Google Loses the Underline
Noticed that google are testing the search results without the underline of the link. Currently this is on natural and paid listings in Germany. But seems that the styling of the line height is out on some of the listings.
Google gets spammed on “We are the world 2010″
You may have seen this post from Dave Naylor about the spam on the Nexus One Google SERP, one of the sites listed is a malware site.
On the SERP for “we are the world 2010″ (song to help people in Haiti) 6 of the 10 results are malware sites. This has come around as the topic is trending.
It might get cleaned up soon, but don’t click any of the listings!
Google Fail on Football Fixtures
If your a fan of a sports team you may have seen Google displaying the last result and next fixture at the top of the SERP. They haven’t got is correct on all searches with some team names not triggering the feature e.g. “bolton wanderers”.
For my team, Blackpool they are showing the fixtures for Blackpool FC our namesake who play in the Malawi Superleague.
If you try the search sometimes Google is displaying the correct date which indicates it’s mixed across data centres.
Lets hope nobody goes to see Blackpool play the Barracks on the 31st!
Google Remove Unauthenticated / Anonymous Spam Report Form
I’ve seen in the past scraper sites cause problems for sites in Google and this blog is currently been scraped and outranked sometimes by brokencontrollers.com. A quick spam report to google and the offending site soon goes away. But it seems that the page to report spam to google has been removed recently and you can only report spam while signed into a Google account…
The page used to be located at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html known as the “unauthenticated” you could report spam anonymously, so no ties to your Google account which links to your site.
That page now 301 re-directs to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en which does load up the form but only when logged in to a Google Account with Webmaster Tools.
The landing URL from the natural ranking for “report spam” takes you just the dashboard of webmaster tools which is pretty useless, guessing they haven’t added the correct re-direct.
This seems a strange move by Google as this may decrease the number of spam reports.
1. Not everyone has a Google account.
2. Even if you have a Google account your might not have Webmaster Tools.
3. You might not want to report on an webmaster tools account that contains your site if you use any black hat methods. E.G. reporting your competitor may draw attention to your site.
Google’s best method of detecting spam and paid links are reports from webmasters, SEO’s and users. This move to to remove the unauthenticated / anonymously report method may have made their jobs a little harder?
Google Doesn’t Use The Meta Keyword Tag
Yes, yes we know that Google doesn’t use the meta keyword tag. It was mentioned in a post back in December 2007 they ignore it. Today’s video and blog post just to any that missed it.
Yoast had a great idea to get the new post ranking for meta keywords so SEO’s don’t need to answer the question from clients. We can just say “Google Meta Keyword” for an explanation.
So if you have a blog link to the post using the anchor text meta keywords. It’s at 27 in the UK rankings at the moment being out ranked by a few blogs published today mashable, searchenginejournal and malcolmcoles. So if we all link together…
Google My Account links now Google Account Setting
I noticed at the start of the month that Google had moved about some of the links on the results pages, it hadn’t gone unnoticed as Pete Young at holisticsearch also spotted the changes.
It seems that the My Account button had now come back under the Setting link as “Google Account Setting”
Google were playing around all this weekend, at one point all the search options had gone.
Although a little change it shows that people do pick it up as it’s a button that’s used often. It reminds me of the time all my door knobs at my house were changes to open the other way, took some time to get used to!
Matt Cutts answers question on the UK SERPS but misses the point
Although it’s been a little quiet recently on the whole UK SERPS issue Matt Cutts did get round to answering the question on why so many foreign sites are popping up in the UK search results. First of all it’s great that there is this platform to get a question to someone at Google but Matt’s missed the point in answering the question.
So basically, Google will now consider more .com sites in the UK SERP’s, but ones that are relevant to UK users for example .com websites based in the UK or promoting UK companies e.g. tesco.com (which ranked before all of this anyway). This isn’t the problem, the issues we are seeing are .com’s ranking when then are American or Australian companies or to the extent using a au.com domain. Maybe Google isn’t able to determine what is a UK based .com ??
An example of this was from a non related blog from Dom the Hodge who had used a screenshot of a UK SERP for the search conference lanyards. Ranking in at number 3 and 4 you’ll find two .com.au sites.
www.freshpromotions.com.au/lanyards/conference-lanyards.html
www.lanyardsandmore.com.au/
It’s up for interpretation but I don’t think that two Australian sites are relevant to a search for conference lanyards. If the search was for “Australian cooking techniques” then maybe it is relevant to show Australian sites ??
Matt eneded the video saying that if there are problems in the results then people should get in touch….. looks like i’ll be “getting in touch often” unless they do make a change.
US websites ranking in Google.co.uk an example – Commercial Laundry Equipment
There has been lots of chatter about a recent shift in ranking by Google with US based sites ranking in Google.co.uk, seoptimise and Search Round Table reported in articles and there was plenty of tweets about the movement. It’s caused a few problems with plenty of UK sites moving down the rankings due to the influx of US based sites.
It’s hard to quantify sometimes what has shifted in the rankings has done as you don’t have before and after data of the top 20, 30, 40 rankings.
Fortunately I have a report from January the 18th 2009 for the top 40 sites in google.co.uk on a search for “commercial laundry equipment”.
I’ve then taken the top 40 websites for the same search query today and the difference is concerning with US sites ranking in the place of many good UK sites. There is also sites from Belgium, India, Spain and China ranking in Google.co.uk.
The list is big so I have added it into a Google Docs Spreadsheet which can be seen by clicking the image.
It would be great to get someone from Google to have a look over this. If anyone has seen something similar with their clients or SERP’s post the details below in a comment. Also link to your own blog with an example of the movement of US sites in the UK rankings.
UPDATE 17/06 : Fresh Egg have an article on a similar problem with the key phrase Pet Surgery. Check out the article which has a great conspiracy theory behind the US sites ranking.
Wolfman Alpha results appearing in Google results
It appears that Wolfman Alpha search results are appearing Google results. This search for “search for i am” returns a number 9 position for a Wolfman Alpha search result.
But the robots.txt is currently blocking search engines form the results page such as http://www46.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Where+am+I%3F
www46.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pirates+vs+ninjas
www46.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+is+the+meaning+of+life%3F
User-agent: *
Disallow: /input/
So either Google is ignoring the robots rule or Wolfman Alpha have only just blocked their results as their are 71 results for a site command on http://www46.wolframalpha.com/input/.
Still not found a really good use for Wolfman Alpha… still better than tonight’s Britain’s Got Talent
Search Engine Rankings how they move
Search Engine Rankings move, they move a lot and there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it but keep on the track of building content and links which should reduce the movement.
How much can they move? Well in the matter of 12 hours my Blackpool FC blog move from 3 to 9 on the first page for the key phrase “blackpool fc“.
So happy happy, joy joy with a number three ranking, the official club site takes up number 1 and 2 spot so no room for improvement. That was about 11 last night.
This morning at 11, whammy all the way down to 9 on the bottom of the first page. I’m signed out of my Google account which can skew the results.
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