November 2009 Archives

A Google AdWords API Help thread estimated position or average CPC being returned by the AdWords API differs from that of the Google Keyword Tool.

Eric Koleda from the Google AdWords API Team replied basically pointing fault at the tool.

I think the problem here lies in the Keyword Tool's web interface.

You'll notice that changing the match type drop down from Broad to Phrase or Exact does not change the estimated position or average CPC. It is unlikely that the match type has no effect on these parameters, and in the API changing the match type does change the returned position and CPC values. My guess is that the web tool is always using the Broad match type for getting estimates, and that the numbers returned by the API are accurate.

I validated that the Google keyword tool does not change the estimated position or average CPC when you change the match type from broad, exact, or phrase types. Logically, it would make sense that this means the keyword tool is off when reporting on those factors and narrowing the results by match type.

It seems if you want to get more accurate numbers for estimated position or average CPC you would have to use the AdWords API.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords API Help.

Earlier this month we reported on nudity & seductive Google Maps listings for London Escort services, amongst others. When we investigated the issue, it turned out to be a worldwide issue with nude and seductive images being displayed both in the UK and US for certain business listings. It seems like all the business listings I reported then have been cleaned up.

However, now we have new business listings with nude and pornographic images and videos in their business listings.

The new batch was reported by James in a Google Maps Help thread. Here are the three listings he pointed out. Here is a screened out picture of one:

In fact, one of those listings has a video hosted on YouTube with a nude picture in it (the video is a slide show). Clearly this goes against both the Google Business Listing guidelines and YouTube guidelines.

Joel H. from Google confirmed the issue and said:

Thanks for the report James. I'm looking into this know and will remove content based on our policies.

I believe Google Maps needs to grab someone from the Google Images team to help them with this issue. Handling it by hand, is something that is likely not recommended.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

A month and a half ago, Google for some reason had a bug that ranked the Google New Zealand property for a search on Google Ireland. Google fixed the issue a day or so later but now it appears to be back.

A search for google.ie or google.eg both return Google New Zealand in the number one position. If you were wondering, Google.ie is the Google Ireland property and Google.eg is the Google Egypt property.

Colin in the Google Web Search Help thread reported this the first time and then noticed it again today.

I am not sure why Google New Zealand would rank above the others for a search on their names, but it currently is.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread links to a blog post from imanjalali.com which shows a new user interface for Google. The new user interface looks like Google is placing related search queries in tabs across the top of the search results.

Here is a cropped picture of his full screen capture:

Seems weird being that Google is really taking the user interface in a whole new direction.

I am not sure if this is some type of malware causing this interface or something else.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google AdSense adds are currently being blocked by Kaspersky anti virus and Internet security software.

This started sometime yesterday with their latest releases of their security program.

One AdSense publisher emailed Kaspersky to let them know and he received a reply "within minutes" saying:

Hello,

Sorry, it was a false detection. It will be fixed in the next update.

Thank you for your help.

I assume they release updates often and the update will fix the issue soon.

Actually, it seems if you update the software now, it will resolve the issue. You just have to hope your readers update their software.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports seeing a new type of Google AdWords result. This AdWords result seems to be combined with a Google Maps result, where it shows a blue pin, and address information on the right hand side of the search results, where the AdWords results are. Here is a picture from the thread:

Mike recently spotted this as well, and believes this has to do with the local extensions feature Google Maps released.

Personally, I cannot replicate this at all. I tried dozens of queries and non took.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A month ago, we reported on early reports that Microsoft Bing Finally Figuring Out 301 Redirects? Yes, we ended in a question-mark because we were not too confident back then.

Since the November '09 Bing Search update, more people are confirming that Bing is now handling 301 redirects properly.

Historically, Bing use to handle some 301 redirects like 404. How could they do this? I am not sure - but that is what webmasters report. Now, since the update and some saw this a month ago, Bing fixed that issue.

Senior member, CainIV said:

A whole slough of 301'-ed pages that had links to them but were previously stuck in the abyss have suddenly gained the credit that they deserved and have moved forward.

Hopefully all webmasters are taking notice of this now.

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: November 20, 2009"

In this week's search video recap, I try a new format, breaking the news up in segments - do let me know if you like it. I am sorry the video is so long, just lots of information to cover. We start with Google's new user interface that is now being seen by some searchers - it is pretty jazzy. Google is showing breadcrumbs instead of URLs in the search results on occasion. Google is testing Image Swirl, it is pretty tasty. Google Social Search labs is now back in action after going offline. Page load time will be a ranking factor in 2010. Is Google's Caffeine index live in a data center? Why did FeedBurner ruin the search engine friendly web? Did Google preform a hand change to the index for Michelle Obama? Microsoft Bing is updating now. Bing UK when out of beta, was it too soon? AdWords goes on another banning spree - but they now have an appeals process. Check out all that Polish Google ad spam. Google no longer allows exceptions to their 35 character display URL limit. Google expanded their product ads beta. AdSense places gold stars near featured ads. I now have access to the new AdSense beta interface. Publishers are being banned over using Tamper Data as a Firefox plugin. Yahoo added a developing news box to some search results. Finally, Danny took us back to the first ever search marketing conference. 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."

Search Topics of Discussion:
Google Search:

• Google Jazz User Interface Out In The Wild
• Google URL Search Results Snippets Showing Breadcrumb Navigation
• Tasty: Google Image Swirl
• Google Social Search Temporarily Goes Offline, To Return Soon

• Page Load Time & Speed Will Likely Be a Ranking Factor in Google
• Is Google Caffeine At 216.239.59.103 Data Center?
• Google's FeedBurner Tagging URLs : Duplicate Content Issue

• Google Removed Negative Search Result Michelle Obama, Should They Have?

• Microsoft Bing November 2009 Search Update?
• Bing UK Out of Beta, But Too Soon?

• Get Ready, Here Come More Google AdWords Account Bans
• Google Poland: Scam Ads in Polish AdWords
• Google Now Enforcing 35 Character Display URL Policy
• Google Expands Product Listing Ads CPA Model Test

• Google AdSense Ads Get Special "Featured Ads" With Stars
• More Screen Shots of Google's New Beta AdSense Interface
• Google Disabling AdSense Accounts For Using Tamper Data Firefox Plugin

• Yahoo Adds Tweets In New Developing News Box

• Danny Sullivan Looks Back at Starting Search Marketing Conferences

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

Yesterday, Danny covered a new user interface Google is testing on about 2% of their users right now. The interface is known internally (actually, it is not named this internally, but the name is catchy, so maybe we should use it?) as the Jazz UI and is much more colorful, has streamlined search options and kind of looks like the the old Ask 3D interface, just a bit. This new UI might be launched after the holiday season to everyone, so be ready.

Danny wrote (but read the all the details, if you will):

Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz.

There are some people who actually see the new interface. There are two thread at Google Web Search Help, one with screen captures, which prove to me they see it. Here are those screen captures:

This person simply asked, "can anyone help me get Google's regular look back?" The other comment reads:

I did a search a couple minutes ago and it seems like they changed their user interface to look more like a Bing or Yahoo search. For me this is a major fail because the beauty of Google was not only did it feel comfortable, it gave me a wide variety of options like the site links at the side of the page and the sposored links at the top of my search. I think Google should remain the way it was, maybe some minor tweaks but making it look sterile and utterly boring like Bing won't win fans. No other search engine has ever managed to knock Google off the top, so why are they downgrading to a less popular model?

Can't make everyone happy, now can you?

Forum discussion at Sphinn and Google Web Search Help.

There is some early discussion over at WebmasterWorld that Microsoft Bing has updated their search index. Many webmasters are discussing changes in rankings in this and other forums (which are hard to link to).

Here is what WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster wrote:

Bing engineers may need to refine their trust algos. I'm seeing a SERP where Bing is giving a poor quality subdomain a pass because the main domain has a high amount of inbound links (nearly a million). I think Bings method for determining sites likely to be authoritative needs tweaking.

Interestingly, Bing produces another result not seen in the other search engines that is actually pretty good.

For this site, I can tell you Bing sends up more traffic than Yahoo.

The last Bing update we reported was in late October.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The other day, I noticed a thread at Google Webmaster Help where a person was complaining that they were being hit hard by GoogleBot. In short, Google's spider was crawling his site in a very aggressive manner. He said:

After setting a custom crawl rate using webmaster tools (and robots.txt for good measure) GoogleBot's crawl rate slowed to the specified 1 request per (approx.) 60 seconds. However, as of a few hours ago the crawl rate has increased to an inexplicable 1 request every 2 to 3 seconds which is unacceptable - I've had to take the drastic response of adding a site wide disallow until I can get this resolved. Why would the crawl rate increase in speed so and how can I get it to return to the values specified?

Googler, Jonathan Simon, replied and said there was a temporary bug that cause the issue. He apologized and said it was now resolved. Jonathan said:

I took a look into what you've reported and it turns out that there was a temporary issue in the processing pipeline of the crawl rate settings which caused them to not take effect. This issue is now resolved so crawl rate settings should once again behave as expected.

I often give Microsoft a hard time about MSNBot being too aggressive and not listening to webmaster directives. So this time, I felt I point out an issue with GoogleBot.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

First spotted by Kim at AdWords Help Experts Blog, a Google AdWords Help thread has reports that Google is now enforcing the 35 character display URL limit set on AdWords ads.

One advertiser asked for an exception, which Google did allow advertisers to do in the past, and received a reply that read:

Initially for URLs exceeding character limit we used to give exception on a case-by-case basis. However, please note we've revised our guideline on short display URL exception and sorry to inform you that we no longer provide exceptions to the display URL policy for domains that exceed the character space, which is limited to 35 characters for text ads and 20 characters for mobile ads.

There also use to be a way to use dynamic keyword inserting techniques to trick Google into giving you a longer title, but that no longer seems to work for the keywords I have tested. Yes, display URL and ad title are different, I just noticed this as well, when looking back at the history on this topic.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Yahoo announced they have added a developing news box that includes news articles, pictures, videos and also tweets.

Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story on the Yahoo! News Shortcut. Many of you are already familiar with the existing Yahoo! News Shortcut, which displays headlines on our Web search results page when you look for news stories. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches.

Here are some screen captures:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Gone mostly unnoticed, Google has updated their Gmail and Google Calendar interface on iPhone and Android mobile devices. Google did announce a new mobile news look for these devices, but no word on the Gmail interface.

I spotted this update via the Google Mobile Help forums, where Googler, Ethan, confirmed the update. He said:

Gmail updated its look & feel in the browser on Android and iPhone devices today. Some of Google's other mobile apps, like Calendar, have also gotten the new look. Other than the 're-skinning,' features are unchanged for now.

Here is what the new 'skin' looks like on the iPhone:

Here is the old one:

Small difference, but someone noticed.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile 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: November 19, 2009"

I have been seeing reports of Google banning and disabling AdSense accounts due to using a Firefox plugin named Tamper Data. Tamper Data allows people to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters, which can be helpful, but also used for evil.

The emails being sent to these publishers read:

During a recent review of your account, our specialists found that tamper data was used to modify the country listed in your account. Changing your address in this manner is a violation of our policy guidelines.

What appears is happening is that publishers are signing up using Tamper Data to fake their location. You can read why and how this is done at this blog and this one.

In summary, certain countries are not allowed to sign up for AdSense so people fake where they are from. I am not sure why people would use this technique when they are in an approved location, unless I am missing something?

You can read the dozens of threads about this at Google AdSense Help or a thread at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Maps Help thread reports that at least one satellite image in South Africa has a weird posterization effect to it.

You can see it yourself at 33°55'7.79"S, 25°35'2.40"E, or Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Here is a picture:

This looks like a heavily posterized image to me, but I doubt that was the case. There must have been some type of interference when the image was captured?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

About a week ago, Bing announced they have taken Bing UK (www.bing.co.uk) out of beta. They basically said, you can now get more relevant UK results when in the UK and searching in the UK. Here is a snippet from the blog post:

When you search for Football, what kind of answers do you expect to find. Well, I guess it depends on where you are doing the asking, if you are in the UK you probably don’t want to see NFL schedules. You probably mean what we in the US call soccer. Well today, millions of searchers in the UK can rest assured that Bing knows what they are talking about. We are excited to announce today that Bing in the UK is shedding its beta tag. We want to congratulate our pals over in the UK on a huge milestone.

A HighRankings Forum thread is taking issue with this. Two searchers from the UK were not satisfied with the localized version of Bing. They said:

I did a study yesterday and the example they provided (Football) still returns the NFL - something they said that the UK 'wouldn't be interested in'. The universal search results are even worse with US today results of 'American Football' being returned (and two images of an American Football).

You are certainly right, doesn't look like Bing UK has any UK inteligence, I just did a simple search for the word 'analyse' , and the no.1 result returned was spelt with a 'z' , looks like Bing has a long, long way to go yet eh Andy!

I personally tried a search for football in Bing.com and Bing.co.uk and I am seeing tailored results for each region. Yes, NFL.com comes up in the UK, but not in the top result. Since I am not from the UK, it is hard for me to judge.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

For years, email spammers have been looking for ways to encourage people to click on their links. And for years, Google has been a target. Why? Well, when someone sees a link that has google.com in it, people trust it. So over the years, Google URLs that redirect to other sites have been a target by spammers.

The most recent Google property targeted by such attacks is Google Reader.

A Google Reader Help thread has reports of such cases, with a Googler confirming it is an issue. Several people are reporting receiving email spam with URLs that look some thing like:

http://www.google.com/reader/item/tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/3c49b76cf8cb8ba0

Clicking on that URL would have redirected you to a non-Google site.

Googler, Roger said:

It looks like some spammers have taken a liking to Google Reader - we're currently trying to find the best way to limit this kind of automated abuse without impacting the experience of real users such as yourselves. Hopefully we'll have a solution that works for everyone soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding in the meantime-

So be on the look out.

Forum discussion at Google Reader Help.

Yesterday, Danny Sullivan wrote an article named 10 Years Ago: The First Search Marketing Conference, A Retrospective. The article is a must read for everyone who is a daily reader of this site.

In short, Danny talks about how the first search marketing conference came about. He also talks about the various sessions they hosted then. Including many of the panelists who still talk today at his conferences. Yes, the first conference in search marketing was in 1999 and Google's founders were on a panel as the "small search engine."

While the agenda listed Larry Page as speaking, Sergey was also there. He either joined Larry or replaced him at the last minute. Some conference veterans remember how Sergey rollerskated on stage. Actually, he did that a year later, joking about new Google technologies and demoing his shoes with pop-out wheels.

We didn't start covering search conferences until 2003, four years after the first search conference. Wow, has the time flown by and has this industry changed or has it?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A week or so ago, we reported that a search in Google images for Michelle Obama returned a racist image. The image was offensive, racist and has been removed from the search results - which is what I was hoping for. But Google responded to the thread and explained that they normally do not change the search results unless:

(1) It violates our Webmaster Guidelines
(2) If Google believes they are required to do so by law
(3) Or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the image

I am not sure if this image fell under any of those three conditions. Google was not clear if it did, nor did they specifically say which this case fell under. I don't think it violated the Webmaster Guidelines, I don't think the image was "illegal," and I doubt the webmaster asked to have the image taken down. I can be wrong on all of these points, but I am not sure.

Here is Google's full response:

If you recently used Google Images to search for the term [ Michelle Obama ], you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the image in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google.

As with Google Web Search, ranking in Google Images results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query.

Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results, or images from our Google Images results, simply because the content is in very poor taste or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the image, page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the image.

We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google Images and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it. We will continue to improve the product based on your feedback to make sure that users find the most useful, relevant images through Google Images.

-Jem

Am I missing something? Why did Google take it down? Did the White House force them to by making it a legal matter? Maybe the site was indeed in violation of the webmaster guidelines? The site itself is still live, so I am not sure.

Google is clear that they do not remove offensive, racist or anti-semitic from the search results. I am just confused in this case. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely happy the result was removed - but was this only done because she is the First Lady?

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

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

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

A couple of week ago, we reported about Google's new AdSense interface and posted on screen shot, provided by Google. I just gained access to the new interface myself and I took many screen shots. Before I provide the screen shots, I wanted to share with you both the URL they gave me to access the beta interface.

The link at the top right is in red and says "Try new AdSense." When you click it, it takes you to https://www.google.com/adsense/enablebeta and then redirects me to https://www.google.com/adsense/v3/app. I believe you need to be added to the beta to gain access, but those are the URLs.

Here are screen shots, with sensitive info blocked out:

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

There are reports at both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld that Google AdSense is testing a new ad format. The new ad format has "featured ads" within the ad units, with little yellow stars next to them.

I was to hunted down an ad myself to confirm it is real. I spotted the ad on ukcarinsurances.blogspot.com, here is a screen capture:

The ad, as you can see, has a yellow star next to it and if you mouse over the star, it using a title attribute that reads "Featured Ad."

I was only able to replicate this once...

There has been no word from Google on this yet, I will do my best to get an official statement shortly.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google sent me a statement confirming this test. They said:

We are currently running a limited test in which a small number of users are seeing ads that are marked based on signals related to quality and relevance. This experiment is part of our ongoing efforts to help users find what they're looking for, and we're closely monitoring feedback.

If you mossy your way over to the iGoogle Help Forum today, you may notice a bunch of threads complaining about how Google removed the top tabs from iGoogle and is forcing users to use the left hand navigation tabs.

Actually, this news is somewhat old. Back in June, many folks complained that they wanted top iGoogle tabs over left tabs and we offered a way to get those. Then it rolled out to other countries in July. It seems like now everyone has to have the left hand tabs, no matter what override you tried in the past.

Picture of Old Top iGoogle Tabs:

Picture of Current Left iGoogle Tabs:

There is seriously about twenty different threads over the past couple days on this topic.

Forum discussion at iGoogle Help Forum.

I love new fun search features that have eye candy, such as the recently announced Google Image Swirl Google Labs project. It is a bit like Google Wonder Wheel but more images.

The best way for me to explain it is either have you try it or look at the pictures below:

I search for Apple and then click on images to be swirled my way through the various search refinements:

Neat and tasty, don't you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced that when a URL is too long, they might now replace the URL in the Google search results with a "site hierarchy display," or what appears to look more like a breadcrumb trail. Technically, Google analyzes a site's breadcrumb trail and shows this instead for a "small percentage of search results."

I personally cannot trigger it yet, but many are now seeing it. Here is one example:

Google actually has been testing this since August. We have reports of this at Search Engine Land, RedCardinal.ie and Rob Hammond.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

This site rarely ever has guest posts, but I wanted to make an exception for a long time reader and SEO who often sends me tips and advice. Kasia Bauer, a search marketer from Poland, author of Magiczne SEO & SEM blog and co-owner of Divbi.com has written a guest post on Google AdWords scams in Poland. We hear about Google AdWords scams in the U.S. often enough, to the point where Google took action. In fact, just yesterday we reported how Google is getting stricter, but does this apply to outside the U.S.? What type of scams are occurring on Google there? So we have this guest post just on that topic.

Scam Ads in Polish AdWords

Recently, scam ads gained noticeable presence in Google AdWords across Central and Eastern Europe. Polish AdWords is currently experiencing a wave of campaigns that are preying on naive users. It has been at least 11 months since we have noticed first suspicious ads appearing on Google Network. It looks like Google is doing very little, or even nothing, to prevent them from showing.

How Do These Scams Work?

All the scams are based on premium SMS service. A user is lured to fill up a test and, in order to see it's results, has to send a text message to number provided on the landing page. After getting the verification code the website will allow him or her to see test results with the "service". Everything would be OK if only:

1. The ads would appear only with searches regarding related keywords
2. The landing pages weren't misleading
3. The service would provide some real value
4. The service would not violate Google AdWords TOS

The AdWords advertising policies states:

Don't use phishing or other scamming tactics.

Advertising is not permitted for sites collecting sensitive personal information or money with fake forms, false claims, or unauthorized use of Google Trademarks. Examples of personal information include email addresses, user names, passwords, and/or payment information. In addition, advertising is not permitted for 'run your car on water' programs or content.

The most popular “service” is the ”find out when will you die” test.

The ads are showing up both on search and content network. Here are screen captures:

After clicking on one of the ads, user will find himself on a landing page, which asks to fill up a test in order to find out date of his death. It consists of about 20 ridiculous or often very personal questions.

After finishing the test, user finds out that results are not free. He or she is presented with a prompt to pay for “the date of your death”. Sometimes the end pagesshow the information to send the money via SMS only. The cost of 1 text message is stated with very small font in the footer and is about 23 PLN (~$8.34).

Some landing pages are formatted in a misleading way. The price for paying via credit card is enlarged and bolded, and so is the information “pay via SMS”. Such design suggests that the price of the SMS is the enlarged one. However, the real price is stated further below, again with small font.

Polish Google representatives in Warsaw do not comment on the situation officially with anything else than “it is a really big problem”. This is hard to believe, since majority of those ads have similarities in their ad texts which could be flagged by a simple keyword filter. It is really disappointing to see how the leading ad network is not only being polluted this way, but also artificially increases CPC for legitimate advertisers. Whole situation makes one think that having 97%+ of local search market made Google less likely to act.

You can find more on this topic in my Polish blog post: Scam Ads in Poland.

In classic Search Engine Roundtable style... Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help, Golden Line and Gazeta.pl 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: November 17, 2009"

The mass AdWords banning that has continued on since late September of this year is just going to get worse. Google told me last night that they are stepping up the account level bans and making them permanent on the account level.

Nick Fox of Google told me Google is now better at enforcement and able to offer more comprehensive enforcement of their existing policies. This is why they have decided to step up these efforts by banning not just sites from advertising, but complete accounts and permanently stopping them from signing up for new accounts (they have ways).

In the past, I complained that Google replied to AdWords advertisers with lame responses. Fox promised me that the communication process with these account bans have been improved. All accounts that are being banned will get an email from Google telling them they have been banned and instructing them how to appeal the ban. All appeals will get a response from Google, no matter what.

I am some more details at Search Engine Land about this and AdWordsAdvisor posted a note at WebmasterWorld about this as well, the message read:

In keeping with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, we spend a tremendous amount of time and effort monitoring the quality of our search and ad results. As we've stated many times before, Google's primary focus is on delivering the best possible search experience to our end users. To help further this goal, we work with our advertisers in a number of different ways to help them design and run the best ads possible.

Unfortunately, some online advertisers continue to promote services and websites that do not help, and in some cases could harm, our users. For instance, these advertisers may offer free services that bait users into accepting hidden fees. Or these advertisers may attempt to deliver malware to unsuspecting web citizens. Regardless of the practice, these types of campaigns do not benefit our users and we therefore take steps to enforce our policies and prevent such advertisers from running ads through our systems.

Over the last decade Google has implemented a number of systems and processes to identify and disable ads that direct users to these offending websites. However, the ad disabling procedures have resulted in ongoingback and forth between us and these questionable advertisers as they try to outsmart our systems and processes. Therefore, we're being stricter with advertisers who deliver a bad user experience by permanently disabling AdWords accounts that engage in prohibited behavior.

Recently we began implementing this new account disabling. As a result, many advertisers who provide a poor user experience and have previously had their ads disabled will now have their accounts disabled.

We take our user, advertiser and publisher experiences very seriously, and remain dedicated to delivering only the highest quality advertising results to our users. We believe this new process of permanently disabling accounts will markedly improve the overall experience of our users, advertisers and publishers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that someone is noticing that his site's Sitelinks in Google are pointing to a different site. I am not sure how that is possible. How can Google link a Sitelink for one site to a different site? But according to this webmaster, it is true.

I do not have any proof that this is happening, nor will I ever get proof because WebmasterWorld does not allow examples. But I believe it is possible that with DNS changes and shared IPs, it is possible that Google can be confused and link to the wrong place.

There were cases where Google got the wrong site for the info operator and the cache being the wrong page, but never a Sitelink.

If this happens to you, the first thing you should do is block those Sitelinks in Google Webmaster Tools. Then post evidence at Google Webmaster Help.

As Tedster said at WebmasterWorld:

Sounds like a particularly nasty data bug. Does that sitelink show up in your Webmaster Tools account? If so, you can veto it. If not, you could take the issue up on the Google Webmaster forum or try a reconsideration request.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced a major upgrade for Google Translate. I am personally very impressed.

The new features include:

• New layout
• Instant translation
• Shows reading phonetically in English
• Speaks English translation for you (i.e. text to speech)
• Type phonetically also

Here is a video demonstrating the new features:

There are both compliments and anger about the change in the Google Translate Group.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Translate Group.

Jaime from Google reminds us in a Google Web Search Help thread about a 1.5 month old search option feature Google added, named "More shopping sites." Basically, if you conduct a search on Google, click on "search options" and then click on "More shopping sites" Google will try to show you results from sites selling things.

Here is a picture:

This kind of reminds me of Yahoo Mindset, a tool Yahoo created a while back allowing people to change the type of search results from shopping to research with a slider. Here is an old picture of the slider:

Now, personally, I'll probably stick with using Google to research products and then once I find the sku, use both Google, specialized shopping search engines and Bing Cashback to find the best deal.

Happy Holidays!

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The Google LatLong blog announced an upgrade that is currently now available in the iTunes App store for the iPhone. Google Earth 2.0 is out and it has new features, including:

• My Maps Integration
• Performance Improvements
• Improved "Icon" Selection
• Added 13 languages, now 31 languages in total

With iPhone App updates, when they are available in the iTunes App Store, they might not be available for all users. Kind of like when a Google update is out, some people see it and some don't, early on. Why? Cause of multiple servers and the syncing of those servers can take time.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile 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: November 16, 2009"

Page load time (speed) is a factor currently in the AdWords quality score. But soon it may be coming to Google's organic ranking algorithm. If you have a really slow site, it may impact how high you rank in Google. That was the main news coming out of PubCon last week, minus the Caffeine launch.

It is currently not in the algorithm, according to Matt, but who knows - maybe they are testing this already. Matt was clear that Google wants the web to be a faster place and Google does control much of what people see on the web. So Google can influence that people find faster web pages, over slower ones.

You can hear Matt talk about this 2 minutes and 52 seconds into this video:

Google also has a tool to test page speed at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ - so get ready.

I should add, Google has hundreds of ranking factors. Adding one more, depending on the weight they assign to it, shouldn't shuffle things up much for most sites. Just make sure your site loads fast - it is a good thing to have anyway.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google AdSense for Feeds blog announced they will be tagging your FeedBurner feeds with Google Analytics parameter tracking. I have been seeing this for several blogs for the past few weeks already. Basically, this means, Google is appending variables to the URL.

For example, if you look at one of our latest posts, the URL is http://feeds.seroundtable.com/~r/SearchEngineRoundtable1/~3/KwUDQ61JSkg/021166.html. If you click it, it takes you to http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021166.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SearchEngineRoundtable1+%28Search+Engine+Roundtable+1.0+RSS%29.

The purpose is to make tracking better in Google Analytics but clearly, this is just messy. Heck, I have been linking to these URLs via the SearchCap for the past couple weeks and now it is going to get a lot worse. I am going to be linking to a URL that is not the parent URL.

This is the topic of concern at Cre8asite Forums. JohnMu from Google came into that thread to offer some SEO advice:

- Move to "#" for these parameters, which will effectively hide them from search engines. There are a few articles on this, eg http://esev.com/blog/tutorial/hiding-google-analytics-campaign-variables/

- Use the rel=canonical link element: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

- For Google, use the URL parameter handling tool to tell us to ignore these parameters: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-parameter-handling-tool-helps-with.html

In general, we'll try to figure these things out on our own (as will the other search engines), but personally I like to be in control so I'd probably try something like that.

Or you can turn off the tracking, the Google blog explains how but here is that info:

If you're not using Google Analytics, or for some other reason don't want these parameters in the requests coming to your website, you can turn off Google Analytics tracking on the "Configure Stats" page on the Analyze tab at http://feedburner.google.com.

Got all of that. You should take action, as I should as well.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

As we all know, Google Caffeine is launching on a single data center until after the holidays so that online retailers don't get a nasty present from Google.

As I promised then, I would let you know what data center the results went or go live on, when I hear. There are some discussions and chatter at WebmasterWorld that one data center may have Caffeine results. Google has not confirmed it, nor do all webmasters believe these are Caffeine like results.

The data center is 216.239.59.103 and you should give it a try yourself. Matt said that even if they do give out an IP address, it is possible that non-Caffeine results will show on that data center for some people. So maybe this is Caffeine and some don't see it? I am not sure - I am pretty sure Matt can confirm this IP as the data center or not - after he gets back from Las Vegas.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update #1: Some are saying this data center has moved to 66.102.7.18.

Update #2: Google's Matt Cutts replied to me on Twitter saying, "@rustybrick I don't think that IP points to Caffeine."

Ask Google who is the failure and you will see Google showing the first result as whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama.

Yes, a "Google Bomb" on President Obama and the White House. Google has to run their bomb defuse algorithm, which by the way has two algorithms to fix this issue. Just like they did for miserable failure and failure bombs.

The best place to see all the history on these types of presidential Google Bombs is at Search Engine Land.

This search was first sent to me last week by @suzukik.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced last week that they will be expanding their test of the commission based product ads they started testing in June. Over the weekend, many started noticing the new type of ads in the Google search results.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some people taking notice.

Back in January 2008, Google began testing product (base) results in ads. They continued the test in October 2008 with expandable links to these ads. Then in February 2009, the ads became very well seen by many searchers. In May they tested one line product links and in August they tested open product ads. In April, I wrote how to get product images in AdWords ads. Keep in mind, some of these campaigns were not CPA driven, like the one I mention above.

Here are some live examples of searches that trigger these ads:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

October 26th, Google launched a new labs product called Google Social Search. It is basically the only labs product I left on, by default, for my Google searches - it is that cool.

Over the weekend, I like many many others, noticed a Google notice that Social Search was "no longer available" as a Google experimental option. We all currently get this error:

There are many complaining about it on the blogs, Twitter and in the Google Web Search Help thread. So I emailed Google, asking what is up and they said:

The Google Social Search experiment is temporarily down. We are working on it and expect to restore access sometime Monday or Tuesday.

So expect this feature to return back sometime today or tomorrow. Honestly, this is a feature that I doubt Google will ever completely terminate.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 13, 2009"

In this weeks recap, I act all tired and dazed from coming off a red eye from Las Vegas and doing the video at 8am in the morning, with maybe 20 minutes of sleep. Of course I talked about our PubCon coverage, about 40 sessions covered live. Google shut down the Google Caffeine Sandbox and is pushing it out to a single data center soon. Google enhanced the keyword report in Webmaster Tools. MSNBot is having issues respecting the crawl delay directive. Bing added the awesome Wolfram Alpha data. Google Maps has a pornography issue. Are rich snippets being displayed in Google for smaller sites? The AdWords team did a help and tip photo shoot, they also backed a cake for the one year birthday. There is some fake Matt Cutts ban spam that is not real. We also have logos for Veterans Day, Sesame Street and Berlin Wall to show you. 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:

• PubCon 2009 Vegas Coverage Recap
• Google Caffeine Index Goes Live Right Before Holiday Shopping Season
• Matt Cutts Returns to WebmasterWorld: Caffeine Launch After Holidays
• Google Updates Keyword Tool in Webmaster Tools: Updates Daily & Shows More Detail
• MSNBot Crawl Delay Doesn't Delay
• Bing Adds My Favorite Fact Engine, Wolfram|Alpha
• London Escort Service Using Seductive Images in Google Maps Business Listings
• Google Rich Snippets Coming To Smaller Sites?
• Google AdWords Team's Photo Help Session
• Cute: AdWordsPro Sarah Bakes Cake For AdWords Forums Birthday
• Fake Google Matt Cutts Ban List Referrers?
• Veteran's Day 2009 Logos from Google, Bing, Ask But Not Yahoo
• Sesame Street Count(s) Day 6 Trumps Berlin Wall Logo
• Google's Sesame Street Logo Finale : 12 Doodles

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

If you conduct a search in Google Images for [Michelle Obama] you will see a racist image in the number one result. The image is hosted on buzzoverm.blogspot.com and here is a copy of the search result:

Someone reported this at a Google Web Search Help thread, but no Googler has responded as of yet.

I assume after Google sees this post, it will be removed soon.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Like many, when Google announced you can now buy more storage for less, I decide to buy more storage. So I went through the purchase storage process, paid the bill, got the order receipt and waited.

3 days later, I am still waiting to receive that upgrade. I ordered an additional 20GB of storage, here is my email receipt:

But when I log in to check my storage available, it still shows the old amount.

Gmail View:

Admin Account Management View:

So I follow all the Gmail Storage Troubleshooting tips and get no where. I then click on the "If you are still unable to access your Google paid storage, please contact us" link. The link is to google.com/support/contact/bin/request.py?contact_type=contact_storage but when you click it, it redirects you to the generic Google help with no way to get real help.

I am not the only person with this issue, there are a couple complaining at the Gmail Help forum.

It is only $5, so I don't mind donating the money but I do really want the extra storage.

Forum discussion at Gmail Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread had one webmaster who received an email from Google warning of a phishing attempt on this person's site. The webmaster asked if it was real. The email said he/she should "submit a safebrowsing report at http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/."

JohnMu from Google replied that if you want to make sure the email is real, that you should login to the Google Webmaster Tools and see if there is a message there about it. If yes, then it is legit, if not - not.

In addition, John explained that "the sb.google.com URL you mentioned is the correct one to submit feedback on the safebrowsing status of the flagged URL on your site."

Give sb.google.com a try. :)

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread asks a common question in link building. The question is, are "web site designed by X," where "X" is a link to your company, against Google's guidelines?

Both a "level 4" and "top contributor" replied to the thread. One said:

I would think this is a matter of personal preference, and it is quite common in the industry.

The other said:

As far as we know - there is no harm from them. (Hope not - I use them on all my sites ;))

What do you think? Like they said, this is done very often. My company no longer does this, we haven't in years. But we did it a lot before "link building" was so important - go figure.

This is not a new question, we asked in in 2006 with

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

We covered just under 40 sessions at the 2009 PubCon. That makes it the sixth PubCon Vegas we covered, we got 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004. This year, our volunteers include Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal from Promediacorp, Brian Ussery aka Beussery, Marty Weintraub from aimClear and Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel. Thank you guys!

Here are links to all our coverage:

Day One Coverage:

• SEO for Multimedia and Rich Media
• Hot Topics and Trends in the Affiliate Space
• Experts on PR & Twitter
• Enterprise Level Bid Management
• How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search?
• Top-Shelf SEO: Hot Topics and Trends
• Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization
• What Every Webmaster Should Know About Code Installation
• Capitalizing on Twitter & The Microblogging Revolution
• Twitter Landscape - Hot Topics and Trends
• In-House SEO
• Kickoff Keynote Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos

Day Two Coverage:

• Hosting Issues and SEO/SEM
• Multivariate Testing and Conversion Tweaking
• How SEO Can Help Pull the Publishing Industry Back from the Brink
• Post Mortem - Banned Site Forensics
• Mega Site SEO
• Domaining and Alternative Traffic
• Lead Generation and CPA Marketing
• Social Media & Press Relations
• Effective Solutions to In-House SEO, PPC, and Campaigns
• SEO Design & Organic Site Structure
• Viral and Video - Two Good Things That Go Great Together
• Understanding The Complex Social Marketing Playing Field
• The Wonderful World Of Widgets
• How do Social Media & Search Intersect?
• Local Search and Mobile Optimization
• Keynote Panel: Vegas Strip Hotel Marketing Departments

Day Three Coverage:

• PubCon Live: Super Session : Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown
• PubCon Live: Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ
• PubCon Live: Search Bloggers : What's Hot and Trending?
• PubCon Live: Real World Winning Tactics for Content Creation
• PubCon Live: Social Media Measurement and Signals
• PubCon Live: Starting a vBulletin Community
• PubCon Live: Real World, Low Risk, High Reward Link Building Strategies
• PubCon Live: Interactive Site Review : Organic Focus
• PubCon Live: The Top 50 Best Website Ideas We've Ever Seen
• PubCon Live: Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk

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: November 12, 2009"

Below is live coverage of the Super Session : Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog & Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Search Bloggers : What's Hot and Trending? from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Real World Winning Tactics for Content Creation from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Social Media Measurement and Signals from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Marty Weintraub from aimClear.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Starting a vBulletin Community from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Real World, Low Risk, High Reward Link Building Strategies from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp & Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Interactive Site Review : Organic Focus from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick & Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the The Top 50 Best Website Ideas We've Ever Seen from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Marty Weintraub from aimClear & Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

I was all giddy when Wolfram|Alpha demo'ed back in May. The search engine, a fact engine, is filled with so much information and the results are provided in such great detail that this is one of the most, if not the most, useful publicly accessible fact engines available. As you can tell, I am a huge fan. Like I said then, it does not replace a Google but I know when to go to Wolfram and use it for specific queries.

Bing finally officially announced a deal with them where they are syndicating Wolfram|Alpha's data in their own search results. I personally do not see it live yet but here is a picture of how it might work:

I think Google should sign up with Wolfram as well. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and believe it or not, also at Google Webmaster Help.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced they have updated the keyword tool and data in Google Webmaster Tools. The new additions include:

• Data updated daily
• How often is the keyword found
• Displas top URLs that contain the keyword

Specifically, the new significance column "compares the frequency of a keyword to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your site." Google adds, "when you click on a keyword to view more details, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain that keyword." Why is this important, well, if someone does hack into your site, you can easily see if unrelated keywords are showing up and on which pages. Plus, it is just a good tool to see how Google understands your web site.

Here are pictures of the report for this site:

Most importantly, the Google Webmaster Team's Halloween costume not only rocked, but coordinated.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help, DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

I am a big fan of the Bing Cashback program but on the merchant side, I was never to clear on how that worked. I did some research and merchants can sign up here to be included in the Cashback program.

There are actually detailed merchant guides (PDF) and optimization tips (PDF) for Bing shopping available.

At DigitalPoint Forums, I spotted one merchant who was kicked out of the program. Honestly, I have never seen a merchant complain online that his merchant Cashback account was terminated. This is the email he received from Microsoft:

Dear ***,

Thank you for your participation in the Bing cashback program.

This letter is to notify you that pursuant to Section 12 of the Bing cashback Merchant Agreement, Microsoft is terminating your Bing cashback Merchant Agreement and DinoDirect's participation in the Bing cashback program.

As per Section 12 of the Bing cashback Merchant Agreement:

Upon termination, suspension or discontinuation of the Program or Merchant's participation in the Program: (a) all Listings will be promptly removed; (b) Merchant remains responsible for a period of 15 days for tracking Qualifying Sales that occurred prior to termination and paying the associated Sales Payouts; and (c) after the conclusion of such period, Microsoft shall refund any outstanding amounts in Merchant's Account.

Clearly, the site that was terminated was Dino Direct, but why exactly, is not clear. I was unable to find the Bing cashback merchant agreement.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Google blog also announced they teamed up with U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide a Google Maps mashup to help people find flu shots in their area.

You can access the Google Maps mashup at google.com/flushot or go to flu.gov for other information.

One person asked in a Google Maps Help thread, how does he get his facility on the Google Maps list? I believe the way to do this is to go to Flu.gov, find your state and then navigate to the government office that is handling the list. Then submit your facility to that government office.

Anyway, here are the local places in Las Vegas that have flu shots:

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

The Google blog announced you can now lock the SafeSearch filter to help prevent a computer from seeing adult or sexually explicit content in the Google images and results.

To do this, go to Search Settings and click on "Lock Safe Search." FYI, I personally do not see this option right now. But here is a video of how to set it up, when it is available:

Once Safe Search is locked, the Google pages should add these big colored balls to the right top portion of the screen. This way parents can keep an eye on their kids from a distance.

Thing is, you need to lock this on all Google profiles that are on a computer and if someone deletes the cookie and adds this greasemonkey script, then the lock is disabled.

There are more details about this new feature at this help document.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Back in May, Google launched rich snippets that enabled webmasters to markup their HTML with richer data for Google to display. For example, you can often see results from Yelp and other sites like it for reviews that display reviews in the Google results. Here is a picture:

In fact, most webmasters said they will markup their HTML to take part of this richer snippet experience. Then in September, Google added a rich snippet testing tool because although many marked up their HTML, they never knew if it was actually working because Google rarely displayed the richer snippets for smaller sites.

Now, I am hearing via a WebmasterWorld thread that some smaller webmasters are now noticing rich snippets being displayed for their sites. I tried a few sites myself and was not able to see it myself, maybe he is hitting a different Google data center. I do hope that rich snippets do make its way down to more sites so that the playing field is evened up a bit.

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: November 11, 2009"

Below is live coverage of the Hosting Issues and SEO/SEM from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Multivariate Testing and Conversion Tweaking from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the How SEO Can Help Pull the Publishing Industry Back from the Brink from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Post Mortem - Banned Site Forensics from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Mega Site SEO from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Domaining and Alternative Traffic from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Lead Generation and CPA Marketing from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Social Media & Press Relations from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Effective Solutions to In-House SEO, PPC, and Campaigns from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the SEO Design & Organic Site Structure from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Viral and Video - Two Good Things That Go Great Together from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Understanding The Complex Social Marketing Playing Field from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the The Wonderful World Of Widgets from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Marty Weintraub from aimClear .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the How do Social Media & Search Intersect? from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick & Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Local Search and Mobile Optimization from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Keynote Panel: Vegas Strip Hotel Marketing Departments from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Yesterday we reported that the Google Caffeine index is launching right before the holiday season. I wrote my post like that, simply because I was in shock to see this being rolled out, even "slowly" before the holiday season. Honestly, I believe this took Google's Matt Cutts by surprise as well. While on vacation/work in Las Vegas, Matt wrote a blog post explaining this will not be launched on more than one data center prior to the holiday season.

Again, this is not fully rolling out until after the holiday season. Thank you Matt.

Matt also broke his one year streak of not posting at WebmasterWorld, with a post in the Caffeine WebmasterWorld thread yesterday saying:

I thought about including "Don't Panic!" from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my post, but decided not to. :)

cangoou, in a little while, you'll have Caffeine to try out at a full data center. I don't expect the results to change much from the developer preview to the data center, nor from the data center to the full roll out.

barretire, some people might be stressed by waiting, but I think more people were stressed about the idea of Caffeine rolling out during the holidays.

At any rate, I'll be talking at PubCon on Thursday, so I can discuss Caffeine and can answer questions for folks that are still stressed. :)

I probably stressed a few people out with my original post. But we needed clarification and we got it. Personally, I think this all came to a shock to many of the folks at Google Webmaster Central and Matt Cutts but it should not be an issue for most online retailers until after the holidays. Even then, Google hopes the search results are somewhat transparent to searchers and webmasters.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.

We have more MSNBot troubles to unfortunately bring to you. Microsoft Bing's spider, MSNBot, is apparently not listening to directives they should be listening to. In this case, it is the crawl delay command, where a couple users are claiming Microsoft Bing's MSNBot is not honoring. There is a thread on the topic at Bing Forums and no Microsoft representative has come in to clarify yet.

We know that Microsoft wrote both in 2008 and 2009 that Webmasters can add the crawl delay directive in their robots.txt file and it should slow the bot down.

In this case, these webmasters are using delays of 5 and 10, with no recourse from MSNBot. Take a look at events.berkeley.edu/robots.txt and you will see one example. But these webmasters are reporting extreme high crawl rates from MSNBot, which is not uncommon.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion where one webmaster is having the hardest time removing a URL from the Google index. He/she used the Google Remove URL Tool only to find out that even though Google reported back the URL was removed, two weeks later, it is still there.

Susan from the Google Webmaster Central team told the individual to try again and select "outdated or dead link" option in the form. This time, the user received an error that read:

You have already made this removal request.

Susan confirmed that this was some sort of bug. Susan said:

Congratulations, you may have found a bug.

Our team is looking into it. I can submit that URL for removal for you in the meantime, since it 404s.

I believe in this case, the page has finally been removed due to Susan taking manual action. I don't think this is a wide spread bug, but just a small bug.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

This is cute, AdWordsPro Sarah posted a note at the Google AdWords Help forum showing that she baked a cake to celebrate the forums birthday. She wrote:

A birthday is not a birthday without cake- and while virtual photo cake is not as delicious as the real thing- I have never made cake for thousands of people (and if I did, you probably would not want to eat it). So this little cake is a gesture to say thank you to everyone who helped this little (or not so little now) forum grow this past year. I am truly touched by the generosity that is exhibited here on a daily basis. It makes me proud to be a part of this community.

Make a wish!
AdWordsPro Sarah

Sarah's Happy Birthday Forum Cake: http://cli.gs/vVgz4R

Here is a picture of the completed cake, but if you want to see the process of baking this pumpkin cake, see over here.

Now, if we can just get Adam Lasnik to bake a cake for the Webmaster Central forum. :)

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Today is Veteran's Day and the search engines, well most of them, are commemorating the day. We have logos from Google, Bing, Ask.com, AOL and even here but not from Yahoo, at least not yet. Here are the logos.

Google:

Bing:

Ask:

AOL (Flash):

Search Engine Roundtable:

For the past logos for this holiday, see 2008 Veterans logos (no Yahoo there also), 2007 Veterans logos and then we skipped to 2007 Veterans logos.

Also, at Google UK today, they have a logo with a poppy for a belated Remembrance Day. Yes, Remembrance Day was a few days ago, but the Sesame Street logos trumped it.

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: November 10, 2009"

Below is live coverage of the SEO for Multimedia and Rich Media from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog & Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Hot Topics and Trends in the Affiliate Space from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Experts on PR & Twitter from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Enterprise Level Bid Management from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Marty Weintraub from aimClear.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search? from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Top-Shelf SEO: Hot Topics and Trends from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick & Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the What Every Webmaster Should Know About Code Installation from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Capitalizing on Twitter & The Microblogging Revolution from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick .

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the Twitter Landscape - Hot Topics and Trends from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal of Promediacorp.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Below is live coverage of the In-House SEO from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery - Beu Blog.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

In-House SEO

(11/10/2009)

  

Close

10:22

Brian Ussery:  Good morning from Las Vegas and welcome to Pubcon! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:22 Brian Ussery

10:23

Brian Ussery:  In-House SEO If you have a do-it-yourself attitude, then you're probably relying on your own skills for your site SEO. Our panelists are veteran in-house search engine optimizers, and will reveal the best tips, tools and techniques for doing SEO in house. Learn all about the challenges and complications that might arise and the best way to deal with them in order to meet your SEO goals. Moderator: Melanie Mitchell Speakers: Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Yellow Pages, Sensis Pty Ltd Chris Hooley, Owner, MCP Media Alex Bennert, In-house SEO, Wall Street Journal Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:23 Brian Ussery

10:25

Brian Ussery:  Chirs is going over qualities to look for when building an SEO team in house. He suggests looking for individuals who aren't big gun but who have the capacity to handle "trial by fire". Look for folks who can influence others and who know what they are talking about. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:25 Brian Ussery

10:27

Brian Ussery:  He stresses content production, blogs, press releases or other weekly and says incentives are the best way to get action. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:27 Brian Ussery

10:28

Brian Ussery:  He says don't micro-manage. Optimize your talent! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:28 Brian Ussery

10:29

Brian Ussery:  Big takeaway is that all content is link opportunity! @chrishooley THANKS CHRIS :) Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:29 Brian Ussery

10:30

Brian Ussery:  Up next Alex Bennert from WSJ... Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:30 Brian Ussery

10:31

Brian Ussery:  According to Alex, train often! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:31 Brian Ussery

10:32

Brian Ussery:  Alex suggests breaking sessions on individual topics. She uses the same template but updates examples using in some cases their own work. Rule is to keep presos short. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:32 Brian Ussery

10:33

Brian Ussery:  Alex suggests topics like Google Webmaster Tools and Sitemaps for IT. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:33 Brian Ussery

10:36

Brian Ussery:  Alex says she talks about duplicate content a lot due to Journal's parameter issues prior to Google canonical tag. She also says she talks about redirects, crawl priority and so on... When something comes up that nothing can be done about, Alex says yes this isn't optimal but we can impact this issue. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:36 Brian Ussery

10:38

Brian Ussery:  When it comes to biz dev and marketing, Alex focuses on SEO value and link equity in additon to microsites and other topics. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:38 Brian Ussery

10:39

Brian Ussery:  She talks with biz dev folks about leveraging existing sites to boost new properties. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:39 Brian Ussery

10:39

Brian Ussery:  SEO for content development is an important issue for biz dev folks! Which I think it should be KEY! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:39 Brian Ussery

10:40

Brian Ussery:  For feature writers, she teaches them how to use keyword tools for annual events. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:40 Brian Ussery

10:43

Brian Ussery:  Reporters are unique in that they don't have time to do keyword research when stories are breaking. So... Alex says focus on headline Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:43 Brian Ussery

10:45

Brian Ussery:  Alex says industry changes and these sessions are when Alex gets to update team! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:45 Brian Ussery

10:46

Brian Ussery:  Alex says don't try to know everything! She foucs on domestic but not mobile, ppc, international seo or social..... THANKS ALEX! Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:46 Brian Ussery

10:46

Brian Ussery:  Next is Ash Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:46 Brian Ussery

10:47

Brian Ussery:  Alex has worked on 2000 sites in the past 7 years. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:47 Brian Ussery

10:49

Brian Ussery:  Ash's company didn't offer SEO until two years ago but has shown it is well worth the investment... Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:49 Brian Ussery

10:51

Brian Ussery:  Ash says SEO is a long process and in some cases expensive... Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:51 Brian Ussery

10:52

Brian Ussery:  Think about budget for SEO in terms of hiring someone new... According to Ash, SEO may be pushed into the back in some cases but with the right internal processes SEO can produce major gains. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:52 Brian Ussery

10:53

Brian Ussery:  Try to avoid conflict but in SEO it is going to find you, he says. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:53 Brian Ussery

10:54

Brian Ussery:  For some sites, in house and out house SEO may be the best bet depending on marketing budget. Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:54 Brian Ussery

10:55

Brian Ussery:  Ash says, in AUS large companies are slow to adopt SEO but that trend is changing. For SEO to thrive, flat structures seem to work better in terms of management.... Tuesday November 10, 2009 10:55 Brian Ussery

11:00

Brian Ussery:  Ash stresses technical skills and development knowledge. When hiring, he says focus on experience not academic creds or other.... THANKS ASH! The theme for this session seems to be the importance of experience, expertise and influence when it comes to SEO. These are important qualities to look for when hiring SEOs for in-house success. Tuesday November 10, 2009 11:00 Brian Ussery

11:01

 

 

Below is live coverage of the Kickoff Keynote Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos from the PubCon 2009 conference.

This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.

We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.

Google has actually released a major Google index update before the holiday season. Yes, this is the Google Caffeine index, which has been in a Sandbox (testing environment) since August, is now being rolled out. If you visit the Caffeine URL at www2.sandbox.google.com, you are taken to a thank you page that reads:

We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

Yes, this is being rolled out slowly, data center by data center. Some of you may already see it, while most of you probably don't yet. The big question is when will this be fully rolled out? Some have been saying they have been seeing Caffeine in the live index already. I am not too sure.

Why in the world would Google do this right before the holiday season? Did Google forget how the Florida update had hurt online retailers right in the most important time of their shopping season? It was devastating to many small webmasters. I assume Google is confident this will have a small impact on businesses and they are confident it won't shuffle things up too much.

Update: Matt Cutts of Google just promised it won't be rolled out until after the holiday season.

I believe Google's goal with Sandbox was more about infrastructure over the quality of those results. Yes, Google wanted to index deeper and faster and smarter, but the ranking of those results, I believe, they wanted to keep stable from the current index. I hope that makes sense to the readers here, i.e. indexing is different than ranking. But indexing does have an impact on what Google ranks, obviously.

The Google Caffeine Sandbox was shut down about a few hours ago. There is early discussion beginning at the various forums. No official blog post from Google, Matt Cutts or anything, except for that Thank You page.

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

Starting on November 4th, Google began displaying logos for Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. Today is Sesame Street's official anniversary, the previous logos all led up to today. That is why we have a collage of all the characters, all in one logo:

Yes, 12 Sesame Street personalities in total were displayed. Not all on Google.com, some on regional Googles. Here they all are:

Honestly, I think I may have even missed one. :)

For all those wishing Google give up the Sesame Street logos, I think today is the last day. Personally, I liked it...

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: The Google Blog posted a link to the logos in high-resolution.

Google has confirmed a bug with region targeting in the AdWords advertiser console at WebmasterWorld. The bug appears to be an issue with when you set the regions you want your ads to be targeted towards and when you hit the save button, it shows you an error.

AdSenseAdvisor, an official Google representative, confirmed the issue on October 29th:

Yep, I can confirm that, C7Mike.

Assuming that I am in the office at the time it occurs, I'll post again once I've heard this is resolved.

To set reasonable expectations I typically wait at least four hours after I have heard from engineering that an issue is resolved before I am willing to say it's fixed in front of thousands of folks. ;) So, quite often, someone in this forum will notice that an issue has been resolved before I ever post to say so.

There has been no update from Google since that post and the one who reported the issue said it is half fixed. He explained that the changes seem to go through, but it does popup an error, which makes it confusing. In addition, he is not confident the targeting is correct and is concerned to use the feature:

He said:

From what I'm seeing on my end, I believe the issue to be partially corrected. I can define an area to advertise in, but when I save I get the error. I then refresh, like it says for me to do, and then it seems to act like the changes made it through.

Based on the numbers I'm seeing, something is still wrong, even though it shows that we're advertising in the defined area. The numbers act as if the changes to the broadcast area haven't been enacted even though the account shows the broadcast area as being enabled.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Tedster, WebmasterWorld's Administrator, posted an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld asking how do you think Google handles the canonical issues they find on their own? By that he means, if webmasters don't use a 301 redirect or use Google's canonical header tag to instruct Google on how to handle that URL, how would Google handle it?

Would they cosmetically clean up the search results so that there does not appear to be any canonical (duplicate) URLs in the results? Or do they actually decide to implement a 301 on your behalf and pass all the 'link juice' from one canonical URL to the parent URL?

First, take my poll and then I will give you my thoughts on it:

I really think for the most part, where Google is not confident on which should be the main URL, Google will only apply this cosmetically to the search results. I remember when the new canonical tag came out and Google warned to use this carefully, because it is as powerful as a 301, but without actually being physically redirected. For Google to apply their own 301s, hidden be that, is extremely dangerous for both Google and the webmaster. I would assume, in certain cases, Google does do this, but I am not sure if they do this in most cases. Of course, this is just my thoughts - I have no hard evidence, since I never really tested it myself.

I would assume Google would want to be right 100% of the time on this. I would think that would be a goal. And when they are 100% or even 99% right, implementing this would make sense.

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: November 9, 2009"

Today, if you visit Google.com, you will see Count Von Count as the Google logo (doodle) on the home page. This is the 6th day, and 11th Sesame Street logo, Google has posted in celebrating of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. We have all the Sesame Street logos that have currently been posted over here.

Like, I said, today's logo is Count Von Count, another lovable Sesame Street logo:

But today, if you visit Google.de, you will see a logo commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989.

Personally, I felt it would be best to stop with Elmo, yesterday, on Sunday. There are several people upset that Google has not made the Berlin Wall logo more prominent by posting it on all of Google's properties. Especially since Google is on their 6th day and 11th logo for Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, which was 6 days ago. There are even some people upset Elmo usurped UK's Remembrance Sunday.

Clearly, Google likes to show fun logos over sad ones. But 6 days of Sesame Street?

Forum discussion at several threads at Google Web Search Help.

What appears to be a newbie, posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help asking why his site is not ranking yet. He also asked if he had something to do with the URL https://internal.google.com/spamteam/users/cutts/matt/ban_list/ showing up in his log files.

Got that?

https://internal.google.com/spamteam/users/cutts/matt/ban_list/

It appears to look like Matt Cutts' personal ban list at Google. But is it really?

(1) His site is indexed in Google.

(2) Why in the world would Google show those types of referrers in people's log files, especially those sites that are banned.

(3) The IP addresses noted by the webmaster did not seem to be from Google.

(4) Googler, JohnMu, said it is not Matt's ban list. JohnMu went on record, and I trust him, saying:

I can assure you that the URL in the title of the thread is not a Google URL -- where did you get it from?

Do you think the URL is real?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has a post asking where do SEOs make the most amount of money? Is it by offering SEO consulting services? Is it by building web sites with affiliate models? Is it by offering SEO education? Is it by selling successful web sites? Or is it something else?

I assume the answer depends on how good the person is at the particular service. If someone is great at dealing with clients, then consulting might be the way to go. If someone is excellent at educating people, then go that way. If some one can anticipate trends and is able to sell a site for big money, then that is the way to go.

But if you had to pick one, which would it be? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There is a small thread at WebmasterWorld with two advertisers complaining that their US based ads are not running as often as their UK based Microsoft adCenter campaigns. In short, the US campaigns they were running, in comparison to the UK campaigns, were getting a tiny fraction of impressions and clicks.

One advertiser emailed Microsoft and received this interesting response:

We see that your program was opened in 2006.

We see that you are receiving some impressions but not nearly as many as you could be. Sometimes when a campaign or ad group is not getting very much activity for a long period of time the ad will start showing less and less because it is not performing. That may be what has happened with your campaign.

My suggestion is to start two brand new campaigns and copy all of the data over from your existing campaigns.

We know adCenter has hit campaigns for low quality ranking factors in the past, but to have two campaigns, exactly the same, with the difference being UK versus US, that seems interesting. What I find even more interesting is that Microsoft here is suggesting the advertiser build a brand new campaign and just copy over the data.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A disgruntled searcher posted a thread at Google Maps Help forum complaining that he spotted a nude photo on a Google Maps business listing for a London based escort service. I personally don't think I see a nude photo, but the photos are seductive in nature. You can see the business listing over here (also a screen capture).

The individual reported this on Saturday, November 7th, but no one really noticed (it was Saturday). Here is his post:

This is a serious breech of Google quality guidelines ever. Spammer added price £120 on the title of the listing . On the other hand spammer has added nude picture on the Gallery section to get more clicks from surfer .

What a shame, how could some do such things . Please take immediate action.

This is not the first time we found adult oriented content in Google Maps. We found adult spam in Google Maps listings in a much worse way, disguised as a normal business listing. That spam was cleaned up.

Now, I don't think escort services is an issue in Google Maps - I am not sure. But are these pictures an issue? Nudity is, but these?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Update: There are some that actually do have nudity. Do not click if you do not want to see nudity. Here are some examples, this one, this one, and probably many many more. Even many in the US, such as this one, this one, this one and many more. So there is plenty of nudity on Google Maps Business Listings.

The Google AdWords team posted a photo help session, specifically to give tips on how to use the Google Content Network to the best of your ability.

AdWordsPro Sarah, the woman in the middle of the photo above, posted the details of the photo tips:

To help wish the AdWords Help Forum happy birthday, the Online Help team collected Googler's favorite tips and created several photo albums (so you can put a face to the tip!). Its our little way of saying "thank you" for a great first year on the forum.

Tip photo album: http://cli.gs/20RB5g

The first album in the series has tips for advertisers looking to place ads on the Content Network. If you look through the pictures and find a tip that looks interesting, some of the photos have URLs in the caption that will give you more information on how to implement this tip in your own account (it may be easier than reading our messy hand writing). And, as always, if you have questions about any of the tips, please feel free to leave them in this thread.

Happy Birthday Everyone!
AdWordsPro Sarah

There is a lot to say about giving online help for this product, but to show a smile when doing it - well, that adds a lot. To see all the tips, go to the Picasa album.

Very creative AdWords team!

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 6, 2009"

Google shows about ten Sesame Streets logos over three days for their 40th anniversary. Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL and others dressed up for Halloween. Google's home page fade adds "this space left blank," and it is ridiculous. AdSense is testing out a new interface. AdWords keeps banning advertisers. We got the detailed November 2009 Google webmaster report. AdWords now officially has Sitelinks. Publishers need to update their Sitemaps for Google News within six months. Google Maps updated the business listing quality guidelines. Google created a single dashboard. Google adds page previews to search options. MSN previews a new design. Matt Cutts drops WebmasterWorld cold. Sphinn leaves beta and adds premium features. PubCon is next week, we will have live real time coverage of the sessions. 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:

• Google Celebrates Anniversaries For Sesame Street, Wallace & Gromit & Many Others
• Google Really Likes, Really Likes, Sesame Street: Adds Cookie Monster and Ernie & Bert
• Halloween Logos from Search Engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo & Many More
• Google's Home Page Instructs: "This Space Intentionally Left Blank"
• Google's New Beta AdSense Interface Looks Slick
• Google Keeps Banning AdWords Advertisers
• November 2009 Google Webmaster Report
• Google AdWords Ad Sitelinks, Now Official
• Publishers: Google News To Require A New Sitemaps File
• Google Maps Updates Business Listing Quality Guidelines
• Google Finally Creates a Dashboard to Manage Your Google Life
• Google Finally Tries Page Previews
• MSN Home Page Gets a Major Face Lift
• Google's Matt Cutts Goes a Year Without Posting at WebmasterWorld
• Sphinn Comes Out of Beta
• PubCon 2009 In Vegas 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!

A Google Webmaster Help thread reports that because .UA domains are currently not considered "root domains" by Google, the change of address tool doesn't work for them.

I am not sure if Google did not consider them root domains or didn't allow the change of address tool to work with those domains. But Google said, whatever the issue is, it will be fixed soon.

Jonathan Simon from Google replied to the thread confirming the issue:

I've alerted the team to this issue. .UA domains should soon be supported by the Change of Address tool.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Back in late September, Google began mass banning AdWords advertisers. A couple days later, after pushing Google for a response, they offered somewhat of a lame response. I was hoping to see Google come back to the thread and answer more questions, but they did not and it sat. That is until now.

A new thread at WebmasterWorld did spark a comment from AdWordsAdvisor. This was about a "one million dollar advertiser" who was banned. So Google replied saying:

I know the comments in the previous thread have been taken seriously and that your comments here will be taken seriously as well - and we are exploring what changes can be made to the way this is handled.

Okay, so Google is taking this issue "seriously." Additionally, Google is "exploring what changes can be made to the way this is handled." Interesting... So it appears Google will continue to ban, but possibly better handle how they ban advertisers? I am of the understanding that Google is looking to better communicate how and why the bans are happening? But I am not sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In the past few days, many users of the iPhone and Gmail Push service through active sync have been reporting that it is not working. A large Google Mobile Help thread has dozens of posts from unhappy Gmail users.

Google confirmed the issue and blamed the iPhone OS 3.1.2 build, which was out just about a month ago. So I am not sure why people are beginning to complain now.

Robin from the Google Mobile team confirmed the issue and wrote a few responses in the thread. They include:

We're aware of some issues with Gmail sync and are working to resolve them. OS v. 3.1.2 has broken a few things on our build, and we've also had a bug with certain formatting characters in email that has caused sync to stop altogether. We're working on to get a fix out for these items first, and can then start troubleshooting other possible causes.

While 3.1.2 has been a source of problems, there are a few issues across other platforms and OS version as well that we're working on. A number of bugs have been fixed over the past month, so it's unlikely that the source of your problems then is the same as it is now. Also, many folks have been able to sync just fine - sometimes it's a matter of sorting out setup issues and other device-specific variables. We're trying to fix the main bugs that we know about first and then can dive into the 1:1 troubleshooting.

Andrew554321, I did want to address your question about Google Apps. Push email is not currently covered by the Google Apps Premier Edition SLA: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/sla.html

While we do apologize for any disruption, please keep in mind that this is a Beta product that was just recently released; you are of course welcome to go back to IMAP or however you were checking your Gmail before implementing Google Sync. Otherwise, we hope you'll stick with us as we are actively trying to resolve these issues!

Yes, Google Sync uses Microsoft's Mail for Exchange, which is a separate protocol from IMAP and will thus behave differently. There's no link between these services, other than the fact that they can both access your Gmail and that Google doesn't control the protocal for either of them :P

So, if you pay for the Google Apps premier, you are out of luck. Gmail push for the iPhone is a beta product and is thus not covered.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Are you getting a message from the Google AdWords console that reads, "The keyword phrase doesn't currently trigger any of your ads"? If so, that might be a sign that your account is under review and you may be banned soon or currently.

A Google AdWords Help thread has an advertiser reporting this issue, where AdWordsPro Sarah said:

If this message does not clear up in a few hours, it may be that your account is under review. If this is the case, the best thing to do is to contact support using the process outlined below. If you go through the 'Cant see ad' category, you should get to someone on our support team who can help you sort things out.

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Google has seven different doodles (logos) on the day of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. Then yesterday and today, they had two different logos, celebrating the same anniversary.

November 5th was Cookie Monster:

Today, November 6th is Ernie & Bert:

What is Google's obsession with these lovable Sesame Street characters?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Webmaster Help.

The Google AdWords Help thread has an advertising asking why the Ads Diagnostic tool within the AdWords console is giving off this message:

To test this keyword, your campaign must be opted in to the search network.

AdWordsPro Sarah, from the Google AdWords team had an interesting response. Let me quote the whole response:

I think you are getting this messaging because some of our Tools only work for keywords that are targeted to the Search Network. From what you are describing, it sounds like you moused over the Ads Diagnostic Tool (one of our Tools that only can pull signals for ads on Search) and so you got a message basically saying, the Ads Diagnostic Tool won't work for your keywords. This is not to say that your ads are not working, it just means the tool can not tell you if your ads are working.

To determine if your ads are running, all you need to do is check your 'Content Network total' row on your ad group page. If you are accruing impressions- good news, your ad is up and running. If not, you can post again here with a few more details on the type of ad you are running and the targeting you are using and people here may be able to help you sort things out.

I still don't understand why you would need to turn on the content network to see this data on the keyword level. Maybe I am misunderstanding the issue here. Maybe this advertiser is trying to look for the content network stats on a keyword and doesn't know it?

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 5, 2009"

Big news for publishers in the Google News index. Inbal from Google announced in a Google News Help thread that in six months, Google will stop supporting the old News Sitemaps format and require you to switch over to the new format.

Inbal said:

Although we will support your current Google News Sitemap during the transition period of six months, you should re-submit it under the new format as soon as possible. For more details on how to submit your Sitemap using the new format (including how to add new tags to each entry in your Sitemap, to provide more information about individual articles), please visit the Sitemaps section of our Help Center.

Once the transition period is over, we will no longer accept News Sitemaps created using the old format and any old News Sitemaps in your Webmaster Tools account will be rejected.

We encourage you to make these changes as soon as possible in order to avoid interrupting your content's inclusion in Google News. To get started, please visit the FAQ.

The new format looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:n="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.org/business/article55.html</loc>
    <n:news>
      <n:publication>
        <n:name>The Example Times</n:name>
        <n:language>en</n:language>
      </n:publication>
      <n:access>subscription</n:access>
      <n:genres>pressrelease, blog</n:genres>
      <n:publication_date>2008-12-23</n:publication_date>
      <n:title>Companies A, B in Merger Talks</n:title>
      <n:keywords>business, merger, acquisition, A, B</n:keywords>
      <n:stock_tickers>NASDAQ:A, NASDAQ:B</n:stock_tickers>
    </n:news>
  </url>
</urlset>

For more details on this new sitemap format over here.

Again, you have six months to make this change, but the sooner you do it, the better. ALso, there is a learning benefit to the new sitemap file. Any questions, join the forum.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Update: The Google News blog just added more information about this important update.

There is currently no AdSense publisher that would say they like the AdSense management console. Yes, Google knows that and they have finally announced a limited beta for the new AdSense console interface. And let me tell you, it looks incredibly sweet - compared to what we have now.

Here is a picture:

As I reported at Search Engine Land, here are the new features:

• More detailed performance reports
• Enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats
• Additional metrics such as the amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types
• More options to manage the ads that appear on your site
• cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center
• A streamlined AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously
• Added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices

When will you and I get it? Well, hopefully most of us will have this beta interface within three weeks. The others? Well, there is no eta.

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

One of the more obvious complaints about Google is not about their products but rather how to find all their products and manage how you have access to those products. Google just launched the Google Dashboard which brings many - not all - of this in one place.

The Dashboard includes over "20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more." Here is a video demo on how it works:

A WebmasterWorld thread has early discussion around this topic. Right now, the feedback includes "it's about time" and "Well, it is a start..."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google's Matt Cutts, the man who is incredibly responsible the idea of webmaster and search engine communication, has gone over a year without posting anything at WebmasterWorld.

His last post was on November 2, 2008 in a thread named Google.com SERP Changes - November 2008. His last post was in response to changes at Google, where Matt said "Nope, it wasn't a test, whitenight." Since then, we have covered monthly WebmasterWorld Google related threads on these topics, including the November 2009 report.

Of course, Matt is incredibly involved in webmaster communication. He is active on his blog, he publishes daily videos over here, writes at the Google Webmaster Blog and lives at conferences all year round.

Speaking of which, GoogleGuy's last post at WebmasterWorld was on July 24, 2008.

We miss the Google search folks at WebmasterWorld - I believe that is where this concept mostly got its start?

There are two threads at Google Web Search Help where there are two search suggestions that Google has listened to as a possible addition to Google's advanced search.

The first thread talks about how some searchers want a NEAR operator to search for phrases on web pages, but to specific that those pages be near each other. Specifically, the searcher said:

I would like Google to be able to check for relevance based on physical proximity of words to each other - invariably when I search for a phrtase containing several key words, most results I get have at least one of the key words located far away from the others on that website & thus the result is usually not relevant to the concept I am searching for, which is described using ALL key words TOGETHER.

Googler, Jem said:

There isn't a NEAR operator in Google, so it's true that this exact kind of search isn't available. I'll kick the idea around with the team, though. In the meantime, I think the * (wildcard) operator will be helpful. It does dictate word order, but you could try a couple searches with different orders.

There is also a image search suggestion where someone wants the ability to exclude certain image filters. Currently there are filters to filter image filters for news, face, clip art, line drawings and photos, but no way to say, I want to exclude any of those specific types. For example, I want all images for a query except for images that are faces. Googler, Jem said:

Thanks for the post, Eric. There isn't actually way to exclude faces, but I like the idea -- I'm going to share this with the team :)

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

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

PubCon Vegas 2009 is next week and like we have done for the past five years, we are live blogging this event. You can see our past coverage at the 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 live blogging of PubCon, WebmasterWorld's conference.

This year, we will be live blogging the event in real time, using the live blogging tool, CoverItLive.com. We have used this tool for the past few conferences and we enjoy it, so we are sticking with it.

For this show, we have several live bloggers volunteering their time to bring to you the conference. The live bloggers include Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal from Promediacorp, Brian Ussery aka Beussery, Marty Weintraub from aimClear and Carolyn Shelby aka Cshel. Oh, I will also be doing the live blogging.

Here is our schedule:

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - Day 1
09:00a 09:45a:
Kickoff Keynote Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos covered by Barry Schwartz
10:00a 11:15a:
In-House SEO covered by Brian Ussery
Twitter Landscape - Hot Topics and Trends covered by Avi Wilensky & Sheara Goldenthal
11:30a 12:45p:
Capitalizing on Twitter & The Microblogging Revolution covered by Barry Schwartz
What Every Webmaster Should Know About Code Installation covered by Sheara Goldenthal & Avi Wilensky
1:30p 2:45p:
Top-Shelf SEO: Hot Topics and Trends covered by Barry Schwartz & Avi Wilensky
Ecommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization covered by Brian Ussery
2:55p 4:10p:
How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search? covered by Barry Schwartz
Enterprise Level Bid Management covered by Marty Weintraub
Experts on PR & Twitter covered by Brian Ussery
Hot Topics and Trends in the Affiliate Space covered by Sheara Goldenthal
4:15p 5:30p
SEO for Multimedia and Rich Media covered by Brian Ussery & Avi Wilensky

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - Day 2
10:15a 11:30a:
Local Search and Mobile Optimization covered by Sheara Goldenthal
How do Social Media & Search Intersect? covered by Barry Schwartz & Avi Wilensky
The Wonderful World Of Widgets covered by Marty Weintraub
11:30a 12:45p:
Understanding The Complex Social Marketing Playing Field covered by Brian Ussery
Viral and Video - Two Good Things That Go Great Together covered by Barry Schwartz
1:30p 2:45p:
SEO Design & Organic Site Structure covered by Brian Ussery
Effective Solutions to In-House SEO, PPC, and Campaigns covered by Carolyn Shelby
Social Media & Press Relations covered by Avi Wilensky
Lead Generation and CPA Marketing covered by Sheara Goldenthal
Domaining and Alternative Traffic covered by Barry Schwartz
2:55p 4:10p:
Mega Site SEO Sheara Goldenthal covered by Sheara Goldenthal & Avi Wilensky
Post Mortem - Banned Site Forensics covered by Barry Schwartz
How SEO Can Help Pull the Publishing Industry Back from the Brink covered by Carolyn Shelby
4:15p 5:30p:
Multivariate Testing and Conversion Tweaking covered by Brian Ussery
Hosting Issues and SEO/SEM covered by Carolyn Shelby

Thursday, November 12, 2009 - Day 3
10:15a 11:30a:
Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk covered by Sheara Goldenthal & Marty Weintraub
The Top 50 Best Website Ideas We've Ever Seen covered by Avi Wilensky
Interactive Site Review : Organic Focus covered by Barry Schwartz & Brian Ussery
11:30a 12:45p:
Real World, Low Risk, High Reward Link Building Strategies covered by Barry Schwartz & Avi Wilensky
Starting a vBulletin Community covered by Sheara Goldenthal
1:30p 2:45p:
Social Media Measurement and Signals covered by Marty Weintraub
Real World Winning Tactics for Content Creation covered by Sheara Goldenthal
2:55p 4:10p:
Search Bloggers : What's Hot and Trending? covered by Brian Ussery
Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ covered by Avi Wilensky
4:15p 5:30p:
Super Session : Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown covered by Barry Schwartz & Brian Ussery

That is our schedule, I just hope there are no last minute changes to the PubCon side of the schedule.

Every month we give you a Google specific update on what webmasters are talking about at WebmasterWorld, complied with the past month of changes we reported, specifically at Google. To see last month's report, see the October 2009 Google Webmaster report.

This month, via the WebmasterWorld, people are chatting about the following topics:

• Crawling deeper, discovering more pages and more links
• Universal results adding to, not subtracting to, the number of results on a page
• Increase in crawl rates noted on Google Webmaster Tools
• Some talk of Caffeine being rolled out by few

Here are the topics we covered here on Google over the past month (I tried to leave out many):

• Google October 2009 Toolbar PageRank Update
• Maybe a Minor Google Search Update (October 2009)?
• Google Removes PageRank Data From Webmaster Tools
• Google Labs For Webmaster Tools Launches: Fetch as Googlebot & Malware Details
• Google Names My "Deep Sitelinks" as "Forum Sitelinks"
• Google Showing Only 7 of 10 Local Results Now
• Google Adds "Is This Accurate" To Map Details on Web Search
• Google Now Indenting Two Results In Search Results
• Google Maps to Fix One Web Box Result Bug
• Google Geo Targeting Some UK Sites to France?
• Google Search Suggestions Smarter? Abbreviations Working?
• Google To Update Webmaster Tools API Verification Tag
• Blocking Google Sitelinks Can Take Two Weeks Or More
• Google Fixes Webmaster Tools Verification Issue With Google Sites
• Google Webmaster Tools Showing Sub-Sitelinks
• Google Webmaster Tools Verification Files Now Accepted With Hidden HTML
• Google's "Show More Results" Plus Box
• Why Don't I See 'Find Similar Images' in Google Yet?
• Google Soon To Allow Cross Domain Canonical Tag: This Is Big
• Google Wants To Index AJAX #!
• Google Social Search Now Live
• Google Asks For Feedback On 'Fade In' Home Page
• Google Pushes Fading Home Page Test To More, Adds Instructions
• Google's Home Page Instructs: "This Space Intentionally Left Blank"
• Google Finally Tries Page Previews

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A long, long, long time coming, Google is finally testing a page preview feature that shows snapshots of the pages on the search results before you click through. Yes, many search engines have had this feature for a while and yes, there are plugins that added this feature to Google - but Google never really had such a feature, until now.

As I reported yesterday on Search Engine Land via Google Operating System blog, the way to access this feature is to search on something and click on "show options," you can then look towards the button on the left hand side and click on "page previews," and walla!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Ronald from the Google Merchant Center (Base) team reported in a Google Merchant Center Help thread that there is a known issue with FTP uploads.

Specifically, if you are uploading new data feeds via FTP, the data won't show up in the dashboard. If your feeds are less than 20MB, then upload manually, otherwise, you are out of luck.

Ronald said:

We've noticed that a few users have reported that data feeds uploaded via FTP are not getting updated in the Google Merchant Center account dashboard. We are currently investigating this issue. In the meantime, if your data feed file size is less than 20 MB, please upload your data feeds manually. We appreciate your patience.

Forum discussion at Google Merchant Center Help.

The buzz of the day is that Microsoft unveiled a new home page design for MSN. You can see the new design at preview.msn.com. Let's compare the current and the preview:

Current:

Preview:

So much more refreshing! As Greg Sterling noted, the MSN portal drives nearly 50% of Bing queries - that is significant.

The M