According to Webmasters World Google SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are returning fewer results for specific queries, pointing to possible Google SERPs update. The speculations for such changes are that, it may be due to the quality control practices employed by Google, or it can also be a human-error.

If you are thinking of blocking your redirect 301 with a robots.txt file, then you would be making a big mistake. According to Search Engine Roundtable, there is a thread at Google Groups that is concentrated on this very concern.

One of the users who probably started the thread took up this topic in a very long post and then finally got a response from Googler JohnMu. According to the user, he moved from domain.com to domain.info, on a domain name sale, but wanted to retain his links, so set up a 301 redirect from .com to .info for a certain period of time. Here is the user's post:

Last month I had informed our readers about the importance of Image Ranking and that Google was working on a ranking algorithm for images. Following the same track of 'Image Rankings', I recently came across a post at the Phoenix Realm that emphasizes on the importance of the role that images play in attracting traffic to websites.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has slowly turned into a field of experiments. Users around the world constantly practice 'Trial and Error' methodology to enhance or optimize their websites in an effort to improve their site rankings and clickthrough rates in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Recently, I came across a post by Tim Nash, a software architect who intends to refine an experiment that is aimed at improving clickthrough rates in SERPs through optimization. Now, Tim has come out with an update as to how the experiment has faired so far and gives us in-depth details on his findings. However, the readers must keep in mind that this experiment is designed with the sole purpose of improving the rankings and in no ways is associated with higher rankings. Additionally, both the participating websites (with explicit permission from the clients, of course!) are UK based and only clickthroughs from google.co.uk and not.com were monitored for the results. Let us begin then:

Webmasters around the world been reporting a drop in traffic as a result of the pages dropping in terms of their rank due to recent changes in Google SERPS. In a forum thread at Webmaster World, there are suggestions of link buying and link exchanging with off topic or poor geolocation websites that some sites seem to be resorting to. This has led to dropping down of many sites indexed pages! The shuffle seems to be continuing as many sites lost sitelinks after a few days. Some of the excerpts from the forum thread are given below:

Google's Matt Cutts enlightened the audience with an incredible presentation at O'Reilly's web conference. Matt Cutts is widely acclaimed as a titan in the realm of Search Engine Soldiers. He has knocked out more search engine spam sites than any one has even heard of. The 'Spam Killer' spoke about some critical issues regarding Spam. Some of the main points of focus were:

1. How Google detects Spam.
2. The kinds of technology and systems that are designed to defend against Spam.

It is considered to one of the most dreaded penalties that can be levied by Google on a Webmaster for bad link practices. Known as -60 Penalty, it pushes the website of the penalized Webmaster 60 positions back in the search pages. This penalty is enforced mainly in the case of Paid Links, as they are considered to a be questionable tactic to gather links.

Many Webmasters on several occasions try to move their website to a new domain. However, the prospect of a 404 error (File not found) negatively impacting their site rankings restrains most of the Webmasters to perform the transition. Yet again, Google to the rescue. Google has provided some tips on the Webmaster Central Blog for the site owners to follow while moving their website to a new domain.

Members at Webmaster World discusses about the problem of server header status codes. It is one of those topics that aren't touched often!

According to the Webmasters World thread, almost every server can return an incorrect HTTP status in the server header. But, Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Service) has a particularly long history of such errors been shown. For example:

Tried to set up a "custom 404" page, so your users get a friendly human like message.

Google today came out with tips and suggestions on Webmaster Central Blog as to how Webmasters can make their websites more accessible and crawlable so as to achieve higher PageRanks in the Accessible Search as well as in the Google Search.

According to T.V Raman, research scientist at Google, "Critical site features such as site navigation can be created to work for all users, including our own Googlebot." Some of the few tips given by Mr. Raman: