Search Engine Reports - November 2008

Search Engine Reports

November, 2008
Google experiments with their search results page by allowing the user to specify the length (small, medium, or large) of the description that accompanies each listing. "Small" eliminates the description entirely, and expands the entire number of listings on the page to 15. "Medium" presents the listings with no change from what we're used to. "Large" increases the description length to about 625 characters. This reduces the number of search results on the page to just six.

Google Webmaster Guidelines no longer recommends submitting your site to Yahoo Directory, Open Directory, and other "industry-specific expert sites." This does not mean sites will be penalized for listings in reputable directories, but it suggests that webmasters should not rely too heavily on them for inbound links.

Google Analytics adds new features including Custom Reports, Advanced Segmentation, Motion Charts, a data export API, and updated interface. Advanced Segmentation allows you to break your traffic down into the following categories: paid traffic, visitors with conversions, direct traffic, new visitors, search traffic, returning visitors, referral traffic, and more.

Google Webmaster Tools now makes it possible to identify sites linking to pages you've removed from your site, so that you can better maintain your incoming link structure.

Google has settled with The Authors Guild Inc., agreeing to pay them $125 million for the right to scan and publish books, or parts of books, to Google Book Search. If a book is out of copyright or the publisher has granted permission, Google Book Search will include the full text. If it's in the public domain, you'll be able to get a PDF of it. If it's copyrighted, you'll only see the cover page, table of contents, index, and three pages of text. It's possible that Google Books will make inroads to the main search results page, as Google Video, News, and so on, have done.

Now, Google Adwords advertisers can specify whether they want their ads shown on Google search partners or just on Google itself. Also at Adwords, advertisers may now select from a series of pre-designed templates in order to take advantage of display ads, whether they have a graphic designer or not. Another innovation: product images that show up in Adwords search results. This appears to be in beta mode and not yet available to the general public.

Yahoo consolidates its offices, outsources some work, and plans to lay off another 10% of its workforce.

Yahoo Search Marketing now allows advertisers to target their viewers by zip code.

Yahoo rolls out its version of Google Analytics, calling it Yahoo Web Analytics.

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