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:
- Are Paid Links Really That Risky?
There is a nice thread at WebmasterWorld discussing the real-world risk of buying links to improve your web site's rank in Google and other search engines. Senior member, wheel, stated his thoughts on the topic: paid links have been around for years.they're easy to getthey work. people rank just on bought links, and on very competitive terms.except in a very few cases, Google isn't doing anything obvious to stop them. (which would be the risk).Google - Google Says, We Don't Change Search Results For "Political Reasons"
The topic and question of, does Google manipulate their search results based on political influence is nothing new. We asked the question at least once here. But this is the first time I have seen a Google Webmaster representative reply directly to that question. JohnMu, a Google Webmaster representative, said in a Google Webmaster Help thread: I can assure you that at Google we are not interested in manually moving sites up and down in - Removing Sites In Bing Webmaster Tools Does Not Impact Rankings
Did you ever want to remove a site from Bing Webmaster Tools? Were you ever concerned that by removing a site from Bing Webmaster Tools would have a negative result to your rankings in Bing? No? Good, you are right. A Bing Community thread has one webmaster asking this question and a Microsoft representative responded. Brett Yount, Bing's Program Manager said: No. Adding/removing sites does not have any effect on indexing. Of course, most of - Google Does Remove Malware Results Fast
I received a tip yesterday via a DigitalPoint Forums thread that Google was showing a lot of malware for certain keywords, including a search for [racketeering]. When you searched for these results, Google was showing search results that contained spyware and malware. This was posted at DigitalPoint Forums at about 3pm yesterday. I confirmed seeing the spyware/malware results in Google around 4pm yesterday. I knew Google was quick at malware detection and removal, so I - Report Offensive Images On Google Does Not Work
I track lots and lots of threads, and many of those threads complain about a search result. Many of those complain about inappropriate images showing up in Google Images. Google launched a report offensive images about two years ago, and they changed it slightly later. The issue is, it does not work. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen images reported in the forums, I then personally go and report them using
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Google Acquires Mobile Visual Search Firm, Plink, WebmasterWorld
- New Presentation! Google News SEO checklist, Google News Help
- Twitter Acquires Tweetie For The iPhone, WebmasterWorld
- Less indexed pages now in SERPs, WebmasterWorld
- Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch, WebmasterWorld
