Have you ever stumbled upon a web site that was legally seized by the U.S. government? Sometimes, not always, they contain an image on the site that looks like this: Some folks at WebmasterWorld are saying that Google has been...

A WebmasterWorld thread has webmasters complaining that Microsoft is cloaking their MSNBots again, soon to be named BingBot. It has been going on recently since early August and continues throughout today. Microsoft has had issues with cloaking their bots in...

Google announced two new webmaster features. The first is related to rich snippets testing tool and the second is related to the breadcrumb URLs in Google. Google said they have made the rich snippets testing tool error reporting more robust....

Google has been pushing the local maps Google Place tags. They have been giving them away for free for a month, but requiring users to enter their billing information and cancel within 30 days to not be charged. The thing...

Yesterday I tweeted, "Just cause you spend 65k on a web site, doesn't mean Google will like it" and referenced a Google Webmaster Help thread. Well, I was wrong! Well, not 100% wrong. People agreed with me, in fact, it...

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....

This is very very early and I don't have evidence of this myself, since I don't monitor rankings, but a single post at WebmasterWorld suggested there is a Bing update taking place. textex, someone I trust at the forum, who...

Yesterday I reported Google is testing "sponsored map icons" in the US. They are basically enhanced point of interest icons using the company's logo, instead of the basic POI (point of interest) icon Google uses on the map views. Here...

I doubt you missed the big SEO community news from yesterday. Danny Sullivan announced in a Sphinn thread that Sphinn will be going the editorial route and be removing voting. Instead, editors will decide what should be on the front...

Some users have recently been having difficultly removing verified users in Google Webmaster Tools. Google allows you to give multiple users access to view your Google Webmaster Tools reports and data. Sometimes you want to revoke access to some of...

The obsessed (in a cool geeky way) webmasters at WebmasterWorld are discussing recent patterns they noticed with how Google's spider, GoogleBot has been accessing their site recently. One said GoogleBot is crawling 50% less than it normally does. Others are...

Sheara Goldenthal pinged me with a question yesterday about why the Google Keyword Tool shows different search volume data for the same keyword phrase, when she is logged in versus not logged into her AdWords account. It is a great...

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....

So Yahoo web search, the organic results, are now powered by Bing, Microsoft search. The next to fall is the paid search side of things. Yahoo announced yesterday that the beginning of the end for Panama, Yahoo's Search Marketing platform....

Google showing maps and local listings in the pure organic web search results is nothing new. For example, the image below shows a search for [plumber 10010], NYC plumbers. Now, if you are not in that local listing and you...

Honestly, this is one topic I really don't know too much about. Google lets your Geographic target for your web site in Google Webmaster Tools. But what if you have a ccTLD, a country specific top level domain such as...

There is a weird Google bug with the cache feature. It seems to only impact home pages. For example, a search for this site in Google returns a Google search result of the home page (we aren't penalized yet): But...

A Google Places Help thread has a story of a person who bought a business from someone else. The issue is, that business has pretty bad reviews in Google Maps and since there will be new management, he wants to...

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....

There is an outstanding thread by Tedster, Ted Ulle, at WebmasterWorld. The topic is on too many newbie SEOs taking the SEO advice given on forums, blogs, news sites and here at face value. He is concerned that a new...

Google announced they added a new filter that helps you find "specialized blogs" on any topic you can imagine. Here is how it works. Go to Google, search for a topic, then click on the "blogs" filter on the left...

Inc.com posted a really great article with a very catchy title. The title is a bit misleading, it reads How Google Cost Me $4 Million. In short, it goes through a story of how a site was doing great on...

Figured I'd cover a third Google bug this morning. Yea, three, first was a Google Social Search bug, then a Google Places bug and now a bug with Google Merchant Center. Ronald from the Google Merchant Center team posted a...

A new bug with Google Places seems to be preventing some Internet Explorer users from adding a new business to Google Places / Maps. This was first reported a few days ago at the Google Places Help forum and Google...

Google Social Search launched about 11 months ago and it has been popping into the normal search results for those who are socially active online. Recently, I spotted a bug with how Google Social Search works. A Google Web Search...

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....

I spotted an interesting comment from Google's JohnMu at the Google Webmaster Help forums. John said that in some cases, using Google Translate to auto-translate content for your web site might be seen as "creating auto-generated content, which would be...

Long tail keywords were the bread and butter of many SEOs. The MayDay update did have a major impact on that for many web sites. But why? A new WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around how SEOs and webmasters no longer...

A WebmasterWorld thread has a few, not many, webmasters and SEOs talking about a possible tweak to the MayDay algorithm tweak. For those of you who do not know what MayDay is, it was a pretty significant ranking algorithm change...

Over a month ago, we reported that the Google certified AdWords professional logos were not working. Those who passed the test between July 22nd and July 30th were given a logo that was not functioning properly. When you clicked on...

Today, if you go to many international versions of Google, you will see a special Google logo/doodle for Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley's 213th birthday is today and Google want's people who don't know about her to know about her, at...

Google offers many AdSense ad units, but one that may not get as much attention as the others are ad links. Ad links were introduced in March 2005 and never really get too much credit from advertisers. Ad links, also...

In this week's recap, I kind of give it to Yahoo. They say I am "irresponsible" for saying they are not a search company when their own CEO said that?! Google's brand search change is out of hand and then...

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....

Sometimes I love these threads and sometimes I hate them. A WebmasterWorld thread asks if he will negatively be impacted by adding the noindex meta tag to 3,500 pages on his site. The answer to these questions is never black...

Microsoft not only has their own search engine, but they also have their own iPod named the Zune. A couple months ago, Bing, Microsoft's search engine, announced enhancements to their entertainment results, including better integration with the music results and...

You know when you use Google Street Views and there is a little compass at the top left of the page? I have a picture of it on the top right of this page. The compass lets you click on...

Recently, we have been talking a lot about video sitemaps and how important they are becoming in your Google optimization efforts. Here is one more tidbit for you on video sitemaps. According to Googler, JohnMu, your video sitemaps content should...

Often a company will hire a third party search marketing company to handle their Google everything. That includes making sure they are listed and verified in Google Maps/Places. The issue is, some people, especially in the early days, verified their...

Google has finally given their real time search results a home at google.com/realtime. We kind of saw this coming when we reported that Google Alerts added updates to the type list. This was part of the overall announcement by Google....

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....

I love it, Google keeps tweaking their re-design to make it more similar to the look prior to the redesign. Why? Their users keep complaining and asking for the old design and Google made one tweak a month or so...

I am sure everyone by now knows the news that Google Voice is coming to Gmail. Yes, you will be able to make phone calls via your Gmail page to anyone in your contact list. It is neat. They are...

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the basic topic of using absolute URLs versus relative URLs. I believe we covered the topic several times here, but not when it comes to image SEO. Again, an absolute URL is using the...

So not only can owners reply to reviews left on Google Maps, Google has just updated their map review guidelines. The review guidelines seem to take aim at those who leave bad reviews or good reviews without really using the...

Duplicate content is not a fun topic for many SEOs and Webmasters. When it comes to dealing with large dynamic sites and dealing with how they paginate content, it makes things a bit more complicated. Pagniation of articles and even...

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....

I really don't know why I am so upset, but I am. Probably not as upset as all those Yahoo Search engineers who are out of a job or as upset as Jerry Yang but I am really upset. Yahoo...

A quick SEO myth buster post for you. You know how you can set the preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools? Well, if you do that, you won't be deindexed, so don't worry. A webmaster asked this question in a...

Dynamical.biz translated a new eye tracking study done Spanish (PDF here) of how searchers look at the search results on a search results page. Here is the break down of the study, but before you look at it, let me...