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 Maps Testing Ads With Hotel Prices
The Google Lat Long Blog announced a limited test they are running where they are showing sponsored ads in the form of hotel listing prices. So if you search Google Maps for hotels in an area, Google may list the prices for the hotels, which is pulled or pushed from advertisers. Here is a screen capture: Now, Google promises the ranking of the listings is not based on there being a price or an advertiser. - Google Language Detection Bug Confused As Chinese Hack
Yesterday, there was a big stink about Google being hacked by the Chinese because their Google corporate page was being rendered in Chinese for *some* users. At the same time, some were seeing it rendered in Spanish and other languages. As the reports came in, some of us at Search Engine Land were suspicious that this was indeed not a hack but rather a bug. A few days ago, I reported an odd language detection - Google Cache URLs To Be webcache.googleusercontent.com?
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that some users are seeing the URL webcache.googleusercontent.com being used for the Cache link in the Google search results. Typically, Google does not use a name based URL for the cache link, such as google.com or the one above. Typically, Google would use an IP address. But some users are spotting webcache.googleusercontent.com being used instead of the IP address. If you try going to webcache.googleusercontent.com it will actually load a Google - Google To Continue Site Performance Stats By End Of Week
March 10th or so, Google stopped updating the site performance reports in Google Webmaster Tools. Googler, "sreeram" said they are "making some changes to the algorithms and pipeline," and thus had to pull down the tool for a bit. He hoped it would be available within a few days, but it seems like the report stopped running or updating since then. A new Google Webmaster Help thread has sreeram saying that he hopes to bring - Google Maps Expands Businesses Reach With Services Areas & Locations
Matt McGee spotted that Google Maps' Local Business Center added a new feature for businesses to define what services locations and areas they cater to. Before, the only way to show up in a certain location was to have a physical business address at the location, now, it seems Google is expanding that. If you go to a business profile in your google.com/lbc you can edit or add a new business. There you will see
SES NY Live Blog Coverage:
- Search, PR and the Social Butterfly from SES NY 2010
- Ads in a Quality Score World from SES NY 2010
- Spotlight on Fashion: Blogging for Style from SES NY 2010
- Enterprise Level SEO from SES NY 2010
- Advanced Paid Search Tactics from SES NY 2010
- The Business Value of Social Media from SES NY 2010
- Ad Networks & Exchanges: How the Search O/S is Changing the Display Game from SES NY 2010
- PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle from SES NY 2010
- Social Media 101 from SES NY 2010
- Keynote - Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of the Online Audience Business, Bing from SES NY 2010
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Best Practices: Building Scalable Information Architecture, Sphinn
- Duplicate Campaign Names in one request, AdWords API Forum
- Good SEO, Sphinn
- Publishing delays - subscriber updates a couple hours behind, YouTube Help
- SEO for PDF - Optimizing PDFs for Search, Sphinn
- Are rankings a reliable metric for SEO success?, Sphinn
