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 Zeitgeist: Sarah Palin is Most Popular for 2008 on Google
We featured the popular searches for 2008 from Ask, Google Product Search, and Yahoo. But now, we get the official word on Google's front-facing search engine of the most popular terms. The 2008 Google Zeitgeist reveals the most popular terms: 1. sarah palin 2. beijing 2008 3. facebook login 4. tuenti 5. heath ledger 6. obama 7. nasza klasa 8. wer kennt wen 9. euro 2008 10. jonas brothers The first thing that looked out - What PPC Bid Management Tools Do You Use?
In a Google Groups thread, AdWordsPro Sarah has asked us what our favorite bid management tools are. There are a two different tools represented thus far, and it's interesting to see what you've got to add. One user acknowledges that he likes Google's tools (which fortunately are free). Another is using SearchRev. I'm going to mention that I saw a demo for Acquisio's tool back at SMX East, I think, and it looked mighty fine. - Do You Want to Participate in a Google Website Optimizer Case Study?
In a Google Groups thread, JohnMu has asked the Google Webmaster Help community for some help. On behalf of one of his colleagues who is performing a case study, he's looking to gather some intelligence from the very nice people out there who are willing to participate. Here's the request: I'm looking to personally work with a selection of organisations willing to work with me on a project using Google Website Optimizer to try to - Google's YouTube Videographers Making Serious Money
While Google's financial future is uncertain lately (or they've been conveying it by laying off their contractors or cancelling holiday gifts out of an "inappropriate gesture"), it seems that some content producers are making all the money. I suppose those who are laid off are really enjoying their freedom by visiting sites like YouTube. The New York Times reports that some video producers are raking in some serious dough using the social video sharing site. - It's Been a Week. Is Feedburner Going to Fix its Problems?
Yesterday, we reported that Feedburner is not recording Bloglines subscribers. The funny thing is that this was acknowledged on December 6th. It's December 11th and there is absolutely no fix in sight. As you can tell by the image on the right (which reflects an RSS feed of mine), subscriber counts have been down for a week. And for whatever reason, Google is not fixing the Bloglines issue. Or maybe they tried. But at the - Give Me A Link In The X Spot
I think I am missing something, but a bunch of well known members at WebmasterWorld are participating in a thread named "Where do you want your link?" The thread asks, where in a specific page's layout, would you optimally want a link? We have moderators including martinibuster and jdMorgan replying, as well as senior members pageoneresults, wheel, ken_b, adamnichols45 and others participating. Honestly, I think I might be missing something - but i'll play along. - How Can You Block US Visitors But Not Block GoogleBot?
A Google Webmaster Help thread discusses a unique issue to a few niche sites that have no choice but to block all users from the United States while also wanting to allow GoogleBot to access the site. Since GoogleBot lives in the US, blocking US based IP addresses, would likely also block GoogleBot. That would result in Google not indexing your site and you not ranking well in Google for the country you are targeting. - Some Google AdSense Publishers Experience Four Month Hold on Funds
An AdSense Help thread has confirmed reports from Google that some (not many) publishers may have had a hold on their account for about four months due to a bug. That means, these publishers were not paid for around four months due to an issue with a specific feature of the site. As explained by Ashley from Google: A small number of publishers have experienced this issue, whereby their account is on phone verification hold,
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Hackers stealing your PageRank, Sphinn
- All My Maps are visible again, Google Groups
- Blackhat 101 - Cloaking (All You Ever Wanted to Know (But Were Too Afraid of Google to Ask)), Sphinn
- Google Book Search Adds Magazines, WebmasterWorld
- Hedge Funds Still Push For Yahoo - Microsoft Deal, WebmasterWorld
- How to lose friends and uninfluence people on Twitter, Sphinn
- Learning About PR Sculpting: internal links with rel=nofollow, WebmasterWorld
- Meta description does matter. Jumped 3 spots after change., WebmasterWorld
- Now, you can send SMS text messages right from Gmail, DigitalPoint Forums
