Category Archives: SEO Talk

Penguin 3.0 Is Slowly Rolling Out These Couple of Weeks

Google Penguin is the codename for a Google algorithm update that was first announced back in 2012 and was aimed at decreasing the search engine rankings of websites that have violated the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines through the use of black-hat SEO tactics and back-link manipulation. In 2013 we say version 2.0 of Google Penguin […]

Yelp & TripAdvisor Attempts to Rework Google Local Search Results

There’s always been a lot of people arguing against the Google algorithm – however for the first time a group of them got together and created a brand new Google Chrome app called “Focus on the User” …

Google Begins Slowly Rolling Out New Panda Update

Google had first released Panda 4.0 back in May of this year, and yesterday Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update has began rolling out. Through a post on Google+ Google said that a slow rollout has began this week and will continue through to next week. Depending on location the new […]

Google Introduces Structured Snippets

This week, the Google Research team introduced a new addition to Google Web Search called structured snippets, which provide an additional way for Google to pull data from your website and display it among their search results. From the blog post: “Google Web Search has evolved in recent years with a host of features powered by the Knowledge […]

Bing Introduces Dynamic Site Links to Bing Ads

Following an internal report by the Bing team which has determined that providing annotations on ads can improve click through rates – Bing has introduced a feature called Dynamic Sitelinks. I would re-write to you what they do however the Bing blog post describes it best: Dynamic Sitelinks is another way to help your potential […]

Bing Explains How They Deal With Keyword Stuffing URLs

In a post on the Bing Webmaster Blog Bing has dug into how exactly they deal with keyword stuffing URLs. There are a few main signals that Bing looks out for when determining whether URL keyword stuffing tactics are in-use on a site: Site size Number of hosts Number of words in host/ domain names […]

Google Changes Site Search Placement In Search Results

Surely most of you by now have made use of the site search box that Google shows you when you run a search for a company name. Go ahead and try it, run a search for “Youtube” on Google and you’ll see a search box appear within the first search result from which you can […]

Bing Introduces Bulk Editing To Bing Ads Web UI

In the past managing PPC campaigns for large accounts with lots of keywords and hundreds of ads was well … pretty much a pain in the ass. You’re ideal environment would require two screens, one running the Bing Ads Editor and one running the Bing Ads web UI. Thankfully that has all changed as Bing announced the […]

Bing Explains Their Stance on Web Spam

Bing has published a new blog post that I believe is a must-read for any webmaster or SEO’r. Titled Web Spam Filtering the post goes into detail about what web spam is, how it works, and what Bing is doing about it. Bing actually takes a very interesting methodology to understanding and fighting web spam […]

Goodbye Google Authorship

Just a few months ago we bid farewell to Google’s Authorship Images from the search results, and with the new month of September we now bid adieu to Google displaying any Authorship data within their search results. Google’s authorship support page, says simply, “Authorship markup is no longer supported in Web search,” and encourages webmasters to […]

Invalid SSL Certificates Will Still Provide Google Ranking Boost

Earlier on this month Google announced that SSL-secured websites will receive a small ranking boost. Since then I have even converted the majority of Rapid Purple to run over an HTTPS connection. If you’ve been going through the conversion process yourself lately here’s a bit of news that Barry Schwartz found out which might make your […]

HTTPS Will Now Give You Ranking Benefits in Google

Google announced late last week that they are now using SSL/HTTPS as a small ranking signal within their Google search algorithm. Yes, a small ranking signal – or in the words of Google: “a very lightweight signal” which is shown to impact “fewer than 1% of global queries“. Google equated the SSL ranking signal with the Panda signal and […]

Google Introduces Reviews for Product Listings

Those of you who actively utilize Google Shopping probably noticed that some of your search results look a bit different today. Those of you browsing Google within the United States will see product ratings appear in the form of stars and review counts on Product Listing Ads. This 5-star rating system represents aggregated rating and review data […]

Google Adds Sitelinks to Adwords

Google announced over the weekend the introduction of dynamic sitelinks that appear below a Google Adwords advertisement. These dynamic sitelinks are automatically generated and can send customers to a page on your website that’s highly relevant based on recent search activities. They look like this on desktop and mobile: Often times when people are searching on […]

Google Updates Local Search Algorithm

Google has released yet another new algorithm, this one attempts to provide more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results. The new algorithm changes will be visible within the Google Maps search results and Google Web search results. The main set of changes are primarily behind the scenes, but it does impact local search results rankings and […]