Topic: Domain name

SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 14, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Landing Page Testing: Choosing Between A/B Or Multivariate Approaches There are quite a few testing techniques available in the market. In this post I will dwelve into the two commonest testing […]

Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They?

Over at Search Engine Roundtable today, Barry Schwartz writes about the latest comments from Google about domain registration and its impact on SEO/search rankings. In this case, it’s Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration: A bunch of TLDs […]

SEO

5 SEO Tips For Nabbing International Search Real Estate

Though the housing market continues to plummet in the United States, “real estate” on the search results page is as competitive as ever as marketers try to nab as much as possible.   But accomplishing this in foreign markets can be challenging. For example, even if you have a dot-com version of your website that ranks […]

Microsoft Makes It Easier To Filter Out Unsafe Images In Bing

Microsoft announced two new ways Microsoft is making Bing image and video search safer to use. The first change Microsoft made was to serve up all adult related images and videos on a new domain, explicit.bing.net. Having the content served from a different domain will help schools and homes set their own safe filters to […]

Google Adds Change of Address To Notify Google Of Domain Change

Google announced a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools named change of address. This feature allows webmasters to notify Google when they move domain names. When used, Google will update the index to reflect your new URL. The change will stay in effect for 180 days, by which time Google would have crawled and indexed […]

Do Links From Expired Domains Count With Google?

From time-to-time, issues about how domain names can impact Google rankings come up. Is it true that if you buy a name, all the “link equity” that name has gained is lost? Below, a look at this and some related questions. Several years ago, Google sparked some concerns when it said that buying an established […]

How Many 301s Are Too Many?

Google’s Matt Cutts talks about multiple domains and 301 redirects in one of the recent videos uploaded to the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The question essentially asks if Google views the redirecting of many domains toward one domain as a sign of suspicious activity. Matt’s answer is that there are many companies — Google […]

Google Changes Display URL Policy: One Domain Per Ad Group

The Google AdWords blog has finally announced that the new display URL policy will go into effect the week of February 24th. The new policy, which I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable about a month ago, and was confirmed by AdWordsAdvisor (an official Google representative in WebmasterWorld), will disallow multiple display domains per ad […]

Google Expands AdSense For Domains Globally

I am now seeing reports from several blogs that Google is expanding AdSense for Domains internationally. In December 2008, Google expanded the program to all US publishers. They promised to continue the expansion and seems to have done so, overnight, to all international publishers. Google has not confirmed this with a blog post yet, but […]

Google PageRank: A Strange Case Of Hyves

This is one the most bizarre things I’ve seen come down the pike in a long time. Let’s see if you agree: According to this post on Mediadonis, you can check if Google has penalized a domain or not by simply adding the word hyves as a subdomain and then checking the PageRank of that […]

Del.icio.us Now Delicious.com, With Improvements

Delicious has now relaunched under Delicious.com with some new functionality. The old Delicious was at del.icio.us and should soon redirect to the new dot com address. Along with the domain change, the Delicious site has been redesigned to aid newcomers on using the site. Here are before and after screen captures:

Google Sued For Quality Of Ads On AdSense for Domains

Google Sued For Selling Ads On Parked Domains from InformationWeek reports Google was slapped with a class action lawsuit over the AdSense for Domains product. In short, advertisers are upset with the quality of traffic driven through that program and feel that their money was taken from them without any return. The suit was filed […]

Google Gets Whois Answers In Search Results

Looks like Google’s gained a new direct answer service, whois information for domains. Enter a query like whois searchengineland.com, and you’ll be told when the domain was registered and expires, along with a link to more information from the Domain Tools site. Here’s a screenshot:

Confirmed: Google Domain Park To Cease Ads On Domain Kiting Sites

Google to kill Domain Tasting from Domain Tolls reports receiving a tip from a Google informant that Google will be preventing “domain tasting” from participating in the AdSense for Domains (aka Domain Park) program. Domain tasting is the practice of trying out a domain name for a 5 day-period. Registration companies will refund a domainer […]

SEO

Search Year 2007: Search News, In Review

Each month, I compile Search Month — a recap of all the stories that have happened relating to search, categorized by topic. I thought it would be fun to take all the Search Months over the past year and produce this edition of Search Year 2007. It was far more work than I imagined, but […]

Coming Soon: Block Domaining Ads From Google?

In response to popular request, block domain ads looks to be coming, along with other blocking features. I have reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that some AdWords advertisers are now able to block categories of sites, plus they are able to block domain ads and error page ads. Back in August, Google told us […]

The Google Drive Domains Find New Home: GDrive Coming Soon?

Gary Price reports that Google has recently moved MyGoogleDrive.com and MyGoogleStorage.com from third party domain name servers to Google domain name servers. Is this a sign that the GDrive (Google Drive) is coming soon? Back in September, we reported that GoogleDrive.com was moved to Google’s name servers and anticipated that the GDrive was coming soon, […]

PPC

Block Domains Feature Now Live In Yahoo Search Ads

Earlier this month, Yahoo told us they will be launching a block domains feature. The block domains feature enables advertisers to specify which domains, subdomains, or URLs they do not want their ads displayed on. As I reported this morning, the block domains feature is now live. For more information, see the Yahoo help page.

Will Google GDrive Come To GoogleDrive.com?

Garett Rogers reports that Google has updated the name servers for GoogleDrive.com to point to NSx.GOOGLE.COM. Garett explains that this is typically a sign that a new product is coming to life at that domain. Although we don’t know for sure, it may imply that GDrive is about to launch really soon.

SEO

Superpages Acquires ‘LocalSearch.com’ Domain

Local destination site AmericanTowns.com owned the URL LocalSearch.com but has now sold it to Idearc (publisher of Superpages) for roughly $3.3 million. That figure includes a strategic investment in AmericanTowns, which Superpages will help further develop. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search Engine Land, a special look at local search […]

Google Webmaster Tools Now Supports Non-English Domains

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they now officially support adding non-English domain names to Google Webmaster Central. So if you have a domain that looks like https://北京大学.cn, you will be able to add it and very the site in Google Webmaster Tools. Now Google supports Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) within the […]

AdSense For Domains Opt Out Coming To AdWords Advertisers

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has said they will be allowing AdWords advertisers to opt out of the AdSense for Domains product. I quoted AdWordsAdvisors2 from a WebmasterWorld thread as saying: We are working on making it simpler for advertisers who don’t want to show on domain sites or error pages […]

Yahoo & Others Form Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse

Brand Owners on Web Offensive from Red Herring reports that Yahoo, Dell, Coca Cola, Hilton and others have joined together to fight cybersquatting. The companies formed a collation against cybersquatters named Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse. Cybersquatters purchase domain names that are similar to trademark names, such as yahooemail.com and hilt0n.com. Some use that traffic […]

$5 Million Domain Sale For SEO.com

DotSause.com reports SEO.com has been sold to WashingtonVC for $5 million. The new domain will be for an SEO company led by Dave Bascom, who currently runs an SEO company named Web Targeted and blog named Search Trends.