Other Google Topics Archives

In the past few days, many users of the iPhone and Gmail Push service through active sync have been reporting that it is not working. A large Google Mobile Help thread has dozens of posts from unhappy Gmail users.

Google confirmed the issue and blamed the iPhone OS 3.1.2 build, which was out just about a month ago. So I am not sure why people are beginning to complain now.

Robin from the Google Mobile team confirmed the issue and wrote a few responses in the thread. They include:

We're aware of some issues with Gmail sync and are working to resolve them. OS v. 3.1.2 has broken a few things on our build, and we've also had a bug with certain formatting characters in email that has caused sync to stop altogether. We're working on to get a fix out for these items first, and can then start troubleshooting other possible causes.

While 3.1.2 has been a source of problems, there are a few issues across other platforms and OS version as well that we're working on. A number of bugs have been fixed over the past month, so it's unlikely that the source of your problems then is the same as it is now. Also, many folks have been able to sync just fine - sometimes it's a matter of sorting out setup issues and other device-specific variables. We're trying to fix the main bugs that we know about first and then can dive into the 1:1 troubleshooting.

Andrew554321, I did want to address your question about Google Apps. Push email is not currently covered by the Google Apps Premier Edition SLA: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/sla.html

While we do apologize for any disruption, please keep in mind that this is a Beta product that was just recently released; you are of course welcome to go back to IMAP or however you were checking your Gmail before implementing Google Sync. Otherwise, we hope you'll stick with us as we are actively trying to resolve these issues!

Yes, Google Sync uses Microsoft's Mail for Exchange, which is a separate protocol from IMAP and will thus behave differently. There's no link between these services, other than the fact that they can both access your Gmail and that Google doesn't control the protocal for either of them :P

So, if you pay for the Google Apps premier, you are out of luck. Gmail push for the iPhone is a beta product and is thus not covered.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Google has seven different doodles (logos) on the day of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. Then yesterday and today, they had two different logos, celebrating the same anniversary.

November 5th was Cookie Monster:

Today, November 6th is Ernie & Bert:

What is Google's obsession with these lovable Sesame Street characters?

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

One of the more obvious complaints about Google is not about their products but rather how to find all their products and manage how you have access to those products. Google just launched the Google Dashboard which brings many - not all - of this in one place.

The Dashboard includes over "20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more." Here is a video demo on how it works:

A WebmasterWorld thread has early discussion around this topic. Right now, the feedback includes "it's about time" and "Well, it is a start..."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

So when I visited Google.com, I saw Big Bird's legs. It is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and Google made a Doodle for it. But then I noticed other Google properties not only sporting Sesame Street but also Doodles for other learning programs that are popular in those regions. We have Google logos for the 20th birthday of Wallace & Gromit, and these other regional characters: Abigal, Boombah Chamki, Ieniemienie, Abelardo Montoya and Kami.

Here are the logos:

Big Bird's Sesame Street found at Google.com, Google.ca, Google.es, Google.hr, Google.co.kr, Google.co.jp, Google.com.ly, Google.fr, Google.com.ph, Google.com.qa, Google.pl, Google.com.bh, Google.com.hk, Google.com.kw, Google.ps, Google.com.sa, Google.ae, Google.com.eg, Google.co.id, Google.jo, Google.com.lb, and Google.com.om.

Wallace & Gromit found at Google.co.uk, Google.com.tw, Google.co.th, Google.rs, Google.pt, Google.de, Google.ro, Google.ch, and Google.at.

Ieniemienie' Sesame Street found at Google.be and Google.nl.

Kami from Sesame Street found at Google.co.za:

Boombah Chamki from Sesame Street found at Google.co.in:

Abelardo Montoya from Sesame Street found at Google.com.mx:

Abigal (אביגיל) from Sesame Street found at Google.co.il:

I don't think I missed any, but you can check yourself at the bottom of this page.

Happy 40th Sesame Street and 20th Wallace & Gromit!

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: The Google Blog just posted about the peanut butter and sandwiches. :)

November 5th a Cookie Monster logo:

November 6th, an Ernie & Bert logo:

A couple weeks ago, Google began helping business owners find themselves with a link in their Google Local Business Center that read "See your listing on Google Maps."

The thing is, for some, when you click on that link, it doesn't show you are listing in Google Maps. Why? Google isn't sure. But they did ask for help.

A Google Maps Help thread has Googler, Linda asking for help in finding the issue. She asked business owners to post their business listing information, if they cannot see their listings. Linda said:

If you've clicked "See your listing on Google Maps", but do not find your business on Maps, please provide us with your:

1) Business Name
2) Address

Please provide us with the information above or we will not investigate your issue.

We are aware of this issue and we hope to have a fix for this soon. Thank you for reporting.

So if you fall into this category and want this feature to work, join the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google has just updated the Business Listing Quality Guidelines for Google Maps. There are many changes to this guidelines page - in fact - it seems like it was completely revised.

So I will show you the old version and then the new version:

Old Version:

Google Maps aims to provide value for users and business owners alike. We've implemented a number of guidelines that align with these intentions. To protect users, businesses, and the integrity of our search results, we reserve the right to terminate Local Business Center access or broader Google access to individuals or businesses violating these guidelines.

These points cover the general guidelines for creating business listings through the Local Business Center, but are not an exhaustive list of policies. Some actions not specifically prohibited here may still be cause for removal from Maps. If you have any question about whether or not a tactic is deceptive, we recommend you stand on the side of caution. You may also request clarification by posting in our Maps Help Forum.

• 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.

If you believe that another business is abusing Google's quality guidelines, we encourage you to report the listing. Your reports help us to improve the overall Google Maps experience for everyone.

If you find that your listings were removed from Google Maps or you're unable to access your Local Business Center account, please file a reconsideration request. All requests are reviewed, and the decision of Google in this regard shall be final and binding. Please note that we won't necessarily respond to each individual request.

Your business information on Google Maps:

Should you have questions about how to add or how to edit your business information, please visit the Local Business Center help pages.

New Version:

Business Listings in Local Business Center must have correct information about physical, local businesses, as they appear in the real world. Google reserves the right to suspend access to Local Business Center or to other Google Services to individuals or businesses violating these guidelines.

• Only business owners or authorized representatives may claim their business listings on Google Maps.

• The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.
• Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name.
• Do not include phone numbers or URLs in the business name.

• Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist.
• PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
• Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
• Businesses that operate in a service area as opposed to a single location should not create a listing for every city they service. Service area businesses should create one listing for the central office of the business only.
• Businesses with special services, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
• The precise address for the business must be provided in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
• A property for rent is not considered a place of business. Please create one listing for the central office that processes the rentals.

• Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible. For example, you should provide an individual location phone number in place of a call center.
• Provide one URL that best identifies your individual business location.
• Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or 'refer' users to other landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

• 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.
• Please see this page of the LBC User Guide for examples of acceptable custom attributes.

• Use a shared, business email account, if multiple users will be updating your business listing.
• If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.giraffetoys.com, a matching email address would be you@giraffetoys.com.

• Report Spam on Maps.
• Request Reinclusion if your Local Business Center account has been suspended.
• Request Verification for your bulk upload.
• Post in our Help Forum.

For more information about the Local Business Center, please visit the Local Business Center user guide.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google News has dropped the "Text Version" feature sometime over the past week or so. A Google News Help thread has some complaints dating back to October 22nd.

Personally, I don't think I ever used the text option for Google News, but some have. I did spot a screen shot with the option on Flickr, over here, just look on the left hand column. Now, if you go to Google News, you won't see the "Text Version" link anymore.

Why did Google drop it? Fred from the Google News team said in the Google News Help thread:

We're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful. Occasionally, this also means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.

We decided to phase out Text view, in part, because we believe Headline view provides much of the same functionality. You can select Headline view and see all of the article links that Google News has to offer. If you're on a slow connection, Headline view should be faster than the default Google News homepage.

We apologize for any frustration this might cause. We remain committed to helping all of our readers discover as much news content as possible, while helping publishers find and reach new audiences online.

Farewell text version of Google News!

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Five days after Google announced adding music playable search results to their index, I am now able to see it. It only took about five days, but it is there. Yes, Yahoo has been doing this for a really long time, so Google is playing catch up.

Here is a sample result:

And if you click the play button a window opens up and plays a sample of the song:

Just an FYI - Google had music search back in 2005, just about four years ago. But here is how it now works:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

If you scope out Bondi Beach in Australia you will see a little easter egg:

See it? I would be shocked if this was not mentioned elsewhere or if this was not some public stunt that I missed.

But a Google Maps Help thread brought this to my attention.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

A few days ago, we reported on complaints that Google Maps for Israel was in Hebrew, people wanted it to be English or to have the option. Well, Googler Dave updated the Google Maps Help thread to inform us it was a bug. He said:

Thank you for reporting this issue. This was due to a error in one of our internal software settings. We're aware of the problem and are working to return the language settings back to their previous state. I hope it won't take much longer for us to complete our fix, and we'll roll it out as soon as it's ready.

Now, I see English cities and data on the maps (new next to old):

English:

Hebrew:

Want Hebrew back? Just change the hl=en to hl=he in the URL, for example, here is the URL for Hebrew text, http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=he&geocode=&q=Jerusalem,+Israel&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=59.769082,101.601563&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Jerusalem,+Israel&t=h&z=12.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

I spotted this old thread at Google Maps Help that has very useful information and yet, we have not covered it (go figure). In short, the thread goes through the possibility of having a single business listed in your Google Local Business Center console multiple times. The questions are:

(1) Do you delete the repetitive listings?
(2) If so, which ones?
(3) If not, do you make sure they are in sync with each other?

For example, I have duplicate listings, two unverified, which I am afraid to delete:

Back in March, Joel H. from the Google Maps team wrote:

The only time you want to remove the listing from Maps is when the business is permanently closed OR you never want it to appear on Maps. If there are duplicates in your account, keep them. When I initially posted, I didn't think about the ongoing process we have to merge duplicate listings on Maps. Because we do our best to merge duplicate listings on Maps, it's possible that selecting Remove this listing from Google Maps may actually suppress a preferred listing in the future (the process of conflating listing happens regularly). We'll keep our eye out for duplicate, Local Business Center verified listings, and work to refine our systems to merge the right listings as soon as we can. Until then, keep the conversation going on this topic, and we'll be happy to continue to help as best we can.

-------------------------------------------------------------

In the case of differing statistics (impressions/views), they are distinct listing on Maps, and Remove this listing from Google Maps is the right option. It's likely you'll want to choose the listing with less impressions or views.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Update: You also 100% want to check out Mike B's post on this.

Update 2: See Joel's comment (he works at Google):

There's a bit of confusion here - the 'Delete' link has two options:

- Remove this listing from Google Maps
- Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account

The first option should be avoided, per the warning you quoted. The second option won't cause a listings to be removed from Maps.

The second option won't cause a business to be removed from Maps entirely -- it will just delete it from your account. That's the option you should use to get rid of extra copies of your business in your Local Business Center account.

So, if you ever have more than one listing for the same business in your account, choose one to keep, and go ahead and select: 'Delete' > 'Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account' for the others. In this case, keep your verified listing and delete the others.

A thread at Google Web Search Help has a person from Turkey who is saying that him and many of his friends are happy that Google has a Doodle on

This person explained:

Google is my homepage and when i opened my browser today i saw that Google arranged a special logo for Republican day. Its really nice but my friends and i wonder if why the colour of logo is green? It has to be red colour actually, which is our flame colour. But we feel really disturbed since the colour is green because green colour means islamic pressure and terror since we've been in hard times because of mentioned situations.

Do people in Turkey really think Google made the logo green to support terrorism? Should Google have known to make this logo red instead?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The big news the other day was on the Google Maps Navigation for the new Android 2.0 OS which will run first on the Verizon Wireless Droid starting November 6th for $199 with a contract.

Android is not as 'sexy' as the iPhone, but the Google Maps Navigation tool is an extremely 'sexy' application that make iPhone users drool. Just take a look at this video demo:

Heck, it makes me want to buy my wife a Droid, even though I know she won't use 99% of the features. Don't worry, I won't get her a Droid, but I will encourage one of my employees to pick one up so we can mess around with the device.

Will these features ever come to the iPhone? Possibly. Who wouldn't want a free navigation system on their phone? Heck, Google's application looks way better than most paid options.

Why is Google doing this for free? I assume data collection and the ads they can eventually embed in the software.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help and WebmasterWorld.

An ongoing Google Mobile Help thread with complaints on the Google Mobilizer feature has an update on that feature. In short, Google Mobilizer will convert a web page to make it render better on mobile devices. Google has updated it to include a "new mobilizer engine, which is faster, cleaner, closer to the look of the unadapted page," said Zeke from the Google Mobile team.

Zeke explained how to access this one devices:

On most devices:
1. Go to www.google.com
2. Go to Settings, turn "Format pages for your phone" to On, and be sure to Save.
3. Do a search. Clicking on search results will take you to the Google Mobilizer

On some smartphones:
- Go to www.google.com
- Do a search. Click on Options (next to each search result) and select "Mobile formatted". You should get a mobilized page.

Here is a sample of how it works on my iPhone:

Here is how the mobilized page looks like:

You can actually see it yourself on any browser, via this URL.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

There have been some recent complaints in the Google Maps Help forum from English speaking people who live in Israel. In short, Google seems to have recently changes the Israel data to show street and city names in Hebrew (עברית).

Here is one complaint:

I too am having the same problem, in Israel for a month and it worked perfectly in English till two days ago then poof it changed to Hebrew which makes it very difficult for us English speakers.

Yes, Google Maps in Israel was in English and now is in Hebrew. Here are pictures:

Do keep in mind, embedding maps, maps on mobile devices or via the API for Israel show basically nothing due to licensing rights. The only way to see this level of detail is accessing maps.google.com on your desktop. But that is an other complaint.

Forum discussions at Google Maps Help.

Update: This was a bug and is now fixed.

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

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

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

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I spotted an old Google Maps Help thread that reported that in the past, a competitor was able to add a coupon to this guys business listing. So if you visited his business, you would see a coupon for another company. Clearly this guy was upset and it seemed like Google may have never resolved his issue (it is unclear).

It seems like now some business owners are having trouble deleting live coupons from their Google Local Business Listing. For example, Chautauqua Lodge has a coupon that doesn't look all that professional:

I wonder if it is still possible to add coupons to competitors local business listings in Google Maps.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

I am a huge Google Reader, in fact, I might be one of the most active Google Reader users on the planet. So when they add features, I get a bit giddy. Yesterday, they added two features; an explore section and magic sorting.

The explore section loops in "recommended" sources, which is an old feature, but also adds "popular." Popular basically shows you what Google deems to be important RSS items on the web but personalized based on my reader and web history. So it shows me items I may have missed that are popular and likely to be on interest to me. I can tell you that most of the items in my popular section were not exactly of interest to me. But if I am ever bored (not likely) I may browse that section in the future. This feature does get better as you "like" and "share" items in Google Reader.

The magic sorting is pretty neat, it basically sorts all your unread items in order of what they think would be most important to you. Like the previous feature, the magic sort gets better as you "like" and "share" items in Google Reader. I can see this feature being useful for many Google Reader users, but for me, I don't mind going through the feeds in old-school chronological order - being that I have to go through every feed anyway.

Forum discussion at Google Reader Help.

I always find it weird writing the word "cut" after mentioning Matt Cutts, but sometimes you just have to do it.

Remember when we 'reported' that Matt Cutts of Google became the hot guy of the industry after having his hair shaved off? We posted some videos on that in that post, but just yesterday, the Google Webmaster Central team celebrated their one millionth view on YouTube with a video of the actual hair cut at Google.

Here it is for all to enjoy.

Matt is a great sport! I wonder if he is still sporting the hairless look or if he is growing it back for the winter?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help.

Tom from the Google Maps team announced in a Google Mobile Help thread that Google updated the Google Maps for mobile for BlackBerry application.

The update is version 3.2 and includes one major new feature, layers. You can add layers of data on top of the map. The easiest way to explain it, is with this video:

The second change is a fix for the internal GPS/Google Maps. Tom explained there was an issue "for mobile issues certain BlackBerry devices were experiencing, namely the Tour, 8330m, and others on certain carriers."

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

A very active Google Maps user reported a bug in Google Maps at Google Maps Help forums. Recently Google Maps launched place pages for each business listing. It basically meant Google made a nice shiny page for each local business listed in Google Maps.

I think what the bug is showing is that you can still access an old business listing page.

For example, here is an old listing page of a Tekoe Tee Bern tea-Boutique with less information then what would be seen on the new listing page. Here are pictures comparing the two:

Old Page:

New Page:

I personally tried to replicate how this person was able to navigate to this page, but I was unsuccessful. I tried several different ways, so maybe Google fixed the issue but there has been no response from a Googler yet on this matter.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Linda from the Google Maps team posted a thread at the Google Maps Help forum announcing a new feature in the Google Local Business Center that helps businesses see their own listings on Google Maps. Linda said:

Today, you'll see a Maps link for your every business listing in your Local Business Center account. We hope this new feature will help you easily find your business on Google Maps.

Here is a screen capture of that link:

For example, here is a direct link to my business listing:

maps.google.com/?hl=en&q=*&georestrict=input_srcid%3A2a3460b2291b0b2d&iwloc=A&iwd=1&mrt=yp

Personally, I love the query where they use an asterisk, *. Update, Barry Hunter decoded this URL over here.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

You can now search through the comments left on all public YouTube videos at youtube.com/comment_search.This is a new feature launched recently on YouTube TestTube.

Liz from YouTube support announced it in a YouTube Help thread. Many are excited about this feature, because it gives them a new way to find videos. The comments can often be revealing about what the context of the video is about.

It also gives many YouTube users a new way to find nude videos:

To be fair, YouTube is very good at filtering out adult videos.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

Since we are on a Google Maps coverage roll today, how about we keep it going. Google Maps recently announced changes to their map data, which Mike somewhat called out. In short, for many locations in the US, Google is now their own provider of data for their maps.

About a year ago, Google switched their map data to Tele Atlas. Now, Google seems to be moving off them. For example, look at the copyright on the old Google Map versus the current one:

Old shows Tele Atlas:

New shows Google:

There are a few threads in the Google Maps Help forum where Googlers are replying to this question, as follows:

Please use the 'Report a Problem' link (see reference below) to tell Google about the problems in your area (or anywhere else in the US). We hope to be able to fix the reported problems within about a month.

Here is a video explaining the new process to report map issues:

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

What happens when you have Google Satellite view and map street data not lining up? Well, I can show you. If you look at Cairo, Egypt you will see that the Satellite detail is shifted about 90 meters west of the street detail.

Here is a picture showing the box in the map detail not overlaying on the box of the streets in the Satellite view:

I believe this is not that unusual, and it happened every now and then. Google has been informed and Howard from Google said:

Thanks for noticing this. The appropriate team in Google has the bug report now and the problem will be fixed.

Are you aware of other places in Google Maps like this?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

I was playing around with Google Maps the other day and noticed that for my office building, in Street Views, Google is showing the office building number, in a water mark like style above the building.

Here is a picture:

Notice the "2" above the building, I point to it with an arrow above.

You can see it yourself by clicking here.

I am not sure if this is new, but it is useful to know that this building is indeed 2 on that block.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Currently, there is a theme named NoBama in the iGoogle Theme directory that shows a picture of two confederate flags with President Obama hanging from a tree.

Here is a picture of it:

As you can imagine, this is an extremely offensive and outrageous theme to find on Google.

There were two threads about this on Google Web Search Help where it was reported on October 5th.

Jimmy from Google confirmed that this theme will be removed soon. He actually confirmed this about two hours ago. I personally still see it, but it does take time for content and themes to be removed from the iGoogle Theme directory. Here is what Google said:

This iGoogle theme has been reported for review and appropriate action will be taken shortly.

Thanks for the heads-up regarding this theme.

Racism and hate will likely never go away, but to find themes like this creep into a Google directory - well, it is very sad to see.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Liz from YouTube support posted a thread at the YouTube Help forum confirming a wide spread bug with commenting on YouTube videos.

Liz explained the bug as follows:

We've seen many of you report that you're having trouble with comments: more specifically that you receive notification of a new comment on one of your uploaded videos, but the comment never appears. This is an issue our team's aware of and is currently working on a fix. Comments should be working as intended again this week.

Google said they fixed the issue with the comments on YouTube, but some seem to still be having issues.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

If you check out New Delhi on Google Maps, you will see a big fog hovering over the location. Why is that?

Here is a current picture:

A Google Maps Help thread reported this issue this morning. A few hours later, Howard from the Google Maps team replied, "Thanks for the report. We will look into this."

Have you see major clouds or fog in Google Maps before?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

A couple weeks ago, Google brought push Gmail to the iPhone via an expanded version of Google Sync. People were incredibly happy about this and they signed up right away.

Yesterday, people started reporting in a Google Mobile Help thread that Google Sync was down for them. The first reports came Tuesday late night or Wednesday early morning. Later on yesterday, Googler Bing, replied to the thread with a short heads up, "Thanks guys, we're looking into it!"

Soon after it began working again, for some. Others had issues getting things back in sync. Calendars, contacts and emails seemed to be missing or misinterpreted.

The thread is ongoing with complaints and issues, but I think, overall, Google has fixed the Google Sync issue by now.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that Google has been the target of spammers who are trying to push their pornographic videos into Google. This is nothing new, but the terms these spammers are using now include Holocaust related terms.

A search in Google for a popular Holocaust film, Witnessing History - a Teen Second Life Exhibit returns a Google Video result in the web results (universal search). Here is a picture:

Googler, Skylar said in the thread:

This porn video should not be masquerading as an educational video. I've passed your detailed feedback to the rest of the team so we can take the steps necessary to address this issue. For the future, if you can tell from the video thumbnail that the video is explicitly inappropriate and abuses content that is clearly meant to be educational or informative, please click on the “Report problem” link next to the video and mark the video with the category that closely matches the issue.

That was yesterday, it was first reported on Friday. I really can't blame Google for this anymore. I mean, it is a bit over the top (to say the least) to target Holocaust terms with porn videos, as well as children terms. As of right now, I still see the video in the Google web search results.

This is not the first and won't be the last time, Google Video is used as a target to spam Google with porn. In August it was used to show a porn video of Rambha, a famous Indian actress. Early on, with Universal Search's launch, Google had issues with nude images and explicit porn in the web search results. Google has been much better at filtering these out.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

One of the worst parts of uploading to YouTube, especially large and long HD quality videos, is waiting for YouTube to finish processing the video so people can watch it. I normally create a 15 minute or so video, in HD quality, upload it sometime before 11am to YouTube and it often won't be available until after 6pm. The upload process takes an hour or so and the processing can take several more hours.

On very limited occasions, those videos never make it out of the "in processing" status and then you have to reupload all over again. Never fun.

This time, Liz from the YouTube support team has confirmed a bug in the upload process. She posted a thread at YouTube Help the other day saying:

Some of you have mentioned here in the Help Forum and on Twitter that your uploads are stuck processing. This is a bug with the uploading process and our team here is currently working on a fix. Once the team's fixed the bug, uploads which are currently stuck processing will be re-processed again.

For those of you who need to upload a video immediately, try uploading a second time if your original upload attempt is stuck.

Thanks for informing us of this situation, and we appreciate your patience while we're working on resolving the matter!

It is nice to know YouTube is looking into the fix.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

The other week, we wrote about how to block Sidewiki users from commenting on your site. The issue was, it basically blocked all Google Toolbar users from accessing your site.

There is a new script that reportedly blocks only those who try to use Sidewiki to comment on your site, without blocking all Google Toolbar users. It named the Sidewiki Defeat and can be viewed at code.google.com/p/sidewiki-defeat.

I spotted this via a Google Webmaster Help thread. Warning, I personally did not try this, so be careful.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. The Google Merchant Center will replace Google Base for those who submit products through Google Base.

Confused? Google Base is sticking around, but Google has added a new Google Merchant Center, which is focused around merchants who submit product data to Google. Before the other day, all products submitted to Google, to be displayed in Google Product Search, was submitted (mostly) through Google Base. Now, Google wants you to submit that data though the new Google Merchant Center.

So what is Google Base for? Well, anything else that you want to submit data to Google. Other data includes upload real estate, jobs and vehicles. Yes, you can pretty much submit whatever you want and Google will figure out how to deal with it.

Google tried to make the migration from Google Base to Google Merchant Center as smooth as possible. Google said:

For the vast majority of users, existing settings, data feeds or items will not be affected. You will find everything in your account as you expect it to be.

However, a small percentage of users who have been uploading to Google Base both Product listings and other item types will need to sign in to Google Base and create new FTP settings. Otherwise, they will not be able to upload any non-Product feeds via FTP. Their existing FTP settings will work normally for Product feeds, and can be accessed in Google Merchant Center. We apologize for this unavoidable inconvenience. These users have been already notified directly by email. You can find instructions on how to change your FTP settings in Google Base here.

For more details about this change see the FAQs.

If you are confused by the title, just look back at the history of this product. It all started out as Froogle, yes Google named their product search feature Froogle. Then it was changed to Google Shopping and then to Google Products and then Google flipped back between Shopping and Products. Then Google Base came out, but the consumer side remained Google Shopping. And now we have yet another tool to manage, Google Merchant Center. Got all of that? I may have missed some.

Forum discussion at Google Merchant Center Help (formerly Google Base Help) and WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, besides for it being Yom Kippur, was also Confucius' birthday and Google had a logo up for the birthday in some Google properties.

Here is the logo:

According to Matt McGee, the logo was not live in Google.com or on Google France but it was live on Google UK, Germany, Spain, Austria, Russia, Serbia, Australia, New Zealand and other properties.

Why not the US or France? Maybe because it was Yom Kippur and Google didn't want to deal with the complaints about why was there a logo for Confucius but not for a major Jewish holiday?

Forum discussion Google Web Search Help and Google Webmaster Help.

There are tons of people who are confused about the Google logo today. Most people think it is a double L but they are 1s, two 1s for 11 or eleven. Yes, today, Google is celebrating their 11th Birthday. Here is the logo or doodle:

Why so much confusion? Well, I am not sure but see just some of the threads with people asking for clarification.

• GOOGLLE, Google Web Search Help
• Dont have URL just the "GOOGLE" word on your homepage had an extra L " GOOGLLE", Google Webmaster Central Help
• Googlle?, Google Web Search Help
• Happy Birthday Google - 11th BD ?, Google Webmaster Central Help
• Happy Birthday to Goog11e, DigitalPoint Forums
• Has Google recently changed their name? You home page is coming up as GOOGLLE this morning, Google Web Search Help
• why does the word "google" your homepage for google canada appear as "googlle" ??, Google Web Search Help
• Why is Google spelled 'Googlle" on the homepage of www.google.com.vn?, Google Webmaster Central Help
• WHY IS YOUR MAIN PAGE "GOOGLE" MISSPELLED AS "GOOGLLE"???, Google Web Search Help
• why two l's now appearing in your logo on my home page ??????, Google Web Search Help

Google hasn't always celebrated their birthday on September 27th. Their sixth birthday was on September 7th, so was their seventh birthday. The 8th, 9th and 10th were celebrated on the 27th.

Happy "ll" 11th birthday Google!

Google announced the launch of "Place Pages" on Google Maps. What this means is that instead of Google showing you a large bubble when you click on "more info" on a business listing in Google Maps, it takes you to a new landing page, with more information.

For example, here is a clean link to my company's listing page: http://maps.google.com/places/us/suffern/executive-blvd/2/-rustybrick-inc

This is not a major change to how it impacts the normal user, but it does create a unique landing page for every business or "place" on Google Maps.

I find it funny how in a WebmasterWorld thread, moderator, Webwork called this:

PlacePages = Wikipedia, with ads.

What do you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, we reported on Google Sidewiki which allows anyone to basically comment on your site, on your site, with the Google Toolbar. Some webmasters are not into this idea and they want to know if there is a way to opt out of this feature. The answer is no, not an official way to opt out, but you can block these users completely.

One Webmaster in Google Webmaster Help explained that you can use a rewrite rule to block people with this toolbar.

Until Google dumps this or provides an opt out, web site owners who'd like to retain control of what appears on their own site can block all Google Toolbar users by adding the following to their htaccess file. The "notoolbar.php" points to a file explaining Google's bad behavior and instructing the visitor to uninstall Google Toolbar in order to proceed. You can create your own file and name it whatever you like, just be sure to change the code below to make it match the file name you've chosen.

Update: See the comments below about this rewrite code.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GTB [NC]

RewriteRule .* notoolbar.php [L]

Of course, this would block anyone who has the Google Toolbar from getting to your site. Up to you.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Update: I have a new post on how to just block Sidewiki without blocking Google Toolbar users.

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Sidewiki. Sidewiki is basically an add on to the Google Toolbar that allows you to comment about any site, directly on that site, via the Google Toolbar. For more about the tool, see the video below and Danny's detailed writeup.

SEOs are discussing how Google may be able to use this for ranking data at a WebmasterWorld thread. Plus Google is asking for feedback on the tool in the Google Toolbar Help forum.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Toolbar Help.

One of the most requested features for Gmail is push support for the Apple iPhone. Google announced yesterday that they now support push Gmail on the iPhone through Google Sync. To get started with this, go here and read the various instructions.

We knew this would be coming because a Googler told us back in March it would be here soon. And trust me, people are delighted it is here. There are literally dozens and dozens of threads at the Google Mobile iPhone Forum on this topic.

Personally, I really do not want Push notifications for my email. I just don't want my iPhone beeping and vibrating every other second. Plus, I am sure it won't do good for my battery life. Personally, I know when I check email on my iPhone that there will be email waiting for me - I don't need to be pushed this on me. I can see for email accounts that get fewer emails, this may make sense.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile iPhone Forum.

Google's stock, GOOG, closed yesterday at $499.06, just under the $500 mark. Will it break $500 today? Well, it has already in the pre-market trade.

Personally, I felt $80 was too much for Google. But clearly, I know nothing about investing. Is $500 a good deal?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google Latitude is an application that allows you to share your current or most recent shared location with your friends. It also allows you to share your location on your blog by using the Google Latitude Badge.

A Google Reader Help thread has a non-English speaking individual detailing a bug that occurred with his Google Profile using Latitude and the "Like" feature in Google Reader.

He said that if he chooses a "like" in Google Reader, "the other people will see my Latitude location without any limit." This was reported on September 8th. On September 21st, Google's Roger confirmed the bug and said they resolved the issue:

Thanks for reporting this and for your additional research! After working with our friends on Google Latitude, we've found the problem and fixed it, so this shouldn't happen again, regardless of your language setting. Please let us know if the problem resurfaces as we take your privacy very seriously.

I don't fully understand how this issue happened with only non-English based accounts, but the issue does seem to be resolved now.

Forum discussion at Google Reader Help.

Googler, Marie in the Google Docs Help forum announced a major 'feature' coming to Google Docs that will make your documents more discoverable in Google's search engine. She explained that some Google Docs will soon be crawlable and found in the Google search results.

What are the criteria for these docs to be shown in the Google index? They have to be "explicitly published using the 'Publish as web page' or 'Publish/embed' option, and which are linked to from a publicly crawled webpage." Want to make sure your docs are not visible? Here is how:

• Go to the 'Share tab'
• For documents and spreadsheets, choose 'Publish as web page'. For presentations choose 'Publish/embed'
• Click on the button that says 'Stop publishing'

That is not the only new thing coming to Google Docs. On Friday, Marie also announced "back to school" features including:

• An equation editor, which you'll find under the 'Insert' menu.
• The ability to print footnotes as endnotes so that you have the choice to see your citations in different ways when writing papers.
• Expanded the capabilities of our dictionary with more definitions and the ability to translate individual words or phrases between 11 languages.

Forum discussion at several Google Docs Help Forums, WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

If you visit Google today, you will notice a very interesting Google Doodle. The Doodle is designed to honor H.G. Wells, whose 143rd birthday would be today. Who is he? He wrote the 1898 classic, The War of the Worlds and is often referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction."

Here is the logo:

What is unique about this logo, compared to other logos is that Google had two previous logos leading up to this one, kind of hinting that this was coming.

The first was the missing O Google logo:

The second was the missing L Google logo:

The logos themselves did not hint to what was coming, but with aids from Google's Twitter account, @Google, some people were able to crack the code.

Forum discussion continued at Google Web Search Help.

Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that has an open based CAPTCHA technology for validating humans as being real humans. Google basically wants them to help improve their book and newspaper scanning OCR technology. reCAPTCHA uses newspaper words as the identifier for human detection. reCAPTCHA collects all of the responses from humans when they are asked to enter in what they see as the words. This data is incredibly valuable to companies that want to better learn how to read words scanned from a newspaper, which is why Google acquired them.

If you scan the WebmasterWorld thread, you will see one major theme. SEOs and Webmasters are eager to drop reCAPTCHA from their web sites now that Google owns them. One senior member said, "Now busily removing reCAPTCHA from all our sites. Google has enough beacons already. No need for more." A moderator added, "next month you're all going to get ads showing in your captcha box."

The technology is quiet interesting, ResourceShelf links to a scientific paper on the topic. Here is a link to the PDF of the paper.

In any event, I am not sure if it is worth dropping using reCAPTCHA from most sites. Heck, they already have AdSense and Google Analytics running on them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In continuation of Google's missing "O" unexplained phenomenon logo, we now have a logo missing an "L" and linking to a crop circles search result. This Google logo has the file name goog_e.gif and looks like this:

The one ten days ago, the missing O, looked like this:

This time, Google tweeted the coordinates "51.327629, -0.5616088" which is in Woking, Surrey GU21 4, UK.

Is Google spelling something? What is going on here?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

On Saturday/Sunday, the New York Times ran an ad that contained malware. In fact, the New York Times manned up to it in an article named Times Web Ads Show Security Breach. In short, a rogue advertiser posed as Vonage and displayed ads that appeared to be from Vonage. But what really was in those ads were lines of malicious code that filled user's screens "with an image that seemed to show a scan for computer viruses. The visitors were then told that they needed to buy antivirus software to fix a problem, but the software was more snake oil than a useful program," said the New York Times.

So how is Google to blame here? Well, according to at least one Google user in a Google News Help thread, Google led this person from Google News to the New York Times, which contained the malware.

The searcher felt it was Google's responsibility to not lead their searchers to sites that contain malware, even the New York Times. The searcher said:

Can Google please remove links to the NYTimes until they get this fixed. I got hit with this when accessing an NYTimes article via Google News and I don't appear to be the only one.

Google does malware checking and blocking, but sometimes it takes time for Google to pick up on things like this. For sites like the New York Times, users can be infected way sooner than Google detects the malware.

Forum discussion at Google News Help and WebmasterWorld.

If you look at the World Trade Center Site on Google Maps, you will see Google still labels it, "September 11 Attacks." An upset Google Maps user posted his distaste for such a label in the Google Maps Help forum.

Here is a picture:

He said:

I noticed on the map of lower Manhattan, the entire former WTC area is designated as "September 11 Attacks." Surely this is more of an event than a geographical location? It's been 8 years, and I was just wondering if this location could be called something more appropriate for a map, such as "Former WTC Site" or "Future Freedom Tower Complex"?

Dealy Plaza in Dallas is labeled as "Dealy Plaza," with a photo icon that tells the story of JFK's assassination. The location is not called "JFK Assassination." The case is similar with Pearl Harbor.

To my surprise, a Googler replied saying, "Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This seems to be the result of an over-eager algorithm. I'll look into getting it fixed."

Again, Google will look into getting it "fixed."

I guess it can not always be labeled September 11 Attacks but what should it be labeled?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Hasbro has created a virtual Monopoly game at www.monopolycitystreets.com that allows people to buy property, using Google Maps. It is pretty neat - but the big issue is that it is incredibly slow. It took me two days to get in and I finally have some screen captures and videos to show you.

Here is the quick video:

Here are some screen captures:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

At 09:09:09 today on 09/09/09, Google posted a special logo for the special occurrence.

Here is the logo, not sure how much longer it will be live:

The official logo is also at google.com/logos/090909.gif.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

To be honest, I do not fully understand this announcement, but it is causing a lot of discussion in the various forums. In short, the Google Base Blog announced new marketplace and aggregator policies that are going into effect December 1st, 2009. The policy is there to help Google manage duplicate feeds (content) from the same seller, who has their feeds submitted by multiple locations.

Google is releasing a feature named "multi-client accounts" which allows "aggregators and marketplaces to consolidate and manage data feeds and reporting for sub-accounts, submit changes more rapidly, and get more accurate Google Checkout badging at the seller level." So this stops "individual sellers on marketplaces" from needing to a feed to Google Product Search.

There is a lot of discussion on who this will impact, what they should do and how they can prepare. In fact, some are considering dropping eBay and other aggregators to gain better control over their feeds.

Forum discussion at Google Base Help and Power Sellers Unit.

There were several reports at the Google Web Search Help forums over the weekend reporting that the top Google navigation has gone missing. You know, that top bar, above the search box, that lists the other Google features you can use.

@rishil sent me a quick movie, showing how the bar went missing. Notice the top bar, keep your eye on how it disappears after he conducts a search:

The issue started some time on Friday night and continued into Saturday. I do not have the exact times, but I believe it was an issue for at least 12 hours. Google has not officially made a statement about the issue, but "top contributors" in the forum claimed Google was aware of the issue and working on a fix. It then showed up shortly after.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

The Google logo (doodle) for today, Saturday, September 5th, has a weird flying saucer, UFO of some kind. It links to a search result for unexplained phenomenon and no one really knows what it is about. Here is a pictures:

Google tweeted this:

1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19

That translates to "All Your O are belong to us." But what is it about?

Danny received a statement from Google at Search Engine Land saying:

“We consider the second ‘o’ critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the “o” on the Google homepage. We hope to have an update in the coming weeks.”

Danny kind of thinks this might lead to Google's upcoming birthday. I am not sure. I do like the numerous thoughts on this from the Half Loaded blog. Anyway, you can find out more on this at Techmeme.

I have been noticing a recent spike in the number of complaints about their business reviews going missing in Google Maps. One of those complaints has a response from a Googler.

A Google Maps Help thread has one business listing owner complaining that he lost 16 reviews. Googler, Brianna said that Google is looking into the issue, she said:

We are looking into this. When did you notice the occurrence of the disappearance of your reviews?

So this possibly might be a larger issue that the Google Maps team is working on resolving. If you lost reviews for your business, I would chime in at the Google Maps Forum.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Yesterday, the web version of Gmail and Google Apps went down for pretty much everyone. The downtime was about an hour plus for most people and the world stopped. Why did it happen? Basically, some routers got overloaded and shut down, which caused a rippled effect. For the full details, see Google's blog post with them being extremely clear about the technical issues (I love it when people do that).

I was honestly in disbelief to learn about many people do not have IMAP or POP access to their Gmail accounts. You can use the web interface 99% of the time, but as a backup, get an email client (be it desktop or mobile) and set up IMAP (preferably) to work with your Gmail account. Why? Well, in yesterday's case, IMAP and POP were working fine, but the web site was down. So those who had access to their Gmail account via IMAP and POP, were in luck.

Anyway, Twitter was going wild with "is gmail down" tweets. But the forums were going wild as well.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, Gmail Help, DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld and so many more I didn't list here.

There have been on going complaints about the RSS feed Google News generates at Google News Help forums. The complaint is that Google is trimming the title portion of the article in the RSS feed. Let me show you an example.

Google Lands Deal to Put Chrome Browser in Sony PCs at PC World has a ten word title. If you look at the Google News RSS feed, you will see that they significantly drop out about half the title from the RSS feed. The yellow highlight is the "title" element in the RSS source code:

So when you view the feed in an RSS reader, the top title is cropped down:

Why the change? I think it might have been around the same time Google News began altering their News RSS feeds at the end of July of this year.

Inbal from the Google News team said, "we apologize for any inconvenience; the fix should be released within the next days." Inbal added, "please note, though, that in the example below the title is still displayed without truncation with the article itself (it's repeated right below the truncated one." True, true true.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

The Google Logo (Doodle) today is for Michael Jackson's 51st birthday. Yes, Jackson died recently and an outpour of support was felt around the world. Google actually has taken some negative PR due to not having a logo up for the day of his funeral (I didn't write about it, but trust me, there were threads about it).

Here is the logo on Google today:

As I said in the title, there are people who are not happy with Google showing this logo. One asked why a logo for Jackson when no logo for D-Day. Another asked why Google had a logo for Jackson but no logo for Mother Teresa. And two different people asked why is Jackson getting a logo when Senator Kennedy is being buried today.

Of course, Jackson is both loved and hated by many and there is a lot of controversy around his history. But Google did indeed have a logo for his birthday and many of his fans are appreciative. Personally, I prefer the logos of lesser known people who have made a huge impact in our lives, because those people are almost always forgotten. But many fans love the logo and there are positive threads about it also.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help (and others, listed above).

I found it a bit funny that a WebmasterWorld thread is already discussing if and what Google would be sending out as a holiday gift this year. Yea, four months prior to the holiday season, Google advertisers and publishers are talking about the gift they may or may not send out this year.

Google historically has sent some really nice gifts to both AdSense and AdWords (amongst others) customers. In 2005 they sent a how mobile gadget kit with mobile mouse, mini hub, usb drive, and so on (I wish I took a picture of it). In 2006 they sent us a digital picture frame, in 2007 they sent a USB memory card and 2008 a bunch of shwag (mug, tshirt, pen, etc).

But due to the economy, people think the gifts will be cut this year. I am not too sure - I guess we will find out in a few months. It is just funny that people are already talking about it and eager to know if and what it will be this year.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Over the past few months, there have been random complaints from Google Maps users about the live traffic data. In short, people are saying that when they zoom into see more detail on the red colored traffic indicators, the color changes to another color.

A Google Maps Help has posts from three different Google Maps users over the course of three months. Clearly, this cannot be a wide spread issue, because of the very few posts. So either this is a user generated error, where the user is zooming into the wrong location or the traffic data has actually changed on the zoom refresh -- or Google has some sort of bug.

Have you ever noticed this as an issue? I tried to replicate this issue, but failed.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

If you were watching the show, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire last night, you may have noticed a question about the Google logo. Here is a picture of the question on the show:

The question was, "Which of the following is a true statement about the letters in the standard Google logo?"

The available answers were:

A. Both "O"s are yellow
B. Both "G"s are blue
C. The "L" is red
D. The "E" is green

I spotted this picture via a Google Web Search Help thread, where that member snapped the picture for us all to see.

I am not sure if this was the first time a question about Google or any search engine was asked on the show, but it is the first time I have heard about it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

A couple months back, Google quietly dropped the feature to comment on Google News. Yes, Google allowed those cited or mentioned in articles to comment on the stories, here is a look at how that worked.

For the first time, I have seen a thread in Google News Help forum asking why Google removed it. Inbal from Google responded with the official PR statement from Google:

Google has long believed that experimentation and iteration is the best way to build our products, and we're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users. We have phased out support for an experimental mechanism that allowed people quoted in news articles to offer comments on those stories. We are no longer soliciting comments, and comments that participants have provided naturally expired along with their clusters.

We're committed to continuing our efforts to help readers discover new perspectives on the news, while helping publishers find and reach new audiences online.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of this feature, simply because it just seemed out of the norm and hard for Google to maintain.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Google Maps Guide, Brianna, announced in a Google Maps Help thread that there is a brand new verification form for those who use the bulk upload process, to upload their business listings to Google Maps. Google has struggled with spam issues in the bulk upload process, so the verification process is hopefully going to solve much of those issues.

Brianna said, "we're excited to announce that verification for bulk uploads is now available to business owners who have already provided a bulk upload in the Local Business Center account."

The form can be accessed by clicking here but before you fill out the form, make sure you read these three points:

1. You must have a bulk upload of at least 10 listings in your account to qualify.
2. Bulk upload verification does not affect individually added listings
3. You must be the business owner of the businesses provided in your bulk upload.

For more information or if you have questions, make sure to check out the thread.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Today, if you visit Google you might notice a whacky logo that might appear to you as a bomb of some sort. In reality, it is Google celebrating the birthday of Hans Christian Ørsted. Who? Well, he was a Danish physicist born in 1777. He is best known for the observation of electric currents, which can induce magnetic fields. In other words, the logo, which you see below, shows how wires are passing an electric current to help the compass work.

He died in 1851 and was buried in Copenhagen. A man, most of Google searchers had no clue about, is now well-known due to Google.

So when someone asks you, what is that bomb on Google's home page, tell them the importance of the logo and Ørsted's work.

Forum discussion at Google Help Forums.

As many of you know, Google is giving us a preview of their major indexing and infrastructure update. They named this update, the Caffeine Update.

Yesterday I spotted a thread at Google Web Search Help forums, with one SEO asking Google to change the name. I didn't know this, but Mormons mostly don't drink caffeine. More on why they don't drink caffeine over here.

The SEO said:

I'm not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka Mormon Church) but I do respect other religions. Since the Mormon religion disallows caffeine, please consider changing the name. It's kind of like marketing Google Bacon to Jewish or Muslim folks, or Google Brisket to Hindus.

Google Blitz would sound much better anyways.

It is an interesting point. I am Jewish, so I am not sure if I would be insulted if Google named an update, the Bacon update.

In any event, I just found this very interesting.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Last year, Google News made their own top news after displaying an United Airlines article, which was very outdated, causing the airlines stock price to drop. The issue was that Google picked up a date on the article that seemed recent and thus thought the story was a new story.

Well, this happens every now and then with Google and reportedly has been happening more often. I have noticed a few recent threads with complaints from Google News readers, that old news is creeping into the index and appearing as new news.

For example, an old article named Obama accuses Clinton of evading tough issues was found in Google News yesterday as being new. Why? I'll illustrate the issue:

As you can see, in this case, this paper's web site shows today's date at the top of the page and then shows the date of the article below the article's title. Google News was confused and thought it was a new article. That is the issue.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

Less than a year after launching the new help forums, Google has redesigned them. The main differences are:

• Forum landing page, displaying categories by default and not topics
• Cleaning up the thread listing pages
• Removed the "announcements" section
• Other misc changes

Here is a screen shot of the new look:

I also have a screen shot of the old thread view page, which shows the major difference between the two:

If you need to see a full size view, see here.

I personally like the thread view, I just wish they would show a view for answers given by profile.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help (but all the new help forums were redesigned).

There is an unusual spike in complaints in the Google Maps Help forum that the Google Local Business Center is not functioning correctly. People are saying that although they are updating the information in the local business center, those updates are not being reflected in Google Maps.

Typically, updating the local business center would reflect the change in Google Maps "almost instantly" said one local SEO expert. But now, it is taking days and nothing has been updated yet. A few local SEOs are complaining in the thread, which makes me think that there is some type of bug with the Google Local Business center or there is some type of lag.

Another local SEO said:

There is big problem with updating. I work as Local Business SEO consultant. I tried to update some of my clients listing, such as the web address and title. Google hasn't updated those changes. Before it used to take less than hour to get updated.

Google has not confirmed that there is an issue. Linda from Google, did say that "edits you made in LBC should be reflected immediately." So I am not sure why they have not been updated for these local SEOs.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

The other day, I reported at Search Engine Land that Google was marketing the AdSense product over the radio, in specific markets.

These AdSense radio ads are targeting publishers or bloggers in the realm of finance site owners, health site owners and even "mommy bloggers."

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has one person who said they heard it and called it a "cheap [sounding] commercial" where "the girl was reading off cards."

I wish I could get an audio copy of the commercials to hear myself, but I guess that might be hard to find. If you do have one, please send it my way.

It is surprising to many to see Google using traditional means of advertising. Google is known not to use radio, TV or print ads to market their products. However, recently, Google has been using these forms of media to promote some products.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

For a few months now, users from Finland have been complaining that Google Maps Finland is in Swedish and not in their native language, Finnish. A Google Maps Help thread has those complaints.

A Googler even responded on May 26th, saying, "This is an issue which I reported to our team for their review and resolution." Another Google replied three days later, adding "we know this is a problem and it's definitely going to get fixed. In fact one of the engineers who works on tile rendering is Finnish, and is as happy about this bug as you are."

A few months later, still no fix and loyal Finland Google users are upset, to say the least. On July 14th, Googler, Adam said that it was fixed, but it was not fixed. I personally don't speak the language, so see the thread for more details.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

The Google Maps Help forums posted an announcement that there will be scheduled downtime this Wednesday, July 29th. The downtime will be between 1pm - 2pm(edt) / 10am-11am(pdt).

I assume that after 2pm on Wednesday, we might be in for an updated set of features or a new user interface in the Google Local Business Center. Of course, this is just an assumption, but many people are expecting updates from Google in this area and it is due time for an update.

What would you like to see? My preferences?

• A way to easily unmerge those bad merged business records
• A way to give multiple people access to local business records
• Improved spam controls and reporting
• Enhanced business hours

Forum discussion (kind of) at Google Maps Help.

On Friday, Liz (Googler) at the YouTube support forum posted a thread at the YouTube Help forums about why some videos get stuck at the 300 view mark.

Liz explained that when some videos become popular very fast, YouTube takes longer to figure out if those views are legit or not. So it can take several hours for YouTube to update the view counts to reflect the accurate views. Let me quote Liz:

Recently we have seen questions about why some YouTube video view counts "freeze" around 300 views. To help prevent confusion, we wanted to post a quick explanation of what's going on. View counts are extremely important to our community, so we work hard to ensure those view counts are accurate. Occasionally, when a video becomes popular quickly, it takes our computers longer to make sure those views are accurate. This means a video's viewcount may not update for several hours, sometimes allowing ratings and comments on the same video to climb temporarily higher than the views. So if you see your video views aren't moving, or that your video's comments and ratings are moving faster than your views, don't worry. If you're still getting views, the count should update soon.

The issue is that many YouTubers are noticing their view counts getting stuck at 300 for a lot longer than just several hours. Some are complaining about them being stuck for several days, if not weeks. I am not sure what the issue is there or if it is a spam issue or not.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

One person posted a rant in the Google Webmaster Help forums about the "Top Contributors / Bionic Posters" in that forum. In short, Top Contributors / Bionic Posters are given the title by Googlers, who believe that these people are smart enough, experienced enough, skilled enough and helpful enough to be giving answered at Googler levels. But this person felt the Top Contributors / Bionic Posters were not helpful.

The interesting part of this thread is that Googler, JohnMu, does the right thing and backs up the Top Contributors / Bionic Posters with a really nice post. The post, kind of leads me to see that Google may (maybe stretching it here) consider the Top Contributors / Bionic Posters as "certified Google SEOs," if there is such a thing. Google does have certified AdWords professionals, Ad Manager pros, Google Apps, etc, but not Google SEOs, simply because it is something that would be considered very controversial on many levels. But in a sense, these Top Contributors / Bionic Posters are Google Certified SEOs.

Read John's post:

This is one of the reasons we mark a few people as Top Contributor / Bionic Poster. It's not because of their own website(s). Some websites rank high for no particular reasons and some websites are filled with information that is made up -- I wouldn't trust people online just because of a website that they give you :).

Top Contributors / Bionic Posters are people who do more than just work on a single website. They help thousands of users here with their problems. They see issues here weekly which the average webmaster does not ever see. Because of that, they're frequently very quick in finding a diagnosis and frequently the diagnosis is spookily correct (not always, I don't think that's really possible). They might be a little too direct at times, but when you have so many people lined up asking for help I don't think it makes sense to be anything else than direct. Sometimes things can get heated, they're only people after all :), but overall they help an awesome amount of users.

Keep in mind that you can't become a Top Contributor / Bionic Poster by just posting a lot of stuff here. It's not based only on the quantity but to a large part on the quality of the feedback given. When we find that someone is doing an exceptional job here, we may decide to reach out to them and ask them to become a Top Contributor / Bionic Poster. We don't do that based on a single reply, we do that by looking at 100s and often 1000s of replies to webmasters with all kinds of problems.

If this message is not a clear indication that Google vouches for the Top Contributors / Bionic Posters, then I don't know what is. I don't blame JohnMu for backing up the Top Contributor / Bionic Posters, but it also leads John and Google to basically certifying them as certified SEOs, which can get hairy.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

The other day, Google Mobile launched two new features (amongst others). One feature has been asked for ever since Google Latitude launched. The ability to use this program on your iPhone. Well, now it is here, well, kind of.

Apple wouldn't allow Google to build a native iPhone app for Latitude because (I think) apps cannot run in the background and constantly pull your location. Instead, Google made it work over the mobile browser at http://m.google.com/latitude. The new iPhone browser supports geolocation services, so Google uses that to pull the location of the individual and then plots it on the map. Here are some pictures:

Also, for you who don't have iPhones (seriously, no iPhone yet?), Google released map layers for Windows Mobile & Symbian devices. More on that over here.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help Forums.

A Google Maps Help thread has a few business owners and consultants suggesting that Google should allow multiple Google accounts to gain access to a single business listing.

I cannot agree more. This is a feature that is currently supported in Google Webmaster Tools, but is likely needed more in the Google Local Business Listing Center. Giving businesses a way to have more than one person with access to such a listing, just makes (um) business sense. In addition, there are many search agencies that handle local listings for their clients. These agencies would love to give access to their clients, if the client needs to make changes as well.

I was going to create a poll asking if you agree, but honestly, I doubt anyone would disagree that this feature would not be useful.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

I spotted a thread at the Google Maps Help forum asking why Google doesn't allow people to walk across the George Washington Bridge. Specifically, why doesn't Google let people plot the directions as walking directions when traveling across the bridge. Any New Yorker knows, the bridge is filled with people walking or biking back and forth. It is a good question.

But when I was scoping out the bridge on Google Maps, using street views, I noticed that you can only get street views at the lip of the bridge. Any blue area shows where the street views are available, the plain yellow, is not available:

That reminded me that there is a law where you cannot take pictures of anything on the bridge. In fact, one day, I took a picture of the no taking pictures sign on the George Washington Bridge. I guess Google listens to those rules.

So why can't we get walking directions on the bridge? And why no directions to the moon?

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

There are some reports of Google Webmaster Tools not loading for some users. Some of these reports are coming from WebmasterWorld and I also personally have this issue.

When I try to access the tool, the URL redirects back and forth between the Google Account authentication system and the webmaster tools home page. If I try a different browser, it lets me in, so it seems to be a cookie issue for some users.

Firefox Error:

The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.

Safari Error:

Safari can’t open the page.

Too many redirects occurred trying to open “https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en”. This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirected to open the original page.

I can login to all other Google properties without an issue, I am just having this issue with Google Webmaster Tools. I rather not delete my Google cookies, cause that will stop them from tracking me for the past 15 years. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

It appears that some time over the weekend, YouTube began experimenting with 3D videos. I spotted a thread at the YouTube Help forum about this, where Googler Pete said he developed this in his 20% time.

He said he is the "developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project." He added that "it's currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes." Peter also shared the various ways to view such videos:

• yt3d:enable=true Enables the view mode. (obviously you've already discovered this)
• yt3d:aspect=3:4 Sets the aspect of the encoded video.
• yt3d:swap=true Swaps the left and right sources. You may need to add this to videos when the player with fixed anaglyph modes ships. Apologies for the inconvineince.
• yt3d:left=0_0.1_0.5_0.9 and yt3d:right=0.5_0.1_1_0.9 These tags are very provisional and most useful for fixing up old videos. They set the source area for each eye as pairs of coordinates x1_y1_x2_y2. The scale of these coordinates is 0,0 for the the top left down to 1,1 for the bottom right.

I spotted a video that is currently experimenting with this over here.

Again, this is a side project for one Googler right now and he did say:

Your feedback and suggestions are welcome, but as this isn't my primary project I can't promise a speedy turnaround with improvements.

I find it pretty cool that this is being done and I have a feeling it might gain a bit of a following by some videographers out there.

Forum discussion at YouTube Help.

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

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

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

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

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

Starting a few weeks ago the Google Maps Help forum reports that when you want to display text in the bubble of a Google Map pin mark, using the longitude and latitude of the location, it would no longer work.

For example, you can see it live at this link but here is a screen copy.

The issue is, the only way to get this to work is by appending [&iwloc=A&hl=en] to the end of the URL, if you remove it, the info bubble disappears. It works fine without that extra parameter in the URL for a standard address match, i.e. here but not sure why it doesn't work for the longitude and latitude version.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

In August 2008, Google released what was called the enhanced 404 widget that allowed webmasters to easily create custom 404 pages. In fact, we still have a sample of this in action at advertize.html.

But for some reason, I think Google removed the feature from the Google Webmaster Tools section. As a Google Webmaster Help thread discusses, he can't find it in the Webmaster Tools section. I looked for several minutes and I also cannot find it anywhere.

Did Google move it and I can't find it? Did they drop the feature with the launch of the new design?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Rumors of Google building an operating system has been nothing new, but confirmation that they are building an operating system is something new. Google confirmed that a Google OS named Google Chrome OS, is coming in the second half of 2010.

The OS will be first a light weight OS designed for Netbooks, not it is not Android. You can read about it at the Google Blog and all the billions of news items at Techmeme.

One thing I will highlight from the blog post:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. ... and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

As you can imagine, this has people talking about things like Google going after Microsoft directly, Google owning not only our web lives but our desktop lives as well and Google getting into a business they should stay out of. Yes, there are tons of opinions on this news and the best place to discuss them and share your own opinions is in the forums.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

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 d