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 Search Marketing Announces New July Features
YahooPete has visited the forums lately to announce a number of new features within Yahoo Search Marketing for the month of July. Now, there are ad performance report enhancements which contain three new columns: your ad ID, a visual representation of your ad, and the destination URL. Additionally, status changes have been implemented. Some example statuses include "bid too low," "inactive," "min bid: $0.40," etc. Great news for those on the advertisers side of the - What Kinds of Changes Were Made to Google PageRank?
In May, we blogged about Google VP of Engineering Udi Manber's post where he introduced search quality. In the same post, he says that Google has "made significant changes to the PageRank algorithm in January." Last week, Matt Cutts told us that we're in the midst of a PageRank update, and now forum members are wondering what kinds of changes were made to the PR algorithm. In a WebmasterWorld thread, Tedster says that he thinks - Why the SEO Reputation is Being Damaged
SEOAly, an up-and-comer blogger who has been writing some really great blog posts lately, has shared the reasons why "SEO consultation" is ruining the reputation of an entire industry. In the piece, she explains that SEO is not about implementation -- it's about education. The right kind of client relationship is one where the small business owner is ready to apply the advice provided by the SEO. The consultant may be holding their hand along - Microsoft's Answer to Google PageRank: BrowseRank
CNet reports that Microsoft has announced BrowseRank, which they feel may help boost the search's popularity. CNet explains the difference between BrowseRank (BR?) and PageRank: Essentially, the researchers tested out a system that replaces PageRanks' link graph--a mathematical model of the hyperlinked connections of the Internet--with what they call a user browsing graph that ranks Web pages by people's behavior. Basically, it comes down to user behavior. The more clicks and actions they can record, - SEOs Comment On Cuil, New Google Competitor
Last night, Cuil (pronounced "cool") launched and every article out there compared the new search engine to Google. Just scan the Techmeme headlines and see the coverage for yourself. Of course, Danny Sullivan does an excellent job going through the important aspects of the search engine. Cuil should be taken seriously, if you need to know why, read the articles above. But let's take a look at what SEOs have to say. We have threads - Google Recalculates Trillions of Links & PageRank Several Times Per Day
Google pushes out toolbar PageRank updates every 3 months or so. The most recent one was over the weekend, which helped generate some buzz. But the reality is, what Google shows as PageRank in the toolbar is way out of date. How do we know? The Google Blog wrote Friday, We knew the web was big..., which talks about how big the web is. Google said they have "processed" 1 trillion unique URLs on the - Yahoo Publishers Recently Notice Huge Drop in Earnings; Is Yahoo Skimming?
A WebmasterWorld thread has several reports from publishers of the Yahoo Publisher Network complaining that their income is down over 50%. The publishers suspect fraud! They suspect that Yahoo is not reporting the true impression and clicks, thus skimming earnings off the top. Here are some of the accusations: Last night I took a look before heading off to bed and this morning noticed it reported yesterdays commission as 1/2 of what it was reporting. - Make Sure Your Robots.txt File is UTF-8
A Google Groups thread shows the tail of a webmaster who had issues with his robots.txt file. The robots.txt file was uploaded in what is called byte-order mark (BOM) encoding, which threw off Google, when trying to retrieve and understand the webmaster's robots.txt file. Google Groups member, Phil Payne noticed the issue right away, by using rexswain.com/httpview.html. The HTML editor this webmaster was using uploaded his robots.txt file in the BOM encoding. Google and other - Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: July 27, 2008
Google is updating toolbar PageRank. Google shows off a kid being educated. Google updates cache design, dates and explains the importance. Google time stamps Sitelinks and Yahoo makes their Quick Links more like Google. Does Google forgive and forget penalties? Yahoo is discontinuing their Ambassador program. Google Maps added walking directions. Google launched Knol. Google gives out their cookbook. We looked at Hot Dog day. And I talked about the SEO industry's state. More details
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Discuss: Fake 'avatars' In Social Media, Cre8asite Forums
- Google Serving 2% of the Internet's Malicious Viruses, DigitalPoint Forums
- Nice Act By Google To Honor Randy Pausch, HighRankings Forums
- SES San Jose Parties 2008, Search Engine Watch Forums
- JohnChow.com demoted to PR3 - Shoemoney.com up to PR6, DigitalPoint Forums
- POLL: did you go up or down in the PR update?, DigitalPoint Forums
- What are the potential risks of Google Cache?, WebmasterWorld
