Search Engine Roundtable

Official: Google Penguin 1.1 Now Live

Barry Schwartz — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:10:00 -0400

For the past few weeks, we have been reporting on speculation in the forums that Google released a Panda refresh. The Penguin 1.1 update is now officially live.

All of those speculative posts were down right wrong, according to Google. But Google's Matt Cutts has tweeted that a Penguin update is now live - the moment many of you have been waiting for.

Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of English searches.

Personally, I think all those times we reported on Penguin updates - I think those were live tests of what we see now. I think Google was testing this and some webmasters picked up that their sites either recovered or newly hit. Of course, there are many who were under the false understanding that they were hit by Penguin. But for the most part, I believe these were live tests. I can easily be wrong.

Those updates were on or about May 13th, May 15th and last night on May 24th.

So now we have it - I hope those who were hit by the original Penguin update on April 24th has recovered.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Co-authors by Barry Schwartz and Ben Pfeiffer

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 25, 2012

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:00:00 -0400

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 25, 2012
Fun SEO news week. iAcquire, a respected SEO and internet marketing company, was called out for allegedly buying links for Dun & Bradstreet. Shortly later, iAcquire and their affiliates are no longer found in Google. There are new rumors of a Penguin...
Google Bans The Agency Who Buys The Link
This is the first time Google banned the agency who bought the link, instead of who they bought the link for. This is a significant event in the history of the SEO industry. iAcquire was banned from Google for allegedly buying links for their client Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation.
New Google Penguin Update Rumors: Penguin 1.1
Tedster, the administrator at WebmasterWorld, started a thread at WebmasterWorld asking if others feel that Google pushed out or is pushing out an update to the Penguin algorithm. We thought we saw Penguin updates before, once around May 13th and then again around May 15th but Google said no, it wasn't Penguin, Panda or anything else. Is this real?
Compare Your AdWords Performance With Competitors: Auction Insights
This week, Google introduced a new AdWords report named Auction Insights. The report gives you a glimp into how well you are doing for a specific keyword compared to your competitors.
Google Transparency Report Shows Search Listings URL Removals
Imagine getting 1,255,402 content removal requests in a month or about 41,000 of them per day! That is what Google says they are getting from copyright owners wanting those who are stealing their content removed from the Google search results.
Fantomaster Happy
Mikkel DeMib Svendsen snapped a picture of his friend and fellow legendary SEO Ralph Tegtmeier aka Fantomaster. He said he wanted a beer but only one, so he got only one - a rather large one. This w

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Interviewing at Google, Facebook, Foursquare, Dropbox, Fog Creek, etc, Hacker News
Re: QS and Call Only Text Ads, AdWords Community
Suddenly out-of-control changed titles affecting traffic, WebmasterWorld
Malware sites seem to have hacked Google image results, WebmasterWorld
Try out the new version of Google+ for Android (2.6), Google+ Help

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 25, 2012

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:00:00 -0400

Fun SEO news week. iAcquire, a respected SEO and internet marketing company, was called out for allegedly buying links for Dun & Bradstreet. Shortly later, iAcquire and their affiliates are no longer found in Google. There are new rumors of a Penguin update. Google should add a way for people to block unwanted links via Google Webmaster Tools. Google says if your competitors spam, report them. Hey, I have an ad on my site for "Anti Penguin Link Building" - makes me sad but smile at the same time. Google said if you link to a few bad sites, it won't hurt you. Google does audit AdWords accounts managed by third parties. Don't want Google to stop your AdWords ad rotation, then try pausing them. AdWords has a new report named Auction Insights showing you how you compete with your competitors. Google Places updated their PO Box policy. Moving and managing your Google Place account is dangerous. Google AdSense removed the scrolling ads, the arrows. Yahoo Axis is a new browser and search tool from Yahoo. Aaron Wall made LEGO characters for SEOs and Googlers. Google has a sweet interactive logo for the Moog Synthesizer. That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Google Bans The Agency Who Buys The Link

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:53:00 -0400

Last night, I reported on Search Engine Land that iAcquire was banned from Google possibly over link buying allegations.

I do not have the whole story yet but this is what we know.

(1) iAcquire was 'outted' by llsocial.com for buying links through affiliates of theirs for Dun & Bradstreet.

(2) Last night, Google delisted iacquire.com from their index:

(3) Michael King, the Director of Inbound Marketing at iAcquire heavily implied iAcquire didn't remove themselves but rather it was something Google did. He tweeted:

@rustybrick sure was. There's no network for them to kill so that's them throwing their hissy fit.
â" MyCool King (@iPullRank) May 25, 2012

(4) Some of the cited affiliates of iAcquire were also delisted (actually all of them that I know of):

(5) We also received word from Dun & Bradstreet's legal council that they sent notices to all these affiliates about removing any links and also forwarded those notices to the press and to Google. So they informed Google about all those affiliates. How they know who the affiliates are, ~~they said they did their own investigation~~ they told me they pulled the list of the site that did the original investigation.

I believe we will share that letter on Search Engine Land later today when we have more details.

First Time Google Bans An Agency Instead Of Targeted Site

This is so significant because this is the first time that Google has targeted an agency for buying links for the clients. I should be fair and say, maybe Google found that this agency and their affiliates were not only buying links for their clients but also for themselves. So maybe Google delisted them because they indeed bought links for themselves?

Either way, we've only seen large public brokers and underground link networks being penalized, along with the target sites but not agencies.

Some in our industry think this is a horrible thing. Google is terrible for going after the agency.

Others feel that Google did the right thing because this agency allegedly put this client at risk and other clients as well.

Either way, this is a pretty significant step in our industry not matter how you feel about the situation.

Postscript: I should add, as Michael Martinez points out, that there was an other SEO agency that was banned from Google for violating Google's guidelines. This agency was named Traffic Power and was banned in 2006 or so. I honestly would not equate Traffic Power to iAcquire because (1) Traffic Power was the result of hundreds of sites being deindexed from Google and (2) they did some really sketchy stuff beyond asking to pay for links. But they were an "SEO company" and Google did confirm they were banned for violating guidelines. Keep in mind, paid links back then were not an official violation of Google's guidelines.

Forum discussion at Google+ & Search Engine Land Comments.

New Google Penguin Update Rumors: Penguin 1.1

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:26:00 -0400

Tedster, the administrator at WebmasterWorld, started a thread at WebmasterWorld asking if others feel that Google pushed out or is pushing out an update to the Penguin algorithm.

He believes they are due to the increase in discussion in the various forum threads of people claiming recoveries and also new people claiming they were hit. That is the same metric we use to detect and report on possible Google updates - but this time, I am citing Tedster.

We thought we saw Penguin updates before, once around May 13th and then again around May 15th but Google said no, it wasn't Penguin, Panda or anything else.

Is this the real Penguin update? Is this version 1.1 of Penguin?

I do not know - did you recover?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Compare Your AdWords Performance With Competitors: Auction Insights

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:11:00 -0400

This week, Google introduced a new AdWords report named Auction Insights. The report gives you a glimp into how well you are doing for a specific keyword compared to your competitors.

The report contains the following fields:

Average position
Average position is a quick way to gauge how high your ads are ranking compared with those of other advertisers competing in the same auctions. Average position is the average rank of the ad in the auctions, which determines the order of the ads on the search results page.
Impression share
Impression share is the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads' targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores. In the Auction insights report, impression share also tells you the impression share of other advertisers as a proportion of the auctions in which you were also competing.
Overlap rate
Overlap rate tells you how often you and another advertiser received impressions at the same time for this keyword.
Position above rate
Position above rate tells you how often another participant's ad was shown in a higher position that yours was in auctions in which you both received impressions.
Top of page rate
This statistic tells you how often your ad (or the ad of another advertiser, depending on which row you are viewing) was shown at the top of the page, above the organic search results.

Here is a screen shot that you can enlarge:

You can access it on the keyword level by clicking on the icon on the left of the keyword and then on the "activity report" option:

For more details, see this help page.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Transparency Report Shows Search Listings URL Removals

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:59:00 -0400

Imagine getting 1,255,402 content removal requests in a month or about 41,000 of them per day! That is what Google says they are getting from copyright owners wanting those who are stealing their content removed from the Google search results.

Google said they added to the transparency report "information about copyright removal requests that we [Google] receive from copyright owners and the organizations that represent them to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content."

You can see that new section over here. The numbers of requests are astounding but most of them come from several major copyright holders and reporting organizations - as you can imagine.

The more amazing stat to me is that with all these incoming requests, Google is able to act on most within 11 hours! And Google acts on 97% of them!

The issue is, I am a content producer and my content is stolen within minutes of me posting it. I don't have the time to go through the DMCA request process to have Google take down that content from their search results. Most small publishers don't have that time.

Wouldn't it be great if this was built into Google Webmaster Tools? Google could show you all the content stealing your content (at least the ones they think) and then you have a quick button to file a DMCA request with all the details prefilled in. I doubt they will do it but maybe someone else should - if it isn't out there already?

Forum discussion at Google+.

Fantomaster Happy

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:44:00 -0400

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 24, 2012

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:00:00 -0400

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google's Future In 20 Minutes By Larry Page
Google's CEO, Larry Page, presented the Zeitgeist 2012 in the UK a couple days ago. The presentation was titled "Beyond Today" and gives a glimpse into what direction Google is headed.
Google AdWords Account Audit
Did you know Google does AdWords audits on any AdWords management company they feel like...
Google Scholar Redesign Removes Key Feature
Google Scholar recently was completely redesigned to match the new modern Google look. Part of that means some features have changed...
Yahoo Axis: Browse & Search The Web
Last night Yahoo shocked the world by introducing something that looks cool...
Google Places Updates PO Box Policy
Vanessa from Google announced a new PO Box policy in the Google Places Help forums. The new policy forbids you to place your PO Box information in both the address 1 or 2 fields. Previously, if you had a PO Box...
SEOs & Googlers As LEGO
Aaron Wall has created a collection of well known Googlers and SEOs in the search community and made them into legos. It is pretty funny and the list is pretty comprehensive. You can check them out at

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Morgan Stanley Subpoenaed In Facebook Overcharging Case, WebmasterWorld
"Show map of <location>" under our listings, any way to remove?, WebmasterWorld
Best backlink checker for dead links, WebmasterWorld
Have you gone mobile yet?, AdWords Community

Google's Future In 20 Minutes By Larry Page

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:20:00 -0400

Google's CEO, Larry Page, presented the Zeitgeist 2012 in the UK a couple days ago. The presentation was titled "Beyond Today" and gives a glimpse into what direction Google is headed.

Google published the 20 minute speech on YouTube for you all to watch. I have also posted the transcript below:

Yes, of course he is wearing the Google Glass but I can't figure out what is with all the green?

Here is the transcript:

0:07>>Larry Page: If you guys are going to take my picture, I will take your picture, too.
0:12Let me share that with the whole company. Okay. Done.
0:23So, it was a great session. A little bit of a hard act to follow. I was -- I'm upset if
0:30I have to follow Peter. So thank you, Peter. I think that these are obviously the Google
0:37Glass. It is only "glass" because it is only on one side. But it is still in a bit of an
0:44early stage, but I'm really excited to be able to have one and to have it working. And
0:50it was pretty exciting. I just talked to our London Googlers, too,
0:55and I showed it to them. They were very excited about it.
0:57It doesn't yet show me all of your names, but I'm really glad that you are all here.
1:04I think that -- And I really want to thank everyone for coming and for spending time
1:09with us. It seems like you're all having a good time.
1:13Partnership is really important to Google. We've been a company that's had a lot of partners
1:17and lot of business relationships. I think that's been really important to Google's success,
1:22and I hope it's important to all of you as well and to your success.
1:26So it has been about a year since I became CEO again, and I wanted to share a little
1:31bit of an update on what's happened and what my priorities have been and what we've been
1:35doing. So I think the -- the first thing, I'd say
1:40is that it is easy to think about technology as being relatively static. You know, Google
1:45is a search engine. We've done these various things for a long time and not much changes.
1:51But that's not really what's happening. I think that the pace of change is really accelerating.
1:56And, you know, there is more devices being sold every day than there ever has been. People
2:01are more interested in them. They're spending more money and more time using their phones
2:06and everything else. And I think it's really exciting to see that
2:09everyone in the world is going to get a smartphone now. And for many people, for most people
2:15probably in the world, it's going to be their first computer.
2:18And it is really -- you know, it is not a question of "if" now, it is just a question
2:21of "when." You know you are going to have a smartphone and it is going to be connected
2:25to the Internet and you are going to be able to do amazing, amazing things.
2:29Now, it's hard -- even those of us in the industry, it is pretty hard for us to predict
2:35what's going to happen 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now.
2:41We do know things will look really different, and it's -- again, it is easy to -- it is
2:46easy to forget that. I don't think five years from now I'm going to be carrying a phone
2:50where if I drop it, it is going to splatter into pieces because it is basically a thin
2:54piece of glass. I'm sure that's not going to be the case.
2:58So there's going to be a lot of change in ways that really affect us and will really
3:02change our lives. Now, for Google, you know, what should we
3:08be doing? We should really be focusing on really important things that are going to
3:11matter a lot. And we took a look at what we were doing and
3:16we thought, Well, we have an awful lot of products, some of which people don't seem
3:19to care that much about. So we went through and we -- we went through kind of a painful
3:24process where we shut down or closed over 30 different things.
3:28And we also made our products visually better. You know, we made them much more coherent.
3:35And I think that -- you know, I think that it's really important that when you use technology,
3:43you know, you don't see our organization chart or you don't see all of our different products.
3:47It just works together beautifully. And we believe technology should really do
3:52the hard work for you, rather than you having to do the hard work. And that means that,
3:57you know, it should handle communication, discovery, memory, you know, things like that
4:02that might be difficult for you. And that means that you all can do what makes
4:06you happiest, which is living and loving and really enjoying your life.
4:10Now, let me talk about some of our areas of focus as a company.
4:15The first one, for the last year, has been Google+ which is our social efforts, and people
4:22are a bit confused about this. I'd say that we think it's really important that when you're
4:26using Google, you be able to easily share things. You know, I just shared the photo
4:31of all of you with the company, and I did that in a few seconds. And the reason I was
4:35able to do that is using Google+. You know, I had circles set up for the company, and
4:41that sharing was consistent. And, you know, I think that we've had tremendous
4:48success with that, you know, around things like photos. You know, you can take a photo
4:51now also on your Android phone and share it and have it uploaded automatically and share
4:56it really easily. And, you know, we have over 170 million people
5:00now that are, you know, participating in that, that have upgraded, you know, of Google+.
5:05And the other part where people are a little bit confused about what we're doing, that's
5:09the social spine of Google. That means everything in Google gets better by being able to share
5:14and have identity and things like that. The other part of Google+ is the product itself,
5:21where you can follow people, you can read your stream and so on, and that's a social
5:26network and it's starting from a growth -- it started from zero people and it's grown a
5:32lot and it's grown much faster than any other social network ever has.
5:38But it's starting from zero, it's not starting from Google on day one.
5:41You know, I have -- I think I have over 2 million followers now on Google+. There's
5:46a whole bunch of people with over a million people. And we've been really excited about
5:51the growth there, and the pace at which it's growing, but it will take some time. We're
5:56starting it from scratch. So let me talk a little bit about search,
6:00too. I think that's a really big area of focus for us, and it's an area where, you know,
6:05I think if you used Google from five years ago, you'll be astounded at how bad it is.
6:11Or how bad it was, right? And, you know, search has gotten a lot better.
6:16You don't always see it because we change it every day and we try not to distract you
6:20too much with changes, but when I think -- one of the things I'm most proud of that we did
6:26recently is that I have a friend at Google called Ben Smith, and that's a very common
6:34name in the U.S. You know, Smith's the most common last name. And it's very -- it was
6:40difficult to find him before. But now actually with Google+ and with our understanding of
6:45all that, you know, when I search for Ben Smith, I actually get the Ben Smith that I
6:49know and he actually appears in the search box and there's a little picture of him. And
6:54if that's not the Ben Smith I want, I can, you know, delete him and put a different one
6:59in. But I'm actually searching for that person
7:02rather than the string, the combination of letters. And that's a really big deal for
7:07Google and it's a really important thing. We don't want to just do that with people.
7:14Also maybe in the last week or so, we released this thing called the Knowledge Graph, or
7:22Knowledge Panels, we're calling them, and those actually give you -- if you search for
7:26"Tesla" now, "Tesla," then you get the car and you get the scientist, and we know lots
7:34of things about them. So, you know, if you search about, you know,
7:38a different -- a lake or something like that, we'll know the depth of the lake.
7:43And what we're really trying to do is to really get to the point where we can represent knowledge
7:47and we can do much more complicated types of queries. What are the 20 deepest lakes?
7:53What are the highest market cap companies? Or whatever. Things like that where we really
7:57understand what that query means, rather than just give you, you know, the exact text that
8:03matches best on some Web page that's somewhere. And so we're really looking at synthesizing
8:08knowledge and I'm incredibly excited about that.
8:12Now, search also is not just about finding things. It's really about taking actions,
8:17and, you know, when you're doing searches, a lot of times you want to actually do things.
8:22You don't want to just look at 10 different links but you want to actually buy something
8:27or you want to book a flight or you want to know what the weather is, you know, right
8:32there. And we've been doing a lot of this work over
8:35the years. You know, a lot of it requires deep partnerships with probably many people
8:39in the room to make sure that we have access to the right kind of data, the right business
8:44models, to make all that work. But ultimately in search we really want you
8:47to be able to take actions. And that's even more important on mobile,
8:52right? Where you have very limited screen space, you have the limited ability to do
8:57things. It's really important that you be able to
9:00get directions, for example. We've worked very hard on maps. You know, on your phone,
9:06you can get directions right from your current location or you can pay easily for something
9:10using your mobile phone, by using NFC payments which we're really excited about.
9:16Now, you know, in talking about mobile, I think that -- you know, I remember actually
9:24I visited our London office many, many years ago and they actually had a closet in our
9:29London office where we do a lot of our mobile development and they had a closet full of
9:34100 phones. And the reason why we had that closet is that's what was necessary, actually,
9:40to make our phone software work. And at the time, it actually didn't work very well. I
9:46don't know if you remember using a phone, you know, five, seven, eight years ago, but,
9:51you know, you were lucky to be able to -- you could make a phone call but that was about
9:55it. You know, you couldn't get maps or directions or upload your photos or anything like that.
10:00And we were really, really frustrated by that, and that's why we developed Android.
10:06And, you know, if you think back, you know, at the time when we realized that, it wasn't
10:10obvious that, you know, there was going to be a good way of making a software platform
10:15for phones that would get adopted by everyone and all that, but Android's really on fire
10:19now, which I probably don't have to tell you all, and it's very, very exciting.
10:26It's a big area of focus for us, obviously. Now, you know, one of the things -- I'm talking
10:32about having a really, you know, integrated, beautiful experience. You know, on Chrome
10:37on Android, you can actually get all of your tabs that you see on your desktop. If you're
10:42signed in, you're logged in with us, you can get all the tabs you have open that you have
10:48on your desktop and you can hit the "Back" button and it will go back or you can get
10:52all the things that you have available there and it's just an amazing, beautiful, seamless
10:56experience. And that's really what we're aiming for, as
10:59a company. Now, another example of that is Google Play,
11:06which we recently released, you know, where you can basically have any movies, books,
11:10apps, or games, all accessible from the web or your phone and you don't have to sync.
11:16You know, you don't have to use cables, you don't have to download anything, it just works.
11:21And that's, again, really what we're -- what we're aiming for.
11:23Now, you know, I talked a little bit about focusing the company, and, you know, I think
11:30that I want to talk a little bit about making some big bets.
11:34And, you know, we always try to concentrate on the long term, what we're doing for the
11:39long term, and, you know, I think that, you know, many of the things we started up that
11:45are really big now, like Chrome, were seen as kind of crazy when we launched them.
11:50And so how do we decide what to do? What -- you know, how do we decide what's really important
11:54to work on? Well, I like to call it the toothbrush test.
11:59So the toothbrush test is: Do you use it as often as you use your toothbrush? For most
12:04people, I guess that's twice a day. Raise your hands. Twice a day? Yeah. Okay. Most
12:09people. So I think, you know, we really want things
12:13like that, and I think things like Gmail, obviously you use much more than twice a day,
12:20and YouTube, you know, I think that those things are amazing. And I think that -- you
12:26know, when we at things like YouTube, people thought, "Oh, you guys are never going to
12:31make money with that. You bought it for $1.4 billion. You're totally crazy." And we're
12:36reasonably crazy, but it was a good bet. And we've actually been doubling revenue every
12:43year on YouTube for four years, and actually if you're doubling things, it starts to add
12:48up pretty quickly, even no matter where you start from.
12:54So I think that's a good example of the -- how sort of our philosophy is. That we see things
13:00that people use a lot, that they're going to -- that are going to be really important
13:04to them, and we think that usually you can make money from those things over time. You
13:08know, a well-run technology business can be monetized over time.
13:14And I think also having the courage to kind of fail on these things. You know, our AdSense,
13:21which is how, you know, we help other partners monetize their Web sites, that was the result
13:27of a failed experiment to understand the web. So the way in which we target advertisements
13:33to Web pages was -- was a failed result to better understand the web and to actually
13:39improve search. So I think you really got to be prepared to
13:42try ambitious things, which really leads me to my next point.
13:48So I was a student at the University of Michigan, and I went to this sort of summer leadership
13:54course, and their slogan was to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. A healthy disregard
14:01for the impossible. And I think that's a really good slogan.
14:06And that's really stuck with me in all those years. And I think that, you know, it sounds
14:11kind of nuts, but it's often easier to make progress when you're really ambitious, and
14:16the reason is that you actually don't have any competition because no one else is willing
14:21to try those things, and you also get all the best people because the best people want
14:26to work on the most ambitious things. And, you know, I've been really struck by
14:32this over the years. One of the projects I wanted to talk about was we have this project
14:36for self-driving cars. You know, and that seems really crazy. You're like, how can a
14:41car possibly drive itself? You know, how's that ever going to work?
14:46And, you know, we've had a team working on that and we've driven over 200,000 miles now
14:52with no incidents. And it's really amazing to ride in one of
14:57these cars. It's just almost a life-changing experience. You sit down, you drive through
15:01the parking lot, and you're like "Why am I driving," you know?
15:04It's just an amazing, amazing experience. And think about -- you know, I have young
15:08children. I'm sure many of you do as well. Think about your children. By the time that
15:12they're old enough to drive, there's no reason we can't have technology that helps them -- teaches
15:17them to drive and learn all the things they need to know. And that's like almost, I think,
15:22the leading cause of death, actually, for kids as they learn to drive. I mean, it's
15:26a big deal. So I think, you know, my point was that I
15:30think in technology, if we take some ambitious bets, we really have an amazing ability to
15:37transform people's lives. Yesterday I was in New York City with Mayor
15:44Bloomberg and we announced this effort -- you know, they have a new technology school going
15:50into Manhattan onto Roosevelt Island, and I think that's really exciting thing, and
15:57Google contributed space to incubate this new school, which is Cornell and Technion.
16:05And the reason why I think that's important is I think that there's tremendous things
16:09that are possible in the world through technology and we have relatively few people working
16:14on those things. We're not developing a lot of new scientists
16:17and engineers. It's probably, you know, well under 1% of the population in most developed
16:25countries. And I think a lot of our progress really comes from those people and their partnerships
16:30with businesses and other things to really make things happen.
16:37So I think, you know, I'm trying to give you a very positive world view, but I think, you
16:40know, anything you can imagine probably is doable, right? You just have to imagine it
16:45and work on it. And things that we thought were almost impossible
16:50-- so we were interested in machine translation. There is services on the web. We had licensed
16:56one which could translate between different languages. And obviously for search, you know,
17:01if you can't -- if the information's not in your language, we can't find it for you.
17:06And most information is not in your language, right? This is sort of a -- by definition.
17:12And so we thought, well, it would be great if we could provide search results for any
17:16language for any query, and so we really focused on that problem. And we focused on it and
17:22we developed Google Translate, and we found some machine learning researchers and we said,
17:27"Do you think you can translate, you know, between any languages and do it better than
17:31an average human translator?" And they said -- they laughed at us, and said,
17:35"No, we can't possibly do that." But they actually were willing to try.
17:39And, you know, six years later, we can translate between 64 languages, and it's amazing, actually.
17:49We're better -- in many languages, we're better than an average human translating. We do it
17:54instantly and for free. And between those 64 languages, we can translate between any
17:59two of the languages, so we have something like 4,000 languages we can translate between.
18:06And so I'm just trying to give you -- I guess I'm tremendously optimistic that whatever
18:11things we try to challenge, whatever challenges we try to take on, we can solve with a little
18:17bit of concerted effort, and some good technology. And I think that's a really exciting place
18:22to be in the world. So I think we want more people working on
18:26it, we want to have more ambitious goals, and I think with that, we could easily double
18:32kind of human progress and the rate at which we're developing.
18:37So I think our job is to really make the world better, and, you know, I think that the world
18:42has enough resources to really provide a good quality of life to everyone. You know, we
18:48have enough raw materials and things like that. I think we need to get better organized
18:54and really move a lot faster and really make -- work on making that a reality, really by
19:00developing amazing technology that helps the world get better organized, that helps people
19:04be more productive, and I think that's an amazing, amazing thing to see happen.
19:10So I think we take this responsibility really seriously and thank you.
19:15[ Applause ]

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google AdWords Account Audit

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:13:00 -0400

Did you know Google does AdWords audits on any AdWords management company they feel like?

According to the AdWords third-party policy, Google has the right to do these audits since April 2011. Google said:

Any third party who sells Google AdWords may be audited at Googleâs discretion. Audits may be based on complaints that are received by Google or may be initiated by Google. Google may initiate audits beginning on April 1st, 2011, to give third parties sufficient time to prepare.

I like it! But it is a lot of work on the AdWords consultants side of things?

A WebmasterWorld thread has one AdWords consultant who was audited about 9 months ago. He said it was a very easy process where he had to "fill in an online form and attached a sample client report for them to review. " He had about 2-3 weeks to fill out the form to be in compliance with AdWords' terms. Then a couple weeks after filling out and submitting the form, Google responded that all was good and he was in compliance.

Have you been audited by Google for the campaigns you manage for third-party companies? Is it as bad as IRS audits?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Scholar Redesign Removes Key Feature

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:02:00 -0400

Google Scholar recently was completely redesigned to match the new modern Google look.

Part of that means some features have changed, were removed or are hard to find.

One complaint in the Google Web Search Forums is about a key feature being removed.

In the old advanced search settings you were able to limit or filter your search by "search only articles in the following subject areas" but that feature seems completely gone in the new interface.

Here are screen shots:

Old Interface:

New Interface:

Google has yet to confirm if it is completely gone, coming back soon or hidden somewhere where no one can find it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Forums.

Yahoo Axis: Browse & Search The Web

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:47:00 -0400

Last night Yahoo shocked the world by introducing something that looks cool, useful and unique - Yahoo Axis.

Yahoo Axis is a browser/extension/search tool that changes the way people explore and search the web. The best way to describe it is to show you some videos.

How It Works:

Here are some commercials:

Pretty cool, don't you think?

Will you use it? That is another question.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Places Updates PO Box Policy

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:36:00 -0400

Vanessa from Google announced a new PO Box policy in the Google Places Help forums.

The new policy forbids you to place your PO Box information in both the address 1 or 2 fields. Previously, if you had a PO Box, Google recommended you put it in the address 2 field - that is no longer the case.

Vanessa explained:

As it stands today, we allow users to list their P.O. Box in Address Line 2. This sends your listing for manual review to our teams (thatâs why you might see your listingâs status as âPendingâ), who then verify the accuracy of Address Line 1.
Because Google Maps listings should be reflective of a businessâs physical location, and mail receiving locations donât fit this description, weâve made a change to this policy. P.O. Boxes are no longer permitted in either Address Line 1 or 2.
Now, we know many businesses can only receive the verification postcard at a P.O. Box. If you are one of those businesses, or if you have a P.O. Box in the address field for an already verified listing, please see these next steps:

So what do you do, it depends on your situation. Here they are:

(A) Have a verified listing containing a P.O. Box?

Make sure your listing remains active:
1) Sign in at places.google.com
2) Select âEditâ
3) Remove the term âP.O. Boxâ from the address fields
4) Save your changes

If this change requires reverification, and you canât verify using the available options, please visit this contact form and select the following options:

Select: I tried PIN verification for a single listing â' Yes, the listing already appears owner-verified

B) Are you setting up a brand new Places listing?

Try creating and verifying the listing using your physical location. If you donât meet customers at your address, make sure you hide your business location. Places may give you the option to verify by phone.

If you cannot verify using the available options, youâll need to request a manual verification using this troubleshooter path: Select: I tried PIN verification for a single listing â' No, I am attempting to verify my listing --> The status is not Needs Action --> Postcard --> Yes

Once you submit a request via the contact form, please give the Google Places support team up to a week to get back in touch with you via e-mail.

Note: Users with a âP.O. Boxâ in Address Line 1 or 2 should have received an e-mail by now explaining this policy change and next steps (via the e-mail associated with your Places account).

Forum discussion at Google Places Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for PO box

SEOs & Googlers As LEGO

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:17:00 -0400