At the recent Web 2.0 expo (which I totally wish I went to), Matt Cutts presented on "what Google knows about spam." I actually watched the 9+ minute video (yay me!) and found it informative. Basically, he summarizes a few...
At the recent Web 2.0 expo (which I totally wish I went to), Matt Cutts presented on "what Google knows about spam." I actually watched the 9+ minute video (yay me!) and found it informative. Basically, he summarizes a few...
Yesterday, the Internets were abuzz with news that Google has launched Friend Connect, which appears to be "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites," according to TechCrunch. Google's own press release...
About a week ago I ran a poll that asked Can Someone Hurt A Competitors Google Rankings With Links? I ran the poll because there is a lot of debate around this topic. So I figured, why not ask you...
Google has moved the location of the "Saved Locations" feature in Google Maps. Now, you should see an arrow down on the right hand side of the search box, in Google Maps. Clicking on that arrow will show you your...
Dozens and dozens of Google AdSense publishers have reported receiving an email from Google with the subject line, "Important Account Information." The email basically was a reminder to those publishers who have not yet accepted the updated terms and conditions...
A featured WebmasterWorld thread has a fun list of "not to do with your AdSense account because Google might ban you for these things." Here is the list complied by a new member, BrandNewDay: Click your own adsAsking other people...
The folks at WebmasterWorld really look at every fine detail when it comes to Google's search behavior. Moderator, Receptional Andy said he noticed that when searching in Firefox at Google, Google would append an HS parameter in the URL, when...
Yesterday was Mother's Day and the search engines and search industry blogs/forums had special themes and logos up for the day. Here is a compilation of the logos I found: Google: Yahoo (Flash): Dogpile: Ask.com Cre8asite Forums Search Engine Roundtable...
I reported this later last night at Search Engine Land but this is very important news for Google AdWords advertisers. Google will be introducing into the quality score component of your ad rank, the speed at which your landing pages...
An older Google Groups thread was just updated by Jeff Posnick the AdWords API Advisor, an official Google representative in charge of the AdWords API development and support. The Googler explains that the API Sandbox should now support the creation...
search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017091.htmlBack in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site,...
First, congrats on your wedding - I like to personally wish you both a long happy life together. Now, let's get down to the money... You make a lot of money with Google AdSense. But now that you are married...
After a deathly cyclone ravaged the Myanmar (Burma) region, thousands of people are still hoping for aid while the death toll rises into the six digits. Fortunately, if you go to Google.com today, you'll see that they're looking to help....
A WebmasterWorld member notes that when he does a link: query for a specific domain, it shows only internal links and not external links -- but it depends on the size of the domain. This behavior is only observed on...
A WebmasterWorld thread has serious discussion on obtaining advice and tips on getting your images out of the Google SafeSearch filter. Basically, sometimes Google might label your images as being sexually explicit or not appropriate for the average searcher. If...
search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017077.htmlAnn Smarty goes through the conflicts of reporting competitors as spamming Google search results. Yes, this is a topic we covered many times here, including: Reporting Spam: Is It EthicalHow Can I Report Spam to Google?Google Spam Reporting WorkingDoes Google...
Yesterday we reported about a major reporting bug that impacted both AdWords & AdSense users. Yesterday at about 9pm (EST), Google's AdSensePro Stephanie said the reports were now fixed. Yes, that is about 40 hours after received our first reports...
A few weeks ago, I ran a poll asking Which Day Do You Make Most Your Google AdSense Income? We now have 92 responses, over the course of the week and most people voted that Monday they earned the...
A Google Groups thread has a long discussion on how Google defines what a link farm is or is not. I have decided to isolate a Googler's comment, because who can best define what Google feels a link farm is,...
Honestly, I am not sure if this is brand new, but a DigitalPoint Forums thread reports the Large Rectangle (336 x 280) unit as having four text ads within it as new. Here is a screen capture of the ad...
A WebmasterWorld member says that his .com, which has a UK IP address (and is for the United Kingdom audience), is not being recognized as a UK-specific site even though he updated Google Webmaster Tools and informed Google of the...
Starting at about 5am (EST) yesterday, I have been noticing reports in the forums about Google being slow to update both the AdSense reports and the AdWords reports. The two largest threads discussing the issues can be found at WebmasterWorld...
A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting observations, which I thought would be fun to name the "Floating Four" symptom. In short, it seems like there are some pages that happen to float into the fourth position at Google's search results...
Friday we reported that Google is testing new fonts in AdSense ads. Well, I finally found a screen capture of this in action via DigitalPoint Forums. Here is the screen capture: Pretty funky looking, no? If anything, this is a...
A WebmasterWorld thread has speculation that Google is now seeking out AdSense arbitrageurs through AdWords accounts. The rumor is that Google is banning AdSense publishers by looking to see if their AdWords accounts are sending traffic to pages with AdSense...
A Google Groups member notes that Google seems to be able to stem complex plurals as of late and accurate suffixes. For example, if you search for "accredit" or "accrediting," you will see "accreditation" highlighted as well. Forum members also...
This month, WebmasterWorld members have observed the same old shuffle in rankings that plagued webmasters in our April 2008 Google SERP Update post. A lot of rankings are dropping, and one webmaster even reports that he's hit a new traffic...
Aaron Wall recently wrote a brilliant piece about the value of a #1 Google ranking. In his in-depth article, which is divided into 9 sections, he explains based on research and a variety of forum discussion that even small declines...
Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty: What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to...
Let's say, you have a subfolder on your domain that gets hacked. The hack causes your subfolder to be penalized by Google, due to the hack. Did you know that in order to issue a request for a review from...
Since early February we were warning Google AdWords advertisers that Google would be enforcing the display URL policy, where the display URL must match the destination URL. The policy enforcement was suppose to begin on April 1st. On April 10th,...
In order to make it easier to get driving directions and see an intersection or area before you actually get to your desired location, the Google Maps team has integrated driving directions with Street View. For example, take a look...
CNBC interviewed Google's CEO Eric Schmidt earlier this week and the informative interview is now live for everyone to read. Video is available in three parts: part 1, part 2, and part 3. In a nutshell (thanks to engine and...
Google AdSense publishers are reporting via WebmasterWorld that Google is testing new fonts for the ad titles of the Google contextual ads. The new font styles seen include: Comic SansTimes New Roman The folks in the forum find the Comic...
Last night, the big news was again Microsoft/Yahoo/Google business dealings. You can see all the headlines at Techmeme, including (1) Microsoft might start the hostile takeover today (tomorrow) and (2) Yahoo might announce they will continue to carry Google ads...
Yesterday I reported that GoogleBot is crawling less pages then they once were, based on a large WebmasterWorld thread. Now, I spotted a response from a Googler at a Google Groups thread with similar complaints. This time, I decided to...
Search Engine Journal has a very cool photo of a vending machine in Google's Japan office. Since I'm not sure who took this photograph (update: it was Loren Baker!), I'm showing you a small size image here: More photos of...
Aaron Wall wrote a very good piece on whether your website will pass a Google review and says that human reviews can potentially bring your site down. He mentions tactics you should use to avoid such reviews, including building quality...
A DigitalPoint Forums thread has the owner of a Google Maps mashup named Speed Trap get ready for being mentioned in the New York Times. The publisher said his site will be featured in the NY Times online site and...
A WebmasterWorld thread reports from dozens of Webmasters that GoogleBot, Google's web crawler has not been crawling as many documents as they have in the past. Many webmasters are noticing reduction in crawl rates as much as 90-percent, relative to...
Google's AdWords blog announced that all US based advertisers should now be able to participate in Google's TV Ads. Honestly, I think Google opened this up to all US advertisers on April 11th or the day before and just announced...
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on what type of advertiser would you automatically add to your AdSense competitive filter list. I.e. which type ads do you not want showing up on your site? Here are some of the responses: Adult...
Now that Google admitted to crawling JavaScript and forms SEOs and Webmasters need to be aware of how to manage even more duplicate content issues. In the past, a good strategy was to build out filter pages (filter by color,...
Google is making a major promotional push for iGoogle (Google's personalized home page), with the new artist themes section. If you go to the Google home page, you will notice a special logo that looks like the logo on the...
The New York Times reports that "Google researchers say they have a software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages." The algorithm, dubbed VisualRank, weighs...
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around one advertiser noticing Google displaying three scores directly under a Google Netherlands ad. Here is a picture of the ad with the scores underneath the ad: So I began to do some research and...
A recent WebmasterWorld thread is complaining that Google seems to have changed the yellow background color of the Google sponsored ads to a color just a bit different then the white background. Tedster explains that the color he sees now...
I am seeing reports from across the SEO forums that Google has updated or begun the update of the PageRank score found within the Google Toolbar. We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine...
Remember the Google Maps stickers spotted throughout the UK? They looked like the image on the right of this post. Well, a while back, probably a year or so ago, I convinced Google to send me one. It never actually...
WebmasterWorld members are talking about receiving Google Sitelinks, and overall, most forum members who are impacted this way are obviously happy about the expanded link opportunities. Some are a bit afraid that their sitelinks may drop off (as a few...
A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks other Google AdSense publishers which day of the week, do they make the most amount of money with Google. Most say, Monday and Tuesday are their highest yielding days, while some say the weekends are....
A search for flight results in the syntax of flight from A to B, i.e. fly jfk to sjc returns a Google OneBox result, that by default, links to Expedia but offers links to other travel search engines including CheapTickets,...
A WebmasterWorld member asks if there's any penalty for adding H2 text (4 words) for the search engines because his logo is displayed in an image. The answer seems unclear. Tedster responds that he's asked Google twice about this --...
Have you ever wanted to see what interests Google employees? Now you can. Google has combined research written by Googlers in Papers Written by Googlers. Currently, there are a variety of sections that are broken down into the following: Algorithms...
Earlier this week, Reuters said that Google has announced technology to provide brand images on cell phones. In other words, based on a user's query, they'll be provided with some sort of image advertisement that has been scaled to fit...
A little over a month ago, I ran a poll asking Would You Want to Work at Google? The results were a bit surprising, 69% of the 143 responses said they would like to work at Google. 98 respondents or...
A Sphinn thread has discussion about a new AdWords experiment where Google flipped the URL location in the ad from the bottom of the ad to above the description line of the ad. The Get Elastic Blog has a screen...
I would consider this Google Groups thread a "gem thread," since you don't always see a thread at this level - it is precious. A Googler, Wysz, discussed in detail four methods of hiding content and how Google may interpret...
A Google Groups thread confirms that Google Maps is lacking support for a common feature needed both here in the States and overseas, support for multi-language listings. A Google Groups member asked: As a multilingual company our website is in...
Maybe so, just a spidering glitch, weird links, or sitemap error? I was searching this morning in Google doing some tests on Google's new Whois feature. When I plugged in a domain what popped up in the first page of...
A Google Groups thread has discussion about one webmaster that sees Sitelinks for his site in position 60. The search is for vacation realty and in the 60th position. While, I do not see the Sitelinks at that position, the...