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 - 05/16/08: Google Dresses in Green, Yahoo Gets Local & Laser Games Are Played
Another Friday, another rainy day. For what it's worth, though, today is a special day, as we are celebrating the first laser. I don't know if lasers are viewable through cloudy skies, though. Do you? Mother's Day First things first. Did you have a happy Mother's Day? (Did you even surf the internet on Mother's Day?) We did. By the way, Chris Boggs, the Search Engine Roundtable design was inspired by our graphic designer, Mabe. - Yahoo Opens SearchMonkey Doors to Everyone
Are you a developer? You may be interested in SearchMonkey, Yahoo's new open developer platform, which was released to all developers yesterday. The concept behind SearchMonkey is to empower developers to build applications that increase relevancy of search results. Developers can build Enhanced Results or Infobars under the Search Monkey API which can pull data from CitySearch, StumbleUpon, eBay, Epicurious, and more. According to the announcement, "Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a - Competitors Use Long Tail Keywords To Hurt Yahoo Search Advertisers
An interesting phenomenon is occurring within Yahoo Search Marketing that has been expressed pretty intensely by affected advertisers at WebmasterWorld. According to the impacted advertisers, the quality of their campaigns have gone down because of false impressions that have been generated for long tail keywords that were often never searched upon. In the case of one advertiser, his ad campaign served nearly 120,000 new impressions (triple what it was before) because of these obscure keywords - Google Celebrates the Anniversary of the First Laser
If you've ventured to Google today, you may be wondering what in the world that logo resembles. Fortunately, all you need to do is click on the logo for the answer. Today, Google is celebrating the anniversary of the first laser, which, according to Wikipedia, was demonstrated on May 16, 1960. Today, then, marks the 48th anniversary of the laser. Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums. - Google Explains The Processes & Thoughts Behind an Update
Google updates their search algorithms and indexes fairly often. Results change all the time. The goal for Google is to make this transparent for searchers by providing relevant results. But when a change happens, typically the webmaster will notice and may be impacted strongly by the update. So what are the Google processes and thoughts behind an update? Google's JohnMu has an interesting post at a Google Groups thread in response to a webmaster being - Google's Malware Review Form Now Working Again
Google's Malware Review form, which was added back in August of last year had some technical issues this week. First reports came via Google Groups at about 1am on May 15th. Webmasters trying to utilize the form received a "oops, not working" error when they tried to access it. Google partners with StopBadware.org for malware detection and handling. Reportedly, www.stopbadware.org was also having issues at the same time and they were reporting errors that read - Google Testing Green Backgrounds & Turns Directory Ads Green
The iCrossing Blog posted screen captures of Google experimenting with green in the Google user interface. In addition, Google has changed from the yellow background color for their ads to green, within the Google Directory. iCrossing actually reported this two weeks ago but I I missed it until I spotted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread on his findings. Here is a screen capture of a search on ipods at the Google Directory: I see - Google AdWords Traffic Estimator Figures From The API Wrong?
A Google Groups thread reports that the numbers reported from the traffic estimator tool within Google's AdWords API interface is reporting different numbers based on the IP calling the data. The AdWords advertiser said that depending on which IP is requesting the traffic data, Google will show a different traffic estimation for the same keyword. For example, if the AdWords advertiser wants to know how much traffic to expect for the keyword [car], if he/she
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- When Duplicate Content Really Hurts, Sphinn
- Been Reading That Seo Is Slowly Dying / Changing, Cre8asite Forums
- Ranking As The Original Source For Content You Syndicate, Sphinn
- Webmaster Tools on YouTube, Search Engine Watch Forums
- Would adding a hyphen to all titles impact ranking?, WebmasterWorld
- Yahoo Strikes Ad Trading Deal With WPP, WebmasterWorld
