Other Google Topics Archives

Yesterday, if you viewed a video on YouTube in HD format, it would display in a large format. It would basically move down all the content on the right of the video and increase the video size to the full browse width. Here is a picture:

YouTube seemed to have changed it now. When you view a video in HD, it no longer increases the video size to the full width of the browser, instead it just keeps the current video size. Here is a picture:

I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it is being noticed by several YouTube viewers. A YouTube Help thread has a couple people complaining about the change.

The way to force the full width, is to append &hd=1 to the end of the URL, so for my last video recap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0tTyJG9SA&hd=1.

Also, YouTube has increased the file size limit from 1GB to 2GB the other week. In fact, I was the first to notice this change, and some sites credited me, while others did not.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

In March, we reported about several Google scams. I was hoping that the issue would get better over time, but it just seems to be getting worse. The discussion forums are swarming with questions about these scams. Innocent people are believing they can work for Google and get paid, when in fact, they are not working for Google.

A Google Web Search Help thread points out that these Google scammers are not just using Google's name to make money, but they are also using Google's AdWords system to find more people to sign up. For example, here is an add I spotted for a random get job type of search:

As you can see, they are spelling Google's name slightly wrong. Many won't pick up on the typo. Why isn't Google more aggressive about stopping these people from showing ads on their ad system? It is one thing to get email spam about this stuff, but to place ads in Google AdWords?

There is a ton of discussion with more examples of these and other type of scam ads being shown through Google's AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, and so on at Google Web Search Help.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The all powerful Google and their impenetrable server farms took a major hit last night, when the news about Michael Jackson suffering a cardiac arrest and ultimately passing away broke. As CNN and News.com shows, Google was displaying one of those Google "We're Sorry" pages to searches trying desperately to find out the fate of Michael Jackson. Even Search Engine Land was suffering from the news, as the tweet confirms.

I remember during 9/11, sites across the Internet couldn't handle the volume of people seeking news about what was going on. I believe back then, the only working site was Google News, probably because it wasn't being used by as many people as use it now. The spike of people searching for Michael Jackson, amongst Farrah Fawcett and the fake news about Jeff Goldblum was tremendous.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of discussion around the death of Michael Jackson. I will only point you to webmaster discussion, which is a lot less for some reason. It is worth while seeing how Loren Baker sums up how the search engines handled queries on this news.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.

According to at least two Google Maps Help Threads, Google Maps changed how they handle looking up a specific location by longitude and latitude.

Supposedly, in the past, entering in the longitude followed by a comma and followed by the latitude, it would return the location on Google Maps. Now, it shouldn't work - but honestly, it currently does for me (maybe, I am on a different data center). The way to get it to work, is to prefix the longitude and latitude with loc: (for example, enter in loc:37.425866,-122.085743).

This works for me on both my iPhone and Safari browser, so maybe it is Blackberry specific? I am not sure.

Google's Tom from the Google Mobile Maps team said:

I've checked with a few teammates, and they've informed me that we've made slight adjustments to our search algorithm: In order to pinpoint a location on a map, please use the prefix "loc:" in the search bar before entering in the lat/long. For example, the search "loc:37.425866,-122.085743" will drop a pin directly on the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA, USA.

Again, this seems to be Google Maps Mobile specific, but maybe not iPhone or Android specific?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help Threads.

For the first time, I have seen Google comment on when they will be bringing push Gmail to any device. In a Google Mobile Help thread, Googler Ethan responded to a request about push and the iPhone, adding that it is supported on Android devices and in July, it is coming to Blackberry devices.

The only catch is that push will only be supported for Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition users. That means, you have to pay for it. I personally think that is fair and I know many people willing to pay a few bucks for giving them push Gmail. Again, this is only for Blackberry devices and it is coming next month, in July 2009.

Let me quote Ethan:

As a reminder, push email support is currently available with the Gmail app on Android devices and will be available for Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition users with BlackBerry devices in July.

So what about the iPhone? Well, no comment from Google on that yet. It is currently the 7th most wanted feature in the feature request list. But Google has yet to comment about if or when it will be available. I suspect that when it does become available, it will be only available to the Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition users, similar to how it is launching for Blackberry devices.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Google Voice Search for iPhone no longer works exactly like it did in the past. If you installed iPhone 3.0 operating system, you may notice that lifting the receiver to your ear and speaking your command will no longer function with the current Google Mobile app for the iPhone.

This is a bit funny, in that Google admittedly broke Apple's rules by releasing such a feature. Specifically, moving the phone to your ear and having the application change to listen for you to speak, is not a supported developer feature in the iPhone SDK.

So when iPhone 3.0 OS came out, it seemed to have broke that neat feature.

Bret at Google posted in the Google Mobile Help discussion area that Google is aware of the issue and working on a fix. The iPhone application still works, but the feature where you put the phone to your ear no longer functions.

In fact, Bret said they submitted a new version to Apple, which is waiting for Apple's approval. Will Apple let this one slide through also?

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

I have been watching a Google Webmaster Help thread for about a week now. The thread was started by a 3rd party individual who volunteers a lot of his time helping webmasters in the Google Webmaster Help forum. He was even promoted (no pay of course) to the position of "Webmaster Help Bionic Poster" as a top contributor.

Autocrat, the name this person goes by, questioned Google's search quality team, to give them more insight in how to help Google. He said:

It would be nice to know; * What sort of "activities" we should be reporting * What hte chances are of seeing any form of action on a report * What sort of "crimes" could we expect to see action on * Whether you have to make multiple reports - or have multiple reports made against you before action is taken * how is it that some of the most blatant stuff gets to stay on line and escape the "algorythm"

I hate to ask - but I'm tired of seeing some of the * in the SERPs - and I now fail t osee why I should bother reporting some of hte cheating * * when I know that I have a less than 1 in 20 chance of seeing them get punished!

So please - would the Spam Team please step forward and have a chat with us?

We all waited, and waited for a response from an official Google representative. But a week later we have yet to see a response.

It is tough when your top volunteers ask tough questions, but it is even tougher when your top volunteers have to ask some of these questions.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

This almost wants me to switch to an Android device, even though I am getting the new iPhone 3GS on Friday. Google announced that you can now search Google Maps on an Android device by your voice, a lot like how you use the Google Mobile Search app on your iPhone.

Christopher from the Google Maps team said in a Google Mobile Help forum that the new features include

• Search by voice
• Transit and walking directions
• Business details and reviews
• Latitude Updates

Plus, Google fixed the latitude background location updates will continue to update. Previously, a bug was causing background updating to periodically stop for some users.

Here are additional notes left by Christopher:

• The "Google Maps" update in Android Market will only appear for users with system updates for "Cupcake" and above (or SDK 1.5+; see Settings> About phone > Firmware version). If your device does not yet have Cupcake (v1.5), please be patient until it is available in your locale.
• If you experience the "Installation error - package file was not signed correctly" error, this is because your device is not on a user build identified as kila-user, opal-user, etc. (Settings > About phone > Build number). If your device is on a "userdebug" build, this update will not be able to be installed from Market at this time.
• Known issue: Traffic data use may cause some memory issues and turn Traffic off with an error message indicating this. We are aware of this issue and investigating possible fixes.
• Street View was not removed but is now available contextually within Maps instead of as its own map mode. For example, search for an address or business (or use the new long-press the map feature) to pick a location on the map. If Street View data is available, you'll have the option of seeing the imagery along with the rest of the options for that location (Show on map, Get directions, Search nearby, etc.).

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Good news for those looking to get included in Google News. Google finally released a much needed Google News Publisher FAQ to answer those common questions.

The FAQ is focused on publishers looking to get in to Google News, and also to help them with issues and technical requirements. The article is broken down into the following categories:

• Getting accepted in Google News
• Including my content in Google News
• Sitemaps questions
• Help! Something's broken!

Google News was a very mysterious beast back in the day. The Google News team has recently done an excellent job communicating with publishers and webmasters on various inclusion and technical issues.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

The NY Post, in NY Post style, went with an over the top title for their latest article about Google, which read Fear Grips Google. Here is the introductory paragraph:

You'd think nothing would get under the skin of search giant Google.

But co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned.

The NY Post has a history of going a bit (to say the least) over the top with their reporting. Mashable said, "the Post has a knack for spin, and while Google may not be gripped by fear, we’d think it only prudent for the search leader to consider what threat, if any, Bing poses to its dominant market position... The bottom line: we’d be more concerned if Google was not paying attention to new competitors."

It doesn't appear that SEOs and Webmasters are fooled by the title either.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

For about a week or more now, iGoogle users have been complaining that their feeds in the iGoogle theme are not loading. There are dozens of threads about this issue, but there is one really large one at < ahref="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=0cf4230531ec931e&hl=en">Google Web Search Help on the isssue.

Here is a screen capture of the issue, which I was able to replicate on one of the 6 feeds on my iGoogle page. Keep in mind, I don't use iGoogle, so I tested it for the first time in months. As you can see from the picture below, one of my feeds, Google Blogoscoped, was not loading:

On June 5th, Friday, Googler Paul said:

Hi everyone -- thanks again for your diligence reporting this problem. I can confirm that this is definitely a problem on our end, not yours, and we're working on implementing a fix. Meanwhile, refreshing your page may get your feeds to load properly.

Today, three days later, the issue is still bother iGoogle users.

Forum discussion at < ahref="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=0cf4230531ec931e&hl=en">Google Web Search Help.

A Google Web Search Help thread tells us how to change the iGoogle layout from the new tabs along the left-side of the page to the old style of tabs across the top of the page.

To bring back the old top tabs, just go to google.com/ig?hl=all. In the past, bring up the old top tabs worked by going to google.com/ig?gl=all but now google.com/ig?hl=all is how to get there.

Here is a picture of the old tabs:

Here is a picture of the new tabs:

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.

The other day, Google announced improvements with analytics for the Google Local Business Center. I thought I take you through detailed screen shots of how my business listing appears in the LBC.

(1) Analytic Graphs plotting both "impressions" (views) and "actions":

Impressions are the views of your local listing in Google. Any time someone sees your listing in Google. The actions include clicks on "more info," clicking on "driving directions" or clicking on your web site.

(2) The data summary for the date range listed above:

(3) Top Search Queries used to find your local listing:

(4) Where people are coming from when they click driving directions:

(5) Plus Google added a percent done of your listing, and a quick edit button to add or edit information:

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.

Google Maps updated the business listing quality guidelines over the weekend. The new guidelines are welcomed by those who have noticed an influx of spam or borderline spam submissions to the Google Local Business Center over the past couple years.

Here are the new guidelines, as of June 1, 2009:

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

Will it prevent spam? I doubt it. But it should make reporting and removing spam a bit easier.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you take a look at the Gmail Help Forum you will notice dozens of threads with hundreds of posts about Google's spam filter failing in a major way. In addition, you can see hundreds of tweets about the issue this morning as well.

I cannot summarize all the thread, but here are the largest ones in that forum:

• Why is so much spam passing through lately?
• SPAM in GMAIL getting ridiculous
• Eggs, bacon, and SPAM!
• Dear Gmail, WUDDAFUXUP with the spam today? Higher con-spam-ination content than normal...

One of my Gmail accounts suffered from spam about a month ago, but it seems to be getting better now - or maybe I am used to the new spam.

It seems like something spiked up bad today, based on the volume of posts over the weekend.

No official word from Google on the topic yet. Hat tip to Gabs for encouraging me to write about this.

You rarely ever see a Googler complaining about spammers in public. That is why I found this Google Maps Help thread funny. A Googler, Joel, went off on a small rant, asking:

Question: Why do spammers post on the Help Forum asking for assistance?

It surprises me, really.

If you're posting - why isn't my listing showing, and your submitted listing title is something like Best Web Designer and SEO in the State of New Hampshire, you can bet it's been suspended for violating our policies.

In my history of covering SEM forum discussion, I cannot remember ever seeing a complaint like this come from a Googler or even a search representative at another search company.

How does this help you or I? It doesn't but I found this unique enough to post about.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

This story was pre-written and scheduled to go live on May 29th.

Earlier this month, we noticed Google Analytics changed the graph to display only day counts selected. In the past, it faded out the rest of the month when you selected a few days. In addition, if you selected just a single day, it would break down the visits by hour.

Now this is no longer the case. So we ran a poll to see what Google Analytics customers or users want. Here are the results of the 100 responses:

Question: Do You Like New or Old Google Analytics Graph?

:: I Like Old Graph, That Fades Unselected Days said 83 respondents or 83%
:: I Like New Graph, That Only Displays Selected Days said 15 respondents or 15%
:: Other said 2 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

Back in March 2007, Google Maps had an easter egg that allowed people to search for directions from places like New York to London, and it would tell you to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. It was a little geek joke that caused a lot of buzz.

You can see many pictures of the various examples in Google Images.

But at some point, Google disabled those directions. I am not sure when, but a Google Maps Help thread asks what happened to the neat gag? The Maps user said:

Darn it, when did Google get rid of the "swim across the atlantic ocean" gag?! That was the best "easter egg" type feature I ever saw in any professional application, ever. If it was business users who complained which ended this feature please at least bring it back as an option. It was a really neat joke which was obviously not intended to be taken seriously. It was the kind of thing that made Google "cool."

I am not sure when it stopped working, but it was something cool that Google did.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help .

A Google Webmasters Help thread has reports that the Google Webmaster Tools API is having some technical difficulties over the weekend.

Users of the API are receiving 502 errors for some requests. Authentication seems to work via the API, but all other requests seem to time out eventually. One webmaster coder said the following protocols are having issues, but there may be others:

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/sites/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/keywords/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/siteID/sitemaps/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/messages/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/siteID/crawlissues/

Googler, JohnMu, said he has "passed it on to the team to take a look."

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

If you are a maven at YouTube and videos in the mobile space, you might be interested in a new Google Mobile Help thread.

Googler, Robin, said he and Google is looking for mobile YouTube experts to make help videos to be syndicated on the YouTube Help Channel for others to learn from. Robin said:

Help others out by making fun, creative, and informative videos that we can add to the YouTube mobile help center articles. Making videos of tips, instructions, and shortcuts makes everything easier to understand!

Check out more info here if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=YouTubeHelp

So if you have the mobile video skill set, and want to help others, give it a try!

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

I rarely share funny threads, but I seriously need to lighten things up today, due to the lack of sleep I have been getting. A Google AdWords Help thread has a sad story of someone who was scammed for 1,000 rupees. The funny part is that this was done in person, by someone claiming to be a Google advertising representative.

What appears to have happened was that a person claimed to be an authorized agent of Google. The person said, give me 1,000 rupees as a starter balance and I will get your ads going. It turns out, this guy took the money and ran off.

Clearly, the person who was scammed is upset. But who does he blame? Google! Since this guy claimed to be an authorized Google agent, Google is responsible for the loss. Seriously.

The person then goes off cursing at everyone for telling him that Google is not responsible and that he has been scammed. Google has seriously modified the thread to keep it somewhat clean. But it still is a funny read.

Personally, I am willing to repay this guy his 1,000 rupees, which is $27. In fact, I'll make the offer to him, since I did use his story for this site.

Lessons learned:

(1) Don't fall for scams, do your homework before giving anyone your money
(2) Don't blame others for your own problems

Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.

Google News and Google Blog search had updates over the weekend. Google News announced the visual update to their home page, while the Google Blog search update was not announced and less visual in nature.

The Google News update includes three main things:

1. New color frames around each section
2. YouTube logos to embedded news videos
3. Section pages (Top Stories, Business etc) now feature the media files from partners

Most people don't mind the update, and there are not many complaints or compliments on it. There is discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Blog Search also updated but this was not written about by Google. Jeremy contacted me and the team at Search Engine Land to give us the lowdown. Matt McGee did the excellent write up in my absence to explain the update made to blog search. It includes:

• Better at grouping blog posts into clusters
• More and fresher blog posts included in clusters
• Processing new links from blogs much faster
• Ranking algorithm has been tuned a bit
• Slight interface change that most won't notice
• Better at determining the authority

I am a huge fan of Jeremy Hylton, head of the search quality group in Google’s New York office. He is very open about Google Blog Search's advancements and issues and is a down right nice guy.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

It seems like many people around the world are complaining that Google's properties, including Google Search and Gmail are both either down for them or incredibly slow. For me, it is working well, but I had people call, email and IM me about the issue.

Plus, if you look at a Twitter Search for google, you will see many are saying it is slow or down, at the moment.

We do have a few threads in the Google forums, here is one from the Google Web Search Help discussion forums.

I assume there are some server or network issues with the major backbones causing the slowness or downtime. I also assume things will return to normal soon.

Google has updated the App Status page to say there is service disruption today for Gmail users:

We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by May 14, 2009 11:23:00 AM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

*This may also be affecting other services

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Last week, we reported for the first time of Google Gadget porn becoming an issue. Well, it is now more widespread then I have ever seen.

A new Google AdSense Help thread reports seeing porn in home page of the Google Gadgets directory. Here is a screen capture:

Both Google Gadgets contain full nudity and also include sex photos. This is a clear violation of the Google Gadget terms. This was first reported two days ago, and they have been on the home page of the directory for at least two days and they still remain there. Hopefully Google will remove these soon.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

First spotted at Google Operating System, Google posted a 200 second video showing off "life at the Googleplex." Here is that video:

Looks like fun to me.

Forum discussion DigitalPoint Forums.

A Google News Help thread reports on a confirmed Google News bug where blank or black images show up in the search results.

For example, a search for letsrecycle in Google News returns a result with an image that looks like this:

Google has confirmed the issue in the thread and said:

This is something that we see from time to time. It's usually temporary, but let us know [1] if you keep seeing it.

They seem to be aware of the bug, but not too keen on fixing it any time soon.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that iGoogle is starting to get hit with lots of Google Gadget Porn. Via the thread, I found several Google Gadgets that show pornography including frontal nudity and link to pornographic sites.

If you do not want to see porn, do not click on this Google Gadget. The Babe Of The Day Google Gadget, if added to iGoogle, will show you a topless girl. If you click on the topless girl, it would take you to http://babe.pro/babes/, which contains pictures of fully nude women. Here is a censored picture of the Google Gadget:

The thing is, there are many examples of Google Gadgets like this. The Google Web Search Help thread has a Googler saying that "pornographic content isn't allowed." What is the issue? Well, these gadgets are ending up on school computers.

I am hoping that someone from Google will be reading this. I am working with teachers and students creating wikis and adding Google Gadgets to their site. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from a teacher asking about all the nude and sex gadgets. They were NOT there before, can I assume you were hacked? Please fix this or let me know what is happening. This is VERY disturbing. I can't have students use that site if they are going to stay.

Google said they will manually remove these gadgets, but can they keep up? They certainly had their issues with porn on other Google properties.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

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.

A week ago, Google Analytics fixed a bug with content data reports, now they need to fix issues with Google Analytics users logging into their accounts.

There are several threads in the Google Analytics Help forum discussing how Google is displaying an error message when they login.

Googler, Christelle, said in a Google Analytics Help thread:

If you get this error message (Error Has Been Detected) when you click on the View Reports link, please add your username in the form at https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pKyhdPcaY98d84kyJhdBELg

Your login email will be fixed within 24 hours (excluding weekends and holidays)

-- Christelle

PS: Please do not post your email address here

So if you are seeing the message, "Error Has Been Detected," please go to the URL above and fill out the form.

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

As you know, I bring news and stories to you from my findings in the discussion forums. One of those forums is the Google News Forum.

I always find it funny that every day, without question, there are at least one or two posts from people looking to block either conservative news or liberal news. People get into heated arguments over ways to block either conservative news or liberal news. It is often comical for me to see those headlines, which I normally skip. Just for reference, here is a conservative thread and here is a liberal thread (typically NY Times vs Fox News).

But then it occurred to me, why doesn't Google News give people a way to see news that they want to see. If they like the liberal spin, then give it to them. If they like the conservative spin, then give them that. How?

Remember Yahoo Mindset? The innovative tool from Yahoo that allowed you to filter your search results down by either research results or shopping results. FYI, it was discontinued some time recently. In any event, why not allow searchers to do the same thing with Google News, filter the level of either liberal or conservative spin they get in their news?

There are very few people who would not like such a feature in my opinion. Google is smart, we know your machines can detect bias, so add the slider to filter news towards one bias over an other.

Forum discussion at Google News Forum.

Google's merchant system has been around for a while now. Google encouraged merchants to add Google Checkout as an option to their web site through offering discounted or free merchant fees and added visibility on their AdWords ads. Today is the day that Google's pricing structure for Google Checkout changes.

Prior to May 5th:

Going Forward:

When we asked our readers if they will continue to use Google Checkout after trial period the majority, 60%, said no they won't. But 40% said they will continue to use it. Why? I suspect because it was already added and they still benefit from the added visibility in the AdWords listings.

I wonder if the poll I mentioned will be accurate or not?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Starting a few days ago, it appears Google Analytics changed the behavior of the display graph based on your date selection criteria. In the past, if you selected a specific date criteria that was less than 30 days, Google would fade out the remainder of the days and highlight the dates you selected. Now, it looks like Google only shows the dates you selected.

This is a small but very significant change. I personally prefer seeing the whole 30 days on the graph, with Google highlighting that they are only using the days I selected. But not everyone agrees with me on that and Google has changed it to totally remove the unselected days from the graph.

The picture below shows a few days of traffic from my personal blog. In the past, it would show the full 30 days, and just bold those days I selected, now it just shows those days and hides the rest:

Do you like the new way Google Analytics handles this? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Google offers a lot of ways to market your business. Google's claim to fame and where they make most of their money is from search ads and contextual ads. But they do offer other ways to market your products and/or services.

Google announced the launch of a new site named Google for Advertisers. The site is broken down into the fully structure:

• Online Advertising
• Search Advertising
• Website Advertising
• YouTube Advertising
• Advertising Management
• Free Marketing
• TV Advertising
• Mobile Advertising
• The Marketing Cycle
• Defining your strategy
• Creating your ads
• Planning & buying your media
• Optimizing your campaigns
• Getting Started
• Stay in Touch
• My Tool Kit

Within each section, there is additional content and links to the appropriate advertising programs. This does help organize things a bit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I found a very disturbing Google Maps issue via Google Maps Help forums. Mike Blumenthal has uncovered that Google is merging competing businesses that have nearby addresses. Let me say that again, but show you an example, that was uncovered by Mike.

Here are the results for two different hotels/motels in the same area, but that have different addresses. The map result for South Pier Inn displays the correct information, but their competitor, The Inn on Lake Superior is somehow merged into this record, showing the South Pier Inn's information and web address, while not showing the Inn on Lake Superior's information. They did however, merge both hotel's phone numbers. Here is a picture:

Googler, Nina, responded in the Google Maps Help thread saying:

Yes, the algorithm for merging changed recently. The developers who work on this have been alerted and are actively working to address this problem. They are also reading this thread.

The fix needs to be automatic - not manual. These things usually take several weeks to test and bring live. We know it's causing user pain and I know they are working really hard on it right now as we speak.

Clearly Google knows how big of an issue this is and I hope it gets fixed soon.

Mike Blumenthal has posted more information on this topic at his blog.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Update: Marty at aimClear blog wrote about this on the 21st.

Google has posted a new beta version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer over here for users to test. The new version is currently a labs project only and brings location services to the toolbar. This allows Google to determine your current location, I believe based on your ISP's data, and then serve up local search results to you.

It is called, "Google Toolbar with My Location." The help document describes the features:

• Find locally-relevant search results on Google when local information is available.
• Center maps on Google Maps around your current location.
• See your approximate current location using the Google Maps gadget.

Google allows you to enable and disable the location services. It also doesn't tie the location data to your Google account.

Forum discussion at Google Toolbar Help.

Google has secured @GoogleWebspam on Twitter. Currently the Twitter stream is empty, but the account has over 60 followers.

Both Googler's JohnMu and Matt Cutts confirmed that this account is controlled by a Googler at the Web Spam team.

John said this morning "@rustybrick Yes, that account is legitimate, but not active." And @Harith asked Matt Cutts yesterday, who said:

@Harith, got more info. Someone on my team showed initiative and grabbed that user account, so it is a google account.

Is this account going to be used for submitting spam reports or aiding webmasters in improving their web sites? It appears that it might be for spam reports, since the web link on the profile links to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en but it is still early, so that can change.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A confirmed Google Maps bug seems to be causing the reviews in Google Maps to disappear. A Google Maps Help thread has several business owners complaining that their reviews (all or many) are now missing.

Googler, Joel H said that Google is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. I'll quote him:

We're aware of this issue and are working on a fix. We'll update the group when more information becomes available.

I am not sure if this is a specific issue with importing reviews from third-party data sources or if it is a Google Maps review bug. I know that when Google Maps began allowing user contributed reviews back in June 2007, I did have at least one review, from myself. Now, none.

Embedded Maps view (currently has no review, but might change in future):

View Larger Map

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google Image Labeler is a fun game people can play to help Google Image Search better understand and tag pictures within the Google Image Search index. This game launched in September 2006 and has been somewhat under the radar since then.

Recently, I saw not one, but two different threads in Google Web Search Help forums by two different people, who both spotted pornography in Google Image Labeler. One even saw child pornography. Here is what they had to say:

I was doing the Google Image Labeler when suddenly I am confronted with child pornography to label! I am both shocked and outraged that Google allowed such a thing to happen. How can Google make sure this type of filth does not show up again?

Why is there porn on google image labeler? At first it was just women without anything covering their breasts but I saw a sex scene the other day. Is there any way to report this?

Is there a way to report images that are offensive or inappropriate in Google Image Labeler? No, not really. You can in image search, but not here.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: Googlers have replied to both threads.

Jaime from Google said:

Thanks for taking the time to post here; we take any instance of abuse toward minors very seriously and will be in contact with you privately so that we can further investigate and take the appropriate action.

While we will certainly report any legitimate abuse we become aware of to the appropriate authorities, I'd also welcome you to help keep children safe by directly contacting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's (NCMEC) CyberTipline 24-hours per day, 7 days per week online at www.cybertipline.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678. Reports can be made regarding eight categories of child sexual exploitation such as online enticement, child pornography, or the prostitution of children. Learn more about the categories here.

As I mentioned, someone here will be emailing you shortly to investigate. If you encounter this type of material in our results or in the Image Labeler in the future, don't hesitate to let us know.

Evan from Google said:

The system is designed to only show safe images and we believe we are doing a good job at it, however, false positives do happen. Thanks for pointing this out for us.

If you visit Google.com today, you may notice a new logo on the home page. The logo looks like this:

The logo is to remember Samuel Morse who was born on April 27, 1791. Today is his birthday, and Samuel Morse invented Morse code.

We have several threads on the topic, many of them asking why is Google's logo broken. In fact, one asked why is Google's logo not fully loading?

Googler, Jamie created a Google Web Search Thread specifically to talk about why Google changes their logo on special days.

FYI, Google had a Google Braille logo back in 2006.

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

There are two large threads at Google Maps Help Forums with reports from Internet Explorer users receiving errors when trying to view and link to Google Maps.

The error some of these IE users are seeing is:

Webpage error details User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB5; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) Timestamp: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:26:06 UTC

Message: 'elem' is null or not an object
Line: 5
Char: 372
Code: 0
URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Google has confirmed the issue in the threads. Mike CH from Google said:

I wanted to update you on the "elem is null or not an object" error that some of you have been seeing. This is a recently introduced bug which only occurs on Internet Explorer when loading certain locations. Thanks to your (very!) helpful reports, we were able to quickly locate the problem. It's being treated as a priority fix and will hopefully be live shortly.

Workarounds for now include:

- Not using Internet Explorer
- Using the link I provided above to open Maps

I assume a bug like this will be fixed pretty soon. I personally tried to replicate the issue on my PC, but was unable to.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help Forums.

A Google search for time in pakistan should give you the current time in Pakistan, but it doesn't. On April 15th, Pakistan advanced their clocks by one hour, but Google did not. So instead of it showing me 6:19pm, it is showing me 5:19pm.

Big deal? Yes, it is. This is not just impacting people looking for the current time in Pakistan. Is is reportedly also impacting Pakistan users of Gmail, Orkut, AdWords and other Google properties. A Google Web Search Help thread reports that it is showing emails as being received and sent an hour earlier then it is suppose to show.

I hope Google fixes this soon. It has already been a week since it has been first reported as an issue.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google announced earnings last night, the earnings reported that revenues were down from the previous quarter. Let me quote the announcement:

Google reported revenues of $5.51 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a decrease of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the first quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.44 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Profits were slightly up, however, from quarter to quarter:

GAAP net income for the first quarter of 2009 was $1.42 billion as compared to $382 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the first quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion, compared to $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

There are two threads on the discussion of Google's earnings report, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at DigitalPoint Forums.

Another WebmasterWorld thread specifically focuses on the AdSense/publisher side of the coin. The payouts to publishers from quarter to quarter is summarized in the thread:

• Q109 1.23 billion
• Q408 1.29 billion
• Q308 1.33 billion
• Q208 1.32 billion
• Q108 1.34 billion
• Q407 1.31 billion
• Q307 1.12 billion
• Q207 1.06 billion
• Q107 1.05 billion
• Q406 0.92 billion
• Q306 0.78 billion

Many suspect that Google is paying publishers less of a percentage, but it is hard to prove that from the earnings report.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

If you have been like me and been tracking the Google Toolbar Help discussion area, you may have noticed complaint after complaint on how buggy the Google Toolbar was in Internet Explorer.

Google announced they have released a stable version of the Google Toolbar 6 for IE. Version 6.1.1518.856 is the stable release, which removes the beta tag from this toolbar.

Internet explorer users can download it at http://toolbar.google.com/. Improvements include:

• Find bar is no longer a separate toolbar that overrides IE's Find feature
• Word find and Highlight buttons are back
• AutoFill works on most login pages, like the Gmail homepage

Forum discussion at Google Toolbar Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 16th.

Google is pretty off limits to showing off their data centers and engineering floors. But Google created a presentation on April 1st for the Google Efficient Data Centers Summit to show off their data centers. Here is that video:

The video is extremely interesting in how they try to squeeze as much out of every CPU they have, including how they maximize the energy they use to power them.

This is a rare look inside of Google's data centers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.

Google has created a comprehensive user guide for the local business center. You can via the user guide over here.

It is broken down in seven sections:

1. Getting started
2. Adding a listing
3. Adding more than 10 listings
4. Verifying a listing
5. Your Local Business Center homepage
6. Editing or removing a listing
7. Other features

Here is the user guide's introductory video:

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google has announced a Google Maps for Mobile update in the Google Mobile Help discussions area that fixes the bugs with version 3.0 for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.

Googler, Christopher, said:

A new version of Maps for mobile is available to download. This update includes many fixes and updates for both Maps and Google Latitude based on your feedback here in the Help Forum.

Please see the following Release Notes for more details about what's been changed in this version or go directly to m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser to download it now: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=144115

It seems like early feedback on this release shows that some users of these applications on the devices are still having some issues. If you are having any issues with Google Maps for Mobile on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices this is the place to be.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Technically, Google has agreed to store your Google Analytics data for at least 25 months. We ran a poll the other week, asking you if that is long enough. Most of you said, no it is not.

Of the 190 plus responses, 156 of your, or 82% said, that 25 months of storage is not enough time. While 35 of you, or 18% said it is enough.

Truth be told, Google seems to store this data longer than 25 months. Even if that is not the case, Google Analytics is free. There are paid versions and in those paid version, you can control the data storage retention policies. Or you can use a totally different analytics program and pay for it as well.

Forum discussion continued at Google Analytics Help.

This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 10th.

ShoeMoney Sues Google Employee For AdWords Violations from TechCrunch shows how Jeremy Schoemaker (aka ShoeMoney) has filed suit against a Google AdWords employee for allegedly bidding on his trademark and possibly for stealing his keywords.

TechCrunch explains that Jeremy found signs that the person who was bidding on his trademark was very friendly with Google employees. In addition, he found that on his LinkedIn profile it said he worked at Google in the AdWords department. TechCrunch said:

At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords, but at the very least it’s hard to believe the Google employee was unaware that his actions were in violation of Google’s Terms of Service.

I believe this is the first time we are hearing about a case of an SEM (I know Jeremy, you don't like to be called that, but in this case, you are) suing a Google employee for these allegations. It should be interesting following this case.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Over the past few days, the AP and other newspapers and news sources rekindled their campaign against how the Internet works. In short, they are not happy that Google, amongst others, distribute their content to a wider audience and Google doesn't have to pay for such distribution. It gets much more involved and I am honestly way too tired to get into all the details. But that is fine, since Danny Sullivan, at his personal blog, has an excellent (the word doesn't do justice) post on the topic.

Danny's Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It, really says it all. It is well worth a read and trust me, although it is long in word length, the article will fly right by as you read. Let me just quote the final paragraph from Danny's post:

Newspapers get special treatment, both with First Click Free and with the extraordinary amount of traffic they get from Google. And while their top managers go off on renewed Google rampages, they still continue to work to get even more traffic. It is stunning hypocrisy, and certainly not what you'd expect from smart business people. But given how badly their papers seem to be going, I suppose they aren't so smart.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has complaints from some webmasters on how Google's Cache view doesn't render all web pages as they are seen in a typical browser.

Let me show you an example, if you view the cache of this site in Google, you will see it doesn't necessarily rendered it too accurately. Here is a picture:

I personally never even thought of this as an issue, I just took it for what it was. But some would like their sites to appear as they do in a browser, in the Google Cache.

Now that Google has built a browser, Chrome, I can't see it being that incredibly difficult to make the cache rendering a bit better.

JohnMu of Google replied to the thread, saying he will pass the suggestion along. He said:

I'll pass your worries and examples on to the team, thanks for posting.

That said, I don't think it will always be possible to get this right for all pages and browsers, there are just too many combinations that make it non-trivial to get right in all situations. We'll see what we can do :)

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

A Google Maps Help forum thread has a post from Steve Thornton, the IT administrator at Solid Ground, an organization that does a lot of good. In short, Steve posted his extreme displeasure with how Google Maps is listing a shelter of theirs and it can lead to extreme issues for battered and abused woman, amongst others.

Let me quote Steve:

Angry husbands and boyfriends know where this place is now, and they come around and threaten staff and residents. This makes me so angry I'm spitting blood. Women and staff at other shelters around the country have been MURDERED. REMOVE OUR LISTING NOW!

He is a tech savvy individual, he knows how Google Maps works and he testified that he went through the steps to removed the listing in Google Maps. But after two tries, the listing is still there and he is fed up, frustrated and scared.

So far, Google has not replied to this thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

FeedBurner is having a reporting failure yet again. I have received at least four emails and several IMs since April 1st from concerned bloggers that their FeedBurner subscribers numbers have dropped. I personally saw this myself, where FeedBurner is reporting only 8,000 or so subscribers to this site, when in fact, we normally have 20,000+.

The issue? Googler Matt S. confirmed the issue in a Google Groups thread, saying that FeedBurner is having problems retrieving the accurate numbers from Google Feedfetcher. Google notified the Google Feedfetcher team and they hope it is corrected soon. Here is a screen shot showing the huge discrepancy between March 31st and April 2nd, in terms of the numbers reported from Google Feedfetcher, typically people's most popular RSS syndication service. The difference is 9,842 subscribers versus 18 subscribers.

March 31st:

April 2nd:

Here is Matt's post:

If you compare individual days (e.g., March 31 vs. April 1) in Analyze > Feed Stats > Subscribers, I'm guessing most of the missing subscribers are from Google Feedfetcher. We've notified that team of the temporary drop in subscribers we're seeing reported by them and will work with them to resolve the issue.

These issues happen fairly often, so when you see it, don't worry. It is very rare that you would lose 50% of your subscribers overnight, even if you did touch the Queen of England.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Christine from the Google Docs team posted an announcement in the Google Docs Help discussion area that two bugs have been fixed.

• The first bug was that published Google spreadsheets were becoming unpublished by themselves. This should now be resolved.
• The second bug was that 'Share with the world'/''Let anyone view without signing in' did not work, now it does.

Google Docs is very often plagued with bugs, some minor and some serious. The last major security bug shared private documents with others. Yet, Google and the US Government wants you to use Google Health to share your private medical history with others.

Forum discussion at Google Docs Help.

It appears that the Google Local Business Center is not working for many businesses interested in updating their Google Maps/Local business listing. A Google Maps Help thread (well, there are a few) reports the issues from several users.

In short, it seems like when some try to access their local business listing they are presented with the following error:

System Error

We're sorry, but we are unable to serve your request at this time. Please try back in a few minutes.

This has been plaguing some business owners for over three days. There is no word from Google on the issue yet.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does it take to rank well in Google? A good question, but typically, a new site might rank well in the short term and then drop off the radar until it begins ranking again. This is sometimes known as a temporary PageRank feature of some sort.

So let me poll our audience, you tell me how long you think it takes to rank well in Google?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There are several people who are complaining that Google Maps is incredibly slow for them. If you have slowness issues with Google Maps, you may be in luck. A Google Maps Help thread has a Googler helping these users by troubleshooting issues with them.

Googler, Mike CH, believes there are certain firewalls that may be causing the issue. There seem to be two issues, the first is loading the map tiles and the second is trouble loading the JavaScript "brain" of the site.

Mike is asking these users to run traceroutes and disable their firewalls. If you are also having issues with Google Maps, you may want to participate in the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

There are several complaints in a Google Web Search Help thread that users cannot upload their own iGoogle custom themes. iGoogle allows users to pick a theme from a set of pre-made templates or upload their own theme for their iGoogle home page.

It seems like several people are having issues uploading their own theme.

Google employee, Jem, has been trying to help these users figure out the issue. But for a few days now, Jem seems to be at a loss.

For now, people are sharing the images they want to use for their custom theme and hopefully, Jem will be able to figure it out.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

I deal with many start up companies, in my line of work and I have noticed these start ups have been struggling raising capital for their ideas since the recession began.

Google just announced the launch of Google Ventures. Google Ventures is Google's new venture capital fund. Google said:

Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and we'll be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see our website at www.google.com/ventures.

Will it be easy for Google to give you venture capital money? I doubt it. But it is nice to see them making this arm more official.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Google Analytics Help thread has confirmation from a Googler that your Analytics data will remain in your account for at least the past 25 months.

Anna from the Google Analytics team said, "data is stored for at least 25 months," when using Google Analytics.

After that, I guess you should export the data and save it locally. Is 25 months enough for you? Personally, I am not too sure. Here is a poll, let me know what you think:

Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

Google announced they are now offering access providers, such as hosting companies, the ability to easily give their customers access to Google's Webmaster Tools, AdSense, Custom Search, and Site Search. These access providers can sign up at http://www.google.com/webmasters/provider/.

Today, we're releasing Google Services for Websites, a few more tools that your hosting company can now enable to help you improve your website. This expanded program includes Webmaster Tools, AdSense, Custom Search, and Site Search, making it easier to drive traffic to your site, monetize your site through the Google ad network, and add various search capabilities to help your visitors find information on your site faster.

We have some discussion around this announcement at WebmasterWorld. WebmasterWorld admin, tedster, said:

Seems like a savvy, and potentially revenue-increasing move. Note that the web host needs to participate for this program to be available: "...a few more tools that your hosting company can now enable to help you improve your website."

The Custom Search Engine is one service that might be a real boon. A CSE is not all that easy for the non-technical site owner to set up right now, and if this service makes it easier, that's a good thing.

Google has been piloting this type of services to some web hosts in the past. Expanding it to any web host and access provider is a no brainer for Google.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Personalized search and personalized home pages can be great for most users. The only issue is that you need to be signed in, most of the time, to get personalized results from Google. And if you love those personalized results and home page from iGoogle, being automatically signed out without requesting to be signed out, can be a bit frustrating.

Over the past week, I have seen dozens of threads pop out in several Google forums on the topic of Google automatically signing them out of iGoogle. I ignored it as being a recent security patch that deleted cookies and thought it would be resolved soon.

Google recently posted an announcement on this exact issue, saying:

Several users have reported that they're getting signed out of iGoogle several times each day. This is not the way it's supposed to work, and we're investigating the issue on our end.

If you're affected by this problem, please first check to make sure this isn't a problem with your computer or network; instructions for checking are located in this Help Center article. Once you've eliminated those possibilities, if you'd like to discuss this further please post in this thread.

So if you are also being signed out from Google, don't feel left alone.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

YouTube has added new statistics to YouTube Insights, the YouTube video analytics. I wrote about YouTube Insights when it first launched a year ago. Today, they added features to tell you how engaged your viewers are, i.e. do they like your videos?

YouTube added a new tab named "community" clicking on that tab brings up the "User Engagement" stats. It looks like this for my account:

You can also break the community stats down by "ratings":

Or by "comments":

Or "favorites":

These are welcome features for me, being that I produce a weekly search video that you all subscribe to, right?

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

Earlier this month, we informed people how one can close down a business on Google Maps without being that business owner. Since then, Google has posted instructions on how to reopen your business on Google Maps. The issue is, it can take up to two weeks to reopen your business.

Google said, "it can take up to two weeks in some cases."

In any event, here are the instructions on how to remove the "Place Closed" note from your Google Local listing.

• For listings that have been claimed and verified through the Google Local Business Center, please sign in to your account and select the Edit link. The editing wizard will appear. Click the Submit button.
• For listings that aren't claimed through the Local Business Center, they're open to community edits. Please select the Edit link below the address and select Restore Place.

Forum discussion continued at Google Maps Help.

We have talked about Google Ad Manager here somewhat often, we even use Google Ad Manager to serve the ads on this site.

Google Ad Manager was first introduced a year ago, and then in August 2008 opened up to all to use. I even wrote an article on how to get started with Ad Manager, the quick tutorial.

Now that more and more publishers and webmasters are using this ad serving tool, Google needs help with aiding webmasters and publishers in setting up and trouble shooting. Right now, there is a very useful Google Ad Manager forum that people can use for help. But Google just announced a certified Ad Manager program. There are currently four companies listed as certified consultants. I assume if you want to be a certified Ad Manager consultant, you would need to contact Google.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Googlers know they have to be very careful what they say in public forums when I am watching. In a recent Google Webmasters Help thread, Googler, JohnMu replied to a thread, and I am going to beat him up for his response. Before I do so, let me say that John has provided so much value to the forums and to webmasters, that I admit, he does not deserve this, but I know Googlers have thick skin.

The Google Webmasters Help thread was complaining that Google was ranking his site well for a keyword phrase, but the page Google returned was not the page that best suits the searcher for that query. He asked why doesn't Google show the page that is the best result from his site for that query.

From the looks of it, there are some SEO issues with the site that might explain why this is happening. But John's response is what I felt was a bit non-Google like. Let me quote him:

As long as users are coming to your site because they're finding it in the search results, I wouldn't worry about the actual page they're landing on. If they come in and read your content (regardless of whether it's the page where just one post is or if it's your homepage), I think you've pretty much won the first part. They made it to your site. The actual URL shouldn't really matter too much.

Really John? So if they even land on the home page, but there is a better internal page about the query, shouldn't Google show that? Relevancy is key. Now, in this case, there may be SEO issues or relevancy is in the eye of the searcher, so who is anyone to say page A is more relevant than page B. But to say landing on the site is good enough, I am not too sure about that.

Striving for the actual URL is key. Usability consultants know this all too well. I assume landing on the best page possible would lead to higher conversions. I assume it would also make for a happier searcher.

I am not done beating up one of Google's most helpful Googlers.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

I have been seeing a strong wave of posts and discussion threads on the topic of the Google Money System or Google Kit. In short, there are emails going out telling people Google will pay you by using Google's services. I did not get into the details on how they work, but I can tell you, Google is not paying you for these services.

I see tons of threads, tons of them, in the various forums, asking why hasn't Google paid me for this yet. Or asking more questions about these services. Google has not yet responded officially because Google isn't offering any of these programs. I am sure their lawyers are on it, trying to crack down on these people using Google's name in part of this scam.

One thread at Google Web Search has a confirmation from a third party member, who responded to this claim. The person said:

Just because the Google name is mentioned does not mean that Google has anything to do with it. There is wide-spread use of the Google name in relation to money-making schemes. You will have to use your common sense as you evaluate anything like this (even when the Google name is not mentioned.) Read the fine print on the sites. Search the internet for other discussions about the specific offer that you are checking into. A search on this site for [ money ] [ cash ] [ scam ] should provide you with a variety of opinions about these types of schemes.

I assume Googlers can't officially respond until their lawyers look into it. But Google should do something, because it seems like this issue is getting worse. I guess an official blog post on the issue would do good. If that blog post ranked #1 in both the organic and paid listings, it might save some people from signing up to this possible scam.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search.

There are reports from Google Docs Help forum that people in China cannot access their Google Docs or even FeedBurner on feedburner.google.com.

Here is what the China Google Docs user said:

Google Docs appears to be blocked here in China. I live in Shanghai and work at Concordia International School here. No students can access their docs at school or at home where they are all on different ISP's.

I guess that is a better excuse then my dog ate my homework? But seriously, this must be a router issue that is temporary and someone in China needs to open this up soon. We have seen China block many sites, including Google properties, time and time again. Sometimes they do it on purpose and sometimes it is a mistake.

Forum discussion at Google Docs Help.

I found a unique and somewhat weird post at a Google Webmasters Help thread. Let me quote the request for you:

I hope you can help find my husbands truck using your technology. 7 welding trucks have been stolen in N. CO and it is our livelyhood. Please help us in any way you can to find it. It was stolen on 3/11/09 at around 4:45a.m. from 1101 3rd St., Windsor, CO.

I really feel bad for this family business. Seven of their trucks were stolen from them? Wow! But to use Google Maps to find them? That is just funny. It would be cool and we did hear stories about how Google Maps help cops find illegal activity, but Google Maps is not a real time satellite feed.

I believe this is a picture of the house and one of the trucks:

View Larger Map

I hope the cops catch these guys, but I doubt Google can save the day here. Just very funny seeing someone who thinks Google has that much power to be able to make a difference here.

Forum discussion at Google Webmasters Help.

A Google Reader Help thread has Google Reader users who are very happy with a new feature added yesterday. The feature allows the feeds you share with your friends to be commented on. You can see a detailed walk through of the feature set at the Google Reader Blog.

Here is a picture showing the comments in a Google Reader shared section:

I personally am not a heavy user of sharing feeds with friends. But I can see how this can be useful. It reminds many people about FriendFeed, who has a more public form of this sharing feature.

The Google Groups thread has a lot of happy users, but most want more. Many want integration with trackbacks, more public comments and integration with blog software.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Imagine that a search for "Gentlemen's Club" and your zip code in Google returns your business in the top result set. Now, imagine if you are not a Gentlemen's Club and you get all these men coming to your office and you have to turn the men away. How would you feel?

That is exactly the issue one music PR company is having. A Google Maps Help discussion thread has a business owner who asks, what can he do to fix the issue. He said:

If you do a Google search for "Gentlemen's Club" and my zip code, my business is the first listing. Only problem is that we are a business marketing office. We get disappointed guys showing up here from time to time. I established an account a few months back, updated our profile, added images and made sure we had all the information updated. Unfortunately, months later we still come up in Gentlemen's Club searches. How do we fix it?

Can you imagine such a thing happening to your business? On occasion I get phone calls asking if my business, RustyBrick, does building construction. It makes sense, but I never had someone call my office or come to my office, expecting a Gentlemen's Club. I have received calls about building web sites for these types of companies and for escort services, but never had someone come into my office looking for those services.

I honestly don't know what to suggest to this guy to help him with his issue. I asked to see the specific listing and maybe a title tag or some anchor text can be changed to help the issue, but hard to say.

I know a lot of companies would pay big bucks to rank this well for this keyword in Google. But that doesn't mean it suits every business.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

If you go to Google Maps and zoom into the World Trade Center Site, you will see that Google has labeled the area, "Ground Zero."

Ground Zero was what many people started calling the World Trade Center after the terrible attack on September 11, 2001. I think most of us still remember the day vividly. But some New Yorkers (and I am a New Yorker) are upset that Google still labels the area Ground Zero.

Here is the complaint from at least one New Yorker found in Google Maps Help discussion area:

Please remove the "Ground Zero" label from the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. I realize that anyone not from New York City comes here expecting to visit the site and that this is a common reference, but that is not its real name and it should not be used. It is equivalent to awarding the attackers a marksmanship medal, and we should not be doing that, nor frankly should we be equating what happened here with a nuclear bombing reference. All NY'ers refer to the site as 'the World Trade Center site', and that's what it still is to us, and will be again, if they ever get the construction completed. Finally, as a born-and-raised New Yorker who was here htat day I find the label 'ground zero' just plain despicable, and I really wish people wouldn't use it, and people I know here feel the same way. Please stop encouraging its use.

I can totally understand this person's frustration and rational here. But from a searcher's perspective, people still search for worlds like "ground zero" and "september 11" on Google Maps. Google still wants to return those results. I guess technically, Google can hide the label on the map itself and just return this area for the search, but maybe searchers find it useful.

Tough call here. As many people know, maps and borders and what you call places can become a very touchy and sensitive topic.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Late last week, I saw dozens and dozens of threads in the Google Docs Help discussion forum, where Googlers were saying that they would contact these individuals directly, via email. Now, I saw a bunch of these, but didn't really look into them, simply because the issue was handled off the public forum.

Over the weekend, Google posted the details of the issue, which seemed to me to be a major security breach. Let me quote it:

We wanted to let you know about a bug (now fixed) that affected a small percentage of users who may have shared permissions between some documents in their account without their knowledge. This inadvertent sharing happened only when the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. (This issue didn't affect spreadsheets.) As part of the fix, we used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. We apologize for the inconvenience of having to re-share your docs. We have sent notifications to the owners of impacted docs, informing them of this fix and posted this information to the Apps Status Dashboard: http://www.google.com/appsstatus

Can you imagine if you were sharing financial information or personal medical information with someone and some how, it was shared with strangers? And Google wants you to use Google Health to share your most confidential and personal details with your doctor and family? I am all for sharing in exchange for convenience but what is stopping a security bug like this from happening on Google Health?

Forum discussion at Google Docs Help.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a story named Google Maps Closes Down Business When it is Still in Operation. In short, Google labelled a business in Google Maps as being closed, when it was actually in business and servicing companies. Back then, I thought it was an issue with a user not correctly setting his or her Google Local Business Center information. But I was wrong. It seems to be a bug with Google's Local Business Center.

We have several threads in the Google Maps forum and one longer one in the Google Maps Help discussion area.

Googler, Joel H described how this can work. But let me show you how you can do the reverse, i.e. close down a business on Google Maps without having access to that business.

Let's go to Microsoft's listing in Google Maps.

Then click on the "Edit" link on the left bottom side of the map bubble:

Then click on "Remove Place:"

Then check off, "it is permanently closed" and add a comment:

My request went through and it likely will be rejected:

Like I said, it will likely be rejected, because it is Microsoft. That is why I picked Microsoft. But for some smaller businesses, removing them, might slip through the cracks, like they did for these businesses.

If your business is verified with Google's Local Business Center, I don't think there is a way for anyone to make this request. But for the majority of business in Google Maps that are not "verified," this can easily be done and potentially hurt sales for those businesses.

"Community Edits," aren't they great? FYI, this is nothing that new. I am illustrating this not to have a bunch of people start removing businesses, but rather to make it harder for these things to happen. Clearly, this has turned into a bigger mess then one expected.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Update: If you have this problem, you can learn how to fix it here.

A Google Mobile Help thread might have some signs that Google will be releasing push email for the iPhone.

Before you jump up and down in joy, I am making an assumption on this news from the following details.

In a Google Mobile Help a Googler named Robin marked a user's answer as being correct, when the person said, and I quote:

Google will probably release push email for the iPhone (using an Exchange protocol) in the near future. They have begun supporting push contacts and calendar, and mail is the only data service left to transition. The reason it works on a Blackberry is because all mail goes through the blackberry servers first. This server then pushes the email to your phone.

Now, Googler, Robin, marked the answer as correct. Robin did not comment in the thread to say if the first part or the second part is correct. Clearly, no one would say the second part of her answer is correct. But the first part would be a dream for most Gmail users using the iPhone.

Did Google just validate that they will enable push email support on the iPhone through the Exchange protocol?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see it soon. They did it for calendar and contacts already, so adding email is the obvious next step.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

I cover Google a lot here, because that is what people talk about in the forums - mostly. But yesterday, Google joined Twitter at http://twitter.com/google and the online world went berserk. Google has 26,093 right now and it is growing. Yahoo http://twitter.com/yahoo only has 4,709 and they have been on Twitter for a while, and Live Search http://twitter.com/live_search only has 1,434 followers. Let's not forget Ask.com http://twitter.com/askdotcom with a whopping 94 followers.

Google joins and gets 25,000 in 24 hours. What brand power!

FYI, if you want to follow me on Twitter, I am at http://twitter.com/rustybrick. I only have 3,400 followers right now.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Sphinn.

I live in Google Reader and I am sure many of you do also, based on my FeedBurner statistics at least. That being said, Google continues to make Google Reader more useful and they have asked in a recent Google Groups thread for feedback. They want to know which media players, both audio and video, do you want supported by Google Reader.

Google Reader already supports YouTube and most embedded audio files. They also support Flickr videos, which was a recent addition. They also support MySpace, Jumpcut, Grouper, IFILM, Metacafe, Revver, Vimeo, vSocial, Monsters and Critics, Odeo, Yahoo! Video, Brightcove, Dailymotion, blip.tv and MSN Soapbox embedded players. If you think they are missing anything, make sure to tell Google in this feedback form and Google might include that format.

Google Reader does have some rules, them being:

Please keep in mind that all embedded media providers have to be using Flash, and never QuickTime. Also, 'embed' tags have to be used as opposed to 'object' tags. We also don't guarantee support and reserve the right to end support at any time.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Yesterday, my brother-in-law called me and asked me where Google Latitude was showing him as being. I looked at iGoogle and loaded up his profile to see that Google Latitude put him in Florida, at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to be exact. He told me, he was in Newark Airport, in New Jersey, waiting to board a flight to Florida, to go to that airport.

He asked me if Google uses Gmail data to figure out that he will be in Florida soon. He thought that maybe, Google read his emails and figured out that he will be in Florida at this time. I said, there is no way that this was possible. It must be a bug.

I quickly asked him to go to ShowMyIP.com and read me what he saw. He said, the ISP data come back as being in Newark. At that point, I figured it was likely not the Wifi network reporting back as being in Florida. I still dismissed it as some weird bug and told him not to worry that Google is anticipating where he will be based on his personal emails.

There is no doubt there have been many many reports of Google Latitude showing people at the wrong location. The accuracy of this stuff is not perfect, so it is possible. But still, to show the airport of where he will be in the next few hours, well - that is a bit creepy.

I guess it is possible Google mapped certain ISP locations in the wrong location. Google has reported this bug over and over again and has asked to be notified via the forums if this is a problem, so they can fix those mappings.

Yesterday, Google began working on other Latitude bugs. In a Google Mobile Help thread, Googler, Chris said:

Thank you for all your detailed reports. There is in fact a bug in the background location updates feature that we're currently working on for an upcoming version that includes other several other bug fixes. The intended behavior is exactly what many of you have asked for -- Maps is closed but a small location update process runs in the background that updates based on if you are moving and how fast. I'll describe the known issue below as many of you have noted. Please let me know if you experience any differences:

- Background sharing is not currently working on Windows Mobile phones when closing Maps for mobile and choosing 'Yes' to allow background sharing. This is a known issue and is being fixed for the next release.

- If you leave Maps for mobile open in the background by minimizing it or opening another app, location updates will continue as long as your phone is awake.

But still, what are the chances of Google showing an airport that my brother-in-law will be at in the next few hours, even when he wasn't there yet? Pretty crazy.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

It seems like Google News has been dropping publishers from their index. We have several posts in the Google News Help forum. There are a bunch of threads from upset publishers, including two large threads here and here.

Jason Dowdell, Founder & Editor of MarketingShift.com was one of those publishers who noticed his site being dropped by Google News. Jason told me his site has been in Google News for over 4 years now and as of today, his content is no longer getting picked up. In addition, Jason told me, he no longer sees the "News" tab in Google Webmaster Tools Diagnostics area. To me, that is a clear sign that his site is no longer syndicated by Google News.

As you can see, the last article indexed by Google News from MarketingShift.com was from yesterday, even though, MarketingShift.com has new articles today.

Jason feels like Google is going after the smaller sites making him feel that Google doesn't value the small publishers who work hard to produce "quality content day in and day out." Jason told me that he, "personally spent $25k a year for the past 4 years on MarketingShift, by employing full time writers because we wanted to make sure we remained in Google News and abided by their quality content guidelines."

Mr. Dowdell suspects that Google is dropping the small publishers to help "save the newspaper business." He quoted Google's CEO, in a recent CNN publication, with his solution to help the newspaper industry:

I think the solution is tighter integration. In other words, we can do this without making an acquisition. The term I've been using is 'merge without merging.' The Web allows you to do that, where you can get the Web systems of both organizations fairly well integrated, and you don't have to do it on exclusive basis.

Is Google really going this far to drop small publishers in order to try to save the newspaper business? As far as I know, this site (which is a small publication), is still indexed by Google News.

For all I know, this can be a temporary bug. Google has not yet made a post or commented on these allegations but I will try to get you a comment shortly.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Update: Google told me this was an indexing bug. Here is a statement from Google:

Starting earlier today, some publishers noticed that Google News was not crawling their site properly. This issue has now been resolved. We know how important Google News is to publishers, and we take issues like these very seriously.

If you conduct a search on any Google Custom Search Engine, such as ours, you will see that the page numbers, which aid the searcher to the next page of search results, are squeezed together. Here is a screen capture of those page numbers:

There are many Google Custom Search Engine users who are upset with this uncontrollable formatting issue. You can read all the complaints at the Google Custom Search Engine Help thread. As you can see, many webmasters, publishers and searchers are a bit upset with this. I, personally, don't care too much - you can still use it, it just doesn't look pretty.

Forum discussion at Google Custom Search Engine Help.

Update: Soon after we posted this, a Googler confirmed the bug in the forum and then soon after that, it was fixed. The Googler said:

The squished-together page numbers is indeed an issue on our end, and we're working on fixing this. Thanks for reporting the issue, and for your patience - I can't say for sure when this will be resolved, but it should be in the next day or so.

Thousands of Google email users, Gmail users, are experiencing problems logging into Google. I tried it myself, I am am also receiving 502 errors.

There are huge threads at Google Groups with users complaining as early as 5:20am EST (about 40 minutes since this post).

This is an all too familiar error for these users:

Here is another popular thread at Google Groups with Gmail users complaining. In fact, just scan the forum and you will see hundreds of complaints.

It seems like checking email via IMAP or POP is also having issues. So, I guess the solution is wait for Google to fix it.

This is not the first time Gmail has gone down for the masses. This is the third major one we reported. The last major one, that I remember was on August 11, 2008.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Update: IMAP does seem to be working sporadically for some users.

Update 2: At about 6:15am (EST) some people are beginning to access part of Gmail. Google must be working on it right now. Hopefully it will be fixed shortly.

There is so much love for Google's new mobile phone, the G1 or Android phone. A week or two ago, Google announced that they are now accepting paid apps to the app marketplace. But now, we are seeing reports that paid apps cannot be updated.

A Google Mobile Help thread has confirmed reports from a Googler that there is indeed a bug. A G1 paid app user said, "after you purchase a paid and and then try to update it, it doesn't update. It just says downloading and nothing happens." This user said that the free apps update fine, but not the paid apps.

Google employee, Alden confirmed the issue saying:

Thanks for reporting this to us - just wanted to let you know we're looking into it.

In the iTunes App store, if you purchase an app, all updates to the specific app are free. Currently, there is no way for iPhone App users to be charged for a major or even minor update, without releasing a new app. I assume the same model works for the G1.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Last night, the Google News iGoogle Gadget was having issues. The gadget did not show any news at all. Here is the first report I saw from Google Web Search Help.

Suddenly last night when I went to my home page, the Google News section was blank - not stories or headlines - only the Tabs were present. If I expanded Google News I could get all the content, but not the summary. I changed some settings, tried restore to the last backup, and even removed, rebooted and reinstalled Google News. No Happiness with my Google News.

Paul from Google replied thanking users for reporting the issue and said they will work on a fix. In the meantime, he asked users to go to news.google.com to get their news fix.

This morning it was fixed and working properly.

In addition to this Google News bug, it seems like Google News was not properly sorting by date yesterday. A Google News Help thread has a report from a user informing Google of this issue. Google replied with a thank you and that they are looking into it.

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

Some of you may have seen the post at TechCrunch which has a screen capture of Google Translate translating the name "Vimeo" into YouTube. Vimeo is a popular competitor to YouTube and as you can imagine, Vimeo's owners and fans don't consider Vimeo to be YouTube. But yet, when you plugged in the name Vimeo to Google Translate, it returned the translation of YouTube.

In fact, a Vimeo representative posted a thread at Google Web Search Help asking for assistance. Andrea Allen, Vimeo Community Assistant, said:

I almost filed this under the libel and slander section, but figured I'd post it here first. ;-)

Anyone at Google care to comment on this highly unexpected result?

Andrea Allen
Vimeo Community Assistant

Andrea also posted in the Google Groups for Google Translate. Soon after, Google Translate stop translating Vimeo into YouTube. I assume it happened soon after the TechCrunch post.

This incident got me thinking. We know Google Translate is not a pure dictionary. It uses search data and their knowledge of words on the web to pick different translations. I can see how Vimeo would algorithmically be translated into YouTube. Which made me think... Can Google Translate terms be hijacked or Google Bombed to convert your brand name into your competitors name?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Groups.

We have several business owners complaining in two different Google Maps Help Threads that the upload picture feature in the Google Local Business Center is not working.

Basically, they are trying to upload pictures to their business listing but they keep getting an error returned that says, "We are unable to store your image at this time" or "Image Not Available."

I personally tried this yesterday and it worked fine for me using Apple's Safari browser. But many folks are having issues, so I don't think I should dismiss it now.

In fact, the picture I uploaded yesterday is already visible on my business listing. To see it, go to rustybrick, 10901 in Google Maps, see the screen capture below or the embedded live map below:

View Larger Map

So, I am, not sure if this is a wide spread bug or if it is impacting only some account or some browsers.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help Threads.

Google is trying really hard to educate business owners to validate their business listings in Google Maps. If every business owner did this, it would solve a lot of issues for Google. That being said, Google just announced in a Google Maps Help thread that they released a new glossary named Understanding Your Local Business Center Account.

The glossary has the following 15+ terms defined for people who are new to the Local Business Center:

• Active
• Awaiting next update
• Awaiting verification
• Delete
• Disapproved
• Edit
• Flagged
• Impressions
• Not currently showing
• Processing
• Request another letter
• Suspended
• The PIN you entered is invalid
• Validate by mail
• Validate by phone
• Views

To access the Google Local Business Center, go to google.com/local/add.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

If you visit Google Video today, you might be missing some of the old features we had just a short while ago. It seems like we are missing videos categorized as "Movers & Shakers," "Hot videos," which showed most viewed, most shared and so on. Where did it go? Just take a look at the Web Archive of the March2008 Google Video and you will see it is missing a lot from what we currently see on Google Video.

Why did Google get rid of these features? You can no longer seem to see the Most blogged, Most shared, Most viewed, Movers & Shakers at Google Video. We know Google removed uploading to Google Video, but should that impact the other features? I guess so.

There is a very upset group of Google Video users ready to boycott Google over this.

Forum discussion at Google Video Help.

A Google Web Search Help thread has a group of searchers complaining about a single pixel that shows up when you click the next or previous buttons in Google Search. This only seems to show up for a second, when you click the next or previous button, but it also only shows up in Firefox 3.

Here are pictures:

As you can see, I circled in red, the pixel that seems to be really bugging some searchers.

Funny how the smallest little thing can really get on your nerves.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Yesterday, we reported that Google's Local Business Center was injected by Google Maps Help thread with a complaint from a person who lives in Ave Maria, Florida that an adult-like image shows up in the "Explore this area" section of Google Maps for a search on Ave Maria, Florida.

Here is a screen shot:

When you click on that image, it shows up larger in the map:

It is here where you see that it is from Panoramio and the quick solution is to report that image as inappropriate in Panoramio.

So a proud city member is upset that this woman's underpants shows up for her city in Google Maps. I can understand that.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

We all know, Google Maps has their share of trouble with spam, including porn and escort services. Heck, even Google admitted the problem yesterday in the Up Close With Google Maps & Local.

Now a search for auto insurance los angeles returns an escort site in position I.

Clicking through, takes you through a couple redirects and lands you on an adult escort service web site. Clear sign of spam and something that we see often on Google Maps.

Google did say yesterday that they are much quicker at spotting these things. So let's see how long it takes them to remove this listing. It was first reported yesterday in the Google Maps Help discussion area, as Google recommends you do when you find spam. Let's see if it is still there tomorrow.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google is asking you to share your favorite or coolest "My Map" in the Google Maps Help forum.

Maps Guide Brianna said:

Does anybody have any really cool 'My Maps' they'd like to share on this thread?

I started making one a while ago for 'My Favorite Beaches in Kauai' but I still need to add more rich content to it to give it some flair. I plan to share this map with my friends who go visit the island - it's a great way to give a guide of where to go.

Check it out if you want.

Anyways, lets see who else has some cool 'My Maps'!

So if you have designed cool and useful "My Maps" share them with Brianna and who knows, maybe your map will make it on the Google Maps blog?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google announced you can now sync your data from your mobile phone, such as the iPhone or Windows Mobile to their cloud and have it all managed there. From your contacts, calendars and so on. Here is a video Google published explaining it all.

I will likely give this a try when I get back from SMX West (yes we have live coverage coming up at 9am (PST). But if you want to get started, you can learn more about it at http://m.google.com/sync.

If you need help, there are currently many discussions and help threads taking place at the Google Mobile Help discussion area. Plus there is more documentation at the Google blog post. But if you are stuck, hit up the forums for help.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Let's add this to the list of Google bugs we have been reporting about in the past week or so. A Google Maps Help thread has confirmed reports from Google that their "print" button on Google Maps is not working for all users.

First reports came in in late January and yet it still seems not to be fixed. On February 5th, a Google Employee, Alvin, confirmed the issue reported by a user:

I heard from Google that they have escalated this problem to their engineering team and are working in a fix.

In the meantime you will have to keep using the workaround described by others in this thread to print the directions. The main limitation is the loss of the ability to customize the print out.

This seems to be a frustrating issue for many Google Map users. The issue does not yet seem to be resolved and we have no estimate time for when it will be fixed.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

If you tried bring up New Zealand in Google Maps yesterday, you would be surprised to see, Google lost all the map data for that early bird country.

A Google Maps Help thread have reports that are confirmed from Google, that Google had a bug that indeed knocked parts of Google Maps New Zealand off the map.

Google's Mike CH confirmed the issue saying:

We messed up - very, very sorry about that. It's fixed now and we're busy drawing up a list of things we can do to ensure it doesn't happen again. Once again, apologies for the inconvenience.

He did not say exactly what went wrong, but the issue seemed to be somewhat manual, being that they want to make some policies to prevent it from happening in the future.

The map details for New Zealand were not available, but the satellite images were. Now everything seems to be working now.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google has confirmed the miscellaneous reports of the Google News home page having font size issues. In a Google News Help thread, Googler, Inbal, confirmed the issue that some users are noticing.

In short, some users are noticing that the font used on Google News is much larger then expected. Exactly how large is hard to say, since I am personally not able to replicate it. But users are reporting, "way too large," "much larger than usual," and "larger than normal text size."

Google's Inbal, like I said, confirmed the issue and said Google is working on a fix. She said:

Thank you for taking the time to report this problem. We're aware of this bug, and our engineering team is working to find a solution. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to resolve this issue in the near future.

There have been an unusual number of bugs recently with Google. Now, Google always have these minor bugs here and there. But some of these bugs or mistakes have been hitting the much larger Google base. The largest recent bug happened over the weekend with labeling all search results as malware, then today we reported this bug, and two others; safe search bug and SMS blast bug. I would classify these bugs as moderate to major.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Over night, for about four hours, Google's SMS search feature sent dozens of SMS messages to Google SMS users over and over again. There are dozens of threads complaining about the issue, but the two largest threads have hundreds of posts each and can be found both at the Google Mobile Help Forum.

First, Google denied the issue, blaming it on their mobile phone provider. Googler, Zeke, said:

Could you please try calling your carrier (e.g. AT&T, Verizon, etc.) and asking them to reset your SMS message settings? If that doesn't do the trick, please respond back here and let me know what carrier you're using.

Then Zeke said a bit later:

Thanks for responding so quickly. We are looking into the issue, and as soon as I have an update, I'll post it here. If you don't have an unlimited SMS plan, and you're worried about SMS charges, please let your carrier know about the situation.

Then a couple hours later, we hear from Googler Ash, who said they are working on fixing the issue and they should try to block Google from sending these text messages:

I just wanted to let you know that this issue is being worked on, and we will post again when we know that it is resolved for certain. In the meantime, as some users mentioned, you can contact your mobile provider and have our shortcode 466453 or 46645 blocked from sending you text messages.

Then at about 12:40pm (EST) this morning, Ash said they seemed to have fixed the issue. Reports came in from users that indeed, the issue was resolved at about that time. What was the issue? Googler Ash said:

After investigating this issue, the cause seems to be related to an error with the mobile aggregator used by many mobile providers. We've received confirmation that a fix is going out soon.

Please let us know in the forum if you're still having problems with multiple SMS messages. We appreciate your assistance and patience while we looked into this issue.

If you received dozens of text or SMS message and you do not have unlimited messages, you should call your mobile provider and let them know what happened. I doubt Google will be paying for all the unwanted text messages, but maybe your mobile provider will be understanding.

This issue sent about 30 text messages to hundreds, if not, thousands of users. It lasted for about 4 hours, starting at about 8:30pm (EST) last night and going through about 12:40 midnight (EST).

Google has been having major issues with their SMS search feature in January. For more on those issues, see this article.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help Forum.

It seems like spammers finally got around to spamming Google Docs. We have confirmed reports at Google Docs Help discussions where some Google users have reported receiving hundreds of unwanted documents in their Google accounts.

Here is the complaint:

Someone shared a doc (unwanted) with me and a few hundred other people. Now, every day I log in, there are about 20 new copies of it with various new names, also shared with the same people.

I've tried deleting them. This usually fails. If I do it one at a time (VERY time consuming), then I can usually get them deleted in about 30 min. or so. Then I go to remove them from the trash and have the same problem. Trying to do them in bulk just says a server error has occurred. If I do it one at a time, it still says there was an error but I can refresh and it will be gone. Again, takes around half an hour to get them all out of the trash.

The problem is, the next day I login after cleaning it all up and there are about 20-30 new copies waiting for me, cluttering up my list of files. This is maddening and insane, and I can't spend an hour every day trying to restore sanity to my list of files. Any ideas?

This seems like a Google Docs spam issue to me.

Google's Marie confirmed the issue and said only a "small subset of users" are impacted by this spam issue. She adds that no accounts are compromised. Marie said:

We're aware of an issue where a small subset of users are finding multiple copies of unfamiliar documents appearing in their docs list. Some of those users are having trouble deleting these unwanted documents from their docs list. While we know this is a frustrating experience, we'd like to assure you that your docs are secure and that your account has not been compromised.

Google is working on fixing this issue as soon as possible.

Forum discussion at Google Docs Help.

Google Maps has very useful traffic data but it plots that traffic data using colors. For example, here is a screen capture of traffic new NYC:

But those that are severely colorblind are not able to see traffic data. One such person posted a complaint in Google Help Groups asking for an "alternative way" of displaying such data on Google Maps for those that are colorblind.

Interesting point, making Google Maps more accessible for the colorblind.

Forum discussion at Google Help Groups.

We have confirmed reports that Google Reader's recommendation list feature stopped updating some time over the past day or so. The recommendation list is suppose to show you other blogs or feeds that you might be interested in, based on your current feed subscriptions at Google Reader.

In a Google Groups thread, one Google Reader user noticed that he/she stopped receiving recommendations. So he/she reported the issue, and Google confirmed the bug. Google said they hope to fix it in a day or so.

Roger from the Google Reader team said:

Thanks for reporting this. After a bit of investigating, we think we've found something that might be keeping some recommendations from updating. We're hoping to have this fixed by the end of the day. Please let us know if you're still having trouble after a few days.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A content publisher asked about getting his publishing site included in Google News. In the Google News Help thread Googler, Inbal, said that you don't always need to have three digits in the URL to be in Google News.

In the past, there was a strong Google News requirement to have three digits in the URL. It was how Google's News spider worked. But now, with the addition of Google Sitemaps, you no longer need digits in the URL.

Inbal said:

The three-digit-number requirement is waived if you submit a Google News sitemap in order to alert our crawler to your news articles in your Blog. This tool will enable you to optimize the inclusion of your content without having to change the structure of your URLs. You can find more information about creating a News sitemap in our Publisher Help Center:

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?topic=11666.

Good news for new publishers looking to keep their URLs keyword specific. This isn't brand new, but it is relatively new to Google News.

Forum discussion at Google News Help

Google has posted an announcement thread at Google Groups saying they hope they have fixed a bug that removed ownership status of some Google Group owners.

In short, Google Groups pushed out a new update that caused the removal of ownership in some instances. Google believes they have addressed the issue and returned ownership status to those impacted by this change. Google said:

We believe that we have identified all of the users who lost owner or manager rights as an indirect result of our error, and we have fixed those cases as best we could. In some cases, we don't have enough evidence to say that you should be an owner, and in those cases we've made you a manager; you can ask another group owner to promote you or follow up in the help forum. In either case, if you do not like the email address or the nickname that we used to resubscribe you to your group, you can change it by clicking on the "Edit my subscription" link in the group, and modifying as appropriate -- there's a little menu for email, and a field for nickname.

Those impacted by this issue had to have meet the following conditions:

• you have multiple email addresses associated with your account
• you attempted to log in while the bug was live
• you subscribe to or own groups under the different emails in (a)

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

A Google Webmaster Help discussion thread shows a good way to recover lost web pages using Google.

First, Googler, JohnMu, recommends you take down your website down immediately. He said, "do not let the server respond to any requests. This is important because otherwise the cached pages will be overwritten by whatever content you have online now."

Second, use the Warrick Tool, which will look at Internet Archive, Google, Live Search, and Yahoo for caches of your pages. John said, it typically takes a day or two to get your content.

Finally, when you have these files, you can restore with them.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help

On Monday, we broke the news that Google dropped the iPhone version of iGoogle and it really really really update iPhone users. That being the case, I really thought Google would bring back the iPhone interface. It seems like I was wrong.

Google updated the Google Web Search Help thread saying that they want to keep one version of iGoogle mobile so they can concentrate "on a single version is that not all mobile browsers can handle the same content that the iPhone and Android can."

Here is the full post:

I want to let you know that the teams involved in this decision are aware of this thread and following along on the feedback. I'd like to address a few concerns I've seen posted:

The mobile version doesn't provide the same experience as the iPhone/Android version
We know there are some differences between the two versions -- in fact I've been using iGoogle on the iPhone since the day it launched. One of the trade offs we know we're making with concentrating on a single version is that not all mobile browsers can handle the same content that the iPhone and Android can. The mobile team does want to hear any ideas you've got for mobile features; you can submit them to their ideas page:
http://productideas.appspot.com/#16/e=cf

iGoogle on iPhone and Android
The Android users who've popped in here are right; we're also redirecting Android phones to the mobile interface. The goal here is to provide an iGoogle page that's optimized for speed and reliability; this change wasn't made to cater to Android users.

The iPhone/Android version is still available from a desktop computer
That's currently true; redirecting iPhone and Android users to the mobile iGoogle page was the first step in standardizing the experience. We're working on taking down the iPhone/Android version.

Some content has disappeared
If some of your content isn't there now, that's probably because it isn't compatible with the mobile interface (for you technical folks, that's anything in an IFRAME). You can learn about what content from your list does work from this article in our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=96016

Finally, if there's a Google service that you used to access on the iPhone version of iGoogle that isn't offered in the mobile version, we may have an optimized version available. To see the list of optimized services, visit Google.com on your iPhone or Android phone and tap the 'More' link at the top of the page.

This response clearly doesn't sit well with most iPhone users.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

Let's say you wanted to drive from the zip code 10302 to 10308, which are both in Staten Island, New York. If you plugged that into Google Maps, Google would tell you, you have to be prepared for a three hour or more commute.

For some unknown reason, a bug in Google Maps, thinks the zip code 10308, which is owned by Staten Island, is in Schenectady, in upstate New York.

Adam from the Google Maps team confirmed the issue in a Google Maps Help forum thread. He said:

Turns out this bug is an artifact of a known issue we're working to resolve, so if you haven't reported this yet to Tele Atlas please don't expend the effort.

So, if you are driving to 10308, be careful when using Google Maps.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

The other day, we reported that Google began cutting jobs, offices and services. Part of that, was cutting the ability to do video uploads at Google Video.

A concerned Google Apps user asked a valid question. He asked in a Google Video Help thread, does this impact Google App Premium users. The answer was no, Google Apps Premier users still can upload videos, as part of the service. In fact, Google had to update their FAQs to clarify this.

A Google representative, Sapna, said:

Good question! We just added it to the FAQ page as well.

This move is not going to affect the video service of Google Apps - you will still be able to upload & share videos.

Hope that alleviates some confusion!

The FAQs have now been updated to say:

Does this change apply to Google Video for business, used by companies for private, secure video sharing?

No, it doesn't. Google Video for business is part of Google Apps Premier Edition, and it lets employees share video content with each other, like team updates and recordings of training sessions and guest speakers. Business users can continue to upload and share videos, and the service is actively being developed.

Forum discussion at Google Video Help.

Maps Guide Adam created a new thread in the new Google Maps Help discussion forum clarifying how Google's Tele Atlas maps distribution deal has helped improve Google Maps.

The two main points Adam made were:

(1) You can see blocks of addresses, notice in the embed map below around Baruch College, that there are numbers on the streets that show you the house numbers. So if you need to go to 153 East 25th street, you know where to go. Zoom in to see:

View Larger Map

(2) Roof top markers, so you now which building you are looking for. Zoom in to see:

View Larger Map

(4) Easier getting updates and sending update due to their shared data agreement.

Finally, you can submit feedback about the data to mapinsight.teleatlas.com/.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Seems like the economy is getting to everyone, including the all mighty and recession proof Google. In summary, Google has begun cutting out services they provide, they have cut 100 recruiters (i.e. less hiring) and they are closing offices, which might lead to 70 engineers losing their jobs.

Danny has a great article summing up the Google product and services slashes, which include Google dropping Google Video uploads, Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Jaiku and Dodgeball. Danny concludes, "neither products nor engineers seem to have a protected status, as Google goes into the grim economic times predicted for 2009."

On the job front, Google has laid off a 100 recruiters and is closing three offices; the ones in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. That may lead to 70 engineers losing their jobs but Google promises to refill those positions, if those engineers cannot relocate to Google's headquarters. But clearly, dropping 100 internal recruiters will mean less hiring in 2009.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and Sphinn.

A senior member at WebmasterWorld who started posting in 2004, had his server hacked into. He realized this when Google put a temporary ban on his site from showing up in the Google search results. Google does this, because they want to protect searchers from landing on pages that might contain malware or other infectious programs.

The thread goes through the different stages a webmaster goes through when finding out their site has been hacked into. The stages would likely include:

• Confusion/Denial
• Anger
• Acceptance
• Guilt
• Action
• Embarrassment
• Reconsideration
• Response

I am not exactly sure if the stages would be in that order. But as you can see from the thread, it seems this webmaster went through some, if not all, of these stages. Confusion sets in when you learn that you may have been hacked, and you try to figure out how and what the implications are. Then you get angry at both the hacker for hacking you and Google for delisting you. Acceptance rolls in, when you accept the facts and decide to move on. Of course, many feel guilty that they were not able to prevent the hack in the first place. But you decide to take action to remove the bad stuff the hack generated. Then you immediately file a reconsideration request with Google. Then you look into the future and make changes to your current process and environment, to try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

This webmaster's site was delisted for "maybe 1-2 business days" said the webmaster. That is a very quick response time from Google acting on the reconsideration request. When I shared a story about one of my client's getting hacked and delist, Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Hacked & Delisted In Google.com, it also took just about two days for Google to reinclude the site.

Google has to protect the searcher at all costs. Even if the site is not infected with malware, it may be infected with links to help promote a page that does have malware on it. So it has to take action, and action quickly.

This goes well with Preventing Virtual Blight Video by Matt Cutts from the other day.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In mid November I wrote about YouTube Sponsored Ads but back then it wasn't working for me. I recently had the opportunity to get a client up and running with YouTube ads, so I figured I walk you through the process.

(1) Login with under the account of the video owner and go to http://www.youtube.com/account.

(2) At the bottom, click on "Promote your Video with Sponsored Videos," which will take you to https://ads.youtube.com/.

(3) Click on the "Get Started" yellow button

(4) Select one of the videos you want to promote:

(5) Click "Next and I agree".

(6) Type in your ad copy (title with two line description). Then enter in keywords, followed by the daily budget and maximum bids.

(7) Then login using your AdWords or Google account or set up a new account.

(8) Review the ad, keywords, bids and geo-targeting and hit "Okay, Run my promotion!"

Note, MCC accounts do not work, hence why my first test did not work. But this campaign worked just fine. I am not waiting for the campaign to be reviewed and I should then be able to see data.

Here is what I see now in my dashboard:

Here is a detailed view of a specific campaign:

When I gather statistics, I may update this post.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

How many grams of CO2 does the average Google search consume? That was the hot topic of debate over the weekend. The UK's Times Online reported that scientists said a typical Google search consumes about 7g of CO2, which is equivalent to the "amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea."

But Google downright denies this. They said in a recent blog response named Powering a Google Search that the average query only consumes about 0.2 grams of CO2. Clearly, Google is not agreeing with these scientists, because those numbers are way different.

Google then takes the time to explain how Google is very proactive in green causes and explains how a Google search is very green.

The folks in the forums are not happy about this study, not happy at all. Even before Google's response, member lgn1 said, "Also, I suspect those numbers, 7 grams of CO2 per search are way out to lunch. Without power comsumption numbers from google, that physicist is just urinating in the wind."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Let us know in the poll bellow if you like Google's new favorite icon, the icon found in the browser bar on the left hand side of the domain name. The image below shows the three icons used, the one on the left most is the newest. The one in the middle is the one introduced in May 2008 and the one on the right is the original one.

Here is the poll, let us know which one you like the best of the three:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Update: Official word from Google Blog says this redesign was based on a contest they ran.

In the past few hours, I have seen two threads from the Google Mobile Help Forums reporting that these people were able to login with their password to Gmail, but for some reason, were taken to someone else's Gmail account.

Both reports came on the fourth of January, the first said:

There are times when I enter the gmail site on my cell phone, and before the sign-in page even appears, I have found myself to be automatically redirected to the inbox of a complete stranger, and I have access to their account. This has happened to me twice.

The second said:

I've experienced a problem lately: on occasion, I will open up my WAP browser and realise that it's not my email I'm viewing at all! It is the email of some random person. Sometimes, I can see the emails when I click on them and sometimes - seemingly randomly - I click on something (say, inbox) and it takes me right back to my own inbox.

A Google representative, Ethan from the mobile team, replied to both saying that they will touch base with these folks offline.

Thanks for letting us know. Someone on the team has contacted you via email to get some account-specific details.

As for your concerns about your own account, Gmail offers HTTPS -- an additional layer of security that will ensure your mail remains encrypted when it travels between your web browser and our servers.

I have not seen any other reports of this, outside of these two. But this does seem a bit scary to me. I hope they figure out the issue soon and fix it as soon as possible.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Frank Watson posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums asking members what they feel Google's top achievements of 2008 were.

Here are some of the responses from the thread:

• Google, swooping in to muck up any and all Yahoo/MSN talks with very little effort was impressive. They didnt even dirty their hands.
• Not related to search but I think it's pretty cool that they invested in esolar and brightsource. These are startup electric power companies that are using concentrated solar energy instead of coal to run steam turbine generator plants.
• But maybe the most notable might be Chrome; the introduction of the long rumored and awaited browser that was long denied being in development and that hasn't exactly taken the world by storm as of yet. I have to wonder what's coming in along behind it.
• VentureBeat's Android netbooks on their way, likely by 2010 article.
• The G1 hasn't really taken off here in the UK like the iPhone has, or it would get a close first vote!
• Beu gave a dozen or so including Google Sites, Website Optimizer, Friend Connect, iPhone Search, Flash support, 1 Trillion unique URLs, Fighter Jet, G1, SearchWiki

I personally wrote about my feelings on 2008, including a lot of Google topics, in my five years of writing at the Search Engine Roundtable. But if Matt Cutts can post that slide set where he goes through all the products and things he loves that Google released in the past year (which he normally does at PubCon and other conferences), that would be cool.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A few months ago, Google opened up new interactive discussion areas to help improve Google's communication between Google and the people who use Google's products and services. In fact, the Google Webmaster Help area moved over a month ago today.

Everyone was excited to see a quicker, more efficient and more responsive area to get answers to their questions. The only issue is that many folks are posting questions and their questions are not being seen. A Google Webmaster Help post shares this issue, in short, if you post a question, you need to reply to your post, to make sure it is visible to others. It seems like a temporary bug, but even if it is, who in their right mind will post a question and then reply to their question - it just isn't a logical thing to do.

Googler, JohnMu, said "FWIW You can also just add an update to your question -- that works without having to post a reply to yourself. The team is aware of this issue and I assume it will be addressed with the next update."

They have actually posted an announcement:

Due to an issue in the forum software, some posts here may not show up for everyone until a reply has been posted. To be sure that your thread is visible, feel free to post an empty reply to your own thread.

I hope they get this fixed soon.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Update: This was resolved on January 6th in the afternoon.

Want Google to implement a new feature for Google Mobile? You no longer need to venture to Google Groups to make the request. Simply hop on over to http://productideas.appspot.com/ and submit your product ideas. So far, according to the stats, "805 people have submitted 313 ideas and cast 9,772 votes."

These include:
* "An native iPhone App of Google Reader (include a mini browser), more fast and no problem of reloading page after open a link"
* "Google Talk with multiprotocol capabilities."
* "A "Google Product Ideas" for all google services."
* "i want to be able to see my friends on maps on my phone"

If you have your own suggestions for your mobile device, go to the site and start contributing. You never know!

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

Googler, JohnMu, suggested in a Google Webmaster Help thread that they give Google's Lively, Google's failed attempt at a SecondLife virtual world, a shot before it closes down.

Yesterday, John posted a thread announcing an "Informal End Of Year live-chat over at Lively." I missed it, and so did most people. In fact, I don't think it actually worked.

Looking over the thread, it seems like the event really never happened. I did see a chat room URL in there, but I don't see it anymore. So it seems like the Lively event, wasn't too lively. But it was a great idea to give Google's Lively a last whirl.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

We have complained time and time again about Google showing inappropriate images , including explicit porn and other nudity in the Google search results. But it has been getting better overall, that is until I spotted a thread at DigitalPoint Forums.

The thread showed a Google Image search for fat beauty returned nude images. But what shocked me is that the stricter I set the image search filter the worse the images got. Let me show you.

With Moderate Search filter on, the first three images are okay. The fifth image gets inappropriate, as do others, after it. Here is a screen capture:

But when I set the image filter to "Strict," the first three images include two nude images! Here is a screen capture:

That is pretty surprising being that the more I don't want nude images, the more likely Google is going to give it to me.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A WebmasterWorld has recent discussion about Google Alerts sending out email alerts for irrelevant topics.

The way Google Alerts works is that it allows you to get updated via email and now via RSS to new items found for a particular search query in web results, news, blog, video or groups or all of them. So if you are into reputation management or if you want to track the search results for a particular keyword, you might use Google Alerts to help you stay on top of particular keywords or keyword phrases.

The problem is, sometimes Google Alerts sends out unwanted alerts due to some bug. The unwanted results can happen due to many reasons including a bug in Google or a spammer sending junk into Google and triggering these alerts.

First reports of this new Google Alert issue started on December 27th, the member said:

Alerts are coming in more frequently for one of our sites BUT there is no relevant content on any of the indicated sites I've look at. On some small sites I've checked all visible pages.

Several other members have complained about this as well. I might think some of this is due to the blog link command issue, which isn't just about links. But overall, that has gotten better, in my opinion. Maybe this is due to something else? I am not sure.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Like last year and the year before that, this year, we have Googlers responding to questions in the help forums.

Googler, JohnMu, like last year, came in and responded to at least one thread, likely more. In a Google Webmaster Help thread John tried to help a webmaster deal with temporary down time. He gave the following advice:

Instead of returning a default website when an error occurs, it's much better to let us know that it's a temporary issue (result code 503). That way, we'll know not to look at the content and to try again later.

In addition, Matt Cutts also joined in on a Merry Xmas thread, late last night saying, "luzie, thanks for the welcome. :)"

There were plenty of other Googlers, and likely other search reps at other companies working or participating in company events, on Christmas. I just wanted to document a few.

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of bugs reported within Google Docs. Some of these have been fixed and others are still pending. Here's the lowdown of what we've found in the forums:

* A Google Employee says in a Google Groups thread that the bug that made folders visible on the left hand side of the Google Docs pane has been fixed.

* There's still an open bug (but Google is aware of it) with regards to some spreadsheets not being viewable. The error encountered is "Sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties and cannot show all of your documents." (Google Groups).

* Related to the report above, some users cannot see any of their documents with the same error. Google is also aware of this. (Google Groups)

* When Google Docs documents are being emailed, some senders choose to CC themselves to confirm receipt. However, Gmail automatically assumes that these are spam. The Google Docs team is aware of this as well. (Google Groups)

* Google is also aware that some people can only see the first 50 folders and they are working on a fix (Google Groups)

If you're affected by any of these issues, please go to the forum discussion referred to in the bullet point for more information and related discussion.

No one likes it when they get malware on their computers due to an infected site. So that is why Google tries to warn searchers when a site may have malware on it. But Google tries to be as specific as possible, when it comes to malware warnings.

In fact, when possible, Google will report malware issues on subdomains or subfolders only and leave the root domain alone. JohnMu of Google said in a Google Webmaster Help discussion thread:

We try to keep malware labels as specific as possible based on our data. If we can see that it's limited to a specific subdomain, we'll do that. If we can recognize that it's limited to a specific subdirectory, even better. The general problem is that it's often not trivial to find the most specific part of a site that is affected by malware - and with CMSs as they are there's often no clear folder-type structure that we can work with.

That is why a specific blogspot.com blog can be reported as having malware, whereas the main domain will be safe.

Safe Browsing Diagnostic page for blogspot.com

What is the current listing status for blogspot.com?
This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 227 time(s) over the past 90 days.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

The Official Google Blog announced on Friday that a new option is available for searchers: the ability to search for images by a specific style. For example, line art is obviously not the same as a photograph -- and now Google can distinguish this for you.

Here's a screenshot. Click for a larger size:

As you can tell, you can now drill down to news content, faces, clip art, line art, and photo content.

I like. Do you?

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

If you get a really high ranking on Google, should you see less traffic? A WebmasterWorld user says that he's getting much higher rankings than before (increases to the first page from page 11) and he's still not getting a traffic boost ("I'm now getting traffic from hundreds more great keyphrases -- but the total traffic at the end of the day is the same as it has been for the past three months.") The thought is that Google is not giving him that boost (but why?)

Some say that this is because even great rankings for very popular keywords do not necessarily bring great traffic. The user argues that his popular keywords ARE bringing him traffic (and they are GREAT keywords), but he's still not sure. The suspicion lies in a correlation between Google AdWords and organic results, but there's absolutely no relationship between the two.

It's still an open ended question. My thought would be to have a good look at analytics and compare the before-after results of the rankings change.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

So, we all know Google AdSense is cutting off holiday gifts this year. There were many insulted publishers. So, I figured Google would at least send out e-cards before the holidays. And some are now receiving these e-cards.

But those receiving the e-cards are afraid they are sent by spammers. In fact, one AdSense publisher said, "it looks like spam, what are they thinking?" Another said that he will "just delete instead of download" the email. Here is what the email said, and it came from the Google Sydney team:

Dear {this bit was blank},

You have just received a message from Google AdSense Team at Visual Jazz.

To view your message, please visit the following address: {redacted, but the domain included a subdomain 'marketing' and a domain appropriate to the company name above, followed by a long alphanumeric pagename}

To unsubscribe, reply to this email and change the subject to be: unsubscribe

E-cards can be done very nicely or they can be done not so nicely. It is sad to see the beloved Google getting so much bad karma towards them over the holiday season.

I did receive an e-card from a good PR person at Yahoo, it looked like this and led to here.

Hope to hear more happy news next week.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you're hosting your blog on wordpress.com and are embedding video in your blog post, don't expect for it to show up in Google Reader.

That's what Google employees confirm in a Google Groups thread. According to Mihai, a Google rep, there's a whitelist that sites need to be added to in order for their embedded videos to actually play within Google Reader.

So in case you were wondering, apparently you need to request to be whitelisted. The policy isn't exactly clear on how you get your site added to the whitelist, nor is it indicated whether this whitelist is publicly accessible. I suppose that just means that you need to be on top of Google Groups (for now) in order for Google to consider your site whitelisted.

(Surely, there's got to be a better way...)

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

In case you haven't noticed, the Google Webmaster Help forum has moved over to the new layout. Now, things are just a tad more confusing and people are wondering what inspired Google to make the changes they have implemented. In a specific Google Groups thread, a forum member asks what Levels mean (notice in the screenshot I've included that he's designated as "Level 3"). So -- what exactly is it?

Susan Moskwa responds to the frustrated user (and explains, I suppose, why I will never see a nice blue "G" to indicate Google employees):

Apparently in the old help forum, users who were offered advice by non-Googlers would respond to the effect of "Who are you to give me advice?" which deterred regular forum contributors (who still knew what they were talking about) from contributing solid and helpful advice. (Unfortunately, I still want the G to denote Googlers as such, but I digress...)

So what are Levels, then, exactly? Levels are awarded to individuals who offer the best and most valuable answer to the community.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

If you've ever noticed on specific searches, Google gives you a post count and estimates the number of authors of posts in the snippet like the screenshot below indicates:

But if you ask me, the number there is entirely inaccurate. The question: where does Google get these numbers and how does it calculate them?

That is the question being asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread, where Googler JohnMu promised to look into it. John said:

I'll check up on that & let you all know what I find out :)

When John updates the thread, we will let you know what he says.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Blogoscoped reported that Google has finally introduced YouTube videos into Google Maps as an additional layer. You can now view videos, in addition to the photos or wikipedia layers in Google Maps. Here is a screen capture of the "More" button, from where you can activate the video layer:

For example, if you go to Times Square NYC, you will find many videos that have been adding to Google Maps, presumably by geocoding the videos in YouTube as belong to a certain area. Here is one video:

So how would you help get your videos to show up in Google Maps? Well, when you upload a YouTube video, make sure to click on the "Date and Map Options" and then in the search box, enter in the location and set it. Here is a screen shot illustrating:

In the past, you were able to add videos to local business listings, but this is a whole new level.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

If you are a Blackberry Storm mobile user on the Verizon Wireless network and want to fully utilize Google Maps, you may be out of luck. Tom from the Google Maps team said in a Google Mobile Forum thread that Google Maps is not able to use the Verizon Wireless GPS feature at this current time.

Tom does explain that they are able to locate your location through cell phone towers or wifi networks, but the accuracy is clearly not as good as it would be, if it was able to utilize the GPS service. Tom said:

I wanted to provide a little background for people with Verizon Wireless devices who aren't able to use their device's internal GPS with Google Maps for mobile. Access to GPS data on Verizon devices is restricted to certain applications. At this time, Google Maps for mobile isn't included in that list. However, two other methods of determining your location, Cell ID and Wifi access points, can be used to pinpoint your place on the map.

The problem is, most of the folks in the thread don't buy what Tom is saying. They are confident that Verizon Wireless's GPS feature is unlocked. They think Tom is talking about something else. They think it is just an excuse and Google is buying time to release an update to the program.

So, is Verizon blocking Google from using the GPS feature on the Blackberry Storm or is Google looking for an excuse?

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Forum.

I finally switched over to Google Reader from Bloglines after it failed me for 2 days in October. I have a few gripes of my own and wonder if Google will ever address them. For example, I don't understand why there's an incredibly annoying amount of whitespace on the right side of RSS feeds -- Google's decision to wrap text in the way that it does is, erm, annoying.

Another problem I don't like is that Google Reader can't tell me exactly how many feed items I am behind on if there are more than 1000 unread items. I have to say that I liked Bloglines telling me when I had 4342 unread items. 1000+ could mean 10000. Seriously.

A third problem I have is that I'd like to change the text of Google Reader instead of using the old school Arial. In the meantime, I'm hacking userChrome.css in Firefox, but I really shouldn't have to.

Other users are observing other issues with Google Reader, and believe it or not, I've experienced them also (but then again, if you're a Google Reader user, you probably have too). Sometimes, Google Reader says that a specific feed has one unread item. However, you may then enter that feed and find out that there are no unread items at all. It's misleading to say the least. Google Reader Guide says that "we've noticed that unread counts can get thrown off as
result of tagging items from feeds you aren't actually subscribed to or by subscribing to another user's shared items feeds multiple times." Neither of these impact me, but I do see this happen ever so often. My solution is to "mark as read" and then usually it goes away. The key word here is "usually."

In any event, Google Reader Guide seems to be aware of this issue as it's still impacting a number of individuals.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

In a Google Groups thread, JohnMu has asked the Google Webmaster Help community for some help. On behalf of one of his colleagues who is performing a case study, he's looking to gather some intelligence from the very nice people out there who are willing to participate. Here's the request:

I'm looking to personally work with a selection of organisations willing to work with me on a project using Google Website Optimizer to try to increase conversions on their website. In exchange for my time and the insights gained from using Google Website Optimizer, Google would gain the right to present the project publicly as a case study for the promotion of Google Website Optimizer / Google Analytics.

If you're interested in participating, there's a Google Spreadsheet to fill out first.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

While Google's financial future is uncertain lately (or they've been conveying it by laying off their contractors or cancelling holiday gifts out of an "inappropriate gesture"), it seems that some content producers are making all the money. I suppose those who are laid off are really enjoying their freedom by visiting sites like YouTube. The New York Times reports that some video producers are raking in some serious dough using the social video sharing site. Individuals have been able to successfully gain followers -- 100 million views on videos -- and make six figure incomes.

While not all people are happy about this progression, I think it's great that there are ways to capitalize on entertainment. Everyone needs to smile every so often.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, we reported that Feedburner is not recording Bloglines subscribers. The funny thing is that this was acknowledged on December 6th. It's December 11th and there is absolutely no fix in sight.

As you can tell by the image on the right (which reflects an RSS feed of mine), subscriber counts have been down for a week. And for whatever reason, Google is not fixing the Bloglines issue.

Or maybe they tried. But at the same time, "when you fix a bug, you introduce a new one." Apparently, they're breaking other counts along the way. Today, I noticed that my other blog has a subscriber count of 0, which is completely different than yesterday's subscriber count (of more than 0, of course!)

(Or maybe they aren't, because my Bloglines number is still down on one RSS feed and I have a 0 subscriber count on another feed of mine.)

It seems that Google's Feedburner team needs to get its act together. But hey, that's just me -- and the percentage of people who have been affected for a week now.

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups.

It appears there have been recent complaints at the Google Groups discussion area that FeedBurner stats are way down for many folks.

Last night, Google, the owner of FeedBurner, confirmed that there is an issue with Bloglines tracking, saying:

We have seen many reports that Bloglines subscribers are not currently being tracked. We are making adjustments to restore Bloglines as a subscriber source and will update this issue once it's resolved. (Please note that any subscribers on Bloglines are still receiving your feed updates; they just aren't being reflected in your stats at this time.)

A Googler updated that document and said it has been an issue since about December 6th. Since Bloglines is a fairly popular reader, your FeedBurner stats may be way off.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

We reported on November 5th that Google and Yahoo ended their ad agreement. We only knew what the Google Blog (and other news outlets) told us: the government didn't seem too happy about the agreement and advertisers were concerned.

In the past 24 hours, though, it's come to light that there was a lot more than just a "governmental concern." The truth of the matter is that the United States Department of Justice was "three hours away" from filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to CNET.

Now what? Well, Google's decision to pull away was "shrewd." And they think it's smart that Google pulled out, whereas Microsoft's past history shows that they wouldn't back down.

MS rarely back down. Thats why they got such a bad reputation- they were swallowing a multi-million (dollar/pound/euro- take your pick) DAILY fine about publishing "complete and accurate technical specifications" and still fighting.

G still enjoys pub