Google Optimization Archives

Back in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site, using a .com domain - Google would often not give the site any preference in the Google UK search results, unless it had a co.uk TLD. The Set Geographic Target option was suppose to give Google more clues about the site and help it rank better in the local that was specified with the tool.

A Google Groups thread leaves me to believe that it might not be the case. Susan Moskwa, an official Google representative said:

Using the tool to target example.com to the UK may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won't be the same as having example.co.uk. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).

Wait, so are you saying setting your geographic target may or may not have an impact on how your rank in a localized version of Google? Let me bold Susan's response, " Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs."

Hmm and I not understanding the response? I am not sure. I have seen dozens of posts complaining that the tool doesn't improve their ranking in the localized Google version. In fact, respected SEO, David Naylor just posted a blog post with the title, Google Webmaster Tools smoke n mirrors. In that post, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the tool and describes how it simply doesn't work for him.

Does it work for you? Please do comment with your feedback, if you have any.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A WebmasterWorld member notes that when he does a link: query for a specific domain, it shows only internal links and not external links -- but it depends on the size of the domain. This behavior is only observed on very large sites versus smaller ones. How come that's the case? Is there an issue of how this data is being gathered and is there extra weight being placed on these links?

Tedster believes that this isn't the case. He says that internal links pass PR around the site but that the internal linking structure is not weighted as heavily as external links:

Internal links do have anchor text influence, and they do pass PR around the site. But I'd say they are not treated "exactly" same as external links. How exactly their treatment differs is a bit of a Google secret, and it also seems to shift around a bit. For example, I'd say many internal links get a lot less individual weight than a single external backlink would, especially if they are in the page template (menus and footer links.)

On that note, some internal links can be more valuable than external links depending on PageRank, popularity, traffic, and more. Your PR5 homepage internal link will probably be a lot more valuable than a PR0 external link from a link farm. Do you agree?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has serious discussion on obtaining advice and tips on getting your images out of the Google SafeSearch filter. Basically, sometimes Google might label your images as being sexually explicit or not appropriate for the average searcher. If that is done, you shouldn't come up in Google's web search results or in the standard Google image search (unless someone changes their Google preferences).

What we have been noticing is that Google has been a bit more sensitive on image filtering recently. This has impacted a lot of webmasters, where they have noticed a major decline in image search traffic.

So what can you do to ensure your images don't fall within this filter?

I remember hearing, I believe during the Google Webmaster Live Chat session that if you move any images that might appear to be adult related into a different folder, Google will better be able to apply the filter only to those images. Google basically recommended to move pictures that might trigger the filter into a folder like /adult-images/ and have a different folder for /safe-images/.

Outside of that tip, there are some suggestions in the thread that include:

• Check your on-page text content and image filenames for potentially adult words, said Tedster.
• Check to make sure your outbound links are not pointing to any adult neighborhoods, recommended Tedster.
• See if your hosted on the same server as an adult site, Tedster added.
• Try using PICS labels, but I personally don't think that will work.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld member says that his .com, which has a UK IP address (and is for the United Kingdom audience), is not being recognized as a UK-specific site even though he updated Google Webmaster Tools and informed Google of the geographic location of the site. He ranks #5 in Google.com but #149 in Google.co.uk. (For reasons like this, I just wish .co.uk was the default domain in Google and that there wasn't a landrush for .com domains out there. I want tamar.com one day, and they're a UK company.) ;)

Why is this ranking occurring? There are a few reasons. While the site is UK centric, the links to the site may be from other foreign countries. The idea, then, is to get more UK links.

One forum members suspects that it may be something else, because in the past, Google has misidentified some UK IP addresses on generic .com TLDs. Furthermore, some UK hosting companies are actually not hosting in the UK.

While some forum members think that WHOIS information is at fault, that's not the case when these domains are protected by WhoisGuard or Domains by Proxy. There must be other factors in play here.

One final suggestion from a forum member comes from checking DMOZ rankings (if applicable) and ticking off the checkbox that says "this is a UK listing." Since Google uses DMOZ for data, this can't hurt at all.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting observations, which I thought would be fun to name the "Floating Four" symptom.

In short, it seems like there are some pages that happen to float into the fourth position at Google's search results and then a couple hours later disappear. This pattern has been repeating itself time and time again.

WebmasterWorld's senior member, internetheaven, first reported this. He isolated his issue from a position 6 listing, floating to a position 4 and then back to 6. But he isn't the only one who noticed this mysterious floating four behavior. Senior member, steveb, also noticed it with rankings in the position 8 or higher, floating into the fourth position. Here is steveb's post:

Over the past week or so, I've seen the #4 spot show at least two pages that have long (years) been undervalued for the term by Google. they float in and out, and then also sometimes rank #8 while other times fall to where they have been for years (the 30s for one, nowhere for the other).

The thread is very new, but maybe we will find others noticing the same thing. If so, either comment here or discuss at WebmasterWorld. Either way, I will keep watching the space for more signs of this "floating four" behavior and keep you updated on any changes.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Groups member notes that Google seems to be able to stem complex plurals as of late and accurate suffixes. For example, if you search for "accredit" or "accrediting," you will see "accreditation" highlighted as well.

Forum members also observe that Google is "capable of ranking on synonyms now" from an example posed by a user who said that Google is highlighting phrases that is are not at all tied to the on-page text.

One forum member says that Google must be pulling this data from a huge depth of information -- probably a very comprehensive dictionary, if you will.

Honestly... I'm not sure if Google uses links anymore to determine relevancy... I think they just build a huge world wide word density cloud and use that to abstract the depth of information for a search term based on the frequency it appears within a community...

JohnMu from Google adds that this may be related somewhat to personalized search results.

The discussion is interesting and definitely is a good read for those interested in semantic search.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Aaron Wall recently wrote a brilliant piece about the value of a #1 Google ranking. In his in-depth article, which is divided into 9 sections, he explains based on research and a variety of forum discussion that even small declines in ranking can break businesses. He goes on to explain the value of these rankings in financial terms, and explains how you can determine the value of your own rankings in 6 steps:

1. Establishing a baseline keyword value
2. Review Typical Click Distribution Profiles
3. Considering factors that modify click distribution
4. Tapping in the long tail
5. Improve monetization via scale
6. Take action

I won't go into the steps in depth as Aaron does an excellent job himself. I recommend that you give his incredibly comprehensive article a read and maybe even a printout :)

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty:

What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to look at the -60 penalty Google Groups thread. Does he mean to imply that some sites with the -60 penalty, that deserve a number one position, will see Sitelinks in position 60, in these cases?

Well, the thread has been gaining steam since then and Googler, JohnMu, replied in the Google Groups thread once again. His reply was not specifically about the phenomenon of seeing a Sitelink result in the 60th position, which was the topic of the thread. But it was in regards to cleaning up the site from a spam perspective, in order to improve the site's ranking for its own name.

In fact, that webmaster came to our site and commented explaining things were getting better after he has cleaned up some problems on his site.

In short, this discussion seems to imply to me that Google is admitting to the minus 60ish penalty. Which likely comes to no surprise of many SEOs out there, but it is always nice to point to evidence like this. In fact, this is not the first time a Googler replied to a minus X penalty. Google's Matt Cutts replied to a minus 60 thread a couple month back, offering advice on cleaning up the site.

But yet, in a recent poll we conducted, 25-percent of SEOs feel the minus X penalties are not link related. Whereas, 47-percent said they feel they are link related.

Forum discussion continued at Google Groups.

Forums have been buzzing and buzzing about the possibility of a competitor being able to hurt your Google ranking for the past few years now. We have covered this topic time and time again, just see here for some of the many times we covered it. In fact, we even covered a thread that listed how to penalize your competitors in Google.

I thought it would be fun to see if you guys believe it. Do you think it is possible for someone to hurt a competitors by using links as ammunition. I am not talking about hacking into someone's site. I am talking about just using external links, that a webmaster cannot control, as a method of hurting one's Google rankings. Here is the poll:

There is discussion on this topic at WebmasterWorld now. Most feel that, yes, you can hurt someone's ranking in Google with external links.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Let's say, you have a subfolder on your domain that gets hacked. The hack causes your subfolder to be penalized by Google, due to the hack. Did you know that in order to issue a request for a review from Google in Webmaster Tools, you will need to individually submit and verify that subfolder to Google Webmaster Tools - even if you have the main domain listed and verified in Webmaster Tools?

A Google Groups thread discusses just that.

Googler, Susan Moskwa, explains:

If only a certain section of your site has been affected by malware (such as the /blog subfolder), you'll need to add that section specifically to your Webmaster Tools account in order to see the malware review notice. A great way to figure out which section(s) have been affected is to do a site: search and see which URLs have the malware label in search results.

Susan went on to agree with webmasters that it would be nice to be able to handle some of these requests at the top level domain, as opposed to having to register additional sub-directories or sub-domains with Google. But, as you can imagine, it makes sense why Google currently requires the individual registration - to handle third part hosting sites like Blogger, and so on. This is what Susan said:

I agree that it would be nice to bubble this up to the top level of the site (so that you can look at the Overview page for example.com and see that there's malware on example.com/blog), and I've passed your feedback along to our team.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Yesterday I reported that GoogleBot is crawling less pages then they once were, based on a large WebmasterWorld thread. Now, I spotted a response from a Googler at a Google Groups thread with similar complaints.

This time, I decided to login to Google Webmaster Tools and check my crawl stats, which can be found under Tools and then at "Set crawl rate." I noticed the same thing for this site, as well as my other sites. Here is a graph from this site:

John, the Google representative, blamed the Google Groups thread specific example on a slow site:

Looking at your graphs, it looks like the number of pages that we're crawling has gone down because it's taking so long for us to get each page. In general, there could be any number of reasons why that could be and I think that it may make sense to diagnose it properly, as the others have suggested. Having a slow site is not only bad for search engine crawlers who can't crawl as much as they would like, it's also something your visitors won't be happy about.

But the issue seems way more wide spread then what is in that thread alone and maybe we really do need a response from Google? My traffic referrals from Google seems to be about the same as it was throughout the crawl patterns. But SEOs and webmasters become concern that slow crawl rates and mean slow traffic from that engine in the future.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Groups.

Aaron Wall wrote a very good piece on whether your website will pass a Google review and says that human reviews can potentially bring your site down. He mentions tactics you should use to avoid such reviews, including building quality content on your site, creating quality signals, and avoiding making drastic changes to your site so that you don't get flagged for review.

The discussion moves to Sphinn where most people think that their websites would not pass a quality review. Furthermore, they are not exactly sure they agree with how Google's reviewers handle sites at times. Since Aaron mentions that Marissa Mayer employs 10,000 reviewers, that's a hefty number (of individuals who likely aren't trained in any way). What's to say that these individuals don't really know what they're doing?

Best, perhaps exclusive content is the way to go. That way, you're not repeating what other people say and you're actually adding value for your visitors.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports from dozens of Webmasters that GoogleBot, Google's web crawler has not been crawling as many documents as they have in the past. Many webmasters are noticing reduction in crawl rates as much as 90-percent, relative to historical numbers.

I am not sure how wide spread the issue is, or if it is an issue at all. It might be just more efficient crawling or it may be something else.

But this can cause a lot of concern for SEOs and webmasters. Here are some quotes on that concern:

Almost had heart attack when I saw the graph drop off to nothing.

Those three days starting 4/22 had me tearing my hair out.

Again, I don't know yet if it was a Google issue or just new behavior that should be expected from GoogleBot. Maybe a Google rep will chime in via the comments. But if you see a slow down in crawling from GoogleBot, I would not worry just yet.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Now that Google admitted to crawling JavaScript and forms SEOs and Webmasters need to be aware of how to manage even more duplicate content issues.

In the past, a good strategy was to build out filter pages (filter by color, size, price, etc.) using JavaScript pull down menus. Google would typically stay away from such forms and you would not necessarily have to worry about Google seeing the same content filtered or sorted by color, price, size and so on.

But now with Google crawling JavaScript and forms, Webmasters need to take an extra step towards preventing Google from crawling and indexing such content. Why? Duplicate content.

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on this topic and offers tips on what to do, to help you with this problem. Some of the advice includes:

• Include the duplicate content in an external Js, assign it to variables, and do innerHTML to some divs.
• Use XmlHTTPRequest (GET) to retrieve the data in XML format and then put it into the page.
• Use an Ajax POST and retrieve the XML content with this.
• Use robots.txt to block specific files and/or page naming conventions.

There are many ways to tackle the issue, but using JavaScript alone is no longer the best answer.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I am seeing reports from across the SEO forums that Google has updated or begun the update of the PageRank score found within the Google Toolbar.

We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums - all discussing the recent PageRank update that began yesterday some time.

The last time Google updated toolbar PageRank was in late February. Google did recently update the Directory PageRank scores earlier this month. You can see some history on these recent PageRank updates over here.

What this all means for your Google rankings? Not much. Typically, a Google Toolbar PageRank update will have zero direct impact on one's ranking in Google. As Google has said, time and time again, the toolbar PageRank scores are older exports and do not resemble the PageRank score Google uses internally, at the time of ranking your pages in Google.

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

WebmasterWorld members are talking about receiving Google Sitelinks, and overall, most forum members who are impacted this way are obviously happy about the expanded link opportunities. Some are a bit afraid that their sitelinks may drop off (as a few members have observed).

Others are noticing that the "algo broke." There's no specific information into how the algorithm broke but some note changes.

I had them a while now but they changed radically about a week ago. Previously, they were showing country specific subdirectories on my static content... now they only show links to country sub forums on my forum. I guess that means the algo thinks my forum has grown and is more important than the static content. Fine by me, I guess.

Moderator jdMorgan notes that Google Webmaster Tools lets you now exclude Sitelinks that you don't want. Simply go to Google Webmaster Tools, click to Links > SiteLinks, select the sitelink that you don't like, and click the "Block" link to the right of it.

Tedster notes the following changes when sitelinks were implemented:

One of my clients had a sitelink that pointed to a very obscurre page - they requested a deletion and it happened with no trouble. But that particular issue highlighted a problem with their entire "mouseover" menu system - the same menu label appeared in three different places! That one little strange sitelink has now generated a major project to re-structure their entire information architecture.

Another client has sitelinks for a single generic keyword. That's a very startling event, since there are 16 million results currently reported, and the keyword triggers many Adwords plus a Google Shopping OneBox at the top of the SERP. In other words, there are serious competitors who must be furious about those sitelinks.

In other words, these are "early bugs," as he notes.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A search for flight results in the syntax of flight from A to B, i.e. fly jfk to sjc returns a Google OneBox result, that by default, links to Expedia but offers links to other travel search engines including CheapTickets, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity.

This is really nothing new, in fact, we wrote about it back in 2006, but a new WebmasterWorld thread is now wondering if Google has a financial agreement with any of these travel search engines, maybe an affiliate agreement?

Besides for Google not labeling the results as paid, nor stringing them through an AdWords URL, it is pretty hard to assume they are paid. The redirect URLs do go through a few parameters that may imply some type of fee structure, as Receptional Andy implies:

• GoogleAirTest
• googleFlightsLink
• fexp [flights experiment?]
• PLGOOGLECPC [cost per click?]

Should Google clarify if there is any payment going back and forth here. To me, I think it is an unpaid extension of Google's Travel Information OneBox result.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld member asks if there's any penalty for adding H2 text (4 words) for the search engines because his logo is displayed in an image.

The answer seems unclear. Tedster responds that he's asked Google twice about this -- one said that it can get a spam penalty and the other said it was perfectly fine if it was not keyword stuffing and was used only for accessibility.

In other words, we'll need someone from Google to let us know what the real answer is. :)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

I would consider this Google Groups thread a "gem thread," since you don't always see a thread at this level - it is precious. A Googler, Wysz, discussed in detail four methods of hiding content and how Google may interpret each method.

JavaScript-Only Navigation: Wysz explains that this tactic does not fool or confuse search engines, so it likely won't hurt you in your rankings but from an "accessibility perspective," he says it is "not desirable." Wysz then goes on to answer specific questions posed by a webmaster, which you may gain some clues from.

CSS-Enhanced Navigation: Seems like Google and Wysz both love this method. Wysz said, as long as you do not have "intent to deceive search engines," then you should be fine. On the accessibility front, it is a win-win, "since it degrades gracefully as JavaScript and CSS support are removed," Wysz explains. Wysz adds, "Google should be able to follow these links and rank your pages normally."

Hidden Links via Positioning/Color, for Design/Accessibility: Wysz explains that this method can bring you "dangerously close to a grey area." The example he gives is that if you use the word "SkipToContent," which "isn't likely to be interpreted by anyone as an attempt at deception", said Wysz. He then adds, and this is important, "unless the term "SkipToContent" becomes a highly competitive keyword." Wysz does go on record saying, "If implemented in a non-deceptive manner, these aids should not cause a problem." But that leaves it up to Google to decide and intent is not always easy to judge. So, try not to use this method, if possible.

Hidden Links with No Mention of Accessibility or User Value: I think I will just quote Wysz here, cause he said it best. :)

I'm going to assume that these links are only intended for bots to see as attempt to deceive search engines. That's probably not an assumption you want a Googler to make. When making this judgement on your own, just ask yourself this question: "Is all of this text here for the user?" If you want to make Google (and your users) happy, the answer should always be "Yes."

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A Google Groups thread has discussion about one webmaster that sees Sitelinks for his site in position 60. The search is for vacation realty and in the 60th position. While, I do not see the Sitelinks at that position, the webmaster does and provided a screen shot:

So there is really no doubt that this webmaster is seeing this on his computer. The question is, why aren't any of us? Typically, I wouldn't report something like this, but it is very unusual, so I wanted to draw more eyes to it.

What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to look at the -60 penalty Google Groups thread. Does he mean to imply that some sites with the -60 penalty, that deserve a number one position, will see Sitelinks in position 60, in these cases?

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

WebmasterWorld moderator posted a detailed thread at WebmasterWorld claiming that he feels the proxy hijacks that Google has suffered from in 2007, and was getting better towards the end of 2007 seems to be 100% cleaned up now.

IncrediBill concluded:

Therefore, based on all of the evidence presented, I'm drawing a conclusion that Google Proxy Hijacking may be a thing of the past and no longer a clear and present danger to webmasters.

I think this is no longer a problem and welcome anyone to sticky me if they think they're still seeing proxy hijacking in order to review the situation in details.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, agreed:

From what I have seen recently, Google does seem to have a handle on the problem now. Haven't stumbled over any proxy urls for a few weeks at least.

I personally have not seen any recent complaints that conveyed such a proxy hijack issue in Google. So maybe it is true. Maybe Google has fixed the proxy hijack issue that plagued them throughout 2007 and parts of 2006.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if PageRank sculpting, be it through the nofollow attribute, JavaScript or robots.txt file, can it penalize you in Google? Will Google ever look at that to penalize your site? And so on.

I am 99% sure Matt Cutts of Google said you will not be penalized for using the nofollow attribute to flow your internal PageRank, as you see fit. We have some more conversation on quotes from Matt on that over here.

But will it ever raise a red flag? I would be lying if I said no. I would think it could be used as a measure to see which sites are overly optimized for search engines. Heck, what normal webmaster would nofollow their internal links? Most webmasters have no idea what a nofollow attribute is, let alone use it for internal links.

So to say it will never raise a red flag and possibly lead to Google reviewing your site and then penalizing it for reasons outside of the realm of PR Sculpting, is not possible to say. In my mind, it seems like a natural step for some Googlers to look for, when bored.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Note: This post was written last week and scheduled to go live on April 21st.

Googler, JohnMu, has some basic linking advice in a Google Groups thread. In short, John explains that logic behind who you should or should not link to. I'll quote John:

In general, if you can provide relevant links for users of your site, feel free to link to them. That's how the web works :-), even if those links partially come from sites that you also own or work on.

That said, if those links are not relevant to the site, it's generally safe to say that they will not provide any significant value to your users, even if the sites you're linking to happen to be owned, made or run by the same owner. If you own or have made a group of fairly unrelated sites, it might be best to keep them on a portfolio page.

In general, thinking about where and how you would link to these sites will provide a good guideline. Would you want to keep this link visible in your main content? Or would you prefer to keep it in 5pt light-grey on white text on the bottom of your pages?

Did we learn anything new from this? Not most of you, but for our new readers or those searching for "advice on linking out," this article may come in handy.

If you have more questions, join the thread at Google Groups.

Note: This article was written last week and scheduled to be published automatically on Monday, April 21st.

There seems to be a major bug in Google Webmaster Tools where Google is telling virtually all webmasters that their sites are not indexed in Google. For example, I am personally getting the following message for all my sites:

Yes, that reads:

No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index. Indexing can take time. You may find it helpful to review our information for webmasters and webmaster guidelines.

Hmm, but this site is indexed in Google:

So, I would not worry, it just seems to be a display issue in Google Webmaster Tools. As you can imagine, there is a lot of forum noise about the issue.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, HighRankings Forum and Google Groups.

Google has finally written a formal post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Best practices when moving your site. It honestly is a nice place to send a client or webmaster when the question comes up. Does it give any of us more information then we already know? Not really, but it is nice to know that what we know and practice is confirmed by Google.

We have covered this topic over and over again, here are some of the articles I found at the Search Engine Roundtable (I am sure there are more than what I listed):

• Want To Switch to a New Domain? 301 Redirects vs. 302 Redirects
• Moving From Old To New Domains: What To Expect In Terms Of Google Traffic
• Moving Site to a New IP: How to Prepare
• How to Launch a New Website With (and Without) SEO in Mind
• Don't Let Your New Domain Hurt Your SEO
• Changing Domain Name Ownership Whois Information & Google Search Ranking Impact

What I really want to see from Google is what we proposed back in 2006, the Google Certified Domain Change, that is something I think should be instituted already.

Anyway, it is nice to see this article from Google. But it is never enough, is it? We would love a tool in Webmaster Tools that aids the process, specifically for moving to a new domain.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

It looks like Google Sitelinks have had a update, and now mine look a lot better than they were previously.

Here are my new sitelinks:

Whereas before during the March update that added sitelinks to my domain just didn't look as clean:

(Matt, if you had anything to do with this, thanks.) :)

Additionally, new sites are reporting that they now have sitelinks.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

I'll be honest, I keep watching the WebmasterWorld thread discussing the April 2008 Google update, code named Update Dewey.

The latest thing that I noticed were recent reports from very senior members saying that Google is shuffling around the results, in a major way, at Google UK. Here are two posts I isolated from the past 24 hours specific to Google UK and this update:

Oooo! (too effeminate?) Big changes on Google.co.uk ... big, awful changes ... if you've got a bunch of paid links looks like their about to pay off. Top spots in lots of industries have been overtaken by paid link buyers, and not subtle paid link buying either! 2,000 backlinks from just 2 sites with a paid sponsored links section in the bottom right for example.

There's a significant change in the UK algo today. For our top target term the site that recently bought it's way to the top and was rewarded with a site link listing because it has links out to sites that pay it affiliate fees has dropped to #2 and of course lost it's site links. The new #1 has dropped in from nowhere but probably should really be at #1 if it had someone doing at least basic SEO.

In fact, there is a stand alone thread named No.3 in every Google tld except our own - .co.uk at WebmasterWorld, that digs into one issue. The senior WebmasterWorld member says that his UK based site ranks number three in all Google sites except for Google UK, where it ranks 256. Weird, don't you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

You can now enter any category that you feel is best for your company in the category section of your Google Local Business Center listing. In the past, you had to select a specific category that was in Google's database. Now, if the business category is not listed in the database, no worries - you can still enter it.

For example, "web software" is not an available Google Business Local category. But I added it below and clicked "next" with no problem.

I discovered this new feature via a Google Maps Guide post at Google Groups, where Google Maps Guide Jen said:

Up until a few weeks ago it was true that we couldn't create new categories.

However, thanks to your many request, and to our Local Business Center team, you can now enter free form categories for your business in your Local Business Center account.

I believe the category you set in the Google Local Business Center is extremely important in ranking well for local specific results in Google Local and Google Web Search, when universal search kicks in.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

iProspect has released findings of a blended search results study that shows that user behavior is being impacted by search results. According to the findings, users are more likely to click on the blended results (news story, video, or image) than one of the ~10 actual links themselves. Search Engine Watch provides a summary of the findings and concludes that a lot of companies are still not taking advantage of blended search. However, perhaps you now should.

According to the data provided, 36% of users recall clicking on a news item, 31% recall clicking on an image, 17% recall clicking on video, 25% don't remember what they were doing after they completed the search, and only 19% say they clicked on a "regular" search result. The numbers are substantial and they speak for themselves. Blended search is here to stay and you need to evolve or die out.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

We should have seen this coming, based on the number of reports that Google was submitting GET forms. But often, it is hard to validate those types of reports, due to people spoofing Googlebot and similar tactics. In any event, Google now admits to Crawling through HTML forms. Here are some things to know about this announcement in bullet form:

• For select menus, check boxes, and radio buttons on the form, Google will choose from among the values of the HTML.
• After gaining access to content pass the form, Google may or may not index that content
• You can block Googlebot from crawling your forms by excluding them in your robots.txt file
• Googlebot will only attempt to crawl GET forms
• Googlebot tries to avoid forms requesting userids, login, passwords, contact information and so on
• This should not impact PageRank

Matt Cutts of Google explains how this meets a need of so many webmasters that are clueless to SEO. In fact, from making the web more accessible, this new crawling technique rocks. But for SEOs and webmasters who want to block Google from accessing content, it will require some change on their part. I.e. they will have to restructure some of their sites to block Googlebot from crawling their forms.

The forum reaction is very mixed. We have threads at Sphinn, DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Pros: Google can crawl places they haven't and index more of your content, which gives you more visibility.
Cons: Pages you do not want indexed, might require you do more work to block them.

The big joke in WebmasterWorld is that Googlebot now has a credit card. For example, if it can submit forms, maybe Googlebot will start messing around with conversions. Obviously, it won't place orders but what about submit a simple form that you consider to be a conversion (i.e. like user agreements or more)? In fact, I found GoogleBot filling out this Google Checkout form to buy itself some WD40 (kidding of course):

But you get the point.

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

Are you afraid of changing your domain because you're afraid that you'll lose your rankings? It's a valid concern and one that a Google Groups member is quite worried about. What's the best possible way to handle domain changes without any loss of rankings?

Two Google Webmaster Central staff members, Wysz and JohnMu, explain that the best procedure is to implement a 301 redirect. In May of last year, this question was addressed on the Google Webmaster Central blog.

JohnMu explains that it's best to "redirect incrementally" instead of doing hundreds (or thousands) of redirects at once. His reason is that you should be able to check that it's working properly before continuing.

A word of caution: don't use a 302 (temporary) redirect. What that tells Google is that you're saving the old URL. John explains that this can "confuse the crawlers." Finally, he mentions that he moved a site with about 100,000 pages before he joined Google and noticed no long-term negative effects.

While all of this is helpful, you can't help but wonder if Google Webmaster Tools should give webmasters the ability to specify that they're changing domains so that Google has some awareness before (or during) the process -- and I'm certain that it would alleviate some stress that is impacting these webmasters.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.