Something look odd in the search results above for google checkout? Yes, that's the official Google Checkout home page listed first, but it's most definitely NOT the right title for the Google Checkout page. That's got folks at Digg wondering if Google Checkout has been hijacked, sparked from Jon West's original post here. No. It's just Google being lame. Below, more about how HiBidder.com ended up providing the current title for Google Checkout as listed on Google, as well as a look at the problems of dealing with titles for pages that a spider can't access. Most search engines, includ [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Checkout | Google: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

As a consultant who specializes in social media, I've learned one of the most powerful tools in gaining readers is the title or headline of your stories. Crafting a title that grabs someone's eye, gets them to stop scanning and pay attention to your story rather than reading another one is a critical first step. Were you scanning your feed reader when you came across this article and saw something called a "Top 12" list? Did it make you pause, make you wonder if somebody made a typo? Isn't it supposed to be a "Top 10" list? People have been doing top 10 lists for tho [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Social Media Marketing

Last week, I covered a new command for the meta robots tag -- one to prevent search engines from using Yahoo titles and descriptions. In doing that, a number of questions came up about the meta robots tag syntax itself. Google Webmaster Central has now posted "Using the robots meta tag," providing some clarity from Google. In addition, both Yahoo and Microsoft have also sent me information on using the tag. I'll run through what everyone says below, complete with charts for easy at-a-glance comparisons. The meta robots tag was an open standard created over a decade ago and designed initiall [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | How To: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO

Dave Naylor noted yesterday that Search Engine Watch appears to have largely disappeared from Google, at least when performing a site: command search. Today, Marketing Pilgrim notes a weirdly similar thing happening to another site and points to an interesting Webmaster World thread on what could be called the "About 260" problem that appears to have started early last month. (NOTE: Google is now commenting on it here). I'm calling it the About 260 problem because several sites have seen that figure come up in obvious site: errors that have happened. For example, consider this se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Yahoo! Search Support for 'NOYDIR' Meta Tags and Weather Update from the Yahoo Search Blog covers how at long last, you can now tell Yahoo to not use Yahoo Directory information to make a title and/or description for your web page listings. It also cover how Yahoo's currently doing a reindexing change that might impact rankings. More on that below, plus tips about also blocking the Open Directory information from being used for your pages and some possible conflicts with multiple robots tags. Sometimes pages are listed in both Yahoo's crawler-based search results and within its human-compil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO

A reader emailed me today noticing that Google was showing a date next to his listing, which made me think this was a good time to revisit how, when and where search engines show crawl dates for pages. These dates are a useful way for site owners to understand how often they are being revisited or for anyone to "squeeze the loaf" of a search engine to see how fresh it is. Here's a search engine-by-search engine rundown on date display. I'll also cover how we've sadly lost crawl dates being embedded next to listings, over the years. But that's not all! Read now and you'll even [...]

Related Topics: Ask: SEO | Ask: Web Search | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Features: Dates | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Stats: Freshness | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: Site Explorer

Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research by Lisa Barone shares some of the basic steps to take when it comes to keyword research, which is the cornerstone of SEO. Complimentary to Lisa's article is an updated tool by SEO Book named New Keyword List Cleaner Tool. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEM Tools | SEO: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | SEO: Writing & Body Copy

Title tags remain one of the easiest and most important on-page SEO factors you can use to gain traffic. Jill Whalen provides a helpful review of how to write your title tags with All About Title Tags at Search Engine Guide. She goes over her feelings on if company names belong in the title tag, the type of keywords you should include in them and more tips. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

A week ago, we thought that Lower Case Titles In Yahoo Coming From Anchor Text, and asked Yahoo about it. Tim Mayer of Yahoo has commented on original post at the Search Engine Roundtable saying that this has now been fixed. And, based on the examples in our post from last week, a search on searchbliss now brings up the title tag from that page and does not use internal anchor text (as we theorized) in the Yahoo search results. I have before and after screen captures over here. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO

Rand at SEOMoz has a Best Practices for Title Tags that goes over many of the simply fundamentals of a good title tag for both your users and search engines. Rand suggests that adding your brand name to the title tag is not a bad thing, but make sure it is just a piece of the title tag, users and search engines like to see relevant title information, based on the content of the page the link is pointing towards. Rand also suggests ensuring your title is 65 characters or less, make sure you have keywords in the title, be more specific when it makes sense, use dividers in the title, and more t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

At the last WebmasterWorld PubCon, there was a site clinic where one of the issues that came up was Yahoo not using the title tag for a specific site. Instead, Yahoo got titles for these pages in a place no one could figure out, and the titles were all in lower case. Recently, this has appeared to become more widespread and the forums are starting to discuss it. As Ben Pfeiffer noted at Search Engine Roundtable, there is a large WebmasterWorld thread on Yahoo replacing title tags titles with titles Yahoo possibly creates from the links (anchor text) pointing to that site. Let's look at exa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO

On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings is that search marketers may need to be more concerned about getting into the top five rather than the top ten, if they want to be seen. In addition, search engines might want to seriously experiment more with adding "official site" links at the top of their pages and possibly enlarge the size of listing descriptions or "snippets" to help searche [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Features: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Stats: Search Behavior

Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google's Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some people were seeing were likely small and seemingly restricted to individual sites as new data flowed in, rather than a massive algorithm change similar to the great Florida update of November and December 2003. All fine and good and reassuring until the great sex blog disappearance happened [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: General | SEO: Spamming | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

I reported this morning at Search Engine Roundtable that Tim Mayer from Yahoo posted in a WebmasterWorld thread saying support for a "No Yahoo Directory" tag will be coming this January. A No Yahoo Directory tag will enable webmasters to tell Yahoo not to use their Yahoo Directory title in the search results. Yahoo began supporting the No Open Directory (noodp) tag on October 25 and promised us that they would support the no Yahoo directory tag equivalent sometime in the near future. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Yahoo: SEO