+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.
Google confirm outgoing links help for SEO
Google has confirmed what many of us have believed for years
“Outgoing links are also important and should comply with our guidelines.”
Source: Inside AdSense
Google Problems 2008
It is being reported in numerous places that Google has been having problems today.
Unconfirmed reports say that an unexplained script has triggered PC’s that have the google toolbar installed and that this is causing strange re-directs to totally unrelated websites.
July 2008
Bolux to Google
Has someone at google got a sense of humour?
Create a seed keyword list
Red Evolution have devised a fantastic new keyword tool which lets you create your own scenario for a search query. After creating the scenario, a unique URL is created which you can then email to friends, post on forums, send to people to test for you, etc. These people then enter the search phrase they would use for each scenario and the system generates a seed keywords list.
An example scenario can be found here, I’m looking for somewhere where I can advertise my services and products. and you can use the same page to create your own scenarios.
Testing Google to the limits
I made a post in a business forum the other day about one of my test sites that had been filtered by Google and had just returned back to the serps after a long period.
One of the people who replied said “Never had a site filtered or penalized in my life” to which my reply was “You don’t do enough testing then”
I constantly have different tests running, and sometimes use specific sites just for testing new ideas, theories and for monitoring changes in the google algorithms.
Obviously some of these tests stray over to the dark side, and I sometimes use test sites to see just how far you can push the boundaries, which on occasions has led to me overstepping the mark, hence sites getting filtered or penalised.
The guy in the forum seems to think this is a bad idea, but I personally have always believed one of the most important things in search engine optimisation is testing, testing, testing.
Google cached snapshot of page not working properly
I’ve always been a great user of the google Cached Snapshot of Page feature, but are noticing that it is becoming less and less accurate.
Quite often I do a search, see a description in the SERPS, but when checking the cached snapshot it has no relation to the page or the description displayed in the serps.
Another thing I have noticed recently is that using a cached snapshot of a page on large pages only reveals up to a certain size.
An example of this can be seen on my Website Designers Directory it is a large page (over 860k) and displays the details of over 1600 UK website designers who are listed in my Business Directory
A look at the cached snapshot of the page makes one think that Google has only crawled so much of it, and that this is what they will have indexed. On closer inspection though, and by doing a search for a unique phrase near the bottom of the page, we can see that Google has in fact crawled the whole page, and the whole page is indexed.
To sum up: It looks very much like the google cached snapshot of page feature is either lagging, restricting how much it shows, or is simply not working how it should be.