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:
- Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: February 6, 2009
Back from my quasi-vacation, we did text recaps the past two weeks, but I am back to the video recap now. This week we covered a Yahoo Search update. I also discussed the implications of Google's AJAX search result pages. Google is seriously bugging out, possibly due to budget cuts, resulting in 6 somewhat major bugs in just a week. SEOs have a new opportunity with the new "Did you mean" results in Google. AdWords - Google's Search Box Stops Working for Some Firefox Users
Sometime yesterday, Firefox 2.x users were unable to use Google's search box, as they typically do. They would go to Google.com, enter in a search query and hit enter. Then nothing would happen. Really, nothing would happen. There is a long thread at Google Web Search Help discussions on this issue. Google even confirmed the issue saying: Thanks to all of your comments, we pushed out a fix to resolve the problem. You should soon - Show Images In Google News Results
Having images show up in Google News can be very beneficial in getting searchers to click over and read what you have to say. The more visually appealing content and images you have in your articles, the better your chance in increasing your click through rate from Google News. A Google News Help thread asks how does one increase their chances of showing an image in Google News? Inbal, a Google representative, answered that by - Is The Economy Taking A Toll on AdSense Publisher Earnings?
Many, many Google AdSense publishers are complaining about a drop in earnings from their Google AdSense initiatives. A long and detailed thread at WebmasterWorld has a lot of complaints from publishers on the topic. There is no question that ad dollars globally have dried up. The economy is in really bad shape and consumers are not buying, so sellers are not advertising. I can tell you from personal experience, we use to turn away advertisers - Google AdSense Testing New Ad Format With Larger Search Box
Google AdSense might be testing a new ad format. We have a few reports of publishers noticing this new format from DigitalPoint Forums. Here is a look at the new format: This seems to be a fairly interactive ad box. It might be one of those Google Gadget Ads but one publisher said he never noticed the ad type on his site. Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums. - Google News Crawl Issues a Bug with Google
If you recently noticed that your News site is spewing errors in Google Webmaster Tools, under the "Diagnosis" - "News Crawl" reports, do not worry. A Google News Help thread has confirmed reports from Google, that this is just a bug. Googler, Inbal, explained: Thank you for taking the time to report this problem with the Webmasters Tool giving error messages when publishers click on "Diagnostics" --> "News Crawl". We're aware of this bug, and
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Closing Part Of Your Site & Using The Redirect Power, Cre8asite Forums
- Outsourcing SEO is About Trust, Sphinn
- Using Multiple Keyword Filters in Google Analytics, Sphinn
- Going Live With Partially Finished Site?, HighRankings Forums
- Tracking Referrer Conversions, HighRankings Forums
