The current/recent Google update, dubbed “update Bourbon,” has created a bit of a stir, due to the length of the update and the significant shifts that have taken place in some search results. Google’s webmaster rep “GoogleGuy” posted some lengthy comments at Webmaster World, including the helpful note that using “id” as a variable in URLs can discourage the Googlebot from crawling a site. Apparently GG has had a lot on his mind lately, and decided to dump it all out at once.
File this under interesting but not really something you can act on: Google’s “secret” web interface for their quality control team has been revealed to the world by Henk van Ess’s Search Bistro. GoogleGuy confirms that it’s true.
Interesting and maybe worth some folks taking action: for what may be a limited time, you can actually download Google’s spam recognition guide in MS Word format: http://www.searchbistro.com/spamguide.doc. Plenty of comments can already be found on the Search Bistro blog, and there aren’t really any surprises, but it’s interesting reading. Mr. van Ess also snagged another document, a guide to rating searches.
While we’re crawling all over Henk’s blog anyway, he’s reporting that META tags are still being used to generate descriptions displayed on SERPs. This isn’t really news, but it’s interesting to see a post on his blog that doesn’t need to be slashdotted. I’m sure it’s been quite a week for him…