jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Three Google Execs Convicted In Italy Over YouTube Privacy Issues

Honestly, I am shocked that Italy prosecuted and convicted three Google executives in Italy over a YouTube video. The news was all over Techmeme yesterday. I’ll quote Reuters: A Milan court has convicted three Google Inc executives for the 2006 transmission of a video showing the bullying of a youth with Down’s syndrome, the judge in the case told Reuters on Wednesday. The three were...

February 2010 Google Webmaster Report

Here is your monthly update on Google from an SEO’s perspective. You can find last month’s update at the January 2010 Google Webmaster Report. These updates are based mostly off the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread, jammed packed with SEOs and searchers obsessed with watching Google’s every move. The thread this month is pretty lacking. Most, if not all, the discussion is around Caffeine...

More Google Caffeine Sightings Over Weekend

An ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has sparked up some heat over the weekend when more people are claiming to see the Google Caffeine results out in the wild. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, said on Friday night, that he seems them on six IP addresses. He said: I’m seeing the Caffeine data-set being served via this set of IP addresses: 64.233.169.147, 64.233.169.105, 64.233.169.103, 64.233.169.104,...

January 2010 Google Webmaster Report

Every month we do a recap of the past month of Google changes based on an ongoing WebmasterWorld thread. To see last month’s report, see the December 2009 Google webmaster report. The thread doesn’t really have many changes being reported. Most people are on the look out for the Caffeine index going live across all or more data centers. However, we have not really seen that happent...

Google Toolbar PageRank Update (New Years 2010)

Almost exactly like last year, Google is pushing out a New Years PageRank Update now. Mid-December we reported PageRank shifts or penalties and today, there are wide spread reports of a PageRank update in the Google Toolbar. It is a bit funny, because last New Years, we reported in mid-December a PR shuffle and then on December 31, 2008 we reported an official PageRank update in the toolbar. It...

Mass Google Toolbar PageRank Penalty of December 2009???

Let me start off by saying that I used not only one question mark in the title, but three to express how confident I am about this title. There is almost a 100 posts in a single weekend DigitalPoint Forums thread with people reporting their Google Toolbar PageRank has dropped. A long time ago, Google had batch Toolbar PageRank penalties for sites that sold or bought links. The first batch was in...

December 2009 Google Webmaster Report

This is the last Google Webmaster Report of 2009 and it was a pretty busy month. The main changes this past month was Caffeine going live on one data center, the new user fade in interface is live, personalized search becoming the default and Google’s attempts to appease the news business. You can read last months report in the November ‘09 webmaster write up. The new WebmasterWorld thread...

Major Google Search Thanksgiving ‘09 Update? Caffeine Related?

There are several threads reporting major changes in the Google search results, starting yesterday. We have threads at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and an updated WebmasterWorld thread. In short, people are noticing major changes in the search results. Some believe it is a Caffeine index rolling into their search results. Some believe it is just a normal update and not Caffeine related....

November 2009 Google Webmaster Report

Every month we give you a Google specific update on what webmasters are talking about at WebmasterWorld, complied with the past month of changes we reported, specifically at Google. To see last month’s report, see the October 2009 Google Webmaster report. This month, via the WebmasterWorld, people are chatting about the following topics: Crawling deeper, discovering more pages and more links Universal...

Google October 2009 Toolbar PageRank Update

There seems to be a Google Toolbar PageRank update going on right now. We have threads on the topic at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and HighRankings Forum. The update seemed to have started sometime yesterday afternoon and many SEOs and webmasters are chatting about it now. The last PageRank update prior to this one was in June 2009, which may have just been a technical quirk because the...

Maybe a Minor Google Search Update (October 2009)?

Over the past day or so, I have been seeing and watching a small increase in the number of threads discussing either global changes to the Google index or people complaining (at a higher rate) that their site is no longer ranking as well in Google. Yes, Google is constantly changing, so this may just be that people are around more to notice? But the shift in the forum patterns that I watch on this...

October 2009 Google Webmaster Report

I am currently in transit to the SMX East conference and I am going to try to do some blog posts while in the car (no I am not driving). As we normally do, at the beginning of each month, we summarize an ongoing WebmasterWorld thread that tracks and discusses changes at Google’s web search. It looks at indexes, algorithms and fluctuations in the index. You can find last months report, the...

Google’s Happy Birthday Gandhi Logo

If you visit Google.com today, you may see a Google logo or ‘doodle’ with the picture of Gandhi. Today, is Gandhi’s 140th birthday, he was born today in 1869. Here is a copy of the logo: With virtually any Google Doodle, there are some upset with Google picking one event over another. One Google Webmaster Help thread has a person noting that this is also International Day of...

September 2009 Google Webmaster Report

It has been a somewhat slow start to our typically monthly report based on a WebmasterWorld thread that tracks day-to-day changes with Google’s web results. Overall, it seems like people are discussing two main things. (1) The Caffeine preview, Google’s new index, is expected to be launched in the main Google results sometime this month. Google has not confirmed this, but webmasters are...

Possible Google Update – August 2009

There are some early reports of a possible Google web search update currently under way. We have threads on this topic at DigitalPoint Forums and an updated thread at WebmasterWorld. In the WebmasterWorld thread, in post number 3977195, senior member, BillyS, said: We started to see some pretty big changes this morning.This appears to be a return to our pre-summer positions. People first started noticing...