September 26, 2007

Google Group Promises Five Solid Answers

In the Google Webmaster Help group, Google's Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik has promised users that five big questions would be thoroughly answered in that group in the next two weeks. Got questions? We've got answers: at least five (5) substantive responses to your picks on webmaster'y topics over the next two weeks.

We invite you to ask questions in this thread that: - don't deal with a specific site or sites - are likely to be of interest to a great many webmasters around the world - aren't already covered in one of our recent blog posts or in our Help Center

And in turn we will do one of the following for each response: - Start a thread in this group with a detailed answer. - Add new Help Center documentation or substantially revise an existing doc to cover your question. - Do a blog post on the topic.

Now's your chance to get those hard questions answered.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:52 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2007

Yahoo SERP Lists Google Group That Redirects To MFA Search Page

Talk about a maze. I was checking one of my keywords at Yahoo and found down at the number 10 spot a listing for what would appear to be a Google Group covering the subject. The url should have told me something was most probably amiss.

groups.google.com/group/loan-loans-bad-bad/web/currency_trading.html

The arbitragers are getting really creative. But I really want to know how they got someone at Google to create the redirect. It is a little hard to do that without access to the server.

Now you aren't finding the result in the Google organic results, so I guess Yahoo places more stock in Google Groups than Google itself! After this they may be a little less likely to do so.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 2:18 PM | Permalink

February 19, 2007

Google Groups Becoming a Gold Mine for SEO Information

Google Groups recently relaunched with a new look and feel. One of the most popular groups in the search engine optimization community is the Webmaster Help group. This area features literally hundreds of questions about Google's crawling methodologies, as well as Web site design and its relationship to the ability to be indexed in Google. Although not all questions are useful, and responses in any community should be taken with a grain of salt, the best thing that this group has going for it is the actual participation by Google engineers and members of Matt Cutts' team.

Just in the past few days, the topics of 301 redirects and server downtime have led bloggers to cite discussion going on at Google Groups. Barry and others commented on the 301 redirect comment by Adam Lasnik, which has actually led to more questions. Both Barry and then Loren Baker commented on Vanessa Fox's statement in a response that being "down" for a few Google crawls can lead to de-indexing.

So if you have some time to spend asking SEO and other site design questions and looking for answers, Google Groups might be one of the best "forums" out there, due to the increased chances of an actual Google person being involved. If that floats your boat.

Posted by Chris Boggs at 1:48 PM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

Google Groups Beta 2006 Gets Mixed Reviews

Google announced a new Google Groups Beta with a new design, added features and some shared features from other Google properties. In short, Google Groups has a new design, added Google Page like features, more customization abilities, file upload and sharing capabilities, member profile pages, Gmail-like "message cards for discussions" and more. Nathan Weinberg calls this a "step backwards" for Google Groups. As Nathan notes, Philipp Lenssen says there is too much confusion and inconsistency felt in the new design. Garett Rogers calls this upgrade an "better overall experience" for the Google Groups user. Finally, News.com reports that it is an overall positive outcome for Groups. I personally rarely use this Google product, so I have no preference.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:19 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2006

Google Groups Adds User Profiles and Ratings

Philipp Lenssen discovers that Google Groups Adds Rating, Author Profiles. If you navigate your way to Google Groups and view any thread or post. You will notice that there is a link to "view profile" of that poster, on the right of the profile link would be the rating and at the bottom of the post is a way for you to rate the post.

Philipp notes that this adds a great "social layer" to the Usenet posts. The user profile link not only gives you information about the poster, but also shows you an historical archive of all the user's posts.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Google Groups Adds User Profiles and Ratings

Philipp Lenssen discovers that Google Groups Adds Rating, Author Profiles. If you navigate your way to Google Groups and view any thread or post. You will notice that there is a link to "view profile" of that poster, on the right of the profile link would be the rating and at the bottom of the post is a way for you to rate the post.

Philipp notes that this adds a great "social layer" to the Usenet posts. The user profile link not only gives you information about the poster, but also shows you an historical archive of all the user's posts.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Google Groups Adds User Profiles and Ratings

Philipp Lenssen discovers that Google Groups Adds Rating, Author Profiles. If you navigate your way to Google Groups and view any thread or post. You will notice that there is a link to "view profile" of that poster, on the right of the profile link would be the rating and at the bottom of the post is a way for you to rate the post.

Philipp notes that this adds a great "social layer" to the Usenet posts. The user profile link not only gives you information about the poster, but also shows you an historical archive of all the user's posts.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Google Groups Adds User Profiles and Ratings

Philipp Lenssen discovers that Google Groups Adds Rating, Author Profiles. If you navigate your way to Google Groups and view any thread or post. You will notice that there is a link to "view profile" of that poster, on the right of the profile link would be the rating and at the bottom of the post is a way for you to rate the post.

Philipp notes that this adds a great "social layer" to the Usenet posts. The user profile link not only gives you information about the poster, but also shows you an historical archive of all the user's posts.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:16 AM | Permalink

July 20, 2005

Google Alerts Now Available for Google Groups

Philipp points to a blog post about the availability of Google Alerts for Google Groups.

It monitors the top 50 most recent Google Groups search results that relate to keywords you're interested in. Any new articles posted that match your criteria will be emailed to you, just like Google News alerts.

Google Groups Alerts are sent via email (no RSS) either immediately (as material enters the database), once a day, or once a week. Since so much content is constantly being generated in Google Groups, it would be a good idea to be very specific with your query terms and/or use some of the advanced search syntax that's available when building your query. You can do this by using the Google Groups advanced search page and then doing a copy and paste of the query string into the Google Alerts form.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Alerts Now Available for Google Groups

Philipp points to a blog post about the availability of Google Alerts for Google Groups.

It monitors the top 50 most recent Google Groups search results that relate to keywords you're interested in. Any new articles posted that match your criteria will be emailed to you, just like Google News alerts.

Google Groups Alerts are sent via email (no RSS) either immediately (as material enters the database), once a day, or once a week. Since so much content is constantly being generated in Google Groups, it would be a good idea to be very specific with your query terms and/or use some of the advanced search syntax that's available when building your query. You can do this by using the Google Groups advanced search page and then doing a copy and paste of the query string into the Google Alerts form.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Alerts Now Available for Google Groups

Philipp points to a blog post about the availability of Google Alerts for Google Groups.

It monitors the top 50 most recent Google Groups search results that relate to keywords you're interested in. Any new articles posted that match your criteria will be emailed to you, just like Google News alerts.

Google Groups Alerts are sent via email (no RSS) either immediately (as material enters the database), once a day, or once a week. Since so much content is constantly being generated in Google Groups, it would be a good idea to be very specific with your query terms and/or use some of the advanced search syntax that's available when building your query. You can do this by using the Google Groups advanced search page and then doing a copy and paste of the query string into the Google Alerts form.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Alerts Now Available for Google Groups

Philipp points to a blog post about the availability of Google Alerts for Google Groups.

It monitors the top 50 most recent Google Groups search results that relate to keywords you're interested in. Any new articles posted that match your criteria will be emailed to you, just like Google News alerts.

Google Groups Alerts are sent via email (no RSS) either immediately (as material enters the database), once a day, or once a week. Since so much content is constantly being generated in Google Groups, it would be a good idea to be very specific with your query terms and/or use some of the advanced search syntax that's available when building your query. You can do this by using the Google Groups advanced search page and then doing a copy and paste of the query string into the Google Alerts form.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2005

Google Removes Child Porn Post & Reports To FBI

Child Pornography Complaint at Chilling Effects illustrates how Google received a complaint of child pornography in its Google Groups service, causing the company to remove the post and report the incident to the FBI. Google reporting to the FBI? As Chilling Effects explains, it's something electronic service providers are apparently required to do. Other search engines have probably taken similar actions, but Google is still unique to my knowledge in publishing its takedown actions to Chilling Effects.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google Removes Child Porn Post & Reports To FBI

Child Pornography Complaint at Chilling Effects illustrates how Google received a complaint of child pornography in its Google Groups service, causing the company to remove the post and report the incident to the FBI. Google reporting to the FBI? As Chilling Effects explains, it's something electronic service providers are apparently required to do. Other search engines have probably taken similar actions, but Google is still unique to my knowledge in publishing its takedown actions to Chilling Effects.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google Removes Child Porn Post & Reports To FBI

Child Pornography Complaint at Chilling Effects illustrates how Google received a complaint of child pornography in its Google Groups service, causing the company to remove the post and report the incident to the FBI. Google reporting to the FBI? As Chilling Effects explains, it's something electronic service providers are apparently required to do. Other search engines have probably taken similar actions, but Google is still unique to my knowledge in publishing its takedown actions to Chilling Effects.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google Removes Child Porn Post & Reports To FBI

Child Pornography Complaint at Chilling Effects illustrates how Google received a complaint of child pornography in its Google Groups service, causing the company to remove the post and report the incident to the FBI. Google reporting to the FBI? As Chilling Effects explains, it's something electronic service providers are apparently required to do. Other search engines have probably taken similar actions, but Google is still unique to my knowledge in publishing its takedown actions to Chilling Effects.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 10, 2005

Google's Usenet Timeline and Early Search Engine Announcements

Slashdot has a thread about a "new" timeline from Google that highlights interesting and historic posts from their 20 year Usenet (aka Google Groups) archive. If you've never seen it, it's a lot of fun. However, as several people including Michael Fagan correctly point out on Searchblog, this timeline has been around for several years.

and speaking of Google's Usenet Archive... Web search history types, take note. In 2001 I used the Usenet archive to build this compilation of early search engine annoucements that I posted on my ResourceShelf site.

The compilation includes: + Martijn Koster Annouces the Availability of Aliweb (11/30/93) + An Early Mention of JumpStation by Jonathon Fletcher (2/27/94) First Mention of McBryan's World Wide Web Worm in the Usenet Archive is this Technical Query (3/14/94) + Brian Pinkerton Announces the Availability of Webcrawler (6/11/94)

+ Steve Kirsch Announces Free Demos Of the Infoseek Search Engine (7/18/94) + Jerry Yang Alerts a Usenet group to the Yahoo Database (9/21/94) + Carnegie Mellon University Center for Machine Translation Announces Lycos (8/14/94) + UC Berkeley Announces Inktomi (9/26/95) + Introduction of Excite (9/27/95) + AltaVista Public Beta Press Release (12/15/95)

Posted by Gary Price at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google's Usenet Timeline and Early Search Engine Announcements

Slashdot has a thread about a "new" timeline from Google that highlights interesting and historic posts from their 20 year Usenet (aka Google Groups) archive. If you've never seen it, it's a lot of fun. However, as several people including Michael Fagan correctly point out on Searchblog, this timeline has been around for several years.

and speaking of Google's Usenet Archive... Web search history types, take note. In 2001 I used the Usenet archive to build this compilation of early search engine annoucements that I posted on my ResourceShelf site.

The compilation includes: + Martijn Koster Annouces the Availability of Aliweb (11/30/93) + An Early Mention of JumpStation by Jonathon Fletcher (2/27/94) First Mention of McBryan's World Wide Web Worm in the Usenet Archive is this Technical Query (3/14/94) + Brian Pinkerton Announces the Availability of Webcrawler (6/11/94)

+ Steve Kirsch Announces Free Demos Of the Infoseek Search Engine (7/18/94) + Jerry Yang Alerts a Usenet group to the Yahoo Database (9/21/94) + Carnegie Mellon University Center for Machine Translation Announces Lycos (8/14/94) + UC Berkeley Announces Inktomi (9/26/95) + Introduction of Excite (9/27/95) + AltaVista Public Beta Press Release (12/15/95)

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google's Usenet Timeline and Early Search Engine Announcements

Slashdot has a thread about a "new" timeline from Google that highlights interesting and historic posts from their 20 year Usenet (aka Google Groups) archive. If you've never seen it, it's a lot of fun. However, as several people including Michael Fagan correctly point out on Searchblog, this timeline has been around for several years.

and speaking of Google's Usenet Archive... Web search history types, take note. In 2001 I used the Usenet archive to build this compilation of early search engine annoucements that I posted on my ResourceShelf site.

The compilation includes: + Martijn Koster Annouces the Availability of Aliweb (11/30/93) + An Early Mention of JumpStation by Jonathon Fletcher (2/27/94) First Mention of McBryan's World Wide Web Worm in the Usenet Archive is this Technical Query (3/14/94) + Brian Pinkerton Announces the Availability of Webcrawler (6/11/94)

+ Steve Kirsch Announces Free Demos Of the Infoseek Search Engine (7/18/94) + Jerry Yang Alerts a Usenet group to the Yahoo Database (9/21/94) + Carnegie Mellon University Center for Machine Translation Announces Lycos (8/14/94) + UC Berkeley Announces Inktomi (9/26/95) + Introduction of Excite (9/27/95) + AltaVista Public Beta Press Release (12/15/95)

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Google's Usenet Timeline and Early Search Engine Announcements

Slashdot has a thread about a "new" timeline from Google that highlights interesting and historic posts from their 20 year Usenet (aka Google Groups) archive. If you've never seen it, it's a lot of fun. However, as several people including Michael Fagan correctly point out on Searchblog, this timeline has been around for several years.

and speaking of Google's Usenet Archive... Web search history types, take note. In 2001 I used the Usenet archive to build this compilation of early search engine annoucements that I posted on my ResourceShelf site.

The compilation includes: + Martijn Koster Annouces the Availability of Aliweb (11/30/93) + An Early Mention of JumpStation by Jonathon Fletcher (2/27/94) First Mention of McBryan's World Wide Web Worm in the Usenet Archive is this Technical Query (3/14/94) + Brian Pinkerton Announces the Availability of Webcrawler (6/11/94)

+ Steve Kirsch Announces Free Demos Of the Infoseek Search Engine (7/18/94) + Jerry Yang Alerts a Usenet group to the Yahoo Database (9/21/94) + Carnegie Mellon University Center for Machine Translation Announces Lycos (8/14/94) + UC Berkeley Announces Inktomi (9/26/95) + Introduction of Excite (9/27/95) + AltaVista Public Beta Press Release (12/15/95)

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

December 2, 2004

New Google Groups Opens To Public

The new Google Groups service unveiled in beta form last May has now officially replaced the old Google Groups, exposing more Google users to new features such as mailing list creation. Google says Groups is its third most popular feature, after web and image searching.

My past article, Google Groups Adds Mailing Lists & Other Features, Competes With Yahoo Groups, explains all the features of the new service. As mentioned, it's been open to the public since May as a beta test. However, anyone clicking on the "Groups" tab on the Google home page would have reached the old service. That changed today. Now that link leads to the new service.

Be aware that the "old" Google Groups is still reachable via its original domain. In other words:

So, if you prefer the old version, you can still reach it for the moment. And if you've bookmarked the old service but want the new service, you'll need to update to the new address.

Interestingly, while the new groups service is being fully unleashed on the public, it's still not considered complete enough for the beta tag to be removed. That means that Google Groups, previously a non-beta service, now goes back to beta status.

The move also means that the majority of services that Google offers via its home page are oddly in beta status. For more about that, see my Most Of Google Remains In Beta post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

New Google Groups Opens To Public

The new Google Groups service unveiled in beta form last May has now officially replaced the old Google Groups, exposing more Google users to new features such as mailing list creation. Google says Groups is its third most popular feature, after web and image searching.

My past article, Google Groups Adds Mailing Lists & Other Features, Competes With Yahoo Groups, explains all the features of the new service. As mentioned, it's been open to the public since May as a beta test. However, anyone clicking on the "Groups" tab on the Google home page would have reached the old service. That changed today. Now that link leads to the new service.

Be aware that the "old" Google Groups is still reachable via its original domain. In other words:

So, if you prefer the old version, you can still reach it for the moment. And if you've bookmarked the old service but want the new service, you'll need to update to the new address.

Interestingly, while the new groups service is being fully unleashed on the public, it's still not considered complete enough for the beta tag to be removed. That means that Google Groups, previously a non-beta service, now goes back to beta status.

The move also means that the majority of services that Google offers via its home page are oddly in beta status. For more about that, see my Most Of Google Remains In Beta post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

New Google Groups Opens To Public

The new Google Groups service unveiled in beta form last May has now officially replaced the old Google Groups, exposing more Google users to new features such as mailing list creation. Google says Groups is its third most popular feature, after web and image searching.

My past article, Google Groups Adds Mailing Lists & Other Features, Competes With Yahoo Groups, explains all the features of the new service. As mentioned, it's been open to the public since May as a beta test. However, anyone clicking on the "Groups" tab on the Google home page would have reached the old service. That changed today. Now that link leads to the new service.

Be aware that the "old" Google Groups is still reachable via its original domain. In other words:

So, if you prefer the old version, you can still reach it for the moment. And if you've bookmarked the old service but want the new service, you'll need to update to the new address.

Interestingly, while the new groups service is being fully unleashed on the public, it's still not considered complete enough for the beta tag to be removed. That means that Google Groups, previously a non-beta service, now goes back to beta status.

The move also means that the majority of services that Google offers via its home page are oddly in beta status. For more about that, see my Most Of Google Remains In Beta post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

New Google Groups Opens To Public

The new Google Groups service unveiled in beta form last May has now officially replaced the old Google Groups, exposing more Google users to new features such as mailing list creation. Google says Groups is its third most popular feature, after web and image searching.

My past article, Google Groups Adds Mailing Lists & Other Features, Competes With Yahoo Groups, explains all the features of the new service. As mentioned, it's been open to the public since May as a beta test. However, anyone clicking on the "Groups" tab on the Google home page would have reached the old service. That changed today. Now that link leads to the new service.

Be aware that the "old" Google Groups is still reachable via its original domain. In other words:

So, if you prefer the old version, you can still reach it for the moment. And if you've bookmarked the old service but want the new service, you'll need to update to the new address.

Interestingly, while the new groups service is being fully unleashed on the public, it's still not considered complete enough for the beta tag to be removed. That means that Google Groups, previously a non-beta service, now goes back to beta status.

The move also means that the majority of services that Google offers via its home page are oddly in beta status. For more about that, see my Most Of Google Remains In Beta post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBack