August 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from August 2008: 1) Google’s Email, Gmail, Having Major Issues – It is not uncommon for Gmail (Google Email) users to complain about outages and issues with sending and receiving email. But right now, there are hundreds of Gmail users complaining that Gmail is down or […]

Chat with SearchBot

Below are
Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular
stories from August 2008:

1)
Google’s Email, Gmail,
Having Major Issues
– It is not uncommon for Gmail (Google Email)
users to complain about outages and issues with sending and receiving email.
But right now, there are hundreds of Gmail users complaining that Gmail is
down or simply not sending or receiving emails. A current search at Twitter on
Gmail will return hundreds of messages with Gmail complaints. I am personally
receiving a "Temporary Error (502)" and was receiving other weird errors when
trying the Gmail interface. Some are reporting that Gmail is working fine
through POP and IMAP protocols, but just not via the web interface.

===================

2) 6 Common Website
Mistakes That Are Costing You Money
– As I’m reviewing company
websites to prepare for our August SEO Training Class, I’m struck by how often
I see the same website mistakes. Since we’ve been offering the SEO classes
over the past 7 months, we’ve reviewed over 40 websites. In each class of 6
online marketers, there’s never a dearth of problems to point out to them. I’m
not talking about minor glitches here, but stuff that prevents the website
from reaching its full potential with the search engines. In other words, as
long as these problems exist, they’re not going to be able to gain all the
targeted search engine traffic that they could be. To put it into terms that
anyone can relate to–the company is basically losing money every day they
don’t fix their website. Here are 6 common website mistakes that could be
costing you money.

===================

3) Olympics
Logos From Google, Yahoo & Ask.com
– Today is the day that the 2008
Summer Olympics kick off in Beijing. Here are the logos from Google, Yahoo and
Ask.com for the special day:

===================

4)
Search & Internet
Explorer 8
– After finally getting the new Internet Explorer 8 beta
installed (demands to upgrade Windows, verify Windows, sigh), I spent some
time playing with the new search functionality and checking to see if
Microsoft was going to try to stack the deck in its favor with the new
browser. So far, it remains pretty even handed. Indeed, so far, Microsoft
seems kind of lame given that there are some cool search features you’re hard
pressed to locate. Let’s take a tour.

===================

5)
Google Adds Olympics
One Box Results
– I was chatting with Danny about the Yahoo Olympics
Shortcut on the Daily SearchCast and Danny noticed that a search for beach
volleyball olympics on Google returns a Google OneBox result.

===================

6) Google Insights
For Search Launches
– Google has launched Google Insights for Search,
a tool that helps advertisers and marketers understand searcher behavior. The
tool offers a comprehensive set of statistics based on search volume and
patters. You can compare seasonal trends, geographic distributions, and
category-specific searches, and you can group all these variables together to
get extremely specific. In addition, Google allows you see "rising searches"
overall or in a specific filter that you have set up. Overall, this seems to
be a huge extension to Google Trends, Google Ad Planner, and the tools
available within AdWords to advertisers. I will share some examples with you
below, in order to help you understand the powerful set of features Google
Insights for Search can offer you.

===================

7) Looking For The
Paris Hilton Campaign Video — How’d The Search Engines Do?
– As much
as I’ve enjoyed comedians poking fun at John McCain’s ad that uses Paris
Hilton to mock Barack Obama, even better is a new fake ad where Paris Hilton
herself takes on McCain. People are clearly turning to the web to find it —
Google Trends shows plenty of people seeking it in a variety of ways. A quick
look at that below, how easily (or not) the video can be found on search
engines, and the video itself.

===================

8) 3,000+ Hours Of
Olympic Video: Can Search Engine Users Find It?
– During the 2008
Beijing Olympics, NBCOlympics.com is streaming 2,200 hours of exclusive live
Olympic video, as well as over 3,000 hours of replays. This content is housed
exclusively on the NBC site. Users can search NBCOlympics.com to watch their
favorite highlights or catch something they may have missed. But can hungry
Olympic video fans find their way to this mass of popular NBC content? Like
the number of gold medals Michael Phelps will win, this remains to be seen.

===================

9)
Google.com Finally
Gets Google Suggest Feature
– After being in testing for literally
years, Google Suggest is finally coming to Google.com. This is the feature
where as you start to type in the search box, related searches automatically
appear below where you are typing.

===================

10) Googler Asks,
"Marry Me" Via Google Maps
– The Google Earth Blog reports that
Googler Michael Weiss-Malik has proposed to his girlfriend, Leslie, via Google
Maps. They documented everything on their new web site, MarryMeLeslie.com, but
here is a picture of the proposal using an embeddable Google Map: View Larger
Map

To see all of our most popular stories over time, visit our
Most
Popular Stories
page.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.