The way it is achieved makes a mockery of the Google review system and shows just how pointless and meaningless the stars are.

Basically all anyone needs to do is ask 2 people to provide a review of them (preferably 2 people who they know will give a 5 star rating) and then add a snippet of microdata to any page they would like the stars to appear alongside in Google.

Full instructions are shown here  Google reviews stars in Google results Manipulation Exposed

With the Google stars giving such an advantage surely Google shouldn’t be displaying them simply based on 2 reviews which could be easily faked or fabricated.

Until Google sort out this loophole and stop people being able to manipulate the Google review system they have little choice other than removing all stars or as they appear to do Not bother.

Come on Google, please remove all stars from the SERPs now as the advantage is to great to those who game the system.

Comments please.

I haven’t seen it before and can’t remember ever enabling it.

I also noticed some of the icons in the google toolbar have changed.

I haven’t done a toolbar update, but did do a Windows live update last week, would this have changed the settings in my google toolbar?

Going to have a thorough check now to see if any other settings have been changed.

site:http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk

and noticed that google are displaying an ad saying

Try Google Webmaster Tools
www.google.com/webmasters/   Do you own http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk? Get indexing and ranking data from Google.

Very similar to normal adwords, but it also said Google promotion in the top right hand corner of the ad too.

Can’t say I have noticed it before, anyone else noticed it?

This made me think how much better google would be if they just kept these all separate, but advertised the other options more.

A good way I see of them doing this would be if instead of having small text links to the other options they could have multiple search boxes on their homepage, like in this google demonstration

What I think would be even better would be if they created a new system for products, services, ecommerce etc. and then gave webmasters the choice of their pages appearing in this new system or the old system.

By doing this the original search engine would revert back to being useful for finding information, where as the new system would be good for people looking for business, services, products etc.

Source: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=173733

So why no encrypted search for google.co.uk ?

And is it not a bit silly having the link “Go to Google.co.uk” on https://encrypted.google.com/ and https://www.google.com/ when it takes you back to the unencrypted search option on google.co.uk ?

Try a search on google like this,

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&q=site%3Awww.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk%2Fbusiness-listings.asp

and you will see google has added a date to the start of some descriptions, a perfect example is http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=Ensurve

My listing is at number 2 and the description google displays is,

“6 Apr 2007 … Ensurve – Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) … Ensurve. Domestic Energy Assessment and Energy Performance Certificate production. Ensurve …”

Nothing wrong with that you may think, but 6 Apr 2007 doesn’t appear anywhere on the page, within the title, meta description, keywords or any links pointing to the page.

What does appear on the page is the date of entry 04/06/2007 which for us in the UK is 4 June 2007. Google has obviously seen this date converted it to a US format and is using it in the description.

Prior to upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1 a new post would be indexed in google blog search within 2 minutes, this is a 3rd upgrade to see if this post gets picked up.

Update: Obviously not a WordPress problem, this post was picked up within a minute.

A poster had brought an item for £325 from an online retailer using their Google checkout facility. The goods arrived 2 weeks later but were not as described and faulty. The poster attempted to contact the retailer only to find the website had gone, emails were unanswered and the postal address was fake.

He initially used the Google checkout mediation service which failed as the vendor could not be traced, he was then told by Google to continue his attempt to contact the vendor or ask his credit card company for a charge back from the vendor.

Now this is where the catch comes in.

The credit card company couldn’t issue a charge back against the vendor because the vendor wasn’t the person who charged the card.
The people who had charged the card were Google so any charge back could only be against them, but as the service google provided was money transfering and this had not been the problem, it meant the poster could not claim the money back of them either.

What in theory this means is that whenever you buy anything online via Google Checkout you automatically lose the security that credit cards provide against bad purchases.

Be aware of this next time you make an online purchase and ensure you read the small print of the Google Checkout terms and conditions.