Google Search Engine Archives

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.

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.

I am a bit in shock to see Google testing yet another messaging on their simplistic fading home page. First it was just a plain and simple search box and logo, with no instructions. Then Google had to add instructions to tell people they need to press enter to conduct a search. Now, Google is taking it one step further by explaining that the page is left empty on purpose.

Here is a screen capture:

Yes, this is the type of stuff you see on standardize tests or big legal documents. Now, you see this on Google's home page.

We have some people complaining about this in the forums.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Schwarzenegger Gives California Legislature A Hidden Finger showed how a letter Schwarzenegger wrote had a hidden message. Here it is:

Creative, funny and just outstanding journalism. But not all think so.

The news made it though various publications and then hit the front page of Google News. Supposedly, I don't have a screen shot to prove it, the F bomb was on the front page of Google News. What I see now is:

However, Google did apologize for the word showing up on the front page of Google News. In a Google News Help thread, Googler Inbal said:

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

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Google has temporarily removed the time line feature from search options. The new Google search options went live in early May. We have a screen shot from even before that shows the time line feature. But it has now been removed.

Current vs Old:

Notice it is now missing, next to "Wonder Wheel." Why? Well, Google said this is only temporary.

In a Google Web Search Help thread, Googler Jaime said:

Hey there -- not to worry, the Timeline will be back soon. There was a small bug we had to work out but we'll restore this option as soon as things are ironed out (shouldn't be long).

Glad you're finding Timeline and Wonder Wheel useful!

There is currently no ETA for when it will return, it has been missing since Monday, October 26th.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: The Timeline feature is now back as of November 3rd.

Earlier this month, Google began testing a simplistic fading in home page. Some loved it, but mostly, I have seen complaints about it. It seems like Google has pushed this test home page to many more people. I have seen a spike in posts about this in the Google Web Search Help discussion area, plus a new thread at WebmasterWorld.

The new push seemed to have one minor, but significant change to the fade home page test. As the SEW blog reports, Google added instructions, informing users to "Press enter to search." Here is a screen capture:

Now, if you need instructions on how to use a simplistic design, does that mean the simplicity is simply not there?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and dozens of threads at Google Web Search Help.

It has been just about two days since Google announced they have graduated the find similar images features from labs to the main Google Image Search. But even now, I do not see it.

I see it on similar-images.googlelabs.com but not on images.google.com. I tried Safari, Firefox, logging in and out - but no luck.

The feature is really nice and fun to play with but can you get to it?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, we showed you a video demo of Google's Social Search. Well, now it is available for all to play with in google.com/experimental.

Personally, I think this can work well for my searchers. But for most of those who do not have Google Profiles set up, it likely won't add much. Google currently promises to only look at information you give to them via your Google Profile or via Gmail. For Google to know who your Twitter connections are, you need to share that information on your Google Profile. Then Google will crawl your social profiles and make a map of all your friends, and associate what they read in Google Reader, share, click on and produce with you, when you search.

Here are two videos explaining it all:

Here is a useful Google help document and Google Blog post, plus Danny's article and more commentary at Techmeme.

Of course, there are some worried that Google will go beyond their boundaries and figure out your social profile without you specifically sharing it. Google said they won't, but many don't trust Google.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

I often see threads in the various discussion forums online with people complaining that the Google search results look weird. They often complain the wrong sites come up, or they are full of ads or there are weird pop ups. The answer to these issues is often that their computers have been infected with some form of virus and/or malware.

Google has a specific FAQ page just to help people with this issue. You can find the page under the title Suspicious results and strange behavior: Strange pop-ups and other malware. If you have a similar issue, make sure to check out that page asap and take the necessary action to cleanse your computer.

As Google becomes more popular and less savvy searchers use computers and Google, more and more people get hit by these viruses. I believe this weekend had one of the higher levels of reports in the various forums, with complaints of this nature. Unsuspecting searchers, complaining that Google failed them, when in reality, their security software has failed them.

I'll share just a few of the many threads I spotted on this topic. Here are one, two, three and four threads, with different issues, but all seem to be due to malware issues.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

You heard about the Twitter news from Bing and Google but did you see the video demo from Google's Marissa Mayer on how Google will handle searches within the social network of an individual? If Google knows who your friends and family are, they can make image search, product search, web search, much more personalized.

Want to see how? Check out this video of Google's Social Search labs project that hopefully will launch in the next couple of weeks.

For many, handing over such data to Google can seriously improve the 'relevancy' of many of their search queries. But those worried about privacy should realize that for Google to get this information, you probably need to provide it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Watching the search news yesterday was pretty interesting. First, there were tons of rumors that Microsoft will be integrating Twitter data into Bing. Then the news broke on that where Bing confirmed the news. It launched, in limited form, at bing.com/twitter.

Shortly after, Google also confirmed a deal with Twitter to get their data as well and the news sites went nuts.

Yes, Twitter is licensing out the "firehose" of the tweets to search engines. Bing was doing something like this on a limited basis with Twitter in Bing search on some searches. Yahoo was/is reportedly in similar negotiations with Twitter as well.

In summary, clearly the search engines find the content within Twitter to be valuable. For more on this topic, see the stream of reports from Search Engine Land:

• Google Social Search Is Coming & More On Google-Twitter
• Live Blog: Marissa Mayer Speaking At Web 2.0
• Google & Twitter Have A Deal, Too
• Live Blog: Qi Lu Speaking At Web 2.0
• Up Close With Bing’s Twitter Search Engine
• Bing To Do Deal With Twitter, Launch Its Own Twitter Search

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Bing Community.

When Google local business listings are showing on the web search results, Google is now asking users to confirm if the business information is accurate. Even if the business listing is verified by the business owner.

Here is an example:

When you click the link, it asks you to "confirm" or "cancel."

Then when you "confirm" the listing Google thanks you.

Mike spotted this a couple days ago.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Friday we reported AVG security called some of Google's pages a security threat. Later on in the day, Googler, Jem came in to tell us they spoke with AVG who promised to resolve the issue soon.

Jem Said:

We've been informed by AVG that they've made a change that should resolve the issue. If your AVG installation is set to auto-update (which is the default), this issue should be resolved. If you've changed that setting, you may need to check for an update first.

Several hours later, Google users with the AVG software have confirmed the fix did resolve the issue on the Google search result pages.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

Google released third-quarter earnings last night and it was a very good earnings release. Overall, Google's earnings are up 7% this past quarter compared to last years Q3. They earned $5.94 billion in revenue with operating income at $2.07 billion, or 35% of revenues. Greg Sterling has more of the business news at Search Engine Land.

Pulling out two snippets from the release, we see that search marketings are more spend conscious because the cost per click went down by 6%. But to make up for it, Google saw an increase in the actual number of clicks on their ads by 14%. Here is that part of the earnings release:

Paid Clicks - Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 14% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2009.

Cost-Per-Click - Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, decreased approximately 6% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 5% over the second quarter of 2009.

GOOG, the stock, is currently up over 3% in pre-market (after hours) trading.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google Web Search Help thread has several Google users reporting that the AVG Free virus scanner is prompting security alerts on some of the Google search results pages.

Many are claiming the Google result pages with YouTube results are triggering the security threat. The AVG warning reads:

Danger: AVG Search-Shield has detected active threats on this page and has blocked access for your protection.

Several searchers reported this but I doubt there is much Google can do to fix the situation. It seems like this would be on AVG's side.

Again, it seems to come up only when YouTube or other video results would show up in the search results.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: AVG Releases Update To Fix Google Security Threat Warning.

Search for Google Ireland in Google and you will notice that Google does not return Google.ie but rather returns Google.co.nz.

Someone should send Google a memo that Ireland is not the same place as New Zealand.

Here is a picture:

Ireland is only about 12,000 miles away from New Zealand.

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

Update: This is not just Google Ireland, but also Google Egypt and other properties where Google thinks they are all New Zealand.

The Google Mobile team is calling this week, "Google Mobile Week." In celebration for the special week, Google announced in a Google Mobile Help thread that they are accepting a new set of questions for the Google Mobile team to answer on their blog.

To submit your questions or vote on existing ones, go to this page, sign in and vote and submit.

Bin from the Google Mobile team explained:

Google is doing a lot of things in mobile - a lot of products on a lot of phones - and we're sure you have some questions. Here's your chance to ask us anything you'd like to know about mobile strategy or our mobile team! You and others can then vote questions up or down. (Please continue to post your "how do I?" questions and bugs here, since we won't be answering these types of questions on the Q&A form).

You have until 11:59 PM PST on Oct 13th (that is tonight) to submit your questions. Google will answer the 5 most popular questions on the Google Mobile Blog in the near future.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

More and more people are noticing Google's new more results user interface, where it shows a plus box, instead of taking the user to a site command like search result.

You can likely reproduce the plus box yourself for a search on sitelinks. You will notice the page looks like this:

If you click on the blue link plus box that reads, "Show more results from googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com" it will expand to show you five additional results:

Then it will add the option to take you to a site command search, on a new Google search results page, if you want that.

This is something Google has been doing or testing since early August of this year. This was the old way:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The local SEMs are buzzing about how Google dropped three listings from the local space in the Google search results. Now, instead of showing the "ten pack" of ten local search results pulled from Google Maps on the Google web search results, Google is now showing the "seven pack." Yes, instead of A through J, we are getting A through G results.

Here is what I see now for a local result for the query [web design]:

Here is what I saw a few months ago:

We have threads on the topic at Google Maps Help, Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Wired reports that an article they published publicly embarrassed Google about a bug with Google Groups search that has been an issue for over a year now, that was fixed in a matter of a day, after Wired wrote about it.

Wired wrote:

Google has pulled its Google Groups development team out of the basement broom closet and begun patching up its long-broken Usenet library, in response to our story Wednesday highlighting the company's neglect of the 700 million post archive.

700 million lost posts in the archive! Wow! Google's response:

“It turns out there was a bug, a specific bug, that affected search within a specific group,” Google spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou told wired.com late Wednesday. “That bug is something we’re working on fixing, and I think that will be fixed by tomorrow. Thanks for writing this, because that’s how we discovered this specific bug.”

The thing is, as Tedster points out in a WebmasterWorld thread that Slashdot wrote about this in November 2008. But Google did not fix it then.

In any event, Google Groups has now 700 million more posts of content in the system. It only took a day of work and a year of time for Google to make happen.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google recently announced a feature that they have implemented just a couple weeks ago in the search results named "Quick View." Quick View basically shows you a PDF in a web based PDF viewer on Google. It takes the PDF from the host, typically the owner of the PDF, and does all the conversion on the Google's server.

The neat part is that this feature gives you OCR for virtually all of the languages Google has translation for. I'll get to that in a bit, first let me show you a basic example of how Quick View works and then I'll show you the translation OCR.

A search for [w4] returns the IRS's web site with the PDF of a W-4 form.

When you click on the Quick View link in the search results, you get this page:

Yes, a neat view of the PDF, the ability to download the file, print it or convert it to plain html. A WebmasterWorld thread has webmasters who are not happy about this because this bypasses your site and you get no traffic benefit from this. Tedster explains:

So it looks like one more way that Google Search can distribute a site's content without requiring a direct visit to the site itself - and in this case, it's an entire document, not just a snippet. And the intention is to roll this out for other file format types, too.

To make things even worse, from a copyright standpoint is the OCR technology. I can upload a book, in almost any language, let Google index it as a PDF and then convert it to plain HTML and copy and paste from there.

For example, this hebrew book in Quick View looks like this:

If you click the "Plain HTML" link you are taken here where Google has OCRed the text into copy and paste friendly Hebrew. Pretty neat! Well, to some, not to those that might own the copyright on this text.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

For the first time in my six plus years of reporting on search forums, I spotted a thread where Google has made a change to a specific query based on a thread. Of course, they make changes for porn or inappropriate search results, but never for standard issues with sites missing or pages missing from the results.

That has changed with a Google Web Search Help where one user reported that his search for [site:whitehouse.gov information literacy awareness month] did not originally return this page on the White House site. He went on to say that Bing found it, but Google did not.

Google replied a day later saying:

Good news, Janran. We made a slight change this morning and now President Obama's proclamation should show up at the top if you search for it. Thanks again for letting us know. :)

Google made a "slight change" to make President Obama's proclamation "show up at the top" of the search results? Did they just say that? Yes they did.

Forum discussion Google Web Search Help.

Update: See Matt Cutts of Google's comments below where he said this was being "fixed" even before the post and this was not a fix for a "specific query" but for many queries.

If you visit the Google home page today, you may see Google's logo has been taken over by a bunch of stripes. Those stripes are actually a bar code, and when you convert the bar code to english, guess what it means? You got it! It means Google.

Here is a picture of it:

There is a lot of discussion and questions around this logo. We have threads at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, a few at Google Web Search Help, and Google Webmaster Help.

Here are some of my favorite comments from the thread on the logo:

Folks really disliking it:

i don’t like barcode sign today ! i don’t feel Google any more wit this signature ...please change it and use shiny colourful Google :)

It is a bug!

My Google Icon has turned into a BAR CODE for some unknown reason. What has happened and how to correct.

Out of nowhere today, 7 OCT 09, the Google logo shows up as a barcode on the homepage. Any fixes?

Too funny.

Truth be told, today in 1952, the US Patent Office issued a patent for the bar code. You can see the patent over here.

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

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Google is testing a new home page that fades in. Seriously, it fades in, here is a video:

Personally, I don't get it - I don't see the value in this at all. I tried to email Google for a statement, but did not get a response yet. I did spot a thread by Googler Jaime hinting at this, at Google Web Search Help. He said:

Many of you may be familiar with Google experiments, you may even have been included in one in the past. We're constantly testing tweaks -- both large and small -- to various aspects of Web Search, from its look and feel to new features to "under-the-hood" adjustments we think may improve your Search experience. Well, beginning today we're running experiments with our homepage itself, and some of you may now be seeing (or will soon see) some changes to the design and behavior of Google.com.

Why would Google do this? How does this actually help the user?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: Here is a statement from Google on this:

At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on Google sites all over the world. Right now, we are running a small experiment of a new Google homepage design that shows links when a user mouses over the screen. This is just a test and a way for us see whether our users will celebrate an even simpler search interface. More information about how Google runs experiments can be found here.

Google announced they have added some search refinements to the various Google search properties. The additions include past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news. To see them yourself, do a search on Google and then click "Show options" at the top.

Danny Sullivan goes through these changes in detail over here, so I won't bother with that.

Some Google users are a bit taken back and confused by the changes. One frequent Google News searcher was confused in a Google News Help thread as to where certain features were, when in reality, they were just moved. But overall, I think the additional filters and refinements are useful.

Jaime at Google posted a thread at the Google Web Search Help thread asking for comments and feedback on these new changes.

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

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

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

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

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

The best way to explain this is a quick demo:

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

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Here is a picture:

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

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

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

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

Google's Inbal replied to their concerns, explaining:

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

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

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

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

Forum discussion at Google News Help Forums.

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

Select at least 1 category that matches suggestions as you type

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

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

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

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

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

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

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

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

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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

Old Google:

New Google:

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

Robert Charlton has some measurements:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ones listed so far include:

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

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

* [whois www.rustybrick.com]:

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

What is your favorite search feature?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

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

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

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

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

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

Tedster, the admin at WebmasterWorld said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

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

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

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

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

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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

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

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

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

<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

However, if you don't want a section of your webpage to be translated, just add "class=notranslate" to any HTML element to prevent that element from being translated.

The question asked in the Google Webmaster Help is that he wants to allow Google to offer this but only for certain languages. For example, he doesn't want to allow users to translate his Spanish words into anything else, because those are product names. It would be neat to have the option of specifying what to translate into which languages, at the webmaster level - but I am not sure how many webmasters would use that feature.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

This might be clearly obvious to 99.999% of you out there, but there are some of you who don't get it. If you do not want your personal information found in Google, then don't post that information on the Internet. I cannot tell you how many times I see people complaining in the various forums, as well in the comments here, that they do not want Google to list such information about them in the search results.

The issue is, they go ahead and list out their social security numbers, ID numbers and other sensitive information in the post itself. Case in point, a Google Web Search Help thread has one such person listing his identity card number in the forums, asking Google to remove that number from their search results. Guess what, now that ID number is not just listed on a geocities domain, but now on a google domain. Yea, good going!

Anyway, if you are in a jam and need content removed from Google, follow the instructions here and hopefully you will be okay. But do not, I repeat, do not, list what you want removed in a public forum.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Over a week ago, a WebmasterWorld thread reported that Google was testing a new form of Sitelinks. These sitelinks didn't link to different URLs, but instead, linked to the same URL but with anchors (i.e. # signs at the end of the URL, which drop you down to a section on the same web page).

I skipped past the thread, not understanding it as a new feature, until I spotted a post from Google Operating System blog detailing the difference.

For example, a search for [charles darwin] shows a Wikipedia listing with those special sitelinks, here is a picture:

The links send you to, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#Religious_views which anchors you down to that section of the page.

As I noted at Search Engine Land, Yahoo has been doing this for a while with their quick links.

The big SEO question is, how to you get these types of sitelinks on your pages in the search results? Does adding anchor links to pages, where it makes sense, help? I assume so, but this needs to be proven.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help which shows how Google can not subtract the numbers 999999999999999 - 999999999999998. Google returns the result as 0, when Yahoo and Bing return the correct result of 1.

Google:

Yahoo:

Bing:

Why is Google returning zero as the answer to this calculation? Is there some type of geek response to this or is Google's calculator malfunctioning?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Ever notice when you do a search at Google for nfl or seo or ppc or other popular acronyms you see that Google will bold the longer version of the acronym? Yes, Google will not only bold the title and snippet for the words NFL, SEO or PPC but also for National Football League, Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click, amongst others.

Here are pictures:

This is not new, Google has been doing this for at least a year now. Yet, I thought I mention it again, since more threads on this topic of sprung up recently.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google seems to be indexing Bing search results. Take a look at this query and you will see some of the Google search results leading to Bing search results.

So I decided to check to see if Yahoo, Ask.com or even Bing themselves were doing the same. It seems like Ask.com is also doing this, but Yahoo and Bing are not indexing Bing results.

Google doesn't like to see search results in search results so this is not common to see in Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, I spotted a post in the Google Web Search Help threads from an individual who claims to be representing Rambha, a famous Indian actress. This person is looking for Google to remove a video from the Google search results that depicts Rambha as having sexual relations.

Currently, a search for rambha returns video results in the middle of the page. This is Google Universal Search in action, one of those videos shows a woman depicted to be Rambha as having relations with a man. It is hosted on Google Video, displayed on Google web results.

I reported the video, as did this person, over 24 hours ago. I was hoping it would be removed from the search results. Not because it shows Rambha in a bad light, but because it is adult content and my adult filter (SafeSearch) is set to moderate.

I am sure there are plenty of videos reported to Google every day, but videos that end up on the search results page for a search term that receives hundreds of thousands of searches per month - must have a way of being moved to the front of the line. If not, a blog post about it over here, tends to speed things along.

We do report on Google porn issues from time to time, when the details are public in a thread.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Shortly after Google announced the Caffeine preview update The Register published an article named Google File System II. The two are actually mostly unrelated, in that the caffeine update runs off the second Google File System, like Microsoft Word runs off Windows.

But Matt Cutts confirmed in a recent interview with The Register that Google's Caffeine infrastructure, does indeed run off the second Google File System. The article said, "Matt Cutts confirms that the company's new Caffeine search infrastructure is built atop a complete overhaul of the company's custom-built Google File System."

"There are a lot of technologies that are under the hood within Caffeine, and one of the things that Caffeine relies on is next-generation storage," he says. "Caffeine certainly does make use of the so-called GFS2."

How does this impact SEOs? Well, honestly, it doesn't. Caffeine will have an impact, but it running on GFSII really doesn't matter technically to SEOs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In the past, once you published a story and Google News indexed it, that was it - Google News would keep the story as is. That caused issues in the past for stories that needed to be updated, but yet reflected the wrong information in Google News. So what you would have are stories that are incorrect on Google News and corrected on the publication source.

Yes, even I have made typos in headlines and such, and Google News had the embarrassing typos forever, even though I updated the story minutes later in my publishing system.

This seems to have now changed.

A Google News Help thread has confirmed reports from Google's Inbal that Google News now reindexes and crawls news sources for the latest version if those updates are posted within a "short period of time." So if you make a mistake in your publication, you now have a short window of opportunity to update the article, in order to make sure Google News updates your mistake in their index.

How long exactly? One member said he thinks it is within 12 hours, but Google has not confirmed that number.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Oliver Fisher from the Google Anti-Malware team has posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help announcing that the team is now fielding questions. This team specifically works on making sure the Google search results are safe from malware and viruses and often impacts many webmasters.

To ask your questions, you need to use Google Moderator and either submit questions and/or vote on other questions. The Google Anti-Malware team will typically pick the most voted for questions to answer first.

Oliver from Google said:

The Google Anti-Malware engineering team knows you have many questions related to our scanning and flagging of infected sites, some with short and simple answers and some with more complex answers. The short-answer questions are already -- we hope -- adequately handled on the Webmaster Forums; now we want to do a better job at answering the more complex questions.

To this end, we have created a Google Moderator page for you to submit your questions, and to vote on other webmasters' questions. In two weeks (on Friday the 28th of August), we will close the page and select a few of the top-rated questions. Over the course of the next several weeks, we will do our best to answer each of these in a write-up, to be published here and to the Webmaster Malware Forum.

We hope to repeat this exercise (with a fresh Moderator page) in the fall to give you the opportunity to ask more questions.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about Google's anti-malware process and have your questions answered.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Tutor listed five tools that help you compare the Google Caffeine index to the current Google index. I figured I would list six here:

• facesaerch.com/caffeine/
• Google Caffeine Bookmarklet
• Plug Caffeine into FireFox Search Bar
• Caffeine Ranking Checker
• cartercole.com/googlevsgoogle.html
• comparecaffeine.com/

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

If you visit the Google home page, you will see a special doodle representing the Perseid meteor shower. The special meteor shower is expected to pass by earth today with about a 100 meteors per hour flying by and burning up in Earth's atmosphere. Very cool and exciting, which is why Google has a Perseids doodle for the special day.

Here is the Perseids Google Doodle:

Wikipedia explains the nature of such a shower:

The Perseids (pronounced /per-si-dis) are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are so called because the point they appear to come from, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. The stream in this case is called the Perseid cloud and it stretches along the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun.

I am a bit surprised to see Microsoft's Bing not doing something special with their home page today. Perhaps we will see a Perseids Meteor Shower background later today?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

Over the weekend, I saw dozens of threads and posts in the Google Web Search help forum with complaints that these users have been getting "We're Sorry" pages from Google. Here is an example of what that page may look like:

The last time there was a wide spread issue with this was in February of this year. But this time, it is also impacting iGoogle, Blogger and not just Google search results pages. Here is a listing of some, not all, of the threads complaining about the issue:

• I'm Not a Spamming Computer
• we're sorry page
• getting a sorry message
• "We're Sorry" error when accessing my blog.
• Why do I keep getting the error message?
• ANNOYING SORRY PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TROUBLE CONNECTING TO BLOGGER????
• Trouble connecting: 'We're Sorry' page
• ERROR TROUBLE CONNECTING SORRY PAGE
• ANNOYING SORRY PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TROUBLE CONNECTING!!!!!!
• 403 "we're sorry" error when I'm not even using Google
• Can't get into google - "automated software!?"

The largest single thread on this has several posts, but there are many small posts on this topic. I believe the issue is now resolved, even though I did not see a response from Google on the issue.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search.

Googler, Christine, has confirmed a bug where the Google Custom Search Engine stopped working properly on the popular CMS package, Drupal. The bug has been confirmed to be resolved in a Google Custom Search Help discussion forum thread.

Christine said:

Thanks for the heads up about the issues with Drupal sites and CSEs, and for all the details you provided about this. Your CSEs should now be showing results rather than your search engine homepage in your page's iframe.

We've reverted the change that caused the incompatibility with the "query" parameter, and we'll try to ensure that these parameters don't cause problems in the future.

I am personally a fan of the Google CSE, I use it on this blog, my personal blog and many of my web sites. There are limitations, i.e. not real-time results - but on many blogs, the results are close to real-time.

Drupal is a very popular CMS, so I am glad this bug is now resolved.

Forum discussion at Google Custom Search Help.

A couple days ago, many users started complaining that Google Images's next button didn't work. It basically showed the searchers the first page results, even though they clicked on the next page button.

There were literally dozens of complaints about this in the forums. Google finally tracked it down and posted in one of the Google Web Search Help threads that it has been fixed.

Jaime from Google said:

As it turns out, this was indeed a problem on our end. We have a fix and I believe it should be completely rolled out by now. If you're still having this problem, try clearing your cahce once more. If it's not cleared up after that, let me know.

Glad it is fixed, because people were beginning to think they were going mad.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Earlier this year, we reported how the colorblind were blind to Google Maps traffic because many of them could not distinguish between the various shades of colors.

It has come to my attention from a Googler named Dave via the Google Maps Help forums that Google has made changes to some of the colors to help the colorblind distinguish between the various traffic colors.

Google said:

We recently (last couple of weeks) made a change that was significantly driven by requests in this forum, to make the red (second-slowest level) a bit darker so it could better be distinguished from the green.

Dave from Google added that Google Maps is also "looking into other solutions."

Want to see the difference?

Before shot:

After shot:

This is pretty cool of Google to try to help the colorblind.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Friday, Google started showing a new "show more results from" link in the Google search results listings. The new link is an AJAX like link that dynamically expands the page to show you five more listings from that site. In the past, clicking on the link would take you to a site command flavored search page, thus sending a new query to Google and taking you to a new page.

Here are pictures of the new way Google is handling this:

I have a picture of the old way from a 2005 post:

The new way is much faster for the searcher, but might lead to less queries per user for Google (a stat thing), unless Google is tracking the click on the "more" link as a query, but would comScore and HitWise consider it a new query?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google Web Search Help thread reports some users seeing Google Image Search adding a left bar with added search options. Google Operating System posted screen shots of this in action, so I thought I share them here.

All the options displayed on the left are available image search refinements in the advanced search box or by changing the URL parameters. Google Operating System named this the "Toolbelt for Google Image Search."

I personally tried to replicate this on both Safari and Firefox for Mac and IE, Firefox and Chrome on a PC, without any luck.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Last night, Google sold off their 5% stake in AOL for $283 billion. Google acquired that 5% stake in 2005 for $1 billion. The news of the sale was pretty big, showing that AOL was valued at less than $5.66 billion and Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive, now CEO of AOL, will earn at least $1 million a year in salary and up to $4 million a year in bonuses, not including stock options.

AOL is really trying to change their perception and gain some traction this year, under the wings of Tim Armstrong. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

For more details on the deal, see Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

We have covered the topic of someone else's Google web history showing up as yours. Including one parent catching her son searching for pornography. But what if you find your web history showing searches you did not do personally and you are convinced no one has access to your computer.

There are two possibilities, the first we covered as Google might have a bug where your history is merged with another Google user. The second is discussed in a new Google Web Search Help thread.

There, Googler, Jimmy Deheeger said that in some cases, someone may be watching you with keylogging software. The keylogging software can watch you as you type in your passwords and then these evil people might login as you and conduct searches that make you unhappy. Why would a person spend the time to use keylogging software, simply to run pornographic queries on someone else's account makes little sense to me, but Google suggests it as a possibility. I mean, the person can easily sign out and no web history would be tracked. I don't get it.

In any event, Google offers this up as a possible reason why web history that is not yours would show up in your Google account.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

About a week ago, we reported the issues Google News was having with some RSS feeds. At that time, Google dropped the RSS links from the main Google News search pages.

The question is why did they drop the feature? Well, the feature is still there, but they removed the obvious access to that RSS link. Still, why? Well, according to a Google News Help thread, a top contributor said:

The feed link was removed on all versions of Google News, much likely because people started to abuse the feed usage rights. Your page looks all right, though.

Inbal, a Google News representative, confirmed the answer. So was the link removed do to spammers abusing the feed? I am not sure.

In any event, the feature is still there. You can access it two ways:

(1) Go to the bottom of the news search result page and click on the email alert link:

Then select "Feed" from the drop down menu:

(2) Most modern browsers have RSS discovery built in, and you should see an RSS icon in the top right of the URL box. Clicking on it, should give you the RSS feed URL:

Firefox:

Safari:

Forum discussion at Google News Help & Google Web Search Help.

Update: Inbal updated the thread to address my question as to why it was removed. It was not a spam thing, but a usability thing.

Please be assured we've removed the RSS feed link *not* in response to usage abuse nor to spam, but it's part of improving our User Interface and your user experience with Google News.

Honestly, if it is a user interface experience thing, then they should add it back.

Last night, Google (GOOG) announced earnings and they "met" expectations, because the revenues were up 3%. There is a lot of buzz about this on Techmeme, but to read more about the earnings and the conference call about the earnings, see Greg's notes at Search Engine Land, there are some really nice tidbits in there.

Shortly after, news is leaking out that Yahoo and Microsoft are back at the table and this time, they are really really close to finalizing a deal. Of course these rumors and discussions have been going on for a really long time and many of you are tired of hearing about it. I for one, would like not to mention it until it actually happens, which I hope is soon.

Meanwhile, the biggest buzz over the past 12 hours is that TechCrunch posted stolen internal memos about Twitter's business strategy, that involved their discussions with Google, Microsoft, future growth plans and so much more. Matt McGee posted at Search Engine Land how these correspondence impact the search industry, so you can read those details there. The situation is just a sad one, and I believe law suits will follow.

That is the past 12 hours in search business news, it has been pretty busy.

Forum discussion on the GOOG news at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that now Google is rolling out the left hand navigation design to iGoogle users in the UK and France.

I believe the US had the new, left hand navigation for a while now. Many users miss the old tabs at the top and we discussed a way to bring the top tabs back. So, if you are in the UK or France and you miss the old tabs, check out that article, I hope it still works. mooredc54, in the thread, discusses other methods to get the old tabs back.

Old:

New:

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I am pretty fascinated with how Google News works and how the workflow runs there. I recently spotted a thread at the Google News Help forum which shows how not only does Google review publications periodically, but before removing publications, they may email those publications.

One site owner was upset his site no longer showed up in Google News. Inbal, a Googler, informed this site owner that after receiving some complaints from Google News users, the site was reviewed and removed. Inbal said:

The reason why we stopped crawling your content since July is that we periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users. When we reviewed your site we found that we can no longer include it in Google News at this time.

We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information. When we reviewed your site we weren't able to find this evidence of an organization.

What was more interesting was that Inbal said they do try to contact the publication before removing it, to get more facts about the complaints. Inbal said:

Please be assured that we tried to contact Eritrea Daily via email before removing it from Google News to offer the necessary remedy, however, alas, our emails bounced back, and due to some user complaints about no evidence for an organization behind the source we took this action, as we weren't able to find multiple writers and editors and accessible contact information on your site.

In this case, the publication was restored and placed back in Google News after being removed for a couple weeks. But learning about this process, I admit, does fascinate me a bit.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

For several weeks, Google News has been tinkering with their RSS feeds. We have a thread at Google News Help where Googler, Inbal, said it should be fixed in a week or so, well, it has been a week.

We have a new Google News Help thread with an example of foreign language searches via RSS not working. Let me show you.

A Google News search for [фармацевтический] which means pharmaceutical returns several results on the web version but when I flip to the RSS version, I get no results. Here is a picture of the RSS version using Safari's RSS reader:

I am not sure when this will be fixed, but Inbal from Google said, "Thanks for taking the time to report this issue. Our engineers are on top of it."

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Whenever there is an image search change at any search engine, Zeus, a WebmasterWorld member, knows about it. He posted a thread at WebmasterWorld noting that he has seen a change to the moderate filter used by Google Image search.

Zeus said the change is a big improvement to what was there previously. Specifically, images often wrongly associated with being adult pictures are no longer classified as such. He said, and I quote:

Today I see big changes in search with "Moderate filter on" and I can say its to the way better, I have made my usual searches with some keywords which can not be mistaken as adults searches and some which could be mistaken both search gave me good results with more images presented, so as it seems now we are on a good way, but sometimes they make a few changes to the filter, so we have to wait a few days, but for now it looks good.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, also noted that Google Image Search's product manager, Peter Linsley was interviewed by Eric Enge last week. There are some good tidbits in there.

So if you noticed an spike or decline in Google image search referrals, this may be why.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last week Google added a creative commons drop down filter to Google Image Search. The filter looks like this:

Google said:

This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain.

This feature also helps artists who want their images to be discovered and reused across the web — on their own terms. Creative Commons licenses allow artists to specify the ways others may use their work. Artists can license their images for general reuse, or for noncommercial reuse only. They can also decide whether or not to grant people the right to modify or remix their images. Once they've chosen to make their work available online under these terms, Google Images helps people start to find and use it.

Yahoo has had this feature since May or so.

Yes, this is a help to both content owners and searchers, now if only more people understood what creative commons was.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld administration, engine, reported in a WebmasterWorld thread that he is now only seeing UK news at Google.com.

He said, in the past, when he wanted UK news he went to Google.co.uk, but when he wanted US news, he went to Google.com. Now, since he is based in the UK, he only sees UK news at Google.com.

Engine is a bit upset, adding, "Google has taken one of my toys away, and I want it back!"

Not every UK searcher is noticing this right now. It might be related to how Google is testing dropping the country filter search option - or it might be totally unrelated.

Just as a heads up, you can get any news edition for any country at this page so if Engine wants US news in the UK, he can go to news.google.com/news?ned=us.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google's web history is great for finding things you have searched for in the past. It comes in handy for many reasons. In fact, it even helped a parent catch his son searching for porn, but is it always accurate?

Every now and then, I see threads pop up with complaints that someone else's search history is showing up in that person's Google history. I always dismiss it as someone else accessing this person's computer or someone having his Google account password, and messing with this person. But now, I am not a 100% convinced it is always user error.

An updated Google Web Search Help thread has one person who reported an issue with his web history back in January and came in recently to tell us his story. He basically said a Google representative talked to him offline and then took down his information. Shortly after, that web history was gone, according to this searcher, and the problem never occurred again.

I asked him what happened and he said:

I never found out what the issue was. If Google knew the answer, no one from Google told me. I had a conference call with a product manager and and an engineer, they said they'd work on it, and then the problem went away. That was several months ago, and the problem has not returned for me.

I don't know how widespread the issue is--not that many people check their web history. I suspect it's a lot more than the handful of people who are reporting it here. I was, and am, most concerned about the integrity of my searches and my personal information showing up on someone else's computer and my having no idea it was happening. I don't use online map services any longer, nothing that would indicate my address.

Personally, I rarely check my web history and I am sure 90% of searchers don't even know about Google web history. So I wouldn't be surprised that if there was an issue, a lot more are being affected without knowing. Clearly, this can be a huge security, privacy and confidentiality concern for the Google searcher.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

If you visit Google.com today, you will notice a special logo that looks like a coil lighting rode. It is a depiction of the Tesla coil created by Nikola Tesla.

Without Tesla, most people think we would not have had electricity as early as we did. Without electricity, no computers, no computers, no Internet, no Internet, no Google.

Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 and he passed away on January 7, 1943. Today is July 10th, so 153 years later, Google is remembering Nikola Tesla.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Web Search Help.

Google has confirmed in a Google Mobile Help thread that many mobile users of Google News will be redirected to the desktop version. Some people already began noticing it and Google's Robin has confirmed it saying:

Hi folks - As you've noticed, we're switching around the Google News site a bit. Let us know what you think about using the desktop site vs. the old mobile version!

I am not sure if this applies to iPhone and Android users, because I personally see the iPhone version, which looks like this:

But some are seeing this on their mobile phone:

Big difference in the mobile experience, don't you think? Most people are not happy with the change.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Remember a little back Matt Cutts of Google posted that he wanted the Google search results to remove empty review sites from the listings? Recently, during my Google searches, I have been landing on sites that have answers, but require you to login and pay to view those answers.

This has happened to me several times over the course of the week, but let me share one example with you. I was looking on how to mess around with imap outlook folders and found a Google result at, you guessed it, Expert Exchange. Here is a screen shot:

Great, this is my exact question, I click over and what do I see? I see a teaser to sign up to view the answer:

I cannot tell you have annoying this search experience has been for me. It makes me want to completely remove all expert-exchange.com results from my search experience at Google. I know this is not new, it comes up very often in the forums. But now it is bothering me personally, so I thought I take a recent thread and vent about it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: As noted by Adam in the comments, if you actually keep scrolling and scrolling, you will see all the answers listed there. I assume they are doing this to not cloak content to Google, but it still seems wrong.

Did you know that both Yahoo and Bing cannot tell the time in Tehran, Iran? A Bing Community thread points out the issue with Bing. Let me share with you searches for [time tehran] from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and Wolfram - you will notice that both Bing and Yahoo are off.

Bing shows 3:55pm:

Yahoo also shows 3:55pm:

Google, Ask & Wolfram Alpha all show the correct time, as 4:55pm:

I am not sure why there is a difference between these search engines. Some cite that the difference comes from Iran Standard Time versus Iran Daylight Time, but Iran has one time right now.

Forum discussion at Bing Community.

If you conduct a Google search for ugliest person in the world today, you will see Google listing a picture of the late Michael Jackson. Here is a picture I took from this morning of the search results:

As virtually everyone knows, Michael Jackson died on June 25th and the memorial service was yesterday. The popularity of Jackson, especially right now, with how Google ranks documents, has likely lead to Jackson's picture being listed as the number one result for that search.

A Google Web Search Help thread has one Jackson fan who is somewhat upset with Google over the listing. He said:

i'd think google would be a little nicer then that maybe put him third at least

Clearly, there was some sarcasm there, but I doubt you will see Google make any changes to that image result - at least I hope not. Not because I am not a Michael Jackson fan, that has nothing to do with it. Simply because Google has a policy of not changing the search results for things like this.

Does the search result bother you?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The other day we reported on Searchers Want "Pages From [Country]," Google Might Drop It. Go read it quickly and come back here. The reports of people seeing this has grown tremendously. I see dozens of forum threads on the issue, and it is not limited to countries outside of the United States, it is also being reported within the United States (not sure how that is possible).

In any event, at first I thought it was a "feature" Google was testing. But I keep watching the threads and I keep seeing Googler, Jimmy and Jem, respond that this is something Google is looking to fix. I don't get why this would be a "bug" because it looks like a deliberate change or test from Google, but Jimmy from Google keeps calling this a bug impacting some users.

Some people who have seen this are reporting they no longer see it. Again, I really don't think this is a "bug," no matter what Google says. This really seems like a feature test to me. I don't think the Googlers in the thread understand the issue.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: Google has confirmed that this is not a bug, but rather a test they are running.

A reader, BlogsDNA tipped me off on a new Google test. It appears that Google is showing a form of sub links under the main search results, that link to additional forum threads, when relevant, from a specific site. Here is a picture showing two such cases for a search:

I personally do not see this in any browser I tried, nor on any platform. But it does seem interesting. Often discussion forums have many threads about the same exact topic. This gives Google a way to include multiple threads without cluttering up the search results with indented results from the same site.

I am not sure if this will stick, but it does look interesting.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

When Bing first launched, it received a lot of hype around the amount of porn it found. Soon after, Microsoft added additional measures to help filter out the porn and adult content.

Now, it seems like Google has changes Google Image Search to make it just a bit faster and easier to find adult or pornographic content with the search engine. If you conduct a search, you will now notice the "SafeSearch" filter has a quick drop down box that allows you to make the filter stronger or turn it off:

In two quick clicks, you have access to any type of picture you want.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Okay, so maybe the title is a bit too much. Building out Google Maps to make a difference in the housing market is a bit of a stretch. Google announced the launch of Google Maps Real Estate Search.

It allows you to:

• Find houses currently on the market
• Search nearby for schools, restaurants and public transport
• See the property in Street View to explore the neighborhood
• Find directions between the property and your favorite places

The Age seemed to break the story and now we have lots buzzing on the news.

It is pretty nice to have, even though there are many real estate search engines out there. Here is a look at my area, near my office.

As you can see, you can filter by price range, foreclosures, number of bed rooms, bathrooms and square footage.

Again, real estate search is not new. The big player in this game, in my mind, is Zillow.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Blog Search announced the addition of a few features. The most noticeable changes are to the Google Blog Search home page, where Google now shows the top hot queries and the latest blog posts from popular blogs.

Here is a picture showing those two new sections:

Another feature that was released was the ability to subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds. Simply click on the links under "Subscribe" in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader.

Clearly the hot queries box will become a target for spammers and/or marketers, just like the Twitter trends box is. In fact, the Google Trends page has been hit by spammers in the past, at least a few times.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

So Gabs spotted last week that Google was testing removing the "pages from UK" radio search button at Google UK. He was the only one I saw mention that until now, but I blogged it at Search Engine Land, because I knew it would come up again.

Today, I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help with complaints from some searchers that Google South Africa is no longer showing the radio button "pages from South Africa" only. They are pretty upset about Google dropping this. Keep in mind, it seems to be a limited test and Google might not go this route.

Here are some screen captures from Gabs:

Google UK With the Country Specific Filter:

Google UK without the Country Specific Filter:

To make up for the lack of the radio button, Google will add a link to the bottom of the search results page that shows: "Show only results for United Kingdom."

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has a searcher asking Google how they can remove a Facebook page from Google. The page has been deleted from Facebook, but it still shows up in the Google Cache.

Googler, Wysz, gave the searcher a detailed explanation of how he can remove this Facebook page. I'll quote him word for word:

In this case, you'll want to do a cache removal request, which does not require the page to return a 404; it just requires that the webmaster modifies the content. While going through the steps documented in the help link below, you'll want to choose "The site owner has modified the page..." option. Make sure you include the correct URL (the Facebook page you mentioned, not the URL of Google's cache) and only mention terms that were on the page but are no longer there. (Don't use "Facebook" as a term, as that is likely still on the page.)

So go to this document to learn more and if you have questions, hit Wyzs up in the thread.

Forum discusison at Google Webmaster Help.

The Google News Blog is asking Google News publications to sign up for the YouTube Partner Program in order to get your videos more exposure.

If you use Google News, you would have noticed that they are playing up YouTube videos. Many of the results contain little YouTube icons, at least for the past month or so, to encourage people to view those videos. Here is a screen shot of how those icons are displayed in Google News:

Since we do weekly videos, I think it might be a good match for this site. Maybe I'll start doing more videos, if they bring in more traffic. We will see.

Right now, Google News only told Google News publishers to apply to the YouTube partner program. What happens afterwards is a bit of a mystery. Google said, "will do a separate review and follow-up about including your videos in Google News." So we are waiting further instructions.

A WebmasterWorld thread is not too happy about this request. One said:

And that's why I prefer Yahoo! News. Too many low quality blogs in there passing as "news".

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Catalyst Group study showed that searchers mostly liked Bing's search interface and results over Google, but would not leave Google because they were familiar with it. TechCrunch covered this study first, where the key findings included:

• Most searchers liked Bing's design and organization layout over Google
• Users felt Bing and Google were equal in returning relevant results, despite the layouts
• Most searchers would continue to use Google, even though they liked Bing better

Here is the chart people are showing:

Here is the full PDF of the study:

Catalyst Group Bing V. Google Usability Study -

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There is an interesting conversation taking place at WebmasterWorld on the topic of page one results versus page two results. Senior member, Whitey, asks the question, should webmasters begin preparing their sites to rank well on page two over page one?

Why would anyone want to do this? Well, some webmasters are suggesting that the first page results are cluttered and polluted with universal results, including videos, news, local and so on. They think that in many cases, people will begin hitting the page two button and get results from that page.

Personally, if people are clicking over to page two, I am sure Google would be aware of that and pull many of the universal results off page one. The last thing Google wants is to make their searchers click over to page two, even though that means more air time on Google's servers (which means more ads). The reason is, searchers will become frustrated and switch to a competitor, such as Bing. ;-)

I suspect Google has noticed that searchers are clicking over to page two less often now. But I can be wrong and if I am, should you start thinking about page two optimization? Or no point in that?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

An interesting thread at Google Web Search Help started by "anotherDad" tells the story of how a father was shocked to see a pornographic site come up in the Google search results for a search for his daughter's name. He said:

I recently did a Google search on my daughter's name, and was surprised when one of the URL's returned by the search forwards to a porn site when clicked.

What this father quickly learned was that this site that was showing up had a cached page that contained the honor roll of his daughter's class. That cache page contained his daughter's name on it. What was likely happening was that either the URL was taken over by a spammer and Google has not updated their index yet or the page is being cloaked, in a very bad way.

I love this post because it shows how a normal searcher was shocked by this. Let me share his thoughts, after learning a bit on how Google operates.

I originally thought that the Google crawlers might have made a false association. I now believe that the Google crawler had nothing to do with the bad links. I now believe that the offending links between my daughter's name and the porn site were generated by hackers/pranksters or a perhaps by a dodgy webmaster who is alligned with the porn site.

I have a couple of suggestions for Google. I think it is relatively hard to find the corrent Google help pages and the corrent Google help forum for problems like mine. People like me who are not IT professionals don't have all day to look around every pocket of Google (and there's a lot there) for help. I also think that the "contact us" link is misleading. I think it is unusual for a corporation as big and important as Google not to have some kind of customer service for cases like mine.

This searcher is exactly the type of person Google takes seriously and it is always interesting to read posts by them. Especially when it is so close to home and so important to them.

In the end, Google was wrong - his daughter is not a porn star and the father can somewhat rest a bit easier at night.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: JohnMu from Google commented below stating there is a special form for this at Google.

The Google News Blog announced a neat new feature where they hyperlink the author's name in the Google News results. If you click on the authors name it basically takes you to a search for articles by that author, i.e. author:name here.

You can find many of my articles at Search Engine Land by searching for author:"Barry Schwartz", which shows me I need to update the feed here to include the author's full name (which I thought I did) this way the Search Engine Roundtable supports this command.

Again, the author search in Google News, I don't believe is new. But the hyperlink is new and makes it more visible.

As a searcher, you can follow your favorite authors, even if they write across several sites and publications via a Google News RSS news alert.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday was not only the day Google posted a Father's Day logo, but it was also the day Google posted logos for the first day of Summer and Winter. Here are those logos:

Google showed the winter/summer logos in countries that do not celebrate Father's Day on June 21st. It showed the winter logo in the Southern Hemisphere and the summer logo in the Northern Hemisphere. The issue is, just like when they showed the first day of Spring logos and ended up showing "First Day of Fall" and not the "First Day of Autumn" in the Southern Hemisphere. This time Google seemed to upset folks from that side of the globe.

A Google Web Search Help thread has posts from people in that hemisphere who are a bit upset. The original poster said it is a bit more complex:

The history of seasons associated with calendars is a bit more complex than just the Winter Solstice. Yes, the Winter Solstice (traditional time of MID-Winter festivals) falls on that date according to our modern calendar. No, that does not make it the beginning of Winter. In civil calendars (at least in Australia), Winter begins with the first of June. Earlier calendars involved the cycles of the moon and counts of days more than they involved the sun (the SOLstice being related to the sun).

In any event, it seems like Google may have ticked off a few people in that hemisphere.

Other than that, I hope you had a nice Father's Day and we decided to launch our "Welcome Summer" theme a day late, in respect for Father's Day. Here it is:

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Sandip Dedhia from BlogsDNA for spotting this and also Vertical Leap noticed a bit later. It Google seems to be truncating the display URL in the search results to a single line. So I decided to test this and it is not always consistently true.

A search for iphone 3.0 os does truncate URLs longer than one line, here is a screen capture. Notice how Google adds ... to shorter the URL in the middle portion (not at the end).

It is very nice how they keep the keywords in the display URL and truncate the less keyword specific components of the URL, i.e. "article/166311."

But when I do a more complex search for site:cgi.ebay.com test, which I know has longer URLs, it seems like those display URLs act like the old way of how Google truncated URLs to two lines:

Notice the ... added to the end of the display URL.

Clearly, the site command search I conducted is more of an advanced search. But I don't think the URL truncating is based on search query but rather the URL structure. For example, if I search for Electrical Test Lead Set you will see two results that have long URLs. One is truncated to a single line and the eBay listing is only truncated to two lines:

Interesting to see how this works, don't you think?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Update: Google has updated us on Why Google May Shorten Your Long URL in the SERPs.

It appears that Google has quietly removed the file size figure from the search results. I am not sure when this happened, it could have been a year ago, but it did happen.

A year and a half ago I took a screen capture of a search result for my company rustybrick and it had the file size of the page listed in the search results.

Now, the same search, does not return the file size:

A WebmasterWorld thread recently noticed this go missing from the search results. Most people are in favor of removing the file size label, being that many people have broadband connections these days. They rather see other information listed in the search results, such as if the site is in flash or if there is video or PDFs on the page, as opposed to the file size of a given web page.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

About six months ago, we reported Google Drops iPhone Optimized iGoogle: Users Revolt. In short, Google dropped the iPhone flavored iGoogle and iGoogle mobile users were really upset and they were upset for a long time.

Now, Google announced a new iGoogle currently being tested for iPhone and Android users. Here are screen captures:

Much cleaner look for iPhone/Android users, don't you think? The previous look that people were complaining about looked more like this:

Paul from the Google team said in the long Google Web Search Help thread that has the complaints about this:

I know you all are very passionate about iGoogle on the iPhone. I'm happy to announce that we've got a new version for you to check out! See the article linked below for details.

If you'd like to share feedback about the new version, we're collecting it over in the Google Mobile forum.

Not everyone is currently happy with the changes, but I personally think this is a major improvements from six months ago.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I don't think I wrote about Google's latest search results test. Over the past month or so, Google has been testing images, several of them, directly under a search snippet. BlogStorm first reported the finding back on May 26th, and I covered his finding as Search Engine Land on the same day. Then it seemed to be hitting the Google UK servers as some sort of test.

Well, it seems to have expanded to Google Sweden. Brent Csutoras (a nice guy btw) wrote how they are now seeing the same thing in Google Sweden for a search on [vigselringar] which means wedding rings. Here is a picture taken from his blog, since I cannot reproduce it here:

So keep an eye on this, because it might be coming to Google.com.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Some times I have to point out the most ridiculous threads in the forums. This morning I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help where a person was complaining that searching in Google Images for the search phrase [nude women] returned some images of (now hold on to your chair now....) nude women!

The individual wrote:

Please take nude & half dressed women off your images if you type in a name for a women alot of half dressed women come up & young kids do not need to see this kind of stuff. if you are looking for a type of bra alot of bad stuff comes up. i did not think google would have this kind of stuff on there website.

What type of search engine would Google be if it did not return images that were related to your search query? If you don't want your children searching Google for nude women, then you should get a good internet filter. Also, Google does a pretty good job filtering out nude women, even for a search of nude women, when the safe filter is set to its highest level.

Sorry for the rant, I am low on sleep.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

This June 6th, Saturday, is known to many as D-Day. June 6, 1944 was the day the D-Day operation began and thousands of soldiers died. It was also the 25th anniversary of the popular computer game, Tetris.

Google decided to celebrate Tetris's 25th anniversary with a Google Doodle, while Bing honored D-Day with a special theme.

Google Tetris Doodle on June 6, 2009:

Bing's D-Day Theme on June 6, 2009:

There are many searchers very upset with Google over celebrating Tetris overing honoring the fallen soldiers. We know that Google often tries to stay away from posting logos for sad events. Google even commented why they don't do a Google Doodle for memorial day (although they did post a Google ribbon this year). Google said in 2008:

Thank you for your note. We understand your interest in seeing a Memorial Day Google logo. If we were to commemorate this holiday, we'd want to express reverence; however, as Google's special logos tend to be lighthearted in nature, this would be a particularly challenging design.

We wouldn't want to create a graphic that could be interpreted as disrespectful in any way.

Should Google have not posted anything? Should Google have posted a D-Day Doodle? Should Google just do whatever they want? Take our poll:

Forum discussion at several forums:

• How can Google recognize Tetris on 6 June instead of D-Day (6 June 1944)?, Google Webmaster Help
• New Google Logo : Celebrating 25 Years of The Tetris Effect, DigitalPoint Forums
• Google start page Tetris on June 6?, Google Web Search Help
• Tetris? New Google Logo, Google Webmaster Help
• WHAT ABOUT D-DAY !!!!!, Google Web Search Help

Starting around mid-May, using Google with the Opera browser was somewhat of a challenge. In short, if you went to Google.com, entered a keyword search and hit the return key, Google would not do anything. You had to manually click on the "Google Search" button with your mouse.

A Google Web Search Help thread has dozens of reports from unhappy Google and Opera users. Google confirmed the bug on June 1st, saying:

A fix is on the way!

Pretty soon, hitting the Enter key after typing a query will perform a Google search in the versions of the Opera browser that you've reported.

I wanted to check in with all the relevant people on my team before giving you the official word on this issue. That explains the delay in my response. I understand the frustration at not hearing sooner about such an important issue. Promise to do better next time (lets hope there won't be a next time!).

Currently, it appears the enter key now works on the search results pages, but searching in Google.com's home page, still requires the click of a mouse.

I believe the bug came with Google's new Google suggest features which launched on the same day the bugs began being reporting.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Squared made its debut yesterday as a Google Labs project at google.com/squared. Honestly, it is very cool to use and has a lot of potential. But it is also extremely risky and often shows very poor results.

Google Squared tries to take the unstructured nature of crawling the web and making it into structure data. In some cases it does a nice job, but in many cases, it fails completely or it shows false information.

Since I had a kid recently, I decided to search for jewish schools to send her to. The thing is, it only listed one Jewish school. It should have listed hundreds, but it did not. I understand, possibly the Jewish school web sites are built incredibly poor from a search friendly standpoint that Google could not extract the content from it to include it in a square.

So I moved on and I search for jewish newspapers to potentially advertise RustyBrick's Jewish iPhone Apps in. We got a neat ad by the way. That search worked pretty well.

As a searcher, you need to be aware that Google Squared is useful but you need to know that the data can be seriously flawed. We discussed the dangerous of snippets earlier, and it applies directly here. Over time, I suspect it will get better, but it might take a lot of time.

As an SEO, you should realize that building search friendly sites will only help Google understand your sites and structure it in Google Squared. Is that a good thing? That is up to debate. In any event, if Google remains dominate, which seems like it will for at least the near future, you need to make sure to play their game. Will rich snippets play a roll in this? Maybe. But search engine friendly design, seems key to me.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This week, we had two major stories about Google seriously causing trouble with their search snippets. The first is more obvious with The Register reporting a webmaster was sued for his listing in Google showing something that was not even written on the page. Profy reported that Google Squared, which just went live declared the living to be dead. Yet another case of unstructured search, structuring data into a false fact.

A new Google Webmaster Help thread is now discussing an individual's case of Google showing a search snippet about his company that, he feels, is derogatory about his company. If you do a search for classicexplorations.com in Google, the localsearch.com result shows this:

The owner of the site is very upset that the words "false false false" come before his company name, Classic Explorations. The person contacted LocalSearch.com and LocalSearch.com told him that this was a Google issue. He explained the meta description used for this page did not say the words false on it. LocalSearch.com said that this person needs to Google to fix the issue.

Googler, JohnMu, replied saying:

There is really not much that you could do in a situation like this. For this particular query, the keywords happen to be found on that part of the page, so this is the part that we use for the snippet. I'll pass this on to the team, but I can't guarantee that this will change quickly. In this case, the disadvantage is more on the side of the other website -- users are very unlikely to click on their result (and even more likely to click on your pages :-)), so I wouldn't spend more time worrying about it for the moment.

Clearly this doesn't seem as big of a mistake then declaring a living president as dead or declaring a company went bankrupt when it did not. But this just shows you the power of Google's search snippets and how it can impact a business or truth, as it is known.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Yesterday, I wrote at Search Engine Land about a report from The Register about how a Dutch company was sued over the snippet Google choose for a certain web page of theirs. Let me quickly explain what happened.

A web page on Miljoenhuizen.nl showed up in Google for the search phrase [Zwartepoorte] and [bankrupt]. When you read the snippet under the Miljoenhuizen.nl listing in Google, it basically read that Zwartepoorte was bankrupt. The issue is, Zwartepoorte was not bankrupt. So Zwartepoorte sued Miljoenhuizen.nl to make Google remove the snippet. The thing is, Miljoenhuizen.nl did not say Zwartepoorte was bankrupt, Google took several words on a page and mixed them together to completely make that up.

A Dutch court ordered Miljoenhuizen.nl to change the page, so Google's snippet would change. Miljoenhuizen.nl removed the page and the issue is now resolved.

Personally, I think it is crazy for a court to make such a request. But what do I know? I really want to see how you guys feel about this.

Should webmasters be responsible for what Google shows in their snippets about our web pages? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are several reports at Google Custom Search Help and Google Web Search Help with searchers who use Internet Explorer version 6 on their PC and are claiming that Bing has hijacked the search feature in the toolbar.

Several users are claiming that since Bing was launched, even though Google was their default search provider in IE, Bing has taken control. Even worse, when they try to change it back from Bing to Google, it does not work.

Here is one post:

Had Google set as my default browser. woke up this morning to discover that BING had hijacked this feature. cant change it via: search/customize on the IE tool bar. all I get is a windows live page saying Ooops.

There is no official explanation from either Microsoft or Google, as of yet. Matt Cutts of Google did tweet about the issue. A Microsoft individual did tweet back saying the "folks have escalated your concerns."

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

Update: We have a statement from Microsoft on this issue:

We're aware of the issue with IE6 and Bing and are investigating a solution. This issue is not impacting IE7 or IE8 users. We respect user choice on search providers in IE and all browsers, and designed IE to enable that choice. We will provide an update soon on this issue, and we apologize for any inconvenience it has caused. In the meantime, we encourage customers to upgrade to IE8 here. Alternatively, Firefox users can install the add-in for Bing here.

Update: Microsoft emailed me again at 2:45am on June 3, 2009 to inform me the issue is now resolved with IE6. The issue was server side, so the fix was able to be pushed out remotely to all infected browsers.

When Google's new search options feature went live earlier last month, Google also changed how they handle time based queries.

Back in 2007 Google handled the time based query refinements by appending &as_qdr= to the URL, now Google is using &tbs=qdr: for the same refinement. Let me show you how it works:

To show the pages indexed by Google on this site for the past day, I use the site command and append the past 24 hours refinement.

• Old Way that still works: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:seroundtable.com&as_qdr=d
• New Way: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:seroundtable.com&tbs=qdr:d

So as you can see, both methods still work. Why duplicate the efforts? As Tedster said in a WebmasterWorld thread, it is possible that two different teams at Google worked on the various features and didn't consult each other.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A moderator at WebmasterWorld noticed Google stopped using standard URL redirects in the Google search results to track click events. If you hover over the link, it now appears that Google is just sending you directly to the destination URL, without using any click tracking.

But that is not the case. If you look at the source code, it looks like Google is using some type of JavaScript to track the click.

Here is a sample of the code used:

<a href="http://www.google.com/" class=l onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','4', 'AFQjCNG5-9Jej-ukVeakTgwonqt2narbYg','&sig2=4Lwo00y104At7P9SCT7uXA')">

Moderator, jdMorgan, added that he noticed the JavaScript request going to Google but then it is resulting in a 204-No Content response. But then he noticed a request direct to his server with the same referrer (the same/original search results page).

This appears to be a new way of Google tracking click events in the search results.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

After some testing, Google has finally announced that they will be launching changes to their search suggestions. The key changes include:

(1) Search Ads in Search Suggestions:

(2) Improved "navigational query" support:

(3) Search Suggestions even on search results pages:

(4) No estimated count numbers, as you can see from the screen shots above. Here is a screen shot of the old way:

(5) Search suggestions are now personalized based on your search history and other factors:

(6) Google bolds the query words in the search suggestions drop down.

I don't see this feature live yet, but it should be soon.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Part of the Searchology 2009 Google event was that Google will be launching Google Squared this month. Danny has a good walk through of Google Squared features, if this is the first time you are hearing about it.

Brian Ussery Tweeted that there are some fun easter eggs in the preview. A Google Blogoscoped forum thread lists some, including:

• [times]
• [be there]
• [alpha]
• [42]

Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped.

The Google Wonder Wheel and search options we have seen being tested is now the real deal in Google.com. Google announced it yesterday at the Searchology event, which Danny live blogged. In fact, Matt posted a nice recap of all the announcements at Search Engine Land. So I won't discuss each feature, but instead, I'll show the video Google released to demo it.

There is a lot of discussion around how this might impact the SEO world. Clearly, this gives searchers a way to refine results at a much rapper pace. So the number one ranking, is not always the number one ranking. SEOs had been preparing for this for a long time ever since universal search came to use in 2007. So this isn't that huge, but it is major change in how search is presented, although not as major as universal search.

Forum discussion at Sphinn, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, Google launched a way to verify your Google Profile with them and ultimately show up in the Google results. In fact, Google offered free business cards with your Google Profile information on it. You can get those business cards over here.

I received my business cards last Thursday. But to my surprise, they didn't work! By didn't work, I meant, that if you typed in barry schwartz into Google, my Google Profile did not show up. The whole purpose of the Google Profile business cards was to give people a way to look you up by Googling your name. But in this case, it didn't exactly work.

Why? Didn't my profile show up. Well, Joe Kraus of Google (founder of Excite, JotSpot, etc) commented at my personal blog to inform me that my profile may have hit the celebrity filter. Joe said:

Hey Barry. My name is Joe Kraus and I'm the PM Director for Google Profiles. We're looking into it. There's a possibility your name is getting caught in our celebrity filters but we'll know more soon. Sorry for the hassle.

Am I a celebrity? I doubt it. But I suspect that maybe the famous psychologist/professor is a quasi-celebrity.

In fact, Kaila noticed that if you search for barry swartz, a misspelling of my name, my Google Profile does show:

So maybe Google should of sent me the business cards with the misspelling? I assume Google might pull the celebrity filter from my name, at least I hope so. It does make sense for names like Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Britney Spears and so on, but I am not sure my name (even for the professor) deserves the "celebrity status."

So this has less to do with the name being common and more about the name hitting a possible filter, I think.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Not all of us are like the founder of LifeLock by hanging up billboards of our social security numbers giving people access to our most private number. The bottom line is that most people don't want their social security number posted in public. It leaves you more susceptible to identity theft and can leave you with a bad credit rating, at no fault to your spending habits.

A Google Webmasters Help thread has one person very eager to have Google remove his social security number from a third-party web page. This person supposedly ticked someone off, who then got back at him by posting his information, including social security number on a web page. Google indexed the web page and he wants it removed.

Clearly, in this case, you cannot plead with the webmaster to remove the page. You may be able to contact the hosting company and ask them to remove the page. But you can use the Google Removal Tool to ask Google to remove it from their index. Googler, Jonathan Simon said:

I agree with LuSEOfer's suggestion of contacting the site owners to get your information removed at the source. It may not help if the site owner is the same person as the person who posted your information but it's worth a try. Most reputable site owners don't want this sort of information on their site.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

So we know Google is seriously testing AJAX search results and Google has confirmed that. We know Google was not passing referrer strings to the receiving sites, but Google promised to fix that. But these changes are going to be coming to a Google search result near you, so you need to be aware of it.

Matt Cutts of Google posted a video explaining a bit more about these changes. It is well worth watching the 3-minute video:

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

In the past couple of weeks, we showed how Google Maps can cause real pain for some business owners. I first showed you how you can close down competitors on Google Maps and then I showed how your business listing can be merged into a competitors listing leaving them with your business and you with non.

Those are two serious ways on how Google Maps can seriously impact your business and sales. Google posted documents on how to reopen one's business after being closed, but we are still seeing complaints from business owners, to this day. Google is working on fixing the merging issue, but no update yet on when or how soon it might be fixed.

The next bug I spotted was via a Google Maps Help thread where one business owner explained that when conducting a search for signs Buckhead, Google changes the town of Buckhead to Bankhead. That then leads his potential customers to a totally different town, far away from his business.

He said:

When I use Google and try to search this (in Atlanta) "signs Buckhead" Google Maps listings result is "signs Bankhead" which is incorrect. Bankhead is in another section of town. This will cause me to drive way over to Bankhead to get my signs. The organic listings are OK but I need directions from the Maps. As a test I also tried "furniture Buckhead" and the same Bankhead listings came up again in Maps. Is this a search issue or a maps issue? When I look at Maps in the Buckhead area it says Bankhead as well.

Here is a screen capture:

Google confirmed the issue and hopes to have this one resolved as well. But there is no estimated time for when the fix will be in place.

I certainly wonder, how many businesses are losing money due to these three recent bugs with Google Maps?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Just a couple weeks ago, we reported about a Google Video redesign that upset users. In short, they changed how the Google Video search results displayed. Well, it looks like Google is testing search refinements on the video results pages.

Sam from Oh Nuts sent me a screen shot, which he saw when using the Chrome browser (however, I could not replicate in Chrome):

Compare that to the image I have on April 22nd and you will notice the large difference.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

When Google launched SearchWiki in November 2008, it came with a little comments bubble, where users can leave comments about a specific site in the search results. Google seems to be changing that comments bubble or icon into simple text that reads "Review This Site."

Here is a picture of the old version, notice the little comments icon on the right of the "Similar Pages" link:

The new version has a plain and simple "Review this Site" link:

Clicking the link or icon (depending on what you see) will open a text box:

Then after submitting the comment, you will be able to see it under the result:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Qwerty, a long time High Ranking Forum personality, wrote a blog post named Google Related Searches - Cheaters Rejoice. In short, he explains that Google is smart enough to know the answers to the New York Times crossword puzzle, without even seeing the puzzle. How is this done?

Well, according to Qwerty:

So apparently, Google hasn’t indexed the content of the puzzle and related every clue to it. Rather, it looks like it has detected a trend: someone searches on some of the clues, someone else searches on the same clues, someone else searches on some of those and a few others, and this all happens within a few hours, so Google determines that the searches are related to each other based on that, so when I come in and search on one of the clues, Google offers up some of the other searches that were run today by other people who ran that same search.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was indeed true. So any of you looking to cheat on the NY Times crossword puzzle, give this a try next week.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

It appears Google has launched a redesign of the search results pages on Google Video. For example, a search on barry schwartz returns search results on the left side and the video on the right. If you click on a search result, it shows the video directly on that page and gives you the option to click through and watch it on the site it came from.

Here is a picture:

A Google Web Search Help thread (note, the Google Video help forum is no longer, they moved it to the web search section) has a couple users who are unhappy with the new layout. The new layout is due to the fact that Google doesn't allow video uploads on Google anymore. It is now just a search engine for videos, while YouTube is their upload and user generated content (video) section.

One user said:

I am seeing a redesign of TV view when I search for a video in Google Video. The video description is takes up a lot of space, the video is smaller (and not expandable) and there is no way to rate videos (or even see video ratings!).

Alex Chitu said, "the new interface has a lot of flaws: the video player moves as you scroll down, the list of related videos is not always visible, Google Video no longer displays ratings and there's a lot of unused space."

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google announced you can now create verified Google Profiles that potentially can show up in the Google web search results. Danny Sullivan has the ultimate guide on how these Google Profiles work. For example here is my profile as displayed in the Google web results:

It can also show up in this format:

To have your profile displayed in the Google web results, you likely need to have a verified listing. How do you verify your profile in Google? It isn't that easy.

Here is a picture of my profile, there are two verifications. (1) The profile itself (aka "verified name") and the (2) email address.

Let's start with verifying the profile (aka the name):

(1) You must go to Google's Knol site and sign in.
(2) Then go to your profile settings.
(3) Click on the "Name Verification" tab
(4) Then choose to verify by phone or via credit card

If you verify by phone, you enter in your phone number and Google will call it. When you get the call, Google will display a pin code followed by a pound sign on the Knol web site. When prompted, enter in the pin code and pound sign and you should be verified. If you verify by credit card, just enter in your credit card information. Note, Google currently can't verify American Express or Debit cards.

Verifying your email address:

(1) Go to your Google Profile and click "edit profile"
(2) Midway through the page it says "Verified domains" and explains:

You can verify email addresses and choose which domains (the part after the @) you'd like to appear on your profile. Your email addresses will not be displayed. This will help visitors to your profile know that you are the real you. Learn more

If your email is already verified, it should read:

You have verified email addresses at the following domains. Check which domains you'd like to appear on your profile. Your email addresses will not be displayed. This will help visitors to your profile know that you are the real you.Learn more

Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and other free email accounts cannot be verified as domains. You need your own domain. You can add a non Gmail alternative to your Google account to verify your email.

That is basically how to get the verification labels on your Google Profile.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, Google launched a new labs feature named Google News Timeline which gives you a cool new way to scan news. You can scan the news using an AJAX interface based on chronological order. You can then drag the timeline from left to right or right to left. In addition, you can group news by days, weeks, months, years, or decades or restrict to a certain time period. Finally, you can add queries to filter by and remove news from Wikipedia, Time and so on.

Here is a video that shows it in action:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced they have a new labs feature that allows you to find similar images using Google Image Search. To do so, go to similar-images.googlelabs.com and give it a try.

I thought I try searching for danny sullivan to find similar images. The first image is this one:

Attractive, eh? ;-)

In any event, lets see what Google Images considers similar to this picture of Danny. Clicking on the similar images link shows me these images:

There are some guys as well.

Here is a video on how this all works:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Early April, many mobile users, who use Google Mobile for News, noticed that Google News on their mobile device was not updating. In fact, the news was outdated for days on their devices. The issue seemed to have resolved itself for many a few days later, so I decided not to report it.

Now the issue seems to be springing up again. We have a report in the Google News Help discussion area from one mobile user who said the news is now "over 10 hours" delayed. I personally checked myself and the news seems as recent as 30 minutes. But this may have to do with browser caching or something similar that caused the issue a week or so ago.

Googler, Inbal, said:

Thanks for the heads up, our mobile engineers are on top of this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to resolve this in the near future.

It might be a user specific issue or might be a bigger issue. I am not sure.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

An hour or so before I went offline for Passover, the Google Analytics blog announced a very significant change to how Google search will be passing along referral data. In the past, a search for flowers and a click on that search result to your site, would show the URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

Now, you will see the referral string (in some cases, right now in beta):

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

The new format is broken down as such:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t

&source=web

&ct=res

&cd=7

&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm

&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j

&q=flowers

&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w

&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Google's Matt Cutts confirmed on a BlogStorm blog post that Google may be passing along Google ranking data, along with this information.

Brett Crosby, the man behind Google Analytics, summed it up:

The key difference between these two urls is that instead of "/search?" the URL contains a "/url?". If you run your own analyses, be sure that you do not depend on the "/search?" portion of the URL to determine if a visit started with an organic search click. Google Analytics does not depend on the "/search?" string in the referrer, so users of Google Analytics will not notice a difference in their reports, but other analytics packages may need to adapt to this change in our referrer string to maintain accurate reports.

The folks at WebmasterWorld suspect this change is more about Google eventually migrating to AJAX search results, amongst other things.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

99.999% of people would never notice this nor care about it, but a Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a very small bug in Google's cache. If you view the cache of a W3 document for a match on xml well formed root, you will notice that Google says they will highlight the words "root" in a red color. But if you scan through the document, you will notice Google is not highlighting that word in red.

Here are pictures:

Googler, JohnMu, thanked the person for reporting it and has submitted the bug to the right team.

I am shocked that it was reported and noticed.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

The Google blog announced that Google is now showing more local results in web search for more generic queries. This is something that was noticed before the announcement but now it is officially confirmed by Google.

This means that searches for local-like keywords no longer need to have a location in the query. For example, a search on web design automatically shows me a local box in the middle of the Google web search results, without me specifically specifying web design, suffern, ny, which then shows the local box at the top of the results. Here is a picture of Google detecting that I am near the city of Monsey, in New York and it even ranks my company in the number two spot.

Google explains how they get your location:

In most cases, we match your IP address to a broad geographical location. You can also specify your likely location using the "Change location" link on the top right corner, above the map.

These searches work for a wide range of keywords, such as restaurants], [dentist], [groceries], [sporting goods], [flowers], [bank], [gym], [post office], or even [111 8th ave].

My big question is why are there so little people discussing this new change in Google in the forums? I know there are plenty of blog posts on this topic, but very few forum threads.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The much awaited update to the Google Blog Search blogroll detector algorithm has finally been pushed through.

An updated Google Groups thread has Googler, Jeremy Hylton saying:

We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears to be a big improvement over our earlier fix. We had originally planned to launch an experiment for link: queries, but decide more recently to release this change first. We are still working on the link: change and expect to have that ready in a few more weeks.

We did expect to see an update for how Google Blog Search responds to the link query, but as Jeremy said, that won't be released yet for the next few weeks. But the blogroll matching detector, which matches for keywords in the blogroll sections of sites, should no longer return results for those keywords.

Why does this matter? Well, lets say you are like me and you track who links or mentions you via Google Blog Search. If someone has the Search Engine Roundtable in the blogroll, and the do a daily blog post, even if that blog post doesn't mention the Search Engine Roundtable, blog search would show that new blog post as a match. Why? Because it is in the blogroll and Google thinks it is part of the content of the blog post. Google said they fixed this issue but they do want feedback at the Google Groups thread.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

February 3rd, we reported Google Won't Let Some Searchers Turn Off "Safe Search" Filter, well, almost two months later, the issue is still not resolved. In fact, Google cannot find any issue.

The other day, Googler Skylar said he was unable to find any issue. He said in the Google Web Search Help thread:

Thanks everyone for providing information about your computers and browsers. I’ve been passing these details along to the rest of the team to check on SafeSearch filtering. We're currently unable to find errors with SafeSearch filtering. It is likely that a corrupt cookie, a third-party add-on, or an anti-virus program could be interfering with your preferences. I recommend giving the "Preferences aren't sticking" help article a try to make your preferences stick. In the meantime, I understand that it is frustrating when your preferences don't stick, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience you're experiencing.

But this does not explain why hundreds of searchers are still having this issue.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

Almost two months ago, we asked, Should Google Search Suggestions Show Adult Suggestions? In short, Google, on occasion, showed search suggestion for porn/adult related phrases, as you typed your query. The example I gave then, was when you typed "you," Google would offer a suggestion to youpron which is an adult site. Here is the before picture:

A new Google Web Search Help thread shows that Google listens and does remove porn/adult keyword suggestions from that list. The case in that thread was for when you search for [hvernig] Google offered a suggestion [hvernig á að totta] which in Icelandic means "how to give a blowjob."

Googler, Skylar, said last night that it has been removed. He said:

The inappropriate suggestion will no longer appear when someone types "hvernig" in the search box. Thanks again for sharing your feedback about this query suggestion so that we can improve Google Suggest.

So I decided to check the [you] query and it was gone also:

So how do you remove porn suggestions from Google? Post your complaint in the web search forums.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

There is a long thread of upset iPhone, G1 and mobile users at Google Mobile Help discussions. It seems like many users who try to access Google.com on their iPhone or G1 are being presented with errors.

The first report came in on the 23rd, saying "I get the following error message: "error to use eval to parse history info json string!" But many other users are complaining as well. This is not only impacting iPhone users, but also G1 users and likely users of Google Mobile on any mobile device.

iPhone users can manually fix the issue by going to Settings, then Safari, and then click on Clear History, Clear Cache, Clear Cookies.

Googler, Bret, said:

Thanks for the feedback guys. We're looking into this issue. I'll post any updates I have to this thread.

Hopefully this gets resolved soon.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

The Google Blog announced Google has added additional search refinements and detailed snippets. Here is part of the announcement:

More and better search refinements
Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

Longer snippets

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page. Below are a couple of examples.

We noticed Google testing long snippets at least twice and also an option to control snippet size.

Do you like it?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Marty from the aimClear blog emailed me a screen shot yesterday morning, which looked like Google experimental search results. I then spotted a WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the same thing Marty emailed me.

There is a new link in the Google results that says "Show Options." When clicked, it opens up other grouping options. Robert, a WebmasterWorld admin also sees it and he describes the options as:

The main groupings select among...

- types of results (All results, Recent, Videos, Forums, Reviews)...
- time of results (with options between Anytime and the past year)...
- different types of what I'd call snippet displays (with options including standard or longer snippets, and snippets including image thumbnails)...
- and different views (including Standard, Wonder wheel, Timeline, and Search Suggestions)

Here is a screen capture:

When I try to search for the query that they spotted this with, I get a message from Google that reads:

The option you have selected is currently unavailable.

Is this a form of experimental search being forced on searchers?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google started showing search refinements in mid 2006. Later on that year, they cleaned up those refinements and they began showing up a lot for medical searches and for those that participated in the Google Coop solution.

But now, a WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google is showing less and less refinements these days, then they have in the past. In fact, searches that worked in the past to trigger then, don't all work. One example is clinical trials, and also site:www.seroundtable.com florida does not work. You can see that it does work if you force the more condition to be added to the search parameter.

Google frequently changes how the search results interact with searchers. Maybe the refinements were not used all that much or maybe they confused searchers. Or maybe them not showing up as often, recently, might be a bug? We don't know.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I posted a search brief on this topic at Search Engine Land, when I saw Search Engine War noticing Google UK testing single line Sitelinks. But it seems like more folks in the UK are noticing the "classic" Sitelinks showing up. I call them "classic," because the first time we saw Sitelinks, they were in the form of a single line.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one UK searcher noticing them. They call it "mini" but there is nothing "mini" about having any extra line in the Google search results. Typically, Sitelinks look like this:

Eight links, in four rows and two columns. Earlier, Google was testing four links in a single column:

But originally, before we even knew what they were called, they were on a single line:

Search Engine War has a picture of the new "classic" Sitelinks in place.

Personally, I prefer the single line Sitelinks - at least from a searcher's perspective. Just seems cleaner and lets me see more results on a page.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If there was a three strike rule for Google SMS Search, Google would have been out a long time ago. For the fourth time in about two months, Google SMS Search went offline again.

The most recent, was the other day. We have two threads at Google Mobile Help. The first thread has confirmation from a Googler.

Googler, Zeke said:

Thanks for posting. Yes, we were experiencing some issues yesterday with the mobile aggregator used by many carriers. This caused a delay in responses, but them problem has been fixed.

You should be able to use Google SMS normally now. Please let me know if you run into any other trouble.

The later thread specifically complains about Google not returning hockey scores. I tried some of those searches and they did not return results for me, but searching for [scores lakers] did work just fine for me.

Here are the past articles we wrote on Google SMS search failing:

• Google SMS Search Not Returning Search Results, January 8, 2009
• Did Google SMS Search Die Again?, January 15, 2009
• Google Finally Confirms Fixing SMS Search, January 27, 2009
• Google Mistakenly Sends Dozens of Unwanted SMS Messages To Users, February 3, 2009

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld that Google may be biased towards showing more and more "big brands" in the top Google web search results.

Yea, yea - big brands have more links, more trust, more pages and bigger budgets to rank better. We all know that. But some are speculating that this month, more than any other month, there was a spike in how Google ranks these big brands.

Tedster, WebmasterWorld's administration, goes as far to possibly imply, and I quote, "Eric Schmidt made some comments that brands were more important."

The question is how would Google do this?

• Manually?
• Using social media metrics
• Linkage data
• Something else

There is a lot of speculation and concern in that thread right now.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Aaron Wall from SEO Book wrote more details, with examples, of this claim. Pretty enlightening, if I must say, so take a look at Aaron's post.

A business owner is showing his frustration with Google over Google Maps listing his business as closed. In a Google Webmaster Help thread, this business owner said:

The search result from Google shows our office as closed (the exact phrase shown is "place closed")

Can someone please point me how I can get this corrected? Our office is not closed.

Want to see it yourself? Here is a link to the live map, but for archival purposes, here is a screen capture:

Notice how it says, "place closed" directly under the business name.

This business owner can fix this by going to the Google Local Business Center and updating his listing there. And if you have not verified your business, go do so, so this doesn't happen to you!

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

If you visit Google's reliability report at the Better Business Bureau (BBB) web site, you will notice they have a rating of a "D." The D rating is when the BBB says:

We have enough concerns about this company (for example, their offer, customer complaints, advertising, etc.) that we recommend caution in doing business with it.

How can the BBB caution people conducting business with the largest and most loved search ad company?

In the past 36 months there have been a total of 424 complaints. To me, that is a pretty low number based on the number of advertisers and Google users they have.

In July, I reported at Search Engine Land that the BBB listed Google as unsatisfactory. In any event, does Google deserve a D or unsatisfactory rating?

A Google AdWords Help thread has responses from advertisers. I personally like BizWriter's response:

I agree with you about the scammers, affiliates etc. but -BBB D rating or not- the real issue is that AdWords support is mostly an euphemism even for honest advertisers. Misleading messages in AdWords interface, no phone support, loops and dead-ends when someone tries to contact support. Is that the customer support one would expect from a multi-billion -"do no evil"- company? Google is getting sclerotic and you need to be nimble in business. Just my 2 cents.

JezC, a top Google help member said:

I'm astonished, after all the stuff you've replied to, that you give this any credibility. There's *two* issues (CC denials, and account review speed) that are showing up as a pattern here, and *one* significant cause of increased activity - more newbie affiliates than I can recall seeing in around five years of activity on this forum.

So what do you think? Does Google deserve this rating?

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Ever conduct a search at Google and be presented with a "We're sorry" error from Google? The image on the right is what you would see and Google thinks you are a machine conducting automated queries and they want to validate you as a human.

Well, over the past few days, I have been noticing a much larger number of threads with complaints from searchers that they have been getting this message. I typically see threads on the issue but not the number and volume I have been seeing over the past few days.

I then spotted a Google Web Search Help thread that has confirmation from Google that this is an issue on their side. Skylar from Google said:

Hey! Thanks y'all for sharing this strange behavior in your Google's search results. This is an issue (we're working on it) caused by computer worms that search for vulnerable sites to infect. These nasty annoying computer worms will use certain search queries or patterns to find those sites. When we detect these abusive queries, we display the 'We're Sorry' page to stop the worms. Once in a blue moon, your search queries can coincidentally match the search patterns that worms use, and you get blocked as a result.

A quick fix you could try is simply adding another key word to make your search queries more unique (and different from the queries worms use). By making this change, you're less likely to be blocked. Check out http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2007/07/reason-behind-were-sorry-message.html to read an interesting blog post on reasons behind the 'We're Sorry' page.

So it seems like Google is aware of showing this message to real humans, a bit too often and they are working on a fix.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports one member noticing receiving images in his Google Alerts from Google Blog search. It seems to be an extension of how Google News shows images near some articles. But in this case, this searcher is saying the images are near blog post results from Google Blog search.

I am not too sure if the user is confused in how he or she is using Google Alerts. I think that this person subscribed to Google Alerts and signed up for both News alerts and blog alerts. Google News often shows images near articles, but Blog Search does not - as far as I know.

Is it possible that Google Blog search is now showing images near the blog results? Yes, why not? But is it happening?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Web Search Help thread has an annoyed searcher who is upset Google's search box offers search suggestions for "youpron" when you type in the word "you."

The easy solution is to turn off search suggestions in your search preferences:

But you cannot turn off search suggestions on every computer your child has access to. So the big question is, should Google's search suggestions have a strong adult filter that disallows adult oriented suggestions by default?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Sometime yesterday, Firefox 2.x users were unable to use Google's search box, as they typically do. They would go to Google.com, enter in a search query and hit enter. Then nothing would happen. Really, nothing would happen.

There is a long thread at Google Web Search Help discussions on this issue.

Google even confirmed the issue saying:

Thanks to all of your comments, we pushed out a fix to resolve the problem. You should soon be able to search after clicking 'Enter' but if you continue to get no search results, please let me know.

I personally tested Firefox 2.x on Google just a minute ago and it is now working. But for at least a couple hours, Google on Firefox did not work at expected.

In addition to not being able to query Google, many complained that Google Suggest, the search suggestions as you type, did not work either. It seems Google fixed that as well.

Google has been pretty buggy this week. Here are just the bugs we covered this week:

• Google Mistakenly Sends Dozens of Unwanted SMS Messages To Users
• Google Won't Let Some Searchers Turn Off "Safe Search" Filter
• Google News Crawl Issues a Bug with Google
• Google News Font Size Bug Confirmed
• Google Accidently Knocks New Zealand Off The Globe

Good week for Google, don't you think?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Two days ago, we reported that Google is testing switching to AJAX to display their search results. But the tension over this discussion was not all that bad, that was until GetClicky.com wrote:

Just know this: a major update that Google is testing has completely broken the ability for any external analytics service like Clicky to determine the search query used by a visitor arriving at your web site. Why would they do such a thing? Who knows. They aren't talking.

Now, Techmeme is buzzing with the story and Google scrambled to release a statement that reads:

We're continually testing new interfaces and features to enhance the user experience. We are currently experimenting with a javascript enhanced result page because we believe that it may ultimately provide a faster experience for our users. At this time only a small percentage of users will see this experiment. It is not our intention to disrupt referrer tracking, and we are continuing to iterate on this project. For more information on the experiments that we run on Google search, please see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-test-this-is-only-test.html.

There is a lot of commotion on this story and this Google test at WebmasterWorld and Google Web Search Help forums.

Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld said:

I honestly don't think G is shortsighted enough to do something like that system wide. Websites would have little incentive to look to Google for traffic or optimize for Google. The focus would no longer be on Google for optimization. We wouldn't know what or how to optimize for keywords - optimization would be shots in the dark. Our only options would be to look for other big sources of traffic.

On the other hand, we have to respect a websites - even Google's - opportunity to innovate. I think we have to see what G is doing with the Ajax before passing final judgment on it and it's intentions. I doubt that it is Googles will to break log analyzers and keyword trackers with this test. I think that is a by-product of whatever Ajax implementation google is currently testing.

The discussion around this topic is pretty intense and high strung now. It will be interesting to see how Google moves forward with this test over time.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Web Search Help.

Google has a search preference that allows a searcher to define how strict the adult filter should be. It is called Safe Search and I think it was originally designed by Matt Cutts.

In any event, I am seeing dozens of reports of the Safe Search filter getting "stuck." The largest standalone thread is at Google Web Search forums which describes the issue as users not being able to remove the safe search preference to something more lax.

Google Employee Skylar confirmed the issue in the thread and said they are looking into a fix. Skylar said:

Thanks for mentioning SafeSearch's odd behavior today. Several other people also commented on the same issue. I've passed this post, along with a few others, to our team so they can take a closer look at this.

If anyone has more to add about SafeSearch not sticking, please include information about what kind of computer you have, what browsers are you seeing this problem in, what troubleshooters you've tried, and whether you have any filtering software. It will help me to best figure out what's happening here.

At about 2:30am (EST), this morning, Google seemed to have fixed the issue. I am not sure what caused it, because Google has not yet confirmed the fix, but we have at least two reports saying that issue is now resolved.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search.