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:
- Tracking Search Bot Activity
Back in the day, tracking how bots accessed your site was a bit of a crave. Now, you don't hear about it much. The old Google Analytics, aka Urchin, had a section for displaying bot activity on your site. It did this because Urchin also analyzed your log files, in addition to the method Google Analytics uses to track based on JavaScript. Since most spiders don't load JavaScript, popular analytical software, such as Google Analytics, - Google's Tips on Unranking For Keywords
Reverse search engine optimization - unranking for keyword or keyword phrases you work well for. Why in the world would you want to rank less in the search engines? Well, people have their reasons. We actually covered this topic twice in the six plus years of writing about SEO topics: Ranking Well But Not Too Well in Search EnginesI Rank Too High on Google! Is Something Wrong? A recent Google Webmasters Help thread has a - Getting PageRank Without Getting Links
A WebmasterWorld thread has interesting discussion around the topic of pages earning Google PageRank with little or no links to those pages. The discussion was started by a webmaster who asked, how can his page have a PageRank score of four, when Google webmaster tools reports the page has zero links? The obvious answer is that Google is not reporting all the links yet and it is very possible the page has links, but just - Bad Idea: Google AdSense Twitter Units: Twitter Streams in AdSense
On Friday, I reported on an AdAge article that showed Google was testing incorporating Twitter streams in AdSense units. The first test, which was confirmed by Google as a limited beta, would show TurboTax's Twitter stream in AdSense units, likely on pages about taxes. If you scan the recent @turbotax communication via Twitter, you can see why I am nervous about this implementation. If it was purely marketing speak, showing promotions or helpful tax tips, - Ultimate URL Shortening Guide
Danny Sullivan's Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? has an excellent overview of the various URL shortening services available. In Danny's write up, he goes over about 15 different services and rates them based on how they handle the following: RedirectTrackingClient SupportDomain CharsCustom URLSharingPath CharsTotal CharsCountryService With the rise of social media sites such as Twitter, URL shortening services have really risen in popularity. Understanding the pros and cons of the various services - Google AdSense Bug Still Holding Payments For Publishers
It has been about five to six months now of us reporting that Google has a bug that holds payments to some publishers. In fact, many publishers have been waiting months to be paid and some seem to still be waiting. A Google AdSense Help thread has confirmation from Googler, Obair, who is still manually removing the hold status on publisher accounts. It is sad to see that publishers are still experiencing major slow downs - Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: April 3, 2009
Google and the rest of the search industry had a lot of fun with April Fools' Day hoaxes, I recap them in the video. Google had a PageRank update on April 1st, no foolin. Yahoo Search updated earlier this week. Google continues classic, one line, Sitelinks test. Publishers accuse Google of stealing AdSense earnings. AdSense gives more email preferences to publishers. Google drops the video ad units from AdSense. AdWords encourages you to use the
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- How to Abuse the New DiggBar for Fun and Profit, Sphinn
- The New Diggbar - An Iframe I Can Live With, Cre8asite Forums
- Why is Google Adwords so hard to use ?, WebmasterWorld
- 'Oops, you have too many spreadsheets open' error, Google Docs Help
- Google News Now Showing Additional Options, WebmasterWorld
- When will Ask.com go Chapter 7?, WebmasterWorld
- Googlebot is reporting a bunch of porn related words as being found on my site., Google Webmaster Help
