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.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Google’s 09/09/09 Logo (Doodle)
At 09:09:09 today on 09/09/09, Google posted a special logo for the special occurrence. Here is the logo, not sure how much longer it will be live: The official logo is also at google.com/logos/090909.gif. Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Stop Spiders From Crawling Your Site on Shabbat, Including GoogleBot
A Google Webmaster Help thread has an interesting discussion around blocking your site from coming up for both visitors and search engine crawlers on Shabbat (the Jewish Saturday). This is not a new topic, we discussed using cloaking for religious Shabbat purposes in the past. In short, some observant Jews do not want their site to be accessible on Shabbat, which is sundown Friday night, to nightfall Saturday night. The issue on the SEO front
Bing Not Honoring Robots.txt Directives?
Over the past few weeks, I have been noticing threads pop up in the Bing forums with complaints from webmasters that Bing’s bot, aka MSNBot is not honoring their robots.txt directives. It was not just one thread, but at least four. They include one from yesterday over here, one started on September 3rd over here, one from September 1 over here and one started on August 25th over here. I ignored the first three, trying
Google Webmaster Tools Keywords Report Showing Blank Lines?
A webmaster reported in a Google Webmaster Help thread that in his Google Webmaster Tools Keyword report, he noticed that Google is displaying a blank line as one of his more popular keywords used within the site. The blank line is [_______________] and he has no idea why it shows up not just once, but twice. The first one is in the second most popular keyword used on the site and the second one is
Google AdWords VistaPrint Coupon Codes Invalid
A Google AdWords representative posted a thread at the Google AdWords Help forum. In that thread, Bindu, the Google rep, said that the recent marketing blitz from VistaPrint had the wrong coupon codes on them. If you received a VistaPrint AdWords offer code, the code was misprinted. Specifically, the code was “accidentally abridged” so the code won’t work. To get them to work, you will need to contact AdWords support – according to Bindu. Bindu
Longer Domain Registration Does Not Increase Google Search Engine Rankings
It seems that Google has finally gone on the record that longer domain name registration has no impact on your search engine rankings, at least not at Google. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a post from Googler, JohnMu, who said outright that it doesn’t make sense for Google to use this as a ranking metric. Let me quote John: A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Information not updating, Google Maps Help
Old coupon (that needs to be removed) not showing up in my LBC account. Help?, Google Maps Help
Active Twitter User Celebrates 104th Birthday 🙂, Cre8asite Forums
Can a Federal agency post sites for Unexploded Ordinance?, Google Maps Help
Minus 50/60 penalty on single keyword, WebmasterWorld
Robots.txt 101, Sphinn
Tour Bing, WebmasterWorld