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:
- Google Makes Search Bigger With Larger Search Box
Google's Mayer announced last night that the search box's size was increased. The box is bigger, the text when you type is bigger and the search suggestions are bigger. Honestly, I am surprised we did not spot Google testing this on the public, but we didn't. Old Google: New Google: There is a lot of discussion around this. Tedster at WebmasterWorld is with me on this and feels Google never really tested it (or else - Screen Shots & Videos of Google Monopoly City Streets
Hasbro has created a virtual Monopoly game at www.monopolycitystreets.com that allows people to buy property, using Google Maps. It is pretty neat - but the big issue is that it is incredibly slow. It took me two days to get in and I finally have some screen captures and videos to show you. Here is the quick video: Here are some screen captures: Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums. - Google Base Feeds Can Now Include YouTube Video Demos for Product Search
The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base data feeds now support a new YouTube attribute that allows you to define if the product has a video demo on YouTube. The example given is a product search for Nikon d90. If you scroll down, you will see videos from YouTube: To add this to your product data feeds, you need to add the YouTube attribute: The YouTube video ID for product review videos. Video IDs - Power Searchers: What Is Your Favorite Search Feature
Googler, Jem, started a thread at Google Web Search Help asking the forum members to list out some of their favorite search features. The ones listed so far include: * [4 miles per 30 minutes in minutes per mile]: * [intitle:"index of" beatles ( mp3 | wma | mid )]: * [whois www.rustybrick.com]: My favorite queries are mostly site: command related, when I want to find content on specific web sites. I do however greatly - Bing's Fake Referrer Spam Back, Now Hiding Referrer Now?
The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago. We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log files with fake referrers. But I am seeing a new report that the log files are showing Microsoft Bing IP addresses in them but without referrer data. An updated Bing Forum thread has one webmaster
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Facebook the new Wikipedia in Search Results?, WebmasterWorld
- Email from Publisher Optimization Team, WebmasterWorld
- Google site:-whateverhere and you get 6 video results, why?, WebmasterWorld
- How can I tell Google that I moved my wordpress.com blog to a self hosted wordpress.org blog?, Google Webmaster Central Help
- How do I change the business name in a listing?, Google Maps Help
- Google Checkout micropayments extension to help with Paid News Content, WebmasterWorld
- Public service ads with certain names?, WebmasterWorld
