Google Webmaster Central is going to begin emailing webmasters who have been penalized by Google again, a practice they began in 2005 then ended a few months ago.
In July Google started notifying verified site owners of their penalties via a Message Center in Google Webmaster Central, but this still did not allow for Google to contact publishers who do not use Google Webmaster Tools.
Ben D’Angelo writes on the Google Webmaster Central Blog :
While Message Center is great for verified site owners, it doesn’t allow us to notify webmasters who aren’t registered in Google’s Webmaster Tools. For this reason, we plan to resume sending emails in addition to the Message Center notifications. Please note that, as before, our emails will not include attachments. Currently, the Message Center won’t keep messages waiting if you haven’t previously registered, but we hope to add that feature in the next few months. We’ll keep you posted as things change.
The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced they will be resuming the emailing of penalty notifications to webmasters.
Google stopped sending these notifications when they learned that some people were using these notifications as a way to scare, spam and send viruses to webmasters. Soon after, Google launched a message center to notify webmasters, who have registered with Google Webmaster Tools, about penalties that have been applied to their site. Unfortunately, those who were not registered with Google, would not be able to be notified of these penalties.
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The New York Times and PaidContent report on a new reorganization at Yahoo. Among the changes, Executive Vice President of Sales Greg Coleman will be leaving Yahoo early next year and Hilary Schneider has been promoted to EVP to lead a new group called "Global Partner Solutions," which is now responsible for sales, marketing and business development. David Karnstedt, SVP, North American Sales, who oversees the newly combined search and display ad efforts, will report to Schneider.
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After months of speculation, News Corp. and NBC’s online video partnership has surfaced to the face of the web. Simply named Hulu, the online video is preparing to face off with other online video portals, more particularly with Google’s leading video portal, YouTube.
The main page of Hulu.com is now up and running with a very interesting teaser. The site however, doesn’t say enough about what’s to come and what’s in store for internet users. But invitation is now open for users who want to test drive the beta version which will open in October.
Already, the site has generated quite a buzz. With nothing to show on the site, News Corp’s and NBC’s choice of name for the video portal has been the focus of comments and criticisms. Specifically, the name maybe simple but it doesn’t seem to mean anything related to online video or videos in general.
Why the chosen name? The Hulu site has this to say:
Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.
So, what do you think? Judging by the name alone back up by the two companies who owns the video portal, does Hulu stand a chance of beating YouTube in the online video arena? If you can associate the name with video somehow, then there is a good possibility. But after reading this article, and you forget what Hulu is all about, then Hulu doesn’t stand a slight chance against YouTube. But who knows, it still too early to tell. We’ll see when Hulu beta gets rolling if indeed it is the the YouTube killer.
SEO myths get crazier every year. Some are based partially in reality, and others have spread because it's often difficult to prove what particular SEO action caused a resulting search engine reaction.
For example, you might make a change to something on a page of your site, and a few days later notice that your ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase has changed. You might naturally assume that your page change is what caused the ranking change. But that's not necessarily so. There are numerous reasons why your ranking may have changed, and in many cases they actually have nothing to do with anything that you did.
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Next month, AT&T is killing its call for current time feature. One reason? There are too many other ways to get the correct time -- and search engines are among those resources. Below, a look at how easy search engines make it to get the current time for anywhere in the world.
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