Daily Search Forum Recap: July 15, 2010

Jul 15, 2010 • 4:00 pm | comments

(0) by Barry Schwartz

| Filed Under Search Forum Recap

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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 Search Bug Prevents Some Searchers From Using Google
Google has confirmed a bug that prevents some searchers from using Google search. First reported in a Google Web Search Help thread just about two weeks ago, some users are unable to get any search results at Google. The first report said: In Firefox, old and new versions alike, trying to do a search on a results page while not being logged into a google account does nothing. Tried hitting enter, nothing. Tried hitting the
Google Posts Maps & Places Video Answers, Like Matt Cutts
The Google Maps team has been fielding questions via Google Moderator and has produced currently eight video responses to the most popular questions. This is very similar to what Matt Cutts does on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel. Google Places also has a YouTube Channel but let me share with you the 8+1 specific new videos of questions and answers: Forum discussion at Google Places Help.
PageRank META Tag In Real Life Use
You need a laugh, don't you? Well, I got one for you. Spotted via a Google Webmaster Help thread, one webmaster is asking why his site "went to spam and not showing and ranking." The funny part is not the poor English or the fact that his site is indexed, but rather a look at his meta tags. Here is a look at some, I repeat, not all but some of the meta tags on
Google's Josef Frank Logo
Visiting Google today on any Google property you will find a special Google logo for Josef Frank. It is Josef Frank's 125th birthday, he was born on July 15, 1885 and died on January 8, 1967 in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a well known Austrian/Swedish architect and textile designer. Here is the Google Doodle for Josef Frank: This may be the first person Google has placed a logo for with only a really small Wikipedia
Yahoo Search's URL Ping Server Goes Offline. Beginning Of The End?
WebmasterWorld's moderator, incrediBill, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld noting that Yahoo's URL Ping server seems to have gone offline recently. As he explains, when he tries to access the documented Ping URLs, he gets a dead response. Try it yourself, try sending a ping via the documented example URLs: http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstorieshttp://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://site.example.com/blog The API URLs are dead as well, see http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=. Is this the beginning of the end to Yahoo Search? Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Broad Match Modifier To Roll Out To All Google AdWords Advertisers
Two months ago, Google began testing a new AdWords type named broad match modifier. It basically allowed you to be "more specific with your broad match keywords, but be more lax than the phrase based match," as I explained then. Back then, it was only available to advertisers in the U.K. and Canada. But now, Google announced they are now "rolling out globally in most languages." The exceptions are Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew