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:
- Weekly Search Buzz Roundup - 04/04/08: Earth Hour, April Fools & Google Sells Performics SEOs
I can't believe it's already April. After our own Search Engine Squaretable pranks and after several great April Fool's jokes around the search industry (including Yahoo's search ad for Butterfinger), things are starting to go back to normal. Well, some things. Dewey Update The big stir in search forums is the "Dewey" update. People are seeing a lot of shuffling in datacenters and Matt Cutts is asking for you to submit a form to get - What Should You Look for When Hiring In-House SEOs?
My BFF Lisa Barone wrote a really great post about what companies should look for when hiring in-house SEO consultants. SEO folks should have some sort of technical skills and a little coding expertise too. They also should have an analytical mindset and be willing to stare at a lot of numbers. Other highly-regarded characteristics include the ability to research well, someone who can think outside the box, someone with a sense of ethics, and - Why You Shouldn't Use Automated Link Building Software
Should you save wads of cash to buy link building software that contacts hundreds (or thousands) of webmasters for you to give you some links? Wiep Knol says no. In his recent blog post, he explains why link building software isn't the way to go and gives nine reasons why. The biggest reason, at least from what I encounter on my day to day emails, is that link building requests like these are far from - Is it Normal to Plateau When Doing Continuous Link Building?
A WebmasterWorld member has been applying regular search engine optimization and link building techniques and is noticing that the traffic hasn't improved as substantially in the latter months of the campaign as it did initially. Is this something normal? Actually, in many ways, it is. The first few months are typically a lot easier than the later months. Tedster mentions that sometimes it takes links time to reach their full power and cites Google's "Historical - Google Directory PageRank Update: Directory PageRank Now Matches Toolbar PageRank
Google has updated the PageRank bars within the Google Directory recently. The new update now matches the PageRank values of the Google Toolbar. For example, the Computers > Internet > Web Design and Development > Promotion > Weblogs category now shows my revised, penalized Toolbar PageRank score of a 4 and not a 7. New Directory PageRank Score: Old Directory PageRank Score: The last time Google did a PageRank Directory update was in January and - Google Changes Behavior For Showing Results Queried in Quotations
Google has changed how they handle displaying search results for when you use quotes in the search box and when there are not many or any matches. For example, a search on "super running for life" at Google would normally return no results, since there are no matching documents for that phrase as a phrase. But now Google shows a link for "See results for: super running for life," without quotes and displays the first - Google AdWords Changes UK Trademark Policy To Match US Policy
The UK PPC Blog reports that Google AdWords UK has changed their AdWords trademark policy to be more aligned with the US policy. An email sent to him said: If you’ve submitted a complaint letter requesting that we prevent advertisers from using certain trademark terms anywhere in their ad text, we will continue our efforts to support your request. However, from May 5, 2008, our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Adsense Survey, WebmasterWorld
- Bizarre Google Filter Affecting Ranking , Search Engine Watch Forums
- Send2paul Stepping Down, Cre8asite Forums
- Tip for Yahoo! - Surveying Advertisers, WebmasterWorld
- Welcome our new Google Docs Guide, Jen, Google Groups
- Yahoo! India launches maps in local languages, DigitalPoint Forums
