For some reason ‘Mongolian Invader’ is number four over at Google Trends. I say “for some reason” because the the news articles that accompany this search query (that being one single news reference since June 16th) is a spammy site. Could it be that someone is repetitively searching the keyword ‘Mongolian Invader’ to game Google Trends and gain traffic? Interesting bit of manipulation if this is the case.

I’m sure I’m stating the obvious a bit here but has anyone else noticed that Google’s backlink data within webmaster tools isn’t displaying any data? It lists how many links are pointing back to each page but when you click on the link list it doesn’t display anything. Additionally, whenever I attempt to do a site: or link: request within Yahoo, it churns forever and isn’t returning results. I’m not sure what’s going on in the world of backlink data but when a reporting mechanism works 99% percent of the time and then suddenly doesn’t, especially within the two major search engines, it’s a bit disconcerting.

Also worth noting is the weird Google results mentioned over at Search Engine Land and by Aaron Wall.

Some existing companies like Ebay and Amazon seem to be preventing their old identity from being resurrected. However, some of the old heavy hitters (alive and dead) can still be seen in all their startup glory.

Google – 1997

Yahoo – 1996

MSN – 1996
(this one’s kind of weird. Not sure about it’s accuracy)

Monster 1996

AOL 1996

Netscape 1996

Lycos 1996

Geocities 1996

Prodigy 1996 (“Untangle the web” …love it)

Excite 1996

Go to Google and query celebrate express coupon. Do you see the URL www.happycoupons.com? Here’s what I’m seeing for these guys…

In Firefox:
Yesterday they had two listings at positions 3 and 4, one was for the www.happycoupons.com homepage and the other was for http://www.happycoupons.com/coupons/celebrate_express/. The homepage URL is redirecting to the celebrate express URL. Today, they only have one listing which is the homepage URL which is still redirecting to the celebrate express URL.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

When I login to Google and hover over the www.happycoupons.com URL in the SERPs…instead of seeing www.happycoupons.com show-up in the bottom of my Firefox browser, I see this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.happycou

pons.com%2F&ei=TWPhRpbFJY66esXojd0M&usg=AFQjCNHnoKSMuCUpz0Z0UPkjS
LFJzLOGrg&sig2=GsEVur_0ca4jLP3bfpZ8YQ

But I only see this after logging in.

In Internet Explorer:
To make things even weirder, when I do the search in Internet Explorer, I still see the two listings for www.happycoupons.com as I did yesterday in Firefox.

BTW: The homepage URL redirect is only happening in the SERPs when you google ‘celebrate express coupon’. If you type in the homepage directly, there is no redirect.

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here?