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"Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.Search Engine Roundtable Stories:\n\n\t\tWeekly SearchBuzz RoundUp: December 19, 2008 - Google's Enhancements, Yahoo's Data Retention &amp; YouTube on Google Maps\n\t\tIt's almost the holidays! PARTAY! But until then, I have a recap for ya without any special frills. This week, we have some reports from SES Chicago, some news from Google, Yahoo's 90 day data retention policy, and then some. Keep reading for more. Blackhats = Whitehats After SES Chicago last week, Doug Heil is starting to see more like a black hat (or so he's changed his vision from 4 years ago when he\n\t\tIs Social Media Really a Viable Link Building Option?\n\t\tMichael Gray has written a great piece at Search Engine Land on how stories promoted in a social media site have actually translated to higher rankings. He takes a bunch of unpopular domains (e.g. not Forbes, Jalopnik, or other known car sites) and shows how their rankings have improved after the particular stories have been submitted to a site like Digg. Then he looks at the keyword rankings for each of these stories. It becomes\n\t\tDoes Google Throttle Domain Traffic?\n\n\t\tIf you get a really high ranking on Google, should you see less traffic? A WebmasterWorld user says that he's getting much higher rankings than before (increases to the first page from page 11) and he's still not getting a traffic boost (\"I'm now getting traffic from hundreds more great keyphrases -- but the total traffic at the end of the day is the same as it has been for the past three months.\") The\n\t\tAnalysis of Sphinn Front Page Success to Determine How to Get There\n\t\tThe Searchlight Digital blog has a detailed analysis of three weeks of Sphinn frontpage success. The analysis takes a look at the top contributor and the categories in which the stories became popular. From looking at that data, the conclusion (besides being a power user) is obvious: If you want to kick ass on Sphinn, there are specific topics you should be writing on, namely SEO, social media and Google. Well, that may be true,\n\t\tPoll: SEOs Say Alt Attribute Does Improve Search Rankings\n\t\tA few weeks ago I ran a poll asking does the alt tag improve rankings in search engines. We have now received over a hundred responses from our readers, who I assume are mostly SEOs. About 80% said, yes, using an alternative attribute on images does indeed help improve rankings. While about 20% said it does not. Here is the breakdown: :: Alt Tag improves rankings said 86 respondents or 79.63% :: Alt Tag does\n\t\tHow Much More Valuable Is Rankings At Yahoo Over Google?\n\n\t\tJohn Honeck asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread how much more valuable is a number one ranking in Google, when compared to the likes of Yahoo. He asked it in the form of, \"Is being #1 in yahoo as good as being #50 in Google? #100, or?\" But let me place a poll below and ask you it in a different format. Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.\n\t\tGoogle AdSense Sending Out Scary Christmas E-Cards?\n\t\tSo, we all know Google AdSense is cutting off holiday gifts this year. There were many insulted publishers. So, I figured Google would at least send out e-cards before the holidays. And some are now receiving these e-cards. But those receiving the e-cards are afraid they are sent by spammers. In fact, one AdSense publisher said, \"it looks like spam, what are they thinking?\" Another said that he will \"just delete instead of download\" the\n\t\tLinks In JavaScript &amp; Flash: Damned If You Do &amp; Damned If You Don't\n\t\tA Google Webmaster Help thread asks, can Google read links in Flash files or JavaScript? The simple answer is yes, they can. But it is not that simple. Some people want to know the answer to this question because they want to know if their content will be indexed or not. Some want the links in those files to be found, while some don't. In fact, years ago, if you did not want a search\n\n\t\t\n\n\n\nOther Great Search Forum Threads:\n\n\tGoogle's Promote, Remove. and impact on AdSense, WebmasterWorld\n\tTableless Design In SEO, Cre8asite Forums\n\tAnnual repeating &amp;quot;all day&amp;quot; events input on blackberry corrupted on sync, Google Mobile Help\n\tBacklinks.com Userdata, Links Bought &amp;amp; Sold, Etc. Exposed Through Google, Sphinn\n\tGoogle apparently doesn't care about quality? (just a rant), Google Webmaster Help\n\tTop 100 Most Influential Online Marketers of 2008, Sphinn\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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