Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Is Link Buying Worth the Effort?
A WebmasterWorld member was desperate for improved rankings, so he bought links. As a result, his rankings tanked and he was wondering if there's a better way to buy build links. Really, if you're trying to buy links, the recommendation is to avoid using brokers. Go directly to webmasters and ask them if they can place a link on the site where it appears naturally (not in the navigation, for example). Additionally, go for quality - A Reminder to Update Your Google AdSense Login to a Google Account
We posted about the requirement to link Google AdSense accounts with a Google Account in February. As indicated in the comments of that blog post, the frustration of doing so is still there and a lot of publishers are not taking the plunge as a result. Well, Google is reminding you that you have no choice. You'll need to do it, according to a Google Groups thread. AdSensePro Ashley refers to a new post on - Google's International Search Filters A Little Off?
A Google Groups webmaster is reporting that he is finding .co.nz (New Zealand) sites ranked highly in the Google Ireland (google.ie) search result. Strangely enough, that .co.nz site is not even hosted in New Zealand; it's hosted in the US. Similarly, the webmaster reports that a few other sites are being ranked highly even though they are US-based servers. He suspects that there is a problem with geotargeting in addition to other issues (like duplicate - Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 Party Guide
Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 will be held on June 16-18, and the parties are already being planned. AussieWebmaster has opened the floor to anyone who knows of happenings in the area, but Becky Ryan has already posted a few events that she knows will be occurring in a Search Engine Watch Forums thread. On the first day (June 16th), there will be a networking reception from 5:30 until 6:30 in the expo hall. On - Don't Block Your 301 Redirects with a Robots.txt File
A Google Groups thread has a very interesting discussion that is almost complete. The discussion takes you through the life cycle of a 301 redirect. Site owner moved from domain.com to domain.info, on a domain name sale, but wanted to retain his links, so set up a 301 redirect from .com to .info for a certain period of time. Besides for the thread covering a ton of details that are critical to such a move, - Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute?
A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks members if they would consider buying a link that has a nofollow attribute appended to it. For those who don't know what the nofollow attribute is a snippet of code added to the html of the link, so a search engine can easily detect if they should follow the link (in terms of link popularity and even actually following the link physically). It looks something like this: <a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit - Verification of Google Webmaster Tools Fails At 12:22am?
One constant thread you see at the forums are threads complaining that their sites become automatically unverified in Google Webmaster Tools. So the webmaster needs to go back in and manually click the verify button in Webmaster Tools, to reverify the site. One webmaster wrote a Google Groups thread discussing a pattern he has seen. This webmaster wrote a script to notify him whenever his verification file is being accessed by Google. This way he
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Un-ethical Seo Jobs, HighRankings Forums
- AdWords - One Million Servers, Search Engine Watch Forums
- Microsoft Shuts Down Book Search Program, DigitalPoint Forums
- Can Adding a Large Number of Pages Make Your Rankings Suffer?, WebmasterWorld
- Happy Birthday Kim!, Cre8asite Forums
- Reddit Officially Launches New Design, Sphinn
