Just recently, search engines like Google and Yahoo partnered with Live Search to introduce a breakthrough improvement in the search engine playing field: the Canonical Link Element. The Canonical Link Element enables web developers and search engines alike to eliminate the confusion in searches caused by different links that basically point to the same web site. Over the past few years, search engines have been focused on making … Read the Rest
On May 19, 2010, In SEO, by Search Concepts - Search and Internet News, Updates, and Trends
Just recently, search engines like Google and Yahoo partnered with Live Search to introduce a breakthrough improvement in the search engine playing field: the Canonical Link Element. The Canonical Link Element enables web developers and search engines alike to eliminate the confusion in searches caused by different links that basically point to the same web site. Over the past few years, search engines have been focused on making … Read the Rest
On January 14, 2010, In SEO, by rustybrick
There seems to be a lot of confusion out there in the paid search ad space. If the Microsoft & Yahoo do end up closing their deal, which seems likely to me, Yahoo Search Marketing will no longer exist.
The Yahoo Search Marketing console and campaigns you currently run will be either automatically imported into Microsoft adCenter or you will have to manually make that change. Microsoft adCenter will power the ads on Yahoo, Yahoo won’t power those ads.
A WebmasterWorld thread seems to have a lot of confusion over this point. Advertisers seem to not want to spend too much time on either adCenter or YSM optimizing their campaigns in fear that the deal will go through and that time would be wasted. I for one think that this is still going to take a really long time, so go ahead and optimize the campaigns. But if the deal does go through and they do begin the migration, the migration will be from Yahoo to Microsoft, not the other way around.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
There seems to be a lot of confusion out there in the paid search ad space. If the Microsoft & Yahoo do end up closing their deal, which seems likely to me, Yahoo Search Marketing will no longer exist.
The Yahoo Search Marketing console and campaigns you currently run will be either automatically imported into Microsoft adCenter or you will have to manually make that change. Microsoft adCenter will power the ads on Yahoo, Yahoo won’t power those ads.
A WebmasterWorld thread seems to have a lot of confusion over this point. Advertisers seem to not want to spend too much time on either adCenter or YSM optimizing their campaigns in fear that the deal will go through and that time would be wasted. I for one think that this is still going to take a really long time, so go ahead and optimize the campaigns. But if the deal does go through and they do begin the migration, the migration will be from Yahoo to Microsoft, not the other way around.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
On January 3, 2010, In SEO, by randfish
Posted by randfish
Lately I’ve been surprised to hear concerns from a number of SEOs that using the canonical URL tag on the canonical version of the page can somehow cause problems. When I’ve talked to folks about it, there seems to be confusion that only duplicates should use the rel="canonical" specification and the original must remain rel="canonical"-free. This isn’t the case.
Let’s look at a few diagrams to help explain:
This is the standard way rel=canonical is employed. Different versions of a page, whether on your own site, on partner sites, or places you’re licensing content (note: this is an update Google launched on Dec. 17th, 2009) can all reference back to the original to help tell the search engines where to find that piece. However, it’s also perfectly OK to do this:
Looking through Google’s blog post on the subject, this isn’t explicitly stated. However, you can see that even the example website, Wikia, employs this practice on the page Google points out. You can also see Googler Maile Ohye answering a comment on this:
@Wade: Yes, it’s absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel="canonical". It won’t harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you.
Maile’s got really good advice here. If you run into situations where third parties are referencing your posts and appending strings of data to the URL, it can be really helpful to have the canonical URL tag on these by default. In fact, we’ve worked with many companies recently who found it helpful to employ sitewide as a best practice, just to prevent future iterations or less SEO savvy development from reproducing versions of the page that didn’t contain the rel=canonical and potentially losing link juice / causing canonicalization issues.
One last piece – it’s a really, really good way to make sure Google indexes the http rather than https version of your page (and counts link juice to the proper one). This had historically been a royal pain in the butt for many SEOs, and we’ve heard enough positive stories now to feel confident recommending it.
Welcome to 2010! Hope everyone had a great holiday break 
Posted by randfish
Lately I’ve been surprised to hear concerns from a number of SEOs that using the canonical URL tag on the canonical version of the page can somehow cause problems. When I’ve talked to folks about it, there seems to be confusion that only duplicates should use the rel="canonical" specification and the original must remain rel="canonical"-free. This isn’t the case.
Let’s look at a few diagrams to help explain:
This is the standard way rel=canonical is employed. Different versions of a page, whether on your own site, on partner sites, or places you’re licensing content (note: this is an update Google launched on Dec. 17th, 2009) can all reference back to the original to help tell the search engines where to find that piece. However, it’s also perfectly OK to do this:
Looking through Google’s blog post on the subject, this isn’t explicitly stated. However, you can see that even the example website, Wikia, employs this practice on the page Google points out. You can also see Googler Maile Ohye answering a comment on this:
@Wade: Yes, it’s absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel="canonical". It won’t harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you.
Maile’s got really good advice here. If you run into situations where third parties are referencing your posts and appending strings of data to the URL, it can be really helpful to have the canonical URL tag on these by default. In fact, we’ve worked with many companies recently who found it helpful to employ sitewide as a best practice, just to prevent future iterations or less SEO savvy development from reproducing versions of the page that didn’t contain the rel=canonical and potentially losing link juice / causing canonicalization issues.
One last piece – it’s a really, really good way to make sure Google indexes the http rather than https version of your page (and counts link juice to the proper one). This had historically been a royal pain in the butt for many SEOs, and we’ve heard enough positive stories now to feel confident recommending it.
Welcome to 2010! Hope everyone had a great holiday break
On December 18, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
Google sent an email to many publishers yesterday, including myself, explaining a reporting issue with Google mixing up some of the earnings for link units with regular ad units. The email’s subject line read, “Update to AdSense link unit reporting” and the email read:
As a publisher using link units on your pages, we’re writing to let you know about a recently resolved reporting issue that affected your account.
We discovered an issue with the way earnings from link units were being shown in publisher accounts, which resulted in some of your ad unit earnings being incorrectly attributed to link units instead. However, this was only a reporting display issue and so your overall earnings and payments were not affected. We’ve resolved the issue, and as a result, you may now notice slight differences when you look at reports for previous months. Specifically, when you generate separate reports for link units and ad units, you may see that earnings from link units on a particular day have decreased, but that the ad unit earnings for the same day have increased by the same amount.
Again, please be assured that your aggregate earnings and payments were unaffected, so you’ve been credited for all valid clicks and impressions. In addition, this issue has not affected your ad performance in any way.
Your reports will now accurately reflect your earnings from link units and ad units — we apologize for the inconvenience and any confusion caused.
So no damage was done on the earnings side. Some publishers who may have looked closely at their reports to make tweaks to their pages may be suffering a bit, but overall, this doesn’t seem like a major deal.
AdSenseAdvisor in a WebmasterWorld thread added a bit to it:
Just to clarify, there was a link units reporting discrepancy that we recently cleared up. Aggregate earnings were not affected AT ALL. It’s just that if you go back and pull reports on your historical performance, you may notice that a lower percentage of your earnings are now attributed to link units (and a larger percentage are attributed to regular ad units).
An email went out to all those who were affected, so I’m guessing a lot of you got it.
Your aggregate earnings have been correct all along, we were just a bit off in attributing them to link units vs. regular ad units. Now we’ve cleared it up and any reports you run now will correctly reflect exactly where your earnings came from.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
Google sent an email to many publishers yesterday, including myself, explaining a reporting issue with Google mixing up some of the earnings for link units with regular ad units. The email’s subject line read, “Update to AdSense link unit reporting” and the email read:
As a publisher using link units on your pages, we’re writing to let you know about a recently resolved reporting issue that affected your account.
We discovered an issue with the way earnings from link units were being shown in publisher accounts, which resulted in some of your ad unit earnings being incorrectly attributed to link units instead. However, this was only a reporting display issue and so your overall earnings and payments were not affected. We’ve resolved the issue, and as a result, you may now notice slight differences when you look at reports for previous months. Specifically, when you generate separate reports for link units and ad units, you may see that earnings from link units on a particular day have decreased, but that the ad unit earnings for the same day have increased by the same amount.
Again, please be assured that your aggregate earnings and payments were unaffected, so you’ve been credited for all valid clicks and impressions. In addition, this issue has not affected your ad performance in any way.
Your reports will now accurately reflect your earnings from link units and ad units — we apologize for the inconvenience and any confusion caused.
So no damage was done on the earnings side. Some publishers who may have looked closely at their reports to make tweaks to their pages may be suffering a bit, but overall, this doesn’t seem like a major deal.
AdSenseAdvisor in a WebmasterWorld thread added a bit to it:
Just to clarify, there was a link units reporting discrepancy that we recently cleared up. Aggregate earnings were not affected AT ALL. It’s just that if you go back and pull reports on your historical performance, you may notice that a lower percentage of your earnings are now attributed to link units (and a larger percentage are attributed to regular ad units).
An email went out to all those who were affected, so I’m guessing a lot of you got it.
Your aggregate earnings have been correct all along, we were just a bit off in attributing them to link units vs. regular ad units. Now we’ve cleared it up and any reports you run now will correctly reflect exactly where your earnings came from.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
On December 2, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
Yesterday, Google adjusted their First Click Free program and wrote about it at both the Google Webmaster Central Blog and the Google News Blog.
In the past, the first click free program allowed you to show subscription content to Google even if you required users to login. The only requirement was that when users clicked from Google to the article, they should be able to see the content without having to pay or login. After that first click from Google, you can require them to login. The only issue was that anyone wanting to see any article on a paid subscription site, would simply go to Google and click over to the article from Google to the site to get it for free.
Google adjusted their policy to allow publishers to limit the clicks to the “five free accesses per user each day.” So after five clicks, the publisher can decide to require that user to login. Google does not determine how to calculate or code the first five free accesses per user, and leaves it up to the webmaster to figure out. So that means you will have some publishers who are more lax on that rule, allowing more than five and some might allow up to five in whatever 24 hour period they decide. Do they use cookies, IPs, or something else to track that access, that is up to the webmaster/publisher.
The first click free program is old, it dates back past 2007 or further, as far as I know. In mid-2008, there was confusion if it could be used in web search as well and the ultimate decision is that is applies both to News and Web search.
For more technical details on this program, click here.
Forum discussion at Google News Help and WebmasterWorld.
Yesterday, Google adjusted their First Click Free program and wrote about it at both the Google Webmaster Central Blog and the Google News Blog.
In the past, the first click free program allowed you to show subscription content to Google even if you required users to login. The only requirement was that when users clicked from Google to the article, they should be able to see the content without having to pay or login. After that first click from Google, you can require them to login. The only issue was that anyone wanting to see any article on a paid subscription site, would simply go to Google and click over to the article from Google to the site to get it for free.
Google adjusted their policy to allow publishers to limit the clicks to the “five free accesses per user each day.” So after five clicks, the publisher can decide to require that user to login. Google does not determine how to calculate or code the first five free accesses per user, and leaves it up to the webmaster to figure out. So that means you will have some publishers who are more lax on that rule, allowing more than five and some might allow up to five in whatever 24 hour period they decide. Do they use cookies, IPs, or something else to track that access, that is up to the webmaster/publisher.
The first click free program is old, it dates back past 2007 or further, as far as I know. In mid-2008, there was confusion if it could be used in web search as well and the ultimate decision is that is applies both to News and Web search.
For more technical details on this program, click here.
Forum discussion at Google News Help and WebmasterWorld.
On December 2, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
About two weeks ago, we reported on rumors of Sitelinks linking to the wrong site. Well, those rumors have just been confirmed by a Googler.
JohnMu in a Google Webmaster Help thread confirmed a long standing rumor where a Sitelink, can link to a third-party site, likely a competitor. John said:
This looks like something that happened long ago because of a bug on our side that’s persisted because you’re blocking the Sitelinks. Once you unblock them, they can go away on their own
So yes, there was a bug when you blocked a Sitelink that you did not want. You had to unblock them to make the Sitelink go away. Go figure.
I doubt most people will know how to do this or even think this is logical, so I do hope the bug is fixed and Google does this for all sites that are impacted.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
About two weeks ago, we reported on rumors of Sitelinks linking to the wrong site. Well, those rumors have just been confirmed by a Googler.
JohnMu in a Sitelink, can link to a third-party site, likely a competitor. John said:
This looks like something that happened long ago because of a bug on our side that’s persisted because you’re blocking the Sitelinks. Once you unblock them, they can go away on their own
So yes, there was a bug when you blocked a Sitelink that you did not want. You had to unblock them to make the Sitelink go away. Go figure.
I doubt most people will know how to do this or even think this is logical, so I do hope the bug is fixed and Google does this for all sites that are impacted.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
On November 21, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Somewhere over the last few years the search engine optimization industry went in many different directions at the same time. Take ten industry people and each might have a different view point or approach when it comes to search engine optimziation, why is that? Isn’t the goal across the board the same? What else could [...]
Somewhere over the last few years the search engine optimization industry went in many different directions at the same time. Take ten industry people and each might have a different view point or approach when it comes to search engine optimziation, why is that? Isn’t the goal across the board the same? What else could the goal be besides building up a business or website online?
Like everything else in a young and rapidly growing industry fundament things often times break down over time requiring a revamp or clean up to get things back on track and working how they were initially designed to work. Is the search engine marketing industry going to have to go through a clean up phase? Often times I speak with potential clients and they have been badly burned or seriously confused on how or why they need SEO for their business to grow online. The whole concept of search engine optimization should have a general theme across all vertical markets and cause very little confusion. I think in the next few years or maybe sooner we will see some very significant changes to how these online marketing efforts are handled. Who knows they might even come sooner than we think. With Google coming out with one of its most important search engine updates in the next month or so we will all likely see a significant change in how search engine results display information. This is still a very young industry and will most likely go through many rounds of significant changes and improvements but the abuse has taken its toll on not just the search engines but also many of the businesses and with the social element growing stronger each day the race to include social chatter in search results is on.
This is a very quick moving industry. A change in the search engines can happen one morning creating a domino effect for some time to come. What Bing and Google need to understand is that when done correctly an SEO expert is only helping in organization and clean up of the online information. A nice written meta tag and description is going to be much more helpful from a user stand point than one that is almost blank. The problem is getting the entire search engine marketing industry on the same page. I think it will happen and we are already seeing the wheels spinning for these changes in the industry to occur.
On November 10, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Search engine optimization is one of those marketing efforts that seems to just be consistently surrounded by confusion by many different parties. Clients seem to have a real hard time understanding just how to gauge the effectiveness of SEO for their business. Right out of the gate SEO was pigeon holed into something technical and [...]
Search engine optimization is one of those marketing efforts that seems to just be consistently surrounded by confusion by many different parties. Clients seem to have a real hard time understanding just how to gauge the effectiveness of SEO for their business. Right out of the gate SEO was pigeon holed into something technical and clients often times don’t understand that there is a big marketing factor in SEO. Yes there are technical aspects to it but it has evolved over the years into more of a marketing vehicle. It is important to stress that it is a marketing vehicle early in the sales process to avoid as much confusion as possible later on in the campaign. Still, how does a client gauge if it is working? Here are a few outside the box ways to analyze the effectiveness of your optimization efforts.
Analytics:
I urge every client to install some sort of analytics software onto their website. They need to see the numbers when it comes to SEO. We like Google analytics because it works well and it is free but you can use any that you are comfortable with. Numbers don’t lie. Showing a client various traffic reports is a good place to start. What where their traffic numbers prior to starting with you? What are they after? Are there an abundance of new referring websites delivering new traffic? Look at the bounce rate, was it 80% before and not it is 40%? Don’t these numbers count for some sort of success? If you are doing SEO all these numbers should eventually increase. If they don’t you might want to question your methods.
Conversions: It is important that clients don’t only look at sales to equate the success of an SEO campaign. SEO will only work in this manner if there is a high demand for a product. Right about now there is not much demand for anything. Has the email newsletter list grown? Customers might not pull out their credit card when they get to a site but if they submit their email information it means that they just might want to buy something in the future.
Rankings:
I am a firm believer that rankings alone don’t measure success but they are important. There are many different ways to really measure rankings and it is one way to show how well and SEO campaign is working. Rankings take time to grow especially in competitive spaces. If a website sees movement for competitive keywords that is a very good thing, an even if the site moves just a few spaces in the search engine results.
Branding:
With trust being a large factor in the eyes of not just people but search engines also branding is important for the overall success measuring of a campaign. Have your SEO efforts allowed a website to become visible on many other websites? Branding is playing a very important role in marketing any business. Optimization done the right way could really proactively brand a business online with the right light.
On October 29, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
I spotted this old thread at Google Maps Help that has very useful information and yet, we have not covered it (go figure). In short, the thread goes through the possibility of having a single business listed in your Google Local Business Center console multiple times. The questions are:
(1) Do you delete the repetitive listings?
(2) If so, which ones?
(3) If not, do you make sure they are in sync with each other?
For example, I have duplicate listings, two unverified, which I am afraid to delete:
Back in March, Joel H. from the Google Maps team wrote:
The only time you want to remove the listing from Maps is when the business is permanently closed OR you never want it to appear on Maps. If there are duplicates in your account, keep them. When I initially posted, I didn’t think about the ongoing process we have to merge duplicate listings on Maps. Because we do our best to merge duplicate listings on Maps, it’s possible that selecting Remove this listing from Google Maps may actually suppress a preferred listing in the future (the process of conflating listing happens regularly). We’ll keep our eye out for duplicate, Local Business Center verified listings, and work to refine our systems to merge the right listings as soon as we can. Until then, keep the conversation going on this topic, and we’ll be happy to continue to help as best we can.
————————————————————-
In the case of differing statistics (impressions/views), they are distinct listing on Maps, and Remove this listing from Google Maps is the right option. It’s likely you’ll want to choose the listing with less impressions or views.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
Update: You also 100% want to check out Mike B’s post on this.
Update 2: See Joel’s comment (he works at Google):
There’s a bit of confusion here – the ‘Delete’ link has two options:
- Remove this listing from Google Maps
- Remove this listing from my Local Business Center accountThe first option should be avoided, per the warning you quoted. The second option won’t cause a listings to be removed from Maps.
The second option won’t cause a business to be removed from Maps entirely — it will just delete it from your account. That’s the option you should use to get rid of extra copies of your business in your Local Business Center account.
So, if you ever have more than one listing for the same business in your account, choose one to keep, and go ahead and select: ‘Delete’ > ‘Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account’ for the others. In this case, keep your verified listing and delete the others.
I spotted this old thread at Google Maps Help that has very useful information and yet, we have not covered it (go figure). In short, the thread goes through the possibility of having a single business listed in your Google Local Business Center console multiple times. The questions are:
(1) Do you delete the repetitive listings?
(2) If so, which ones?
(3) If not, do you make sure they are in sync with each other?
For example, I have duplicate listings, two unverified, which I am afraid to delete:
Back in March, Joel H. from the Google Maps team wrote:
The only time you want to remove the listing from Maps is when the business is permanently closed OR you never want it to appear on Maps. If there are duplicates in your account, keep them. When I initially posted, I didn’t think about the ongoing process we have to merge duplicate listings on Maps. Because we do our best to merge duplicate listings on Maps, it’s possible that selecting Remove this listing from Google Maps may actually suppress a preferred listing in the future (the process of conflating listing happens regularly). We’ll keep our eye out for duplicate, Local Business Center verified listings, and work to refine our systems to merge the right listings as soon as we can. Until then, keep the conversation going on this topic, and we’ll be happy to continue to help as best we can.
————————————————————-
In the case of differing statistics (impressions/views), they are distinct listing on Maps, and Remove this listing from Google Maps is the right option. It’s likely you’ll want to choose the listing with less impressions or views.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
Update: You also 100% want to check out Mike B’s post on this.
Update 2: See Joel’s comment (he works at Google):
There’s a bit of confusion here – the ‘Delete’ link has two options:
- Remove this listing from Google Maps
- Remove this listing from my Local Business Center accountThe first option should be avoided, per the warning you quoted. The second option won’t cause a listings to be removed from Maps.
The second option won’t cause a business to be removed from Maps entirely — it will just delete it from your account. That’s the option you should use to get rid of extra copies of your business in your Local Business Center account.
So, if you ever have more than one listing for the same business in your account, choose one to keep, and go ahead and select: ‘Delete’ > ‘Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account’ for the others. In this case, keep your verified listing and delete the others.