Spotted this strange ad on my AdSense ads today. It has a - “Show more” link as well as an “Ad-links unit” combined with it beneath 468×60 banners. Show more ads were seen tested on many websites earlier and is reported here on SEO round table and here on Mashable. Even Ad-link units were seen on may sites reported on SEO round table.

But this combination of Show more links and Ad-Links units together are first time. Any clues on how it would function?

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Vanessa Fox, (Product manager, Google Webmaster Central) makes a commendable effort by sorting out an issue, that was silly but interesting, since it’s been ongoing for some time.

Yesterday, I had reported the broken links on the “Sitemaps.org launch” article posted by her, at the Google Webmaster’s central blog, and suprisingly, she reacted very quickly - and the links are all in place now.

She’s also arranged(arranging) for suitable measures(.htaccess file)so that,these kind of errors are not reported again.

Here’s Vanessa’s reply -

Hi,

Funny thing! The engineer who made the change to the site sits right next to me, I just forgot about those links in the blog post. I’ve fixed them now while we work on getting an .htaccess file uploaded that’ll redirect the old URLs to the new ones. Thanks for the catch!

Vanessa Fox

A very commendable effort from Google. Much appreciated!

You can also see her reply in the comments section of this post.

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Like many other bloggers in the country, I respect Amit Agarwal of Labnol as the most influential blogger around.
It’s great to see him posting quality articles everyday, and i almost read the articles instantly on recieving the Feedblitz Newsletter in my inbox. It’s amazing to see how he picks up interesting articles - that too 5-8 per day.

Yesterday(Apr 24, 2007 2:04 AM), I received a newsletter saying 6 new articles on Digital Inspiration, and something caught my attention. One of the posts was from the other days post! Well…….., may be i misread it.

Curious enough- i checked the previous Newsletter(Apr 22, 2007 2:04 AM).
It read - 5 New articles on Digital Inspiration.And it had the same post(The best Video tutorial websites) as in today’s newsletter. (See both screenshots)

I wonder why Amit is doing this? Is it a mistake or a deliberate attempt to “show” that he’s posting 5-6 articles per day?

Readers like me wouldn’t really mind if he posted no articles at all in a day, because we know he will post some good ones by the weekend to cover up. But why the lie here?

Sincerely wish this is a mistake, and something that need be corrected from the Feedblitz newletter mailer configuration.

Once again - Amit, are you listening?

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How disappointing !! I don’t know if this is just with me - but these days, the number of broken links on the official google blogs/services is just increasing.And there’s no stopping it.

Soon after i had reported the broken links here(on Google history) and here on Google, here’s the latest one.

Vanessa Fox’s post about the Sitemaps.org has all the links to the new site broken!!

I really wonder if somebody is actually reading it from their side once it’s posted, how careless can they be?

Here’s is the snapshot of the broken links. While all the links point to the HTML file, there is no HTML file on the sitemaps.org site, instead PHP files!Hence the broken link.

I would recommend Google to be more careful next time, and pluuueeaasee… co ordinate between your departments before making changes. Seems like, the guy on the other end of the office is not aware, every time somebody makes a change to the site structure.

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Google shut down Froogle on April 21(Official News here) and released a new product(well old wine in new bottle) Google History, which is a new version of Google Search history(See Philip’s thought on this).

If you enable this service, and if you have installed the Google Toolbar , you can now browse through the list of sites you visited in the past, and see them in a chronological order.
Talk about Nostalgia!

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Well, another broken link at Google -

This time at the help section of the Google Toolbar. Here, google explains the significance of the various buttons seen on the Google Toolbar like the - Pop-up blocker, Page-Rank, News, Wordfind etc etc. For each help, there is the image of the corresponding feature button shown.

Unfortunately, the Froogle button is shown as a broken image. And interestingly, the image itself is not broken(not a wrong link) but the image “shows” a broken image button. Meaning the grey button is seen but not the icon “inside” it.

This can’t be a mistake because the link to the image is not broken, but in fact a “broken image” is used purposefully here. Am i starting to think that there are “Black sheeps” in the google design team?

If not, I prefer calling it a blunder than a mistake.

Check out other error stuff i “discovered” -
Yahoo Error
Google Error (now corrected)

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