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:
- Funny SEO Video By Fake Matt Cutts
I found this video on "seo secrets" to be very funny, especially how they dressed up Matt Cutts of Google. Maybe you will laugh as well, so here it is: Forum discussion on this video at Google Webmaster Help. - Google News & Google Webmaster Tools "Pending" Sitemaps Bug
There are several threads about an issue with Google News publishers and Google Webmaster Tools. The largest thread is at Google News Help where the issue is described as the Sitemap file being in the state of pending. The Google News blog confirmed the issue, stating is began when the new design launched earlier last month. Google promised to fix the issues quickly, but here are the confirmed issues: Webmaster Tools may report an incorrect - More Cloaking Tests In Form Of Fake Referrers From Microsoft Bing?
A recent thread from the Bing Forums reports one webmaster noticing 150 plus referrers from MSNBot with the referring search query of "donate." They always come from a search result of www.bing.com/search?q=donate. The thing is, his site doesn't rank well in Bing for donate. So why is he seeing this he asked? Historically, Bing (Microsoft/Live Search/MSN Search) is known for using referral requests to attempt to find cloaked pages or find search spam. Since April - Google AdSense Expands Category Filtering & Adds Features
In late April, Google launched AdSense category filtering for some limited publishers. In short, it let publishers block ads by ad category, i.e. block all ringtone ads. Google has announced that they have expanded the beta and added some features. The beta is now available in "English-speaking countries including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S." I personally see it myself. In addition, Google added ad impression data to - Google's New "More Results" Quick Link
Friday, Google started showing a new "show more results from" link in the Google search results listings. The new link is an AJAX like link that dynamically expands the page to show you five more listings from that site. In the past, clicking on the link would take you to a site command flavored search page, thus sending a new query to Google and taking you to a new page. Here are pictures of the - Google AdSense Sending Out Duplicate Checks In Mail
Many Google AdSense publishers are reporting they are receiving, not one, but two checks from Google this month. The only issue is, the checks are duplicates, exact copies of each other. So technically, you can only deposit one of those checks. We have threads reporting the issue at WebmasterWorld and several at Google AdSense Help forums. We have heard of Google sending the wrong check to publishers or not sending payment at all. But I
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Why does clients1.google.com hang when accessing google.com homepage?, Google Web Search Help
- "Congratulations! Your video has received enough views that we can no longer the count in real time. ...", YouTube Help
- AdWords Downtime: August 8, 10am-2pm PDT, Google Groups
- Bing - bing is not obeying my robots.txt file OR my Robots meta tags, and continues to index pages I dont want listed, Bing Community
- Colorblind--traffic layer's colors too similar, Google Maps Help
- Google Traffic Throttling means we have to reduce user services, WebmasterWorld
- It's the Coast Guard's birthday today. Maybe next year it will be incorporated in the Google trademark?, Google Web Search Help
- Need to remove bad reviews from previous business, Google Maps Help
- The Permanence Of 301, HighRankings Forums
- Toolbar spell checker problem, Google Toolbar Help
- Us Marine Corps Afraid Of Twitter, Cre8asite Forums
- YouTube Gets Its Own Version Of AdSense, DigitalPoint Forums