September 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: September 30, 2009"

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that Google has been the target of spammers who are trying to push their pornographic videos into Google. This is nothing new, but the terms these spammers are using now include Holocaust related terms.

A search in Google for a popular Holocaust film, Witnessing History - a Teen Second Life Exhibit returns a Google Video result in the web results (universal search). Here is a picture:

Googler, Skylar said in the thread:

This porn video should not be masquerading as an educational video. I've passed your detailed feedback to the rest of the team so we can take the steps necessary to address this issue. For the future, if you can tell from the video thumbnail that the video is explicitly inappropriate and abuses content that is clearly meant to be educational or informative, please click on the “Report problem” link next to the video and mark the video with the category that closely matches the issue.

That was yesterday, it was first reported on Friday. I really can't blame Google for this anymore. I mean, it is a bit over the top (to say the least) to target Holocaust terms with porn videos, as well as children terms. As of right now, I still see the video in the Google web search results.

This is not the first and won't be the last time, Google Video is used as a target to spam Google with porn. In August it was used to show a porn video of Rambha, a famous Indian actress. Early on, with Universal Search's launch, Google had issues with nude images and explicit porn in the web search results. Google has been much better at filtering these out.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

One of the worst parts of uploading to YouTube, especially large and long HD quality videos, is waiting for YouTube to finish processing the video so people can watch it. I normally create a 15 minute or so video, in HD quality, upload it sometime before 11am to YouTube and it often won't be available until after 6pm. The upload process takes an hour or so and the processing can take several more hours.

On very limited occasions, those videos never make it out of the "in processing" status and then you have to reupload all over again. Never fun.

This time, Liz from the YouTube support team has confirmed a bug in the upload process. She posted a thread at YouTube Help the other day saying:

Some of you have mentioned here in the Help Forum and on Twitter that your uploads are stuck processing. This is a bug with the uploading process and our team here is currently working on a fix. Once the team's fixed the bug, uploads which are currently stuck processing will be re-processed again.

For those of you who need to upload a video immediately, try uploading a second time if your original upload attempt is stuck.

Thanks for informing us of this situation, and we appreciate your patience while we're working on resolving the matter!

It is nice to know YouTube is looking into the fix.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

The other week, we wrote about how to block Sidewiki users from commenting on your site. The issue was, it basically blocked all Google Toolbar users from accessing your site.

There is a new script that reportedly blocks only those who try to use Sidewiki to comment on your site, without blocking all Google Toolbar users. It named the Sidewiki Defeat and can be viewed at code.google.com/p/sidewiki-defeat.

I spotted this via a Google Webmaster Help thread. Warning, I personally did not try this, so be careful.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Back in February I ran a poll asking if the Google Sandbox still exists and if so, is it US based only? I don't think I ever published those results, so I apologize.

A new Search Engine Watch Forums thread has new discussion around the topic. To be honest, the Google Sandbox, as it once was, is rarely discussed in forums anymore. As I said in the previous post, the Google Sandbox goes back to April 2004. We first spotted it when I wrote New Sites = Poor Results in Google, then it became known as the Sandbox effect and had controversial definitions. Matt Cutts confirmed the sandbox existed, somewhat, in his Coffee Talk with Brett Tabke. But since then, we really did not discuss it much.

There are some well-known and respected SEOs that still believe in it and many that don't. Which is why we ran the poll. Okay, so here are the poll results:

Question: Google Sandbox: US Based or Worldwide?

:: Worldwide said 46 respondents or 49%
:: It No Longer Exists said 17 respondents or 18%
:: US Only said 13 respondents or 14%
:: It Never Existed said 11 respondents or 12%
:: Other answer... said 6 respondents or 6%

If you go by the forum discussion as a measure of if this did or currently exists, that answer is simple. It once did exist and no longer exists, based on forum chatter.

There is a nice post from a member at Search Engine Watch Forums, where he offers practical experience.

Last year we launched a new website and againt mine and our webmasters advice, our owner went on a full scale link building frenzy which included using a Submission company to submit to hundreds of directories and do hundreds of article submissions. Well, it took that site about 9-10 months to start ranking for its primary terms and now about 4 months after being released from the sandbox it is doing well. However, to contrast that, last month we launched a brand new website. This time we convinced him to take it slow and easy and utilize the link partners we have to focus on adding quality links slowly. Well a little over a month later we are on the first page for many of the terms we have optimized for. SO I definitely believe in quality over quantity when starting a new site and trying to avoid the sandbox.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. The Google Merchant Center will replace Google Base for those who submit products through Google Base.

Confused? Google Base is sticking around, but Google has added a new Google Merchant Center, which is focused around merchants who submit product data to Google. Before the other day, all products submitted to Google, to be displayed in Google Product Search, was submitted (mostly) through Google Base. Now, Google wants you to submit that data though the new Google Merchant Center.

So what is Google Base for? Well, anything else that you want to submit data to Google. Other data includes upload real estate, jobs and vehicles. Yes, you can pretty much submit whatever you want and Google will figure out how to deal with it.

Google tried to make the migration from Google Base to Google Merchant Center as smooth as possible. Google said:

For the vast majority of users, existing settings, data feeds or items will not be affected. You will find everything in your account as you expect it to be.

However, a small percentage of users who have been uploading to Google Base both Product listings and other item types will need to sign in to Google Base and create new FTP settings. Otherwise, they will not be able to upload any non-Product feeds via FTP. Their existing FTP settings will work normally for Product feeds, and can be accessed in Google Merchant Center. We apologize for this unavoidable inconvenience. These users have been already notified directly by email. You can find instructions on how to change your FTP settings in Google Base here.

For more details about this change see the FAQs.

If you are confused by the title, just look back at the history of this product. It all started out as Froogle, yes Google named their product search feature Froogle. Then it was changed to Google Shopping and then to Google Products and then Google flipped back between Shopping and Products. Then Google Base came out, but the consumer side remained Google Shopping. And now we have yet another tool to manage, Google Merchant Center. Got all of that? I may have missed some.

Forum discussion at Google Merchant Center Help (formerly Google Base 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: September 29, 2009"

It has been just over a year since Google opened the new Google help forums. The official date seemed to be the Google Talkabout forum in September 25, 2008, but most Google services didn't move over until later. The Google Webmaster Help forum didn't move until December 2008 and the Google Reader forum didn't move until last week.

The forum received many updates since the launch. The most significant was the redesign last August. Today, I was told by Googler, JohnMu that one of my pet peeves of the forum has been resolved.

Now, Google support forum profiles have not just questions asked, but also answered posts. So if you leave answers on other people's threads, they are included in the profile of the user. There is no RSS feed yet, but this is a major benefit to me and helping me bring you some of the best discussions in these forums. For example, see JohnMu's profile and you will see both questions he started, plus threads he replied to (but did not start).

Forum discussion continued in the original welcome thread at Google Webmaster Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google Image Search has done an update to their index. One of the members that seems to always be on top of these images updates, zeus, has said that this update is worse off from the one in February.

He said:

Hmm it looks like they are now ruin the good update for 3-4 month ago, now to many images again gets filtered and a lot of images are lost with "moderate search off".

There are many complaints about the new filter in this update at WebmasterWorld. There are also a few sporadic threads at Google Webmaster Help on the topic.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In May 2007, Google released Google Hot Trends and I was a major fan. Google has now made this tool more visible to the public by inserting it into the Google search results, when applicable.

For example, a search for Bill Winters who recently made news by leaving quitting JP Morgan, you will see Google Hot Trends show up in the search results. Here is a picture:

The goal is for Google to show this hot trends box in the search results for any trending topics. Danny Sullivan has a nice write up on this named Take That, Twitter: Google Hot Trends Integrated Into Google Search.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, besides for it being Yom Kippur, was also Confucius' birthday and Google had a logo up for the birthday in some Google properties.

Here is the logo:

According to Matt McGee, the logo was not live in Google.com or on Google France but it was live on Google UK, Germany, Spain, Austria, Russia, Serbia, Australia, New Zealand and other properties.

Why not the US or France? Maybe because it was Yom Kippur and Google didn't want to deal with the complaints about why was there a logo for Confucius but not for a major Jewish holiday?

Forum discussion Google Web Search Help and Google Webmaster Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread once again confirms that Google ignores the geo-meta tags. Those tags somewhat look like this and use to serve the purpose of telling search engines where the site is based:

<meta name="geo.placename" content="United States" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="x;x" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="usa" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="x,x" />

Google ignores them, and has for a really long time. JohnMu from Google confirmed this most recently in the thread:

We generally ignore geo-meta tags like that because we've found that they're generally incorrect (copy & pasted from a template, etc).

But we had confirmation of this when wrote that Bing relies on these geo-meta tags to determine a site's location. And time and time again, there are webmasters who find there site targeted to the wrong country because of that template issue. In that post, Google's Matt Cutts said the same thing:

Historically, meta tags for language and country have been less reliable than inferring the language or country directly. For example, lots of webmaster also just copy/paste from a friend's template without checking the meta tag values. The unreliability of the meta tags is why Google tends not to use them or give them less weight.

So three webmaster points here:

(1) Google ignore the geo-meta tag
(2) Bing currently uses the geo-meta tag
(3) Be careful when you copy templates or use pre-existing templates

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Last week, we reported that a fake Yahoo employee might be picking up unsuspecting SEM clients. Well, I was wrong, at least about the forum person being a fake employee of Yahoo, he is.

The issue is, Yahoo first told me this does not appear to be a Yahoo employee. After I fed the email address and IP info to Yahoo, they confirmed this person was a Yahoo employee. Why is there any issue? Well, it appears that this person did not have Yahoo's approval to be posting such things in the forum.

There is currently a Yahoo representative in the forum who is backed by Yahoo's PR team. Maybe this new Yahoo employee had good intentions, but it is always dangerous for these reps to venture out by themselves in such territory.

I am not sure if this Yahoo rep was doing this out of good intentions or to make some side cash. Yahoo has not given me that level of detail. In fact, I have asked Yahoo if there will be any action taken against this employee. I am waiting to hear back on that question.

Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.

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

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

Tonight is Yom Kippur, one of the most sacred days of the year for Jews. To learn more about the day, just go to Wikipedia.

Because of the day, I personally will not be blogging here or anywhere on Monday, September 28th. We may have Ben and Chris come out of hiding and do some expert posts. But that is up to them. I have already posted about five articles, today, Sunday, to make sure I got you covered for the weekend's most important search marketing discussions.

As you can see, we made this site's color white. White is to recognize the importance of this Jewish holiday. For anyone observing Yom Kippur, have an easy fast and a very meaningful day. I hope you all forgive me for anything I have done against you and I wish you all a happy, healthy and successful new Jewish year.

Here is a picture of the theme:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Last week, we discovered a new beta Google keyword tool that was way more advanced than the current one and which will ultimately replace the current one.

Besides for all the nice new reports and cooler interface, with advanced filters and segmentation. Advertisers seem to be really excited about Google breaking out the mobile search volume from standard search volume.

Here is a screen shot of the mobile filter:

Yes, mobile searches is growing and growing each day. Advertisers having the tools to differentiate between desktop and mobile searches, plus have the keyword data to anticipate such search volume, is key to a successful mobile search strategy.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports "in the coming weeks Google will put logos for fast food chains, coffee shops, hotels and travel agents on its popular maps site." A WebmasterWorld thread has one member asking if this is just going to be tested in Australia or in the US also. He said:

It appears that this is going to expand out the icons use in Austrialia on Google Maps, but it's not clear that they necessarily intend to do this in the United States. The've already had really extensive sponsor icons in Japan maps, but fewer sponsor icons appearing on U.S. maps.

Perhaps they're trying to master it in a foreign market before expanding it out in the U.S.?

Google currently allows special icons in maps for advertisers. Here is a picture of my company's paid map listing:

It seems as if this move would dramatically add more of these ads on the maps. The main question is, will they be relevant or distracting?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Threads at both WebmasterWorld and Google AdWords Help report that many advertisers are getting automated emails from Google with notifications or warnings that they have submitted too many "poor quality landing pages" and will be or have been permanently banned from using Google AdWords as an advertisers.

The email notification looks like this:

Your Google AdWords account has been suspended due to multiple submissions of poor quality landing pages. We are unable to revoke your account suspension, and we will not accept advertisements from you in the future.

Some are just getting harsh warnings, while others are being banned out right.

In the WebmasterWorld an Google customer of four years had issue with this. He said:

The email also mentions that it is a final warning. It tells me if they find any ad in the future that is in violation with the site quality guidelines (the product itself is not the problem) they will immediately disqualify me from participating in the AdWords program. Now, that is a problem.

A bit strange? Also because I’m using Adwords more then 4 years and then I receive an automated email in English while I have a Dutch account.

Is this some type of Google bug or is Google serious about this?

Currently, there are many angry advertisers and since this happened over the weekend, a Google AdWords representative has not had a chance to chime in on what is happening here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdWords Help.

There are tons of people who are confused about the Google logo today. Most people think it is a double L but they are 1s, two 1s for 11 or eleven. Yes, today, Google is celebrating their 11th Birthday. Here is the logo or doodle:

Why so much confusion? Well, I am not sure but see just some of the threads with people asking for clarification.

• GOOGLLE, Google Web Search Help
• Dont have URL just the "GOOGLE" word on your homepage had an extra L " GOOGLLE", Google Webmaster Central Help
• Googlle?, Google Web Search Help
• Happy Birthday Google - 11th BD ?, Google Webmaster Central Help
• Happy Birthday to Goog11e, DigitalPoint Forums
• Has Google recently changed their name? You home page is coming up as GOOGLLE this morning, Google Web Search Help
• why does the word "google" your homepage for google canada appear as "googlle" ??, Google Web Search Help
• Why is Google spelled 'Googlle" on the homepage of www.google.com.vn?, Google Webmaster Central Help
• WHY IS YOUR MAIN PAGE "GOOGLE" MISSPELLED AS "GOOGLLE"???, Google Web Search Help
• why two l's now appearing in your logo on my home page ??????, Google Web Search Help

Google hasn't always celebrated their birthday on September 27th. Their sixth birthday was on September 7th, so was their seventh birthday. The 8th, 9th and 10th were celebrated on the 27th.

Happy "ll" 11th birthday Google!

Yahoo launched a new search interface along with a brand campaign. Google AdWords is testing a new keyword tool, which is extremely advanced compared to the current one. AdWords advertisers were hit with a "low share of voice" notice. Google has confirmed new AdSense arrows and I see them. Some AdSense publishers are unable to login to their accounts. Did you know, Google doesn't use meta keywords? Did you see the new deeper Sitelinks with data formats? Google launched Sidewiki, which lets you comment on other sites, directly on those sites. Yea, there is a weird way to block it. Google Maps launched Place Pages. Referrer spam can't hurt your Google rankings. Should you nofollow your affiliate links? Bing's adCenter is to try favicons in ads. Google's flying saucer logo leads to H.G. Wells. Finally, we posted our SMX East coverage schedule, see you there in about a week. 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 & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Yahoo Launches New Search Interface & Brand Campaign
• Google AdWords New Beta Keyword Tool
• Google AdWords Accounts Hit With "Low Share of Voice" Notice
• Google Confirms AdSense Arrows Changes
• Some AdSense Publishers Still Not Able To Login: Confirmed Issue
• News Flash: Google Doesn't Use Meta Keywords Tag
• Yes, Google Is Showing Deeper Sitelinks In Different Formats
• Google Sidewiki - Comment About Any Site on That Site
• Block Google Sidewiki Users From Commenting On Your Site
• Place Pages: Google Gives Everyone A Page On Google Maps
• Google Says, Referrer Spam Does Not Hurt Your Google Rankings
• Linking To Affiliates? Better Nofollow Those Links or Google Will Penalize You
• Bing adCenter To Try Favicons in Search Ads
• Google's Flying Saucer Logos Lead to H.G. Wells
• SMX East '09 Live Live Blogging Schedule

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

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 25, 2009"

Google announced the launch of "Place Pages" on Google Maps. What this means is that instead of Google showing you a large bubble when you click on "more info" on a business listing in Google Maps, it takes you to a new landing page, with more information.

For example, here is a clean link to my company's listing page: http://maps.google.com/places/us/suffern/executive-blvd/2/-rustybrick-inc

This is not a major change to how it impacts the normal user, but it does create a unique landing page for every business or "place" on Google Maps.

I find it funny how in a WebmasterWorld thread, moderator, Webwork called this:

PlacePages = Wikipedia, with ads.

What do you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, we reported on Google Sidewiki which allows anyone to basically comment on your site, on your site, with the Google Toolbar. Some webmasters are not into this idea and they want to know if there is a way to opt out of this feature. The answer is no, not an official way to opt out, but you can block these users completely.

One Webmaster in Google Webmaster Help explained that you can use a rewrite rule to block people with this toolbar.

Until Google dumps this or provides an opt out, web site owners who'd like to retain control of what appears on their own site can block all Google Toolbar users by adding the following to their htaccess file. The "notoolbar.php" points to a file explaining Google's bad behavior and instructing the visitor to uninstall Google Toolbar in order to proceed. You can create your own file and name it whatever you like, just be sure to change the code below to make it match the file name you've chosen.

Update: See the comments below about this rewrite code.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GTB [NC]

RewriteRule .* notoolbar.php [L]

Of course, this would block anyone who has the Google Toolbar from getting to your site. Up to you.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Update: I have a new post on how to just block Sidewiki without blocking Google Toolbar users.

A Google Webmaster Help thread asked if he should include fragments (i.e. the # signs found in some URLs) in the new parameter handling feature in Google Webmaster Tools. Again, parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools gives you a way to tell Google to ignore certain URL parameters, to help them with removing duplicate URLs (duplicate content).

The thing with URL fragments, they are not seen as duplicate because Google simply strips out the stuff after the pound sign anyway. In fact, many sites are using fragments to do custom tracking, in order not to have a problem with the search engine indexing or people linking to URLs that might be considered duplicate, such as question marks in the URL.

Googler, JohnMu confirmed this, which is obvious to most our readers, but here is what John said:

We generally ignore the "fragments" (as in http://domain.com/path#fragment) when crawling, indexing and ranking since this is generally just something that is handled on the client side. There are some cases where we're experimenting with showing them in the snippet (as in Colin's example), to help users to find parts of a page quicker, so if you have large pages, that might be something to consider. You do not need to (& cannot) mention these fragments in Webmaster Tools.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Just about a year ago, most Google help forums moved from the old Google Groups platform to a new platform. But not all have moved. The Google Reader group finally moved to the new platform a day or two ago.

I asked in a Google Reader Help thread, "what took so long?" The response from Roger from Google was "We liked our old group so much we had a hard time letting go! :)" Cute.

But there are other Google support groups still on the legacy system, including the AdWords API Group. I am not sure what the hold up is, but I don't know why they are staying in the old platform.

I assume most Google groups within Google have already moved, based on what I am tracking.

Google Reader, welcome to the new forum.

Forum discussion at Google Reader Help.

Earlier this month, we reported that AdSense was testing new arrow formats in their ad units. I personally didn't see it, but it seemed like others were seeing various tests.

Google has finally confirmed the tests in a blog post that says we should notice new types of arrows that are more visible. The blog post said:

We've been testing slight updates to the look of these arrows, and our experiments have shown improvements in the user experience. As a result, we'll soon be making a few minor aesthetic changes, including darkening the arrows to make them more visible and orienting all arrows to point left and right. In addition, to help users understand what the arrows do, hovering over the arrows will soon show the labels 'previous ads' and 'next ads'. You'll see these changes appear in CPC ad units in all languages gradually over the next few days.

I now see the difference on my personal blog.

Old Arrows from June 2008:

New Arrows:

Small but noticeable difference.

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: September 24, 2009"

Update: I was wrong, it was not a Google issue. For some reason, I had to resubmit my subscribed links XML feed to Google. I did that and now it is working again. So if you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe here and then search for link building or other typical SEO keywords.

In May 2006, Google introduced Google Subscribed Links via the Google Coop. It was confusing, but once we implemented it here, it became clearer to people how it worked. I loved it and had tons of people (thousands) sign up to see my subscribed links in the Google search results. In fact, I expanded it in April 2008. But now, it appears to be missing from the search results.

In the past, if you searched for any of the keywords that I told Google to trigger to show my pages and you were subscribed to my links, you would get those links in the Google search results. For example, if you subscribed and searched for link building, you would have seen this in the search results:

The box under seobook.com is the special subscribed links. Now, it is missing, gone, from the search results, even though, I am technically still subscribed. Where did it go? I posted this question at Google Webmaster Help and hope to get some response.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Sidewiki. Sidewiki is basically an add on to the Google Toolbar that allows you to comment about any site, directly on that site, via the Google Toolbar. For more about the tool, see the video below and Danny's detailed writeup.

SEOs are discussing how Google may be able to use this for ranking data at a WebmasterWorld thread. Plus Google is asking for feedback on the tool in the Google Toolbar Help forum.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Toolbar Help.

I spotted a weird thread at DigitalPoint Forums with a new member of the forum claiming to be a Yahoo employee. The person said, "My name is Matthew, I am a Yahoo! employee who works with advertisers on both the search and display side. I came across this forum and wanted to introduce myself."

What made me suspicious of this person were a few things:

• He said his email is newyorkysmaccountmanager@yahoo.com, but if he really worked for Yahoo, he likely would not list his email in the forum.
• Yahoo employees do not use @yahoo.com as their work email, they use @yahoo-inc.com as their work emails.
• Plus it seemed more like a sales pitch then a help post.
• Yahoo already has a rep in that forum

I have emailed Yahoo to confirm or deny this person's identity. I have not yet received a confirmation yet, but initial thoughts are that this person is not a real Yahoo employee. I will update this post and the thread when I get final confirmation from Yahoo.

So beware of fake search engine reps, in any forum, pretending to be from any company.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: Yahoo has confirmed with me that this is not a real Yahoo employee.

Update 2: Turns out, Yahoo was wrong. This is a real Yahoo employee. But it seems like this employee did not have Yahoo's approval to post on their behalf. I hope to find out more and post a new article afterwards.

Update 3: I have some more details in this new post.

Google is apparently testing a new AdWords keyword Tool. You have to be logged into your AdWords account and click on the keyword tool feature to see it. Then when you get there, you will see the old keyword tool with a link to the beta tool.

Here is a picture of the old keyword tool:

When you click on that link towards the top, you get the new keyword tool which is way more advanced. It is broken into two parts, top and bottom. Here is a screen shot of the top:

Then when you add words and filters, you can then get reports that not just show traffic and click estimates but brings in Google other various tools to give deeper insight into those keywords. I could have taken a screen shot myself, but "searchengineman" in Search Engine Watch Forums did a great screen shots with overlays to explain the various components of the tool. Here it is:

You can click on the image to zoom into a larger version (it goes to click and click on "all sizes" above the image).

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who runs a home construction resource complaining that his rankings tanked. After some back and forth, Googler, JohnMu came in and said:

I browsed your site's reviews a bit and most of the links are either affiliate links or links to the companies without nofollow. This doesn't seem to match your reply regarding the use of nofollow. Perhaps it would be good to double-check and submit a reconsideration request should you find something that could be improved.

Yes, this webmaster dared to write a review or an article and decided to link to related products within the article, via a straight link, to the affiliate. Google likely automatically found the links, felt the site was abusing their paid link policy and slapped them with a penalty for it.

So, if you have affiliate links that you have not nofollowed, you better nofollow them. If you don't, well, then you join the ranks of sites link the one in the thread or like this site. Yes - before you all comment that we don't nofollow our paid links, I admit it, we don't. I am one of the few bloggers who decided that this blog's sponsors are not just "advertisers" but also extremely related to the site's content and can be useful to ALL of our readers. Hence, I decided to take a hit on this site's PageRank and ranking - to stand tall. Don't get me wrong, I believe this was a smart move by Google, and I totally feel they have every right to do this. Doesn't mean I don't have a choice to take a hit in the Google rankings for it.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

I have been getting emails, Twitter messages and seeing threads that more and more people are seeing this newish kind of Sitelink. It isn't brand new, it has been around for some time now, but it is 100% showing up more often in the Google results. You can probably trigger it yourself for many types of queries, but I know this one is working for me. Search for [google sitelinks forums] and you will notice these newish Sitelinks formats coming up, not once, but twice. Here are screen captures:

If you scroll down, you also see:

As you can see, they offer more links from the same site with added data (such as date of post and number of posts, if a forum thread). This is a mix bread of Sitelinks and content attributes in the search results.

So this format is coming up more and more often, as opposed to standard Sitelinks. I find these types of Sitelinks to be deeper, so I am calling them "Deep Sitelinks."

Google has been experimenting tremendously with Sitelinks. From snippet Sitelinks to anchor based Sitelinks, to various layouts for the standard Sitelinks - we see Google is busy in this area.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 23, 2009"

SMX East is less than two weeks away, so if you have not yet registered, what are you waiting for! Okay, if you really, really cannot make it, we will have real-time live blogging coverage. You will see our notes, pictures, and will be able to ask us questions and comment on our coverage, as we sit in the sessions.

Our live bloggers will wear out their keyboards, finger tips and Wifi, to bring you this live coverage. A big thank you goes to the SMX team for having us and a big thanks goes to all the live bloggers, including:

• Justin Davy of JustinDavy.com - @jdavy
• Marty Weintraub of aimClear - @aimclear
• Sheara Wilensky & Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp - @aviw / @sheara
• Keri Morgret of Strike Models - @morgret
• Brian Ussery Beu - @beussery
• Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link - @debramastaler

Oh, of course, I will also be blogging and my Twitter handle is @rustybrick.

Some of the sessions we will be covering, will have dual coverage, while some will have solo coverage.

Please help contribute by giving money, sponsoring or attending the IM Charity Party at SMX East.

Finally, here is the schedule of real live blog coverage of SMX East 2009:

Monday, October 5, 2009 - Day 1
9:00am-10:15am
Web Analytics You Should Know covered by Justin Davy
Revisiting PageRank Sculpting & Siloing covered by Marty Weintraub & Barry Schwartz
10:45am-Noon
Actionable PPC Insights From Analytics Data covered by Sheara Wilensky and Keri Morgret
Mobile Search Apps & Opportunities covered by Barry Schwartz & Justin Davy
Duplicate Content Issues: The Search Engine Edition covered by Avi Wilensky
1:45pm-3:00pm
SMX Boot Camp: Copywriting For Search Success covered by Sheara Wilensky
Actionable SEO Insights From Analytics Data covered by Avi Wilensky
Amazing PPC Tactics covered by Marty Weintraub & Keri Morgret
3:45pm-5:00pm
Increasing Conversions Through Better Usability covered by Brian Ussery
Trademarks & Paid Search: How Have Things Changed? covered by Barry Schwartz & Justin Davy

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - Day 2
9:00am-9:45am
Keynote – What's Next In Search: The Bigwig Crystal Ball Panel covered by Barry Schwartz
10:45am-Noon
Real Time Search: Opportunity Or Hype? covered by Barry Schwartz
Ecommerce Search Marketing Tactics covered by Sheara Wilensky & Keri Morgret
Proven Tactics For Targeting Local Searchers covered by Brian Ussery
1:30pm-2:45pm
Ask The Search Engines: Best Practices Edition covered by Barry Schwartz
Pumping Up YouTube covered by Debra Mastaler
Search Marketing & The Ad Agency covered by Brian Ussery
The Interplay of Social Media & Paid Search covered by Justin Davy
3:15pm-4:30pm
Ask The SEOs covered by Barry Schwartz & Brian Ussery
Paid Search & International Issues covered by Justin Davy
Video Search Marketing Beyond YouTube covered by Sheara Wilensky
4:45pm-6:00pm
Ask The Link Builders covered by Barry Schwartz
The Cross Media Attribution Battle covered by Justin Davy

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - Day 3
9:00am-10:15am
Facebook Marketing Tactics covered by Keri Morgret
Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues covered by Barry Schwartz & Brian Ussery
Search Meet Display; Display Meet Search covered by Justin Davy
10:30am-11:45am
Twitter Marketing Tactics covered by Barry Schwartz
Bringing PPC In House: How To Be Successful! covered by Justin Davy
Dealing With Domain Names, URLs, Parameters & All That Jazz covered by Avi Wilensky
12:45pm-1:45pm
Social Media, Search & Reputation Management covered by Barry Schwartz & Justin Davy
Pumping Up WordPress For SEO covered by Sheara Wilensky
2:00pm-3:00pm
Analytics For Social Media covered by Barry Schwartz
CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO covered by Sheara Wilensky & Brian Ussery

The schedule is subject to change last minute, but we will do our best to provide detailed, entertaining and educational coverage for all those who cannot make it.

Back in the old days, referrer spam was a way to get quick rankings by spamming other site's referrer logs. Wikipedia explains it pretty well:

Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referrer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer's site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.

This benefits the spammer because of the free link, and also gives the spammer's site improved search engine placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use.

This was an issue ages ago, in Internet years at least. These days, you rarely hear about them and for good reason - it doesn't work like it use to.

JohnMu, a Google representative, said in a Google Webmaster Help thread that it generally does not hurt your rankings. He said that after someone complained their Google rankings dropped due to someone referrer spamming him. John said:

I can pretty much assure you that those referrers are not negatively affecting your collection of sites. If you are seeing fluctuations, it's almost certainly due to other issues.

John said repeatedly in this thread that this type of spam 'generally' cannot hurt a web site from ranking well in Google.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

One of the most requested features for Gmail is push support for the Apple iPhone. Google announced yesterday that they now support push Gmail on the iPhone through Google Sync. To get started with this, go here and read the various instructions.

We knew this would be coming because a Googler told us back in March it would be here soon. And trust me, people are delighted it is here. There are literally dozens and dozens of threads at the Google Mobile iPhone Forum on this topic.

Personally, I really do not want Push notifications for my email. I just don't want my iPhone beeping and vibrating every other second. Plus, I am sure it won't do good for my battery life. Personally, I know when I check email on my iPhone that there will be email waiting for me - I don't need to be pushed this on me. I can see for email accounts that get fewer emails, this may make sense.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile iPhone Forum.

I use different search engines for different reasons. I am not the typical searcher, I am more of a "power" searcher, I would guess. I often see people complaining that Google isn't good at searching for X or Y. The reason is, Google is a great normal search engine, but there are search engines that excel in other areas and you should learn them.

I spotted a thread at a Google Web Search Help thread where someone was complaining that Google couldn't calculate his age properly based on his birthday. His birthday is December 12, 1977.

So when you plug in 12/12/1977, Google does math:

Searching for December 12, 1977 doesn't give you much help either.

But Wolfram|Alpha is smart enough to know this is a date format and even says so, "Assuming "12/12/1977" is a date | Use as a mathematical object instead." Wolfram is excellent at these types of queries. In this case, it gives me the day of the week it falls out, various date formats, time difference from today in years, weeks, days and a combination of those. It also tells you if any holidays fall out on that day, any notable birthdays on that date and sunrise/sunset and moon phase. Here is a picture:

So when searching and not getting what you want from Google, look for alternatives - there is likely a search engine that can give you what you need.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google's stock, GOOG, closed yesterday at $499.06, just under the $500 mark. Will it break $500 today? Well, it has already in the pre-market trade.

Personally, I felt $80 was too much for Google. But clearly, I know nothing about investing. Is $500 a good deal?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday, many advertisers have been complaining in the Google AdWords Help forums that many of their keywords and campaigns now have the warnings, "Low Share of Voice." Here is a screen capture of the warning:

We have many threads on the topic and many complaints from Google AdWords advertisers. A Google AdWords representative chimed in, but he/she really did not have much to say, outside of we hear you, we are listening and good luck. Here is what the AdWords rep said:

That said, my apology for not getting to this thread earlier. Long story short, I have been looking into this since I first saw this thread a couple of hours ago - and am trying to get to the bottom of things. At this point, though, I am sorry to say that I don't have any definitive information.

However, a tech contact with whom I have been working had an interesting comment that I'll pass along. He has been able to check the accounts of a few folks who have written us, and he is seeing no drop in traffic as has been reported here. His thought is that those in this thread who have reported such a drop may have been looking at their stats mid-day, rather than for a complete day - thus the apparent drop in stats. And, looking at the time stamps of these posts, I think that is a real possibility.

In any case, my colleague Stephen who has posted here in the past as 'AdWordsPro Stephen' (and whom Sarah and I are actively be trying to lure back into the forum) will continue to look into this, and update the thread when he has a clearer picture of what's up.

In the meantime, my apology for the confusion and discomfort. Not fun, I know.

I am not sure if they released a new update that impacted many accounts or if this is a bug. I guess time will tell.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

You can read all about the buzz around Yahoo's new brand campaign at Techmeme. Yea, the "Internet is Under New Management... Yours," campaign. With this, Yahoo launched a new search interface to help convince people that search is more about the interface then the underlining technology, that they hope to outsource to Microsoft.

The new interface impacts their web search, image search and video search and includes:

• Intelligent Search Results – Allows you to explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data.
• Feature-Rich Experience – Provides quick access to search features that make people’s online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad.
• Search Assist Expansion – With the new design, our powerful query assistance is still available directly below the search box, but we’ve also incorporated it into the left-hand column for quick access lower on the page, even when the Search Assist layer is hidden.
• Improved total page load time – Even though the new design includes dozens of additional assistance features and graphical assets, we are seeing faster page loading time and significant speed improvements.
• Improved perceived load time – In addition to reducing the weight of the page, we also greatly reduced the perceived load time by sending the page in three semantically meaningful chunks: first the search box and page header, then the rest of the visible content, and finally JavaScript for rich behavior.
• Inline data URI images – We’re taking advantage of specialized techniques for modern browsers such as inline data URI images, which we use to generate our subtle repeating gradients. This improves perceived and real performance dramatically. For legacy browsers, we provide the same gradients with traditional image sprites.

You can view some screen shots over here.

Do you like the new interface? Please take our poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 22, 2009"

Ever conduct a search and see that you have at least ten pages of search results to browse through but then, as you get to page 4 or 5, Google cuts down those ten pages to only 4 or 5 pages? Here is an example, search for [lockeeeer] and you will see one through nine pages of results at the bottom:

But when I click to page five, I get stuck there:

Why is that? In this case, does it have to do with Google possibly first including "omitted results" in the pagination and then removing them when you click forward through the search results? Or is there just this ongoing pagination bug for some search results?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Latitude is an application that allows you to share your current or most recent shared location with your friends. It also allows you to share your location on your blog by using the Google Latitude Badge.

A Google Reader Help thread has a non-English speaking individual detailing a bug that occurred with his Google Profile using Latitude and the "Like" feature in Google Reader.

He said that if he chooses a "like" in Google Reader, "the other people will see my Latitude location without any limit." This was reported on September 8th. On September 21st, Google's Roger confirmed the bug and said they resolved the issue:

Thanks for reporting this and for your additional research! After working with our friends on Google Latitude, we've found the problem and fixed it, so this shouldn't happen again, regardless of your language setting. Please let us know if the problem resurfaces as we take your privacy very seriously.

I don't fully understand how this issue happened with only non-English based accounts, but the issue does seem to be resolved now.

Forum discussion at Google Reader Help.

Google made historic news yesterday by declaring they do not use the meta keywords tag. Okay, I am being incredibly sarcastic. Google hasn't used the meta keywords tag for an incredibly long time and any "SEO" should know that. So why did Google blog about this, on the record? At least two reasons, (1) people continue to sue over it by claiming copyright infringement and people confuse the meta keywords with the meta description, which Google does recommend to use.

So there are official posts from Matt Cutts, the Google Blog and Search Engine Land trying to erase any confusion from people who are new to this space.

If you want to know which meta tags Google does pay attention to, see this FAQ. Plus, Googler's JohnMu tweeted that Google also does "not adhere to the "revisit-after" meta tag," if you wanted to know.

Finally, here is a video if you don't want to read any of this:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday I wrote about a MediaPost report claiming Microsoft Bing will be the next search engine to try favicons and images in search ads.

Google tested favicons in AdWords and so did Yahoo search ads. Google Japan even went large with those icons in the ads. Plus Google tested them in the normal free/organic results.

Matt Cutts told me yesterday that AltaVista also had these, as an extra paid option to their search ads.

So that goes way back in time.

I have not seen examples of Microsoft Bing testing these favicons in the adCenter search ads. Not yet at least, have you?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Today, in some parts of the world, is the first day of Autumn. Yes, summer is officially over. Bing is the only major search engine to have an image up for the day. Although Google had season logos in the past, today, they skipped it. Why? Well, maybe because seasons are not always black and white in where they start and when they start.

In any event, here is the Bing image with hotspots:

We also created a pretty nice theme for the Search Engine Roundtable for Autumn:

Forum discussion at 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: September 21, 2009"

A few weeks ago, Yahoo announced the "enhanced" Yahoo Mail. But for many, Yahoo Mail remained the same. Now I am seeing threads with people both complimenting and disliking the new Yahoo Mail interface. Many are now getting the new Yahoo Mail by default, whereas others are still using the old interface.

I am not going to go through all the new interface and feature changes. The Yahoo Mail blog does that well. Here is a bullet list of changes:

• New interface
• More social
• 3rd party apps
• Better photo integration
• and many more features.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

On Thursday we reported that some AdSense publishers were having issues logging in. We thought it had to do with publishers who had a manual review on their account, but we were not a 100% sure of that.

Jennifer from the Google AdSense team posted a thread in Google AdSense Help confirming the issue and saying they have put this issue on the known issues page:

Publishers unable to log in

Details: We've received reports that some publishers are having difficulty accessing their AdSense accounts, and are seeing that the login page reloads even after having cleared the cache and enabled cookies. Our engineers have been notified and are investigating this issue to resolve it as soon as possible. We'll keep you updated with any details as we receive them, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

The thing is, this is still an issue for many publishers even about four days later. There is currently no estimated time for when the fix will be in place.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

Googler, Marie in the Google Docs Help forum announced a major 'feature' coming to Google Docs that will make your documents more discoverable in Google's search engine. She explained that some Google Docs will soon be crawlable and found in the Google search results.

What are the criteria for these docs to be shown in the Google index? They have to be "explicitly published using the 'Publish as web page' or 'Publish/embed' option, and which are linked to from a publicly crawled webpage." Want to make sure your docs are not visible? Here is how:

• Go to the 'Share tab'
• For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
• Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'

That is not the only new thing coming to Google Docs. On Friday, Marie also announced "back to school" features including:

• An equation editor, which you'll find under the 'Insert' menu.
• The ability to print footnotes as endnotes so that you have the choice to see your citations in different ways when writing papers.
• Expanded the capabilities of our dictionary with more definitions and the ability to translate individual words or phrases between 11 languages.

Forum discussion at several Google Docs Help Forums, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

If you visit Google today, you will notice a very interesting Google Doodle. The Doodle is designed to honor H.G. Wells, whose 143rd birthday would be today. Who is he? He wrote the 1898 classic, The War of the Worlds and is often referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction."

Here is the logo:

What is unique about this logo, compared to other logos is that Google had two previous logos leading up to this one, kind of hinting that this was coming.

The first was the missing O Google logo:

The second was the missing L Google logo:

The logos themselves did not hint to what was coming, but with aids from Google's Twitter account, @Google, some people were able to crack the code.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

In this week's recap, I take you to St. Louis with a quick recap on my laptop. Bing launched visual search, while Google launched news flip. Google added DoubleClick to AdWords. Parameter handling finally came to Google Webmaster Tools. Yahoo secretly added top query and URLs reports to Site Explorer. Bing takes over 10 percent market share. Google acquired reCAPTCHA for OCR improvement. Google says validation doesn't help with ranking boost. Google's related command is much better. Bing hides MSNBot as Mozilla, plus they don't reverse DNS properly. SEOs don't like to show off and SEMs refuse to let Google manage their AdWords accounts. Are there AdSense poison words and is it a double standard? Is Google locking down AdSense publishers? When will the Google UFO or flying saucer logos be solved? Everyone, thanks for listening to this weeks search recap. Have a wonderful Rosh Hashanah and Talk Like a Pirate Day 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 & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Video Demo of Bing's New Visual Search
• Video Demo of Google News Fast Flip
• DoubleClick Now Integrated With Google AdWords, Impacts AdSense
• Google Adds Parameter Handling To Webmaster Tools, Plays Catchup to Yahoo Site Explorer
• Yahoo Site Explorer Adds Top Queries Report
• Bing Springs To 10% Market Share, Takes From Yahoo
• Google Acquires reCAPTCHA, SEOs Drop reCAPTCHA
• Google Says Pages That Validate Do Not Get Ranking Boost
• Google's Related Command Now More Accurate?
• Bing Masking MSNBot Under Mozilla's UserAgent & Reverse IP Fails
• SEO Show Offs: Poll Results
• 87% Won't Allow Google To Manage Their AdWords Accounts
• Google AdSense Poison Words & The AdSense/AdWords Double Standard
• Google AdSense Locks Down Publisher Accounts For Manual Review
• Goog_e's Missing "L" Crop Circles UFO Logo

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

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

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

Big ad news today from Google, they have officially made a big push into display ads through DoubleClick ad network they acquired a two years or so. The DoubleClick ad network will be directly integrated into AdWords. This expands the content network, which means AdSense publishers should see more ads, hopefully higher paying ads.

I am about to get on a plane, so let me give you all the relevant links that I can find. We have the main Google Blog discussing the integration and the AdWords blog talking about how this impacts search advertisers and finally the AdSense blog discussing how to get these ads in your mix. Greg Sterling covers more of the business angle at Search Engine Land and plus we have tons more commentary at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an interesting Google AdSense Help thread on the topic of specific words that seem to cause Google to show PSA (public service ads) that do not earn the publisher money.

One example I can show you is a blog post on my personal blog named Went To The Pizza Store Naked.... The word "naked" trigged AdSense to show a PSA in the ad slot, because it is against AdSense's TOS to show ads for adult content. If you read the blog post, you can clearly see that no one was naked but the toy troll.

Here is a picture of the PSA near the content:

The ad in the top right position is a PSA.

The AdSense publisher said her site, which is about politics, uses words like this all the time. She calls them poison words, because they kill her potential to make money with Google. She also said that the following words are considered "poison," death, prison, drugs, gun, funeral, shot, killed, war, terrorist, and jail. I have tested some of these on my personal blog and not all meet those requirements.

What I find even more interesting is a point Gracey made in that thread. Gracey said that there is a double standard here. When you conduct a search for naked in Google, ads do show up, but at the same time - content with the word naked in it, prevents ads from showing up. Publishers want to know why is there one set of rules for AdWords and another for AdSense?

Here is a picture of ads that show for the keyword [naked] in Google:

The original thread creator summed up her frustration, saying:

Rather than pretending this doesnt exist, how about helping those of us who are not running porn sites or gambling dens or are crackers, hackers and hate sites... But we who are just writing about history and the news of the day. Help us overcome what Google, in good faith, is doing trying to deal with the bad boys. We are not bad boys!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread suggests that Google is getting better at either determining or showing that they know which sites are related to others in the related command. The related command is triggered when you click on the "similar" link in the search results, here is a picture:

When you click that link, it basically triggers an advanced query for related sites. The query is [related:www.seroundtable.com. And if you look, the results are much more on target then in the past. Here are sites Google suggests are related to this one:

• searchengineblog.com
• searchengineland.com
• searchenginewatch.com
• searchenginejournal.com
• seobook.com
• highrankings.com
• mattcutts.com
• seomoz.org

And there are more and most of them I would consider to be related to this site. In the past, the related command was somewhat of a joke, now it seems pretty accurate.

WebmasterWorld administrator agreed saying:

Totally agree - it's been a long time coming, but related sites are now much more related in topic, rather than some spastic collection of loosely interlinked sites in an odd cluster that does not give a user any value.

Good to see this improvement from Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you go to the Bing Webmaster Tools and login, then try to "add a site" to the list of sites you have rights to manage, you will get a page cannot be displayed type of page.

Here is a picture of the error I am seeing, as well as many other webmasters:

There are dozens of threads on this issue at the Bing Forums and will likely be dozens more soon. There is also a thread at WebmasterWorld with complaints.

Microsoft is aware of the issue and hope to get it resolved soon. I hope it is resolved by the time this post goes live, which is about 20 hours after the first report of it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Bing Forums.

I guess those Bing commercials are indeed working. CNet reports on a Neilson ratings survey that claims Microsoft's Bing search engine has captured 10% share.

Here is the break down:

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for August 2009, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Notice Yahoo dropped 4.2 percent from the previous month, but keep in mind, looking at month-to-month numbers is dangerous in this space.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 17, 2009"

I was looking at Yahoo Site Explorer when I was reviewing the dynamic URL tool earlier and noticed a new beta link available to sites that are validated or authenticated in Site Explorer. The new tool is named "Top Queries" and it basically shows you the top ten searches you come up for a specific day, week or month. It shows the number of views and clicks you received for those top queries. In addition, it shows you your top URLs as well.

Here is my top queries report for the day:

Here is my top URL report for the day:

In this case, Yahoo is playing catch up to Google Webmaster Tools.

I am pretty sure this is new, but I can be wrong. A Yahoo Site Explorer suggestion thread notes that the feature was not available at least 11 months ago. And I have not seen any reports of this feature being available in any blog, including the Yahoo Search Blog.

Forum discussion at Yahoo Site Explorer Forums.

If you login to Google Webmaster Tools, click on site configuration, then on settings, you will see a new option for "parameter handling." Here is a screen capture:

This basically allows you to tell Google which parameters in the URL they should ignore. This comes in handy for tracking parameters added to the URL, or duplicate content caused by printer friendly URLs and many other cases.

If you want to learn more about how this stuff works, see the Google help document or read Search Engine Land article. Also, Brain was the first to spot this.

I posted a thread on this topic at Google Webmaster Help where a Googler, Jonathan Simon added, "One small correction should be noted in regards to the Search Engine Land blog post where it says it's okay to mark parameters that control sort order as ignorable. That's only true if the sorted results all fit on a single page. Otherwise you could unintentionally be excluding some data."

Yahoo Site Explorer has had this feature for a while now. Yahoo calls it Dynamic URLs and the screen looks like this:

You can learn more about Yahoo's dynamic URL feature over here.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.

The question of having valid HTML and would it help your rankings in Google or other search engines is not new. Most SEOs believed that it made no impact on your rankings, unless Googlebot has serious issues crawling your site.

In a recent YouTube video, Google's Matt Cutts explained why Google.com does not validate (historically has not) and also added that Google doesn't "give any sort of boost to web pages that validate." He explained because "the vast majority of pages on the web don't validate," including Google.com.

Here is the video:

For those in the SEO community and know Edward Lewis, aka pageoneresults, you will find it funny that he posted that thread at WebmasterWorld.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

With all the on going issues with MSNBot not behaving, I am not too surprised to see more complaints about the little spider.

New confirmed reports from Bing Forums shows that MSNBot is hiding itself under the UserAgent of Mozilla/4.0. How does this person know that it is MSNBot? Two reason, it is "crawler-acting-like" and also because it is in the same range of IP adresses as MSNBot.

Brett Yount from the Microsoft Bing team confirmed the issue saying:

We've received word from a few other sources concerning this. Our team is reviewing it and will let me know as soon as they have an update. Please be assured that it is not our intention to misrepresent the bot or cause undo problems for webmasters.

In addition to this confirmed report, we have a webmaster in WebmasterWorld complaining that MSNBot fails the best business practices of reverse DNS lookup validating. In November 2006, Microsoft added a method to validate MSNBot is indeed MSNBot by allowing reverse DNS checking of the IP. That began to fail in December 2007, which was confirmed shortly after. Then again, in March 2008 the reverse DNS complaints came back. This is a brand new report after not hearing complaints for a while now. There has not been confirmation of this from Microsoft.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Sometimes I like to point out weird anomalies in the Google search results. A search for [lufthansa fleet] returns a Wikipedia listing to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa. The issue is, the way Google lists out the snippet and title is all weird:

Why does it show it like that? What does wxloop mm5aq_stata_pm25gt65 2008112700///1 mean? Why no snippet?

JohnMu from Google said it isn't visible everyone, but it is just one of those strange anomalies. He said:

Thanks for bringing this up! I've passed it on to a team here to review. As far as I can tell, this is just a strange fluctuation that's not visible everywhere.

I bet an SEO can figure the issue out pretty quickly.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that has an open based CAPTCHA technology for validating humans as being real humans. Google basically wants them to help improve their book and newspaper scanning OCR technology. reCAPTCHA uses newspaper words as the identifier for human detection. reCAPTCHA collects all of the responses from humans when they are asked to enter in what they see as the words. This data is incredibly valuable to companies that want to better learn how to read words scanned from a newspaper, which is why Google acquired them.

If you scan the WebmasterWorld thread, you will see one major theme. SEOs and Webmasters are eager to drop reCAPTCHA from their web sites now that Google owns them. One senior member said, "Now busily removing reCAPTCHA from all our sites. Google has enough beacons already. No need for more." A moderator added, "next month you're all going to get ads showing in your captcha box."

The technology is quiet interesting, ResourceShelf links to a scientific paper on the topic. Here is a link to the PDF of the paper.

In any event, I am not sure if it is worth dropping using reCAPTCHA from most sites. Heck, they already have AdSense and Google Analytics running on them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are many threads, plus one really long one at Google AdSense Help forums with publishers complaining they cannot login to the AdSense portal. I tried it myself and I have no problem, but it seems like the typical person complaining are those new to AdSense.

Most seem to be related to Google taking down the account for a manual "review." The issue is, Google said that the review would only take about a week. Many of these users say it has been over three weeks with the same issue and no word from Google on the status of that review.

It does seem like some mass review is going on. I have seen tons of complaints in the forums about publishers being terminated from the program and tons of threads like this that they cannot login to their accounts.

Some say that upon manual review, they can no longer login due to some cycle issue. One explained the process as, "login screen --> enter details --> click login --> back to login screen." That seems cookie related to me and likely can be fixed by deleting the Google cookie causing the issue.

Overall, there does seem to be a major review cycle going on right now.

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: September 16, 2009"

On Friday we ran a poll asking Would You Allow Google to Manage Your AdWords Account? I am honestly not surprised by the answer, where an overwhelming majority of the responses were basically, "no way!" In short, people feel that the Google AdWords representatives who manage accounts in Google for advertisers cannot do as good as a job as an SEM company or someone who manages it themselves.

Just take a look at the pie chart, 87% said no, they would not allow Google to manage their AdWords campaigns. That is out of about 150 responses from our readers.

The other responses said that they would allow Google do the set up of the initial campaign but then take it over from that point going forward. In my mind, that means, no, they won't allow Google to manage their campaign.

What does this say for Google? But what I find interesting is that I would have to guess that a nice percentage of Google AdWords campaigns are managed with Google employees. What does that say for those who pay for those campaigns?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Let's file this under weird or unexpected search results from Google. A search for business website design] returns one of those middle of the page Google refinements. The weird part is what Google returns as a refinement for that search. Google returns the keyword, [semi repair]. What does semi repair have to do with business website design?

Here is a picture of the page:

Why is this the case? No one really knows, but Googler JohnMu did comment in a joking fashion saying:

As I mentioned, these suggestions are generated automatically. I wonder what that tells us ... hmm :-) Someone should be out there making DIY truck repair sites!

Maybe, just maybe.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

There is a featured WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how Google treats affiliate links and if there are ways to hide your affiliate links from Google.

There is discussion that Google will lower your rank of a web page, if it has an affiliate link on that page. I honestly do not know if that is a true statement. The typical issue with affiliate links, is not the link, but the fact that Google wants to show the best single unique result in the search listings and not the same ten results from ten different web sites. Affiliates typically sell the same product and often have the same content on their site, with various changes to the template and content. Google wants the searcher to get one of those sites and not all of them.

So I really do not think an affiliate link is the signal Google uses to "demote" a page in the search results. It is likely more about how unique that page is.

But let's say Google does look for affiliate links. The thread discusses how you can possibly hide that link from Google, so that you don't suffer any loss for having it.

Some suggest using JavaScript, but Google now crawls JavaScript. Some suggest using a special directory for the link and then robots.txt that directory out and also nofollow the link. Some even go as far as suggesting cloaking the link out for GoogleBot and showing it to everyone else.

Whatever route you go, be careful with all these methods. And think hard, how unique is your page from the 300 other affiliates selling the same product or service?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

BT.com, a major UK portal, was powered by Yahoo Search, but is now being powered by Google Search. Why is this a big deal? Well, the portal is a partnership of some sort between Yahoo and BT, i.e. it is hosted at bt.yahoo.com.

Now we all know that Yahoo and Microsoft have made a big deal, where Microsoft will hopefully take control of all of Yahoo's search technology and power that side of their business.

So why did Yahoo partner up with Google on this portal and not Microsoft Bing?

This is not recent news, I reported this back in August based on a ConnectedInternet tip. Here is a screen capture:

Eventually, Yahoo said all their properties will be "powered by Bing Search."

A WebmasterWorld thread said that BT members just received emails from BT saying:

Your BT Yahoo! Search is now powered by Google, the UK’s most popular search engine.

This shouldn't confuse anyone down the road.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I never understand it when I see trolls come into forums, owned and managed daily by search engine representatives, and spam them. It is clear that these forums are crawling with people who can seriously impact your site's ranking in that search engine - but they are clueless to that fact?

Two recent examples for you:

(1) A Bing Forum thread discusses one member who has been just spamming the forum with link drops to his site. Literally every post of his, is a link to his site. The posts rarely answer questions related to the thread, they are just clogging up the forum.

One active webmaster finally called him out and then warned him:

And a side note, you really think it's a good idea to do this in the forum from a search engine company? I am sure they can add and remove URLs from the index if they really want this...

(2) Some guy came into the Google Webmaster Help forums and asked outright to do link exchanges. I mean, come on! Besides for Google clearly not approving such methods of link building, the forum is filled with people who absolutely hate exchanging links with others.

One of the main DO NOTs of SEO is DO NOT raise a red flag on your site. Coming into an official search engine forum that clearly is monitored by search reps and spamming it with links to your site, doesn't just raise a red flag, but gives them a bulls eye. Now, if you are doing this to a competitor, that is a different evil story.

Forum discussion at Bing Forum and Google Webmaster 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: September 15, 2009"

In continuation of Google's missing "O" unexplained phenomenon logo, we now have a logo missing an "L" and linking to a crop circles search result. This Google logo has the file name goog_e.gif and looks like this:

The one ten days ago, the missing O, looked like this:

This time, Google tweeted the coordinates "51.327629, -0.5616088" which is in Woking, Surrey GU21 4, UK.

Is Google spelling something? What is going on here?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

There is an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld on the topic of search engine position security. In short, the SEO is asking others, how secure do you feel that your rankings won't change all that much? How secure do you feel in your site's success in Google? How secure do you feel that Google won't change things up so drastically that your site won't be impacted?

Why should you feel nervous? Some of the points in the thread include the fact that Google is showing "universal search" results, such as videos, local, news, images and so on in the main web results. Also, Google is constantly changing up their filters and now working on releasing a new infrastructure. Plus, you need to constantly maintain your site, in some industries, to remain at the top.

How confident are you? Take the poll:

Overall, there is some excellent SEO advice in the thread, outside of the question in this post. But please have your SEO buddies that this anonymous poll.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

All that chatter of Bing 2.0 I guess was about Microsoft launching a new search feature to let you narrow your search results down through filters and images - i.e. visually.

Here is a video demo of how it works:

As you can see, for the most part, this is structured data and doesn't appear to be data from unstructured parts of the web. In any event, this is a really nice and easy way to narrow the results down. Elisabeth Osmeloski at Search Engine Land has a pretty large write up on the new feature.

The main issue for me is that it requires Silverlight to run, which I don't have on my main machine.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Last night, Google announced a really neat feature for Google News in the Google Labs named Fast Flip. It basically lets you visually flip through Google News, as you would in a magazine, on the screen.

The best way to explain this is a quick demo:

There is also a mobile version for iPhones and Android devices. Here is the FAQs and there are about 40 current news sources included.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Web Search Help thread has a complaint from a worried searcher who stumbled upon a Google Suggestion on how to kill yourself. He said he was searching for tips on killing poisonous mushrooms and when he began typing "how to kill," Google suggested he search for "How to killing yourself."

Here is a picture:

Google does sometimes censor the suggestions in the list but typically they are algorithmically driven based on searcher popularity. In this case, it might make sense for Google to filter out these suggestions.

The topic of suicide ads showing up in in AdWords is nothing new. Also, in the past we talked about Google censoring both the ads and organic results for suicide matches. Although censoring results is typically something Google is against, censoring the suggestions is something they have historically done and should do here.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

On Saturday/Sunday, the New York Times ran an ad that contained malware. In fact, the New York Times manned up to it in an article named Times Web Ads Show Security Breach. In short, a rogue advertiser posed as Vonage and displayed ads that appeared to be from Vonage. But what really was in those ads were lines of malicious code that filled user's screens "with an image that seemed to show a scan for computer viruses. The visitors were then told that they needed to buy antivirus software to fix a problem, but the software was more snake oil than a useful program," said the New York Times.

So how is Google to blame here? Well, according to at least one Google user in a Google News Help thread, Google led this person from Google News to the New York Times, which contained the malware.

The searcher felt it was Google's responsibility to not lead their searchers to sites that contain malware, even the New York Times. The searcher said:

Can Google please remove links to the NYTimes until they get this fixed. I got hit with this when accessing an NYTimes article via Google News and I don't appear to be the only one.

Google does malware checking and blocking, but sometimes it takes time for Google to pick up on things like this. For sites like the New York Times, users can be infected way sooner than Google detects the malware.

Forum discussion at Google News 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: September 14, 2009"

A few weeks ago, we ran a poll asking if you should flaunt your search engine rankings? We have about 150 responses in now, so I thought I share with you how SEOs like to show off their success.

Question: Should You Show Off Your Success With Search Rankings?

:: Depends On Business said 50 respondents or 34%
:: Yes, But Privately said 48 respondents or 32%
:: Never said 33 respondents or 22%
:: Yes, Publicly said 18 respondents or 12%

Pretty nice level of disagreement between the SEO industry, don't you think?

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

If you were reading the Google News front page early this morning or late last night, you may have seen a highlighted article with a news headline containing a four letter word. The article came from the Village Voice Blog, not the main news site, but the blog and was features on the Google News home page for a bit of time.

At least three people came to Google News Help Forums to complain.

Google's Inbal replied to their concerns, explaining:

Thanks for bringing this inappropriate content to our attention. We'll contact the Village Voice following your alert.

As you my know, Google News is highly unusual in that it offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. There are no human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines and pictures, and no individual decides which stories and images get top placement. This automation is what makes Google News a valuable source of information on the important issues of the day. We are always working to improve our service, and your feedback will help us in this process.

Now, if you even search for the full phrase in Google News, you won't get that four letter word in the title anymore. It will show in the description. Here is a picture:

I am not sure how big a deal it is to have this word on a news site, but I am not sure.

Forum discussion at Google News Help Forums.

There is some confusion in a WebmasterWorld thread, where advertisers are asking where the Tools tab in the AdWords management console went.

If your tool tab is missing, it is likely because you have been included into the new beta "opportunities" tab. This does not mean you don't have access to those tools, they are just moved.

To find the tools, click on "opportunities" and on the left side bar, you will see a box for "tools." The tools can be found in that box. Here is a picture:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On Friday afternoon, there was this rumor spreading through Twitter that the Yahoo Directory was no longer accepting submissions.

Maybe it was true for a minute or two, but as of a few minutes after the rumor, it seems like anyone who tested the Yahoo Directory submission process, learned that they were indeed taking new sites.

I personally just submitted a site to the Yahoo Directory as a test and it went through the free submission process with no problem. I do find it interesting how people reTweet stuff without first making sure what is being Tweeted is legit.

Here is a picture of the submission add page:

After this page, you are taken to a form to fill out your site's detail.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A Google Maps Help thread has several business owners complaining that they keep getting an error from the Google Local Business Center category field that says:

Select at least 1 category that matches suggestions as you type

The issue is not that Google is now requiring businesses select a pre-defined category but that even when they do, they still get this error.

Mike Blumenthal has a picture of the error warning shown to these businesses.

There seem to be a small spike in complaints about this error in the past week or so.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

On September 11th we covered why Google doesn't have a logo, but yet will "fix" Google Maps for "September 11 Attacks." We did however show off the logos for Bing and Ask.com for their remembrance. Also, Labor Day, Google didn't have a logo, but Ask.com, Bing and Dogpile did. Google did a logo for 9/9/09 at 9:09:09 and a weird missing "O" logo on Saturday. Google made their search box much larger. Longer domain name registration does not improve SEO, Google said. Keywords in the URL help with SEO according to our most recent poll. UK and Ireland are very similar and even on different ccTLDs can result in duplicate content. Google Sitelinks are now in the search snippets. Bing fake referrers might be back, but are they even paying attention to the robots.txt files? Yahoo search ads should get cheaper and they added a new report. Google Base added a YouTube attribute to link up videos. Google AdWords advertiser threatens suicide. How can you stop search spiders on the Jewish Shabbat? Finally, did you check out Google Monopoly? 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 & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• No 9/11 Logo From Google, But Bing & Ask.com Remember
• Google To "Fix" September 11 Attacks Mark on Google Maps
• 2009 Labor Day Logos from Bing, Ask, DogPile But Not Google or Yahoo
• Google's 09/09/09 Logo (Doodle)
• Go_gle's Missing "O" "Unexplained Phenomenon" UFO Logo (Doodle)
• Google Makes Search Bigger With Larger Search Box
• Longer Domain Registration Does Not Increase Google Search Engine Rankings
• 75% of SEOs Feel Google Loves Keywords in the URL
• UK & Ireland Geo Targeting in Google Need Unique Content
• Google's Sitelinks Within Search Result Snippets
• Bing's Fake Referrer Spam Back, Now Hiding Referrer Now?
• Bing Not Honoring Robots.txt Directives?
• Yahoo Search Marketing Changes Pricing Algorithm & Adds Partner Reporting
• Google Base Feeds Can Now Include YouTube Video Demos for Product Search
• Google AdWords Advertisers Threatens Suicide To Get Google's Attention, It Worked
• Stop Spiders From Crawling Your Site on Shabbat, Including GoogleBot
• Screen Shots & Videos of Google Monopoly City Streets

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

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 11, 2009"

Today is the anniversary of the horrible attacks of the U.S., forever known as September 11th, or 9/11. People will be asking, why doesn't Google have a special logo up (a Doodle) to remember the day. The answer is because Google only has logos up for days that are lighthearted or fun. Today, is a special and very sensitive day for many people.

Other search engines are able to post something that does show some type of remembrance. For example, Microsoft's Bing and IAC's Ask.com have custom backgrounds for their home pages.

It doesn't mean Google is doing nothing. Google has a blog post named Make History with the National September 11th Memorial & Museum. Google partnered up to create a web site, using Google Maps API, named 911history.org.

Also, let's not forget the way the Google home page looked on the day of 9/11:

For more internet 9/11 resources, check out ResourceShelf.

So why no Google logo? It just isn't the right thing for Google to do today.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

If you look at the World Trade Center Site on Google Maps, you will see Google still labels it, "September 11 Attacks." An upset Google Maps user posted his distaste for such a label in the Google Maps Help forum.

Here is a picture:

He said:

I noticed on the map of lower Manhattan, the entire former WTC area is designated as "September 11 Attacks." Surely this is more of an event than a geographical location? It's been 8 years, and I was just wondering if this location could be called something more appropriate for a map, such as "Former WTC Site" or "Future Freedom Tower Complex"?

Dealy Plaza in Dallas is labeled as "Dealy Plaza," with a photo icon that tells the story of JFK's assassination. The location is not called "JFK Assassination." The case is similar with Pearl Harbor.

To my surprise, a Googler replied saying, "Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This seems to be the result of an over-eager algorithm. I'll look into getting it fixed."

Again, Google will look into getting it "fixed."

I guess it can not always be labeled September 11 Attacks but what should it be labeled?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Remember a few weeks ago Google started with anchor based Sitelinks for specific sites? Well, now it seems like Google is trying to put these types of links directly in the search engine snippet (i.e. the description in the search results, under the page title).

A search for pension contributions brings up a Wikipedia listing with an anchor link directly in the Google search snippet. Here is a picture:

iCrossing first spotted this and @rishil gets credit for letting me know.

This is also mentioned in the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of these anchor based Sitelinks.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced two main changes that went into place yesterday.

(1) The most important change was that a new pricing algorithm is in place. Yahoo said, "we're now expanding the adjustments we make to our click charges based on our assessment of the performance of traffic coming from sources within our distribution network." Yahoo added, "based on our analysis, we expect that most advertisers will see click charges drop or remain unchanged as a result of this change, while a small fraction of advertisers may experience an increase in click charges."

(2) Yahoo added a report to weed out how Yahoo's partners are performing, which gives you the tools to block underperforming partners. The report is named the Ad Delivery Report and it allows you to "view information about the URLs where your ads are being displayed. You can then use this information to help inform your decisions regarding which domains to block using the “Blocked Domains” feature."

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

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if anyone has experience with allowing Google to manage their AdWords accounts. There are many stories in the thread, all not too positive about their experience with having Google manage their account.

To take a step back, Google has a whole fleet of staff ready to help you set up and continue to maintain your Google AdWords account. And they do it for free. The issue is, at least according to the stories in the thread, they don't manage the accounts as effectively or as smart as you would yourself or as a professional PPC management company. At least, those are the overwhelming opinions in the thread.

I wanted to ask you, would you allow Google to manage your typical account? Here is a poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 10, 2009"

Google's Mayer announced last night that the search box's size was increased. The box is bigger, the text when you type is bigger and the search suggestions are bigger. Honestly, I am surprised we did not spot Google testing this on the public, but we didn't.

Old Google:

New Google:

There is a lot of discussion around this. Tedster at WebmasterWorld is with me on this and feels Google never really tested it (or else he or I would have seen it or someone reporting that Google is testing this). Some find the new look to be immature and worse off than the previous look.

Robert Charlton has some measurements:

OLD SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 43 px
- width of search box = 366 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.7%

NEW SEARCH BOX
- left edge to end of flowers = 54 px
- width of search box = 483 px
- width of flowers compared to width of box = 11.2%

Another person asked if this might lead to "more long-tail searches."

Anyway, as I said, most people are not too happy about the change - at least those voicing their opinion. Personally, I barely notice it.

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

Hasbro has created a virtual Monopoly game at www.monopolycitystreets.com that allows people to buy property, using Google Maps. It is pretty neat - but the big issue is that it is incredibly slow. It took me two days to get in and I finally have some screen captures and videos to show you.

Here is the quick video:

Here are some screen captures:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base data feeds now support a new YouTube attribute that allows you to define if the product has a video demo on YouTube.

The example given is a product search for Nikon d90. If you scroll down, you will see videos from YouTube:

To add this to your product data feeds, you need to add the YouTube attribute:

The YouTube video ID for product review videos. Video IDs are case sensitive and can be located following the v= in the YouTube video URL.

Format:
Text.
Tab-delimited example:
sDDvpDNbEXo
XML example:
<g:youtube>sDDvpDNbEXo</g:youtube>

Google does not promise that even if you do add this attribute to your data feeds that the videos will show, but it can't hurt.

This feature has been on many folks waiting list for a while now.

Forum discussion at Google Base Help.

Googler, Jem, started a thread at Google Web Search Help asking the forum members to list out some of their favorite search features.

The ones listed so far include:

* [4 miles per 30 minutes in minutes per mile]:

* [intitle:"index of" beatles ( mp3 | wma | mid )]:

* [whois www.rustybrick.com]:

My favorite queries are mostly site: command related, when I want to find content on specific web sites. I do however greatly miss inquisitor, the search toolbar, that allows me to save advanced search queries, so I can run them quickly. Snow Leopard totally removed the ability to run these types of plugins in Safari.

What is your favorite search feature?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago.

We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log files with fake referrers. But I am seeing a new report that the log files are showing Microsoft Bing IP addresses in them but without referrer data.

An updated Bing Forum thread has one webmaster explaining the situation:

Unfortunately, the problem is back in another shape!

I have almost the same number of fake referrer hits from bing but in a different shape: no referrer. So, the stats show me the pages visited, no referrer and the IPs (microsoft's) are like: 65.55.110.21, 65.55.110.110, 65.55.107.196

So this does not generate fake keyword referrer data, but it does spike up Bing's referrer traffic for specific pages. That is assuming the webmaster who posted this is correct.

Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 9, 2009"

At 09:09:09 today on 09/09/09, Google posted a special logo for the special occurrence.

Here is the logo, not sure how much longer it will be live:

The official logo is also at google.com/logos/090909.gif.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has an interesting discussion around blocking your site from coming up for both visitors and search engine crawlers on Shabbat (the Jewish Saturday). This is not a new topic, we discussed using cloaking for religious Shabbat purposes in the past.

In short, some observant Jews do not want their site to be accessible on Shabbat, which is sundown Friday night, to nightfall Saturday night. The issue on the SEO front is if you turn off your site, then what happens to the search engine crawlers? Do they get 404 pages and drop your site from the search index?

Phil Payne posted an answer to how one can handle this, which Googler JohnMu said was a good answer. Phil said:

Yes - a 503 is the correct server response for "We're closed". If you substitute a normal HTML page saying "We're closed" and serve a 200 it's very likely to get indexed by Google.

If you give the Googlebot a 503, it will just go away and come back later without indexing what you give it.

For humans, you can serve a custom 503 page that explains the situation. Are there no other Orthodox sites you can ask, to see how they do it?

Now, Friday night here, is not the same as Friday night by you. So detecting the location of a visitor is key here. There are services like Saturday Guard that do this for you, but I am not sure how they handle search bots.

Technically, the issue, as far as I understand it (I am not a Rabbi, but I am an observant Jew) is that they do not want to earn money on Shabbat or Jewish holidays. Some hold that since the money doesn't transfer from the merchant account to the bank that day, then there is no money being earned technically that day. But some do not hold that way or some want to be extra careful. If it is a matter of money, then just turn off the "add to cart" and shopping cart features for the site.

If they do not want any activity on their site by potential customers, then I guess a 503 is a good answer. But are search engine bots customers? No. I suspect, most Rabbis would be okay with spiders or automated crawlers using the site on Shabbat. The issue then is, are you allowed to serve up a 503 page to a visitor and not to a crawler - that might be against Google's terms of service and fall within the bad cloaking policies.

If the issue is about the server actually working on Shabbat. Then a 503 cannot really be served up at all, because you would technically need to power down the server and without a server to send the 503 response code - then you got nothing.

This is a complex issue that I personally never had to deal with on sites that we have built. But it would be interesting to see what to do in the case of turning off a web server. There isn't much Google can do here.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Over the past few weeks, I have been noticing threads pop up in the Bing forums with complaints from webmasters that Bing's bot, aka MSNBot is not honoring their robots.txt directives.

It was not just one thread, but at least four. They include one from yesterday over here, one started on September 3rd over here, one from September 1 over here and one started on August 25th over here.

I ignored the first three, trying to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. Hoping it is a webmaster issue or someone spoofing MSNBot. But four threads on the same topic, all within a few weeks of each other does stand out as a possible issue.

I have personally not confirmed the issue, since I have no interest in blocking MSNBot from crawling any parts of my sites - but others don't like Bing as much as I do.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums here, here, here and over here.

A webmaster reported in a Google Webmaster Help thread that in his Google Webmaster Tools Keyword report, he noticed that Google is displaying a blank line as one of his more popular keywords used within the site.

The blank line is [_______________] and he has no idea why it shows up not just once, but twice. The first one is in the second most popular keyword used on the site and the second one is the eleventh most popular keyword used on the site. If you think about it, the underline or line is weird, but even if it technically was a keyword, wouldn't it be the same keyword (i.e. only show up once in the keyword list)?

In any event, the webmaster posted a screen shot in the thread - because honestly, I thought he was on crack or something. Here it is:

Why is this showing up? No idea! In fact, if you search for the line using a site command, nothing comes up.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A Google AdWords representative posted a thread at the Google AdWords Help forum. In that thread, Bindu, the Google rep, said that the recent marketing blitz from VistaPrint had the wrong coupon codes on them.

If you received a VistaPrint AdWords offer code, the code was misprinted. Specifically, the code was "accidentally abridged" so the code won't work. To get them to work, you will need to contact AdWords support - according to Bindu. Bindu said:

Recent VistaPrint Coupon Codes seem to be invalid because they were accidentally abridged. If you have received a VistaPrint code and it does not seem to work, you will have to write in to AdWords support and request the correct version of the code.

For more information on how to contact Google AdWords support, click here.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

It seems that Google has finally gone on the record that longer domain name registration has no impact on your search engine rankings, at least not at Google. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a post from Googler, JohnMu, who said outright that it doesn't make sense for Google to use this as a ranking metric.

Let me quote John:

A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates -- how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time :-).

I think that is pretty convincing that Google doesn't use the domain expire date as a metric.

What is funny is that we discussed this topic a few times in the past. Each time, we never really came to a conclusion. But it didn't stop domain registrars from using this as a marketing tactic.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster 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: September 8, 2009"

About ten days ago, we asked our readers "Right Now, How Much is Google Loving Keywords in URL?" We have about a 185 responses in and I wanted to share the results. Overall, about 75% of the responses said that Google does love those keywords in the URL.

Let me give you the break down:

Question: Right Now, How Much is Google Loving Keywords in URL?

:: Lots Of Love said 97 respondents or 52%
:: Completely Loves Them said 41 respondents or 22%
:: No Change In Past Year said 36 respondents or 19%
:: Doesn't Hate Them said 6 respondents or 3%
:: Other answer... said 3 respondents or 2%
:: Hates Them said 2 respondents or 1%

The other responses were:

Yes but only for TLD's like com and net

don't know

loves in domain

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

To be honest, I do not fully understand this announcement, but it is causing a lot of discussion in the various forums. In short, the Google Base Blog announced new marketplace and aggregator policies that are going into effect December 1st, 2009. The policy is there to help Google manage duplicate feeds (content) from the same seller, who has their feeds submitted by multiple locations.

Google is releasing a feature named "multi-client accounts" which allows "aggregators and marketplaces to consolidate and manage data feeds and reporting for sub-accounts, submit changes more rapidly, and get more accurate Google Checkout badging at the seller level." So this stops "individual sellers on marketplaces" from needing to a feed to Google Product Search.

There is a lot of discussion on who this will impact, what they should do and how they can prepare. In fact, some are considering dropping eBay and other aggregators to gain better control over their feeds.

Forum discussion at Google Base Help and Power Sellers Unit.

Often, when you want to create a localized version of your site, you can create a duplicate site on a ccTLD (country level top level domain). For example, if I wanted to geotarget this site to UK users, I would just place it on seroundtable.co.uk and maybe localize some of the English words, such as colour, favour, etc.

It doesn't always work this way, some languages require complete rewrites due to either being a different character type or the way people speak is completely different.

JohnMu from Google chimed in about a site that was being both targeted under different ccTLDs to both UK and Irish markets. In the Google Webmaster Help thread, John explained that when it comes to the UK and Ireland, often the sites that appeal to UK users also appeal to Irish users.

He made a few points:

(1) Google's searchers do not want the same content from two different sites in the same search results.
(2) Google finds UK and Irish sites to be very related. John explained, "There are many Irish sites that are equally important for the UK (and of course vice-versa). Those are sites that we might choose to show in the UK search results, perhaps even above or in place of similar "UK" sites."
(3) John said, using Google Webmaster Tools geotargeting setting may "help a bit in this regard, but it will take a bit of time to take affect and it's not guaranteed that it will always choose the right version (domain) of your site given that the external factors could be significantly different."
(4) John added that you should make the "two sites are different enough that they can stand on their own." Otherwise, combine the sites under one domain and they can rank well in both the UK and Irish Google versions.

I am a bit interested in knowing that since many US sites are showing in Google UK results these days, does the same now apply here?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A Google AdWords Help thread has an advertiser from India who is threatening to kill himself, if Google doesn't respond to him in the next few hours. Now, suicide is no joking matter, but in this case, this advertiser did not kill himself after a few hours of Google not responding.

Google did indeed reply, a day or so later, explaining that it is the Labor Day weekend and any response will have to really wait until today, Tuesday. The threat from the advertiser came in broken English, here it is:

If I don't hear from the Google Ad words Team in the next few hours I will have no options but the only option to do Suicide as I have stake all my 10 years of my career and my funds into the business and now I have no options to wait each day to see whether my Ad Words are active or not which I am doing for the last 20 days.

About a day later, an official Google representative spotted the thread and replied.

First off, I am sorry that AdWords has been such a difficult road to tread for you. While I am not aware of the particulars of your situation (because I do not have access to your account) I do apologize for that difficulty, and the frustration that has resulted.

To set reasonable expectations, please note that this thread spans Saturday and Sunday here in the US - a time period during which the AdWordsPro team (and the AdWords support team as well) are not in the office. In addition, tomorrow, Monday, is a national holiday here in the US - and the US based members of the team will be out of the office.

That said, I have written to the AdWordsPro team to ask that they take a look into your situation - and to see if they can determine how it might be resolved.

Again, to set reasonable expectations, please know that the teams to which the AdWordsPro team would normally escalate your issue are not available today, Sunday, nor tomorrow, Monday - due to the national holiday I previously mentioned.

Soon after, the Indian advertiser came back in to once again threaten to kill himself if he does not get a response by early Tuesday. He said, "If I do not have a Solution by Tuesday than what I have stated in this forum is my ultimate choice as I have no other options with me left."

Is this what it has come to? I know Google representatives often reply to threads, but they cannot reply to every thread. So if you really need a response, do you have to go to these extremes?

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread reports that when using Google Sites and submitting a Sitemap file to Webmaster Tools, you may receive an error. The error some people are seeing is:

Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.

The issue is, the Sitemap files are auto generated by Google Sites. The help document explains:

Once you have verified your site with Google Webmaster tools, Google Sites will auto-generate a sitemap xml file. Your sitemap will be generated at:

http://sites.google.com/a/(your domain)/(site name)/system/feeds/sitemap for Google Apps.
http://sites.google.com/site/(site name)/system/feeds/sitemap for sites under sites.google.com/site

Once these Sitemaps have been created, you can submit them to Google using Webmaster Tools.

So why is a Sitemap file that is auto-generated by Google seen as an HTML by Google?

Googler, JohnMu said that in this case, it appears to be some sort of bug. He said he would alert the Google Sites team about the issue. JohnMu said:

You can ignore that error message -- this is your homepage's URL just written in a slightly different way (without the trailing "/"). I'll pass a note on to the Google Sites team about this, but it's not affecting the processing of your Sitemap file so you don't have to worry about this :-).

Even though Google is telling this webmaster that the Sitemap file is bad, Google is actually eating (indexing) the contents of the file with no problem.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster 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: September 7, 2009"

Today is Labor Day in the United States and the search engines have special logos up, except Google and Yahoo. There is no surprise there, historically, Google and Yahoo never have logos for the Labor Day holiday. So although Google and Yahoo don't like to put up logos for the day, Microsoft's Bing, Ask.com and DogPile do have logos.

Here is a run down of the logos for Labor Day 2009:

Bing's Labor Day 2009 Theme:

Ask.com's Labor Day 2009 Theme:

DogPile's Labor Day 2009 Logo:

Also, Cre8asite Forums designed a special logo for today:

And we dressed up this site, the Search Engine Roundtable, for Labor Day:

For the past years logos, see 2008, 2007, 2005 and 2004 - yes, I am missing 2006 and like I said, Google and Yahoo historically do not do logos for Labor Day.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Google has changed the top navigation where you manage your settings. Here is a picture of the new way it is handled:

As you can see, the "Settings" link drops down when you click on it and gives you the option to click on "search settings" or "Google account settings." This is a small change and you will only see the drop down when you are logged into Google, but it is a change indeed.

The first person I know who spotted this was Darrin Ward. Outside of that, I have not seen much discussion on it. In fact, this is the first time I am seeing this new navigation, myself. Maybe it has to do with the top navigation going missing recently?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There is an excellent topic at a WebmasterWorld thread (required paid access). The topic is named, "Am I asking for too much from SEO companies?"

In short, the thread has one person who has several sites and has, over the years, had to hand over the SEO work to SEO companies. He has been through "all the 'SEO' firms in town" and is really never happy with the outcome. He asks, is he asking too much from these SEO companies? Is he expecting too much? Can an SEO company help him at this point?

We have discussed in the past the pros and cons of bring SEO in house. Clearly, an SEO who focuses for a long time in a specific industry may have some advantages. But at what point are your sites too big for an external SEO company?

The thread doesn't really go off on the size issue. The discussion there is more about what to expect from SEO companies and how to utilize them for a network of site in your situation. Some recommend that for his situation, he should just ask a few trusted SEO companies for SEO audits and then compare those audits. Maybe hiring an SEO on a month to month basis, doesn't pay for him - or maybe it does.

Like I said, lots of good questions and discussion around the top of the value of an SEO company in the thread.

Forum discussion in the WebmasterWorld Supporters Forum.

Arrington from TechCrunch is posting his interview with Google's Eric Schmidt over the course of a few days. In one of those pieces, Arrington titles the post Search connecting it straight to your brain. Schmidt told Arrington, "So I don't know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we'll get to the point - the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time."

That phrase has caused a lot of discussion at WebmasterWorld. Questions such like, can Google really ever provide the exact right answer to any one person? Is it even possible? The right answer can change over time, it can differ from person to person, it can have multiple correct responses.

Tedster, the admin at WebmasterWorld said:

I am struck nearly dumb by that statement. The absurdity of thinking that there can even BE "the right answer" just jumped out at me. Has he been living with data so long that he lost touch with the real human world?

His fear is that Google may ultimately lead to telling us what is correct, even if there are other alternatives. His fear is that we will stop thinking for ourselves and let Google think for us.

But Brett Tabke, the owner of WebmasterWorld, feels Google can know the exact right answer to each individuals question. Brett explains:

Google will know your entire 'search' history - probably your entire email history (gmail), tracked your life via gps (android), your preferences and tastes (google news), your browsing habits (chrome/toolbar) your purchasing habits (g checkout), and a host of other things there are to know about you.

Given all that, if you ask Google a question, they should be able to give you the 'one' answer you are looking for with a very high degree of certainty. There are currently around 6 billion people on the planet. Sorry, we all do the same stupid stuff. A couple thousand variations in the algo is probably all it will take to nail most of the human population.

Of course, that drives other fears. Okay, so maybe Google is not thinking for us - but anticipating what I might be thinking through the vast knowledge that Google knows about me or you.

John Andrews expresses other concerns, on the publisher side. Not only is Google thinking for us or anticipating what we want to hear - but they are 'forcing' publishers to hand over their content in structured formats (i.e. rich snippets) so that there is no need for a searcher to click through to your content, but rather just go to Google and stay on Google.

Lots to make you think on this really nice Labor Day weekend.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

There were several reports at the Google Web Search Help forums over the weekend reporting that the top Google navigation has gone missing. You know, that top bar, above the search box, that lists the other Google features you can use.

@rishil sent me a quick movie, showing how the bar went missing. Notice the top bar, keep your eye on how it disappears after he conducts a search:

The issue started some time on Friday night and continued into Saturday. I do not have the exact times, but I believe it was an issue for at least 12 hours. Google has not officially made a statement about the issue, but "top contributors" in the forum claimed Google was aware of the issue and working on a fix. It then showed up shortly after.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The Google logo (doodle) for today, Saturday, September 5th, has a weird flying saucer, UFO of some kind. It links to a search result for unexplained phenomenon and no one really knows what it is about. Here is a pictures:

Google tweeted this:

1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19

That translates to "All Your O are belong to us." But what is it about?

Danny received a statement from Google at Search Engine Land saying:

“We consider the second ‘o’ critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the “o” on the Google homepage. We hope to have an update in the coming weeks.”

Danny kind of thinks this might lead to Google's upcoming birthday. I am not sure. I do like the numerous thoughts on this from the Half Loaded blog. Anyway, you can find out more on this at Techmeme.

There was a Yahoo Search update last night, that is currently updating right now. We released the Google Webmaster report for September 2009. Some are reporting a higher click through rate on the AdWords ads since Google moved the ads closer to the free listings. Bing Mobile has a language bug that we can fix for you. Bing might allow you to manage your preview box, which is good cause some of error code in them. AdSense speeds up competitive ad filter, plus doubles its size. PSAs plagued AdSense publishers in Asia region for 12 hours. Google released an excellent rich snippet test tool in Webmaster Tools. Google said they recrawl all site's robots.txt file daily. Google allows you to stop them from translating with the notranslate tag. AdWords API users can now test the 2009 version. Don't post private information in a public forum, search 101. Are Google impersonators threatening and spamming webmeisters? Finally, Google had a logo (doodle) for Michael Jackson's 51st birthday, which sparked some controversy in the forums. 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 & hit "HD."

Some Of The Topics Discussed:

• Yahoo Search September 2009 Update Official
• September 2009 Google Webmaster Report
• Closer Google AdWords Increasing Ad Clicks & Decreasing Organic Clicks?
• Bing Mobile's Language Bug & How To Fix It
• Bing May Allow Management of Quick Preview Box
• Bing's More Info Box "WARNING 2: session_destroy" Error
• Google AdSense Publishers Happy With Competitive Ad Filter Changes
• Google AdSense Ads Hit With PSAs Again
• Google Adds Rich Snippet Testing Tool
• Google Crawls Robots.txt Files Daily
• Google's "NoTranslate" Tag To Prevent Translation in Search
• AdWords API Users, Start Testing The New AdWords API v2009 Now
• Don't Want Your Social Security Number or Identity Card Number On Google?
• Former Googlers Spamming Site Competitors To Beat Them In Google Search Results?
• Google's Michael Jackson Logo Sparks Debate

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

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

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

It has been a somewhat slow start to our typically monthly report based on a WebmasterWorld thread that tracks day-to-day changes with Google's web results. Overall, it seems like people are discussing two main things.

(1) The Caffeine preview, Google's new index, is expected to be launched in the main Google results sometime this month. Google has not confirmed this, but webmasters are expecting this.

(2) The Minus 6 Penalty, which was a Google bug, is not being discussed again.

Outside of those two topics, a lot has gone on this past month at Google, here is a bulleted recap with links to more details:

• Google Releases First Public Search Update Preview: "Caffeine" Update
• Possible Google Update - August 2009
• Google Loving Keywords in URLs Now?
• New Set of Google Penalties & New Siteslinks
• What's Going On With Google UK's Search Results?
• Google Adds Rich Snippet Testing Tool
• Google Site Reconsideration Form Not Working For Many
• Google PageRank Distribution Data Not Available For Many in Webmaster Tools
• New Google Sitemaps Error: "Duplicate URL" Warning
• Google Webmaster Tools Now Reporting SSL Certificate Errors
• Google News & Google Webmaster Tools "Pending" Sitemaps Bug
• .ME Domain Names Can Now Be Geo Targetted In Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Webmaster Tools API Bugs

To see lasts months recap, visit the August '09 Google webmaster report.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night, the Yahoo Search blog warned us of a search index update that is currently taking place. Dan Rampton from Yahoo said, "We're rolling out a web index update over the next few days. During this process, you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index."

Originally I thought it may have been a delayed confirmation of the unconfirmed August Yahoo Search shuffle but maybe not.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one webmaster reporting seeing a new change in his rankings. I tried looking at some of the stats on this site, but due to being included in Google and Yahoo News, the stats I have are a bit skewed. So I personally have not seen significant changes in how this site ranks in Yahoo, maybe slight changes on some of my other sites.

Did you notice an update?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

The topic of cloaking or IP deliver or useragent delivery is always a very touchy topic in the SEO industry. I am not going to get into the history, but in short, webmasters can use various methods to show GoogleBot one piece of content and the user a different piece of content. Now, there is a gray area in that space. For example, hiding certain links or content from GoogleBot, while showing it to searchers, at the same time, showing the primary content to GoogleBot. That is why this is a touchy topic, Google wants to take a hard stance against cloaking and forms of it, but at the same time, there are very valid reasons for it.

In a recent video by Matt Cutts he discusses why showing a mobile version of a web site is 100% okay by Google. In short, as long as you show GoogleBot the same site normal web browsers see, then you are okay. Having a mobile version or print version of your site is fine, just don't show it to GoogleBot. Here is the quick video:

A week or two ago, I go through, in detail, how I implemented this for my corporate site. You can read about it over here.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

There are hundreds of SEO tools out there, we have covered just a few. I recently saw a short thread with a person complaining his site has been removed from the Google index. In the Google Webmaster Help thread, a top contributor suggested they use a tool to see if they are linking to bad sites and getting links from bad sites.

The tool was built by Michael VanDeMar and can be accessed at bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm.

I am not sure how accurate it is, but it is just one more of many link tools to help you analyze the health of your site's linking strategy (or lack there of).

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster 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: September 3, 2009"

I have been noticing a recent spike in the number of complaints about their business reviews going missing in Google Maps. One of those complaints has a response from a Googler.

A Google Maps Help thread has one business listing owner complaining that he lost 16 reviews. Googler, Brianna said that Google is looking into the issue, she said:

We are looking into this. When did you notice the occurrence of the disappearance of your reviews?

So this possibly might be a larger issue that the Google Maps team is working on resolving. If you lost reviews for your business, I would chime in at the Google Maps Forum.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google AdSense first began experimenting with arrows to scroll the ads displayed back in December 2007. It became a confirmed feature in April 2008. Now, people are noticing that the colors of the arrows are being changed.

A WebmasterWorld thread had one publisher notice that "every now and then they'll be highlighted, in my case to match my title color." Others have confirmed seeing this.

I personally could not replicate this on any of my sites, nor have I noticed this on other sites with AdSense.

But if this is indeed a test, it would not surprise me. Most people are missing those ad arrows and maybe Google wants a better way of highlighting them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are some complaints in the Bing Forums that the Bing mouse over box, which we discussed yesterday, has a weird error. When you mouse over certain listings, Bing may show the following type of error in the box:

WARNING 2: session_destroy() [function.session-destroy]: trying to destroy uninitialized session in/usr/home/mitetsn/public-html/cart/includes/functions/sessions.php on line 146

The session destroy warning seems to be coming from Bing's handling of the site. Ovi in the forums gave us a bit more insight into the technical issue. He said:

session_destroy destroys all of the data associated with the current session. It does not unset any of the global variables associated with the session, or unset the session cookie. To use the session variables again, session_start() has to be called.

So it is an problem from the Bing script. I think that the technicians are working on it already.

You can replicate the issue by hovering your mouse over the first listing for this search.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

The Google AdSense blog announced they have made two changes to the Competitive Ad Filter tool. Here they are:

Faster filtering
In the past, the Competitive Ad Filter sometimes took up to several hours to block URLs you'd entered. Knowing you've wanted a faster filtering system, we're excited to let you know that URLs added to your Competitive Ad Filter are now usually blocked within 30 minutes. We hope that this will help you quickly make changes to maintain a positive user experience on your sites.

Increased filter list size
At the same time, a growing number of you have let us know that you're running out of space in your Competitive Ad Filter. Now, you can add up to 500 sites to your filter list, more than double the previous limit. As you add new sites, please continue to keep the possible revenue impact of filtering in mind. You might also find it helpful to review our tips for using your Competitive Ad Filter.

Overall, AdSense publishers are happy with these additions. A small change, a small improvement, but very welcomed.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.

JohnMu from Google posted in a Google Webmaster Help thread that Google typically crawls a site's robots.txt file on a daily basis. This is the first time (at least that I can remember) I have seen a Googler make a statement on the crawl frequency of robots.txt files.

JohnMu said:

We usually only check the robots.txt file once a day for most sites, so I assume you were just still seeing the version that we fetched yesterday.

I have not validated this with my sites log files, but that is not the point. The point is a Googler said, on a general level, how often Googlebot will refetch a site's robots.txt file.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster 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: September 2, 2009"

Recently, some Google AdWords advertisers have been complaining in a WebmasterWorld thread that they were (1) being forced to upgrade to the MCC (My Client Center) section of the AdWords console and (2) after being upgraded, they lost their promotional credits in their accounts. That was reported late August.

On August 31st, in the afternoon, Google apparently emailed those affected by this with the promotional credit codes. One advertiser said, "I just got an email with the aforementioned credit codes." Some others also confirmed receiving such an email. The issue is, one advertiser said he tried the code and Google said they were not valid.

Google has yet to confirm or deny this possible bug.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

On occasion I share SEO tips on optimizing for Google News search results. Yesterday, Google's Maile Ohye posted a blog entry at the Google Webmaster Central blog on how to optimize for Google News results in both Google News and Google Web Universal Search. The video is definitely worth watching if you are a Google News publisher or an SEO for sites included in Google News.

Here is the video:

I personally love the advice on getting images to show in Google News. She really expanded on that more than what I have seen in the past.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google News Help.

We all have seen them at least once in our search life time. A "did you mean" in red at the top of the Google will display for a query where you did mean to search for that. A Google Web Search Help thread asks, is there a way to tell Google, "no - I did mean to search for my search query."

Wouldn't it be helpful to Google and to the searcher (to feel some satisfaction) to have a link to tell Google, no, I didn't mean that.

Clearly, that clutters up the page, but maybe a little X or "No" link. I know Google can use this data on some level. A searcher who goes out of his way to click "no" says a lot more than a searcher who skips past the "Did you mean" link.

In any event, Google has been experimenting with how they handle such "Did you mean" results over the years. Maybe we will see this as a test one day?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A Bing Forum thread asks if there is a way to update the quick preview box (more info box) found on some of the search results in the Bing search page. The quick preview box is the box on the right side of the search result listing that pops up when you hover your mouse over a listing. Here is a picture:

The first listing for a search on [rustybrick] at Bing is showing not the most optimal information in that quick preview. Here is a screen shot:

The second listing is the same URL, but with tracking parameters added on and for some reason, the quick preview box has much more optimal text:

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to change the information shown in this box? That is what people are asking in the Bing Forum thread. In fact, Bing representative Brett Yount said it might be coming to a Bing Webmaster Tools section near you. Brett said:

Currently there is no way to change that information. That may change in the next release, but I do not have an ETA.

Now that would be a neat feature.

Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

Yesterday, the web version of Gmail and Google Apps went down for pretty much everyone. The downtime was about an hour plus for most people and the world stopped. Why did it happen? Basically, some routers got overloaded and shut down, which caused a rippled effect. For the full details, see Google's blog post with them being extremely clear about the technical issues (I love it when people do that).

I was honestly in disbelief to learn about many people do not have IMAP or POP access to their Gmail accounts. You can use the web interface 99% of the time, but as a backup, get an email client (be it desktop or mobile) and set up IMAP (preferably) to work with your Gmail account. Why? Well, in yesterday's case, IMAP and POP were working fine, but the web site was down. So those who had access to their Gmail account via IMAP and POP, were in luck.

Anyway, Twitter was going wild with "is gmail down" tweets. But the forums were going wild as well.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, Gmail Help, DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld and so many more I didn't list here.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: September 1, 2009"

In May, Google announced the availability of adding rich snippets to the Google search results through microformats and RDFa aided code. The two major complaints were not being about to:

(1) Know if you will be able to see the rich snippets in the Google web search results.
(2) How they will look prior to them showing up in the Google web search results.

We still don't have the answer to knowing if they will show up for a specific site, without Googling it. But number two, being able to preview them, is now available with a new tool found in Google Webmaster Tools named the "Rich Snippets Testing Tool."

The tool can be accessed at google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and you can plug in any URL (not just your verified sites) to see how the page looks with rich snippets on a Google listing.

For example, here is a preview of my LinkedIn profile:

The neat part is not just the preview, but it actually extracts all the microformats and RDFa data and shows it to you below the preview. I have a full screen capture at Flickr with this.

Extremely happy that Google added this tool. It seems like they have not announced it yet, and it is currently under beta. Hat tip to Beussery for spotting this first.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

For a few years now, some webmasters have been trying to figure out ways to prevent Google from allowing users to translate their pages with the Google Translate tool. From time to time, webmaster ask if there is a way to prevent Google from displaying the "translate this page" link in the Google search results from showing up. We have such a question at Google Webmaster Help forums just the other day.

Here is a picture of the "Translate this page" option in action:

Did you know there is a tag to prevent Google from showing the "Translate this page" option in the search results?

Google says if "you prefer not have your page translated by Google Translate, just insert the following meta tag into your HTML file:"

<meta name="go