Google & Bing See Canonical Tags Differently

Nick Roshon has an excellent post on the difference between how Google & Bing handle the canonical tag, something non of us really noticed before until he pointed it out.The key differences are two fold:(1) Mass use of the canonical tag and(2) Canonical tag pointing to itself.How does each engine differ?(1) Google doesn't care if you use the canonical tag on hundreds or thousands of pages, where Bing says they will trust the tag less if you do.(2) Google doesn't care if you link a canonical tag to the same page (i.e. a redirect back to...

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Links Increase In Google Webmaster Tools

There are many webmasters reporting a huge increase in the number of links reported within Google Webmaster Tools, "links to this site" report.There are reports at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help with webmasters asking why.Here is a screen shot of this site's links, showing a screen shot from November 2010 till now:I rarely look at my link counts, so I am glad I captured a screen shot back in November.Did you...

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Google Definitions Asking Users To Email error@google.com

There are many reports in the Google Web Search Helpforums that Google Definitions feature is not working on some browsers for some people.I cannot replicate it, but when you search for things like [what is toast], Google will provide this definition at the top:Instead, users are getting errors that read:server error comes up...Please email error@google.comI couldn't replicate the issue myself, but here is an old screen shot of such an error:Thing...

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Where's The Google Logo For Steve Jobs?

Last night, the world heard the sad news that Steve Jobs has died. Apple and the world has lost one of the most visionary people to ever live. Most of you know, I grew up on Apples and am one of the largest Apple users out there - people think I am a bit cultish. So yea, the news was very sad for me personally.There is no doubt the impact Steve Jobs had on the world. But yea, he lead Apple, a company that he directed in changing the world. That...

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Hosted On A CDN? You May Get A Special GoogleBot Crawl Rate

Gary Illyes from Google responded to a question in theGoogle Webmaster Help forums about hosting your content on a CDN, content delivery network.The question was why did Google assign a special crawl rate to his site.Gary from Google said, Google may assign content hosted on a CDN with a special crawl rate. He specifically said you should most likely never increase the crawl rate manually if you are on a CDN, at best, leave it for Google to decide. You can lower the crawl rate, but do not increase it.Gary from Google explained:When you're...

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Google's Latest Ad Format: Circulars

Bloomberg reports Google is starting to test a new search ad format that looks like web based online circulars.The ads will be a new search ad format that supposedly will open up an interactive online circular for the store, instead of a standard ad that simply takes you to the seller's web site.Nick Fox, Google's vice president of product management, told Bloomberg:Retail in general is a large category for us. They're trying to understand what the answer is in the digital age to the offline print circular. They're trying to understand...

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Google Panda 2.5 Update

Earlier last week, Google pushed out an update to theGoogle Panda algorithm.I didn't see it before going offline for the holiday but Google confirmed the update based on a WebProNewsstory featuring DaniWeb getting hit again by the update.In fact, Dani from DaniWeb posted in the Google Webmaster Help forums complaining:However, we were hit again on Wednesday, September 28th, once again losing more than half of our traffic. I think this might even be a bigger hit than last time. I am still investigating whether or not...

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