June 2008, Week 4, Weekly Round Up of Important Search Engine Related Happenings

All that happened in the world of search engines in the fourth week of June 2008. Once again, the blogs are all in chronological order. Enjoy!

At Google, 'Long URLs' Can Land Your Website in Trouble!

It's true! According to Search Engine Roundtable now even modeling your websites on long URLs can get your sites into trouble with Google indexing.

Over at the Google Groups, Googler JohnMu comments upon a URL that according to him is quite long and this is what he has to say,

"Looking at the pages indexed, I see two issues which Autocrat has already mentioned (thanks, Autocrat!) that I'd like to expand on:

1. Long & crazy URLs
I ran into this URL while looking at [site:gadgetguy.com.au] :
http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/small-kitchen-appliances-toaster-kettle-c…

Now I'm all for having descriptive URLs, but …. this seems to be taking it a bit too far and I have a bit of trouble identifying anything that matches in the content of your page.

The problem with URLs like this is that they almost appear to be random and in fact I can get exactly the same page by using something like: http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/xyzzy-42.html . In general, you should make sure that you have only one URL that leads to your content
– all others should either redirect to the proper URL or return HTTP result code 404 to signal that the URL is invalid. Without that, your site is leading us (and all other crawlers) on a wild goose chase.

If your CMS is not able to handle this properly (one URL per piece of content), I would recommend not using rewritten URLs so that we can recognize and skip over unimportant parameters in your URL query string."

10 Solid Ways to Increase the Google Crawl Rate for Your Website!

Over at the Search Engine Journal, the resident writer Ann Smarty has written an extremely interesting post about how Webmasters can increase the Google Crawl rate for their websites. It is every important to understand one simple concept and it is that, you can never force or cheat Googlebot into crawling your website. But you can always employ certain steps, that would ensure that Googlebot gets attracted to your content and crawls it.

Google Explains the Method of 'Adding Business on Google Maps'

Over at the Google Blogoscoped, there is a post that has provided details as to how a user can successfully add his business to the Google Maps.

Google Universal Search is essentially comprised of data from various verticals as well as Google Maps. The reason for adding Google Maps in the Google Search, is that 'Maps' provide relevancy and above all Google Maps include geographic factors that help in determining ranking order in search engine results pages.

Google Launches 'Google Ad Planner'! But is it Getting its Data from 'Google Toolbar'?

A couple of days ago, I had reported to our readers that Google had launched a factor in the Google Trends, known as 'Google Trends for Websites'. Hot on the heels of this launch, according to Google AdWords Blog, Google has launched yet another friendly tool for the Google AdWords members and its name is Google AdPlanner.

Google Launches 'Google Website Optimizer Service Plans'! Users to Get Live and Expert Technical Help!

Via the Google Website Optimizer Blog, Google has announced the launch of 'Google Website Optimizer Service Plans'. These service plans have been created in collaboration with participating Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, in an effort to provide the users with live and expert technical assistance.

These are the news, reviews and events that have marked their impact on the Search Engine Industry this week. Sit tight for more news from this ever evolving domain. Have a great weekend!

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