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:
- Schwag Award Winners for SMX West 2008
Last week, we attended SMX West in Santa Clara, CA with a room full of exhibitors and cool schwag. Since I like schwag, Danny Sullivan told me that I had to rate the schwag in the exhibit hall, a task that I thoroughly enjoyed. In the end, everyone was a winner, but to be fair to Danny (and to make it a little competitive), I selected a few more outstanding pieces of schwag as the - Link Building Secrets from Established SEOs
Pole Position Marketing did an excellent writeup on some link building secrets from 12 link building type people, including Rand Fishkin, Hamlet Batista, Jim Boykin, Debra Mastaler, Bob Gladstein, and Michael Gray and published the findings in a 24 page PDF. Here's part of one tip (you'll have to read the PDF to get the rest of the tips): Not all links are created equal. We know that some links help more than others in - Webmasters Report March 2008 SERP Changes
Last month, we reported some SERP changes and this month the trend continues with the following observations from WebmasterWorld members. First, some members noticed a PageRank change, but we noticed that last week. Other people are seeing some sitelink anomalies: I have noticed that the numbers of indexed URLs from the sitemaps of my main site have been steadily reduced in the last two days. The reduction rate is about 5% per day. This drop - Google Tests Additional Sitewide Searchbox Within SERPs
Yesterday, I got a few tips about a new Google search box when you search for certain authority websites (e.g. Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, NYTimes, etc.) I haven't seen it myself but Barry was able to reproduce it and blogged about his findings at Search Engine Land. Here's a screenshot of what he saw: Why does that search box exist? As Matt Cutts says: If you do a search like [imdb] it's often because you're looking - Search Community Reaction to Ask.com New Search Strategy
Yesterday afternoon I got word that IAC laid off 8% of the Ask.com workforce and I wrote a blog post named IAC Cuts 8% Of Ask.com & Kills Search Engine. Let me summarize what IAC told the press. (1) They laid off 40 people, which was about 8% of Ask.com (2) They are refocusing the search engine on women over 30 (3) They will be fine tuning the engine to answer questions on health and - Landing Page Load Time Will Impact Google AdWords Quality Score
A WebmasterWorld thread discovers a brand new Google AdWords quality score metric, page load time. The new factor has just been added to the AdWords full dump of their help section (here is a picture for archiving purposes). If you scroll down to where it says "How does website load time affect my landing page quality?" you can read all about it. It appears to be new since it says "Beginning in February 2008." Also, - Google Updates Design for Advanced Search Page
Google seems to have updated the design of the advanced search form. Here are pictures of the new page design, as I see them right now: Now if you click on that plus sign to open the "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more" you see this: The tip links open a small contextual help box over the page. Here is a picture of an older version of the Google advanced search form: I like - Early Reports of Ask.com Testing Google Results in Core Web Search
A WebmasterWorld thread has one member spotting Google search results in the Ask.com web search results. textex, who has been a WebmasterWorld member since 2003 and I personally find to be a trusted forum informant said last night: I am seeing Google results on Ask right now! Unfortunately, he decided to quickly clear his cookies and reproduce the same results. When he cleared his cookies, he was no longer able to see it. He does
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Pros and Cons of Hiring SEOs, Sphinn
- Yahoo Creates Robo-kim, Cre8asite Forums
- AdWords Downtime: March 8, 10am-2pm PST, Google Groups
- Facebook Announces Hire of Google's Sheryl Sandberg as COO, WebmasterWorld
- Facebook Hires Google's Sheryl Sandberg, Search Engine Watch Forums
- Python AdWords API Client Library Updated, Google Groups
- Yahoo and Time Warner Step Up Talks, WebmasterWorld
- Yahoo Creates R & D Laboratory in Bangalore, India, WebmasterWorld
- Yahoo To Launch OnePlace Bookmarking for Mobiles, WebmasterWorld
