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 Forum Recap - October 31, 2008: Halloween in Search, Google Alerts Available via RSS & Questionable Political Endorsement
Happy Halloween! The year is almost over, we're celebrating the spooky holiday, US elections are next week, and you're reading this. High five! Halloween Hits the Search Industry Today, you can check out the various Halloween logos around the search industry and see that many are happily celebrating. I noticed on Twitter last night that most people weren't too thrilled with Google's logo. (What do you think?) Your CTR Will Impact Your Quality Score Higher - Google, The Unbiased Company, Has CEO Backing Obama
It's one thing to be a celebrity and endorse a political candidate. It's another when you're supposedly a spokesperson for a company that purports to be unbiased -- and yet, you clearly and openly endorse a candidate. Over at Search Engine Watch, forum member Discovery has a problem with one of the recent "infomercial" endorsements that Barack Obama created to further his presidential campaign. In the infomercial, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, announces that he - Google Opens New Interactive Help Forums One at a Time
In a Google Groups thread, AdWordsPro.Sarah tells us that there will be a new forum opening on November 5th . The new forums will boast user posting incentives, integration with the help center, enhanced user profiles (personalization with social -- photos too!), rich text posting, and video capability. Meanwhile, the Google AdSense team reports that they, too, have started a new forum, and it's already available. Here's the link and here's an interactive feedback forum - Is the Google AdSense Team Worrying About the Economic Downturn?
Yesterday, several Google AdSense publishers and I got this email. I never get anything from Google AdSense, so I found it interesting that they cared. Here's a snippet: We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we're continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network. We're focusing on further developing our product - Google Makes All PDF Documents Copy & Paste Friendly with OCR
Google announced that they are now using OCR technology to index and show an HTML version of a scanned PDF document. In the past, Google only showed an HTML version of PDF's created with text enabled formatting. But now, if a document is scanned as an image, Google can create an HTML version using OCR. For example, this PDF is a scan of a cooperative agreement between Google and Regents of the University of California. - Google AdWords To Take Ad Position Into Account For Quality Score
Typically, if you see an ad first, you are more likely to click that ad over the ad you see later. Meaning, in Google, the search ads are listed along the right hand column. If you are in position one or two, you are more likely to be clicked on than if you are in position seven or eight. Now, the quality score used by Google AdWords takes CTR (click through rate) into account as - SEOs Make Microsoft & Yahoo An Example on Google Maps Hijacking Hole
Mike Blumenthal has been covering Google Maps spam since Google Maps came out. I guess he got sick of covering the issues and not much being done about stopping it. He decided to do something a bit extreme. He hijacked Microsoft's listing in Google Maps and made them a Microsoft Escort Service. He also messed around with profiles, here is one example: Danny Sullivan has a really enjoyable read on how Mike did this. While - Microsoft adCenter Drops Sunday Support Hours
These are the days of cut backs. We've seen it at Yahoo and now we are hearing about it at Microsoft's adCenter team. adCenterRep posted a thread at DigitalPoint Forums announcing the support details for the Microsoft adCenter product/service. The representative did drop a new detail that they are discounting support for US advertisers on Sundays. If you visit the phone support page, you will notice the new hours are 06:00 - 18:00 PST Monday - Halloween '08 From The Search Industry
Here are various logos from the search industry, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's Live.com, Ask.com and many others. Some are pretty spooky, including our theme. Google's Halloween Logo: Yahoo's Flash Halloween Logo: Yahoo's Static Halloween Logo: DogPile's Halloween Logo: Live.com's Halloween Theme: Ask.com's Halloween Theme: FriendFeed's Halloween Logo: Cre8asite's Halloween Logo: The PPC Hero's Halloween Logo: Search Engine Roundtable's Halloween Theme: FYI, the Search Engine Roundtable's theme is animated and pretty entertaining, if I might add.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Google Makes Moves Towards OpenID With an API, WebmasterWorld
- Are Google Now Penalising "Free Gift" Blog Reviews?, Sphinn
- How to see where my ad appears on Content Network, Google Groups
- Launched - embed Google presentations in your LinkedIn profile!, Google Groups
- Light Behind The Changes At We Build Pages, Sphinn
- Search Featured: Craig Newmark, owner and founder of craigslist, Sphinn
