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:
- Google's Ben Gomes Talks About Search Quality
On Friday, Google's Ben Gomes of the search quality team blogged about Google's search interface. This follows the earlier coverage from Udi Manber about search quality. In this post, Ben Gomes talks about "the principles that guide our development of the overall search experience and how they are applied to the key aspects of search." He explains that the goal of Google is to give you the most relevant result in the fastest period of - Yahoo Introduces First SearchMonkey Applications
Just three months ago, we learned that Yahoo SearchMonkey opened its doors to everyone. On Friday, Yahoo announced that SearchMonkey is turned on for Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and LinkedIn. Pretty cool. In fact, one forum member says that this is an incentive to develop using SearchMonkey. The SERPs will be different and it somewhat looks like an "update" (though that definition may be contested). Still, it's possible that the update reported this morning has some - Webmasters Report August 2008 Google SERP Changes
A few new changes have been spotted after the July 2008 SERP updates that we reported last month. One forum member at WebmasterWorld thinks that Google might be using different data centers for query refinements. The reason he suspects this is because he's performing the same search but finding different results. It's possible that if Google is realizing that users are not happy with those search results (since they searched again) and are offering a - Cre8asite Forums Celebrates its 6th Birthday
Last week, we celebrated the birthday of the High Rankings Forum. The festivities are not over, because if you hop on over to Crea8site Forums, you'll see that they're celebrating the forum's 6th birthday! Awesome logo! Congratulations to Kim Krause Berg and all the forum members! Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums. - Google Maps Adds Printable Street Views & Avoid Tolls
Google Maps Guide Brian announced in a Google Groups thread two minor but important features Google has added to the new, blue Google Maps. Printable Street Views were added to the new Google Maps. Brian said Google received "a lot of feedback that users wanted a way to take Street View images on the road." Brian said, "now you can." All you need to do is when viewing a Street View image, just click on - AdSense Ad Review Center Goes Missing For Some Google Publishers
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Ad Review Center, which helps Google AdSense publishers block advertisers, has dropped all the advertisers from showing up in the list. But Google really did not hide all these advertisers from their publishers. It appears that based on how you actually access the Ad Review Center, you may see different options. Russ noticed it seems to be a rendered bug of some sort. Russ had to click on the blocked - Google Sitemaps "Too Many Redirects" Warning
Google Webmaster Tools is now reporting "too many redirects" within Sitemaps files. A WebmasterWorld thread has reported the warnings back last week. I have finally hunted down a screen shot of such an error: The only way to see this error is to submit a Sitemap file to Google and for one or more of those URLs to contain a redirect of some sort. The additional help Google links to is over here, which says - Major Yahoo Search Ranking Changes in Early August
We have substantial reports from webmasters and SEOs in both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums of a major Yahoo Search update. This update was unannounced by Yahoo and has hit webmasters by surprise. The last update was on July 17th but that update was not as significant as this update appears to be. Here are some of the responses and reactions from webmasters. Our site has lost about 30% of traffic Many of my keywords that - Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: August 3, 2008
Happy anniversary World Wide Web. I chat a bit more about the Google Yo-Yo. Google processes many links per day, many. Google tests related searches inline with search results. Microsoft does BrowseRank. Google updates AdWords Search. Yahoo adds search marketing features. Cuil launches. Google Maps updates features and fixes the local business center. Webmaster tools has a 404 error reporting issue. Google Analytics has several bugs. Yahoo still needs to fix publisher reports. More at
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Delicious Gets an Overhaul, WebmasterWorld
- "your site may not comply with Yahoo!'s Content Quality Guidelines", DigitalPoint Forums
- AdSense in YouTube Video Units - Now Available For Indians Too, DigitalPoint Forums
- AdSense iPhone App, DigitalPoint Forums
- Blogger nuked by sitemeter, DigitalPoint Forums
- More Proof That Google Loves Digital Point, DigitalPoint Forums
- SEO The Things To Avoid, DigitalPoint Forums
- W3C HTML Validation and Search Engine Optimization, Sphinn
- Yahoo! board remains unscathed, WebmasterWorld
