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:
- Adult Spam Makes Its Way Into Google Maps
We all know, Google Maps has their share of trouble with spam, including porn and escort services. Heck, even Google admitted the problem yesterday in the Up Close With Google Maps & Local. Now a search for auto insurance los angeles returns an escort site in position I. Clicking through, takes you through a couple redirects and lands you on an adult escort service web site. Clear sign of spam and something that we see - SEO Targeting Different Countries? Use Different Domains
A common but difficult question was asked at HighRanking Forums about the issue of targeting different countries. My advice for when it comes to targeting different countries is almost always to have two different sites on TLDs (top level domains) that match that country. So if you want to target the US and the UK, have one US site on the .com and one UK site on the co.uk and make sure your content is - SEO Companies Continue Using Fear Tactics To Keep Clients
I hate it when I see companies in our industry acting unprofessional. It makes our whole industry look bad and encourages ill-informed authors to write bad things about this industry. Why am I upset? Well, I saw a thread at Google Webmaster Help posted by a site owner who is afraid that his old SEO company will hurt his site in the search engines. This SEO company allegedly wrote him the following email: Per your - SEOs Get Defensive Over Ill-Informed Writer
I cannot tell you how many horrible SEO articles I read at major publications. Be it from giving advice on SEO that is completely wrong and out-dated to trashing the SEO industry because of taking the wrong advice. The other day, John Dvorak decided to bash the SEO industry because he took the wrong advice from a so-called SEO. John's article was named SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization. In his article, he - Alexa Updates Numbers: Should We Care?
Back in "the day," Alexa was a very talked about tool for checking the traffic data for a third party site. These days, people know to take Alexa's data with a grain of salt. Alexa data can be easily spoofed and tampered with, at least - that is what I am told, so just be careful when using it. That being said, DigitalPoint Forums has a large discussion on Alexa. They claim it has just
SMX West Day Two Coverage:
- Live Coverage of 301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways at SMX West
- Live Coverage of Search & The US Presidential Campaign at SMX West
- Live Coverage of Tapping Into Image Search at SMX West
- Live Coverage of Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior at SMX West
- Live Coverage of SEO Status Report Metrics at SMX West
- Live Coverage of Google's SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results at SMX West
- Live Coverage of Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google at SMX West
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- "Your URL Here", WebmasterWorld
- All Day Events Off One Day, Google Mobile Help
- Only Syncs One Calendar, Google Mobile Help
- Sitelinks getting spammed?, Google Webmaster Help
- Twitter Considers Charging For Commercial Accounts, WebmasterWorld
- What Wikipedia Teaches, WebmasterWorld
