Google seems to be including in-page navigation links within their SERPs, most likely as part of their strategy to show the user as much info as possible about the destination page before they click through. We’ve seen this strategy in action with the site search box that is added below the SERP entry. John Andrew’s Continue reading →
Googlebot Strips Default Filenames From Sitemap URLs
September 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment
There’s a useful thread over at Google Webmaster Groups that highlights an issue with default filenames such as index.html and sitemaps. As user edralph888 explains: The URL in our sitemap is in the format: http://www.domain.com/index.html?whatever=value The problem with Googlebot is that even though that is the URL we put in the sitemap, it doesn’t use Continue reading →
The DaveN Blog Hack Raises Questions On Google Blacklist API
September 19, 2008 By 4 Comments
When Dave Naylor first reported some issues with his blog, I fired up SERPGuard.com to check out his URL. Our tool interacts with Google’s API to find compromised sites which are listed on their malware or phishing blacklists. Dave’s pages were being dropped from Google’s SERPs, which raised my suspicions he had been blacklisted but Continue reading →
John Mueller Answering Webmaster Questions on Twitter
September 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment
John Mueller is a well known face in Google’s Webmaster Help Group and works as a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Zürich. He’s also a regular on Twitter under his familiar username JohnMu. Seeing as it’s Friday, he’s allowing people to send him Webmaster questions through the service. I don’t know if this is official Continue reading →
GSiteCrawler Now On Ubuntu
August 15, 2008 By 8 Comments
I went cold-turkey on Windows at the beginning of this year, installing Ubuntu on my work station. It’s been frustrating at times, when you have to learn to do tasks again but you soon adapt. One thing I have missed though are some Windows tools and applications. Most have been replaced, even PhotoShop has a Continue reading →
7 Google Docs Templates For Search Marketers
July 31, 2008 By 1 Comment
Earlier this month, Google gave their users access to a free library of document templates. I found time last night to dig around and discovered some useful ones for search marketers. To save you some time, here are direct links to the ones I downloaded. 1. Non Disclosure Contract (NDA) An NDA is an essential Continue reading →
Matt Cutts Suggests Google Penalties For Fake Stories
May 22, 2008 By 21 Comments
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, has finally waded in on the issue of fake linkbait. Jonathan Crossfield (aka Kimota) provides some background information on the controversy. In summary, Lyndon Antcliff posted a satirical story on a client’s site, which ended up being quoted on several mainstream news channels. Critics have claimed that Lyndon Continue reading →
Google Analytics Merges Data on Accounts
April 4, 2008 By 3 Comments
I have several sites in our Google Analytics account, as most people do I suspect. However I noticed this morning that Google seems to be mixing up the data in a couple of them. Here’s a screenshot of the content report (pageviews/traffic by content) when logged in as RussianMarketer.com: As you can see, there are Continue reading →
