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 Tests "Skip Intro" Link in the SERPs
Today, gabs spotted a new feature in Google.co.uk that lets you skip through the splash screen of sites. Using this query, you can see a similar result to this: Search Engine Land spotted this in June, and it looks like Google isn't done testing this out yet. Further, the "Skip Intro" link isn't very visible, so it'd be interesting to note how many people actually have seen this but never actually clicked on it (probably - State of Washington Sues Search Engine Optimization Firm
NetworkWorld reports that the State of Washington has sued an SEO firm for a variety of infractions, including making claims that they can increase traffic to clients' websites, falsely claiming affiliations with other marketers, making claims that customer service representatives are available for any calls (though they never returned calls), failing to provide refunds, continuing to bill credit cards of customers who have canceled, and failing to register with the Department of Licensing as a - Is Social Media Marketing a Productive Use of Your Time?
Peter Da Vanzo poses a question on SEOBook asking if social media marketing is a waste of time. In it, he adds a few qualifiers including traffic (is the traffic to your page to see a monkey riding a bicycle worth it?), an uncontrolled message, a concern about the ability not to measure branding, the level of interaction isn't clear, it takes time, it's stupid and is a useless distraction, and it's difficult to scale. - Yahoo Search Marketing Now Lets You Block 500 Domains
The Yahoo Search Marketing blog has announced that those utilizing the Sponsored Search account functionality can now block 500 domains instead of the standard 250. While this is helpful--after all, the number of blocked domains has now doubled--there's a concern that Yahoo is still sending "garbage traffic" to YSM users (from Yahoo search partners). One mentions that 500 blocked domains is not nearly enough. One mentions that he wants to block all non Yahoo domains. - Google Video Ads Take About 48 Hours to be Approved
Google's video ads can be an interesting way to drive more traffic to your site. But if you expect video ads to be approved immediately or as quickly as your text ads, don't bank on it. A Google AdWords Group thread has one advertiser who posted his video yesterday and got impatient. He then asked how long it will take for approval and AdWordsPro Sarah said it takes about 48 hours but can take longer - My Pages Are Dropping Out of Google: What Do I Do?
Over the course of the past few months, I have hearing buzz from the forums and from people in the SEO industry that Google is dropping pages out of their index. How do these people know? Well, when they do a site:www.domain.com command, i.e. in my case, site:www.seroundtable.com, Google is showing less results then they have a few months ago. Personally, I do not track these things, so I am not sure. In fact, the - Google Now Showing Sitelinks for Some Sub-Directories
As Googler, Matt Cutts Twittered, he now has Sitelinks under his domain for a search on [matt cutts]. Why did it take Matt over two years to get Sitelinks for his domain when it is such an authoritative source? The answer might be that his content was on a sub-directory. Yes, right now, there is no substantial content on www.mattcutts.com, all or most the content is on www.mattcutts.com/blog/. And it seems like Google is now - How Google Wants You To Use Alt Tags & Title Tags on Images
A Google Groups thread has discussion around how to properly use the alt attribute and title attribute for your web page images. Of course, Google recommends that you make sure to make them as useful for the end users. So use them as per W3C recommendations but let's hear from Google on what they expect. JohnMu from Google explained how to use both the alt and title attribute: alt attribute should be used to describe
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Position targeting reports working again, WebmasterWorld
- Now serving overlay ads in embedded YouTube partner videos, DigitalPoint Forums
- Google Updates Backlinks - I Lose 75% of Traffic on my Top 3 Sites, DigitalPoint Forums
- How To Prevent Affiliates From Driving Up PPC Costs?, HighRankings Forums
- Pagerank took a massive drop. why?, WebmasterWorld
- Will Google ignore urls that use tildes?, WebmasterWorld
