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:
- I Lost Google PageRank. Should I Submit a Reconsideration Request?
If you are doing something naughty that results in lowered PageRank, should you tell Google that you addressed the issue? A Crea8site Forums thread discusses this issue: a webmaster notes that his site has lost PageRank, probably due to what he believes is selling text link ads. Now that he stopped selling these ads, should he tell Google so that they can restore the PageRank? Yes. According to JohnMu, if it now complies with Google's - Alexa Ignores 'noarchive' Tag, Upsets Webmasters
Does Alexa have a separate set of standards that allow them to ignore metatags that other search engines are supposed to ignore? Well, perhaps Alexa thinks it does, because the statistics package site is ignoring the 'noarchive' tag and one webmaster complains that 5000 pages are being archived by Alexa. Huh? It seems that, according to IncrediBILL, Alexa only honors robots.txt files and not metatags (huh x2?) If you have a problem, you have to - Google Encourages Drunken Behavior, Lets Advertisers Bid on Beer
Want to buy beer? Until recently, you could search for "beer" on Google and not see any Google ads since it was against the policy. But recently, Taylor Pratt had the desire to get drunk bid on some alcoholic keywords (maybe?) and discovered that Google was allowing individuals to buy alcoholic keywords, which is a change that Google has not previously made public. He has a quote from his Google AdWords rep which says: Beer, - Exact Match vs. Broad Match: Who Wins in the Google AdWords Auction?
A fairly basic but confusing question in the pay-per-click auction space of search advertising is often around the topic of match types and the auction around it. One question asked at a Google Groups thread asks if I am bidding $2.00 for broad match and $1.50 for an exact match and someone searches for the exact keyword, do I pay $2? The clear answer to that is that you pay up to a $1.50. Why? - CSF (ConfigServer Security and Firewall) May Be Blocking GoogleBot
A webmaster at Google Groups may have uncovered an issue with a specific firewall program named CSF (ConfigServer Security and Firewall). In short, this webmaster found that his host used this firewall and it was blocking GoogleBot from accessing his web pages. If you are noticing that GoogleBot cannot access your site, check to see your firewall. If any of the GoogleBot IPs are listed in the "Firewall Deny IP's" area, then remove them asap. - Is Ask.com's Web Search Technology Falling Apart?
A WebmasterWorld thread has pretty sad reports about the current status of Ask.com's web search technology. The thread reports the following issues: Search results per page shift between 10 per page and go down to about 5 per page, depending on the page you are viewing.Many of the results for one-keyword search terms return results with a matching title tag, exactly - they call this a huge "page-title correlation."Many of those results are very outdated, - Google Search Update Blows Up, Google Reverting Back Now
Over the weekend, Webmasters started to notice major changes with the Google search results. Most of those changes are documented in an incredibly long but only three-day long thread at WebmasterWorld. I decided to wait on reporting on this thread until Monday morning, to see if things settle. In short, webmasters were not happy. They saw low quality sites come into the search results, they thought Google went backwards. And they actually did. Matt Cutts - Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: November 2, 2008
I am a bit under the weather in this video recap, but I hope you like it. I discuss the Halloween logos from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Live.com, DogPile, FriendFeed, and other search related sites. I talk about Google's changes to their quality score. Google Alerts added RSS as an option. Google uses OCR technology to read scanned PDFs. Google pays AdSense publishers the wrong amount, for the fourth time. Google tests new AdSense ads. Google
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Is SEO Blogging Worth It?, Sphinn
- Is anyone here at SMX London?, Google Groups
- The Search Engine Buying Cycle, Sphinn
- The Secret Influence of Search Behavior, Sphinn
- What Link Is Most Valuable? Yahoo Directory Or Pr Web?, HighRankings Forums
- When will Google start communicating with publishers on a human level?, Google
