Google Can Penalize A Network Of Sites For The Same Manual Action
Let’s say you run a legit network of sites under one umbrella company. Those sites have different content but the content is in the same framework and structure because I assume they use the same content management system and overall site structure. G…
Google Drops Review Snippets For Lawyers
It looks like Google has stopped displaying the rich results review snippets for attorneys and lawyers in the Google search results. Joy Hawkins showed a screen shot from January 10, 2021 with ratings showing in the Google search results and then on J…
Google Mistakenly Sending Emails To Verify Sites In Search Console
Google is emailing users to verify their sites in Google Search Console. The issue is that this is going to people who do not have any way of verifying those sites because they are not the site owner.
Possible Issues With Google Search Console Canonicals & AMP Reporting
There may be some possible bugs or issues with Google Search Console reporting around some canonical URLs being reported in some URL Inspection reports and for the AMP enhancement report.
Google: Digital Public Relations Is Not Spammy Link Building
Google’s John Mueller has said something positive about one strategy SEOs use to attract attention and thus, hopefully, natural links. He said on Twitter “I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it’s a shame it often gets bucketed with the spa…
Google: Paying For Content Review Or Time With Links Is Paid Links
What if you do not charge for do-follow links but you do charge for the time for link outreach or the time to review and publish that piece of content, that happens to have a do-follow link. Is that type of link an unnatural link and against Google’s w…
Annoying Call To Action Overlays Can Hurt Your Google Rankings
John Mueller of Google was asked by Michael Lewittes if those news websites you see overlay those call to actions asking you to sign up for their newsletter before seeing the content see harm in their Google rankings because of those actions. And yes, …
Google Adds Price Drop Enhancement Documentation
Google has added updated its product structured data documentation document to include details around price drop enhancements. There is a new section named “price drop” that explains that Google “automatically calculates the price drop.”
Chrome 88 Performance Recordings Adds Core Web Vitals Lane
With the release of Chrome 88, you can now see Core Web Vitals data in the developer tools performance recording section. The lane currently displays Web Vitals information such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Layou…
Health & Medical Sites Ranking Too Well For Non-Medical Queries?
There are some interesting complaints that Google is ranking medical and health related sites well for non-medical queries. The theory here is that since the Medic Update Google has given some sites more authority to not just rank for the site’s expert…
Google Search Removes Job Training Rich Results
I believe this is a temporary change but Google has updated the job training rich results structured data documentation to say “this appearance isn’t available on Google Search right now.” The job training experience on Google Search is designed to he…
Google On Mobile-First Indexing For Separate Mobile URLs
To be clear, none of this is exactly new, but John Mueller of Google took the time to explain how mobile-first indexing works with mobile-first indexing. Most sites have been switched over to mobile-first indexing but if you have not, then here is wha…
Google Crawl Stats Report Can Handle Additional Types Of Crawls
Google has noted that it has updated the already updated Crawl Stats report to handle “additional types of crawls.” Google wrote “the crawl stats report has increased its reporting coverage for additional types of crawls.”
Google: There’s No Timeframe For Out Of Stock Product Pages Soft 404ing
Google’s John Mueller said that there is no specific timeframe for when an out of stock product page on your e-commerce site will end up resulting in a soft 404 in Google Search. A soft 404 is when Google thinks a page should return a 404 server status…
Google Search Console Coverage Report Validate Fix, Fixed.
Just a PSA, when Google rolled out the update for the coverage report last week, it also fixed the validate fix issue from December 16, 2020. This is when Google posted the “issue validation is temporarily disabled due to upcoming changes in the report…
Google: Paying Bloggers To Write For Dofollow Backlinks Is Against Our Guidelines
John Mueller of Google was asked the following question, “if I dofollow backlinks due to paying bloggers to write highly relevant review articles or paying for high-quality PR news articles, are they paid links that go against Google’s guidelines?” Jo…
Schema.org vs Google Structured Data Rich Results
There is a difference between what you see at Schema.org and what Google publishes at its Google Search developer documents for structured data rich results. The short difference is that what Google publishes is what you can potentially see surface in…
Old Google Disavow Tool Going Away On January 19, 2021
Two months ago Google launched the new disavow link tool, a tool Google says you really do not need, but relaunched it anyway in the new Google Search Console. Now, Google is sunsetting the old tool in just a few days from now.
Google Marketing Search Console Owners To Verify Via Domain Property
Looks like the folks at Google are doing an email marketing push to Search Console properties that have not yet verified the property through the domain property method. Google is sending out different flavors of emails, some pitching you can see all …