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:
- Does Yahoo Offer Do It Yourself Ads?
A forum member pointed us to a Yahoo ad Library which entitles you to an on-demand banner advertising solution. You can choose ad templates and customize them for your company and service and then choose a publisher you want to run with. The cost of the service is $167/day ($5k/month), according to the FAQ, though one wonders if this is a program endorsed by Yahoo. It looks like a reseller (adready.com) and has Yahoo branding - What's the Cutoff Length for Meta Tags?
A Cre8asite Forums member asks the community about the length of a meta tag (keywords, description). Is there a particular length that you should limit yourself to? Most search engines ignore it, and a recent lawsuit said that meta tags are immaterial. Still, a few people limit their meta tags to about 60 characters, like forum member EGOL. Ammon Johns says something interesting regarding the length. His ideal meta tag size: zero. Why? You don't - Is Onsite SEO Dying Down?
Marketing Pilgrim recently published a prophecy that onsite SEO is going to die. The writer says that "[a]s the search engines acquire more revenue, their pool of professionals is also drained with best brains" and that new technologies like OCR will eliminate the need to optimize for search engines. Search Engine Journal posted its own rebuttal that onsite SEO is not going to die. In particular, the respondent says that even if there is OCR - Yahoo Search Marketing Getting Stingy on Click Fraud Credits?
Yahoo, historically, has always been perceived as a company that took click fraud seriously. In fact, they launched the Traffic Quality Center in 2007 to make that statement. In addition, we have seen examples of Yahoo refunding money to advertisers time and time again, without the advertiser even requesting the refund. In the past, there were times where Yahoo wasn't all that good at admitting to click fraud, but they made up for it. Now, - Has Google Fixed The Image Search Filter?
In December 2007, we reported that Google's image search filter was a bit too sensitive and it filtered out many non-adult images as if they were adult images. We have new early reports from WebmasterWorld that some Webmasters are noticing more and more of their images being taken out of that filter and showing up in normal "moderate filter on" Google Image searches. A very senior member, Zeus, who once had only 80 images show - Is Google Using Behavioral Targeting Off the Search Page for Better Search Ads?
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread, started by moderator Discovery has experienced something very concerning. In short, he said that he was browsing the web in order to buy a PC. He did not conduct any searches that were 'buying PC' related. All he did was navigate directly to sites such as Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy. After finishing some of that research, Discovery opened a new browser window and search in Google - Country-Coded Top-Level Domains Do Not Rank Worse in Google.com
A Google Groups thread has discussion about the questions one webmaster has in regards to his country-coded top-level domain (ccTLD), moonri.se. There are a couple interesting points we can learn from this thread. (1) As the Google help document states, you can only set the geographic target of your site in Google Webmaster Tools, if your using a generic TLD, such as such as .com or .org or .net and so on. If you are
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- I conclude I must be penalised, Google Groups
- Google's Eric Schmidt Says, "We don't have an 'Evilmeter", WebmasterWorld
- Google's Sergey Brin to Book Space Flight, WebmasterWorld
- Matt Cutts blog disappeared, WebmasterWorld
- Non English Character in URLs, WebmasterWorld
- Stats Stuck Weds June 11, 2008 ?, WebmasterWorld
- Trust the Linkers, Not The Links, Sphinn
- WMT link results not updating - is this new ?, WebmasterWorld
