Google: WhoisGuard Does Not Impact SEO & Rankings
Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit “no” WhoisGuard, the NameCheap domain privacy setting, does not impact your SEO or rankings on Google. Google does not care if you use domain privacy settings or not when you register your domain name.
Google Search Console Core Web Vitals Boundaries Changed On February 17th
Google made a small change to how it plots the core web vitals data in Google Search Console. The change goes into effect on February 17, 2021 and using less than as a boundary, Google is using less than or equal to.
Google Can Process JavaScript Redirects But Be Concerned About Other Search Engines
Google’s Gary Illyes said that Google Search can process JavaScript redirects but Google still does not recommend using JavaScript redirects because other search engines might not pick up on it.
Google May Discover URLs In Form Action Attributes & Text Files
Google’s John Mueller said Google may discover and index URLs it finds in form action attributes, just like it does when it finds URLs in simple text files. Again, these are not normal HTML hyperlinks but URLs listed in files.
Google May Provide Method To Block Content From Google Discover
Danny Sullivan from Google said Google is “looking at” providing a mechanism to block pages or subsections of your site from being displayed in Google Discover. This comes off the controversy that there are new manual actions for Discover and Google Ne…
Google Passage Based Ranking Causing Minimal Impact So Far
I see a ton, absolutely a ton, of confusion in the SEO industry around the Google launch of passage based ranking. A reminder, according to Google, passage based ranking launched in the US English results in the afternoon of February 10th PST time. Bu…
Can You Ride The Google Discover Wave?
Dan Shure shared a screenshot on Twitter of a client of his who got a big win in Google Discover. Then they decided to create more articles on the same topic to see if those new articles can ride the same Google Discover wave and it seemed to work.
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Google Search Console Screenshot Hack
Valentin Pletzer along with Saijo George came up with a little trick or hack to get Google Search Console to show you a screenshot of the middle or portion of your page. Normally, the URL inspection tool screen shot is of the top of the page only but …
Google’s John Mueller On Google Search Spam Penalties & Quality Issues
Google’s John Mueller posted one of the more detailed responses I’ve seen from him on the topic of overall search spam, penalties, quality algorithms and more. I am not sure if the comment is showing up anymore on Reddit, so here is a screenshot of it….
Poll On Impact Of Google Page Experience Update & Core Web Vitals On Rankings
Lily Ray posted a Twitter poll asking the SEO industry if they think the core web vitals, or I guess the upcoming Google Page Experience Update, will have an “discernable impact” on your Google organic rankings. As expected, the results are somewhat al…
Google: Stop Worrying About Stop Words Just Write Naturally
A couple of weeks ago, the SEO industry couldn’t stop talking about stop words. SEMrush posted a list of “SEO stop words” and the community began buzzing. John Mueller of Google even responding saying on Twitter “I wouldn’t worry about stop words at …
Google Search Console Adds AMP Error Disallowed !important CSS Qualifier
Google has added a new AMP error to the Search Console AMP enhancements report for disallowed !important CSS qualifier. This was added back on January 19, 2021 and as a result, you may see an increase in the number of AMP errors reported after that da…
Google Passage Ranking & Scroll To Text/Snippet Are Unrelated
With the launch of passage ranking this past week, there has been a lot of confusion about if you can “see” these in the Google search results. The answer is no, you cannot see them in the search results as we covered last week and December 2020.
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Google Won’t Penalize Your Site For Missing Logos, Menu Links Or Footers
Google’s John Mueller said Google does not have manual action penalties for building sites that are missing logos, or missing the menu links at the top or even the footers at the bottom. John said on Twitter “I’m not aware of any manual actions / penal…
Google SEO Advice On Temporarily Removing Site Functionality In Support Of Action
Google’s John Mueller shared a number of tweets the other day with specific SEO advice around what to do when you remove or disable functionality of parts of your website or your whole website in order to encourage users to take action on an issue. So…
Google: Shorter Domains Are Not Better For Ranking Or SEO
Google’s John Mueller said that having a shorter domain name or a shorter URL is not going to benefit you in terms of your SEO and ranking in Google Search. He said on Twitter “domain name or URL length is not a factor, adding that “shorter is not bet…
Google Image Search Update Reduces Duplicate Images (November 2020)
Google announced it rolled out a Google Image Search algorithm update in November 2020 aimed at reducing duplicate images in the search results, to instead show “relevant yet visually distinct” images. Plus, Google made the alternative meanings refine…
Google Search May Use Core Web Vitals Data From Noindexed Pages
Google may or may not use the Core Web Vitals metrics from pages not within Google’s indexed, pages you may explicitly block from indexing, as part of its overall calculation for the upcoming Google Page Experience Update. John Mueller of Google said …
Google Video On Image SEO In Detail With 12 Tips
Google’s John Mueller released an almost 10 minute long video on image SEO best practices and tips. It is one of the more detailed image SEO presentations I’ve seen from Google. He lists off 12 specific actionable tips and then talks more about implem…
Google Search Prefers To Neutralize The Effect Of Spam
Ever since Penguin 4.0, we know Google preferred to ignore bad links versus penalize those bad links. Well, that applies to other search spam as well. Google’s John Mueller said the other day on Twitter that “if we can neutralize the effect of bad lin…