This week’s forum thread round-up is in! Check out what the search and social community has been discussing this week:
My First Web Site Was…
Do you remember your first website? Inspired by seeing the work of former student, our forum founder reflects on how it all started. Everyone begins somewhere, makes mistakes and learns along the way. But sometimes looking at where you came from can help you figure out where you’re going. What’s your origin story?
To rel=canon or to not rel=canon?? That is my question…
A conversation about best practices for setting a canonical page has some interested sides. The perspectives here pit the risk of duplicate content against the possibility of losing link equity. Does the risk of having multiple duplicate pages on slightly varied URLs or could you be losing the influence of links if websites link to the non-canonical version. If you’re into this kind of thing, the debate here could get good. What do you think?
H Tags… could my pages be set up better?
Another fun question if you’re setting up a new site, what is the best way to do your H tags? To really talk about that it helps to remember that H in h tag stands for “Heading” and the number is supposed to reflect importance. The conversation covers some fundamentals but leaves tons of room for the nuance of personal experience and your SEO style.
Best Monitoring Tool?
Is there a great one-stop option for social citation monitoring that goes beyond the usual social media? The search for the best tools can feel like a quest for the lost ark. Especially if you’re looking for something specific or bigger than what’s common. What monitoring tools do you love? What to you love and hate about the best known ones now? It’s discussions like these that can launch new tool ideas or inspire new features for our faves.
Responsive design vs. other solutions.
We couldn’t have a week without something related to mobile so one community member wants to have some real talk about the nature of responsive design. Is it really so great to take things you’re used to having on a side bar widget pushed down to the bottom of the page? This seems to be a convention based on observation. Is that the standard? Does that re-location mess with the user experience? As the discussion continues, the bigger question that emerges what does it truly mean for a website to be responsive and how do we evolve our ideas of user experience for mobile?
Google Finance, Govt, Policy and Business Issues Forum
The EU may be making big moves against Google in the near future. The possible antitrust suit could accuse Google of abusing power in multiple different areas from content scraping to unfairly biased advertising restrictions. Though this issue has been on-going for some time recent activates may indicate forward progress. The European Commission recently asked companies who have filed complaints against Google to grant permission to publish this previously confidential information. This move indicates that formal charges could be in the works. Would you be grabbing some popcorn for Court TV’s version of that case?
Google Confirms Panda and Penguin Do NOT Update in Real Time
Since the first waves of destruction of Panda and Penguin began to infiltrate the online community, webmasters and SEOs have been waiting for recovery to happen more quickly. According to John Mueller, everyone can keep on waiting. Literally. As is stands refreshes are still done manually, which means that there will continue to be a hiatus between them. Unfortunately, if that is the case it could still take a substantial amount of time after taking reparative action to see if the changes you’ve made were enough to turn things around.
For Apple Maps: Trip Advisor & Booking.com in, Yelp out
It looks like Apple Apps who, traditionally displayed reviews from Yelp has started showing results from Booking.com and TripAdvisor. Is this a move to supplement areas where Yelp doesn’t offer much coverage? Is this the beginning of a bigger transition to different sources? What’s next for Apple Maps, the less popular younger cousin of Google Maps? Is Apple just spreading the wealth or could a complete changeover be a bad thing for Yelp? There are plenty of possible implications for some big brands here.
