In this week's video recap, we discuss the July Google webmaster report, a lot has happened over the past 30 days. Google may have had a PageRank quirk. Google penalized the porn industry and then reversed it. Google is messing with international search filters. Many of you like the new Bing commercials. Bing tries real-time search with Twitter answers. Microsoft adCenter has a quality based ranking team. Google announces the new AdWords API, v2009. Google has payment issues with Australian AdSense publishers. Selling SEO before the site is developed, is not easy. Google insults their top forum help contributors. Have a wonderful July 4th weekend! That was this past week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks.
The overall theme is that there is a lot of ranking fluctuation taking place over the past few weeks. There are some rumors that Google has adjusted their link algorithm to look more at how "relevant" the link is to the page it is linking to. What exactly that means and if the rumor is true, is incredibly hard to validate. But the thread is getting a lot of traction and if you are noticing unstable shifts in Google for your search phrases, you might want to take a look at that thread.
Overall it has been a busy month, from adult sites being penalized and restored, to a couple PageRank updates and new Webmaster Tools features - Google has been up to a lot of things over the past 30 days. Here is a rundown of our Google specific coverage over the past thirty-days.
It seems like there are several threads around the SEO forum space that have discussion on a recent PageRank update. Yes, even more recent then the June PageRank update.
There is a WebmasterWorld thread, a few DigitalPoint Forum threads and a few Google Webmaster Help threads. I will only link to two, but there are plenty out there.
In the Google Webmaster Help, Googler, JohnMu, replied to one webmaster saying that he/she should not worry about the last PageRank change because it was likely a "technical quirk."
The way John said it, made it sound like the error was on Google's side. Here is what John said:
You have a nice-looking site :). As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about.
So I am wondering if the recent PageRank update noticed by a small percentage of webmasters, was a technical bug on Google's front?
A WebmasterWorld thread asks if DMOZ is still relevant in 2009? DMOZ is a legendary web directory and has a ton of history. But is it still a critical or what it ever a critical part of your overall SEO or link building strategy?
I don't often see discussions around DMOZ (Open Directory Project) these days. In the past, the SEO forums were more likely to have an active discussion around the value and tips for submitting to DMOZ. Nowadays, I don't see it too much.
So I decided to create a poll and hope to get some responses from you on how important DMOZ is to you, as an SEO. Here is the poll:
