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.

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.

Today is Memorial Day, so we plan on keeping it light over here at the blog today. I have a post at the Search Engine Roundtable, with a collection of logos I have found from the various search related companies and blogs for the special day. Here is a single picture with those logos and themes all in one image:

Click to continue reading…

Doing A Fake Story For Linkbait? Disclose — Or Face The Wrath Of Google from last week is still a hot topic of discussion in the industry. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a more detailed explanation of why a fake story without disclosure is something, in some cases, Google cares about.

Matt says, “if a site says that they completely made up a story to get links, Google doesn’t have to trust the links to that site as much.” But is that about intent of the author? Does the intent have to be about influencing your search results for Google to trust you less or is it something larger?

Click to continue reading…

Doing A Fake Story For Linkbait? Disclose — Or Face The Wrath Of Google from last week is still a hot topic of discussion in the industry. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a more detailed explanation of why a fake story without disclosure is something, in some cases, Google cares about.

Matt says, “if a site says that they completely made up a story to get links, Google doesn’t have to trust the links to that site as much.” But is that about intent of the author? Does the intent have to be about influencing your search results for Google to trust you less or is it something larger?

Click to continue reading…

comScore released its April 2008 rankings last week, and it appears that Google has increased its search share to 61.6% up from 59.8% the previous month.

Even though this is an overall view of search traffic, forum members wonder if the quality will improve in certain niches (especially Ask, now that it may target women — of course, women would have to actually realize this and search Ask in order for this new arrangement to work for them). It all depends on the users, according to a forum member. Google performs very well in certain areas.

Looking at this data, another forum member wonders why Google, the “search giant baby,” is worried about the Yahoo-Microsoft merger. That’s one specific issue that will affect a lot of people for some time.

On a related note, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has graphed out the search shares of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The graph shows that Google search shares have increased, whereas Yahoo and Microsoft search has decreased for the most part.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Over the weekend, I noticed reports from WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums suggesting that Google dropped .info and blogspot results from its index.

First reports came in at around 9:50am (EST) on May 23rd at both forums. Massive panic actually started where we saw dozens of forum posts with members not understanding how Google can completely wipe off many (not all) .info TLDs and all Blogspot results. Here is one person’s reaction:

But banning all .info domains without any apparent reason is greatly surprising.

But most felt this was a pretty large Google bug and they were right.

About five hours later, Webmasters began to see the old results come back to life. At 2:49pm (EST), we got reports from WebmasterWorld that the info TLDs were coming back into the Google results. Then at 4:33pm (EST), we received similar reports from DigitalPoint Forums.

Imagine that, Google delisting most of the .info TLDs and blogspot hosted blogs.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Historically, most search engines do not place a special logo up on their home page for Memorial Day. I am not sure why, I know it is just a U.S. holiday - but typically, the lack of a special logo, confuses many Americans.

This year, we had some search engines that historically have not placed a special logo for Memorial Day, place one. But Google, still, has yet to showcase a special logo for today. In any event, here is a run down of the special logos from Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, Cre8asite Forums and yours truly.

Yahoo:

Ask.com:

Dogpile.com:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Here is a look past at the previous years coverage of Memorial Day:

• Memorial Day Commemorated: Ask.com & Search Engine Roundtable
• Ask Jeeves Commemorates Memorial Day : 2005
• Memorial Day & Search Engines : 2004

Where is 2006? Well, I got married on Memorial Day weekend of that year.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Historically, most search engines do not place a special logo up on their home page for Memorial Day. I am not sure why, I know it is just a U.S. holiday - but typically, the lack of a special logo, confuses many Americans.

This year, we had some search engines that historically have not placed a special logo for Memorial Day, place one. But Google, still, has yet to showcase a special logo for today. In any event, here is a run down of the special logos from Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, Cre8asite Forums and yours truly.

Yahoo:

Ask.com:

Dogpile.com:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

Here is a look past at the previous years coverage of Memorial Day:

• Memorial Day Commemorated: Ask.com & Search Engine Roundtable
• Ask Jeeves Commemorates Memorial Day : 2005
• Memorial Day & Search Engines : 2004

Where is 2006? Well, I got married on Memorial Day weekend of that year.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

BusinessWeek writes about Google’s potential plans to enter the travel arena with a specialized offering. That offering, assuming it appears, would likely include a heavy dose of video. There would also likely be a heavy helping of Maps. Interestingly, Google is pushing Maps and MyMaps today as a travel/trip planning tool.

Click to continue reading…

BusinessWeek writes about Google’s potential plans to enter the travel arena with a specialized offering. That offering, assuming it appears, would likely include a heavy dose of video. There would also likely be a heavy helping of Maps. Interestingly, Google is pushing Maps and MyMaps today as a travel/trip planning tool.

Click to continue reading…

by Manoj Jasra

More and more each day you probably see Google’s custom search engine functionality appear on site’s across the Internet. In fact, I have implemented the Google custom search engine on two of my own sites. If you are looking for a simple way to enhance your users’ engagement level on your site then I recommend you take a closer look at Google custom search engine. Below are few of the top reasons I like it so much:

• Giving users what they are used to: More than half the world prefers Google’s search results and are comfortable interacting with the search box as well as the search results. Google Custom search engine provides the exact same search experience as Google.com but on YOUR site.

• Building your own search engine is difficult: Have you ever tried designing your own site search functionality, it’s definitely not simple. It’s difficult to apply the same type of algorithms Google does so that you can sort your results smarter than just alphabetically. With the custom search engine the algorithms are applied for you and you gain all the benefits of the awesome performance.

• Access to deeper content: Many sites on the Internet have some of their best content buried deep within their folder structure, the custom search engine allows your users to find that deep content within 1 click without getting frustrated and abandoning your site.

• Access to new content, not a huge issue anymore: One previous draw back of Google Custom Search vs. a proprietary search was that Google took a little while longer to index newer content which made a given site’s internal search results not as fresh. However, with the recent changes, your new content can be made available quicker by leveraging Google’s XML sitemaps.

• Customization: Google Custom Search Engine allows you to customize your configuration in many different ways including: look and feel of results, style of search box, placement of ads, sites to search within, ability to introduce AdSense, method of displaying results and refinement labels for popular website topics.

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