The news came from a WebmasterWorld thread this morning by a Junior Member who was hit by Penguin codenamed Martin Ice Web. He said that when he was searching for his keywords and added a negative parameter for amazon, his rankings went back to normal.

For example, he search for [blue widget -amazon] and his rankings pre-Penguin showed up on Google for the query [blue widget].

I tried this myself on a ton of examples of sites that were hit in the forums and I was unable to replicate it to the extreme but it does kind of work.

For example, a Google Webmaster Help thread has the owner of discounted-hotels-london.co.uk saying that [strand palace hotel -amazon.com] brings up his site on page one. I see it on page two with that query but on page 27 for [strand palace hotel] without the -amazon.

This is pretty wild!

I tried it on some others but failed. Give it a try on your end and let me know if it works.

This seems so weird. Although there was a time years ago where we had a weird hack like this before.

Remember the Google Sandbox, there was a query hack for that to where you would put -dfsdgsdsd -sdfgsdgsdfg -sdfgsdgsdg -sdfgsdfgsdfg -dsfgsdgsdg -sdfgsdfgsdfg -sdgsdfgdsfg at the end of the query and it would show pre-sandbox results.

So who knows?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google Webmaster Help.

In short, it provides answers directly in the search results sourced from third parties such as Wikipedia but driven from their acquisition of Metaweb in 2010 and the FreeBase database.

Now, answers in search are nothing new – Ask.com, Bing all have been doing it and Google has been doing it as well. But this is Googles attempt to take what they have done further.

Here is a video demo of how Google explains it but Danny Sullivan digs really deep on this topic at Search Engin Land – so I won’t repeat what he said.

I personally do not see the knowledge graph yet with those knowledge panels but Branko Rihtman aka @neyne shared some screen shots of it for me.

He did a search for my name and the famous professor came up as did I in a split view:

Google Labeling Me An SEO Expert?

What is interesting is that when you click on my information, it not only brings up my panel but also changed the query to read “barry schwartz search engine optimization expert.”

I am not sure where this label is coming from? It doesn’t say “expert” on Wikipedia. I guess now I can go around and tell people Google certifies I am an SEO expert? I am kidding of course but is Google labeling people with this new knowledge graph system? Possibly.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help, WebmasterWorld & Google+.

So what does Google do when it doesn’t understand the markup? It often ignore the markup and just looks at the text in or around the markup.

Google’s John Mueller was asked this in a Google Webmaster Help thread in which he responded:

In cases where we don’t understand the markup that’s used, we’ll generally ignore the tag and just keep the text. That allows us to keep up with most of these changes, be it from XML pages or new HTML5 tags like these. A quick way to double-check is to look at the text-version of a cached page.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should make up new markup languages and stuff keywords in them. Don’t do that!

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

It is the left over residue income generated from the Google API Referrals program which expired or sunsetted a few days ago. Google AdSense engineer Vincent said:

In any case most of you should have a couple pageviews for “API Referral Bounty” — if any at all — from June/July/August, from the time were this AdSense product served as a platform for pay-per-action advertisement. This part of our business was moved to the Google Affiliate Network, a Doubleclick product.

So if you see these in your AdSense account, they will likely go away soon.

That being said, I love his to the point and blunt comment about them doing away with the referral program. Vincent said it was “a relief for us, as it was a rather large burden to support from a technical point of view.” Love it.

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

It’s common for a lot of us to wonder what other people think about specific topics and issues, even join in discussions online. Twitter, among many other social media sites, is a great platform for this, letting people talk and share their two cents on any given topic. Mon.ki is a browser extension that can help you find discussions and communicate with people on the Twitterverse talking about topics within your browsers.

Developed for Google Chrome, Mon.ki expands Twitter’s capabilities to the browser, aggregates discussions and other content shared over the social network that are relevant to the content on the sites you are visiting. This, not only allows you to learn more about products, news and just about any topic, it will also direct you to the people who are actively talking about them.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, Mon.ki will appear as a sidebar on the right side of your browser. You sign in using your Twitter login credentials.

We tested it by first visiting the BBC Web site, where it displayed all the most recent tweets that link to any page on the BBC site, and those that mention “BBC” including retweets and those from the British TV network’s Twitter profile itself.

At the bottom, you’ll find related Twitter profiles which in our test’s case, displayed a handful of BBC reporters, some of the contestants of their reality competition, and the official Twitter for Torchwood, one of the network’s sci-fi shows.

If you want something more specific, you can refine the Mon.ki’s search parameters by adding your terms. Aside from this, you can also view the trending sites within your network, and send out tweets without having to go to Twitter.com. This appends a shortened URL that links to the site you’re current on, and a #getmonki hashtag. Of course, both of these can be removed.

There are a handful of great uses for Mon.ki. It’ll help you be more informed by directing you to different sides of any topic, helping you learn more and make wise purchasing decisions.

For players in the social media marketing field, this browser extension can be a valuable tool that can benefit many components of your campaign. For starters, it can be good for brand monitoring as Mon.ki sifts through the Twitter networks for mentions and impressions on your brand. It’ll also be a nice tool should you decide on getting into influencer marketing because it shows the people who are involved in the conversations around your brand.

It can also help you find direct engagement opportunities, and jumpstart points for developing strategies that are more engaging, and will positively resonate within your community.

But in the last year or so I’ve noticed a growing trend when it comes to Facebook marketing—companies are giving their Facebook profiles a lot of “face time” on all of their marketing platforms—TV commercials, radio ads and print ads invite consumers to Like a company on Facebook; websites publish big “Find Us on Facebook” banners on prime page real estate and entire marketing campaigns are built with around the goal of getting more Facebook fans. While I think it’s great that so many companies are invested in having a strong social presence, it’s important to remember that every time you promote your Facebook page it’s Facebook that could reap the most benefits in the long run, not necessarily your company. If you’re not careful, your Facebook marketing just markets Facebook!

In my opinion, Facebook is not a place of commerce; people don’t head over to Facebook with the intent to buy. They go to check in with their friends, post funny videos or breaking news, upload photos from their family vacation, plan parties and so forth. Even though Facebook is doing all it can to become a one-stop-online-shop for users it’s still mostly a social site. When you promote your Facebook page, you are encouraging your target audience to check out Facebook INSTEAD of coming to your website. Facebook is the one that benefits from all of your traffic!

Think about it like this—let’s say someone does heed your call-to-action and searches for your company on Facebook. Once they are on your Facebook page, where do they go from there? Sure, they could click over to your website or blog (the end goal of any Facebook marketing campaign), but there are literally dozens of other links on you Facebook page that could take them away from your brand. Never mind the fact that their own profile and home page is just a click away, Facebook also puts ads in the side bar on your page. You might be advertising your own competitors! The last thing any site wants to do is send a targeted customer over to the competition.

Now I am not saying that companies should stop promoting their Facebook profiles altogether. Having a social presence is critical to online success today, and obviously you want to make sure your audience knows where they can find, connect and interact with your brand online. However, I am suggesting that site owners take a good hard look at their Facebook marketing tactics. The end goal should never be just “get more Fans.” You want to use your Facebook profile as a gateway to send more qualified visitors over to your site. Don’t turn Facebook into the end destination otherwise Facebook reaps all the benefits while you do all the work.