virtually all the topics that get written by other authors or go into the SearchCap. I might take offense when Todd, who I respect, calls Journalists in our industry people who do not "respect your craft." That cannot be further from the truth.

I know Todd was likely not thinking of me personally when calling Journalists out - so I have no ill-will towards him. But some might take Todd's blog post the wrong way, which is why I write about it today.

From someone who has been writing in this industry for six years or so. From someone who created one of the first SEO blogging ethics ever. From someone who, I believe, never really crossed that line. I hope the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land prove that you don't have to sell out to blog in this industry.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A confirmed Google Maps bug seems to be causing the reviews in Google Maps to disappear. A Google Maps Help thread has several business owners complaining that their reviews (all or many) are now missing.

Googler, Joel H said that Google is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. I'll quote him:

We're aware of this issue and are working on a fix. We'll update the group when more information becomes available.

I am not sure if this is a specific issue with importing reviews from third-party data sources or if it is a Google Maps review bug. I know that when Google Maps began allowing user contributed reviews back in June 2007, I did have at least one review, from myself. Now, none.

Embedded Maps view (currently has no review, but might change in future):

View Larger Map

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google Image Labeler is a fun game people can play to help Google Image Search better understand and tag pictures within the Google Image Search index. This game launched in September 2006 and has been somewhat under the radar since then.

Recently, I saw not one, but two different threads in Google Web Search Help forums by two different people, who both spotted pornography in Google Image Labeler. One even saw child pornography. Here is what they had to say:

I was doing the Google Image Labeler when suddenly I am confronted with child pornography to label! I am both shocked and outraged that Google allowed such a thing to happen. How can Google make sure this type of filth does not show up again?

Why is there porn on google image labeler? At first it was just women without anything covering their breasts but I saw a sex scene the other day. Is there any way to report this?

Is there a way to report images that are offensive or inappropriate in Google Image Labeler? No, not really. You can in image search, but not here.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: Googlers have replied to both threads.

Jaime from Google said:

Thanks for taking the time to post here; we take any instance of abuse toward minors very seriously and will be in contact with you privately so that we can further investigate and take the appropriate action.

While we will certainly report any legitimate abuse we become aware of to the appropriate authorities, I'd also welcome you to help keep children safe by directly contacting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's (NCMEC) CyberTipline 24-hours per day, 7 days per week online at www.cybertipline.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678. Reports can be made regarding eight categories of child sexual exploitation such as online enticement, child pornography, or the prostitution of children. Learn more about the categories here.

As I mentioned, someone here will be emailing you shortly to investigate. If you encounter this type of material in our results or in the Image Labeler in the future, don't hesitate to let us know.

Evan from Google said:

The system is designed to only show safe images and we believe we are doing a good job at it, however, false positives do happen. Thanks for pointing this out for us.

Ever since May 2008, when Google began supporting third-party cookies as part of the DoubleClick acquisition, Google has been asking AdSense publishers to update their privacy policies to include language that third-party cookies are in fact utilized. Then, more recently, Google started behavioral targeting ads and asked publishers again to update their privacy policies.

A new wave of AdSense publisher account bans has been spotted in the discussion forums and some believe this is due to some publishers not updating their privacy policies. A Google AdSense Help thread has discussion around this theory. One "Top Contributor" said:

The privacy policy is a huge deal because it's about doing ethical business. Google is, and partners with, some of the largest companies in the world through the AdSense/Words programs, and if parties on either side of the fence (SANE parties I mean, not these doofi who for some reason think that Google is trying to remain one of the world's largest and most successful companies by ripping them off for a hundred bucks) lost faith in the Google brand - which is largely built on their ethics - then the whole thing falls apart. The advertisers must have a degree of confidence that Google both maintains and enforces standards among their AdSense publishers...so if Richard Branson happens to stop by LowGenius.Com and see that I don't have a privacy policy, and there's an ad for Virgin Airways at the top of my page, he's going to throw a fit and pull his ads...the whole network loses.

But do you think Google is really banning accounts over not having the proper privacy policy?

We recently polled our audience to see how many have updated their privacy policy for AdSense and currently, most have said they have not. If you have not taken the poll yet, please do and I will publish the results later this week.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

If you visit Google.com today, you may notice a new logo on the home page. The logo looks like this:

The logo is to remember Samuel Morse who was born on April 27, 1791. Today is his birthday, and Samuel Morse invented Morse code.

We have several threads on the topic, many of them asking why is Google's logo broken. In fact, one asked why is Google's logo not fully loading?

Googler, Jamie created a Google Web Search Thread specifically to talk about why Google changes their logo on special days.

FYI, Google had a Google Braille logo back in 2006.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, Google Webmasters Help and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all reported pretty poor earnings this quarter, in fact, they all made history. I talked about how Google handles expired domains. Google's Gray bar PageRank score, what does that mean? I show how you can verify your profile in Google. Use Google's new Similar Image search feature. Microsoft is still faking their search referral data. Google began to push the new AdWords user interface on advertisers. Google also allows Google Base users to enhance their AdWords listings. SEOs are excited for the new Google Analytics API. Microsoft opens up ContentAds a bit more. Google AdSense beta tests category filters. Jeeves comes back in the UK. At the end of the show, I showed off the Earth Day logos from the industry. Thanks for listening and reading the Search Engine Roundtable.

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:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play at hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Google Sees Q1 2009 Revenue Drop: AdSense Publishers Seek Answers
• Yahoo (YHOO) Reports 1st Quarter 2009 Earnings
• Google On Expired Domains & Domain Name Transfers
• What Does The Gray Google PageRank Bar Mean?
• How To Verify My Google Profile
• Finding Similar Images of Danny Sullivan With Google
• Microsoft To Fix Fake Referrer Data From Live Search
• Global Live Search Local Listings Coming Soon
• Google Begins Pushing New AdWords Interface on Advertisers
• How To Show Google Base Products in Google AdWords Ads
• SEOs Excited For Google Analytics API
• Microsoft To Open adCenter Content Ads As Public Beta
• Filter Google AdSense Ads By Category
• Jeeves Makes a Comeback To Ask UK
• '09 Earth Day Logos From Google, Yahoo, AOL & Others in Search Industry

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: April 24, 2009"

There aren't many people out there that can say they have been in the SEO industry and optimizing sites for search engines since 1999. But there are probably a hundred or so people who can say that. Personally, I joined the "SEO industry" in 2002 (been in the internet industry since 1995), what is known as the second wave of personalities who joined the industry. Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Daron Babin, Greg Boser (I better stop naming names before I insult people) were part of the first wave - people who were in the industry before it may have been known as SEO.

That being said, a YouMoz post named SEO Since 1999 takes you through the history of one quiet SEO, who was optimizing sites for ten plus years. Can you imagine? In any event, this write up should interest anyone who loves the industry.

Here is the introductory paragraph:

Monday, April 20th, 2009: Today I celebrate the completion of my first decade in search. I have been waiting for this day with some trepidation for the past 6 months or so. I am not really sure why or even what this anniversary really means. Does it mean that I am some sort of expert? Well, anything is possible. Or does it mean that I have wasted the past decade with little to show in an industry that my friends and family can hardly even understand? Hmm, I hope not. In truth, it means I not only have a job that I like, but a career that I love.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Live Search Maps is still gaining ground and currently, the only businesses that can verify their listings are those in the US. For US businesses, you can go to Live Search Local Listing Center and update your listings. But if you are outside of the US, you are out of luck.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a UK business owner who was upset he was unable to verify his listing. MSNDude, an official Microsoft representative has finally come in to respond. His response:

Unfortunately, we currently do not support local listings outside of the US. However, I believe the local listings team is working to expand this in the near future.

You hear that? It might be here in the "near future." Who knows how long that really means, but "near future" to me, would mean within the year.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced the public availability of the Google Analytics API this week and SEOs are very happy about it.

SEOs thrive with data and even better SEOs have ways to automatically build software that uses this data to improve their conversions. Dynamically creating new pages based on search query data or A/B testing landing pages based on bounce rates and conversions in an automated fashion, simply makes sense. There are just an incredible amount of opportunity with this new API and SEOs are excited about it.

To be fair, most SEOs who realized this benefit already built internal systems to handle most of the tracking and dynamic creation of content and landing pages. But maybe Google Analytics gives them new ways to peal away at the data that they haven't had the time or resources to get at as of yet?

If you have technical questions about the API, you can check out the new Google Analytics API Group. There is a dedicated Googler there to help.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Shouldn't there be some laws about removing historic landmarks from the Internet? I mean, we have laws about physical historic landmarks in the U.S. but not on the Internet?

If you visit GeoCities, you will notice a message that reads:

Sorry, new GeoCities accounts are no longer available.

After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please sign in or visit the help center for more information.

In short, Yahoo is shutting it down and current GeoCity customers have to find a new hosting solution. Yahoo is of course pushing their paid small business hosting service.

Clearly, Yahoo has to turn their business around but to close down history? Maybe Obama has something in his budget to take over the historic GeoCities? ;-)

Personally, I have never used GeoCities - but it was incredibly popular. Googler, JohnMu, Tweeted "Surprised at how many serious sites are hosted on GeoCities: get a domain name and move your stuff out NOW!" Now he would know the value of some of these GeoCities sites.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google AdSense Blog announced they are beta testing a new feature for publishers that allow them to filter ads based on category. So if publishers don't want ads that are about dating, religion or "get rich quick" type of ads, they can block those ads from showing on their site by blocking the whole category.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? In fact, They shared a screen shot that details the various categories. In addition, it even shows you how much money you are making from each category. This way, you don't block your most profitable category.

Here is a screen shot:

So what is the issue? A WebmasterWorld thread asks a very important question. Who is classifying the ads into categories? Is it Google or the advertiser? One member said that when someone asked a Google rep about this at the ADSPACE conference (where this was announced), Google said the advertiser is categorizing their ads.

Here is the post from the thread on that:

Someone asked this question at the google panel at adspace today, and the way i heard the answer is that the _advertiser_ sets the category.

Both the questioner and the answerer were not too clear, but this is what i gathered from the exchange.

The concern is that advertisers will make sure not to categorize their ads in certain categories that might be perceived as negative towards publishers. Now, I am not 100% sure if advertisers to categories their own ads, we will have to wait and see how this all works.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google has notified us that the advertiser does not categorize the ad, instead, Google does this automatically. More details in Google Determines Category For Contextual Ad Category Filter.

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: April 23, 2009"

Google released a whitepaper titled "CPA Performance Trends on the Google Content Network." The whitepaper has the following findings, all very positive about how Google AdSense performs:

1. Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective - or even more cost-effective - than ads on the search network.
   • The median advertiser has a content CPA that's about 2% lower than their search CPA.
2. The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.
   • The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.
3. Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Thing is, no one believes the report. A WebmasterWorld thread has real advertisers saying they don't see this in their daily use of Google's content network and this seems to be a Google backed study that would bias the results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread spotted an interesting paragraph in an Reuters article on AOL possibly using automated tools to create an infinite number of niche sites, targeted at driving users to the site via search and having them click on the ads on the site. The article says:

AOL, for example, is embarking on a strategy of creating a plethora of niche websites through automated methods on which to place ads, partly through its own ad platform. It has called this "leaning into the fragmentation of the Web.

The debate in the thread is two fold:

(1) Is this simply bad journalism and AOL is not trying to go this route? If not:
(2) What will search engines do to combat such a large site creating such spam?

It is no doubt that there are many "authority" sites that create these types of pages and get by for doing so because of their "authority" status. In fact, many SEOs have called out these type of sites before.

AOL can make a lot of money if they did go this route, but are they really going to go the automated route when they do a pretty good job at creating unique content already?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are two large threads at Google Maps Help Forums with reports from Internet Explorer users receiving errors when trying to view and link to Google Maps.

The error some of these IE users are seeing is:

Webpage error details User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB5; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) Timestamp: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:26:06 UTC

Message: 'elem' is null or not an object
Line: 5
Char: 372
Code: 0
URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Google has confirmed the issue in the threads. Mike CH from Google said:

I wanted to update you on the "elem is null or not an object" error that some of you have been seeing. This is a recently introduced bug which only occurs on Internet Explorer when loading certain locations. Thanks to your (very!) helpful reports, we were able to quickly locate the problem. It's being treated as a priority fix and will hopefully be live shortly.

Workarounds for now include:

- Not using Internet Explorer
- Using the link I provided above to open Maps

I assume a bug like this will be fixed pretty soon. I personally tried to replicate the issue on my PC, but was unable to.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help Forums.

A reader, Brad from Set Solid, sent me new information about Google showing products in AdWords ads. We covered this topic a few times, reporting on seeing such ads in Google several times in the past. Here is a screen shot of the ad:

Well, a reader sent me an email with an image of the Google Base administrative console. In the admin panel, it shows a new link to "Share with AdWords." Here is a screen capture of that section:

If you enter in your AdWords customer ID, it will link up your products with your ads. There is actually a new WebmasterWorld.

A Google search for time in pakistan should give you the current time in Pakistan, but it doesn't. On April 15th, Pakistan advanced their clocks by one hour, but Google did not. So instead of it showing me 6:19pm, it is showing me 5:19pm.

Big deal? Yes, it is. This is not just impacting people looking for the current time in Pakistan. Is is reportedly also impacting Pakistan users of Gmail, Orkut, AdWords and other Google properties. A Google Web Search Help thread reports that it is showing emails as being received and sent an hour earlier then it is suppose to show.

I hope Google fixes this soon. It has already been a week since it has been first reported as an issue.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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: April 22, 2009"

It appears Google has launched a redesign of the search results pages on Google Video. For example, a search on barry schwartz returns search results on the left side and the video on the right. If you click on a search result, it shows the video directly on that page and gives you the option to click through and watch it on the site it came from.

Here is a picture:

A Google Web Search Help thread (note, the Google Video help forum is no longer, they moved it to the web search section) has a couple users who are unhappy with the new layout. The new layout is due to the fact that Google doesn't allow video uploads on Google anymore. It is now just a search engine for videos, while YouTube is their upload and user generated content (video) section.

One user said:

I am seeing a redesign of TV view when I search for a video in Google Video. The video description is takes up a lot of space, the video is smaller (and not expandable) and there is no way to rate videos (or even see video ratings!).

Alex Chitu said, "the new interface has a lot of flaws: the video player moves as you scroll down, the list of related videos is not always visible, Google Video no longer displays ratings and there's a lot of unused space."

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I spotted a member in a DigitalPoint Forums thread with a level of certainty that Microsoft will be announcing at adTech San Francisco today that they are opening up ContentAds (also may be known as PubCenter) as a public beta. ContentAds is Microsoft's competing Google AdSense product.

An open beta means that virtually anyone should be able to sign up for the product and test it against Google AdSense. It is also rumored that Microsoft will set up a companion blog for the ContentAds (PubCenter) today, April 22nd.

In March 2008, Microsoft began accepting beta users via a sign up form. Since then, it has remained fairly quiet except for some comparisons made by beta users between ContentAds & AdSense. ContentAds began being tested in June 2007 by a few publishers and some really early tests in October 2006. The earliest rumors of this product came in December 2005 and then again in DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Microsoft confirms this and adds more details.

Yahoo announced their first quarter earnings for 2009 and it was pretty bad. Here are the highlights:

Yahoo! Inc. today reported revenues of $1,580 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, a decrease of 13 percent from the first quarter of 2008. Excluding the impact of currency rate fluctuations, revenues for the first quarter of 2009 would have declined 8 percent from the first quarter of 2008. The Company’s non-GAAP operating cash flow for the first quarter of 2009 of $409 million exceeded the midpoint of the outlook range provided by the Company last quarter.

Plus, Yahoo will be cutting 5% of the staff, that is an additional 600-700 employees from the layoffs they had earlier this year and last year. Sounds like Yahoo is bleeding to me.

But the thing is, Yahoo beat Wall Street Estimates and the stock is up a bit in pre-market conditions.

In any event, you can read more about this at Search Engine Land or on Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Starting yesterday, many Google AdWords advertisers began noticing a message in the AdWords console asking them to give the new user interface a try. Google began beta testing the new AdWords UI in November 2008 and expanded the beta in March 2009. More recently, they asked advertisers to experiment with the new UI early because it will be here soon.

Well, now it is here and most advertisers can switch over to it. When you login to your AdWords account, you should see a bubble notification that looks like this:

Note, when I upgraded, I was told my browser (Safari 3.2) may not be fully supported and I should use Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, or Chrome to manage my campaigns. In any event, you likely can upgrade but before doing so, if you want to learn more about the UI, see this resource for more information.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Since August 2007 Microsoft has been sending out weird referrer data to people's log files. The spam like referrers were official cloaking tests from Microsoft and should have been resolved in 2007. But they came back in January 2008 and then again in July 2008 without explanation.

We are now seeing them again, starting last month. A WebmasterWorld thread said it is coming from search.live more than MSN bots.

Microsoft's Jason chimed in the other day suggesting Betsy Aoki at Microsoft via this form. But soon after, Brett Yount from Live Search's Webmaster Center came in as MSNDude and said:

I would like to apologize for the inconvenience this is causing. We are working to correct this issue ASAP.

Hopefully it will get resolved soon and forever.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced you can now create verified Google Profiles that potentially can show up in the Google web search results. Danny Sullivan has the ultimate guide on how these Google Profiles work. For example here is my profile as displayed in the Google web results:

It can also show up in this format:

To have your profile displayed in the Google web results, you likely need to have a verified listing. How do you verify your profile in Google? It isn't that easy.

Here is a picture of my profile, there are two verifications. (1) The profile itself (aka "verified name") and the (2) email address.

Let's start with verifying the profile (aka the name):

(1) You must go to Google's Knol site and sign in.
(2) Then go to your profile settings.
(3) Click on the "Name Verification" tab
(4) Then choose to verify by phone or via credit card

If you verify by phone, you enter in your phone number and Google will call it. When you get the call, Google will display a pin code followed by a pound sign on the Knol web site. When prompted, enter in the pin code and pound sign and you should be verified. If you verify by credit card, just enter in your credit card information. Note, Google currently can't verify American Express or Debit cards.

Verifying your email address:

(1) Go to your Google Profile and click "edit profile"
(2) Midway through the page it says "Verified domains" and explains:

You can verify email addresses and choose which domains (the part after the @) you'd like to appear on your profile. Your email addresses will not be displayed. This will help visitors to your profile know that you are the real you. Learn more

If your email is already verified, it should read:

You have verified email addresses at the following domains. Check which domains you'd like to appear on your profile. Your email addresses will not be displayed. This will help visitors to your profile know that you are the real you.Learn more

Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and other free email accounts cannot be verified as domains. You need your own domain. You can add a non Gmail alternative to your Google account to verify your email.

That is basically how to get the verification labels on your Google Profile.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Today is Earth Day and many of the search engines have created special logos to remind people of the day! We have Earth Day logos from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's Live.com, AOL, Ask.com, DogPile and others!

Google:

Yahoo (animated):

AOL (animated):

Live.com:

Ask.com:

DogPile:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

We covered the logos for the past several years including 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums & Cre8asite 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: April 21, 2009"

For over three years now, I and others (including Danny) have been trying to get information from Google on how they handle passing link value from domain names, specifically in cases of expired domains and domain name transfer of ownership.

In April 2006, I wrote Changing Domain Name Ownership Whois Information & Google Search Ranking Impact. Then Tamar wrote a nice piece summing up the history around this topic about a year ago. Then more recently, Matt Cutts of Google commented on expired domains and if you should 301 them, he said:

Hey Michael! If you buy typos, I'd 301 them to your main site. Even things that you win in UDRP arbitration can be 301'ed. For example, if someone bought porngoogle.com and Google won it in UDRP, it would make sense to 301 it to your main domain.

What I *wouldn't* recommend is try to register unrelated expired domains in an attempt to get those pre-existing links to count toward your domain. I would also avoid registering-and-301'ing typos of competitors' domains or other completely unrelated domains.

That all being said, Danny Sullivan has more details from Matt of Google on this topic. Danny wrote Do Links From Expired Domains Count With Google?. In that piece, Matt Cutts told Danny:

There are some domain transfers ( e.g. genuine purchases of companies) where it can make perfect sense for links to transfer. But at the same time it wouldn’t make sense to transfer the links from an expired or effectively expired domain, for example. Google (and probably all search engines) tries to handle links appropriately for domain transfers.

The sort of stuff our systems would be designed to detect would be things like someone trying to buy expired domains or buying domains just for links.

Danny then analyzed these comments and wrote some scenarios on what types of domains would pass value and which would not. We still don't have Google saying in case X, Google will do B and in case Y, Google will do C. I am not sure if we will ever get there.

But domain name change of ownership happens often enough and communicating to Google what really is happening with that domain, via Google Webmaster Tools, makes sense to me.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Yesterday, Google launched a new labs feature named Google News Timeline which gives you a cool new way to scan news. You can scan the news using an AJAX interface based on chronological order. You can then drag the timeline from left to right or right to left. In addition, you can group news by days, weeks, months, years, or decades or restrict to a certain time period. Finally, you can add queries to filter by and remove news from Wikipedia, Time and so on.

Here is a video that shows it in action:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The last time we discussed the grey PageRank Google toolbar indicator was just about two years ago. It was then when the gray/grey color changed from meaning banned to having no clear meaning. Back then, there was a blank white bar and a blank gray bar, both with PR0s. White meant PageRank was not yet calculated for the page, gray likely meant a ban or penalty. This is no longer the case.

Here is a picture of gray:

Today, we have a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing what the gray bar means. There are a few theories that I will share with you.

One person thinks that gray is given to pages with not enough PageRank to reach the 1 level. Another person thinks that pages in the supplemental index receives gray. Some believe that pages with penalties still receive the gray indicator. Let me quote Tedster's post on this topic:

It is no longer true that any url gets the TBPR that it earns. Some types of pages (lists of links for example) seem to get flagged as an automaic gray bar - and that's that. I used to think this was manual, and in the beginning it may have been. But now I think that original "seed set" has been used to generate a machine-learning algo that is intended to locate other pages of the same nature. This approach to various segmants of the algo is something that is more and more in use. All those PhD in Statistics folks need something to do, right?

For a while, my theoretical algorithm was misfiring quite a bit and the mysterious graybar disease was nearly epidemic. Just this past month, I'm seeing some of those peculiar gray bars come back to white or even green. That could indicate either that the machine-learning has improved, or something about its logic has been tweaked.

Can it be a form of artificial PageRank, is it Google classifying certain pages in a group, is it pages in the supplemental index or is it just nothing?

I wonder if we can get a response from Google on this, knowing that we should not live and die by what the PageRank indicator says in the Google Toolbar.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced they have a new labs feature that allows you to find similar images using Google Image Search. To do so, go to similar-images.googlelabs.com and give it a try.

I thought I try searching for danny sullivan to find similar images. The first image is this one:

Attractive, eh? ;-)

In any event, lets see what Google Images considers similar to this picture of Danny. Clicking on the similar images link shows me these images:

There are some guys as well.

Here is a video on how this all works:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ever since Google AdSense began supporting third-party ad serving technology, via DoubleClick technology, Google has required publishers to update their privacy policies to specify so.

Then more recently with the implementation of the behavioral targeted Google ads, Google said the privacy policies need to be updated. They even posted a help document specifying those details.

Many publishers have already updated their privacy policy, because I think the deadline to do so, may have past. But I am confident many publishers didn't do anything or make any change to their privacy policies. In fact, I am not even sure if I have a privacy policy on this site. :)

Did you update your privacy policy based on Google's request? Take our poll:

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: April 20, 2009"

Google has confirmed last week that they are officially bring "one-line sitelinks" to the Google search results.

In early March rumors of these Sitelinks were spotted first in the UK region. Then the tests of the classic sitelinks continued and we saw them in the US. On April 15th, the day before Google announced it, it seemed to be available to everyone and there were some great insight posts on how they work.

Well, now they are here to stay, after just under two months of testing.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google AdWords Help thread reports that an AdWords advertiser has been notified that using the word "gay" in his search ads are seen as offensive. This advertiser was offended that Google would consider the word "gay" as offensive. Here is what he said:

I found it very offensive when my ad was flagged for review for having the term "gay" in it. It surprises me that this a part of Google's policy as it is very offensive and homophobic.

Just to clarify: Google's policy is offensive, the term "gay" should NOT be.

With the recent Amazon FAIL over a similar topic, does google also want to be lumped into this mess?

It is well known that Google is very supportive of gay rights, so I was a little skeptical. I tried to create a search ad in Google AdWords myself, and used the word "gay" in the title and description and it worked without an issue. In the case above, it seems like after the ad was already live, Google made a decision to review the ad later. Maybe someone felt his ad was offensive and Google pulled it until it can be manually reviewed? I am not sure, we don't have the official word from Google yet.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Update: Via Twitter @AccuraCast notified me that he has screen shots proving this. Plus @GrosenFriis has a post on this as well.

Ask has decided to bring Jeeves out of retirement, at least in the UK, and rebrand Ask.co.uk as Ask Jeeves UK. If you visit uk.ask.com you will see a question with the new Jeeves on the home page, that reads, "Why am I back?"

Glad you asked. The simple answer is I'm back to help.

I popped out three years ago to travel the world in a quest for knowledge and I've returned to Blighty armed with answers. During my sojourn research showed the public wanted me back, which I found jolly touching. And in that time the engineers toiled hard to make the site look better, work harder and be more personal...just like yours truly! I realise the questions are different now. Back in 2006 you wanted to know about spending money, now you want to know about saving it. That's why I've teamed up with TV's moneysaving expert Jasmine Birtles to bring you ten ways to save money, if I may. And don't forget to pop back and see me on the site throughout this week, I have some terrific prizes to give away!

Personally, I am delighted to see Jeeves come back. I have been really been giving the Ask management team a really hard time over the past year or two. But with this move, I am pretty happy with them. My major issue is that they only brought Jeeves to the UK (well, kind of). In the US, NASCAR is Ask.com's way of reaching America. In the UK, they are using Jeeves. I would love to see Jeeves come back to the US as well, and I believe that will eventually happen. In fact, we have dozens and dozens of comments on our Jeeves retirement post begging to bring back Jeeves, I know people miss the character.

Here is how Jeeves has transformed through the years:

Jeeves is more animated, more 3D now. It is suppose to show how the technology is better. I am not too sure about the technology being better, but I do like bringing back the character.

Most recently, I felt Ask.com crossed the line when they framed the search results. I also felt their technology is failing and they are not focused on core search. Those opinions have yet to change. But the Jeeves character, I am a fan of.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has a webmaster worried that Google has not downloaded his XML Sitemap file in about five days. I went to check the status of my sitemap file in Google Webmaster Tools and Google has not downloaded the Sitemap file for this site in five days as well.

So I decided to panic and shut down my web site. Just kidding. I checked to see if one of my more recent articles is indexed in Google and it was. An article I wrote Friday, April 17th is indexed. So is an article I wrote minutes ago, and so will this article, within minutes.

A Sitemap file is great but it does not mean Google has not indexed your content. The Sitemap file is one way that Google may find your content, but Google typically finds your content other ways, and typically Google may find your content faster without the Sitemap file. Meaning, Google will typically find new content on your site through their normal crawl process, faster then they would when compared to the Sitemap file. That doesn't mean that the Sitemap file doesn't help, I believe it does help.

In summary, don't worry about the reporting in Google Webmaster Tools. We know it is often buggy. If your rankings drop, traffic from Google dies and your Google Webmaster Tools console shows scary signs, then you know you have issues. Otherwise, make sure to use all the tools at your disposal before worrying all that much about a delay in reporting from Google.

Forum discussion Google Webmasters Help.

The summer is coming up and that means there are plenty of college and high school students looking for a couple months of work. Typically, you can hire these college or high school students at extremely low rates. It is the summer internship possibilities that come up yearly. I do hear that many people in this position are having a tough time finding work, especially paid work - like the rest of the world. But it may be the time for your company to tack on these interns.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around using interns for link building. Some believe that if trained well and you have good quality assurance measures in place, putting interns in the position of link builders is a no-brainer. Others believe it would be a waste to hire an intern with no link building experience and have them do link building for you for two months.

Personally, I think it would be a good job for an intern. They surf the web all day, looking at web sites and get paid or college credit, for doing so. But do you agree?

Take our poll:

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: April 15, 16 & 17, 2009"

In this week's recap, I discuss several topics after going offline for a 50 hour period. That is why I look and act incredibly tired. In any event, we discussed the changes noticed at Google over the past couple weeks. Google confirms they will be changing the referral strings and we discuss why. Google Blog search updates link operator, finally. One line Sitelinks are here to stay. Google still showing different results for different case. SEO works, it is that simple. Video SEO tips from yours truly. Do all links look like links? Yahoo's new targeting feature may be flawed. I published several SEO polls, which I discuss. Google reported earnings and realized their first decline in revenue since going public. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

FYI, I created a video and accidently deleted it. I am way too tired to make a new one, so here it the text version. I'll be back next week.

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• April 2009 Google Webmaster Report
• Google Search To Change Referral Strings: SEOs Discuss
• Google Blog Search Updates Link Query Algorithm
• Are One Line Sitelinks Here To Stay: A Deeper Look
• Google Still Showing Different Results Based on Query Case
• Case Study Shows Pushed SEO Works Better Than Natural Site Development
• Video SEO: Host Internally or on YouTube?
• Links That Might Not Appear As Links
• Yahoo's New Local Targeting Feature Showing Poor Quality Traffic?
• 54% of SEOs Believe in Artificial Google PageRank
• Most SEOs Believe Google Has Keyword Specific Penalty
• 80% Say SEOs Need Some Coding Abilities
• Tuesday Mornings: Best Time To Send Out Link Request Emails
• Google Sees Q1 2009 Revenue Drop: AdSense Publishers Seek Answers

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

Early April, many mobile users, who use Google Mobile for News, noticed that Google News on their mobile device was not updating. In fact, the news was outdated for days on their devices. The issue seemed to have resolved itself for many a few days later, so I decided not to report it.

Now the issue seems to be springing up again. We have a report in the Google News Help discussion area from one mobile user who said the news is now "over 10 hours" delayed. I personally checked myself and the news seems as recent as 30 minutes. But this may have to do with browser caching or something similar that caused the issue a week or so ago.

Googler, Inbal, said:

Thanks for the heads up, our mobile engineers are on top of this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to resolve this in the near future.

It might be a user specific issue or might be a bigger issue. I am not sure.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

We recently wrote about getting PageRank without getting links, it turned out to be a fairly popular thread we covered. In any event, Brett Tabke started a timely post on that at WebmasterWorld.

He named the post, Hot Top 20 Stealth Links and explores the various links you may get that might not appear as the typical link. Here is a list from Brett and others in the thread:

• another site links to your graphics ( img src=http://www.searchengineworld.com/gfx/logo.png )
• a site links to your javascript files
• a site links to your css files?
• rss feeds and other xml feeds that people can link to without notice or referrals necc being generated.
• links in email that some se's can read (yahoo mail, hotmail, Gmail)
• links marked with noindex
• links marked with nofollow
• raw urls within javascript or js comments
• raw urls within css or in css comments
• urls within meta data of graphics and video files
• urls within html comments
• urls within the head section, meta data of a html page, or alternate html entities (alt, name, id, etc)
• links or pages that maybe surfed while visitor has page rank engaged on the toolbar
• the target of a constructed, obfuscated, or encrypted js url (hidden until executed)
• links behind pay walls that Google can spider via webmaster tools
• Domains that have been 301'd with links.
• Links in Flash movies (games, quizzes, etc).
• non href'ed url's. (raw url on page http://www.webmasterworld.com)
• Links in any documents other than web pages e.g. .doc, .pdf, .txt, etc.
• blocking a page in robots.txt should make it blocked from bots, but they still spider it.
• Domain registrations/Whois and DNS data
• Links in form data.
• Links in other Google produced software (gadgets, widgets)
• NonTraditional pages (irc, twitter, UseNet, Yahoo, or Google Groups.
• Links in Flash movies (games, quizzes, etc).
• Links in contextual ads
• Links written on billboards, cars and other outdoor objects with help of Google Map.

The thread is just beginning and there are dozens of ideas already in the thread. So get over to WebmasterWorld and start contributing more.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced earnings last night, the earnings reported that revenues were down from the previous quarter. Let me quote the announcement:

Google reported revenues of $5.51 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a decrease of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the first quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.44 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Profits were slightly up, however, from quarter to quarter:

GAAP net income for the first quarter of 2009 was $1.42 billion as compared to $382 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the first quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion, compared to $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

There are two threads on the discussion of Google's earnings report, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at DigitalPoint Forums.

Another WebmasterWorld thread specifically focuses on the AdSense/publisher side of the coin. The payouts to publishers from quarter to quarter is summarized in the thread:

• Q109 1.23 billion
• Q408 1.29 billion
• Q308 1.33 billion
• Q208 1.32 billion
• Q108 1.34 billion
• Q407 1.31 billion
• Q307 1.12 billion
• Q207 1.06 billion
• Q107 1.05 billion
• Q406 0.92 billion
• Q306 0.78 billion

Many suspect that Google is paying publishers less of a percentage, but it is hard to prove that from the earnings report.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

An hour or so before I went offline for Passover, the Google Analytics blog announced a very significant change to how Google search will be passing along referral data. In the past, a search for flowers and a click on that search result to your site, would show the URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

Now, you will see the referral string (in some cases, right now in beta):

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

The new format is broken down as such:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t

&source=web

&ct=res

&cd=7

&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm

&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j

&q=flowers

&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w

&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Google's Matt Cutts confirmed on a BlogStorm blog post that Google may be passing along Google ranking data, along with this information.

Brett Crosby, the man behind Google Analytics, summed it up:

The key difference between these two urls is that instead of "/search?" the URL contains a "/url?". If you run your own analyses, be sure that you do not depend on the "/search?" portion of the URL to determine if a visit started with an organic search click. Google Analytics does not depend on the "/search?" string in the referrer, so users of Google Analytics will not notice a difference in their reports, but other analytics packages may need to adapt to this change in our referrer string to maintain accurate reports.

The folks at WebmasterWorld suspect this change is more about Google eventually migrating to AJAX search results, amongst other things.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

99.999% of people would never notice this nor care about it, but a Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a very small bug in Google's cache. If you view the cache of a W3 document for a match on xml well formed root, you will notice that Google says they will highlight the words "root" in a red color. But if you scan through the document, you will notice Google is not highlighting that word in red.

Here are pictures:

Googler, JohnMu, thanked the person for reporting it and has submitted the bug to the right team.

I am shocked that it was reported and noticed.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

About a week ago, we wrote a piece about getting PageRank without links. In that write up, we wrote how Google may give pages temporary or artificial PageRank to make up for the page being new.

We decided to poll our readers, asking if they believed in such a concept or not.

54% of our readers, 83 of the 153 responses, said they believe that Google does give web pages artificial PageRank. 44% of our readers, 67 of the 153 responses, said they do not believe in an artificial PageRank concept.

Interesting break down. Personally, I do believe Google does give new pages a temporary or artificial PageRank value early on.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

About two weeks ago, we polled our audience asking if they thought Google had a keyword specific penalty. By the I meant, does Google penalize a site from ranking well for a specific keyword phrase, while allowing the site to rank well for other keyword phrases. There are now well over a hundred-sixty responses, with the majority, seven-eight percent, saying Google does have such a filter.

I went as far to break down the poll by asking if you do believe in such a filter, is the filter or penalty algorithmic or manual. Meaning, does Google give these keyword penalties by hand or is there an algorithm that does this automatically?

86 of the respondents or 53% said it is done algorithmically, while 41 of the respondents or 25% said it was done manually. Only 35 respondents or 22% said there was no keyword specific penalty. I wonder how Matt Cutts voted. :)

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

Last week we asked if SEOs need coding capabilities based on a controversial Sphinn thread. The results are now in and I am surprised to see just about 80% of the responses said that to be considered an SEO, you need some coding abilities.

Here is the break down of results for the question, Do You Need Coding Skills to be an SEO?

:: Yes, Some Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 100 respondents or 65%
:: No, No Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 33 respondents or 21%
:: Yes, Expert Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 21 respondents or 14%

I would have thought more would say that SEOs need no coding experience to be labelled an "SEO." Of course, having coding skills helps, but a requirement?

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

If you have been like me and been tracking the Google Toolbar Help discussion area, you may have noticed complaint after complaint on how buggy the Google Toolbar was in Internet Explorer.

Google announced they have released a stable version of the Google Toolbar 6 for IE. Version 6.1.1518.856 is the stable release, which removes the beta tag from this toolbar.

Internet explorer users can download it at http://toolbar.google.com/. Improvements include:

• Find bar is no longer a separate toolbar that overrides IE's Find feature
• Word find and Highlight buttons are back
• AutoFill works on most login pages, like the Gmail homepage

Forum discussion at Google Toolbar Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

There are two new conferences coming up that I thought I let you know about. One is focused specifically around contextual ads, and is named ADSPACE. The other is focused on the technical side of SEO and is named Found.

The ADSPACE conference is an adTech conference taking place in San Francisco on April 22nd. The speaker list is impressive, including keynotes from Brad Bender, Product Management Director at Google, Will Martin-Gill, Director of Internet at Marketing eBay and Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization at Facebook. The Google AdSense blog posted a promo code that can save you 20%, the promo code is ADSPACED.

The Found conference is an O'Reilly Media backed event, organized by Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia of Microsoft. Speakers include Matt Cutts of Google, Nick Cox of Yahoo, Alessandro Catorcini of Microsoft, dozens of other search reps, and SEO celebrities such as Danny Sullivan, Jill Whalen, Greg Boser and others. I have a 15% discount code if you register using fd09ser code.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

A week ago, we ran a poll asking when is the best time to send out link requests. We know, we don't recommend bombarding people with link exchange or request emails, but if you had to, when would you do it?

The hundreds of responses are in and it seems like most people suggest sending it on Tuesday mornings. Here is the breakdown in pie charts.

Best day to send link request emails:

Best time to send link request emails:

Not sure if this will help you, but the results are interesting.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

SEOMoz created the first and second comprehensive search ranking factors document. We now have a new one, a shorter one, from HuoMah.com.

Dave lists out dozens and dozens of factors and adds commentary around them. Here are some of them, without the commentary:

• PageRank (or relative nodal link valuation)
• Link text (internal and external)
• Link relevance (global and page)
• Also see Temporal, Personalized PageRank and Phrase factors.
• Page TITLE tag
• Meta-description tag
• Document inception/age data
• Link velocity
• Link age
• Viral/Current news (QDF)
• Time of year (niche trends)
• Content update rate
• Domain history
• Inbound links (global)
• Outbound links
• Named entities (products, brand, author)
• Contact information (also important for geographic signals)
• Location of client device
• Location of webpage hosting
• Contact / location information
• Inbound/outbound link geo-factors
• Linguistic indicators (language and nuances)
• Heading (H1-5)
• Bold
• Italic
• Lists
• Font attributes (size, color)
• Related phrase ratios
• Categorization of content (clusters)
• Occurrences (probabilistic)
• Duplication dampening (filters)
• Personalization (phrase based)
• Link analysis (inbound)
• Global site relevance
• Term proximity (for multi-term queries)
• Image tagging (in content segment/related terms)
• Search History
• Web history (pages/sites we visit)
• Query revision (and analysis)
• Search intent (informational, navigational)
• Explicit data (favourites, reader,wiki)
• Interaction with advertising
• Surfing frequency/ time of day
• Personalized PageRank (yahoo and google)
• SERP and document interactions
• Duplicate issues (structural/content)
• Link devaluations (segmentation, link text, recips)
• Poor architecture/coding
• Reviewer penalties
• Redundant meta-data (such as meta-descriptions)
• Canonical / URL issues
• Server reliability (can be de-indexed)
• Phrase based detection
• Cloaking
• Boilerplate
• Domain history
• Query analysis
• Network proxy detection
• Link based (link spam and excessive recips)
• Client type (browser, mobile)
• Toolbars and browser (Google Suggest, web history)
• Application focus (email, instant messenger, RSS etc..)

Exhausting list, but it is nice to have an updated version in one place.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

This coming April 18th, at 11am PST, Google will be hosting a free AdSense Webinar on the topic of "Orientation" for the first 500 people who sign up. To sign up, go to this URL and click on the "Sign Up" link in the middle of the page.

The first Webinar is to give you the "understanding of the basics of your AdSense account. Learn more about the program and get familiar with your account."

AdSensePro Obair said in a Google AdSense Help thread, you can expect to learn the following from this Webinar:

• Learn how to make the most of your AdSense account
• Get an opportunity to chat with some AdSense Specialists
• Get detailed insight in to different account features

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

Google has been testing showing classic (one line) Sitelinks in the search results for a while now. The one line Sitelinks are interesting in that they seem to differ some from the Sitelinks we are typically accustomed to.

Melanie Phung posted very interesting observations of these Sitelinks. Let me bullet point the key points, but feel free to check out the post for more details.

One Line Sitelinks Can:

• Show for non-branded terms
• Can show multiple times on a single search results page
• Can show up at the bottom of the search results page
• The Sitelinks can differ based on query
• One line Sitelinks can be displayed with typical 8 Sitelinks
• Show for sub folders
• Can show for sub domains

Those are just some of the insights this post showed. Some of these insights also apply to the 8 Sitelinks version. I do wonder if Google has a name for these. I.e. Does Google call them Sitelinks? Will these replace the Sitelinks we know?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

Google is pretty off limits to showing off their data centers and engineering floors. But Google created a presentation on April 1st for the Google Efficient Data Centers Summit to show off their data centers. Here is that video:

The video is extremely interesting in how they try to squeeze as much out of every CPU they have, including how they maximize the energy they use to power them.

This is a rare look inside of Google's data centers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 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: April 14, 2009"

A detailed Google Webmasters Help thread has discussion around how Google perceives affiliates and how they need to go above and beyond to warrant ranking well in the Google search results.

Googler, JohnMu, answers one affiliate, as to why he is not ranking as high as he would have liked:

I believe one of the issues that you might want to work on is to make sure that your site provides unique and compelling content to the web. It's important for us that the site not only contains "rewritten" descriptions and articles, but that it actually provides something more than just "different words" for the same content. In other words, given the choice between your site and the company providing the products, what could your site offer to make Google want to show your site instead?

John then links this webmaster over to a Google document on Affiliate programs for webmasters. The document explains how you can make your site stand out from the other affiliates:

• Affiliate program content should form only a small part of the content of your site.
• When selecting an affiliate program, choose a product category appropriate for your intended audience. The more targeted the affiliate program is to your site's content, the more value it will add and the more likely you will be to rank better in Google's search results and make money from the program. For example, a well-maintained site about hiking in the Alps could consider an affiliate partnership with a supplier who sells hiking books rather than office supplies.
• Use your website to build community among your users. This will help build a loyal readership, and can also create a source of information on the subject you are writing about. For example, discussion forums, user reviews, and blogs all offer unique content and provide value to users.
• Keep your content updated and relevant. Fresh, on-topic information increases the likelihood that your content will be crawled by Googlebot and clicked on by users.

Does this mean you must do this to rank your affiliate site well? Not necessarily but for the long term, it might be best to follow these strategies.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A HighRankings Forum thread asks if one should host videos on their own server or host them on YouTube.

I do a lot of videos here in my Search Buzz Video Recaps, which are weekly digests of what we covered here over the course of the week, so I have some experience with this topic.

Let me start off by saying that Google and most search engines have a very tough time understanding the content within the video. Yes, they are testing out speech recognition and other factors, but right now, these search engines don't rank videos based on the words spoken in a video. They determine the relevancy of the video based on meta data, content around the video, links to the video, the video title and so on.

That being the case, duplicate content is not really much of an issue in videos then it is with standard content on the web. Why do I say this? I publish our videos both on YouTube and on my own server because I am not currently worried about duplicate content in the video search space.

YouTube videos simply rank incredibly well. I also want my videos hosted internally so that I can publish an iTunes feed and gain subscribers not only to YouTube but also to my video feed, which can be subscribed to on your favorite RSS reader or via iTunes or other video/podcast readers.

If you had to make a decision on where to host your videos, I would tell you to host them both on YouTube and on an internal server (I use Amazon S3).

Here is my process for syndicating my videos:

1. Upload video to YouTube and write descriptive title and description, plus link to my blog via YouTube
2. Upload video to S3
3. Create blog post, embed both YouTube video and a link to the raw video on S3.
4. Create video XML feed file for iTunes and other podcast readers, which includes the YouTube video in description, but also S3 download URL for readers
5. I make sure the XML file contains description, title, S3 URL, YouTube embed, link to blog post and other meta data

You can see my latest video on April 3rd, you can subscribe directly on iTunes or via your favorite RSS reader on watch it on YouTube or on my blog. Yes, I give a bunch of options and they all work well.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Google has created a comprehensive user guide for the local business center. You can via the user guide over here.

It is broken down in seven sections:

1. Getting started
2. Adding a listing
3. Adding more than 10 listings
4. Verifying a listing
5. Your Local Business Center homepage
6. Editing or removing a listing
7. Other features

Here is the user guide's introductory video:

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Every month we report on a monthly WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the current state of the Google web search index. This month, the WebmasterWorld thread has very little to report. If you want to see last month's report click here.

Instead, I thought I highlight the most important posts here over the past couple weeks, in relation to Google's web search changes.

• Google Gets Generic on Local Web Search Queries
• Google Releases Major Blog Search Blogroll Algorithm Update
• Google Blog Search Updates Link Query Algorithm
• See Google "Classic" Sitelinks In Action (One Line Sitelinks)
• Google Still Showing Different Results Based on Query Case
• April Fools Google PageRank Update
• Google Adds More Search Refinements & Detailed Snippets
• Google Pushing More Search Options On Searchers?

Those are some of the more important Google related updates over the course of the past few weeks.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, we reported that Google released a major blog search update. That update fixed the issue with Google Blog Search finding content in the blogroll and thus showing irrelevant search results. It directly impacted the "blogroll detector" aspect of the algorithm.

Today I learned via a Google Groups thread that Google has finally updated the link operator aspect of that algorithm in Blog Search. That means, if you come up in the blogroll as a link, you won't be shown in a link operator on Blog Search every time that blog writes a new blog post.

Jeremy Hylton explains:

We deployed our latest improvements for blogroll detection late last week. The change affects link: queries. We now drop most or all of the links that occur in the blogroll or in other parts of the page that are just boilerplate. I'm sure there are lingering problems, but our internal metrics suggest that its a big increase in quality for link: queries. We've got a few more improvements in the works, but I think this recent change fixed the biggest part of the problem.

As always, please send me specific examples where things have gone wrong. We'll do our best to fix them.

The link command and blogroll issue with Google Blog Search has been an issue since November 2008 and I hope this update resolves it. Honestly, over the past day or so, it does seem to have been removing many (what I call) false positives in the 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: April 9, 10 & 13, 2009"

A very helpful WebmasterWorld thread shares insights from a long time SEO who decided to pin two sites, competing in the same industry, with each other. He took two different strategies for each site. One site was pushed using old school SEO tactics, including doorway pages, paid and reciprocal links, content development and so on. The other site was to build a site with no paid links, unique content, no doorway pages, but add videos, blogs, rss feeds, Twitter integration and so on.

Let's call the first site the "SEO'ed Site" and the second site the "Quality Site." Guess which one is earning money and getting quality Google traffic? You got it, the "SEO'ed Site."

The member said:

Site 1 (AKA "SEO'ed Site"): after just 3 months it was skyrocketing past some pretty hefty competition with traffic increasing well each month. The site was making £10,000+ a month for the last six months we had it and just sold for a rather nice figure.

Site 2 (AKA "Quality Site"): has struggled to rank anywhere, even for it's own name, and traffic has been stagnant since the outset - it made a loss for the first 8 months and made just under £3000 in it's best month which was last month.

So what is a webmaster to do? Of course, this is just one single case study. To see exactly what tactics were used on each site, see the WebmasterWorld thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has announced a Google Maps for Mobile update in the Google Mobile Help discussions area that fixes the bugs with version 3.0 for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.

Googler, Christopher, said:

A new version of Maps for mobile is available to download. This update includes many fixes and updates for both Maps and Google Latitude based on your feedback here in the Help Forum.

Please see the following Release Notes for more details about what's been changed in this version or go directly to m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser to download it now: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=144115

It seems like early feedback on this release shows that some users of these applications on the devices are still having some issues. If you are having any issues with Google Maps for Mobile on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices this is the place to be.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

A month ago, Yahoo made some serious enhancements to the search marketing platform, improving the local targeting capabilities amongst other features.

WebmasterWorld moderator, werty, has been gathering local data since the feature has been released and has posted the somewhat disappointing results. werty said in a WebmasterWorld thread:

Currently we are using "North American YSM" and should only be getting North American traffic, but if I look through our logs I can see that 29% of the traffic is coming from foreign countries.

I could see how maybe 2-3% could come from proxies or things like that, but this traffic is highly suspect.

Werty goes on to share:

Of those 2061 that we received we were billed for 1894. This is roughly 8% of "bad traffic" that is being caught or screened by Yahoo!

There is another 21% that is not being caught, screened or refunded.

The scariest/funniest part of this is; Of the 2061 clicks, only 43 came from Yahoo! or ca.search.yahoo.com. That is 2.1% of traffic we received or 2.3% of traffic we paid for.

These are some serious insights and hopefully this is only a bug that is impacting this individual advertiser. I do highly doubt it though and I wonder if Yahoo will respond to this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Yahoo responded in the thread asking:

werty, are you using the Blocked Continents tool? It allows you to select the continents from which you do not wish to receive traffic. (Our lawyers make me say this next part: The accuracy of the Blocked Continents feature is not guaranteed, and may vary depending on a number of factors, such as the quality and type of data in the traffic stream that we receive. For example, if a searcher is using a product or service that makes the IP address "anonymous," our systems will be unable to determine his/her location, and therefore will be unable to apply continent blocking.)

Follow these steps to turn on or modify Blocked Continents:

1. Click on the “Administration” tab.
2. Click on the “Account General Information” link
3. In the Blocked Continents field, select the checkbox for each continent to block. You cannot block your own continent, meaning the continent included in the market of your account.
4. Click “Save Changes”.

Google continues to say that Google searches are "always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ]." But since February 2008, we have been reporting cases where Google is case sensitive in terms of the search results they return. In fact, we reported it in February 2008, May 2008 and October 2008. So I am not surprised to see more threads about this topic spring up now at Search Engine Watch Forums.

In this example, the query is [seo services] in different cases. The three cases that return slightly different results include seo services, SEO Services and SEO services. As I 'tab' between the results, I see rank shifts and results that are missing on one, but on another.

For example, [SEO Services] shows webuildpages.com in the 10th position, while seo services doesn't show webuildpages.com in that position, but rather, seomoz.org. There are several examples in this single search query of differences. I have posted screen captures of these results at Flickr. The screen shots are from searches I took within seconds of each other for these queries.

Does case matter in search or is something else in play here?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Late last week, Google AdSense had an issue where publishers were unable to login to the site and manage their ads. The reports began coming in on April 10th and some earlier reports came in on the night of the 9th.

We have threads at Google AdSense Help, Google AdWords Help and two at WebmasterWorld and dozens at DigitalPoint Forums.

Both AdSensePro Jennifer and AdWordsPro replied to the issue on the 10th. AdSensePro Jennifer chimed in when it was fixed, saying "OK, things should be back to normal. You should be able to log into your accounts." AdWordsPro gave dialog during the downtime, saying:

Word has is that technical issues are now resolved, and that stats will catch up in the near future. I was told perhaps 4 or 6 hours, but am going to be on the safer side and tell you 6 to 8 hours.

I believe the issue was resolved some time Friday morning.

Now people are complaining about poor Easter day earnings.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help, Google AdWords Help, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Due to the Passover holiday, I am only posting a text recap for the past week's coverage here at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Google is making local queries more generic. There was link building prior to Google, see my write up on it, with Eric Ward's excellent comment. AdWords employee may have stepped over the line, ShoeMoney sues. Google testing a Twitter ad unit? Google ups the competitive ad filter. Publishers are still optimistic about earning potential. Amazon ditches affiliates who use search ads. Google is the newspapers best friend. Easter logos are hard to find.

• Google Gets Generic on Local Web Search Queries
• Link Building Pre-Google Days
• Google AdWords Employee Allegedly Breaks Trademark Rules, Sued by SEM
• Bad Idea: Google AdSense Twitter Units: Twitter Streams in AdSense
• Google Boosts AdSense Competitive Ad Filter To 500
• Optimism Abounds For Some Despite Adsense Earnings Drop
• Amazon Says No To Search Ads From Affiliates
• Why Are Newspapers Complaining? Danny Sullivan Shows The Hard Truth
• Easter Logos From Search Engines But Not Google or Yahoo

Next week, I hope to post a video recap.

Today is the holiday of Easter, it is also Passover. Some search engines have special logos and themes for the day, while others don't. Google, Yahoo & AOL are all missing special logos for Easter or Passover. Microsoft's Live.com, Ask.com, DogPile and a few others do have special Easter themes and logos. Here they are:

Microsoft's Live.com theme:

Ask.com:

DogPile:

Cre8asite Forums:

Bruce Clay:

Happy Holidays!

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Some webmasters on WebmasterWorld are keeping an optimistic view on Adsense despite disappointment in their earning this year. The issues with Adsense lately are no secret, ranking from reporting issues to a Google glitch holding Adsense checks for some publishers. Let conspiracy theories on why abound, but that's not going to halt some from keeping a positive look on what an earnings drop in Adsense can actually spur you to do.

For some when issues arise with Adsense and they fear their income being threatened they kick into high gear to explore areas to diversify their revenue streams into others areas that will hold up when Adsense clearly isn't. As ember a member on WebmasterWorld states when his Adsense earnings drop it "forces him to contact advertisers directly and establish relationships with them. It let's me sleep at night knowing that if I lose my AdSense account, it is not the end of the world".

He goes on to say:

I think this could a blessing in disguise. I was getting lazy, anyway. Time to talk to advertisers.

He makes a great point. Stop being lazy. The WMW thread includes many many success stories on people contacting advertisers directly being able to raise their income well over what Adsense is returning for them. One member complains about the complexity of Adsense turning away people and opting instead for direct relationships that are easier to maintain and consistent.

Great thread with lots of discussion, check it out at WebmasterWorld

Google typically cuts down the display of the title tag in the search results to no more than 65 characters. A WebmasterWorld thread asks does that mean Google won't look beyond the 65th character to determine what that page is about? Or if they do look beyond that 65th character, does Google deem the value of the words after the 65th character as less valuable?

The title tag is arguably the most important on page SEO component of a single page. Most, if not all, SEOs suggest that if you want to rank for a specific keyword phrase, you must have that keyword phrase in the page's title tag.

In addition, almost all search engines display your page's title tag in the search results, as the blue, clickable link to your page. It is vital to make sure the link is "clickable," meaning that people are encouraged to click it, by making it read well and appear nice.

Finally, the title tag is also displayed in the browser's title bar, tabs, and as bookmarks or favorites. So having them formatted nicely, is key in that respect. Let alone all the different social networking sites that use the title tag of the page as the default title of your article.

When formatting your title, I take the approach of making it short enough to be attractive in the Google search results. But you also want to make sure it has your keyword phrase in it. Will Google rank you for a keyword phrase that goes beyond that cut off? Most SEOs say yes, Google will rank you for keyword phrases found after the 65th character.

Long time WebmasterWorld member, pageonresults said:

There really is no hard rule when it comes to longer titles. I've seen titles with up to 20+ words perform just fine. tedster has mentioned that he has seen pages with longer titles perform for keyword searches where the words were towards the end of the long titles.

Senior member, wheel, said:

I care more about clickability than I do rankings when it comes to title and particularly description. I want my 'advertisement' to really pop out.

An older Google Groups thread has Googler, Reid saying:

Also making sure the most difference in the title is starting on the left ensures it will show up as a distinct button when the window is minimized or the tab is at the back of the browser window. Furthermore this also helps Googlebot in determining how unique that is.

I mentioned length of the description meta tag in terms of words because this is the typical measurement. But yes, 2 lines for a total of about 160 characters or so. As for teh title, it depends on the browse but about 70 characters are safe.

In short, there are no fixed number of words/characters that are allowed for a meta description.

A Googler did say have the most important keywords to the front of the title tag.

Let's not forget that Google recently confirmed showing longer snippets for the description part of the search listings. Would this translate to longer titles and clickable links? Who knows - it would not surprise me to see this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

A couple weeks ago, we polled our audience asking if Google should add time zone preferences to their AdWords feature list.

Yahoo recently launched day parting, but gave advertisers the option to day part based on either the advertiser's time zone or the searcher's time zone. Google AdWords time zone setting is only based on your account's time zone, i.e. the advertiser's time zone. So if you have some one looking for your services and you want to target them based on their time zone and not yours, you are somewhat out of luck in Google AdWords.

I ran a poll asking if advertisers want Google to add this feature and the overwhelming majority of the responses said yes. 88% of advertisers want the feature, 6% said they don't want it and another 6% said they don't care.

Forum discussion continued at Google AdWords Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion started from a webmaster of a five year old e-commerce site, which had seen a drop in their Google Image search traffic, only to notice that their images are still in the Google results, but Google is using a different source to display the images. What that means is that Google thinks the other source is the true source of the images, while in fact, that source has stolen the images from the true owner.

Clearly, this webmaster is upset that this third party is getting credit for the images, and profiting from them. What can he do? Here are recommendations from both the thread and my own ideas:

• I would post a thread at Google Webmaster Help and call out @SusanMoskwa to look at it.
• File a DMCA with Google
• File a DMCA with the site's hosting company.
• Email or call the person who took your images
• Call a lawyer

There are more ideas in the WebmasterWorld.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

A heated Sphinn thread started some controversy in the SEO industry over who is an SEO and who is not an SEO.

In short, Edward Lewis wrote a piece named HTML 4 SEO Best Practices for HTML Authoring. The article goes through many HTML attributes that can come in handy when coding your pages. The article is a very useful resource to hold on to and bookmark, if you need to look up the various elements. So where is the controversy?

Well, when the thread was submitted to Sphinn, Harith titled it "You're not an SEO if you don't know these by heart!" That is where the controversy came in.

Well known SEO, Jill Whalen, said:

Guess I'm not an SEO then because I don't see how most of those have anything to do with SEO.

Now if you're a developer, then yeah--good stuff.

Do you really need to know all these HTML elements to be considered an SEO? I know many people who consider themselves SEO, but know very limited HTML and coding. Of course, it helps a lot to be fully skilled in HTML, and other web languages, but is it necessary?

Here is a poll, do you need coding skills to be considered an SEO?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

Technically, Google has agreed to store your Google Analytics data for at least 25 months. We ran a poll the other week, asking you if that is long enough. Most of you said, no it is not.

Of the 190 plus responses, 156 of your, or 82% said, that 25 months of storage is not enough time. While 35 of you, or 18% said it is enough.

Truth be told, Google seems to store this data longer than 25 months. Even if that is not the case, Google Analytics is free. There are paid versions and in those paid version, you can control the data storage retention policies. Or you can use a totally different analytics program and pay for it as well.

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of link building. This link building topic is different then the average thread. In this thread, the member asks if there was link building before Google became popular.

The link building market, which is a niche within the niche of SEO, is almost completely driven by the popularity of the Google algorithm - at least these days. Typically, the more, high quality, relevant links you have to your web pages, the higher those web pages rank in Google. It is not that simple anymore, but the premise is still mostly true. Thus, to 'manipulate' or improve your visibility in the Google search results, you had to get many, high quality links from external pages. Thus, the link building industry has been born.

But was there such a thing as "link building" prior to Google becoming popular? The answer is yes. There were a few people in the business of acquiring links on popular web pages, for the sole purpose of online marketing. These link builders purchased or asked for links on sites that had traffic, so that people would click from those popular sites to their sites.

Eric Ward (ericward.com) was one of the first, if not the first, person in the link building business pre-Google. Eric has told his story at many SEM conferences. The most remember part of his history is that he did link building as a way to promote Amazon, in the early days. He said that Amazon offered him shares in the company, but he turned it down - that is his legacy. ;-) Seriously, he was using links to market companies online before Google and he still uses links in the same fashion. He believes that those types of links are the links that mean the most to Google because they worked pre-Google for pre-Google reasons.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 9th.

A few weeks ago, we wrote a story on how e-commerce sites can build links through offering customers a discount on orders, if they link back to the site. It is a neat way to get links but we wanted to poll our audience asking if they felt it was considered link buying.

Since I am technically offline today, I thought it would be a good day to post the results of the survey. The results were pretty much split. Of the 76 responses, 41 or 54% said they felt it was link buying and thus against Google's webmaster guidelines. 33 or 43% said it was not considered link buying and thus not against Google's webmaster guidelines.

I wish we had more responses, because the topic of what is and what is not link buying, is fairly controversial.

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forum.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 9th.

There is a big misconception out there that to make a site rank well in search engines, you need to make your site look ugly. SEO (search engine optimization) does not have to look ugly. Yes, having a lot of text and hyperlinking your content, where it makes sense, is important SEO factors, but it doesn't have to look ugly.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has a webmaster who said that the SEO process is "killing the look" of his site. It doesn't have to. You can use CSS, graphics and other elements to make your site look pretty and still rank well. As long as you make sure to place enough text on the page and format it properly, it still have look great.

If anyone tells you, especially your designer, that the suggested SEO changes will look ugly, so don't do it. They are wrong. The designer should be able to be creative enough to come up with a way to get the SEO requirements in the new design and still make it look professional and pretty. It is done every day and it is done successfully and professionally.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 9th.

Back in April 2007, Google gave webmasters a new easy way to remove content in Google, through Google Webmaster Tools. It is a great feature to quickly remove your content in Google, but it is an extremely powerful tool. If the wrong people gain access to your webmaster tools account, either by getting your username and password or by hacking into your site and validating your site on their webmaster tools account - you can be in bad shape.

Not only can they remove your site from Google, which is incredibly bad, they can also gain competitive knowledge on your site. Google Webmaster Tools provides detailed linkage data, detailed keyword data and much much more on your site. So if a competitor or evil person gains access, they cannot only do major damage, but also take all your sensitive data.

Besides for changing your Google Account password every now and then, you should also reverify your site owners in webmaster tools. To do so, login to Google Webmaster Tools, click on Tools and then click on Manage site verification. Then when the page comes up and if you see other verification files, you may want to click on the "Reverify all site owners" button, if a verification file doesn't look right. This feature should remove all access to webmaster tools and require re verification. If, indeed, someone uploaded a verification file, you will want to look into a security breach on your server.

A recent Google Webmasters Help thread has a site owner that seems to have had his site removed by some evil doer. In short, Google confirmed that someone with verificaiton access has removed his site via the Google Webmaster Tools feature. This is not the first time this has happened, we reported a similar case in early February. Don't let this happen to you.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 9th.

A week ago, we polled our audience asking How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google?

With over two-hundred responses, I thought it would be a good time to share the results with you all.

How Long Does it Take To Rank Well in Google Results:

:: 3 - 6 Months said 83 respondents or 35%
:: 6 - 9 Months said 46 respondents or 19%
:: 2 Months said 28 respondents or 12%
:: A Year Plus said 24 respondents or 10%
:: Weeks said 22 respondents or 9%
:: A Year said 13 respondents or 5%
:: A Month said 13 respondents or 5%
:: Other answer... said 10 respondents or 4%

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 9th.

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: April 8, 2009"

The Google blog announced that Google is now showing more local results in web search for more generic queries. This is something that was noticed before the announcement but now it is officially confirmed by Google.

This means that searches for local-like keywords no longer need to have a location in the query. For example, a search on web design automatically shows me a local box in the middle of the Google web search results, without me specifically specifying web design, suffern, ny, which then shows the local box at the top of the results. Here is a picture of Google detecting that I am near the city of Monsey, in New York and it even ranks my company in the number two spot.

Google explains how they get your location:

In most cases, we match your IP address to a broad geographical location. You can also specify your likely location using the "Change location" link on the top right corner, above the map.

These searches work for a wide range of keywords, such as restaurants], [dentist], [groceries], [sporting goods], [flowers], [bank], [gym], [post office], or even [111 8th ave].

My big question is why are there so little people discussing this new change in Google in the forums? I know there are plenty of blog posts on this topic, but very few forum threads.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

ShoeMoney Sues Google Employee For AdWords Violations from TechCrunch shows how Jeremy Schoemaker (aka ShoeMoney) has filed suit against a Google AdWords employee for allegedly bidding on his trademark and possibly for stealing his keywords.

TechCrunch explains that Jeremy found signs that the person who was bidding on his trademark was very friendly with Google employees. In addition, he found that on his LinkedIn profile it said he worked at Google in the AdWords department. TechCrunch said:

At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords, but at the very least it’s hard to believe the Google employee was unaware that his actions were in violation of Google’s Terms of Service.

I believe this is the first time we are hearing about a case of an SEM (I know Jeremy, you don't like to be called that, but in this case, you are) suing a Google employee for these allegations. It should be interesting following this case.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

AdSenseAdvisor notified publishers via a WebmasterWorld thread that the competitive ad filter now supports up to 500 possible filters. I believe this limit is up from 200 filtered URLs from 2006.

Some publishers were able to block more than 200. In fact, I was able to block up to 500 since February 2009. However, now all publishers should be able to block up to 500.

AdSenseAdvisor said:

Check your account. We have more than doubled your number of filters (to 500).

Please don't go crazy with this. The reason we're not announcing it on the blog is that we don't want to overload our system with everyone filling their filters to capacity at once.

Huge thanks go to the awesome engineering team that implemented this for us (I'm an AdSense publisher, too, after all).

Please feel free to leave love letters to our engineers below.

Most publishers are really happy about this increase.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, we reported Google was testing fav icons in AdWords results. The fav icons was a confirmed test by Google, that is still running to this day. In Japan, they seem to be really pumping up this test, by displaying much larger images near the ads.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a member reporting seeing 70x70 images. In fact, I contacted that member, and he posted the details, with screen captures at his blog, which is in Japanese. Here is a screen shot taken from his site:

Compare this with what we are seeing on Google.com, with just fav icons:

Huge difference here, a 16x16 vs a 70x70 image.

Let's not forget Google was also testing favicons in search results, the free, organic results.

For more pictures, check out his blog and you can try to use Google Translate to translate the Japanese to English.

Googler, AdWords Pro, confirmed the fav icon test recently in an Google AdWords Help thread, saying:

Google is always experimenting, and based on the limited information in your post, I believe you may be seeing one such experiment. If so, it is not a test that is generally available to advertisers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the past few days, the AP and other newspapers and news sources rekindled their campaign against how the Internet works. In short, they are not happy that Google, amongst others, distribute their content to a wider audience and Google doesn't have to pay for such distribution. It gets much more involved and I am honestly way too tired to get into all the details. But that is fine, since Danny Sullivan, at his personal blog, has an excellent (the word doesn't do justice) post on the topic.

Danny's Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It, really says it all. It is well worth a read and trust me, although it is long in word length, the article will fly right by as you read. Let me just quote the final paragraph from Danny's post:

Newspapers get special treatment, both with First Click Free and with the extraordinary amount of traffic they get from Google. And while their top managers go off on renewed Google rampages, they still continue to work to get even more traffic. It is stunning hypocrisy, and certainly not what you'd expect from smart business people. But given how badly their papers seem to be going, I suppose they aren't so smart.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

About a week ago, many Google Analytics users and Google AdWords advertisers began noticing that the AdWords cost data was no longer being sent to the Google Analytics reports. We said that Google sent a warning that this may happen, if you don't link the two accounts.

Googler, AnalyticsPro.Chris, created a new "sticky" thread at Google Analytics Help discussions that talks about this issue.

Chris said:

Going forward, you'll have to tag your URLs and enable cost data to see AdWords data in your Analytics account.

If your accounts stopped receiving AdWords CPC/PPC data around March 23/24, It is possible that it is affected by the cost data changes implemented then. If you are an admin on such an account, you should have received a message, in February, with the subject line: Action required: Important change to AdWords/Analytics cost data

Here's an article explaining the different scenarios: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57167

So if you have this issue, hopefully this will help you going forward.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

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: April 7, 2009"

A Google Webmaster Help thread has complaints from some webmasters on how Google's Cache view doesn't render all web pages as they are seen in a typical browser.

Let me show you an example, if you view the cache of this site in Google, you will see it doesn't necessarily rendered it too accurately. Here is a picture:

I personally never even thought of this as an issue, I just took it for what it was. But some would like their sites to appear as they do in a browser, in the Google Cache.

Now that Google has built a browser, Chrome, I can't see it being that incredibly difficult to make the cache rendering a bit better.

JohnMu of Google replied to the thread, saying he will pass the suggestion along. He said:

I'll pass your worries and examples on to the team, thanks for posting.

That said, I don't think it will always be possible to get this right for all pages and browsers, there are just too many combinations that make it non-trivial to get right in all situations. We'll see what we can do :)

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

The topic of link requests is not new to this site. We covered it many times. Personally, I mark all link exchange or link requests emails as spam - I simply don't play that game. Not that I think it is not something that might be necessary for some link building campaigns, but I am not in that market. That being said, if you were to send out a link request email, when would you do it?

I have set up a poll, that allows you to select multiple days and times. Select all that you feel are the best times to send out a link request email. We will assume sending out link requests on holidays is a bad idea, so I left that out. Please take the poll:

Here are other articles on the topic of link requests:

• The Do's & Don'ts in Link Request Emails
• How Do You Ask for Links?
• Watch Out How You Ask for a Link!
• How You Shouldn't Ask for a Link

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It feels like almost every other day where I see threads on the issue of Google not reporting AdSense clicks properly.

A new thread at WebmasterWorld has dozens of publishers complaining that their reports seem to have stalled or are seriously lagged. There are also a few threads at DigitalPoint Forums and Google AdSense Help.

My first thoughts are to just stop checking hourly and check back tomorrow. But for someone who earns 75% of their income with AdSense, I can understand why the concern.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Maps Help forum thread has a post from Steve Thornton, the IT administrator at Solid Ground, an organization that does a lot of good. In short, Steve posted his extreme displeasure with how Google Maps is listing a shelter of theirs and it can lead to extreme issues for battered and abused woman, amongst others.

Let me quote Steve:

Angry husbands and boyfriends know where this place is now, and they come around and threaten staff and residents. This makes me so angry I'm spitting blood. Women and staff at other shelters around the country have been MURDERED. REMOVE OUR LISTING NOW!

He is a tech savvy individual, he knows how Google Maps works and he testified that he went through the steps to removed the listing in Google Maps. But after two tries, the listing is still there and he is fed up, frustrated and scared.

So far, Google has not replied to this thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Amazon announced starting May 1st, they will no longer pay affiliates for sales sent to them via paid search. That means any leads through search ads on Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter and other search ad programs. The announcement read:

After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. As of May 1, 2009, these paid search Associates will not be paid referral fees.

Why did they make this decision? Amazon said, "decision is based on our review of how we invest our advertising resources." In other words, they did not like competing on the paid search side with SEMs who were sending the same traffic to their site.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion over this announcement, where affiliates try to understand why Amazon would change their policy on this matter. Most people think it is about not wanting to compete on keyword bids with all their affiliates. Some feel it is a good way to rid themselves of affiliates, to reduce the management fees of regulating these affiliates. Others feel it is a branding issue, where Amazon could not fully control how ads looked like that were pointing to their site.

Do note, that Google has been wanting to rid themselves of affiliates in some ways. In the past, Google released a new affiliate policy that required (in some cases):

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

Maybe, this is another way for Amazon to mess with Google, if you remember history. :)

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: April 6, 2009"

Back in the day, tracking how bots accessed your site was a bit of a crave. Now, you don't hear about it much. The old Google Analytics, aka Urchin, had a section for displaying bot activity on your site. It did this because Urchin also analyzed your log files, in addition to the method Google Analytics uses to track based on JavaScript. Since most spiders don't load JavaScript, popular analytical software, such as Google Analytics, won't track the bot activity.

To track bot activity, you need to use analytic software that analysis your log files. There are other methods, including writing your own database script to track all bot activity. Back in the day, Darrin Ward (founder of SEO Chat, who sold it years ago) created a script that looked for bot activity and stored the data in a MySQL database. I forgot the name of the software, but I bet it is still out there now or there are plenty of alternatives.

If you don't want to instal anything but you still want to track bot activity, there are ways.

In Google Webmaster Tools, you can go to the "Crawl Stats" section under "Statistics" and get data from Google on how active GoogleBot is on your site. Google will show you data and time based graphs for:

• Number of pages crawled per day
• Number of kilobytes downloaded per day
• Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)

Here is a screen shot of our graphs:

If spiders are not crawling your site, you might have to worry. Otherwise, this is often a metric not discussed often by SEOs.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forums.

Reverse search engine optimization - unranking for keyword or keyword phrases you work well for. Why in the world would you want to rank less in the search engines? Well, people have their reasons. We actually covered this topic twice in the six plus years of writing about SEO topics:

• Ranking Well But Not Too Well in Search Engines
• I Rank Too High on Google! Is Something Wrong?

A recent Google Webmasters Help thread has a question from an SEO blogger named Gab Goldenberg of SEO ROI. He said he ranks too well for [advertising presentation] in Google and wants to not rank as well.

Why does he want to rank lower? He feels that his page that ranks well for advertising presentation is not what people are really looking for. This leads to those readers being dissatisfied with what they see and also leads to a high bounce rate. Some believe bounce rates influence rankings of the entire site, so it might be detrimental the rest of the site to have a high bounce rate on a specific page (I don't believe that). But the main reason Gab wants to rank lower is because he only wants happy readers.

Googler, JohnMu, offered advice on how to rank lower in Google. John said:

If you rank for a phrase that you don't want to rank for, there's not much you can do other than make sure that your content does not include this phrase. Adjusting the description meta-tag and the title element to give more information about what you are really writing about can be helpful as well, although this may not affect your ranking for that phrase. Adding a "not" qualifier won't really help to change the ranking, but it might help users who are looking for something particular.

One trick you could try is to replace individual letters with alternate glyphs that look very similar. For instance, you could replace a lower case "L" with the number "1" (or use cyrillic characters that look very similar, eg "e"/"е", "r"/"г", "i"/"і", etc.). While this would make it harder for us to understand your content (say if someone wanted to use Google Translate to read it in their own language), it would likely also prevent your content from ranking for those words.

Simply, complete unoptimize that page. Or try to target the page towards a more relevant keyword phrase.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread has interesting discussion around the topic of pages earning Google PageRank with little or no links to those pages.

The discussion was started by a webmaster who asked, how can his page have a PageRank score of four, when Google webmaster tools reports the page has zero links? The obvious answer is that Google is not reporting all the links yet and it is very possible the page has links, but just not being reported yet. But that might not be the full answer.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, feels that Google gives "mom and pop" sites an artificial PageRank boost, in some cases. Let me quote Tedster:

My assumption is that this unusual PR boost is one of the ways that Google helps "mom and pop" sites compete - something that Matt Cutts made a side comment about on his blog a few years ago. He never said WHAT Google does specifically, only that they do a few things.

It seems like many top names in the thread believe in this "artificial PageRank boost." The question is, what is the artificial part? Is it the score shown, how the score is made up, or how Google sees the page in terms of trust and popularity?

In any event, do you believe in the artificial PageRank boost? Take the poll below:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On Friday, I reported on an AdAge article that showed Google was testing incorporating Twitter streams in AdSense units. The first test, which was confirmed by Google as a limited beta, would show TurboTax's Twitter stream in AdSense units, likely on pages about taxes.

If you scan the recent @turbotax communication via Twitter, you can see why I am nervous about this implementation. If it was purely marketing speak, showing promotions or helpful tax tips, then I would understand it. But as you can see from the stream, TurboTax is having disconnected conversations with other Twitter users. If you see the latest five Tweets from TurboTax in an AdSense unit on a page on taxes, you would have no clue what the ad meant - in this case.

I have asked Google to provide a sample of what this ad unit looks like, but they did not comply. They did give me this statement:

To provide more marketing opportunities for our advertisers to reach users in moments that are relevant and useful to them, we are currently testing different ways that allow advertisers to better update their ads in real time. We are currently in a limited test with a small number of advertisers and publishers.

I understand that Intuit wants to grow a following for @TurboTax on Twitter, but is this the best way to do it? A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around this news. Many are skeptical, but skeptical for the wrong reasons. I am fairly confident I understand Twitter well, I have been on it very early, before most people and I am fairly active on it, under @rustybrick, but using it in this manner, at least the way I understand how it is being used, seems off.

Problems with showing your last five or so Tweets in an AdSense unit?

1. The Tweets may not be relevant to the content of the page
2. You may display disconnected conversations that the public won't be able to understand
3. Many people still are clueless as to what Twitter is
4. Followers are great, but will it lead to sales (many cases, yes, it will)

In this case, I am very skeptical that this type of ad unit will work for Google and advertisers. I am sure publishers won't like to see someone else's Twitter stream on their pages.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Danny Sullivan's Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? has an excellent overview of the various URL shortening services available. In Danny's write up, he goes over about 15 different services and rates them based on how they handle the following:

• Redirect
• Tracking
• Client Support
• Domain Chars
• Custom URL
• Sharing
• Path Chars
• Total Chars
• Country
• Service

There is some very good discussion around the piece at Sphinn and in the comments area in the article.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

It has been about five to six months now of us reporting that Google has a bug that holds payments to some publishers. In fact, many publishers have been waiting months to be paid and some seem to still be waiting.

A Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from Googler, Obair, who is still manually removing the hold status on publisher accounts.

It is sad to see that publishers are still experiencing major slow downs in being paid. In fact, if they don't reach out to Google via the help section, they may never get paid. The issue goes back months and months, but was initially confirmed in January 2009.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Google and the rest of the search industry had a lot of fun with April Fools' Day hoaxes, I recap them in the video. Google had a PageRank update on April 1st, no foolin. Yahoo Search updated earlier this week. Google continues classic, one line, Sitelinks test. Publishers accuse Google of stealing AdSense earnings. AdSense gives more email preferences to publishers. Google drops the video ad units from AdSense. AdWords encourages you to use the new beta interface now. Microsoft drops Ms. Dewey, the fun and witty search character. FeedBurner stats go haywire again. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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:

For the original iTunes version, click here or to see the YouTube version in higher quality, click play at hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• April Fools Day & Search Industry
• April Fools Google PageRank Update
• Yahoo Search Update: March 2009
• See Google "Classic" Sitelinks In Action (One Line Sitelinks)
• AdSense Publishers Accuse Google of Taking More Per Ad Click
• Google AdSense Adds Email Preferences Details
• Google AdSense Dumps Video Ads, Saw It Coming
• Make Sure to Beta Test New Google AdWords Interface
• Microsoft Drops Ms. Dewey
• FeedBurner Subscriber Reports Bug: Major Drops In Counts

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: April 3, 2009"

FeedBurner is having a reporting failure yet again. I have received at least four emails and several IMs since April 1st from concerned bloggers that their FeedBurner subscribers numbers have dropped. I personally saw this myself, where FeedBurner is reporting only 8,000 or so subscribers to this site, when in fact, we normally have 20,000+.

The issue? Googler Matt S. confirmed the issue in a Google Groups thread, saying that FeedBurner is having problems retrieving the accurate numbers from Google Feedfetcher. Google notified the Google Feedfetcher team and they hope it is corrected soon. Here is a screen shot showing the huge discrepancy between March 31st and April 2nd, in terms of the numbers reported from Google Feedfetcher, typically people's most popular RSS syndication service. The difference is 9,842 subscribers versus 18 subscribers.

March 31st:

April 2nd:

Here is Matt's post:

If you compare individual days (e.g., March 31 vs. April 1) in Analyze > Feed Stats > Subscribers, I'm guessing most of the missing subscribers are from Google Feedfetcher. We've notified that team of the temporary drop in subscribers we're seeing reported by them and will work with them to resolve the issue.

These issues happen fairly often, so when you see it, don't worry. It is very rare that you would lose 50% of your subscribers overnight, even if you did touch the Queen of England.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Christine from the Google Docs team posted an announcement in the Google Docs Help discussion area that two bugs have been fixed.

• The first bug was that published Google spreadsheets were becoming unpublished by themselves. This should now be resolved.
• The second bug was that 'Share with the world'/''Let anyone view without signing in' did not work, now it does.

Google Docs is very often plagued with bugs, some minor and some serious. The last major security bug shared private documents with others. Yet, Google and the US Government wants you to use Google Health to share your private medical history with others.

Forum discussion at Google Docs Help.

AdWords API users out there, you may have noticed that Google is returning errors for some of your operations and calls. Reports came in on April 1st at a Google Groups thread, which has been confirmed by Google.

Googler, Jeff Posnick from the AdWords API Team said:

I'm sorry that you're running into this. Our core engineering team has noticed a recent spate of 502 errors in our Production services, and are taking steps to isolate and resolve the problem.

502 "Bad Gateway" errors are most common in our environment when one of our backend servers has trouble communicating with another internal server, and is normally not something that you as an end user can do to avoid. There shouldn't be any connection to whether you're running your code in the debugger or not, though if you code hits a different set of backend servers in between calls you may or may not see the errors.

There have not been many complaints. That can be because of three possible reasons:

1. This is not a major issue and is only impacting a few people.
2. Few people use this feature
3. People have not yet looked at their automated reports to see these errors yet.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Throughout my many years (makes me sound old) in the search industry, I have heard about many filters and penalties, including a filter or penalty to prevent a site from ranking well for a specific keyword phrase. For example, if I want to rank well for big blue pineapple chair and I create a page about a big blue pineapple chair but Google never ranks me for that term, I may consider my site to be penalized from ranking well from that specific term.

A HighRankings Forum thread has a couple webmasters asking about such a filter. They say they rank well for everything they want, but not for a single keyword phrase that they once ranked well for. The question they asked does a search engine, such as Google, penalize a site for a specific keyword phrase?

Here is a poll, let me know what you think about this topic:

As you can see from the poll, I have two Yes answers and one No. You can select all or none. Yes algorithmically means that Google has a filter that is automated. Yes Manually means Google does filter for keyword phrases, but a human does it. No, means, no, Google does not penalized in this way.

I'll vote but I won't tell you what my thoughts are until after I post the results.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

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: April 2, 2009"

About a month ago, we reported Google was testing classic Sitelinks, i.e. one line Sitelinks. Well, now it seems like we can reproduce the single line Sitelinks.

A Google Webmasters Help thread shows how two different queries return different types of Sitelinks for the same site.

A search for cashforgold returns the standard Sitelinks:

A search for cash4gold returns the classic Sitelinks:

Both are the same site, but showing only half the number of Sitelinks shown on the current Sitelinks format. Plus, the Sitelinks are shown on a single line, as opposed to four lines in two columns.

I wonder if Google will be going back to the classic user interface for Sitelinks?

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Update: Dennis Dornon commented pointing to a blog post that shows for a search on internet marketing blog on Google returns classic Sitelinks with numbers. Here is a screen capture:

The thing is, Sitelinks are normally made up anchor text of the links and the numbers might just reflect that and nothing more.

It appears that the Google Local Business Center is not working for many businesses interested in updating their Google Maps/Local business listing. A Google Maps Help thread (well, there are a few) reports the issues from several users.

In short, it seems like when some try to access their local business listing they are presented with the following error:

System Error

We're sorry, but we are unable to serve your request at this time. Please try back in a few minutes.

This has been plaguing some business owners for over three days. There is no word from Google on the issue yet.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Yesterday, as well as today, I spotted dozens of threads on Google updating their site's toolbar PageRank scores. I didn't want to post the details until today, simply because it was April Fools. But the PageRank update seems to be here and like always, too many people care.

We have threads at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums (dozens there), and HighRankings Forum.

Yes, it seems like Google did push out a toolbar update. I will quote one post from all of these threads. The post is from Googler, JohnMu in the Google Webmasters Help thread:

I'm pretty sure we'll have another Toolbar PR update this year. However, as touched upon by the others, this is generally not something you need to worry about.

Enough said.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and HighRankings Forum.

There is a thread at WebmasterWorld and several in the Google Analytics Help forum with complaints that Google Analytics is no longer tracking Google AdWords data properly.

The WebmasterWorld thread has this complaint:

In two of my analytics accounts for sites which I use adwords to drive traffic all of the data is being recorded as direct and not google(cpc)...and it not reporting any traffic from adwords (which my wallet tells my otherwise!)It is only for the past two days including today. Is anyone else seeing this? Is it a glitch?

The simple answer is that in February, Google notified us that we need to link our analytics account to our AdWords accounts to pass this information. So if you have not done so, and your Analytics data is looking a bit empty, go ahead and link up those accounts. Brad has a good post explaining how to link up your accounts.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Analytics Help.

Google began beta testing a new AdWords interface about 6 months ago. Recently Google expanded that beta test and is going as far to encourage AdWords advertisers to sign up for the beta, in order to get accustomed to it before it becomes the default.

AdWordsPro Sarah said in a Google AdWords Help thread, "everyone's account will migrate to the new interface, so, to make sure you are ready, I highly recommend signing up for the beta test." She also gave us a teaser of what new stuff we can expect:

• Performance graphs: Spot trends over time with custom graphs on every campaign management page.
• Insight across ad groups: Focus on the high-impact areas of your account with new roll-up tabs on every page. You can see and edit keywords, placements or ads from all ad groups on a single tab.
• In-line editing: Want to change a keyword or bid? Click on it and make changes in-line instead of loading a separate page.
• Easier content network management: Improve content network performance through a new Networks tab. Look at statistics for the placements where your ads have appeared, and then take action by setting unique bids or excluding placements directly from the report.

Sarah asked that if you are participating in the beta, you should provide feedback, of all kinds, in this Google AdWords Help thread.

Ready or not, here it comes.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

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: April 1, 2009"

I wrote a big write up at Search Engine Land on the various search related April Fools gimmicks over here. Here, let me focus on the forum threads I found related to questions on the various April Fools jokes.

Google went back to 1990 with CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. In short, the intelligently designed this awesome blog. Honestly, I am not too much into the joke. The funny part is that someone asked "How can I install Gmail Autopilot by CADIE in my gmail account?" Hmm, April Fools!

Cre8asite Forums renamed to Cre8abanana:

Finally, you may have noticed that visiting this site, will spring you for an April Fools hoax. The hoax changes if you are on a PC or Mac.

Mac users (or linux) get the ever so scary kernel panic:

PC users users get the blue screen of death:

Hope it didn't freak you out too much. Honestly, every time I visit this site and get that hoax, I get nervous. Something about seeing the kernel panic that scares me, even though I know it is a hoax.

I wrote a big write up at Search Engine Land on the various search related April Fools gimmicks over here.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, Cre8asite Forums and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forum thread has a collection of "weird" or "funny" ads people spotted through Google AdSense or AdWords. I thought I share them in text format, but feel free to see the thread to see screen captures.

• AdSense shows ads on a skydiver accident for American Airline with the slogan, "we know why you fly."
• AdWords shows ads for Big Daddy and Big Juicy Butts
• AdWords ads for used toilet paper
• Hillary Clinton Naked ads?
• Amazon selling "human remains."
• A search for world of warcraft showing an ad for virgin males (I guess that makes sense)
• You can visit hell on ebay
• Or sell your kids on ebay

Feel free to add more to the forum.

Forum discussion and pictures at DigitalPoint Forum.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does it take to rank well in Google? A good question, but typically, a new site might rank well in the short term and then drop off the radar until it begins ranking again. This is sometimes known as a temporary PageRank feature of some sort.

So let me poll our audience, you tell me how long you think it takes to rank well in Google?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A HighRankings Forum thread asks why do some people use more than a single robots.txt file to control and instruct search spiders how to crawl and access their content. That is a good question. Typically, the spiders will only listen to the robots.txt file found in the root level. So technically, if you place a robots.txt on a subdomain, the search engine will likely ignore it. I do not believe the same applies to subdomains, where subdomains have their own root levels.

HighRankings administrator, Randy, said:

robots.txt anywhere but the Root level will be ignored by the spiders. In fact it would surprise me if it's ever even queried. robots.txt is not like .htaccess where you can control things on a per directory level.

The only way a subdirectory robots.txt might be valid is the rare case where someone has a domain name parked on a subdirectory of another domain. Or possibly if the subdirectory is really a subdomain, though that one too is questionable in my mind and isn't something I've tested to see if spiders look for a robots.txt for each subdomain.

I love what Ron Carnell added:

FWIW, I almost always back up a file before modifying it. My ex-wife always said I had trust issues? At any rate, I probably have a few copies of robots.txt laying around on more than a few sites. I don't worry about it because, as you pointed out, the only one that counts is in the root.

I believe Google often uses individual sitemaps per subdomain, to control their content.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

There are several people who are complaining that Google Maps is incredibly slow for them. If you have slowness issues with Google Maps, you may be in luck. A Google Maps Help thread has a Googler helping these users by troubleshooting issues with them.

Googler, Mike CH, believes there are certain firewalls that may be causing the issue. There seem to be two issues, the first is loading the map tiles and the second is trouble loading the JavaScript "brain" of the site.

Mike is asking these users to run traceroutes and disable their firewalls. If you are also having issues with Google Maps, you may want to participate in the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.