Google’s First SERP Down To 7 Listings

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Google appears to be testing some changes to the first page of results. The first listing is getting additional “sitelinks” underneath in many cases, from two links to as many as six additional links. For search results that have the first listing containing these sitelinks, there is now only seven listings total on the front page. It doesn’t matter how many sitelinks, it’s still seven listings. For an example, Google “ebay” and check the results.

Another change is that Google is not limiting the number of results appearing for a single domain to two per page – it looks as though one domain can potentially dominate the entire front page now, without limitation.

Whether or not these are permanent changes or just tests we’ll see as time progresses.

Read the full article here:
7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain

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Google Says If You’ve Blocked GoogleBot

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There are many webmasters who have their reason to block GoogleBot from their site. Your site can still be listed, but if you’ve prevented the GoogleBot from crawling your pages Google will display it clearly in the SERPs. Instead of showing the standard description tag (or another snippet) it will say, “A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt – learn more.” This may be worth knowing if you care about what displays on Google when people find you there and you’ve been blocking the GoogleBot.

Read the full article here:
Google Search Descriptions Now Say If GoogleBot Is Blocked

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Google and Oracle Both Pay Bloggers, Now Ordered To Reveal Who

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A United States judge has demanded that Oracle and Google reveal paid bloggers. The two firms must provide the information by August 17. It is already known that firms pay commentators, but the information on who the paid commentators are must be revealed. Unfortunately however, it is unclear to both firms what will qualify as payments, as there are many ways they send out payments. Where is the line between bloggers and professional journalists, and is it distinct enough to clarify?

Read the full article here:
BBC News – Oracle and Google are ordered to reveal paid bloggers

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Facebook Hack Help and Fixes

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There are some steps one may take to retrieve their Facebook when it is hacked. First and foremost, one should change their password, along with having a secondary email and phone number submitted to Facebook in case of a hacker changing the password. One should also verify their identity on Facebook, and utilize the two-step login process. Also, to see if anyone has hacked into an account, one can check their Facebook sessions. If you do all of these, you can recover your account and prevent future issues.

Read the full article here:
Steps to Take When Your Facebook is Hacked

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Custom URL on Google+ Coming Soon

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It’s been done on Facebook, and it looks like it’s coming to Google+. Getting your own customized URL. For now, Google’s offering it only to limited numbers of users (apparently large name brands and personalities), but word is that it will be coming soon to anyone who wants it.

Read the full article here:
Google+ Launches Vanity URL Feature for Select Users

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SEO Is Not Always What The Client Thinks

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In many cases where a client is looking to gain SEO, their expectations are set in their minds. “I want to be #1 for 10 terms” or “I want 2000 visits a month”. And they expect to have these results in one or two months. But this is usually far from reality. Real SEO means putting time and money into the project to build trust with both Google and with visitors to the site. This isn’t a switch that you turn on or off, and it does take a good amount of time to build properly. A good SEO company will warn their potential clients about this reality before starting work or taking money, but sadly, “good” SEO companies are a bit more rare than not. Mark Jackson has his thoughts on this struggle in the article linked below.

Read the full article here:
Why I Talk Most Folks Out of SEO Projects

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Google Acquires Travel Guide Company Frommer’s

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Google has bought another company and may be moving forward to make some more changes for user interaction with the search engine. Zagat was bought to allow reviews to be made in a different way. Why Frommer’s was bought is still a bit of a mystery, but this company is one that provides a variety of travel assistance, known for their travel guides. Perhaps Google has plans in the future to support travelers that need some help on their excursions and do not have established resources they know to use.

Read the full article here:
Zagat Take Two: Google To Acquire Frommer’s Travel Guides

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Translation From Images On Your Phone by Google

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Google has introduced a new service that ties Google Translate to Google Goggles. It means there’s a new OCR tool useable on your phone that can detect language from images and translate them. An example of a good way to use this is of a restaurant menu with foreign unknown language – the service uses OCR (optical character recognition) and allows your to brush your fingers over the screen to select the part of the menu in the image you want translated. The update is currently available for Android’s version of Google Translate and supports Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish languages.

Read the full article here:
Google Translate: Picture To OCR To Speech

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If Guest Posting, Low PR Blogs Are Okay For Quality Sites

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When using guest posting to increase Web traffic to one’s own site, it is common to skip sites with relatively low PageRank (the score given to a site by Google’s patented search algorithm). However, the wisdom of this convention is questioned by search engine optimization (SEO) adviser Amanda DiSilvestro. She suggests ignoring the convention when the site is easy to navigate and filled with content that is original, relevant, and regularly updated.

Read the full article here:
Guest Posting on Sites with a Low PR: Is There an SEO Benefit? – Search Engine Journal

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Olympics Breaking Records For Mobile Search Volume

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Olympics are the first truly multi platform global sporting event. Tablet and smart phone searches approached 50% of overall search query volume for the first two days of the Olympics, and Japan even exceeded that to 55%. At some times during the games searches are being done more on smart phones and tablets than on computers. The Olympics are establishing new levels of mobile usage for online searching, definitively showing the public’s adaptation to mobile browsing and searching.

Read the full article here:
Google: Nearly 50 Percent Of Olympics-Related Searches Coming From Mobile Devices

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