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:
- Case Study Shows Pushed SEO Works Better Than Natural Site Development
A very helpful WebmasterWorld thread shares insights from a long time SEO who decided to pin two sites, competing in the same industry, with each other. He took two different strategies for each site. One site was pushed using old school SEO tactics, including doorway pages, paid and reciprocal links, content development and so on. The other site was to build a site with no paid links, unique content, no doorway pages, but add videos, - Google Releases Maps for Mobile Update to Resolve Bugs
Google has announced a Google Maps for Mobile update in the Google Mobile Help discussions area that fixes the bugs with version 3.0 for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. Googler, Christopher, said: A new version of Maps for mobile is available to download. This update includes many fixes and updates for both Maps and Google Latitude based on your feedback here in the Help Forum. Please see the following Release Notes for more details about - Yahoo's New Local Targeting Feature Showing Poor Quality Traffic?
A month ago, Yahoo made some serious enhancements to the search marketing platform, improving the local targeting capabilities amongst other features. WebmasterWorld moderator, werty, has been gathering local data since the feature has been released and has posted the somewhat disappointing results. werty said in a WebmasterWorld thread: Currently we are using "North American YSM" and should only be getting North American traffic, but if I look through our logs I can see that 29% - Google Still Showing Different Results Based on Query Case
Google continues to say that Google searches are "always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ]." But since February 2008, we have been reporting cases where Google is case sensitive in terms of the search results they return. In fact, we reported it in February 2008, May 2008 and October 2008. So I am not surprised to see more threads about this - Google AdSense Outage Resolved : April 2009
Late last week, Google AdSense had an issue where publishers were unable to login to the site and manage their ads. The reports began coming in on April 10th and some earlier reports came in on the night of the 9th. We have threads at Google AdSense Help, Google AdWords Help and two at WebmasterWorld and dozens at DigitalPoint Forums. Both AdSensePro Jennifer and AdWordsPro replied to the issue on the 10th. AdSensePro Jennifer chimed - (Text) Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: April 12, 2009
Due to the Passover holiday, I am only posting a text recap for the past week's coverage here at the Search Engine Roundtable. Google is making local queries more generic. There was link building prior to Google, see my write up on it, with Eric Ward's excellent comment. AdWords employee may have stepped over the line, ShoeMoney sues. Google testing a Twitter ad unit? Google ups the competitive ad filter. Publishers are still optimistic about - Easter Logos From Search Engines But Not Google or Yahoo
Today is the holiday of Easter, it is also Passover. Some search engines have special logos and themes for the day, while others don't. Google, Yahoo & AOL are all missing special logos for Easter or Passover. Microsoft's Live.com, Ask.com, DogPile and a few others do have special Easter themes and logos. Here they are: Microsoft's Live.com theme: Ask.com: DogPile: Cre8asite Forums: Bruce Clay: Happy Holidays! Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums. - Optimism Abounds For Some Despite Adsense Earnings Drop
Some webmasters on WebmasterWorld are keeping an optimistic view on Adsense despite disappointment in their earning this year. The issues with Adsense lately are no secret, ranking from reporting issues to a Google glitch holding Adsense checks for some publishers. Let conspiracy theories on why abound, but that's not going to halt some from keeping a positive look on what an earnings drop in Adsense can actually spur you to do. For some when issues - Does Google Look At Keywords In Long Titles?
Google typically cuts down the display of the title tag in the search results to no more than 65 characters. A WebmasterWorld thread asks does that mean Google won't look beyond the 65th character to determine what that page is about? Or if they do look beyond that 65th character, does Google deem the value of the words after the 65th character as less valuable? The title tag is arguably the most important on page - Advertisers Want Google AdWords Time Zone Settings
A couple weeks ago, we polled our audience asking if Google should add time zone preferences to their AdWords feature list. Yahoo recently launched day parting, but gave advertisers the option to day part based on either the advertiser's time zone or the searcher's time zone. Google AdWords time zone setting is only based on your account's time zone, i.e. the advertiser's time zone. So if you have some one looking for your services and - Google's Ranking My Images But From A Stolen Image Source
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion started from a webmaster of a five year old e-commerce site, which had seen a drop in their Google Image search traffic, only to notice that their images are still in the Google results, but Google is using a different source to display the images. What that means is that Google thinks the other source is the true source of the images, while in fact, that source has stolen the - Do SEOs Need To Know Coding To Be SEOs?
A heated Sphinn thread started some controversy in the SEO industry over who is an SEO and who is not an SEO. In short, Edward Lewis wrote a piece named HTML 4 SEO Best Practices for HTML Authoring. The article goes through many HTML attributes that can come in handy when coding your pages. The article is a very useful resource to hold on to and bookmark, if you need to look up the various - Google Analytics Users Want Longer Data Storage For Free
Technically, Google has agreed to store your Google Analytics data for at least 25 months. We ran a poll the other week, asking you if that is long enough. Most of you said, no it is not. Of the 190 plus responses, 156 of your, or 82% said, that 25 months of storage is not enough time. While 35 of you, or 18% said it is enough. Truth be told, Google seems to store this - Link Building Pre-Google Days
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of link building. This link building topic is different then the average thread. In this thread, the member asks if there was link building before Google became popular. The link building market, which is a niche within the niche of SEO, is almost completely driven by the popularity of the Google algorithm - at least these days. Typically, the more, high quality, relevant links you have to - SEOs Split On If Store Discounts Are Equal to Link Buying
A few weeks ago, we wrote a story on how e-commerce sites can build links through offering customers a discount on orders, if they link back to the site. It is a neat way to get links but we wanted to poll our audience asking if they felt it was considered link buying. Since I am technically offline today, I thought it would be a good day to post the results of the survey. The - SEO Doesn't Have To Look Bad
There is a big misconception out there that to make a site rank well in search engines, you need to make your site look ugly. SEO (search engine optimization) does not have to look ugly. Yes, having a lot of text and hyperlinking your content, where it makes sense, is important SEO factors, but it doesn't have to look ugly. A Google Webmasters Help thread has a webmaster who said that the SEO process is - Reminder: Reverify Google Webmaster Tools Site Owners
Back in April 2007, Google gave webmasters a new easy way to remove content in Google, through Google Webmaster Tools. It is a great feature to quickly remove your content in Google, but it is an extremely powerful tool. If the wrong people gain access to your webmaster tools account, either by getting your username and password or by hacking into your site and validating your site on their webmaster tools account - you can - Poll Result: How Long Does It Take To Rank Well?
A week ago, we polled our audience asking How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google? With over two-hundred responses, I thought it would be a good time to share the results with you all. How Long Does it Take To Rank Well in Google Results: :: 3 - 6 Months said 83 respondents or 35% :: 6 - 9 Months said 46 respondents or 19% :: 2 Months said 28 respondents or
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Email from Google Reader, Google Groups
- ALERT: AdWords system maintenance on Saturday, April 11th, Google
- Diagnose Critical Website Architecture Issues for SEO, Sphinn
- Digg Releases New Search Capabilities, Sphinn
- Domain Names And Quality Score, HighRankings Forums
- Evolution of Google Search since the 2003 Florida Update, WebmasterWorld
- Extortion SEO Sanctioned by Google, Sphinn
- Google News Mobile Not Updated since 4/8/2009?, Google News Help
