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:
- The Big Paid Search Merge Begins: Yahoo to Microsoft adCenter
So Yahoo web search, the organic results, are now powered by Bing, Microsoft search. The next to fall is the paid search side of things. Yahoo announced yesterday that the beginning of the end for Panama, Yahoo's Search Marketing platform. It is the beginning end of Yahoo powering their own search ads on their own search interface. Folks at WebmasterWorld are calling it a "merge." The big paid search merge? Well, not really, more like - Google Map In Web Search Can Drop Your CTR Up to 65%
Google showing maps and local listings in the pure organic web search results is nothing new. For example, the image below shows a search for [plumber 10010], NYC plumbers. Now, if you are not in that local listing and you are in the web search results, what are the chances of you getting clicked on? Slim, no? A WebmasterWorld thread is asking webmasters and SEOs to estimate the degradation of having the local listings mixed - Setting Google Geographic Target To "Unlisted"
Honestly, this is one topic I really don't know too much about. Google lets your Geographic target for your web site in Google Webmaster Tools. But what if you have a ccTLD, a country specific top level domain such as .fr (France), and you want to not target a specific country? The Google help document on this topic says: You can only use this feature for sites with a generic top-level domain, such as .com - Google Cache Broken For Home Pages
There is a weird Google bug with the cache feature. It seems to only impact home pages. For example, a search for this site in Google returns a Google search result of the home page (we aren't penalized yet): But when you click on the cache link, it takes you to a dead page: This does not appear to impact inside pages, but rather only the root page (aka home page). Why? I have been - Taking Over a Business With Bad Google Maps Reviews?
A Google Places Help thread has a story of a person who bought a business from someone else. The issue is, that business has pretty bad reviews in Google Maps and since there will be new management, he wants to know how to remove the bad reviews. A fair question, that is why you often see the "under new management" signs outside of businesses. People want to know when new businesses have new owners and
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Google now discounts the article links, WebmasterWorld
- 5 Link Building Questions That Make Me Die a Little Inside, Sphinn
- Google Planning Pay-Per-View Movies For YouTube, Google Blogoscoped Forum
- Uploads taking a long time to process- eventually fail to upload, YouTube Help
- How Buying Links Cost A Flower Vendor $4 Million In Google Traffic, Sphinn
- Updating Question - no ranking movement despite on-page changes, WebmasterWorld
