Happy holidays! Some of you are still celebrating and that's quite all right - enjoy the 4-5 day weekend while you can! But you've missed some happenings and we're ready to serve!
Holidays, holidays, holidays Yesterday, people celebrated Christmas. Google anticipated the holiday for 5 days with a unique logo but we've also done some cool stuff over here at Search Engine Roundtable. Have you seen it yet?
And while we alluded to that 5 day weekend, not everyone at Google was celebrating. JohnMu visited the forums on Christmas like one helluva dedicated guy. :)
Finally, you might have gotten your Google AdSense or Yahoo publishing network checks early this year, but don't expect to have earned a lot yesterday. It was a pretty slow holiday week.
Google: Probably Not Accounting for Bounce Rate in the Algo Matt Cutts semi-confirmed that the Google search team is probably not accounting for bounce rates because they are spammable and noisy. He suggests that the Google Analytics guys care a lot more about bounce rates than the Search Quality Team.
Other things the Google Search Quality Team Doesn't Do People don't like what Google does but they really don't necessarily know what Google does or doesn't do. JohnMu confirms what Google doesn't do which includes Google crawling differently on sites they don't agree with, large companies being able to influence how Google crawls their websites, that crawlers can damage sites, and that Google will react to spam reports when a website is clearly not in violation of any rules. Seriously -- for at least the first three of these, it's a little outrageous to put the blame on Google.
Google Toolbar PageRank Update, Perhaps Numerous webmasters reported a Google PageRank update. Have you noticed anything?
Google Fixing Blogroll Links in Blog Search While I'm still encountering issues with inaccurate Google Alerts due to blogroll links showing up in Google Blog Search, Google's team is acknowledging that they're fixing it. I hope so!
Google Image Search Enhancement: Cool If you haven't noticed yet, you can now search by style in Google Image Search. That means you can distinguish line art from photographs and faces and more. Whee!
Let's Make Fun of SEO Newbies There's a Google Webmaster Help thread that pokes fun at SEO newbies. Hey guys, I bet you were all n00bs once!
Happy Birthday to Us Search Engine Roundtable is 5 years old and Barry has celebrated the year by writing a "year in review" post. Whoooooooooosh!
