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 Testing "Searches Related To" Above AdWords Map
Mike Blumenthal spotted a new, minor, Google experiment on the AdWords side. Remember earlier this year, Google began testing related commercial searches? Those then seemed to turn into basic related ads. Well, recently Google also began testing maps at the top right, which is now the default for some searches. So when those maps show up at the top right, they typically are placed above the AdWords ads and then hover over those ads when - New SEO Strategy: Treat Your Customers Poorly
This weekend, the New York Times published an article named A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web. The article basically goes through how Google's search results can lead someone to a horrible customer experience, but at the same time, the poor customer experience will help that site that ranks well in Google keep those top rankings. Got that? In short, the article covers how one company treats their customers like dirt because they feel - Should Google Remove Q&A Sites From Search Results?
Aaron Wall named Q&A sites spam of the year in Google. We all know Google doesn't want search results in their search index. Google says they do not want to display a link to a search engine's search results as a search result for a query. Makes sense. So Google says you should block your internal search engine from being crawled. At the same time, tag clouds I believe fall under this as well. Currently, - Google Scares Sites Not To Link Out
There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld that talks about the fear of linking to third party web sites. One webmaster knew he had about 3,000 links to his web site, but the site wasn't ranking well. So he built a program to check the source code of those 3,000 links. What he discovered was that about half of those 3,000 links, linked to him with the nofollow attribute added on to those links. So - Google's Watch This Space Page For Display Ad Promotion
I believe some time in September, Google launched a landing page at google.com/adwords/watchthisspace to promote their display ad network at the MIXX conference. The slogan was: Display Ads Are Big. They're Gonna Be Huge. Watch This Space. Here is the video they have on the page. As you can see, they promote the Google Display Network, DoubleClick ands YouTube ads all on that page. A WebmasterWorld thread has a post on this with one member
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Mobile PPC, Search Engine Watch Forums
- Where's IAH?, Google Maps Help
- Doodle 4 Google Winner Japan, Google Blogoscoped Forum
- Doodle Independence Day Panama, Google Blogoscoped Forum
- Link Building with Google Alerts: A Guide, Sphinn
- Twitter's CEO Admits It Lacks a Clear Long Term Vision, WebmasterWorld
