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:
- Major Google Search Thanksgiving '09 Update? Caffeine Related?
There are several threads reporting major changes in the Google search results, starting yesterday. We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and an updated WebmasterWorld thread. In short, people are noticing major changes in the search results. Some believe it is a Caffeine index rolling into their search results. Some believe it is just a normal update and not Caffeine related. We do know that Matt Cutts promised not to roll out Caffeine - Google Maps Bug Disables Searching My Maps for User Created Content
A Google Maps Help thread has confirmed reports that searching for user generated content via My Maps seems to no longer be returning results. ehg, a helpful Google Maps forum member helped debug this. He said, all of my maps of MyMaps created until 20 Oct 2009 are still to search. Here a sample map "GRZG" which is still to search [1] when searching "related maps" and "GRZG". Here searching for a user- created content - More on How Google News SEO Works
Google News SEO is a fun topic for me because we are included in Google News. Two recent interviews were published on how Google News ranks articles and yes, it is very different from rankings in Google Web Search. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and Eric Enge at Stone Temple both ask the tough questions with Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News. I suggest reading those interviews and then joining the - Google Tracking Phones & Devices For Traffic Data: Crowdsouring Traffic
This is old news, back in August Google told us they are now crowdsourcing traffic data in order to provide better and more accurate traffic reports on Google Maps. Let me quote Google: When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of - Google: Comment Spam Can Hurt Your Site's Ranking
Google wrote a blog post named Hard facts about comment spam. I'll sum it up for you quickly. If you do not protect your site against comment spam, Google will trust your site less and it can ultimately hurt your rankings. Most blogs these days have automatic comment spam solutions, but you need to make sure your blog is handling it correctly. I check comment spam here several times a day. Although most gets caught, - Rich Snippets Now in Google UK & Other Non-US Properties
First blogged at BigMouthMedia, Google's Rich Snippets feature which went live in the U.S. in May is now showing up in other Google properties, such as the UK, Canada and other English based language countries. When it first launched, it was only based in the US. But now if you try to bring up sites that provide rich snippets to Google outside of the US, some show them. For example, Google UK, Google Canada and - Thanksgiving Greetings 2009 From Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask & Search Industry
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, it is my favorite holiday. As you can imagine, the search news (as in all news) will be slow today, so here is a look at today's special logos, themes and designs from our industry. We have logos from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Ask and others in the search industry. For the past years logos, see 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 logos. Here are 2009's Thanksgiving Day Logos: Google: Yahoo (Flash):
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Using the Ads Diagnostic Tool: Your ads are set to only show to users in the geo-targeted areas you've chosen., Google AdWords Help
- How to build traffic with Twitter, WebmasterWorld
- Using the "Fetch as Googlebot" feature, Google Webmaster Help
