November 6, 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 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.

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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

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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.