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:
- Yahoo! Outsources its Messenger Phone Calls to Jajah
According to a Yahoo News report, Yahoo will be outsourcing the Internet telephone functions of its instant messaging program to the startup Jajah. Of course, this is great news for the startup -- but forum members wonder why Yahoo seems to be outsourcing a lot of its internal affairs. However, that may not necessarily be a bad thing, as another forum member says. The less important things are fine if outsourced; the more important things - Google Announces Software for VisualRank, Precision Image Search
The New York Times reports that "Google researchers say they have a software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages." The algorithm, dubbed VisualRank, weighs and ranks images that look most similar. WebmasterWorld members fear that this could be a problem for spammers -- just like folks aim to build links for PageRank, so too this may happen in the - Google AdWords Displays Ad Scores: Pscore, mCPC & thresh
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around one advertiser noticing Google displaying three scores directly under a Google Netherlands ad. Here is a picture of the ad with the scores underneath the ad: So I began to do some research and it seems someone else saw the score for a different search today as well, on Google.de. Here is a screen capture, but even though the webmaster highlighted the score with the middle ad, I have - Buying 70,000 Links From Same Site Equated to "SEOicide"
A newish term, named SEOicide, caught my attention via a WebmasterWorld thread. The thread discusses how an SEO has the opportunity to buy 70,000 links from a PR7 site for a great price. He asks if it he should do it. Most everyone says, don't - you are setting yourself up for a penalty. In fact, words like SEOicide are being used to describe what you would do to yourself. But others are not convinced, - Google Blending Ads More Into Organic Results?
A recent WebmasterWorld thread is complaining that Google seems to have changed the yellow background color of the Google sponsored ads to a color just a bit different then the white background. Tedster explains that the color he sees now for the top ads are #FFF9DD, which he said, "is very close to a pure #FFFFFF." On my screen they look different, but on a typical PC monitor, it may look very similar to white. - Google Updates Toolbar PageRank: April 2008
I am seeing reports from across the SEO forums that Google has updated or begun the update of the PageRank score found within the Google Toolbar. We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums - all discussing the recent PageRank update that began yesterday some time. The last time Google updated toolbar PageRank was in late February. Google did recently update the Directory PageRank scores earlier this - Google Maps Stickers Gone Missing
Remember the Google Maps stickers spotted throughout the UK? They looked like the image on the right of this post. Well, a while back, probably a year or so ago, I convinced Google to send me one. It never actually made it to my office. I didn't really think about it until now, when I spotted a Google Groups thread that has word from Google that the stickers are forever gone! Google Maps representative, Jen,
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- 10 reasons why Yahoo search sucks, Sphinn
- Congratulations On Videos, HighRankings Forums
- Social Media Being Taught at School, Sphinn
- Yahoo Answers: 11 Million Answers per Month, Sphinn
