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:
- Matt Cutts Talks to USA Today About Google Optimization Techniques
Yesterday, USA Today published an interview with Google's Matt Cutts about how webmasters can optimize their sites for Google. In the article, Matt provides five tips on improving visibility. They are: Figure out what people are searching for and put those search phrases on the page. Ensure that your title tag, at the minimum, is not generic. (The article also mentions meta description tags so that the search will return a descriptive snippet in the - Google Launches Ad Planner - What Google Really Knows About Your Sites
Google has announced the launch of Google Ad Planner. Ad Planner is Google Trends for Web Sites on steroids. Basically, it gives you site data for publisher sites you might want to place your ads on. You "enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites that your audience is likely to visit." This works both on Google's content network and off the content network. Here is - Does Google Needs an Ombudsman or Not?
Last week, we talked about Google's new tool: trends for websites. In response, Michael Gray wrote a fantastic post about how Google gave us access to our website data, but not Google's itself. When you search for Google.com, you get "Google.com has no data available for ranking." Not so fair, is it? Barry Welford takes the discussion to Cre8asite Forums where he says that it may be a good idea for Google to look for - Get Google.com in Your AdWords Display URL
Google has a policy that your display url must match your destination URL. As most advertiser's know, having google.com show up in your ad, can drive a huge click-through rate. So what can you do to get google.com to show up in your display URL without breaking this rule? Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, abbottsys, tested out a theory that actually worked for him. abbottsys created an ad for a search on ivf, the ad's - Is Google's AdWords Search Too Inclusive?
A WebmasterWorld thread argues that Google's AdWords search is too inclusive. Why? Well, if you search on keywords, Google will return keywords that match not just the ad title or description, but also the display URL. The advertiser in the WebmasterWorld thread is upset because one of his affiliates have threatened to drop him and not pay him for the revenue he brought in. Why? Because they are using this search feature and finding that - Porn Continues to Invade Google Web Search Through Universal Search
I continue to report porn on Google over here, at Search Engine Land, via email to Googlers, via Twitter and Plurk and so on. But it seems that this is a battle Google is not winning. Why is this such an issue, because if a kid searches on his or her new bathroom, he or she may see this result: I blocked out parts of the image for obvious reasons. But this is an issue
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- US-ASCII vs UTF-8 - Google webmaster tools, Google Groups
- Barry Diller's IAC Pools Sites In Ad Sales Targeting System, WebmasterWorld
- Huge Google results flux, Google Groups
- Press Releases For Inbound Links, HighRankings Forums
- Warning: All the URLs in your Sitemap have the same priority, Google Groups
