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:
- (Text) Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: April 17, 2009
In this week's recap, I discuss several topics after going offline for a 50 hour period. That is why I look and act incredibly tired. In any event, we discussed the changes noticed at Google over the past couple weeks. Google confirms they will be changing the referral strings and we discuss why. Google Blog search updates link operator, finally. One line Sitelinks are here to stay. Google still showing different results for different case. - Google News Mobile Edition Days Behind?
Early April, many mobile users, who use Google Mobile for News, noticed that Google News on their mobile device was not updating. In fact, the news was outdated for days on their devices. The issue seemed to have resolved itself for many a few days later, so I decided not to report it. Now the issue seems to be springing up again. We have a report in the Google News Help discussion area from one - Links That Might Not Appear As Links
We recently wrote about getting PageRank without getting links, it turned out to be a fairly popular thread we covered. In any event, Brett Tabke started a timely post on that at WebmasterWorld. He named the post, Hot Top 20 Stealth Links and explores the various links you may get that might not appear as the typical link. Here is a list from Brett and others in the thread: another site links to your graphics - Google Sees Q1 2009 Revenue Drop: AdSense Publishers Seek Answers
Google announced earnings last night, the earnings reported that revenues were down from the previous quarter. Let me quote the announcement: Google reported revenues of $5.51 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a decrease of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In - Google Search To Change Referral Strings: SEOs Discuss
An hour or so before I went offline for Passover, the Google Analytics blog announced a very significant change to how Google search will be passing along referral data. In the past, a search for flowers and a click on that search result to your site, would show the URL: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search Now, you will see the referral string (in some cases, right now in beta): http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw The new format is broken down as such: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t - Google's Cache Highlighting Colors May Be Wrong
99.999% of people would never notice this nor care about it, but a Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a very small bug in Google's cache. If you view the cache of a W3 document for a match on xml well formed root, you will notice that Google says they will highlight the words "root" in a red color. But if you scan through the document, you will notice Google is not highlighting that - 54% of SEOs Believe in Artificial Google PageRank
About a week ago, we wrote a piece about getting PageRank without links. In that write up, we wrote how Google may give pages temporary or artificial PageRank to make up for the page being new. We decided to poll our readers, asking if they believed in such a concept or not. 54% of our readers, 83 of the 153 responses, said they believe that Google does give web pages artificial PageRank. 44% of our - Most SEOs Believe Google Has Keyword Specific Penalty
About two weeks ago, we polled our audience asking if they thought Google had a keyword specific penalty. By the I meant, does Google penalize a site from ranking well for a specific keyword phrase, while allowing the site to rank well for other keyword phrases. There are now well over a hundred-sixty responses, with the majority, seven-eight percent, saying Google does have such a filter. I went as far to break down the poll - 80% Say SEOs Need Some Coding Abilities
Last week we asked if SEOs need coding capabilities based on a controversial Sphinn thread. The results are now in and I am surprised to see just about 80% of the responses said that to be considered an SEO, you need some coding abilities. Here is the break down of results for the question, Do You Need Coding Skills to be an SEO? :: Yes, Some Coding Abilities To Be Called An SEO said 100 - Google Releases Stable Toolbar for Internet Explorer
If you have been like me and been tracking the Google Toolbar Help discussion area, you may have noticed complaint after complaint on how buggy the Google Toolbar was in Internet Explorer. Google announced they have released a stable version of the Google Toolbar 6 for IE. Version 6.1.1518.856 is the stable release, which removes the beta tag from this toolbar. Internet explorer users can download it at http://toolbar.google.com/. Improvements include: Find bar is no - Two New Conferences: ADSPACE & Found
There are two new conferences coming up that I thought I let you know about. One is focused specifically around contextual ads, and is named ADSPACE. The other is focused on the technical side of SEO and is named Found. The ADSPACE conference is an adTech conference taking place in San Francisco on April 22nd. The speaker list is impressive, including keynotes from Brad Bender, Product Management Director at Google, Will Martin-Gill, Director of Internet - Tuesday Mornings: Best Time To Send Out Link Request Emails
A week ago, we ran a poll asking when is the best time to send out link requests. We know, we don't recommend bombarding people with link exchange or request emails, but if you had to, when would you do it? The hundreds of responses are in and it seems like most people suggest sending it on Tuesday mornings. Here is the breakdown in pie charts. Best day to send link request emails: Best time - Factors That Search Engines May Use to Rank Your Web Pages
SEOMoz created the first and second comprehensive search ranking factors document. We now have a new one, a shorter one, from HuoMah.com. Dave lists out dozens and dozens of factors and adds commentary around them. Here are some of them, without the commentary: PageRank (or relative nodal link valuation)Link text (internal and external)Link relevance (global and page)Also see Temporal, Personalized PageRank and Phrase factors.Page TITLE tagMeta-description tagDocument inception/age dataLink velocityLink ageViral/Current news (QDF)Time of year - AdSense "Orientation" Webinar on April 18th
This coming April 18th, at 11am PST, Google will be hosting a free AdSense Webinar on the topic of "Orientation" for the first 500 people who sign up. To sign up, go to this URL and click on the "Sign Up" link in the middle of the page. The first Webinar is to give you the "understanding of the basics of your AdSense account. Learn more about the program and get familiar with your account." - Are One Line Sitelinks Here To Stay: A Deeper Look
Google has been testing showing classic (one line) Sitelinks in the search results for a while now. The one line Sitelinks are interesting in that they seem to differ some from the Sitelinks we are typically accustomed to. Melanie Phung posted very interesting observations of these Sitelinks. Let me bullet point the key points, but feel free to check out the post for more details. One Line Sitelinks Can: Show for non-branded termsCan show multiple - A Video of Google's Data Center
Google is pretty off limits to showing off their data centers and engineering floors. But Google created a presentation on April 1st for the Google Efficient Data Centers Summit to show off their data centers. Here is that video: The video is extremely interesting in how they try to squeeze as much out of every CPU they have, including how they maximize the energy they use to power them. This is a rare look inside
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Graywolf, Matt Cutts, g1smd and Halfdeck discuss robots.txt disallow & meta noindex exclusion!, Sphinn
- EC starts legal action over Phorm, WebmasterWorld
- some news are missing when sort by date, Google News Help
- Big changes for the Google Video Help Forum, Google Video Help Forum Announcements
- Can rel="canonical" index my hostname and not my IP address?, DigitalPoint Forums
- Holding Seo Work Hostage, HighRankings Forums
- Intermittent Google Ad Manager Errors - Resolved, Google Ad Manager Help Forum Announcements
- PLEASE NOTE: AdWords system maintenance on Saturday, April 18th, Google AdWords Help
- Site Maintenance & $10 Earnings Threshold, AdSense Help Forum Announcements
- Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site, Sphinn
