Google Search Engine Archives

As Danny reported over the weekend, Google added a significant search feature (Matt Cutts mentioned it first to let us know). You can now type into Google, whois domain.com and get the whois information for that domain.

For example, whois seroundtable.com returns this result:

When you click on the whois link, you are taken to Domain Tools. Domain Tools is one of the most widely used whois databases out there. Curious if it was a formal partnership or just because Google likes the resource? In any event, the Sphinn thread has one comment about that:

I can't believe that they have "partnered" with a site the does an SEO analysis upon clicking? http://www.domaintools.com/seo-score/

Forum discussion at Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

A few weeks ago we reported that Google was testing search suggestions as the default option when searching at Google.com. It appears that more people are noticing this new Google Suggest test.

A new WebmasterWorld has reports from a couple members who have seen this behavior from Google recently.

A senior member said:

Today, for the first time, searching on google.com I noted that Google "suggests" me the most requested phrases.

I thought I clicked the wrong bookmark ( I have a boomark for googe.com and another one for Google suggest), but in fact the "suggestions" seem the default choice...

It can be that this user went to Google Experimental and clicked on the "Join experiment" button under "Keyword suggestions."

However, this searcher said he did not join that experiment.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google China seems to be highlighting the query term in the search results in red, instead of just bolding the query term, like was done in the past. For example, a search on search engine roundtable at Google China returns all matches of the keyword phrase on the page in red. Here is a screen capture:

Let's compare this to a search at Google.com:

Wonder why Google China is going with the red highlights, as opposed to the normal bolding highlighting?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen blogged about how difficult it is to perform a Google search:

If you thought it's easy to get to Google, think again. In our current round of usability research, only 76% of users who expressed a desire to run a Google search were successful. In other words, 1/4 of users who wanted to use Google couldn't do so. (Instead, they either completely failed to get to any search engine or ended up running their query on a different search engine — usually whatever type-in field happened to be at hand.)

He concludes:

I doubt that any Web designer would be incapable of running a Google search. So, the fact that 1/4 of users can't do it is a striking demonstration that you can't rely on your own experience if you want to reach a broader audience.

Surprised? Not so much. How many people grew up around computers? Most of us did not. You're still dealing with people who are adding "www" to their email address and are discovering that pages actually can scroll.

But not everyone prefers Google:

What shocked me last week at a barbershop is absolutely nobody there considered Google a good search engine. They all considered Yahoo and MSN the better search engines. There were about 15 people ranging in age from 25-75. People were vocal about Google. They were upset at seeing a lot of pages on Google where the keyword was only mentioned once on the web site. As I listened further these people were savvier than I thought. Many seemed to show a shift to other search engines based upon the roll-out of Universal Search. Most also seemed to like SEO. They felt even if the web site overused the keywords it was more prone to be about the subject. Also it seemed to be about branding and the fact that Bill Gates at least tried to help his fellow man.

Interesting. Do you think the findings are farfetched? Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has two members reporting seeing Google Suggest like suggestions as the default feature of the main Google.com search page.

Typically, if you go to Google.com, you can type in a query and press search. But these users are seeing an auto-complete feature that you would typically only see on Google Suggest. Here is a screen capture of how it may look:

Can this be coming to the main Google.com search results? Possibly. Yahoo does it by default with search assist and they love it. Ask.com does it also. So if it works, why not port it over the the mainstream?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a few users complaining that every time they login to Google Webmaster Tools, they are prompted with a security warning by their browser. The warning is similar to this:

Supposedly, it is not just Google Webmaster Tools. One member complains it has to do with AdSense's console as well.

I can tell you that I rarely personally get this warning and it might just be the nature of the user's browser. There is no official word from a Google representative on this matter, at the time I publish this piece.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night at Search Engine Land, I reported Google Forgot To Renew Their SSL Certificate.

A WebmasterWorld thread reported the issue with https://www.googleadservices.com SSL certificate at noon (EST). What that meant was that from between noon time and about 8pm (EST) last night, customers who clicked from your AdWords ads might have been issued a security warning on your site. This would only happen if you used Google's conversion tracking script. But for those that did, a security warning popping up on your site, due to Google, can cause a potential buyer or prospect to quickly leave your site, even though you paid your CPC to Google for that user.

When I wrote the story, at about 4:30pm (EST), I think Google was already working on the issue. Because I was not receiving the error for the googleadservices.com SSL certificate anymore, but instead I was receiving a different error for the Google.com SSL certificate. The error was a "host name mismatch" issue, possibly Google trying to utilize the valid certificate with the expired one? I don't know but here is a screen capture:

AdWordsAdvisor at 8:20pm (EST) told the forum that he/she "just IM'd now with those same tech folks and before I could even send my second sentence, they wrote back 'resolved'." So they likely fixed it before 8pm. AdWordsAdvisor said it is now on his/her calendar for March 1st, so they remember to renew it every year. Some of these certificates have to be renewed annually, there is no way to renew for 10 years (I wish there were for all).

About a month ago, Yahoo Publisher Network also forgot to renew their SSL certificate. And I believe it took Microsoft adCenter about a a month to fix their conversion tracking script issue, which also included signs of SSL issues.

Every year I need to renew my wild card SSL certificate for my servers. I honestly start the process one month in advance because for some reason, Verisign is incredibly slow in reissuing the "wild card" versions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google seems to have updated the design of the advanced search form. Here are pictures of the new page design, as I see them right now:

Now if you click on that plus sign to open the "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more" you see this:

The tip links open a small contextual help box over the page.

Here is a picture of an older version of the Google advanced search form:

I like the new interface, which seems to give users not only an easier method of searching in an advanced method but also some new features within the form (although not new completely because there were special command to do this). It seems like we now can use this form to:

• Usage rights for "not filtered by license," "free to use or share," "free to use or share, even commercially," free to use share or modify ," and "free to use, share or modify, even commercially."
• Search by region (country location)
• Numeric ranges

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo News reports that Google will be storing patients' medical records while testing a health service. Health profiles will include prescriptions, allergies, and medical histories, and will be password-protected just as your Google Account is.

Naturally, this is having a backlash since it's Google, after all, and it's privacy. But some forum members suggest that the reaction would have been different if the company storing your medical history was not Google. Others feel that this is a bad idea overall and even if it wasn't Google, they'd disapprove.

But some point out that this is an opt-in only program, so your health records won't be available unless you want them to be.

For those who have opted in, however, there is raising concern that this is tied to your Google password, and Google doesn't encourage separate passwords for any of their accounts.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The blogs and news sites are buzzing about a NY Times blog post that has official word that Google started "testing video ads on some pages of search results," yesterday. I have not seen any examples of this test in any of the forums I track, so this must be an extremely limited test.

We knew that Google would be trying these ads out for a while now. It will be interesting to see the implementation. Remember the when we discovered that Google Places Image Ad in Search Results! Maybe it will be like that? Here is a picture:

Or maybe they will be along the right hand side? I doubt we will see adds between the organic listings.

Danny Sullivan has word on the pricing model, explaining advertisers pay on a CPC model. We do have some older data on Google video metrics within the AdSense network. Plus Danny has some more examples of what these ads may look like, but who really knows? As soon as I see any, I will post them here.

Forum discussion at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.

Looking for pizza in New York? Well, Google thinks that three results are simply not enough, you need 10.

Yes, it is now official, Greg Sterling's Google Maps: From "OneBox" To Ten Local Links has the official word on the ten local results. Google will now show ten links instead of three for the local results. Why?

Google said today that the reason it's showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the "more results . . ." prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.

A WebmasterWorld thread is now going back and forth on if this is good for SEOs or not. One person says "the party is officially over," while someone quickly responds, "exactly the opposite." Which is it? It depends on how good you are at local optimization.

For more tips and discussion on this new Google Local web search integration, join the discussion.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, at about 10AM Eastern Time, reports came in that Google News search was not working. Barry reports that he also had downtime with Google News yesterday, and four other users also announced that it impacted them. The problem was that the result pages were blank.

Four hours later, Google News Guide 2 announced that the problem had been fixed.

While the problem seems to be fixed (Google News works for me), another member reports that it is still not coming up with results. Hopefully, the problem will be fixed fully within the next few hours.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Google launched Universal Search back in mid-May of last year. Since then, SEOs and Webmasters have become interested in how to leverage that to their benefit. But some are just upset and want the universal search blend to go away.

This lead me to think, hey - as a searcher, what if I wanted the old school, plain vanilla organic Google results to show up when I search and keep those pesky vertical search results out of my way when I am searching. The Ask 3D interface does a fairly good job of separating out the organic results from any mixed results together - which does the job. But no where in the Google Search preferences does it give a searcher the ability to say, "Don't give me universal results."

We can specify we don't want personalized results by logging out or using a special URL trick, which I use all the time. But can't we get something similar to turn off Universal Results? Maybe an &unvs=0 or something like that, would do.

Giving the searcher more power over their search results is a win-win for Google.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

According to Marketwatch, Nielsen is reporting that Google has only captured 56.3% of the US search market in December compared to 57.7% the previous month. The gain seems to be in Microsoft, which captured 13.8% of the search share compared to 12% the previous month.

But all is not lost for Google, at least in terms of its video properties. CNN Money reports that Google has a 31.3% hold on video, which is substantially ahead of second place, Fox Interactive Media, which only has a 4.4% share of videos. The lowest-ranked video site on the CNN list is Break.com with a 0.5% of shares (which is surprising for me, at least, since I see that site often! However, that's mostly through Digg -- and the bottom line is, then, that Digg isn't the only place you should focus your branding efforts upon.)

Forum discussion continue at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Bill Slawski writes on Cre8asite Forums that when you perform a search on Google with words like "to," "be," "the," or "a," you no longer see a message saying "XXX is a common word and was not included in your search." Instead, it displays all the results, so when I search for my BFF The Lisa, it takes me where I want to go without any setbacks.

On the heels of the discovery by Dan Thies, Bill believes that this may be related to a Google patent that Google is attempting to look at multi-stage query processing, which he explains as "a patent application that is listed as related to the one dealing with compression explores a way to handle queries that's somewhat different."

It hasn't been confirmed, though, if the stop words issue is a bug or a new thing that is being paved to accommodate this patent application. Barry writes at Search Engine Land that he will try to find out official word from Google.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums

It appears Google made a slight change in how they display the "cache" and "similar pages" link within the search results listings.

Yesterday, the link appeared on the same line as the URL, as shown here:

Today, the link appears on the line under the URL, as shown here:

Was this change intentional? It seems like everyone is seeing this on the main Google.com results.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Update: This is no longer happening, I assume some Googler accidently put a break in there and it got pushed to the main results. It is now back to normal.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports seeing Google Local results above the sponsored listings on the right hand side of the Google search results page.

Back in December, I reported at Search Engine Land that Google was testing vertical results in that top right position, such as video search results. You can see a picture of that in action at Google Blogoscoped.

The WebmasterWorld thread reports it to be very similar, but instead of the video vertical, it is the local results vertical coming up.

I am seeing a different layout in the Google SERP's since early last week, specifically the Local Business listings are showing up in the upper right hand corner.

I can only get this to work using Firefox--no IE or Opera much like some changes that were tested back in May 07. Is this a Firefox add-on I have installed or is G testing again?

Google is frequently testing layout changes to the search results page, so this is not uncommon to hear about. It is however, uncommon to see first hand.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: And more reports in this AdWords WebmasterWorld thread.

Update: There are now screen captures available at Flickr that show this in action.

There are many many ways to remove content from Google. We have discussed this topic over and over again. In fact, here are those articles:

• A New Way To Remove Content in Google.com via Google Webmaster Central
• Removing A Page From the Search Engines: Google & Yahoo Easy; Live.com & Ask.com Hard
• Need Content Removed From Google Quickly? Expedited Google Content Removal
• Google Removes Old Remove URL Tool
• Frustration Over Google URL Removal Tool

But if these methods don't work for you, Google started a thread at Google Groups. Susan Moskwa offers assistance on methods to remove content from Google's index.

The quickest method to remove Google from Google, in my experience, is to sign up with Google Webmaster Tools. Then make sure to robots.txt that page out of the index by disallowing it. Then use the Google remove content feature and the content is typically gone within 24 hours.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Yesterday, Barry did a roundup of January 1st search engine logos and made a brief acknowledgment that the Google logo links to January 1st TCP/IP. That's because while it was a New Year for most of us, it's also the celebration of 25 years of TCP/IP, according to Philipp Lenssen.

Philipp also noted an easter egg in the actual confetti parts themselves (SYN SYN / ACK ACK which refers to a 3-way handshake to establish connectivity on the TCP/IP protocol) as seen in his screenshot below:

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint member shows the Google doodle for the Christmas holiday as a 5-step logo building project as seen below:

Quite a cool and creative idea as always. I love 'em Google Doodles. :)

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

A story that emerges at the SEO Refugee Forums speaks volumes about the power of Google Maps in the natural/universal search results. A florist company in Denver is currently ranking #1 for their key terms in the natural organic listings. They have also invested over $100,000 in Google AdWords over three years.

The problem is that now that Google Universal search includes maps in the results, they're not showing up on the listings for whatever reason. Instead, the competition is. They claim that it has "shut down their business overnight." The owner is desperate and is trying every possible angle:

We are now less than 1 week from Christmas, our busiest time of year, and critical weakness in the "algorithm" for maps has bankrupted my company.

....

PLEASE HELP us. I realize we are nothing to you, but my family is losing everything.

It's scary how important Google Maps are now that people are going to desperate measures to keep their businesses and families alive. But it truly shows the power of Google and their technology.

For the sake of this business owner, I hope that someone at Google lists this company in Google Maps. I don't think they deserve to be shafted.

Forum discussion continues at SEO Refugee Forums.

You've gotta love being too dependent on a good thing. But when it goes down, boom -- the unfortunate occurs and you notice. Earlier, a bunch of folks looking at the Google Cache couldn't find what they were looking for and received the following result:

Your search - cache:http://www.##############.html - did not match any documents.

It looks like there was an early morning hiccup online as many forum folks noticed. But it's back now!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and High Rankings Forum.

If you're reading Search Engine Roundtable, chances are that the answer is yes. A recent Pew Internet and American Life Project study announced that up to 47% of Americans are looking for information from themselves through search engines. Similarly, 53% have used search to look into information about other individuals (co-workers, romantic interests, etc.) with women tending to look into the online histories of people they are dating.

Surprised? Not really. The question for many of us should be "how often do you Google yourself?" :)

And most of us need to be proactive generally anyway:

Ya know, Googling yourself is crucial for your OWN online brand reputation management. Yes, we're each a brand and there may be a time we may have to combat negative dialect in the SERPs.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Many of you in the US may already be so used to the navigational bar on Google that you wouldn't notice a difference elsewhere. But here it is in case you're "banner blind."

The Google Operating System blog announces that other Google websites, such as Google.co.uk, Google.fr, and Google.de are now using this same navigational bar. This is confirmed by Search Engine Land who says it's now available worldwide.

It's interesting to see that this new feature is making it easy to understand and navigate to the various Google properties. And if you were wondering what's different on the Google homepage, now your questions have been answered.

Do you use this navigational bar? I'm curious to know how often you use it instead of going directly to the sites. Feel free to share your input in the comments.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Google is indexing and ranking ads from Google AdSense.

To see evidence for yourself, just search on this popular Google AdSense ad found throughout the web for a Google product. Here, search on "Get The Data You Need Faster". Up comes many results, many of those results are triggered from Google AdSense ads, most from Google Parked Domain ads.

Here is one example of a parked domain ad with the Google AdSense ads being indexed:

I don't believe this is a new occurrence, but it should be pointed out and corrected by Google.

Why?
* It skews advertiser's results by letting GoogleBot crawl the pages
* It shows up in the Google cache
* Google ads should not be indexed by Google as part of your page content
* and more...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I just reported about a Google Image update but it seems with that update, Google has removed a very important feature. Typically, if you click on an image in Google images, it will open that image in a framed window. Part of that framed window will contain a Google Search box at the top and the page the image came from in the bottom half.

What is now missing is the "Remove This Frame" link from Google Image search.

You can of course click on the "Below is the image in its original context on the page: URL here" option to take you directly to the image source. But the "remove this frame" link has been removed.

A WebmasterWorld is discussing this now and some are mentioning that Google is currently testing out new layout options for this feature. For me, I currently don't see the "remove this frame" text anywhere. However, some say it was "renamed and moved to the other side of the screen." Time will tell.

Forum discusison at WebmasterWorld.

Both DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld are reporting Google has updated the Google Image Search index and algorithm over the weekend.

Many people are noticing new images being found in the image search engine. Also some are noticing that Google is more particular about which images they are showing. The SafeSearch filtering tool, which allows you to define how safe you want your results, seems to have been fine tuned a bit also. The three options include:

• Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you’ll receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
• Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search).
• No Filtering, as you’ve probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.

If someone turns this filter on, there are reports that many images are missing from the results that should not be missing. The suspicions are that if a site that isn't "family friendly" is linking to that image, Google will include it in the filtered results. Even if that image is family friendly and even if that image is on a site that is family friendly.

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, tries to offer some type of explanation from Google on this:

Google wants to be extra careful with images (they've recently shown some embarrassing images quite prominently in "universl" search results)

But Tedster still believes this behavior is a bit out of the norm.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday I covered the news at Search Engine Land of a new Google experimental search feature that lets you move search results up and remove results from the Google search results page.

The changes you make only impact you - your login and does not influence the overall scope of the search results. But can they? Who knows. We have been seeing Google test remove results features before and then drop the feature.

Here is a screen capture of how it works:

Google says:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

A Cre8asite Forums thread is talking about how this may or may not impact SEOs. Well, this is nothing new. We have had whole conference panels on the topic, such as Personalized Search: Fear or Not?. Plus we have shown how much the personalized results today can differ from non-personalized results. In fact, why not try turning off Google personalized results yourself and do some tests.

Is this new Google experimental test the end of SEO? Not at all. This does not add much more than what we have today with Google Personalized results. All it does it make it more visible to all of us.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Remember back in September we reported about Chinese-like .CN TLDs spamming the heck out of Google's search results? Well, it appears that a study was done by Sunbelt Software that showed "27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages" found in Google for hundreds of legitimate search queries. It appears that the .CN (which were really not .CN TLDs but masked as such) are directly related to this report.

Subverted search sites lead to massive malware attack in progress is the article that most people are pointing to. I covered it yesterday at Search Engine Land placing blame on Google's Malware Filter not working properly. But it has history, as I showed above.

Here is our picture from September:

Here is a picture from News.com from yesterday with those malware results:

Look similar? Yea.

Was Google aware of this issue back in September. Yes, they were. Google is working to clean up the mess faster since this news hit the front page of Techmeme.

Do I know for sure the two are related. No, but they seem to be. Only Google can confirm the two are directly related.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Valleywag reported last week that Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which takes the user directly to the #1 result for a particular search phrase, costs the company $110 million per year in lost revenues because the button bypasses all sponsored results (and is used in 1% of all searches).

Ironically, people still don't know what it is. I remember thinking that "I'm Feeling Lucky" would randomly bring me to a website related to the search term, but it didn't necessarily have to be the #1 ranking.

Why does Google keep it? It's part of who they are.

A few years ago back at SES NYC I was at a session and I cannot remember who, but a woman from Google and I were talking and she stated that they did a test years ago and that when they removed the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button there were a ton of complaints. Most people inquired about something that changed on the site- but could not point out what it was....

Yeah, it's useless to most people, but it still identifies the Google search engine. Funny and ironic at the same time.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Have you noticed Google's homepage lately? Instead of the "Video" link, you'll now see "Products" instead. This must be Google's official acknowledgment of the holiday season. :)

Philipp Lenssen has more.

Forum discussion: Search Engine Watch Forums.

Hitwise, a competitive intelligence service, has released its October 2007 numbers, indicating that Google dominated the search landscape that month with over 64% of searches performed. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask followed, with numbers at 21.65%, 7.42%, and 4.76%, respectively.

Is Google a monopoly? Forum members wonder. Other forum members dismiss that idea, saying that high market shares are not indicative of any such monopoly. It is, after all, a user preference, and there are few "barriers to entry" at this time.

Another member spots that MSN is performing better than expected. But yet another member has a problem with that. Why is MSN still sending spam-like referrals?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Forum members are noticing a bit of a change in terms of presentation for Google Local results. One member was a bit disgruntled by the results presented when he performed a local search and found 10 links -- without the necessary map:

I am no longer seening a map and now I get the "top ten local results" instead of the 3 links and the map.

That observation piqued another response from someone who watches TV:

I have seen some commercials for Ask and think that Google needs to do more

(Really, now, beyond watching the tube, you should also be using Ask.com. Their local results rock!)

I can't reproduce the 10-link result and still see the standard map plus three links, but my guess is that Google is testing this feature out and looking for feedback. There's your feedback, Google. I still say that Ask.com works pretty darn well on the local front, though.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.