Google's 15th birthday celebrated by interactive doodle

Google is celebrating its 15th birthday with an interactive Google doodle that features a piñata game.

A piñata is a fancy container that is filled with sweets and goodies which is later broken as part of a celebration. Piñatas are popular in Mexico. Friday's Google doodle features a piñata that sports the colours of the Google logo. The alphabets in the Google logo are part of the celebration and the blindfolded, second 'G' alphabet holds a stick with which users have to hit the piñata when it comes close, to try and extract the maximum number of sweets that fall with each hit, in ten limited chances. Users can play with the Space bar key of their keyboards or even with the computer mouse. They can even share the score on Google+.
Last year, Google's 14th birthday was marked with a doodle that featured a cake with 14 candles. The cake transformed into a Google logo, as each candles was blown out.

In addition to the doodle, there's an Easter egg that lets you search on Google's 1998 search avatar. Enter the term 'google in 1998' and you'll see how Google used to look in 1998.

The first time Google created a doodle to celebrate its birthday was way back in 2002, to mark Google's 4th birthday. It's worth pointing out that September 27 is actually not the date of the company's incorporation. Google started celebrating its birthday on this date after 2005 when it made an announcement about indexing a record number of pages. Google acknowledges that the exact date when it celebrates its birthday has moved around over the years.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At that point in time, the two were Ph.D. students at Stanford University.

To mark its birthday Google has also announced an updated search algorithm called Hummingbird. The algorithm was rolled out a month back and aims at making Google search better at answering long, complicated queries. It has also introduced comparison filters, improved exploration for songs and revamped mobile apps for search.

Get ready to make the switch to Google Partners. Google Partners is coming to an agency near you

On September 30, 2013, Google will begin replacing the Google Certification Program with a new and improved experience for agencies and online marketing professionals—Google Partners. Inspired by your feedback, Partners will include improvements that make it easier and more meaningful to get certified in Google advertising solutions like AdWords. 

How this will affect certified professionals 
• 
Beginning September 30, 2013, access to your GCP account will be read-only. 
• 
You'll need a Google Partners account to take exams and get certified. 
• 
Taking exams and getting certified will be free. (Currently $50 USD per exam) 
• 
Your GCP exam history and AdWords certification status will transfer to Partners when you join using the same Google account. 
• 
Certifications earned through GCP will remain valid through the expiration date. 

Learn more about transferring your AdWords certification to Partners 

How this will affect Google Certified Partner companies 
• 
Beginning September 30, 2013, a Google Partners account will be required to manage your company's profile on Google Partner Search. You'll be able to manage both your individual certifications and company profile using the same Partners account. 
• 
Certified Partner companies will remain listed on Google Partner Search until November 13, 2013. 
• 
To continue being listed on Google Partner Search after November 13, a company must qualify for the new Google Partner badge. 
• 
Current Certified Partners will not automatically qualify for the new Partner badge. 
• 
Use of the old 'AdWords Certified Partner' badge for promotional or other purposes won't be permitted after November 13. 

How to Upgrade Your Google AdWords Accounts to Enhanced Campaigns -post 2

Detailed Changes in Enhanced Campaigns

Below are the specific changes that have been made in enhanced campaigns.
• To customize your ads for mobile devices, you can create mobile optimized ads. This is done by checking the device preference box. This setting is shown at left for a new ad.
• Enhanced campaigns allow advertisers to easily adapt to the differences in ROI across devices by using bid adjustments at the campaign level. Enhanced campaigns give you control over the mobile bid by
allowing you to set bids for mobile ads to be a percentage of your default bids. They can be from -100% to +300% of default bids. Setting a bid of -100% will prevent your ads from being shown on mobile devices.
• Campaigns can now reach desktops and tablet users from a single place. For any ad, keyword, extension, or bid, desktops and tablets are considered equivalent, with the following exceptions:

– Ads for app promotion will only appear on devices that the app operates on. For example, ads that promote your latest Android tablet app will only show on Android tablets. See Upgrading Ads for Applications for more information.
– For “Display Network only” campaigns, advertisers will be able to target the device models where an ad can run. For details, see Setting Mobile Optimized Ads.
– For display ads, certain formats (for example, 3rd party ad serving/HTML5) will have a “Touch Device” filter for ads.

2. Plan Your Upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns
This section describes how to plan your upgrade to enhanced campaigns. In summary, you need to:
• Ensure you have access to all your AdWords accounts.
• Review the tools you can use to make the upgrade faster and easier.
• If you have copied any desktop campaigns and used them to create separate mobile campaigns, you may want to merge these campaigns together. If your campaigns target all devices (desktop, tablets and mobile), no merging of campaigns is required.
• Upgrade your campaigns using AdWords, AdWords Editor or the AdWords API, including setting a mobile bid adjustment.

Google AdWords Upgrading to Enhanced Campaigns

How to Upgrade Your Google AdWords Accounts to Enhanced Campaigns

Google AdWords introduces enhanced campaigns to make it easier for advertisers to promote marketing messages based on people’s context like their location, the device they are using and the time of day – all within a single campaign.
This paper explains:
1. What enhanced campaigns are
2. How to plan your upgrade to enhanced campaigns
3. How to upgrade your campaigns to enhanced campaigns
4. The upgrade process for some example campaigns
Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option beginning in February, 2013. We plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013. If you need assistance, contact the Google ads team.


1. What Are Enhanced Campaigns?
People are constantly switching between devices, using the one that works best for where they are and what they are doing. This makes it important for marketers to focus on reaching the right audience in the right context, rather than just targeting a specific device.
Advertising plans that used to require separate campaigns, like ones that required bidding differently by device or by location, can now be handled in a single enhanced campaign, making it easier to reach users no matter where they are or what device they are on.

Benefits of Enhanced Campaigns
Enhanced campaigns enable powerful bidding improvements that allow you to manage your bids seamlessly across locations, times and device types. For example, you can bid higher for customers who are searching from within a half-mile of your store, or lower during specific hours when your business is closed. Additionally, you can create custom bidding combinations of device, time, and location that work best for your business. Enhanced campaigns also offer smarter ads that are optimized for varying user contexts. You can now show the right ad, site link, app or extension based on user context and device capabilities. For example, an advertiser can show a store locator for customers on smartphones during business hours, or change ad texts and sitelinks at specific times. These changes will all be complemented with advanced reporting metrics and new conversion types. Advertisers will immediately have access to detailed call reporting with free Google forwarding numbers and conversion metrics for digital download campaigns.

Google Link Disavow Tool

Google has finally released their link disavow tool enabling webmasters to report inorganic
inbound links for their domains. This document contains a step-by-step guide with screenshots
and a list of best practices including potential problems associated with the use of the tool.

What is the link disavow tool?

The tool allows you to disavow unnatural inbound links for a domain verified in your Google

Webmaster Tools. Specifically you can ask Google to ignore links you do not control if you

believe they could be harming your website’s rankings.

“If you believe your site's ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not

control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site.”

What are inorganic links?

Google uses links as one of their ranking signals and they want them to occur naturally. Paid

links, link exchanges or other types of link manipulation are considered ‘inorganic’ or ‘unnatural’.

How did I end up with inorganic links?

You may have created some yourself or perhaps your SEO company did. In some cases even third parties can create unnatural links for you. This can happen as part of random spam / content scraping, reputation management spam or deliberate attempt at much debated concept of ‘negative SEO’.

Examples of Inorganic Links

Here are some examples where inorganic links may appear:

● Automated link exchanges

● Low quality article and directory submissions

● Artificial blog networks

● Paid links

● Fake Profiles

● Blog Comment Spam

● Widgetbait Tactics

● Footer Link Spam

● Artificial Blogrolls

The above examples typically exhibit characteristics of manipulative anchor text

Why use this tool?

There are two reasons why you would use this tool:

1. Preventative

Inorganic links could potentially harm your website’s rankings and by using the link disavow

tool you can specify which links should be ignored by Google to prevent any algorithmic or manual action against your website.

2. Remedial

If your website has been affected by a search quality algorithm or manual action you can assist in the repair process by specifying which links Google should ignore.

There are several levels of action Google may take upon noticing search quality issues including:

● Algorithmic Filter (e.g. Panda, Penguin)

● Manual Action (various degrees of severity)

● Domain Ban

For example, Google recently sent out thousands of notifications to webmasters whose websites experienced partial intervention and only very granular action was taken against their content. This could, for example, affect the ability for a single page or phrase to rank in results after ignoring inorganic links pointing towards that page. Finding and disavowing unnatural links for troubled pages could be a good strategy to resolve the issue.

Use With Caution!

Google’s link disavow tool is an advanced feature, recommended for experienced and well informed webmasters. By removing good links you could impact your website’s ability to rank

in Google. If you are certain that the links you are about to disavow are indeed a part of a link

scheme and you do not control the links then this tool may be an option for you.

Do I have to use this tool?

No. You have an option to go directly to the source of your bad links and ask for them to be

removed. Some links are already ignored by Google and will not affect your website’s rankings.

One such example is any link which contains rel=”nofollow”. These will neither help nor harm

your website. Another example is various domain information websites such as domain

information websites (example: au.similarsites.com/site/dejanseo.com.au) or parked domains.

Google already knows about these websites and deals with them appropriately on an

algorithmic level.

Links:

Link Disavow Tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

ERROR CODE MEANING

  

100	Continue. Request initiated and not rejected. The client can continue.
101	Switching Protocols. The server reports having received a request to change protocol and it is accepted.
102	In processing. Makes clear that the server is active and not inaccessible.(WebDav Extension).
	Request processed
200	Request completed successfully.The page is found and displayed.
201	Created.Establishing a link between the client and the server in the form of URI on a newly created resource.
202	Accepted.The request is received and accepted but not yet processed..
203	Non-Authoritative information.The server response provides information that does not certify it. It could come from a third-party source.
204	No content.No information to return from the server.
205	Reset content. Request processed, the client must reset the source of the request.In the case of a form, it must be cleared before another request.
206	Partial content.Only part of the content is returned.(This may be due to limitation of resources). A Range header must have been included by the user.
207	Multiple statements for the answer.(WebDav Extension).
210	Different contents between the server and the client.(WebDav Extension).
	Redirections
300	Multiple choice.The server has different answers, so it must return a list of resources with their location.
301	Moved permanently.To be used when a file is renamed or moved, and a new URL must be provided.The old URL will be ignored by robots.
302	Moved temporarily. A new URL is provided but robots return to the original URL.
303	See other location.This code is returned when the resource can be retrieved atto another address and a GET method must be used to obtain it. The client is redirected if the method is GET.
304	Unmodified.The page has not changed since the last request, and no content is returned.This assumes that the server is configured to provide a If-modified-since header. Essential for robots of search engines.
305	Use a proxy.Response from the server asking to recover the document on a proxy server whose address is provided.
307	Temporary redirect.The request is redirected to another address as 302.
	Client error or access denied
400	Bad request.The server does not recognize the command syntax.
401	Unauthorized.Authentication required. Connections refused unless a valid password is furnished.
402	Payment required. Future use.
403	Forbidden.Access is prohibited or it is prohibited to a specified robot (for the server and not by robots.txt).
404	Not found.The page does not exist.This may be due to an incorrect spelling, different cases on Unix, or a change of address.
405	Method of request not allowed.
406	Not acceptable.The server can not provide the type of document requested.
407	Proxy authentication required.The connection is refused because the client needs to connect only through a proxy server that is indicated in the response.
408	Timeout. Expiration of time allocated to a request.
409	Conflict.The request contains a request that conflicts with the state of the resource. The information on the causes are provided with the error code. Occurs with the PUT method.
410	Gone.As 404 but means that the page not found was there before. Google recommends its use rather than 404 when the page is missing forever.
411	Length required.The server does not accept the request if the Content-Length is not specified.
412	Precondition not met.The request is accompanied by conditions that the server can not fulfill.
413	Volume asked too high.The server can not provide a document of this size.
414	Request-URI too long.The size of the URI sent to the server exceeds the number of characters allowed. Occurs whan a POST is converted to GET.
415	Unsupported media type.The client requests a document type that the server does not support.
416	Requested range not satisfiable. The request specifies the Range (ex 200-10000) and the size of the resource is not included in this range.
417	Expectation failed .The request contains a field Expect and the server can not meet it.The definition of this field is vague.
422	The request contains an entity that the server can not handle.(WebDav Extension).
423	Locked.The page is locked and will not be transmitted.(WebDav Extension).
424	Failure of the method used by the request.(WebDav Extension).
	Server errors
500	Internal Server Error.The request is not processed.
501	Not implemented.The server does not recognize the nature of the request, the method used, for example.
502	Bad gateway.When the server acts as a proxy or intermediary and that the other server not responding.
503	Service unavailable.Temporary problem due to overloading or other server problem including maintenance.
504	Gateway timeout. Waiting time from the other server exceeded, when the server asked plays the role of gateway.
505	HTTP Version not supported.The protocol used is too recent or not handled.
507	Space on the server insufficient to accomplish the client's request.(WebDav Extension).
509	Non-standard code but may be used by servers when exceeding quota.

About rel="canonical"

What is a canonical page?

A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.

Why specify a canonical page?

It's common for a site to have several pages listing the same set of products. For example, one page might display products sorted in alphabetical order, while other pages display the same products listed by price or by rating. For example:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234567&sort=alpha&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234567&sort=price&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd

If Google knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results. Our algorithms select the page we think best answers the user's query. Now, however, users can specify a canonical page to search engines by adding a element with the attribute rel="canonical" to the  section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Google: "Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results."

How do I specify a canonical URL?

You can specify a canonical URL in two ways:

• Add a rel="canonical" link to the  section of the non-canonical version of each HTML page.
  To specify a canonical link to the page http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, create a  element as follows:
  Copy this link into the  section of all non-canonical versions of the page, such as http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=price.
  If you publish content on both http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish and https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, you can specify the canonical version of the page. Create the  element:
  Add this link to the  section of https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish.
• Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header. Adding rel="canonical" to the headsection of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and otherfile types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):
  
  

  Link: ; rel="canonical"
      

  Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.

Is rel="canonical" a suggestion or a directive?

This new option lets site owners suggest the version of a page that Google should treat as canonical. Google will take this into account, in conjunction with other signals, when determining which URL sets contain identical content, and calculating the most relevant of these pages to display in search results.

Can the link be relative or absolute?

rel="canonical" can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.

Must the content on a set of pages be similar to the content on the canonical version?

Yes. The rel="canonical" attribute should be used only to specify the preferred version of many pages with identical content (although minor differences, such as sort order, are okay).

For instance, if a site has a set of pages for the same model of dance shoe, each varying only by the color of the shoe pictured, it may make sense to set the page highlighting the most popular color as the canonical version so that Google may be more likely to show that page in search results. However, rel="canonical" would not be appropriate if that same site simply wanted a gel insole page to rank higher than the shoe page.

What happens if rel="canonical" points to a non-existent page? Or if more than one page in a set is specified as the canonical version?

We'll do our best to algorithmically determine an appropriate canonical page, just as we've done in the past.

Can Google follow a chain of rel="canonical" designations?

Yes, to some extent, but to ensure optimal canonicalization, we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page.

Can rel="canonical" be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?

There are situations where it's not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects. In this case, you can use the rel="canonical" link element to specify the exact URL of the domain preferred for indexing. While therel="canonical" link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible.

See this Matt Cutt`s video on Canonical issue  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Cm9onOGTgeM#at=53