May 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: May 29, 2009"

In this week's video, which I created on Thursday, but published on Friday, we discussed several SEM topics. First, there was a Google Toolbar PageRank update. Google is testing new click tracking. Can Google rank pages higher on certain days? Most SEOs will try Google's new rich snippet markups. Rich snippets only show up in Google US. 80% of SEOs feel they can beat Wikipedia in Google. Most SEMs prefer the new AdWords trademark policy. 76% of SEMs don't fully trust Google's keyword tool. The local search ranking factors released a version two this week. Google finally commemorates memorial day and we got the logo recap for you. 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:

• Google May 2009 Toolbar PageRank Update
• Google Web Search's New Click Tracking
• Does Google Rank Pages Higher on Specific Days of the Week?
• Most Webmasters Will Use Google's New Rich Snippet Markups
• Rich Snippets Showing in Google US & Beyond?
• 80% Of SEOs Said They Can Beat Wikipedia In Google
• Most SEMs Prefer Google's New U.S. AdWords Trademark Policy
• 76% of SEMs Don't Fully Trust Google's Keyword Tool
• Version Two of Local Search Ranking Factors Released
• Google Finally Commemorates Memorial Day, Like Yahoo, AOL, Live & Ask.com

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

I am a huge fan of Google Ad Manager, the hosted ad serving solution from Google. The only issue is that those who heavily use AdSense run into issues when they wanted to test out using Ad Manager with AdSense. What is the issue?

Google does not communicate clearly that after an AdSense channel has been imported to Ad Manager to become a placement, this change is permanent, and you will no longer be able to use that channel in your AdSense account.

There have been complaints about this in the Google Ad Manager Help forum since earlier this year.

Steve, from the Google Ad Manager team, explained that this is the case due to technical reasons. He said there is an alternative:

However, you can now begin using this new placement in Ad Manager for any of your directly sold ad campaigns as well as AdSense ads. When a channel is imported into Ad manager, any placement targeted campaigns to that channel will also be imported.

The main issue is still an issue. Why is there no warning of this before allowing AdSense publishers to make the transition to Google Ad Manager? Many AdSense publishers do not need the features of Ad Manager, and they learn this quick. But once they switch, those channels are locked forever and they can't go back.

Forum discussion at Google Ad Manager Help.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

We asked our readers a few weeks ago if they can beat Wikipedia in the Google results? The answer is yes, most SEOs believe they can beat Wikipedia's listings in the Google results.

81% of SEOs feel they can beat the Wikipedia number one listings, if they need to. 74% said they can do it with some work, while 7% said it would be easy to do so. Let me share the break down of results:

Question: Can You Beat a #1 Wikipedia Google Listing?
:: Yes, But With Work said 117 respondents or 74%
:: No, Too Hard said 23 respondents or 14%
:: Yes, Easily said 11 respondents or 7%
:: No, Not Possible said 5 respondents or 3%
:: Other answer... said 3 respondents or 2%

That is a total of 159 responses to the poll.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

The other day, we polled our readers asking if you trust Google's keyword suggestion tool. We received a lot of responses, well over 200 and I wanted to share them with you.

The majority, 76% said they do not fully trust the keyword tool. While 23% said they do trust the keyword tool. Trusting Google is not something most people do these days.

Let me break down the results for you.

Question: Do You Trust Google's Keyword Tool?

:: Not Fully said 147 respondents or 62%
:: Yes said 55 respondents or 23%
:: No said 33 respondents or 14%
:: Other answer... said 4 respondents or 2%

But I bet most of you still use the tool. :-)

Forum discussion continued at HighRankings Forums.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around what it will take for Google AdSense to "remain great." Clearly, you must first agree that AdSense is "great," and if you do, then we need to agree on what must be done for it to remain that way.

Some of the suggestions in the thread include:

• Accept only sites with 5,000 daily visitors or more
• Go back to the basics
• Drop smart pricing
• Relax the AdSense algorithm
• Penalize sites that copy content
• Less AdSense Spammers
• More & better advertisers

There are other suggestions in the thread, plus not everyone agrees with all of these suggestions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

You rarely ever see a Googler complaining about spammers in public. That is why I found this Google Maps Help thread funny. A Googler, Joel, went off on a small rant, asking:

Question: Why do spammers post on the Help Forum asking for assistance?

It surprises me, really.

If you're posting - why isn't my listing showing, and your submitted listing title is something like Best Web Designer and SEO in the State of New Hampshire, you can bet it's been suspended for violating our policies.

In my history of covering SEM forum discussion, I cannot remember ever seeing a complaint like this come from a Googler or even a search representative at another search company.

How does this help you or I? It doesn't but I found this unique enough to post about.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: May 28, 2009"

About a week ago, we asked our readers if they like or dislike the new AdWords trademark policy. The new policy gives some advertisers the ability to use trademarked terms in the ad copy.

We asked our readers if they like the new policy and the majority do like it.

Question:Do You Like Google's New AdWords Trademark Policy?

:: Yes, About Time said 38 respondents or 64
:: No, This Is Bad said 20 respondents or 34%
:: Other answer... said 1 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google has quietly announced in a Google Groups thread that they have finally added the impression share columns to the AdWords API. The new columns, currently visible in the API documents are:

• exactMatchImpShare which is the Exact Match IS (measure)
• impShare which is the Impression Share (IS) (measure)
• lostImpShareBudget which is the Lost IS (Budget) (measure)
• lostImpShareRank which is the Lost IS (Rank) (measure)

Jeff Posnick from the Google AdWords API Team said they will likely post on this at the AdWords API blog in the next few weeks.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A Cre8asite Forum thread has discussion around the topic of updating a web page that does really well in the search engines. The member asked, would you dare change your best producing web page?

The reason the SEO wants to change things is to get this page off the static environment and move it over to the updated content management system they have been using. The issue with their CMS is that it appears they will have to change the URL and the way the page renders a bit. Honestly, that upsets me, the part about changing the URL. Why can't they get a CMS that allows them to define the URL directly in the CMS?

In any event, it is a scary thing to start messing around with your best performing web page. But if this is something you have to do, down the road. You should likely do it sooner then later. It obviously depends on the type of content this page is about. Is there a slow season? If so, move it then.

Google typically will move all the link weight from page A to page B when a 301 is in place. Try not to change the content for the worse and try to keep all what you did well with that page on the new page.

Would you dare change your best performing page?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forum.

Yesterday, a new search engine launched, its name is Topsy. Topsy's tagline is "a search engine powered by tweets." So there you go.

If you look at the WebmasterWorld thread, all you will see is disappointed searchers. Here are some quotes:

Tried a search regarding furniture delivery and I got 7 out of 10 results from the same company/account and looked very spammy...

I don't like it. Very slow and bad results.

The creators should be fined for wasting bandwidth.

interesting. I topsied the name of my city, and thre top results were some public events coming soon, some sports scores, and where to get the lowest gas prices in town. Not relevant results like City Hall or Munipical News. These are things people are tweeting about.

I can see how this might be alluring... but I can also see how the results might turn many people off.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, Google made two quick announcements about bug fixes with Google Webmaster Tools.

The first item was that the URL Removal tool was not working. A Google Webmasters Help thread has confirmation from Susan Moskwa, a Googler, that this was indeed the case. Susan even tweeted that her "inbox is full of email about URL removal requests," implying there was an issue. Susan confirmed that the issue is now resolved and removal requests should now be working.

The second item is that in the new Google Webmaster Tools UI, Google had to disable the option to subscribe to notifications. Google has updated us via Google Webmasters Help that they have re-enabled this feature and you can now subscribe to notifications in the new user interface.

Forum discussion at two different Google Webmasters Help Threads.

Starting yesterday afternoon, people began noticing the little green pixels in the Google Toolbar began updating. Yes, there was a Google Toolbar PageRank update last night and many of the forums are buzzing about it.

Yes, a Toolbar PageRank update means nothing in terms of your ranking changing anytime soon. The PageRank scores shown in the toolbar are outdated and have zero direct impact on your Google rankings. That doesn't mean that PageRank has no influence, but the toolbar score does not have any influence. Google shows us one thing, but yet uses another thing.

The last possible PageRank update was in early April 2009, so it has been just about two months since the last update. Typically Google updates the PageRank value in the Toolbar every few months or so. So this update does seem more recent then updates in the recent past.

Forum discussion at several forums including:

• WebmasterWorld
• Google Webmaster Help
• HighRankings Forums
• DigitalPoint Forums
• Google Web Search Help
• Search Engine Roundtable 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: May 27, 2009"

Google provides a very popular Keyword Suggestion Tool that many SEMs rely on. But a HighRankings Forum thread questions how trustworthy the tool is.

Many SEMs use the tool because it is convenient and Google provides the estimated search volumes. At the same time, many SEMs know how to take Google's estimates and apply them to their campaigns. Experience and campaign history helps SEMs learn this trade.

In fact, did you know that the keyword tool allows you to adjust the type of query based on match type? After you run the tool, you can then click on a drop down menu to select the match type, broad, phrase, exact or negative match.

But the big question is, do you trust the keyword tool? Take our poll:

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

An interesting WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that for some sites, Google may give that site higher ranking based on what day of the week it is.

The SEO has been tracking the traffic from Google to the site for months. He noticed that every Tuesday showed the highest level of referrals from Google, but every Saturday showed the least traffic from Google. Over the past five weeks, he also has been tracking how many pages Google shows were indexed from the site using the site command (which he and we all know is not 100% accurate). The pattern remained the same, more pages were indexed on Tuesdays, the days he saw the most traffic from Google. Whereas, on Saturdays, less pages were indexed and less traffic was seen from Google.

WebmasterWorld, administrator, tedster, said "ranking changes based on day of the week definitely occur - they even get mentioned in some of Google's patents."

After a few more days, the thread creator noted that everything changed this week, after months of tracking. He said:

Final update, just when I thought I had sufficient data to start tracking related considerations for effect Google changed gears on me, Today's traffic should have been trending downwards until Friday (though up from last Wednesday) but instead the site enjoyed a record up day... breaking a long running trend.

I suppose nothing ever stays still long enough to fully evaluate online, ah well.

Coincidence or truth to this phenomenon?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense has an ad unit named "link units." The link unit ads look like links and if you click on them, they take you a landing page of Google ads. In the past, those ads were only text ads. Now, Google is showing image ads on the bottom of the page.

Here is a screen capture:

Google explained more about how and when they are triggered:

These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we'll only show the original text ads -- in other words, we won't show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.

Here is a sample of a real link unit Google ad:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Many local SEO experts came together to publish the second version of the Local Search Ranking Factors. This guide grades how important each factor is in ranking well in local search. The survey polled 27 local SEO experts on 49 factors.

David Mihm who organized the survey said the follow points are most interesting to him:

• The power of Distance from Centroid as a ranking factor has diminshed, but many folks are still seeing clear evidence of its importance, despite Carter Maslan’s claims to the contrary last summer. It’s becoming even more important, though, to have a physical location for your business within the city which is being searched.
• The importance of links in the Local search algorithm(s) seems to be on its way down, while the importance of citations, particularly those from major data providers and industry/location-specific directories, was deemed to be increasing in importance. HyperLocal citations (from blogs or other businesses in your area) are becoming more important, too, but not at the same rate. The quality of links seems much more important than quantity, which speaks to the idea of Location Prominence as a central algorithmic factor.
• When it comes to reviews, though, it’s the exact opposite–at least in terms of rankings. Nearly every expert felt that positive customer experiences dramatically increased clickthrough and conversion, but that volume of reviews is what makes the difference in ranking. Ian Lurie’s concept of review “velocity” is an interesting one to consider.

A must read for all SEOs and all businesses that run local operations.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A WebmasterWorld thread has several AdWords advertisers complaining about the site exclusion feature in AdWords. With the new user interface to manage campaigns, advertisers are confused how the exclusions work.

Does the exclusion block domains in the search network or content network, or maybe both? I personally tried it myself and it is not clear if you can block your ads from showing up on specific sites by search or content network. It would appear that you can block sites globally from both search and content network, but I am not sure if that is true.

No wonder 56% of AdWords users dislike the new interface.

Try it yourself, go to AdWords, click on a campaign and then click on the "network" tab. You should then see an "Exclusions" plus sign, click it and it will show you the campaigns you can apply the exclusions to. But it doesn't seem to specify content versus search networks:

AdWordsAdvisor chimed in on the thread, saying:

I am 99.8% sure that this is simply a new UI on top of the exact same functionality as before.

I have pinged a colleague on the new UI team to confirm this (since I do hate to be wrong in public) but discover that she is traveling and not reachable.

I'll post again after I've had the chance to speak with her.

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: May 26, 2009"

Earlier this month, we noticed Google Analytics changed the graph to display only day counts selected. In the past, it faded out the rest of the month when you selected a few days. In addition, if you selected just a single day, it would break down the visits by hour.

Now this is no longer the case. So we ran a poll to see what Google Analytics customers or users want. Here are the results of the 100 responses:

Question: Do You Like New or Old Google Analytics Graph?

:: I Like Old Graph, That Fades Unselected Days said 83 respondents or 83%
:: I Like New Graph, That Only Displays Selected Days said 15 respondents or 15%
:: Other said 2 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

Most of us have had the client from hell but we often don't like to talk about it. There is a Google Webmasters Help thread which takes us through one client from hell.

If you read through all 60 or so posts, you will see how hard this web designer is working to make this client happy. The designer tells us that the client was very happy with the design, and everything. But when the client didn't see their site in Google, soon after it was launched, the client was extremely displeased. The designer, who was not an SEO, came to Google Webmasters Help to help get the site listed.

The designer learned from professional SEOs and Googlers that the site was done fairly search engine friendly and that over time, the site will be indexed and ranked in Google. But it wasn't soon enough. The designer added more and more SEO changes, such as an XML sitemap, removed some flash, added some links - but it wasn't fast enough. The client then found the Google thread and threatened the designer that they would sue him. So the designer gave the client his deposit back and took down the web site.

Guess what? A day later, the web site showed up in the Google index, only to return an empty site. And now, I am sure it doesn't show up anymore.

We probably all had clients like this. If not, read the thread and you can learn lessons from this.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A few weeks ago, Google announced the support of rich snippets in the search results. Most SEOs and Webmasters said they would give it a try and I did also. So far, none of the sites I have tried it on, show the rich snippet data.

I do wish there was a way, maybe in Webmaster Tools, to verify that we did it right and what it might look like once it shows up in the search results. I know Google does not guarantee it will show up in the search results. But it would be nice to know it is not showing due to technical reasons versus authority reasons.

In any event, a Google Webmasters Help thread asks if the rich snippets will also show in Google localized versions. Would rich snippets show in the UK or Canada or Israel?

It appears that rich snippets currently only show in Google.com, and not other Google properties. Compare:

• google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+pizzeria

• google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+pizzeria
• google.ca/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+pizzeria
• google.co.il/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+pizzeria

As you can see when you currently click through, the rich snippets only show in Google.com.

In any event, it would be nice to see if you can see how the rich snippets would appear and if you have technically set them up correctly.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Back in March 2007, Google Maps had an easter egg that allowed people to search for directions from places like New York to London, and it would tell you to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. It was a little geek joke that caused a lot of buzz.

You can see many pictures of the various examples in Google Images.

But at some point, Google disabled those directions. I am not sure when, but a Google Maps Help thread asks what happened to the neat gag? The Maps user said:

Darn it, when did Google get rid of the "swim across the atlantic ocean" gag?! That was the best "easter egg" type feature I ever saw in any professional application, ever. If it was business users who complained which ended this feature please at least bring it back as an option. It was a really neat joke which was obviously not intended to be taken seriously. It was the kind of thing that made Google "cool."

I am not sure when it stopped working, but it was something cool that Google did.

Forum discussion at Google Maps 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: May 25, 2009"

A couple weeks ago, we reported on Google's new rich snippet markups and asked our audience if they will use it on their web sites. With 90 responses in, I wanted to share the results of the poll.

53% of webmasters said they would use the rich snippets, while only 14% said they would not use it. 29% said they may or may not use it. Here is the breakdown:

Question: Will You Use Google's New "Rich Snippets" Markups?

:: Yes said 48 respondents or 53%
:: Maybe said 26 respondents or 29%
:: No said 13 respondents or 14%

Personally, I am trying it out on a few sites and if it takes on, I will continue to add this markup, where it makes sense, to other sites.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld, Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

Google's Matt Cutts explained in a video why Google does not currently index @ signs. It stems from not wanting to index email addresses, he said. But now with the popularity of Twitter, Matt would not be surprised if Google changes how they handle indexing of @ signs.

Here is the video:

I find these little tidbits interesting.

Forum discussion at YouTube.

A moderator at WebmasterWorld noticed Google stopped using standard URL redirects in the Google search results to track click events. If you hover over the link, it now appears that Google is just sending you directly to the destination URL, without using any click tracking.

But that is not the case. If you look at the source code, it looks like Google is using some type of JavaScript to track the click.

Here is a sample of the code used:

<a href="http://www.google.com/" class=l onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','4', 'AFQjCNG5-9Jej-ukVeakTgwonqt2narbYg','&sig2=4Lwo00y104At7P9SCT7uXA')">

Moderator, jdMorgan, added that he noticed the JavaScript request going to Google but then it is resulting in a 204-No Content response. But then he noticed a request direct to his server with the same referrer (the same/original search results page).

This appears to be a new way of Google tracking click events in the search results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has reports that the Google Webmaster Tools API is having some technical difficulties over the weekend.

Users of the API are receiving 502 errors for some requests. Authentication seems to work via the API, but all other requests seem to time out eventually. One webmaster coder said the following protocols are having issues, but there may be others:

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/sites/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/keywords/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/siteID/sitemaps/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/messages/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/siteID/crawlissues/

Googler, JohnMu, said he has "passed it on to the team to take a look."

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Today is Memorial Day in the United States of America. And to recognize the day, Google, Yahoo, AOL, Live.com, Ask.com, DogPile and others have special logos up. Google, who is known not to show a special logo for the day, has placed a little yellow ribbon below the search box. This is a historic move for Google, since they gone on record as saying the Google logo is not appropriate for the day.

Google's yellow Memorial Day ribbon:

Yahoo (animated):

AOL (animated):

DogPile:

Live.com:

Ask.com:

And our theme, here at the Search Engine Roundtable:

For past logos, see:

• Memorial Day Logos from Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile But Still Not Google
• Memorial Day Commemorated: Ask.com & Search Engine Roundtable
• Ask Jeeves Commemorates Memorial Day : 2005
• Memorial Day & Search Engines : 2004

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

In this 13 minute video recap, I go quickly through the past two weeks of search news. First, I had a baby girl, so that is why I missed the recap last week. Google made major changes named search options, wonder wheel, timeline, rich snippet markups, search suggestions and news and blog search were updated. Google and Yahoo Japan has a search index update. AdWords shows all queries now. Google tests one line product AdWords ads. Yahoo Search ads test favorite icons. Slow sites do better on AdSense? Google AdSense doesn't work on linux. Google Profile profiles have filters on occasion. Microsoft gets ready to relaunch search. Safka leaves Ask.com. SEO companies are springing up like dandelions. That was this 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:

• Taking Day Off - I Had a Girl
• Google Wonder Wheel & Search Options Go Live
• Will You Use Google's New "Rich Snippets" Markups?
• Google Launches New Search Suggestions & Drops Counts
• Google News Get Update & Blog Search Gets Improved
• Small Google May 2009 Update?
• Yahoo Search Japan Update: US Update Soon?
• AdWords Advertisers Get More Transparency But Don't Care About It?
• Google Testing One Line Product Links in AdWords
• Yahoo Search Ads Also Testing Favicons
• Earn More AdSense Money By Slowing Down Your Server
• Empty Google AdSense Ads is Linux Bug
• Why Does My Google Profile Not Show For A Google Search?
• Microsoft Getting Ready to Launch New Search Engine - Kumo? Bing? Live? MSN?
• Jim Safka Leaves Ask.com For Personal Reasons
• SEO Companies Springing Up "Like Dandelions"

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: May 22, 2009"

A Google Webmasters Help thread asks, what does it mean when the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator is a red color, as opposed to green?

Here is a screen capture:

So what does that mean?

(1) Maybe this image was photoshoped
(2) Or maybe there is a plugin that makes the color red, instead of green

This is a joke, but it caught my attention and I thought it would be nice to lighten things up a bit before the weekend.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A Sphinn thread has discussion around the topic of how much Digg might not like SEO sites or blogs.

Back when Digg was first getting started, SEOs flocked to it, as a way of driving traffic and ultimately links, to help promote the site in the search engines. In fact, this site was often features on Digg's home page, not because I gamed it or wanted the links, in fact, it often put stress on my server, which I didn't want. It was featured because, on occasion, we write something that is quality. The last time we were featured on the Digg home page was in June 2007 for a brief period until it was manually removed. Since then, hundreds of people submitted our content to Digg and none of it made it "hot."

Personally, I gave up caring. But there is no doubt, the Digg community doesn't like the SEO community. It is understandable and it is their community.

The Sphinn thread discusses some of those reasons.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

If you are a maven at YouTube and videos in the mobile space, you might be interested in a new Google Mobile Help thread.

Googler, Robin, said he and Google is looking for mobile YouTube experts to make help videos to be syndicated on the YouTube Help Channel for others to learn from. Robin said:

Help others out by making fun, creative, and informative videos that we can add to the YouTube mobile help center articles. Making videos of tips, instructions, and shortcuts makes everything easier to understand!

Check out more info here if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=YouTubeHelp

So if you have the mobile video skill set, and want to help others, give it a try!

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

The Yahoo Search Japan blog announced they are updating their index now. Perhaps this is a sign that Yahoo in the US will update soon as well. I am pretty sure that both indexes are mostly separate for the most part, I am not sure if it works the same way at Google, but I think it does at Yahoo.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a single post about the update. One person who tracks Yahoo Search Japan said "we're experiencing big move on SERP."

The translated announcement reads:

Yahoo! In search, Yahoo! Inc. UEBUSACHIENJIN has developed the "Yahoo! Search Technology (YST)" has upgraded the search algorithm.

Recently we reported Index Update, unlike a significant upgrade and will affect the behavior of search engine algorithms.

The last US Yahoo Search update we reported was a while ago in March 2009.

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: May 21, 2009"

This is a great video posted at SEOptimise on what should Google do with black hat SEOs. The video interviews 50 SEOs at SES London.

Really funny stuff - great job!

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A couple days ago, Google announced that they will now show all queries that resulted in an AdWords click as opposed to grouping some of the less popular keywords in a category called "other unique queries."

This clearly provides more transparency for advertisers to know how each and every click is being spent.

This is really a great thing that I know advertisers have been asking from Google for a while.

But I have yet to see any threads or discussion on this feature outside of a single post at WebmasterWorld. Do advertisers not care or did they miss the announcement?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I often see threads at the Google Webmasters Help discussion forum of people who have sites that were penalized for having issues with their site in the Google Webmaster guidelines. But it is not often where you see a thread that one issue then opens up an other issue, then an other issue and so on.

A recent Google Webmasters Help thread has just that. It starts off by looking like the site has a copied privacy policy, which isn't nice, but normally doesn't warrant a penalty. It then looks like there are way too many link pages, so that should be removed. We then notice that some of this person's sites have duplicate content amongst themselves. So fix that.

Then I see this from the webmaster:

My partner's brother had muscular dystrophy. He made several md sites based on personal knowledge as well as medical facts. These are examples of our sites which are useful and deserve to be indexed.

www.typesofmusculardystrophy.com
http://duchennemusculardystrophycure.com/

We have hundreds of sites like this.

Okay, to have hundreds of sites in different topics make sense. But to have hundreds of sites on exactly the same topic? Well, that just seems redundant to me.

In any event, the thread is an interesting read in that this webmaster is getting advice from both SEOs and Googlers on several layers of issues.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

After some testing, Google has finally announced that they will be launching changes to their search suggestions. The key changes include:

(1) Search Ads in Search Suggestions:

(2) Improved "navigational query" support:

(3) Search Suggestions even on search results pages:

(4) No estimated count numbers, as you can see from the screen shots above. Here is a screen shot of the old way:

(5) Search suggestions are now personalized based on your search history and other factors:

(6) Google bolds the query words in the search suggestions drop down.

I don't see this feature live yet, but it should be soon.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of web directories. Moderator, incrediBILL, runs directories and he goes off on how many of the submissions are not able writing your titles and descriptions to be click worthy, but rather they are stuffed with keywords for the SEO benefit, if any.

There is a key point in this thread which explains why possibly many DMOZ listings that are reviewed (many are not even reviewed) are not approved. Most SEOs who think of web directories don't think about the possible traffic benefit, they think about getting a keyword rich anchor text link. But they should not think that way. Why?

(1) Keyword rich links won't necessarily encourage a person to click on your listing
(2) Directory editors hate submissions that are not designed for the directory user, but rather designed to improve the ranking of a web site in Google

Jim Noble, an experienced DMOZ editor, said:

As a DMOZ editor, I don't mind them doing that at all. It's an indicator that the site is likely to be a content mill/MFA/affiliate link farm - none of which we knowingly list.

Even if it's not, we need to amend almost all suggested titles & descriptions to make them guidelines compliant anyway. Of the tens of thousands of sites I've listed in DMOZ over the years, I guess I've only accepted around 50 without change.

When faced with a pool of listing suggestions, some spammy and some not, and limited time, guess which ones I process first :).

These are just tips to keep in mind when submitting your site to a web directory. Yes, getting those keywords in the hyperlink is a good thing, but honestly, it should not be your primary goal.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I rarely share funny threads, but I seriously need to lighten things up today, due to the lack of sleep I have been getting. A Google AdWords Help thread has a sad story of someone who was scammed for 1,000 rupees. The funny part is that this was done in person, by someone claiming to be a Google advertising representative.

What appears to have happened was that a person claimed to be an authorized agent of Google. The person said, give me 1,000 rupees as a starter balance and I will get your ads going. It turns out, this guy took the money and ran off.

Clearly, the person who was scammed is upset. But who does he blame? Google! Since this guy claimed to be an authorized Google agent, Google is responsible for the loss. Seriously.

The person then goes off cursing at everyone for telling him that Google is not responsible and that he has been scammed. Google has seriously modified the thread to keep it somewhat clean. But it still is a funny read.

Personally, I am willing to repay this guy his 1,000 rupees, which is $27. In fact, I'll make the offer to him, since I did use his story for this site.

Lessons learned:

(1) Don't fall for scams, do your homework before giving anyone your money
(2) Don't blame others for your own problems

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: May 20, 2009"

Google Webmaster Tools and Webmaster Central are tools I cannot believe SEOs ever lived without. Early on, many experienced SEOs were skeptical about the tools, but many of us have learned that the tools and advice are here to help us with our web sites.

Adam Lasnik, who I rarely hear from in the forums anymore, started a thread at Google Webmasters Help discussion area asking Webmasters to give Google case studies on if the Google Webmaster Central team has helped them or not. Adam said:

Did your website once scare away both users and Googlebot but -- after you put in some hard work and used the resources of Google Webmaster Central -- later turn into a success story?

Whether it was intelligence you gleaned from Webmaster Tools, insights you got from friendly Webmaster Help Bionic Posters, or wisdom you soaked up from our blog or Help Center, we'd love to know! So please take just a moment to brag to us and to your fellow webmasters, sharing your ugly-duckling-to-swan web site story.

I promise to share your positive vibes with all relevant Googlers (which will make their day!), and you might serve as an inspiration to your fellow webmasters, too! :-)

So, if you want to share your success, which you think is due in part of Google Webmaster Central, do join the thread at add your thoughts.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

The exciting topic from last night was that Microsoft is demonstrating their search engine next week at the D: All Things Digital conference. It is expected that the search engine will go live at the SMX Advanced conference a week later.

Danny Sullivan has a nice write up on what we can expect from Microsoft. There are questions about when it is launching, what brand will it go under and how it will compete with Google. Microsoft is struggling in the area of both branding the engine and making it as good as Google. So we will see how the demo works out and if it can make a dent in Google.

Time will tell. I was wrong in 2004 when I said Microsoft will beat Google even if they aren't more relevant. I actually am happy that they did not and I am happy to admit I was wrong. I am now wiser to say, let's wait and see with what happens here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has many experienced publishers talking about a tip they never talked about before. The tip is about how slowing down your server, actually increases your AdSense CTR and leads to higher earnings.

WebmasterWorld moderator, incrediBILL, said that by accident he noticed that when his server is slow and bogged down by traffic, his AdSense CTR climbs. As soon as he posted it, Moderator martinibuster and Senior Member, youfoundjake both said he let the secret out.

They both confirmed that slowing down your server will make people impatient and encourage people to click on the ads, assuming they load faster then the rest of the page.

One member points out that "smart pricing" is linked directly to how fast your pages load. So in the long run, it might hurt your earnings. But I guess if you make it slow enough to not be considered slow by Google's standard but yet slow enough to make people want to click on ads, you win?

In the past, we heard reports that speeding up your server increases AdSense earnings by as much as 25%.

Who knows? Do you think faster or slower servers have an impact on earnings? Take our quick poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has been holding webinars for both new and expert AdSense publishers. The next webinar is tomorrow, Thursday, at 6.30 pm PDT. It is on the topic of getting paid.

The topic is named "Understanding the payment cycle" and is described as:

De-mystifying the AdSense payments system. Learn about the various payment options and understand the payment cycle.

One of the most discussed topics in the various AdSense forums are about payments, so a webinar devoted to payment topics, makes a lot of sense.

Keep in mind, Google caps the attendance to 500 people. So go register for the event now and don't forget to be there.

AdSense experts will be on hand to answer questions submitted from the audience.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

We covered this topic twice in the past, including January 2008 and December 2007. A post by Ben McKay has 80+ SEO Job Interview Questions, which may be the biggest list of questions I have seen to date.

I am not sure asking 80 questions to an interviewee is good. But clearly, have 80 questions you can ask and fine tune based on how the interview is going, is nice to have. Since we figure there is roughly 7% unemployment in the SEO industry, there are clearly talented SEOs out there looking for work. There are also many companies still hiring SEO talent, so getting the best talent should be key. Interviewing is just on step of that process.

There are many blog posts on the SEO interview, just see Google.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: May 19, 2009"

Jill Whalen, in her High Ranking Advisor wrote a piece named Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight! Jill goes on a well-deserved rant about how SEO companies are popping up left and right, even thought the people running these SEO companies know very little about SEO and have no real experience offering SEO services.

Here is a blurb:

What I don't understand is why people think that SEO is something they can perform as a business without knowing anything about it!

Certainly I give this person props for wanting to know about SEO *before* they set up shop. But what is it about SEO that attracts people with no knowledge or skills? While it's definitely not rocket science, if SEO were so easy that any hack could successfully start an SEO biz overnight, then every webmaster and company owner could easily learn it and do it themselves.

Regardless, new SEO companies keep popping up like dandelions in Spring.

I love that last line there, too funny. SEO is a great business these days. Organic search is surpassing paid search according to Hitwise and advertisers and marketers know this.

So what gives people the right to start a company offering a service that they have no skill in? Well, it is a free world. Trust me, I see plenty of companies selling things from SEO to postal stamps, and they nothing about it. It is how come so many companies fail and how come people have a distaste for certain professions.

Ultimately, it is not about people getting into businesses they have no business being in. It is more about people hiring these businesses to save a buck and ultimately getting burned by them.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Part of the Searchology 2009 Google event was that Google will be launching Google Squared this month. Danny has a good walk through of Google Squared features, if this is the first time you are hearing about it.

Brian Ussery Tweeted that there are some fun easter eggs in the preview. A Google Blogoscoped forum thread lists some, including:

• [times]
• [be there]
• [alpha]
• [42]

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped.

You wake up one morning, check out your site statistics and learn your traffic has plummeted. You then dig deeper to see the source of the traffic drop is from Google sending less traffic for your main keywords. Most SEO companies have gone through the experience of having at least one site penalized. The question is how does an SEO company first confirm a site penalty and then remove the site penalty.

We will discuss a thread at WebmasterWorld that has SEOs offering advice on this topic.

One of the sure fire ways to determine if a site was penalized by Google is if the site no longer ranks for it's own domain name. So if your site's domain name is rustybrick.com and you type in rustybrick into Google and you don't come up in the first page, then you got pretty good evidence that you have been penalized.

Also, since you have statistics on which keywords you ranked well for. If most of those keywords are now ranking in the 5th plus page, then that is often a sign of a penalty.

Senior member, johnnie, suggested that you first see if it is a malware issue. To do so, either go to Google Webmaster Tools and login (make sure your site is verified) and it should tell you in the messages. If not, then go to google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mysite.com and replace "mysite.com" with your domain.

But I prefer Google Webmaster Tools cause they may show you other issues with your site. It doesn't always show you if your site has been penalized, but it is a good start.

Here is a good checklist of items to review to make sure you fix your penalized site. We also wrote about how long sites are penalized in Google. In fact, we have lots of good articles about a Google penalty in our archives.

Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.

Google News and Google Blog search had updates over the weekend. Google News announced the visual update to their home page, while the Google Blog search update was not announced and less visual in nature.

The Google News update includes three main things:

1. New color frames around each section
2. YouTube logos to embedded news videos
3. Section pages (Top Stories, Business etc) now feature the media files from partners

Most people don't mind the update, and there are not many complaints or compliments on it. There is discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Blog Search also updated but this was not written about by Google. Jeremy contacted me and the team at Search Engine Land to give us the lowdown. Matt McGee did the excellent write up in my absence to explain the update made to blog search. It includes:

• Better at grouping blog posts into clusters
• More and fresher blog posts included in clusters
• Processing new links from blogs much faster
• Ranking algorithm has been tuned a bit
• Slight interface change that most won't notice
• Better at determining the authority

I am a huge fan of Jeremy Hylton, head of the search quality group in Google’s New York office. He is very open about Google Blog Search's advancements and issues and is a down right nice guy.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

While my wife was giving birth to our baby, Google sent me an email telling me they have made a serious change to their AdWords trademark policy. The AdWords blog explains that now, in the US, advertisers can use the trademark term(s) in the ad text, in certain conditions. Here is Google's language:

That is why, in an effort to improve ad quality and user experience, we are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. This change will bring Google's policy on trademark use in ad text more in line with the industry standard. Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don't own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it. This change will help you to create more narrowly targeted ad text that highlights your specific inventory.

For example, under our old policy, a site that sells several brands of athletic shoes may not have been able to highlight the actual brands that they sell in their ad text. However, under our new policy, that advertiser can create specific ads for each of the brands that they sell. We believe that this change will help both our users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across our networks in the U.S.

Advertisers can begin submitting new ads to Google AdWords with that meet these trademark criteria on 11am PDT on May 15th. And those ads that meet the criteria will not begin showing until June 15th.

Scanning the forum threads, specifically at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums, you see that people are either in love with this change or hate it. Trademark holders are mostly against it, while those that sell the trademarked items are very for the policy change. In addition, many people feel that Google is doing this to make an extra buck, while some aren't so sure - suggesting that Google may get hit with more lawsuits that might cost more money then allowing the ads in the first place.

What do you think? Take our poll:

Here are some good quotes from the forums:

somebody needs more cash :_)

It makes sense though. We've run into problems with it in the past. I should be able to promote products that I'm authorized to sell by the manufacturer in my ads. If I'm not allowed to sell them, I can't use the term. Seems pretty fair.

I think it's about time. Are the big brands pissed off at all the grocery circulars that use their trademark?

Don't mean to sound like an ass but honestly, why is PPC any different from print, yellow pages, etc.?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: May 18, 2009"

On Thursday we reported that the backlink data was out of sync in the redesigned webmaster tools. Well, over the weekend, that was fixed.

Googler, Jonathan Simon said in a Google Webmasters Help thread that it is now up to date. Jonathan said:

Check out your site's backlinks data in the new version of Webmaster Tools. We've just finished the process of loading the most recent backlinks data so you should now be able to see all your site's backlinks.

The backlinks data between the new and old versions of Webmaster Tools may not match 100% but the new version's data should be more comprehensive for most sites.

Some people are still having issues, so if you are one of those, join the thread and Jonathan or Sagar can help you.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

I love it how personal some people are in the SEO/SEM forums. It reminds me of the old days when the forums were like extended family for most of us. It many cases, that is still true, but as the industry has grown, we feel less of that.

Case in points, a Googler, AdSenseAdvisor in WebmasterWorld first tells us that he/she will be on vacation for a week and there will be a fill in during that time. Here is the post:

I'm taking some vacation next week, so I'll be away from Webmaster World 5/16-5/25. I have someone covering for me if you need anything in my absence, but I wanted to give you a heads up in case you notice a significant drop in snark compared to your usual ASA. :)

Later on, he/she tells us that the vacation is in Barbados. Just reading the back and forth in the thread, reminds me of how forums should be.

In any event, enjoy your trip AdSenseAdvisor, we will miss you - but you deserve the time off.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In any business field, making sure to protect your business from being taken advantage of through the legal arena is something that every company must be prepared for. The larger you are, the more chances you are to be hit up with a lawsuit.

John Andrews started a Sphinn thread discussing the topic of SEO liability. He sums it up as follows:

I bet you never saw this kind of lawsuit coming! As a professional service provider you obviously know you can be held liable for your performance, for negligence, and for making mistakes. You probably include something in your consulting agreements that addresses that. Your clients want assurances that you are responsible for your actions, and you want to be free to act in good faith on behalf of your clients, working to gain a competitive advantage in the search engine results pages. But the very nature of SEO is competition. For every winner in the SERPs, there are going to be losers. Are you ready to be sued by the losers?

Whenever I think of SEO liability, I always think of Jill Whalen. Why? Well, I am pretty sure her husband is a lawyer and she has been in the SEO space for longer than some of us owned computers. In addition, Ian McAnerin is very active in the forum and he has a degree in law. In any event, if you are looking for some legal advice, I might recommend High Rankings Forum for that reason.

The discussion at Sphinn is just getting started. I suggest anyone with both experience and knowledge to get involved in the thread because for many people, being sued is a scary thing that can have a serious impact on one's business and family.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

As many of you know, I had a baby girl on Friday morning. Cutest thing ever and mother and baby are doing great!

What I didn't expect is how little sleep you get during this stage. So, I apologize for the lack of posts here. That being said, I wanted to let you know I am still doing the forum research. I do hope to post a few things each day, but don't expect the volume and detail in each post until I get my feet wet with being a father.

Thank you so much for all the kind words left here and on my personal blog. The hundreds of good wishes on Twitter and all the emails, calls, IMs (yes, I was on my computer much of Friday, hospital had great wifi) and from the Search Engine Land Team and Cre8asite Team.

In classic SERoundtable tradition...

Forum discussion at Sphinn and Cre8asite Forums.

I am taking the day off today. I just had a baby girl. Feel free to comment on my personal blog.

I added a theme:

I'll take off Monday also. Didn't realize there is little to no sleeping. :)

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: May 14, 2009"

It seems like many people around the world are complaining that Google's properties, including Google Search and Gmail are both either down for them or incredibly slow. For me, it is working well, but I had people call, email and IM me about the issue.

Plus, if you look at a Twitter Search for google, you will see many are saying it is slow or down, at the moment.

We do have a few threads in the Google forums, here is one from the Google Web Search Help discussion forums.

I assume there are some server or network issues with the major backbones causing the slowness or downtime. I also assume things will return to normal soon.

Google has updated the App Status page to say there is service disruption today for Gmail users:

We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by May 14, 2009 11:23:00 AM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

*This may also be affecting other services

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help thread reports seeing more of empty or test AdSense ads. We have seen them back in March 2007 but they have disappeared until now.

Here is a screen capture of one ad that reads "text goes here" in the ad and the URL reads yoururlgoeshere.com.

Google replied to the threads confirming this is a Google bug with Linux operating systems. Google said:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This issue is isolated to Linux users, and our engineers are looking into it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

Yesterday was a very interesting day for Twitter. In short, Twitter removed the ability to see @ replies. Then they brought it back but in a limited fashion. The Twitter blog explained:

We're making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account.

Read that a few times. Neither here nor there.

Well, you might be able to see people who @ reply you or maybe not, it depends. That is why you might want to conduct a Twitter Search for your name and subscribe to the results via RSS. I do for both @seroundtable and @rustybrick (feel free to follow both).

To catch up on the Twitter action over the past 24 hours, TechCrunch posted a quality summary of what took place.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and make sure to follow @seroundtable and @rustybrick on Twitter.

Last week, we reported for the first time of Google Gadget porn becoming an issue. Well, it is now more widespread then I have ever seen.

A new Google AdSense Help thread reports seeing porn in home page of the Google Gadgets directory. Here is a screen capture:

Both Google Gadgets contain full nudity and also include sex photos. This is a clear violation of the Google Gadget terms. This was first reported two days ago, and they have been on the home page of the directory for at least two days and they still remain there. Hopefully Google will remove these soon.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

The other day, Google released a redesigned Webmaster Tools area. Soon after it was released, webmasters began noticing that the linkage data found in the new Webmaster Tools was out of sync with the one found in the old Webmaster Tools version.

Google has confirmed the issue, saying:

You may notice that your backlinks data differs between the new and old versions—this is because we're still filling in data for some sites in the new version. We hope that you'll find the new data more comprehensive once it's 100% filled in.

So for these sites, the issue hopefully will be resolved shortly. No need to panic.

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

Gab Goldenberg from SEO ROI posted a thread at Google Webmasters Help discussion forums when he noticed Google began to drop his rankings for all his pages. I have been tracking the thread for about three weeks, but held off on posting about it until Gabs wrote his post.

How I Cloaked My Way To LOWER Rankings was Gab's title and it shows how you must be careful about who you request site changes from. One WordPress plugin conflicted with a custom plugin and it turned out to generate cloaked-like pages in the eyes of Google. Google would see virtually the same title, content, etc for all the pages on the site, while a human would see unique pages.

Clearly, this type of duplicate content issue, with cloaking, is a recipe for disaster in the search engines.

Thanks to the good help of the folks at Google Webmasters Help and for Googler JohnMu pointing out the issue, Gab is able to address the issue and fix his site, which will fix his rankings.

Lesson learned: Test your changes in a test environment and try your best to understand how the changes will impact your pages. Some times things slip through, like in this case, but don't be afraid to ask for help.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters 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: May 13, 2009"

For the past few days, dozens of threads have been popping up in the Google Webmasters Help discussion forum about how Google Webmaster Tools was showing "Data is not available at this time" for some sites.

After many complaints, Google posted it as a known issue at 5am and then at 11am, they said it should be fixed by tomorrow (which is today).

I don't see any new complaints and no, I won't link to the 10 or so threads discussing the issue. Instead, I will link to just one.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Part of the Google Searchology event announcements from yesterday, Google announced a new way to enhance the search results. This way is called rich snippets and it gives webmasters a way to communicate richer data to Google, so they can display a richer search for the searcher. Yahoo has been doing this with Search Monkey for a months now, on some level. But Google is Google and this is much bigger.

Google will look for markups in your HTML in the format of either microformats and RDFa and use those markups to determine more structured data about that page's content. There is a lot of technical detail available at Google and it can be used on content for reviews, people, products and businesses and organizations.

There are some pros and cons to this feature on the SEO front and searcher front. Pros are that you can add more flavor to your listing and get more visibility. Cons include that richer data might mean less clicks or that competitors can more easily scrape your content. The lists goes on and you can read the pros and cons discussion at WebmasterWorld. That being said, I think I will personally use this new rich snippet feature on this site eventually and for clients as well. Will you?

Take our poll on if you will use this new feature:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google Wonder Wheel and search options we have seen being tested is now the real deal in Google.com. Google announced it yesterday at the Searchology event, which Danny live blogged. In fact, Matt posted a nice recap of all the announcements at Search Engine Land. So I won't discuss each feature, but instead, I'll show the video Google released to demo it.

There is a lot of discussion around how this might impact the SEO world. Clearly, this gives searchers a way to refine results at a much rapper pace. So the number one ranking, is not always the number one ranking. SEOs had been preparing for this for a long time ever since universal search came to use in 2007. So this isn't that huge, but it is major change in how search is presented, although not as major as universal search.

Forum discussion at Sphinn, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

The last time Google Webmaster Tools was redesigned was back in September 2007. It has been a while since the interface was updated. That doesn't mean features weren't added over time, they were, but within the same old interface.

Google announced they have refreshed things for "spring time." You can see the detailed what's new page to find out all the changes or you can watch this video below:

It seems like most people are taking a liking to the new look. We have threads at Google Webmasters Help, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums discussing the new design.

Do you like the new design, take our poll:

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

Last night the news that Jim Safka, Ask.com's CEO for the past 16 months or so, has decided to step down from the role for personal reasons. What personal reasons?

"Jim has decided to move on from Ask.com, following the recent passing of his brother which has led him to re-evaluate his personal and professional priorities," Ask.com said in a prepared statement.

Scott Garell, who has been the President of Ask.com, will take his role. I first would like to send my condolences to Jim on his loss.

I have never been a fan of Safka's strategy for Ask.com, but he did do some good things for the company. I won't get into what I disliked about Safka now, it just isn't the time for that.

Safka took Jim Lanzone's CEO spot in January 2008. Prior to that, Jim Lanzone became the CEO in April 2006. I hope Scott does well at the spot, it is not an easy place to be.

You can read more coverage on this news at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The first AdSense Orientation Webinar took place on April 18th. It was an overview of AdSense for new publishers. Google is hosting a second orientation webinar tomorrow, Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:30pm (PST).

AdSensePro Obair said in a Google AdSense Help thread that this webinar will differ from the first in that Google would like to "spend more time chatting with you and answering your questions about this presentation."

You can view a recording of the first webinar below via YouTube:

You can register here for the new orientation webinar.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense 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: May 12, 2009"

We know Google allows products in AdWords now and we even know a way to make it happen for your ads.

An anonymous reader just sent me screen captures of Google testing a new way of displaying those products. Here is a cropped version of his screen capture:

Here is a blow up of the AdWords ad:

Versus the current way:

Hitting the plus sign:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Kurt Krake spotted this on a top premium ad position and sent us this screen capture. Notice, this is for a different advertiser:

Google began aggressively testing the new AdWords interface the other week. I heard many complaints from advertisers on the new AdWords interface, so I figured I would poll our readers to see what their thoughts were. The 144 responses are back and the majority of advertisers prefer the old user interface to the new one.

Here is the breakdown of what advertisers prefer:

:: Old (Current) AdWords Interface said 80 respondents or 56%
:: New (Beta) AdWords Interface said 51 respondents or 35%
:: Neither said 13 respondents or 9%

Like my mother says: You can't always make everyone happy.

Forum discussion continued at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There have been recent rumors that Google has been terminating publishers for not updating their privacy policies. The week prior to that post, we polled our audience, asking if they have updated their privacy policies to comply with Google's guidelines.

The majority of those who answered the poll said, they did not update their privacy policies.

Here is the break down of results for the question, "Have You Updated Your Privacy Policy for Google?":
:: No said 55 respondents or 63%
:: Yes said 32 respondents or 36%
:: Other said 1 respondents or 1%

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

eWhisper, WebmasterWorld moderator said that he sees a new feature in his AdWords account. The new feature allows him to link up his AdWords account with his Analytics account and bring in the tracking conversion data from AdWords directly into Analytics.

eWhisper said:

This feature seems to be about a week old. If you go to Google conversion tracking, there is an option for linking Google analytics goals to count as conversion types.

I personally tried to replicate this, but was unable to. I assume I am having issues linking up my accounts. In any event, here is the help document that explains how to link my Analytics goals and transactions to AdWords Conversion Tracking. I'll repeat those instructions here:

1. Sign into your Google Analytics account.
2. Click "Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings."
3. Make sure you've selected at least the "With other Google products only" options under "Share my Google Analytics data..."
4. Click "Save Changes" to finish.
5. Navigate to the Conversion Tracking page from within your AdWords account. The Conversion Tracking page will show a message alerting you that your goals and tractionsactions are ready to be linked. Please note that it may take up to two weeks for your Analytics data to be imported into AdWords.
6. Click "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" from the Conversion Tracking table.
7. Select the goals or transactions you want from the list. Each listed item will have the Analytics profile name, the type of action (goal or transaction), an editable field for the action name, and pull-down menu for the action's tracking purpose. Edit the action name and tracking purpose here so that you can identify the goals once they show up in your AdWords conversion reports.
8. Select "Link" from the bottom of the table to finish.

AdWords Conversion Tracking will then start importing the data from your Analytics account starting from the day you clicked "Link." Historical data from before this date will not be added to conversion tracking. You will begin to see your goals appear alongside your conversion data in your Conversion Tracking page and AdWords reports after approximately two weeks.

This is an obvious connection Google has made and hopefully this will make the tracking of ROI just a bit easier for AdWords advertisers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We rarely cover Google updates these days, since it appears Google is in a constant flux. But I have noticed a dozen or so threads at DigitalPoint Forums and an updated WebmasterWorld, plus a few threads at Google Webmasters Help discussions on the topic of either a back link update, PageRank update or major drops or increases in rankings for specific categories.

Now, this does not mean there is a massive update going on. In fact, I would classify this as a minor update possibly only impacting specific sites that may have triggered a new penalty or just random fluctuations in Google that some webmasters took notice to.

In any event, if you noticed a major change for your site in Google, you are not alone. It is not as 'huge' as some of the past updates, but it seems like many are discussing this specific, possible update.

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

The topic of link building is a very popular subject here. One recent WebmasterWorld thread asks how can one create a value proposition compelling enough to encourage someone to link to their web site via an email request?

The webmaster said:

Sites just don't link back to you unless they have a reason to....for the most part. I'm wondering what is the best way to approach these types of link request and perhaps an example or two of the language/tone of voice that would be most successful.

Well, maybe sites just sit back and don't link out. But a lot of sites do link out without being asked to. Maybe that is why Consumer Reports did link exchanges, if that was a true story.

In any event, how does one convince someone to link to their web site via email? Hard question, and a lot depends on the quality of your web site. Personally, I delete all link exchange or request emails, but not everyone deletes them. So your website better back up your email request. Don't say you have the best web site on blue widgets and have a web site about green widgets.

There are many tactics people can use to spice up those email requests. Join the discussion on this topic at WebmasterWorld and scan through our many link building articles.

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: May 11, 2009"

A few weeks ago, Google launched a way to verify your Google Profile with them and ultimately show up in the Google results. In fact, Google offered free business cards with your Google Profile information on it. You can get those business cards over here.

I received my business cards last Thursday. But to my surprise, they didn't work! By didn't work, I meant, that if you typed in barry schwartz into Google, my Google Profile did not show up. The whole purpose of the Google Profile business cards was to give people a way to look you up by Googling your name. But in this case, it didn't exactly work.

Why? Didn't my profile show up. Well, Joe Kraus of Google (founder of Excite, JotSpot, etc) commented at my personal blog to inform me that my profile may have hit the celebrity filter. Joe said:

Hey Barry. My name is Joe Kraus and I'm the PM Director for Google Profiles. We're looking into it. There's a possibility your name is getting caught in our celebrity filters but we'll know more soon. Sorry for the hassle.

Am I a celebrity? I doubt it. But I suspect that maybe the famous psychologist/professor is a quasi-celebrity.

In fact, Kaila noticed that if you search for barry swartz, a misspelling of my name, my Google Profile does show:

So maybe Google should of sent me the business cards with the misspelling? I assume Google might pull the celebrity filter from my name, at least I hope so. It does make sense for names like Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Britney Spears and so on, but I am not sure my name (even for the professor) deserves the "celebrity status."

So this has less to do with the name being common and more about the name hitting a possible filter, I think.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced that Google is not the only ones testing favorite icons (favicons) in the search ads. Yahoo said they are doing a limited test of favicons in the search ads in order to give their searchers one more tool to "know they’re really looking at your site, which will improve the search experience." If it increases CTR and quality score, they may expand the test and may keep it.

Here is a picture of one ad:

Google has been testing favicons in search ads and favicons in search results this year. I have not seen them recently, in either the ads or free listings, but they were testing it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We have written about Wikipedia's dominance of the Google search results plenty of times. A new thread at WebmasterWorld asks if it is possible to beat a number one Wikipedia ranking at Google.

I wanted to poll our audience to see what you think. Can you beat Wikipedia? Let us know:

I do like at least one post in the thread:

Yes, it's possible to rank higher than Wikipedia for some terms, but I'm not sure that it matters. Not every searcher is looking for a Wikipedia article. The searcher who searches on "widget pastry" while looking for a widget-pastry recipe or a widget-pastry shop is likely to either (a) skip down past the Wikipedia result on the SERP or (b) hit the browser's back button and try the next result if he has clicked through to a Wikipedia article on the history, etymology, and regional variations of widget pastries.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does a link pass link juice after the link was removed from the web page? For example, a web page has a link to your page and then that link is either removed or the page or site goes down, how long will the search engine consider that link a vote of confidence for your page?

I think the obvious answer is as soon as the search crawler notices the link is gone, communicates that to the index and the index updates to correct the link popularity factors for that page. Not every search engine is quick to do that. I know that in the past, Yahoo was incredibly slow to devalue links that were dropped. Google is typically faster.

What do you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On Friday, Click Forensics announced a new service they are offering that helps predict high conversions. Click Forensics is known for tracking the click fraud rate in the search industry. This new tool promises to "allow online ad networks, publishers and advertisers to identify traffic that’s more likely to convert into sales."

The platform includes the following features:

• Click Forensics Site Score – sources of traffic are tagged with individual Click Forensics Site Scores that rank visitors based on their propensity to convert. This allows ad networks to more effectively filter and route traffic for highest monetization and provide the best ROI for online advertisers.
• Adaptive Intelligence – to accommodate varying traffic profiles among different ad networks, advertisers, and publishers, the new engine provides the capability to adjust rules and thresholds to produce traffic quality scores that better reflect propensity to convert for each specific client. For example, an ad network that caters to retailers in Asia might have very different traffic patterns than a B2B ad network in North America.
• Machine Learning – the traffic scoring engine also employs new machine learning capabilities that allow it to adapt and tune itself in real-time to detect new sources of good and bad traffic as they emerge. Filtering decisions can be made instantly based on traffic quality thresholds set by clients.
• Enhanced Anomaly Detection – more granular click anomaly detection features can distinguish new complex click types – machine or human – even from the same computer. This includes increasingly popular malicious Javascript programs that execute upon a page view or site visit. In addition, volume and spike anomalies can be more easily identified to protect from stealth attacks, such as those resulting from botnet activation.

A WebmasterWorld thread has members of the search marketing community who are very skeptical about the tool. One advertiser said:

If I were an advertiser, I would be more concerned about how to test the claims made about the developers of this product, rather than the conversions of publisher traffic.

Like with any tool in this market, you need to use it with wisdom and not go by it blindly.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! Here is a collection of logos from the search industry, celebrating Mother's Day. We have logos from Google, Yahoo, Live.com, Ask.com, AOL and others.

Google:

Yahoo (animated):

AOL (animated):

Live.com:

Ask.com:

Google Maps changed the Street Views guy to a mom and son:

Search Engine Roundtable (Out) Theme:

It seems like DogPile is missing a logo today, which is not normally the case.

For past Mother's day logos, see our 2008 Mother's Day logos and 2007 Mother's Day logos and 2004 Mother's Day logos - I seem to be missing 2006 and 2005 coverage.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

In this week's recap, we have your Google May webmaster report. I also polled about 400 search marketers who told me that there is 7% unemployment in the search marketing industry, while 25% are self-employed. I discussed three major issues where Google Maps can seriously impact your business. Twitter hopes to improve their search engine. Wolfram Alpha has high expectations. Google launches a publisher center for Ad Planner. Google tests "review this site" link in the search results. Matt Cutts tests Google's 302 redirect handling. We spotted porn on iGoogle from Google Gadgets. Google Checkout begins charging fees. 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:

• May 2009 Google Webmaster Report
• 7% Unemployment In Search Marketing Industry
• How Google Maps Can Seriously Hurt Your Business
• Twitter Aims to Make Twitter Search More Relevant
• Wolfram Alpha : The Real Thing
• Detailed Screen Captures of Google's New Ad Planner Publisher Center
• Google Replaces Comments Bubble with "Review This Site" Link
• Matt Cutts Uses His Blog To Mess With Google Search
• Google Gadget Porn Becomes an Issue
• Google Checkout Begins Charging Fees: Time To Drop Google?

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: May 8, 2009"

Not all of us are like the founder of LifeLock by hanging up billboards of our social security numbers giving people access to our most private number. The bottom line is that most people don't want their social security number posted in public. It leaves you more susceptible to identity theft and can leave you with a bad credit rating, at no fault to your spending habits.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has one person very eager to have Google remove his social security number from a third-party web page. This person supposedly ticked someone off, who then got back at him by posting his information, including social security number on a web page. Google indexed the web page and he wants it removed.

Clearly, in this case, you cannot plead with the webmaster to remove the page. You may be able to contact the hosting company and ask them to remove the page. But you can use the Google Removal Tool to ask Google to remove it from their index. Googler, Jonathan Simon said:

I agree with LuSEOfer's suggestion of contacting the site owners to get your information removed at the source. It may not help if the site owner is the same person as the person who posted your information but it's worth a try. Most reputable site owners don't want this sort of information on their site.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A Google AdSense Help thread has several publishers ranting about the lack of contextual relevance that the Google AdSense flash based ads have towards their content. They say that the image ads and text ads are more contextually relevant, and thus they want to be able to block out the flash ads from displaying on their site, all together.

Currently, the only way to block flash or animated ads is to block all image ads. Blocking image ads is not something all publishers want to do. Some want static image ads and at the same time, they don't want flash or animated ads.

The poll below asks if you think Google show allow for blocking of static ads versus animated or flash ads.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Jeffrey Posnick, AdWords API Team posted an announcement in a Google Groups thread about budget optimizer changes that AdWords API users might need to know about. If you are an AdWords API user and you use Budget Optimizer, then you should read this message from Jeff.

Each Campaign object has a budgetOptimizerSettings property, which in turn has a takeOnOptimizedBids setting. Currently, if takeOnOptimizedBids is set to false and you turn off the Budget Optimizer in a campaign, the original bids that were manually set for the ad groups and criteria contained in the campaign will be estored. In other words, the AdWords API will save your old bids from before the Budget Optimizer was turned on, and restore them when it is turned off. If takeOnOptimizedBids is set to true, however, the old bids will not be restored when the Budget Optimizer is turned off. Instead, the last bids that were automatically set by the Budget Optimizer will persist for the ad groups and criteria in your campaign. You can, if you wish, use the AdWords API to manually update the bids for ad groups and criteria once the Budget Optimizer is turned off in either scenario.

The upcoming change will effectively treat takeOnOptimizedBids as if it were set to true (regardless of what it is actually set to) for all campaigns using the Budget Optimizer. Once the Budget Optimizer is turned off, all bids will be set to the last bid used by the Budget Optimizer. This change will match the behavior currently in place when the Budget Optimizer is turned off via the AdWords web interface.

We're planning on making this change to AdWords API behavior on May 19. It is not likely that you will have to make any substantial changes to your code in advance of this change, but please take the new behavior into account when you write code that turns the Budget Optimizer off.

I quoted Jeff's words exactly so that nothing gets lost in the translation.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

First spotted at Google Operating System, Google posted a 200 second video showing off "life at the Googleplex." Here is that video:

Looks like fun to me.

Forum discussion DigitalPoint Forums.

In August 2005, Matt Cutts, the head of search quality at Google, launched his blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/. Notice, if you click on that URL, you are redirected to http://www.dullest.com/blog/. Why? Well, Matt explained that he was to switch things around, with a new name, new design, etc.

But the main thing, he is using a 302 redirect, which is a temporary redirect. When moving domains, Google almost always recommends using a permanent redirect, 301 redirect. But since Matt said this is a possible temporary change, he is using a 302.

But why?

If you read through the comments, you might notice Danny Sullivan's comment where he said "Why do I suspect some ultra-secret Google we get 302s right test is going on." Matt Cutts replied soon after saying:

Danny, my site makes the perfect guinea pig. I laughed when Greg Boser got everyone to link to mattcutts.com instead of http://www.mattcutts.com. He was trying to mess me up and cause duplicate content hijinks, but little did he know that I was the guinea pig for the www/non-www setting in the webmaster console.

Nice to have Google experiment on their own stuff when changing or investigating issues.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A Google News Help thread reports on a confirmed Google News bug where blank or black images show up in the search results.

For example, a search for letsrecycle in Google News returns a result with an image that looks like this:

Google has confirmed the issue in the thread and said:

This is something that we see from time to time. It's usually temporary, but let us know [1] if you keep seeing it.

They seem to be aware of the bug, but not too keen on fixing it any time soon.

Forum discussion at Google News 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: May 7, 2009"

A couple weeks ago, I ran a poll asking do you currently have a job. We have just under 400 responses, which I would consider a great sampling, and I wanted to share those results with you.

According to our survey, 7% of search marketers are out of a job and consider themselves unemployed. The current unemployment rate is 9%, so it looks like the SEM space is a bit better off, but not all that much better off.

65% of the respondents said they are an employee of a company, while 25% said they are self-employed. 7% said they are currently unemployed and 2% answered "other." The other responses included:

• Employee and Self Employed
• Retired
• at a startup working for equity...no pay yet
• Both Employee and Self-Employed
• yes - employee, i also do web development and graphic design
• yes, employee, but barely. layoffs keep coming. kind of scard.
• Was employed, quit, now self-employed and better off
• Freelance but looking for permanent

I was kind of hoping the responses would be a bit more encouraging in this industry. I was hoping to see closer to 4 or 5%. Why? Well, in this industry, even if you are out of a job, many can do begin their own job, work for themselves and put together a livable income. The 25% figure for those who are self-employed seemed high to me, but not high for this industry. Last figure I saw was from 2007, where the overall US self-employment rate was at just under 9%.

Do you think the figures above, i.e. 7% unemployment in the search marketing industry, sounds right? Do these numbers shock you in any way?

Forum discussion continued at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google has been testing click to call features for a while, but the true value to having Google Audio Ads, which was discontinued recently, was to get the toll free and trackable free phone feature. In fact, many AdWords customers used it to track their campaigns, even without using audio ads.

Since Audio Ads was discontinued, the phone tracking was discontinued as well. As of May 5th, Google has discontinued the service. If you read the Google help page, it reads:

Important news about Google Audio Ads: On February 12, 2009, we announced that Google will discontinue the Audio Ads platform. All audio ads will stop running on May 31, 2009.

Also on this page, it says:

Call reporting numbers are being discontinued in AdWords Business Pages on or shortly after May 5, 2009.

So if you have been using these toll-free numbers, make sure to swap them out to new numbers.

Forum discussion continued at Google AdWords Help and a hat tip to Sam at Oh Nuts.

News.com reports that Twitter is working on making Twitter Search more useful and relevant. Former VP of Search Quality for Google, Santosh Jayaram said they will soon be analyzing the links and content of the links in Twitter posts to make the search results more relevant. They will also build a ranking engine to take into account a person's reputation and trending topics.

The article said that this might help Twitter become a "credible competitor to Google Search." What is the issue with Twitter Search now? "Currently, if you search for a hot topic on Twitter, the results may be swamped by retweets and low-value content from hundreds or thousands of other users."

True, it is hard to find "unique" content with all the retweets. Finding unique, useful and relevant content on Twitter via search would be nice.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that iGoogle is starting to get hit with lots of Google Gadget Porn. Via the thread, I found several Google Gadgets that show pornography including frontal nudity and link to pornographic sites.

If you do not want to see porn, do not click on this Google Gadget. The Babe Of The Day Google Gadget, if added to iGoogle, will show you a topless girl. If you click on the topless girl, it would take you to http://babe.pro/babes/, which contains pictures of fully nude women. Here is a censored picture of the Google Gadget:

The thing is, there are many examples of Google Gadgets like this. The Google Web Search Help thread has a Googler saying that "pornographic content isn't allowed." What is the issue? Well, these gadgets are ending up on school computers.

I am hoping that someone from Google will be reading this. I am working with teachers and students creating wikis and adding Google Gadgets to their site. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from a teacher asking about all the nude and sex gadgets. They were NOT there before, can I assume you were hacked? Please fix this or let me know what is happening. This is VERY disturbing. I can't have students use that site if they are going to stay.

Google said they will manually remove these gadgets, but can they keep up? They certainly had their issues with porn on other Google properties.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

So we know Google is seriously testing AJAX search results and Google has confirmed that. We know Google was not passing referrer strings to the receiving sites, but Google promised to fix that. But these changes are going to be coming to a Google search result near you, so you need to be aware of it.

Matt Cutts of Google posted a video explaining a bit more about these changes. It is well worth watching the 3-minute video:

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

In the past couple of weeks, we showed how Google Maps can cause real pain for some business owners. I first showed you how you can close down competitors on Google Maps and then I showed how your business listing can be merged into a competitors listing leaving them with your business and you with non.

Those are two serious ways on how Google Maps can seriously impact your business and sales. Google posted documents on how to reopen one's business after being closed, but we are still seeing complaints from business owners, to this day. Google is working on fixing the merging issue, but no update yet on when or how soon it might be fixed.

The next bug I spotted was via a Google Maps Help thread where one business owner explained that when conducting a search for signs Buckhead, Google changes the town of Buckhead to Bankhead. That then leads his potential customers to a totally different town, far away from his business.

He said:

When I use Google and try to search this (in Atlanta) "signs Buckhead" Google Maps listings result is "signs Bankhead" which is incorrect. Bankhead is in another section of town. This will cause me to drive way over to Bankhead to get my signs. The organic listings are OK but I need directions from the Maps. As a test I also tried "furniture Buckhead" and the same Bankhead listings came up again in Maps. Is this a search issue or a maps issue? When I look at Maps in the Buckhead area it says Bankhead as well.

Here is a screen capture:

Google confirmed the issue and hopes to have this one resolved as well. But there is no estimated time for when the fix will be in place.

I certainly wonder, how many businesses are losing money due to these three recent bugs with Google Maps?

Forum discussion at Google Maps 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: May 6, 2009"

Like every month, we try to provide you with a Google webmaster report on what is going on with Google over the past month, in terms of the SEO perspective. You can read the April 2009 report, in case you missed it.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a scary silence in the Google results. Some are a bit worried that things aren't moving around in the rankings as they normally do. But some webmasters are noticing shuffles, but not all.

Tedster does add an interesting point:

I also see "more associative search results" - maybe the effect of the approach outlined Google patent. It does get frustrating when an experienced user of search can't count on seeing precise results, even by using quoted phrases, plus signs and the like.

Here are the most important stories in this topic over the past few weeks:

• Google Replaces Comments Bubble with "Review This Site" Link
• Google Maps Merging Competing Business's Local Information
• Is Google's Geo Targeting Off In Web Search?
• Google Confirms One Line Sitelinks (Aka Classic Sitelinks)
• How To Verify My Google Profile

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Just a couple weeks ago, we reported about a Google Video redesign that upset users. In short, they changed how the Google Video search results displayed. Well, it looks like Google is testing search refinements on the video results pages.

Sam from Oh Nuts sent me a screen shot, which he saw when using the Chrome browser (however, I could not replicate in Chrome):

Compare that to the image I have on April 22nd and you will notice the large difference.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

There are rumors that the incredibly popular magazine and website, Consumer Reports is sending out link exchange requests to webmasters and SEOs.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a Senior Member, MichaelBluejay, saying that he has received, what he considers, deceptive emails from Consumer Reports asking for a link exchange. Let me quote you what he said:

Consumer Reports wrote to me, saying they're "constantly seeking sites that complement our own," how their ultimate goal is to help consumers get expert information, and how my site is an excellent resource for various specific reasons (which was on the mark, they did actually visit it). They then requested a link from a specific page of mine to a specific page of theirs, ending with "Hopefully together we can help users find reliable information on [widgets]."

But a careful reading of their message shows that they didn't actually link to my site, or even say they'd do so if I linked to them -- even though they're supposedly so incredibly impressed by my site and its usefulness to consumers.

So I wrote back and asked, "I'm sorry, where exactly is your link to my site?" They never replied.

The obvious question is why would a large publication like Consumer Reports need to conduct link exchanges? Are they just automatically sending out emails to publishers asking them to link to their site? Why make it sound like they want to give a link back to the publisher, when it doesn't seem like they will end up doing so?

There are a few possibilities that come to mind:

(1) Consumer Reports hired a SEO company and maybe the SEO company feels these emails are important to their SEO campaign?
(2) Another site had a typo in their link exchange email requests and put down Consumer Reports?
(3) This was a joke or made up?

I am not sure but this is indeed interesting. I guess, it can't hurt to remind people that Consumer Reports does have solid information. It is just weird to see link exchange emails from large publications and companies.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

When Google Ad Planner launched I was really in shock and awe. Google has added a new feature to Google Ad Planner named the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center. It basically gives publishers a way to add more details about their site, so that advertisers can find their sites and better judge the traffic and demographics data of your web site.

To gain access to this, you need to be a publisher and you need to verify your site with Google Ad Planner. There are two ways to verify your site, the details on that is over here, but since I am already verified under Google Webmaster Tools, I can easily add them to Google Ad Planner.

When I logged in, I had no sites in my profile, but since I had sites verified with Google Webmaster Tools, I was able to add them easily to the publisher center:

I clicked on "select sites to include" and was presented with a list of sites I can include:

Then I am presented with an overview and a way to "edit" the information about these sites:

I clicked on edit on one of the sites and the screen looks like this:

Here is also a screen capture of the categories I can add my site to:

For more information about this Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, see the Inside AdSense Blog.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

When Google launched SearchWiki in November 2008, it came with a little comments bubble, where users can leave comments about a specific site in the search results. Google seems to be changing that comments bubble or icon into simple text that reads "Review This Site."

Here is a picture of the old version, notice the little comments icon on the right of the "Similar Pages" link:

The new version has a plain and simple "Review this Site" link:

Clicking the link or icon (depending on what you see) will open a text box:

Then after submitting the comment, you will be able to see it under the result:

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: May 5, 2009"

A WebmasterWorld thread has a documented case of one webmaster forgetting to renew his domain name after a day or so. Then after the domain name expired, he renewed the domain and got things back up after maybe two days.

The issue was, he also noticed that his domain name was no longer showing up in the Google search results. He said:

I accidentally let one domain of mine expire and renewed it after it showed an "expired domain" message for a day or so. A few days later the site is gone from Google with no traffic at all from this SE. Even when searching for the url my website is nowhere to be found.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, told the webmaster that in many cases your domain will be lost in Google until you renew it. It might take a few days for the domain to reappear in Google. Tedster was right, a few days later, the webmaster came back in to let us know his site was indexed and ranking again.

Thanks Ted, the site is back indeed with the same traffic it had:-)

Please don't forget to renew your domain name. The couple day loss in traffic might not be the end of the world, but leaving your domain name open for others to grab and use, can be extremely painful.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A week ago, Google Analytics fixed a bug with content data reports, now they need to fix issues with Google Analytics users logging into their accounts.

There are several threads in the Google Analytics Help forum discussing how Google is displaying an error message when they login.

Googler, Christelle, said in a Google Analytics Help thread:

If you get this error message (Error Has Been Detected) when you click on the View Reports link, please add your username in the form at https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pKyhdPcaY98d84kyJhdBELg

Your login email will be fixed within 24 hours (excluding weekends and holidays)

-- Christelle

PS: Please do not post your email address here

So if you are seeing the message, "Error Has Been Detected," please go to the URL above and fill out the form.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Google is hosting a series of free Webinars for new AdSense publishers. The orientation webinar seemed to go well, so why not join the next webinar?

The next webinar is on May 7, 2009 at 6.30pm (PST). It is on the topic of implementation and optimization:

Learn how to work with your ads and experiment with different formats, colors, etc. to maximize your performance.

Google can support up to 500 publishers on the webinar, so make sure to sign up quickly if you want to join. You can sign up over here for the second webinar.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

As you know, I bring news and stories to you from my findings in the discussion forums. One of those forums is the Google News Forum.

I always find it funny that every day, without question, there are at least one or two posts from people looking to block either conservative news or liberal news. People get into heated arguments over ways to block either conservative news or liberal news. It is often comical for me to see those headlines, which I normally skip. Just for reference, here is a conservative thread and here is a liberal thread (typically NY Times vs Fox News).

But then it occurred to me, why doesn't Google News give people a way to see news that they want to see. If they like the liberal spin, then give it to them. If they like the conservative spin, then give them that. How?

Remember Yahoo Mindset? The innovative tool from Yahoo that allowed you to filter your search results down by either research results or shopping results. FYI, it was discontinued some time recently. In any event, why not allow searchers to do the same thing with Google News, filter the level of either liberal or conservative spin they get in their news?

There are very few people who would not like such a feature in my opinion. Google is smart, we know your machines can detect bias, so add the slider to filter news towards one bias over an other.

Forum discussion at Google News Forum.

Reid, a very helpful and respected Google Webmaster Trends Analysts in the Google Search Quality team has announced in a Google Webmasters Help thread that he is moving to the paid search division at Google. Let me quote you his words:

I wanted to let you know that I've made the decision to move into a new role within Google, in the realm of paid search, which means I will no longer be monitoring the forum in an official capacity. I'm sad to be leaving, but know that there's plenty of webmasters, Bionic Posters, and Googlers in the forum to keep the conversation going. I've particularly enjoyed seeing countless webmasters jump in to help out one another, whether it be in regards to how their site is ranking or a gentle (or not so gentle!) reminder to check out the posting guidelines. You've been our most vocal and truthful critics, which has helped us understand how we can make Google and Webmaster Tools better. And in the past few months, it has been a pleasure seeing BbDeath, Beussery, Chibcha and Luzie skyrocket into Bionic Posters. So, I'll miss you all! I hope to occasionally pop-in from time to time when I get a chance. Thank you again! :)

I personally have never heard of a Googler in the Search Quality team moving from organic search to paid search. To me, it seems a bit of a conflict of interest for someone with as much knowledge as someone in the search quality team to be on the paid side. But honestly, I do not know what part of the paid side he is joining? Will it be customer support or more on the side of paid search quality? There may be a ton of synergies between proving quality organic results and quality paid results.

In any event, Reid will be deeply missed in the Webmaster help forums.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Google's merchant system has been around for a while now. Google encouraged merchants to add Google Checkout as an option to their web site through offering discounted or free merchant fees and added visibility on their AdWords ads. Today is the day that Google's pricing structure for Google Checkout changes.

Prior to May 5th:

Going Forward:

When we asked our readers if they will continue to use Google Checkout after trial period the majority, 60%, said no they won't. But 40% said they will continue to use it. Why? I suspect because it was already added and they still benefit from the added visibility in the AdWords listings.

I wonder if the poll I mentioned will be accurate or not?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: May 4, 2009"

A WebmasterWorld thread started by moderator martinibuster has been getting a lot of attention over the weekend. MartiniBuster asks other members to come up with theories on why it appears AdSense earnings are lower these days then a year prior.

MartiniBuster's own theory is pretty interesting. In short, he says that there are less AdWords coupons floating around these days, so less people are experimenting with the content network. Let me quote MartiniBuster:

As I recall, there were thousands of dollars worth of AdWords coupons flooding Internet conferences. Those AdSensers who have not attended conferences several years ago won't know what I'm talking about so before you comment on this theory, hear me out.

Every conference I went to there were thousands of dollars worth of coupons available from denominations of $250 on down (as I recall). I think there may have been $500 coupons available, too. There were so many coupons floating around that some people were selling them, exchanging them between themselves, and opening multiple AdWords accounts to take advantage of them.

Could part of the higher payouts have to do with there being less publishers in the system? Is it possible that another contributing factor in those early days of higher ECPM was the flood of AdWords coupons?

Now, there are many other theories for the lower earnings, outside of the world being in a recession. They include:

• Google needs to take a bigger piece of the AdSense pie
• Slow down in new fresh to the net ad clicking users.
• Ad blindness for veteran net surfers.
• Less MFA has to affect a segment of publishers.
• Landing page rules turning off some advertisers.
• AdWords complexity
• Google dropping the ball on code quality due to lack of competition for too many years leading to data loss that is later artificially unfairly balanced out.
• More advertiser control positively affecting few and devastating the rest.
• Google silently taking a bigger portion of publisher's earnings to meet the market expectations.
• Smarter advertisers
• Over saturation of content

There are many more ideas and theories being debated in the thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I cannot tell you how many emails I get from PR companies telling me that the next Google is here. Wolfram Alpha, a "fact engine" might be the closest search engine to meet that criteria and in my opinion, Wolfram Alpha does not compete with Google, but it will be a must use search engine.

Wolfram Alpha is a "fact engine" as Danny describes at Search Engine Land. Actually, before reading on here, you should first read Danny's review and then come back here.

I watched the full demo, live, last week and I was honestly blown away. It doesn't replace Google but it does fill a much desired need in the search business. Wolfram can answer your questions with hard cold facts. It is more than a Butler answering questions, it is a whole group of Harvard professors answering your questions with incredible detail and clarity.

Here is a quick demo of the screen shots of Wolfram Alpha:

Wolfram comes in and gives searchers something they have been missing. You can search for very specific things in the realm of science, math, geography, demographics, and so on and get not just the answer, but detailed information from real sources. There is really nothing like this out there at this scale.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting comments from SEOs and webmasters on what Wolfram may have to offer:

Tedster: "I look forward to what this approach may offer. Wolfram brings fundamental genius on the level of Einstein and Hawking, rather than intelligence at the level of Page and Brin."

JS Harris: "Wolfram seems to be a different beast, not only is all the knowledge there but it's being analyzed and compared in some ingenious ways."

But most people in the thread are skeptical for good reason. But we need to think that a search engine does not have to compete with Google to be the next Google. It can fill a new need that has been unfilled in the past. I think Wolfram Alpha will fill that need.

I personally cannot wait to be able to test the new engine out sometime this month. It is currently not live, but they promised to make it live sometime in May.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Microsoft is having a rough couple weeks. First they shut down their tests that is causing fake referral data from being spewed out and now I am hearing reports that their HTTP headers are malformed.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports Microsoft is keep-alive and transfer-encoding the connection. Here is an export of the status:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
P3P: CP="NON UNI COM NAV STA LOC CURa DEVa PSAa PSDa OUR IND", policyref="http://privacy.msn.com/w3c/p3p.xml"
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 16:56:37 GMT
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive, Transfer-Encoding
Cache-Control: private

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Qwerty, a long time High Ranking Forum personality, wrote a blog post named Google Related Searches - Cheaters Rejoice. In short, he explains that Google is smart enough to know the answers to the New York Times crossword puzzle, without even seeing the puzzle. How is this done?

Well, according to Qwerty:

So apparently, Google hasn’t indexed the content of the puzzle and related every clue to it. Rather, it looks like it has detected a trend: someone searches on some of the clues, someone else searches on the same clues, someone else searches on some of those and a few others, and this all happens within a few hours, so Google determines that the searches are related to each other based on that, so when I come in and search on one of the clues, Google offers up some of the other searches that were run today by other people who ran that same search.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was indeed true. So any of you looking to cheat on the NY Times crossword puzzle, give this a try next week.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Starting a few days ago, it appears Google Analytics changed the behavior of the display graph based on your date selection criteria. In the past, if you selected a specific date criteria that was less than 30 days, Google would fade out the remainder of the days and highlight the dates you selected. Now, it looks like Google only shows the dates you selected.

This is a small but very significant change. I personally prefer seeing the whole 30 days on the graph, with Google highlighting that they are only using the days I selected. But not everyone agrees with me on that and Google has changed it to totally remove the unselected days from the graph.

The picture below shows a few days of traffic from my personal blog. In the past, it would show the full 30 days, and just bold those days I selected, now it just shows those days and hides the rest:

Do you like the new way Google Analytics handles this? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

A Google AdSense Help thread has many reports from Google AdSense publishers based in Israel, that Google has not paid them yet. There was an issue last week with publishers getting paid late, but most of those issues are resolved by now. The issue seems to be a problem for Israeli Google AdSense publishers, even today.

Google AdSense representative, Obair, confirmed the issue:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We've noticed this issue with a few accounts in Israel. Rest assured, we've notified our payments specialists have been notified. Thanks for your patience. Please also direct any other publishers with this issue to this thread. Thanks!

Hopefully this issue will be resolved shortly.

Also over the weekend, a WebmasterWorld thread reported that the ad statistics were "frozen." Meaning, the reports in the AdSense console seemed to not be updating. That issue seemed to resolve itself over time.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and 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: May 1, 2009"

In this week's search recap, I covered several topics on search. I started off with how Google's localized search engines may have some geo targeting issues. Google ran up a $30,000 bill for some new advertiser. Google has a major issue with merging business data on Google Maps. Microsoft stopped faking the search referrals, for now. You can trick AdWords into giving you longer titles with keyword insertion. Google updated their AdSense program policies, this is a big one. Publishers are upset with Google over delayed AdSense payments. Google might ban you if you don't update your privacy policy. Google fashioned a Morse code logo this week. Some are looking to make money off the Swine Flu. That was this week in search from 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:

• Is Google's Geo Targeting Off In Web Search?
• $30,000 Google Surprise: New Advertiser Runs Up Huge Bill
• Google Maps Merging Competing Business's Local Information
• Microsoft Disables Fake Referral "Feature" Temporarily
• Get Longer Google AdWords Titles Through Dynamic Keyword Insertion
• Google Updates AdSense Program Policies Again: Guidelines Broaden
• AdSense Publishers Panic About Not Receiving March Payment
• Google Banning AdSense Publishers For Not Updating Privacy Policies?
• Google Logo Not Broken, It's Morse Code
• Swine Flu Concern Helping With Google AdSense Revenue?

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

I ran a poll a couple weeks ago asking, do you use interns as link builders? The 120 plus responses are in and most of those who responded said yes, they use interns as link builders.

74 of the 120 responses, or 62%, said they do use interns for link building. While, 45 of the 120 responses, or 38%, said they do not use interns for link building. One said that he is considering it.

The main debate is if an intern can be successful in link building. Is there enough time to train and deploy an intern in the art of link building before that intern moves on to the next thing he or she may be doing? The debate is still going on, on this topic. But clearly, most of you are comfortable with using interns for link building.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Profiting off of medical concerns, such as with the recent Swine Flu outbreak, is something most people don't think about. But in a WebmasterWorld thread, some people are suggesting that if people are afraid to go out, they might spend more time on their computers.

Clearly, more people sitting front of a computer, surfing the web, can lead to higher AdSense earnings. So technically, publishers and Google may profit off of this concern. At least, indirectly.

The thread said:

I believe if this flu does take hold, then it could be good for adsense members, due to the amount of people staying away from shops etc. More online shopping, more clicks :)

Sad, but possibly true.

In any event, Chris Sherman posted Tracking the Swine Flu Epidemic at Search Engine Land the other day.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has a webmaster upset that he lost his rankings in Google. He switched web hosting companies and days later, his Google rankings plummeted. On typical server move, you should not really lose rankings, if done right. But this person lost his/her rankings.

Google's JohnMu chimed in on the thread, saying:

It looks like your site might have shown a generic server start page for a while (a "This is the default ... server page. (...)" page). When this happens over a few crawls, it can confuse Googlebot enough to cause problems with the indexing of your pages. At the moment it appears that this is no longer happening, so I imagine it'll just resolve itself automatically over time.

Good news, the rankings should come back. But I noticed an interesting tweet from @JohnMu saying:

Tip of the day: If you have a generic "your site will be hosted here soon" page, use "noindex" or 503 result code, thanks!

Clearly that is related to this post. This is a good tip for anyone who is moving or setting up a site. I would completely avoid showing a generic message on the server, if possible, but if you can't, the advice above makes sense.

If you want to see a live site with one of these starter pages, see http://commgrad.uky.edu/.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

Let me start off by saying I find this hard to believe. A Google Maps Help thread has one individual claiming that a Yell.com representative claimed that if you don't pay for your Yell.com listing, your Google listing will drop down. Yell.com is a popular UK local search engine.

The Yell representative reportedly said, "of next week, unless you pay for Yell.com, your listing on Google maps will drop down below anyone listed with Yell.com in your area."

Of course, this is not possible, Google would not let Yell.com influence how Google Maps works and ranks listings. In early 2008, there were rumors that Google would buy Yell and in 2005 Yell even powered Google Local UK, but that is long over with.

A Google Maps representative made it crystal clear. Joel H from the Google Maps team said:

Yell.com doesn't control ranking in our search results.

Maybe the poster was confused or maybe the Yell.com representative was confused or a bit crazed. I don't know for sure, but one thing I do know is that Yell.com cannot do what this poster said.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

There is a pretty funny thread for anyone who is somewhat familiar with the SEO industry. A thread at Google Webmasters Help has this SEO who goes on a rant about the nofollow and what have happened to links. In fact, he says that Google should consider all links nofollow by default and require webmasters to add a rel="follow" to links that they deem respectable enough to deserve any link equity.

Here is the webmaster's post:

I'm thinking that I should just adopt a site-wide policy that all links have nofollow. Because of Google's PageRank algorithm, links have become a dirty thing that requires a lot of consideration, a cause for concerns and panic, an object of envy, conflict, fight, bitterness, etc.. Reading this forum is a good indication of the sad state of what "links" have become. And, it's all because of Google's PageRank algorithm. It would be simpler, easier, and healthier if all links had nofollow as a policy. In fact, I wish Google would do the opposite; require people to add rel="follow" only when you want to pass "link juice" to someone else. The truth of the matter is that everyone has to know what PageRank is these days and some degree of SEO, which means that everyone is perfectly aware of what value and power links have. No one is innocent. Everyone treats links like money whether we actually get paid for it or not. Links has become a currency of power. In the old days, when we used to call them "hyperllinks" they were just a mechanism for convenience.

Now how is that for a rant? I kind of agree. I mean, the nofollow link attribute was originally designed to prevent spam in blogs, forums, and any open web form. Now it is used for ads, for managing your internal PageRank and to penalize sites. I am not going to go off on a rant on the nofollow attribute, so I will stop there.

The Google Webmasters Help thread has a lot of discussion around the nofollow attribute. It makes for a fun, pre-weekend read.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.