BBC Session ID’s in Google

BBC session ids appear to be showing in the Google SERPs

What this means for SEO purposes I don’t know yet but will have a closer look.

New Sitelinks Layout – Google

I’ve seen that google sitelinks displayed in a new layout over the past few days,  but noticed for the first time today that even sites that are not number 1 in the serps are displaying the new layout.

An example can be found if searching in the UK (using google.co.uk) for the phrase free online advertising

One of my sites comes up at number 1, (with no sitelinks), but the site that appears in number 2 has the new layout sitelinks,

The above screen shot shows my site in number 1, and another site in number 2 with the new layout sitelinks.

Google Getting Dates Wrong

It looks like google are trying to be too clever again.

Try a search on google like this,

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&q=site%3Awww.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk%2Fbusiness-listings.asp

and you will see google has added a date to the start of some descriptions, a perfect example is http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=Ensurve

My listing is at number 2 and the description google displays is,

“6 Apr 2007 … Ensurve – Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) … Ensurve. Domestic Energy Assessment and Energy Performance Certificate production. Ensurve …”

Nothing wrong with that you may think, but 6 Apr 2007 doesn’t appear anywhere on the page, within the title, meta description, keywords or any links pointing to the page.

What does appear on the page is the date of entry 04/06/2007 which for us in the UK is 4 June 2007. Google has obviously seen this date converted it to a US format and is using it in the description.

Google Information for Blog Authors

Looks like google are trying to get more blog authors to add their blogs to the google index.

They have added a direct link to the ping page from the blog search homepage.

Screenshot of page today

Screenshot from cached version of page

SearchMash Finished

I’ve always liked SearchMash, especially the flash version, so was saddened today when going there to find it was no more.

No explanation, just a message saying searchmash has gone the way of the dinosaur

Google Local Search Postcode

Looks like google local search have a new feature where you can refine search and enter a postcode or town.

It must also be cookie based because once you do one search and set your location, it also remembers it for subsequent searches.

Great new feature for users, but a nightmare for search engine optimisers.

Google Florida Update 2003 – 2008

Many of us still remember the Google Florida update of November 2003.

5 years on, have Google done it again?

Only time will tell.

West Midlands Business Directory

Every now and then I get what I call a google jammed page

A google jammed page is basically a page on a website that no matter what you do , it just doesn’t get picked up by google.

My West Midlands Business Directory page is a perfect example of this, despite changing the content, setting new links to it, and tweaking it about, it still shows a cache from way back in July and appears nowhere in the SERPs.

Tonight I set up a little experiment to test a system I used when I was selling World Cup football shirts back in 2006, will it work? I will only know if my West Midlands Business Directory gets crawled soon.

DoubleClick ignoring Google Adwords TOS

Now that DoubleClick is a google owned company does it mean they no longer have to comply with the Google Adwords TOS (terms of service)?

I had some adwords ads showing on one of my sites this morning which I didn’t like, so checked the display URL and added it to my competitive filter. A few hours later the ads were still showing so I decided to investigate further. I right clicked the ad, copied the source and pasted it in to Notepad to discover that the ad URL was completely different to the displayed URL, and was in fact going via clickserve.uk.dartsearch.net part of the DoubleClick network.

Now according to the Adwords TOS, the display url must be the same as the ad URL which enables us to know who to add to our competitive filters. If Doubleclick are allowed to do what they are doing it means we can know longer block individual ads without having to put dartsearch.net in our competitive filters, which could in turn block legitimate ads.

If DoubleClick are allowed to get away with things like this it akes a complete mockery of the AdSense competitive ad filter.

Google cache updated and tidied up at last

It looks like google have finally gotten around to updating the google cached snapshot of page feature. It looks a lot neater now and doesn’t appear to be effected by the CSS of the page being cached anymore.