Search Engine Roundtable

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: July 10, 2009

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T19:05:00-05:00

In this week's recap, I share how the Google logo sent me tons of traffic for Tesla's birthday. I also discuss the July 4th logos and our video game pacman logo. Google Chrome OS was revealed this week as coming out in late 2010. Yahoo SearchPad finally launched. Google bolstered their real estate search. Google finally is taking action against AdWords scammers. Google is testing forum sub links in the search results. An SEO company got caught with their pants down. Empty answer sites are so annoying in search results. Google added a toggle for SafeSearch preferences. Google history may be leaking your search history to others. Get into Bing News with an email. Michael Jackson fans are upset with Google. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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Daily Search Forum Recap: July 10, 2009

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T16:00:00-05:00

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.

Google Showing UK Users UK News Only

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T09:03:55-05:00

WebmasterWorld administration, engine, reported in a WebmasterWorld thread that he is now only seeing UK news at Google.com.

He said, in the past, when he wanted UK news he went to Google.co.uk, but when he wanted US news, he went to Google.com. Now, since he is based in the UK, he only sees UK news at Google.com.

Engine is a bit upset, adding, "Google has taken one of my toys away, and I want it back!"

Not every UK searcher is noticing this right now. It might be related to how Google is testing dropping the country filter search option - or it might be totally unrelated.

Just as a heads up, you can get any news edition for any country at this page so if Engine wants US news in the UK, he can go to news.google.com/news?ned=us.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bing Organizes Webmaster Content in "Bing Toolbox"

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T08:53:18-05:00

Let me start off by saying this is not brand new, but Microsoft is now making sure people know about the Bing Toolbox. The Bing Toolbox is basically a landing page that has links to the most important webmaster tools that Bing manages.

That includes features such as:

Submit a site
Add a Sitemap
Get an API key
Browse API tools
Access webmaster tools
See Bing community forum & blogs
And more...

Here is a screen shot of how the page looks right now:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Can Someone Else's Search History Show Up In Your Google History?

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T08:37:45-05:00

Google's web history is great for finding things you have searched for in the past. It comes in handy for many reasons. In fact, it even helped a parent catch his son searching for porn, but is it always accurate?

Every now and then, I see threads pop up with complaints that someone else's search history is showing up in that person's Google history. I always dismiss it as someone else accessing this person's computer or someone having his Google account password, and messing with this person. But now, I am not a 100% convinced it is always user error.

An updated Google Web Search Help thread has one person who reported an issue with his web history back in January and came in recently to tell us his story. He basically said a Google representative talked to him offline and then took down his information. Shortly after, that web history was gone, according to this searcher, and the problem never occurred again.

I asked him what happened and he said:

I never found out what the issue was. If Google knew the answer, no one from Google told me. I had a conference call with a product manager and and an engineer, they said they'd work on it, and then the problem went away. That was several months ago, and the problem has not returned for me.
I don't know how widespread the issue is--not that many people check their web history. I suspect it's a lot more than the handful of people who are reporting it here. I was, and am, most concerned about the integrity of my searches and my personal information showing up on someone else's computer and my having no idea it was happening. I don't use online map services any longer, nothing that would indicate my address.

Personally, I rarely check my web history and I am sure 90% of searchers don't even know about Google web history. So I wouldn't be surprised that if there was an issue, a lot more are being affected without knowing. Clearly, this can be a huge security, privacy and confidentiality concern for the Google searcher.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Google Commemorates Nikola Tesla's Birthday

rustybrick — 2009-07-10T08:23:26-05:00

If you visit Google.com today, you will notice a special logo that looks like a coil lighting rode. It is a depiction of the Tesla coil created by Nikola Tesla.

Without Tesla, most people think we would not have had electricity as early as we did. Without electricity, no computers, no computers, no Internet, no Internet, no Google.

Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 and he passed away on January 7, 1943. Today is July 10th, so 153 years later, Google is remembering Nikola Tesla.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Web Search Help.

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 9, 2009

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T16:00:00-05:00

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.

SEO Company Caught By Client Using Google Support Forums

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T09:16:53-05:00

It is not uncommon to find SEOs asking other SEOs questions in the SEO discussion forums. But it is not everyday where you find the clients of an SEO coming in an asking questions about their own site, only to find out that his SEO previously asked the same question in the same discussion forum, to the same people. That is exactly what happened, as pointed out by Autocrat in a Google Webmaster Help thread. The real shocker is what the client discovered his SEO said about his own abilities.

Yesterday, Gary from Manchester, posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help asking for advice about a client's site. The client noticed a major drop in rankings and hired Gary to fix the issue. Gary then offered his findings in a thread and asked other SEOs for advice and other tips. Again, this is common and often done, either in a public forum or offline, with SEO's who are friends.

Later on in the day, Mike, the webmaster from the company that Gary is proposing SEO to, posted his own thread at Google Webmaster Help asking the same question. What is kind of funny is that one member who replied to Mike said that he should stop posting duplicate threads. Mike replied that he "had no idea Gary had come to a forum for answers."

The issue is, Gary, the SEO, said in the thread, "I personally don't think this will get them their rankings back." Now, Mike saw this and was very upset that Gary would offer an SEO proposal "between £2,500 & £5000 to produce a report on the problems YOU have outlined." A report that, Gary himself thinks would not solve the site's problem. Mike added, "I will look forward to talking to him tomorrow!"

A tip to you SEOs out there. If you are asking for advice in a public forum, please be more discrete. Use URL shortening services, to mask the URL and be upfront with those helping you that you don't want the client to know you are asking for advice. But more importantly, do not say you think the site is doomed. But even more importantly, above that, if you think the site is doomed and you can't fix it, don't charge the client money when you think you can't help - that just seems ethically wrong.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Is Microsoft Bing Slow At Malware Reviews?

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T09:06:58-05:00

There is almost nothing worse than a malware warning for a webmaster or SEO to see in the search results. You can have top rankings in a search engine, but if your listing is labeled to be harmful and the search engine warns users not to visit the site, it can be devastating.

That is why Google and the other search engines offer malware reviews, either in their webmaster tools section or via a form. Google is known to take action on malware reviews within hours, the other search engines typically take days. But according to one thread, Microsoft's Bing may take several weeks.

A Bing Community thread has one webmaster who claimed he submitted his site for a malware review to all the search engines. Google removed the malware label within the same day, the other search engines took days, but Bing took several weeks, according to this webmaster. The webmaster simply said, "but this whole process did take too long."

I am not sure if this is a common practice with Bing or not. Any webmasters experience this as well? Please let me know.

Forum discussion at Bing Community.

Google News Mobile Now Defaulting To Desktop Version For Some

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T08:55:01-05:00

Google has confirmed in a Google Mobile Help thread that many mobile users of Google News will be redirected to the desktop version. Some people already began noticing it and Google's Robin has confirmed it saying:

Hi folks - As you've noticed, we're switching around the Google News site a bit. Let us know what you think about using the desktop site vs. the old mobile version!

I am not sure if this applies to iPhone and Android users, because I personally see the iPhone version, which looks like this:

But some are seeing this on their mobile phone:

Big difference in the mobile experience, don't you think? Most people are not happy with the change.

Forum discussion at Google Mobile Help.

Most Annoying Google Search Results? Empty Answer Sites

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T08:43:53-05:00

Remember a little back Matt Cutts of Google posted that he wanted the Google search results to remove empty review sites from the listings? Recently, during my Google searches, I have been landing on sites that have answers, but require you to login and pay to view those answers.

This has happened to me several times over the course of the week, but let me share one example with you. I was looking on how to mess around with imap outlook folders and found a Google result at, you guessed it, Expert Exchange. Here is a screen shot:

Great, this is my exact question, I click over and what do I see? I see a teaser to sign up to view the answer:

I cannot tell you have annoying this search experience has been for me. It makes me want to completely remove all expert-exchange.com results from my search experience at Google. I know this is not new, it comes up very often in the forums. But now it is bothering me personally, so I thought I take a recent thread and vent about it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.

Update: As noted by Adam in the comments, if you actually keep scrolling and scrolling, you will see all the answers listed there. I assume they are doing this to not cloak content to Google, but it still seems wrong.

Bing & Yahoo Can't Tell Time in Tehran, Iran

rustybrick — 2009-07-09T08:23:49-05:00

Did you know that both Yahoo and Bing cannot tell the time in Tehran, Iran? A Bing Community thread points out the issue with Bing. Let me share with you searches for [time tehran] from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and Wolfram - you will notice that both Bing and Yahoo are off.

Bing shows 3:55pm:

Yahoo also shows 3:55pm:

Google, Ask & Wolfram Alpha all show the correct time, as 4:55pm:

I am not sure why there is a difference between these search engines. Some cite that the difference comes from Iran Standard Time versus Iran Daylight Time, but Iran has one time right now.

Forum discussion at Bing Community.

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 8, 2009

rustybrick — 2009-07-08T16:00:00-05:00

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.

Google Enhanced 404 Feature Gone?

rustybrick — 2009-07-08T09:03:10-05:00

In August 2008, Google released what was called the enhanced 404 widget that allowed webmasters to easily create custom 404 pages. In fact, we still have a sample of this in action at advertize.html.

But for some reason, I think Google removed the feature from the Google Webmaster Tools section. As a Google Webmaster Help thread discusses, he can't find it in the Webmaster Tools section. I looked for several minutes and I also cannot find it anywhere.

Did Google move it and I can't find it? Did they drop the feature with the launch of the new design?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Getting Listed In Bing News

rustybrick — 2009-07-08T08:42:44-05:00

You know how to get listed in Google News but what about Bing News? A Bing Community thread has discussion around that topic.

Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster Center said the way to be included in Bing News is a manual process. You simply need to email bns@microsoft.com and wait to hear back.

What if you don't hear back? Brett suggests emailing again:

There should be confirmation from the review team. If you did not get one, I suggest emailing them again.

Yahoo News and Google News are tremendous traffic drivers, but Bing is gaining market share, according to some. So it cannot hurt to be listed.

Forum discussion at Bing Community.