Rob’s Personal Aggregator

The traditional kick-off to the holiday shopping season, Black Friday, has arrived. If you’re anything like us, you’ll be seeking out the newest, coolest products and best deals today as you make those special holiday purchases.

Using Insights for Search, we took a look at some of the holiday gifts that were most searched for this year: Zhu Zhu Pets, Nerf N Strike, Mindflex and the “Twilight” soundtrack were at the top of kids’ wishlists, while netbooks, mini notebook computers and mp3 players will (hopefully) fill our “bigger” stockings.

But it’s not just about keeping up with the latest and greatest this holiday. The Internet can be a great holiday shopping resource, making it easy not only to find information on the hottest items for this year’s holiday shopping season, but also to track down the best prices for those items. You can see this as holiday shoppers are searching more than ever for deals online. Search terms like coupons, promo codes, free shipping and black friday sales have all increased recently. And, as more people turn to their mobile devices to search for deals, coupons are now also available on the go.

In recent years, we’ve also seen the proliferation of websites dedicated to Black Friday deals — these sites saw a 21% increase in visits during the week of Thanksgiving last year. You can find these sites easily with a search on Google for [black friday sites].

Retailers are increasingly responding to these deal-seeking shoppers. In fact, 60% of retailers report that they are increasing their promotional efforts during this holiday shopping season.* JCPenney, for example, is already promoting their 4 a.m. doorbuster sales and even offering wake-up calls from Cindy Crawford, Rascal Flatts and Kimora Lee Simmons to ensure we don’t sleep through the savings. We also love their YouTube homepage ad today, and hope that it encourages some happy holiday purchases (and keeps some significant others out of the proverbial doghouse).

And in-store sales are not the only places to save this year. Many of us will opt out of crowded malls in favor of cuddling up to our laptops, and retailers are taking their sales to the web during this traditionally in-store focused weekend. In fact, 40% of retailers are increasing free shipping offers during this holiday shopping season* — so watch for those deals both in-store and online!

If you’re interested in reading more about the holiday shopping season, including what shrewd retailers are doing and how you can take advantage of the same, check out the Google Retail Blog for insights from the Retail industry team.

Now after all this talk of shopping, it’s time to get started!

* OTX/Google 2009 Holiday Retailer Survey, May 2009. (Q20) Which of the following advertising tactics has your company used or does your company plan to use in 2009? n=600

Posted by John Mcateer, Managing Director, U.S. Sales

Possibly Related posts

• Your world, your base map (0)
• Your site's performance in Webmaster Tools (0)
• Yahoo CEO Bartz Unveils Major Reorg (0)
• World Bank public data, now in search (0)
• View Google Calendar offline (0)

How to use “Fetch as Googlebot”, part 1
Webmaster level: Intermediate

Has your site ever dropped suddenly from the index or disappeared mysteriously from search results? Have you ever received a notice that your site is using cloaking techniques? Unfortunately, sometimes a malicious party “hacks” a website: they penetrate the security of a site and insert undesirable content. Sophisticated attackers can camouflage this spammy or dangerous content so that it doesn’t appear for normal users, and appears only to Googlebot, which could negatively impact your site in Google’s results.

In such cases it used to be very difficult to detect the problem, because the site would appear normal in the eyes of the user. It may be possible that only requests with a User-agent: of Googlebot and coming from Googlebot’s IP could see the hidden content. But that’s over: with Fetch as Googlebot, the new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools, you can see exactly what Googlebot is seeing, and avoid any kind of cloaking problems. We’ll show you how:

Let’s imagine that Bob, the administrator of www.example.com, is searching for his site but he finds this instead:

That’s strange, because when he looks at the source code of www.example.com, it looks fine:

With much surprise Bob may receive a notice from Google warning him that his site is not complying with Google’s quality guidelines. Fortunately he has his site registered with Webmaster Tools, let’s see how he can check what Googlebot sees:

First Bob logs into Webmaster Tools and selects www.example.com. The Fetch as Googlebot feature will be at the bottom of the navigation menu, in the Labs section:

The page will contain a field where you can insert the URL to fetch. It can also be left blank to fetch the homepage.

Bob can simply click Fetch and wait a few seconds. After refreshing the page, he can see the status of the fetch request. If it succeeds, he can click on the “Success” link…

…and that will show the details, with the content of the fetched page:

Aha! There’s the spammy content! Now Bob can be certain that www.example.com has been hacked.

Confirming that the website has been hacked (and perhaps is still hacked) is an important step. It is, however, only the beginning. For more information, we strongly suggest getting help from your server administrator or hoster and reading our previous blog posts on the subject of hacked sites:

• My site’s been hacked – now what?
• A quick security checklist for webmasters
• Message center warnings for hackable sites
• Best practices against hacking

If you have any questions about how to use the Fetch as Googlebot feature, feel free to drop by the Webmaster Help Forum. If you feel that your website might be hacked but are having problems resolving it, you might want to ask the experts in our “Malware and Hacked sites” category.

Written by Javier Tordable, Software Engineer and John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Possibly Related posts

• ​Upcoming System Upgrade for Greater Scalability & Reliability (0)
• ​And now for something completely different (0)
• Your world, your base map (0)
• Your site's performance in Webmaster Tools (0)
• Yoics Gadget Connects to Remote Files and Desktops from Gmail [Downloads] (0)

No matter how many coasters you set out over the holidays, it’s almost inevitable that someone will leave a drink on your hardwood furniture. To help rid your favorites pieces of unsightly water rings, all you need is a little toothpaste.

Home improvement weblog Charles and Hudson recently compared several different methods of water ring removal. They tried a baking soda and water mix, mayonnaise, and toothpaste. When all was said and done, they deemed toothpaste the most successful. Here’s how to put it to work:

A white toothpaste is required for this so leave the gels in the bathroom. We had Sensodyne handy so we dabbed a bit of that directly on the water stain ring. As we gently rubbed the toothpaste along the line of the stain we saw it immediately disappear or lighten. You don’t need to scrub very hard or for very long to see results. In fact scrubbing too long and outside the area of the stain could cause an even larger mark as it wears away the finish and top layer of wood.

Take proper care to go easy on the scrubbing as the harder and longer you scrub at the surface of your wood, the more likely you are to wear away at the finish instead of simply removing the water ring itself. Hit up Charles and Hudson for the full review of all three methods, or you can always try using a dry iron to take care of things.

Possibly Related posts

• No related posts.

rsullivan25: I wish it was Thanksgiving here in Canada – I could go for that big dinner again! but alas we’ve had ours already

Possibly Related posts

• Yahoo! Transitions Organic Search Back-End to Microsoft Platform (0)
• Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Update for Webmasters (0)
• What will the secret copyright treaty do to your country’s laws? (0)
• Use GOOG-411 and Skype to Call Any U.S. or Canadian Business for Free [Free] (0)
• Toronto’s secret ID law used to arrest G20 protestor (0)

rsullivan25: RT @googlecanada: Find @WhistlerBlckcmb & other ski resorts’ tweets with @gmapsmania’s new mash-up: http://bit.ly/8fcmqv

Possibly Related posts

• ​Upcoming System Upgrade for Greater Scalability & Reliability (0)
• ​And now for something completely different (0)
• Your world, your base map (0)
• Your site's performance in Webmaster Tools (0)
• Yoics Gadget Connects to Remote Files and Desktops from Gmail [Downloads] (0)