Drupal SEO News: Drupal 7’s Last Beta, DrupalCon Chicago 2011 Important Dates and Google’s Algorithm Fix

The holiday season is here and there is much to cheer about in the Drupal community. Drupal Version 7.0 is flirting with release and is on its last beta (read on for more details).

Important dates and deadlines are suddenly approaching for DrupalCon Chicago 2011... yeah, that fast. If you want to host a session, you'd better check out the dates below.

Someone found a loophole in Google's search ranking algorithm. But don't you worry, Google has already tweaked their algorithm to fix this problem. Just remember, the bad guys never win. Please read on to get more juicy details.

Drupal 7 Beta 3 Released with No Bugs

In November, Drupal 7 beta 3 was released, the final beta before the first release candidate. Beta 3 featured an upgrade to jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery UI 1.8.6, numerous upgrade path fixes, accessibility fixes, as well as fixes for all remaining critical bugs.

So, that means 0 bugs!. Drupal 7 is ready to rock AND roll! But wait, then why is there another beta? According to the Drupal community’s infamous webchick, an issue queue 5 pages long has accumulated and the team working on Drupal 7 wanted one last chance to go through the issue queue and identify and fix the issues that are impacting the beta.

Drupal 7 will be released when there are no more issues on the list, which, again, is 5 pages long. When will that happen? In the spirit of open source, that depends entirely on how much people chip in to help. If you would like to help test the beta, scroll down to the download for Drupal 7.0 beta 3 on this link. Cheers!

DrupalCon Chicago 2011 Registration and Session Submission Dates

Even though DrupalCon Chicago 2011 is still nearly 100 cold nights away, the people behind the curtain are working frivolously. And if you want to present a session, pay very close attention to my next sentence:

DrupalCon Chicago 2011 session submission deadline is December 10th at 12pm EST

If you have an idea for a session, the time is now to fill out a submission form and submit it (you must be registered). Once the session submission closes, voting will begin immediately. The full list of sessions will be announced before New Year’s Eve, so you will have plenty of time to procrastinate your presentation! Hurry, before it’s too late!

DrupalCon Chicago 2011 registration is already open, so if you just want to absorb knowledge, have at it.

Google Ranking Algorithm Fixed Over SEO Loophole

In case you missed it, the New York Times published a story on their site this week containing detailed information about DecorMyEyes.com, an eyeglasses company website. The owner of the company intentionally upset customers so they would write irate reviews online, thus giving his website an enormous boost in Google’s search rankings.

In response, Google published that “being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.” Google also made undisclosed changes to their ranking algorithm in light of the incident.

Amit Singhal, head of Google’s core ranking team, published that Google “can’t say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future. We know that people will keep trying: attempts to game Google’s ranking, like the ones mentioned in the article, go on 24 hours a day, every single day.”

In short, a company found a way to gain significant rankings in Google by provoking a surge of negative reviews and ratings. Google calls it a loophole. We call it shady SEO practices and discourage this type of behavior for any and all clients of Volacci.

Thank You For Engaging!

No one likes people who don’t share, especially Keanu Reeves and his crazy gang of memes. So if you liked what you read, please share my post with any of our socially-labeled buttons, or we’ll sick the whole gang after you! You can also subscribe to our RSS feed as well to receive daily fodder from our blog. Thank you for reading!