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:
- Search Engine Land Does Major Revamp: Becomes More News Formatted
Search Engine Land has a new look as of this morning. The new look really makes the site look more "news" oriented. Stories are no longer in chronological order all the time. We (I am the news editor) have the ability to control which sections the content shows up and for how long. This is great flexibility that Danny, Greg, Matt and the rest of the team will use. In addition, my favorite feature is - 2008 Holiday Season Logos From Google & Search Engine Roundtable
Last night, those of us who celebrated Chanukah lit the first candle. This means it's holiday season officially! Google is also building momentum with their holiday festivities with two new images: And given that there are 8 days of Chanukah, we're doing something special at Search Engine Roundtable. Every night around the time the Daily Search Rountup comes out, we'll have a new theme. Here's our first logo which is live until later this afternoon: - Google Image Search Enhancement: Search By Style
The Official Google Blog announced on Friday that a new option is available for searchers: the ability to search for images by a specific style. For example, line art is obviously not the same as a photograph -- and now Google can distinguish this for you. Here's a screenshot. Click for a larger size: As you can tell, you can now drill down to news content, faces, clip art, line art, and photo content. I - Google AdSense Hiccup Reported on December 19
On Friday, a number of Google AdSense publishers reported that AdSense was down. The cause was unknown and Google officially never actually volunteered more information about it. Google AdWordsAdvisor was able to provide the publishers with information -- mostly ensuring them that Google was prioritizing the issue -- but there is no further information on behalf of Google's actual AdSense team. AdWordsAdvisor does say, though, on a completely side point, that "In the AdWords side - Google's Search Quality Team Says They Don't...
In response to an upset webmaster's post in the Google Webmaster Help forums, Googler JohnMu wrote down four things that some people suspect Google of doing, which he says he has never seen since working at Google. These include: Googlers changing crawling, indexing or ranking of content they don't agree with. As a data point, check the search results for http://www.google.com/search?q=jew as well as the explanation at http://www.google.com/explanation.html. Large companies being able to encourage Google - Google Search Not Working For Some On Mobile Safari (iPhone)
Google recently optimized for the hundredth time, the Google Search experience on the iPhone and also Android. But it seems like ever since the upgrade, many iPhone and iPod Touch users are having issues searching at Google on mobile Safari. A Google Mobile Help discussion thread has bug reports from several iPhone/iPod Touch users complaining they can no longer conduct searches in Safari on Google. Rebooting the devices did not help.. Supposedly, some users have - Christmas & Holiday 2008 Google PageRank Update?
Over the weekend, I have noticed several threads mentioning updates to Google's Toolbar PageRank scores. The reports are not as widespread as a typical Toolbar PageRank update warrants, which leads me to ask, is this a true Toolbar PageRank update or did Google conduct a Toolbar PageRank penalty for sites not playing nice with their terms of service? Necessary Disclaimer: Google Toolbar PageRank is a visual indicator that has no direct impact on ranking well - Google Blog Search Fixes Link Issue But Asks For Additional Help
In early November, I reported an issue with Google Blog Search scanning blogrolls, which was then confirmed later on. The confirmation told us that Google would fix the issue, where Google Blog Search would continue to index and use more than just what RSS feed, but would try to exclude blogrolls and navigational elements of the blog. The issue was, if you conducted a link command in blog search, such as link:www.seroundtable.com (which I do - Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: December 21, 2008
As the year rounds out, the search news gets a little more lax, but we still have plenty to talk about. I started off talking about how the white hats and black hats in the industry are seeing more eye to eye, of course, excluding those that hack sites. Live Search updated this week. Google is testing pagelinks, reviews, enhanced spelling and ads in search suggestions. How do Google data points work in the search
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Hit A Dead End With Seo, Cre8asite Forums
- How NOT to get your SEO article on the first page of Google, Sphinn
- Negative Keywords are Positively Fantastic for ROI, Sphinn
- SEO Motivators, Sphinn
- The top 500 Highest Paying Adsense Keywords, DigitalPoint Forums
