WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration they have added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports.

Here are some of the savvy new features:

• Flyout Menus
• Admin Bar Revamped
• More Efficient Media Uploader
• New Feature Tooltips aka Pointers
• Responsive Admin Panel
• Permalink and Performance Issue

Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are pretty spiffy:

Have a Safe and Awesome Halloween!

WordPress 3.2 Highlights

• Refreshed Administrative UI - Admin redesign
• New Default Theme “Twenty Eleven” - Uses the latest Theme Features
• Full Screen Editor - Distraction free writing experience
• Extended Admin Bar - More useful links to control the site

A full list of updates and features can see at http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.2
Matt Mullenweg’s blog post about the update characterizes 3.2 as “faster and lighter” with an emphasis on “a refreshed backend design that improves the typography, design, and code.”

The most recent version of WordPress prior to this, 3.1, was released four months ago and surpassed the 15 million download threshold on Monday.

WordPress 3.2 also introduces the fully HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme, which is in line with WordPress’ plan to replace the default theme every year. On of my favorite updates is the redesigned post editor.  It allows bloggers to enter a “distraction-free writing or zen mode” that fills up the screen. I just used it to write this post and found it very useful. I feel more zen already… don’t You?  :)

“All of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when your mouse strays to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts are right there where you need them,” Mullenweg states.

WordPress 3.2 is available both as an update in your dashboard as well as a download on WordPress.org.

Lines like that, and more, can be found in the video below:

“It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down,” Google engineers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote in a blog post Thursday night.

Google states that sites with original content “such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on” will move up in rankings. One way Google said it measures the bounce rate is by looking at whether users click the “back” button quickly after visiting a search result. A web site’s bounce rate might indicate a lack of satisfaction with a site.
If your site is has dropped in rankings you may need to change the content on your site.

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There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

With the 3.1 release, WordPress is more of a CMS than ever before. The only limit to what you can build is your imagination.

Denis Pinsky, the Digital Marketing Manager at Forbes.com, posted a Google Webmaster Help thread with the notification warning. As some of you know, Google now email site owners when they are participating in unnatural links and Forbes.com just received their email from Google.

The email read:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.forbes.com/,
We’ve detected that some or all of your pages are using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which are available here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. For more information about our linking guidelines, visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356&hl=en.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en to submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en.

Google told Forbes that they have “artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank” on their web site. In other words, they are selling links, which is against Google’s guidelines.

Pinsky asked, in a public forum, “Can someone help figure out what Links are in violation?”

It is important to add that this would not be the first time Forbes.com was penalized by Google for selling links. In fact, Forbes wrote about the first time back in 2007, the article was named Google Scares The Search Crowd.

Thursday, Web site administrators for major sites including the Washingtonpost.com, Techcrunch, and Engadget (as well as Forbes.com) found that their “pagerank”–a number that typically reflects the ranking of a site in Google.

Forbes is no stranger to how Google works. I am a bit surprised that the top SEO at Forbes would post this in a public forum – I assume he has no clue where the paid links are. I looked and didn’t find anything within 60 seconds of looking. Do you see the paid links?

Starting Monday Forbes started to delete the links from their site.