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:
- Survey: Most SEOs Won't Link To Competitors
Last week, we ran a poll asking if you should risk linking to competitors. The specific question we asked was, "Do You Link To Direct Competitors?" Not sure if you are surprised by the results, but after receiving 140 or so responses, 56% said they never link to competitors while 27% said they rarely do and 14% said they do link to competitors. Here is the full break down of results: Question: Do You Link - AdSense Clicks & Earnings Drop Since Google Added "Certified Ad Networks"?
A WebmasterWorld thread has several publishers complaining that ever since Google went live with the certified 3rd party ad networks to expand the inventory, publisher's earnings and clicks have dropped drastically. Of course, most people who voice their opinions are likely to complain, which is why I want to run an anonymous poll. Have you noticed your October earnings drop from previous months. Do note, this new network came in about mid-September, so keep that - The Matt Cutts Hair Cut Video
I always find it weird writing the word "cut" after mentioning Matt Cutts, but sometimes you just have to do it. Remember when we 'reported' that Matt Cutts of Google became the hot guy of the industry after having his hair shaved off? We posted some videos on that in that post, but just yesterday, the Google Webmaster Central team celebrated their one millionth view on YouTube with a video of the actual hair cut - Google Maps for Blackberry Version 3.2 Adds Layers & Fixes GPS Issues
Tom from the Google Maps team announced in a Google Mobile Help thread that Google updated the Google Maps for mobile for BlackBerry application. The update is version 3.2 and includes one major new feature, layers. You can add layers of data on top of the map. The easiest way to explain it, is with this video: The second change is a fix for the internal GPS/Google Maps. Tom explained there was an issue "for - Google, Bing & (Yes) Yahoo Buy Tweets From Twitter
Watching the search news yesterday was pretty interesting. First, there were tons of rumors that Microsoft will be integrating Twitter data into Bing. Then the news broke on that where Bing confirmed the news. It launched, in limited form, at bing.com/twitter. Shortly after, Google also confirmed a deal with Twitter to get their data as well and the news sites went nuts. Yes, Twitter is licensing out the "firehose" of the tweets to search engines.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- An Open Letter to a Client in Search of an SEO Provider, Sphinn
- Is It Worth Buying Aged Domains?, HighRankings Forums
- H1 Tag Limit - Penalties - Myth Or Legend, HighRankings Forums
- Popup windows and SEO - can they live happily together?, WebmasterWorld
- Proof That Social Media is Killing Print Magazines, Sphinn
- Reorganized forum categories, Google Docs Help
- Software distribution as a link development tool, WebmasterWorld
