If you didn’t already know this, Google doesn’t like to be disobeyed. Their webmaster guidelines are there as a rule book and while they do let you un-punish yourself by submitted reconsideration requests, they do not take violation of their guidelines lightly. A blog post by the Google Search Quality Team this past Friday finally […]
Category Archives: SEO Talk
Yandex Gets Nasty With Link Sellers
We’re always talking about the various different penalties and algorithms that Google and Bing put into place to help protect their search results from any manipulation – but what about the other search engines out there? Yandex has recently launched a new update to their algorithm called AGS which targets link sellers and negatively effects […]
Google Confirms: Full Screen App Interstitials Will Break Your Websites Mobile Friendliness
Interstitial app ads are extremely annoying – in my opinion anyway. They pop up just when you’re expecting to dig into the content you wanted to read, and half the time you close them they force the page to reload. Well Google seems to agree with me here and as of November 1st, 2015 any mobile […]
Want To Keep That SSL Ranking Boost? Perfect Your SSL Setup
I’ve covered SSL several times now in post and video form – and if you’ve decided that there’s a benefit to converting your website to SSL I urge you to do it correctly. That means going through your website to make sure that all of the elements you are utilizing (all of your scripts, images, […]
Tweets Now Displaying In Google Search Results
Just a couple of months ago Google officially began showing Twitter Tweets as part of their search results – and I made a video stating that Twitter was going to becoming the quickest way to the top of a Google search result. Well while most of us were relaxing and enjoying our days off this weekend […]
Google Confirms: We Will Probably Never Index All Your Website Pages
Have you been desperately trying to get Google to index all of your websites pages? Constantly revamping your sitemap, updating your content, and resubmitting only to find your stats in Google Search Console barely improving? In a tweet Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google will never actually index all of your pages and there really […]
Google Confirms User Actions Are NOT A Ranking Factor
Continuing with the Google confirmations we now have Google’s John Mueller stating that there are no Google algorithms that target user actions on your website. He further said, “I don’t think we even see what people are doing on your web site.” So comments, form submissions, and general user interactions don’t help your websites ranking. So […]
Google Confirms You Can Use Pipes & Commas In Title Tags
I always say that I get pretty excited at anything that gets confirmed by Google. Well Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter that it makes no difference if you decide to use pipes ( | ) or simple commas within your title tags. @osandacooray doesn't matter @Buddhini5 — Gary Illyes (@methode) August 10, 2015 Personally […]
Google Now Displays Only 3 Local Results
I have some rather unfortunate news to report guys. Google has changed their search layout once more – getting rid of the seven local results they used to show for appropriate queries and displaying only 3 local listings now. I first noticed this around August 6th/7th, and Barry Schwartz over at SearchEngine Roundtable reported on […]
Google Sending Out Warning To Webmasters Blocking CSS/JS Files On Their Websites
Did you suddenly get an email from Google Search Console Team today stating that Googlebot cannot access CSS and/or JS files on your website? Don’t panic too much – although you should DEFINITELY feel a bit bad. Google has been asking people to stop blocking their CSS and JS resources from Googlebot for quiet a while […]
Google Explains How They Handle New Top Level Domain Names
While we’re still on the topic of Google letting us know how they handle different aspects that the SEO community is constantly discussing. Now that we know how Google handles dynamically generated tabbed content, let’s see how Google handles all of the new top-level domain names that have came out. In a post on the […]
Google Doesn’t Index Dynamically Generated Tabbed Content
How Google handles dynamic content has always been a huge topic of discussion among the SEO community – and it’s a huge help when Google steps up and gives us official answers. Gary Illyes stepped in to a Stack Overflow discussion to help us understand whether or not Google will see dynamically generated content within hidden […]
Google Panda 4.2 Begins A Very Slow Roll Out Process
Back during SMX Advanced an update to Google’s Panda was announced – and since then we’ve been patiently waiting for it to finally roll out. A couple of weeks turned into a couple of months but now Panda 4.2 has finally rolled out. Panda 4.2 will be an extremely slow roll out – taking months […]
Google Confirms A Penguin Refresh Is Still Months Away
While we wait on the Google Panda refresh, which still hasn’t rolled out, Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter over the weekend that we will be waiting even longer for a Penguin refresh. @mrjamiedodd No. Penguin refresh is months away — Gary Illyes (@methode) July 11, 2015 The last Penguin update was Penguin 3.0 which […]
Webmasters: Do You Want The Ability To Compare Sites Within Google’s Search Console?
Google has launched a survey asking webmasters, online marketers, and SEOs to offer their feedback on a side-by-side comparison feature within the Google Search Console. The survey isn’t overly complicated and digs into how you would utilize this comparison feature, your role, and an option field where you can list the various websites that you […]
Google’s Panda Refresh Is Still Coming & Still In A Couple Weeks
Back in the beginning of this month I had written about an upcoming refresh to the Google Panda algorithm – as announced by Gary Illyes during SMX Advanced. Originally he expected the refresh to start rolling out within two to four weeks of that post – however here we are at the end of June […]
Google Incorporates Pinterest, Vines, and Food Network into News Carousel
Earlier on this year Google incorporated carousel search results for mobile users browsing for specific news events and topics. Originally the carousel worked solely off of rich snippets from a websites articles – showcasing various articles related to your search term. Well yesterday Google announced, with no real fan-fare, that the carousel will now also […]
Bing Search Goes HTTPS
Bing has announced today the decision to encrypt users searches by default over the course of this summer. Essentially for users that means that you get a more secure browsing experience, and your BING url will essentially be https://www.bing.com. For webmasters this means that traffic will start originating from https://www.bing.com. Bing however promises to pass […]
Google’s Panda Refresh Coming Within A Couple of Weeks
During the SMX Advanced conference last night Google’s Gary Illyes announced that there will be a Panda data refresh coming within the next few weeks. Expectantly within two to four weeks. Now it’s important to take note that this is not an algorithmic change, however merely a data refresh. Now this means that the data about your […]
Google Webmaster Tools Renamed to Google Search Console
Google announced a name change today to their almost decade old Google Webmaster Tools platform, renaming it to Google Search Console in an attempt to broaden the target audience. Google doesn’t want to limit the audience behind Webmaster Tools/Search Console to solely webmasters – they want small business owners, bloggers, designers, and essentially everyone to […]