November 3, 2009 Archives

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

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: November 3, 2009"

A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who noticed his site was spammed and he is anticipating his site to be penalized by Google, and the other search engines.

He asked if he should start early and submit a reconsideration request with Google. A reconsideration request would notify Google of the hack and spam and let them know about it as soon as possible.

So far, all the feedback is that he should not wait until he is actually penalized to submit the reconsideration request. Yes, I know - he was not penalized yet but the belief is that he will be. And if he is not, what is the worst that can happen? This is assuming he does not have real spam on his site.

So he has to clean up the hack and the spam and then submit a reconsideration request.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A couple weeks ago, Google began helping business owners find themselves with a link in their Google Local Business Center that read "See your listing on Google Maps."

The thing is, for some, when you click on that link, it doesn't show you are listing in Google Maps. Why? Google isn't sure. But they did ask for help.

A Google Maps Help thread has Googler, Linda asking for help in finding the issue. She asked business owners to post their business listing information, if they cannot see their listings. Linda said:

If you've clicked "See your listing on Google Maps", but do not find your business on Maps, please provide us with your:

1) Business Name
2) Address

Please provide us with the information above or we will not investigate your issue.

We are aware of this issue and we hope to have a fix for this soon. Thank you for reporting.

So if you fall into this category and want this feature to work, join the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Back in April, Google began allowing AdSense category filtering of up to five categories. Now, Google announced you can filter up to 8 categories, that is three more categories.

I personally do not see the 3 additional categories to block, I can only block up to five right now. But Google did say, "you should notice this change within the next few weeks."

Google does explain how to find this category filter:

To get started with category filtering, sign in to AdSense and visit the Ad Review Center, located under the AdSense Setup tab. You can choose from the listed categories, which include religion, politics, and dating, and your selections will be applied to ads in English no matter how they're targeted.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has just updated the Business Listing Quality Guidelines for Google Maps. There are many changes to this guidelines page - in fact - it seems like it was completely revised.

So I will show you the old version and then the new version:

Old Version:

Google Maps aims to provide value for users and business owners alike. We've implemented a number of guidelines that align with these intentions. To protect users, businesses, and the integrity of our search results, we reserve the right to terminate Local Business Center access or broader Google access to individuals or businesses violating these guidelines.

These points cover the general guidelines for creating business listings through the Local Business Center, but are not an exhaustive list of policies. Some actions not specifically prohibited here may still be cause for removal from Maps. If you have any question about whether or not a tactic is deceptive, we recommend you stand on the side of caution. You may also request clarification by posting in our Maps Help Forum.

• Only enter listings for businesses that you own or are explicitly authorized to represent.
• Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
• Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers or URLs in the title along with your proper business name.
• Create only one listing for each physical location of your business. Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
• When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business. For example, a taxi company might properly categorize itself as "Airport Transportation", but it would be inaccurate to also use the category "Airport". Also, please use each category field to enter a single category. Do not list multiple categories or keywords in one field.
• Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business. For example, you should provide individual location phone numbers in place of central phone lines and the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
• Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as "click through" sites may lead to penalization.
• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business's title, address or category fields.

If you believe that another business is abusing Google's quality guidelines, we encourage you to report the listing. Your reports help us to improve the overall Google Maps experience for everyone.

If you find that your listings were removed from Google Maps or you're unable to access your Local Business Center account, please file a reconsideration request. All requests are reviewed, and the decision of Google in this regard shall be final and binding. Please note that we won't necessarily respond to each individual request.

Your business information on Google Maps:

Should you have questions about how to add or how to edit your business information, please visit the Local Business Center help pages.

New Version:

Business Listings in Local Business Center must have correct information about physical, local businesses, as they appear in the real world. Google reserves the right to suspend access to Local Business Center or to other Google Services to individuals or businesses violating these guidelines.

• Only business owners or authorized representatives may claim their business listings on Google Maps.

• The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.
• Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name.
• Do not include phone numbers or URLs in the business name.

• Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist.
• PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
• Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
• Businesses that operate in a service area as opposed to a single location should not create a listing for every city they service. Service area businesses should create one listing for the central office of the business only.
• Businesses with special services, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
• The precise address for the business must be provided in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
• A property for rent is not considered a place of business. Please create one listing for the central office that processes the rentals.

• Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible. For example, you should provide an individual location phone number in place of a call center.
• Provide one URL that best identifies your individual business location.
• Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or 'refer' users to other landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business's title, address or category fields.
• Please see this page of the LBC User Guide for examples of acceptable custom attributes.

• Use a shared, business email account, if multiple users will be updating your business listing.
• If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.giraffetoys.com, a matching email address would be you@giraffetoys.com.

• Report Spam on Maps.
• Request Reinclusion if your Local Business Center account has been suspended.
• Request Verification for your bulk upload.
• Post in our Help Forum.

For more information about the Local Business Center, please visit the Local Business Center user guide.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Rob Kerry, Sphinn's administrator, announced Sphinn has finally come out of beta. Sphinn has moved off of their original software, started from scratch, improved the user experience, spam filtering and zapped most of the bugs since the launch of Sphinn 2.0 in July.

Sphinn dropped the "beta" badge from the logo:

Other changes include that moderators and administrators will more actively promote items to the home page, even before they become "hot." There is a new Sphinn paid members section which includes:

• Members-only Discussion Forum – a private Internet Marketing discussion area, closed off from the spiders, bots and outside world.
• Live Chat – don’t clutter up your Twitter feed, chat directly and instantly with other internet marketers in this private and specialist environment.
• Members Directory – Find and follow “the ones to watch” on Sphinn, with our searchable directory of Sphinn Members.
• Top Sphinners – Sort and filter our private league table of top Sphinners to add to your network.
• Member Banner – Show your support for Sphinn and the internet marketing community, with a Member’s banner displayed under your avatar.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

If your publication is included in Google News and you tried to submit a Sitemap file on Friday, you may have noticed it was rejected. Several publishers have been complaining about this in a few Google News Help threads.

The issue is that some publications are finding out they are no longer included in Google News. They are instructed to submit a Sitemap file, but when they do, they are told the Sitemap file is no good. The thing is, they never really changed their Sitemap file so they don't know what the issue is.

Inbal from the Google News team explained:

We've recently noticed that all news sitemaps which were submitted since Friday were rejected in Webmaster Tools. Our engineers were able to fix this bug and we've just resumed crawling the news sitemaps again. We apologize for the inconvenience in resubmitting your news sitemaps and appreciate your support while we work to improve Google News.

There is no estimated time for a fix, but you should be aware this is a larger issue that Google is addressing.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.