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:
- Google Adds "Nearby" Search Option
Google announced they added a new search refinement to "show options" section. The refinement allows you to filter results by results relevant to being nearby your location. Google explained: Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. Starting today, we've added the ability to refine your - Google API Bug: Traffic Estimate For proximityTargets
For those heavy Google AdWords API users and developers, did you know that the proximityTargets do not work properly for traffic estimation? A Google AdWords API Help thread has Eric Koleda from the Google AdWords API Team who confirmed the issue. He said: There is a known issue where proximityTargets aren't processed correctly for traffic estimation. I don't believe this problem will be fixed in the near term, so I would recommend you look into - Google Showing Commercially Related Keywords In AdWords Positions?
A somewhat hard to read thread at WebmasterWorld describes Google as testing showing a related keywords type of box in the position where Google would show their AdWords search ads. From what I understand is that the initial query was not commercial enough to drive search ads. Google offered up related keywords that seemed to be more commercially oriented. If someone refines their search by clicking on those related keywords, Google would then show an - How Does One Remove Info From Google's Chile Earthquake Person Finder
A few days ago, there was a tremendous tragedy in Chile, a massive earthquake. Google put together a tool to help family and friends locate missing people due to this earthquake. The tool is located at http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/. At this tool, you can either submit a case of a missing person or search for a case of a missing person. There are currently about 35,700 records, or missing people in the database, some accounted for and - "0 Indexed URLs" In Google News Sitemaps Bug
A Google News Help thread has some reports of publishers reporting that their Google News Sitemaps are reporting "0 Indexed URLs" in Google Webmaster Tools. I too saw this issue and I thought that perhaps there was a bug in my sitemap file. But Google did not report any issues with my sitemap file, plus, I saw my articles were being indexed within Google News. So I figured, it was a reporting glitch in Google
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- MSNBot killing my server, not this again!, WebmasterWorld
- 5 Steps to Launching a Mobile Search Campaign, Sphinn
- 7 Widely Believed Myths Of SEO, Sphinn
- Blogger of the Week: Giovanna Villanueva (Flowchart enclosed!), Google AdWords Help
- Google AdSense: You have 3 working days to make changes to domain.com, WebmasterWorld
- Google Warned by EU Over Street View Map Photos, WebmasterWorld
- Smart Robots.txt, Sphinn
- Something Wrong With Google? Scrappers Copying and Ranking Higher, Google Webmaster Help
- Thoughts on outsourcing link building, WebmasterWorld
