Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

As you know, the Google Indexing API only is reserved for job posting URLs and live stream events. But that might change as we have been speculating for a while. Gary Illyes from Google in his Reddit AMA also mentioned that Google is testing this as …

This is probably common sense to all the readers here, but you should likely not add a noindex and remove the noindex on specific URLs often or heck, even infrequently. It will confuse Google, slow Google down in terms of seeing if that page should be …

Gary Illyes from Google in his AMA said that Google does not have an internal linking over optimization penalty. He went on to say, in his Gary tone, “you can abuse your internal links as much as you want AFAIK.”

I know Gary Illyes from Google is going to roll his eyes when he sees this post, but I find it funny and I want to share what he wrote on this Reddit AMA regarding Google’s ranking factors. He was asked to share some more search ranking factors, and o…

Gary Illyes from Google dropped a hint around if signals from other pages in a duplicate content cluster gets passed to the one Google shows in their search results. It is not clear in his response, which is by design but he said “generally the page in…

I love when Gary Illyes talks about Google. He was asked about what is RankBrain and goes off to explain that “RankBrain is a PR-sexy machine learning ranking component.” I would love to see how Google’s sexy PR team talks to Gary about this comment.
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In that Reddit AMA with Gary Illyes, Gary said out right and clear that the theories around Google using UX and behavioral signals such as CTR and dwell time are “generally made up crap.” He added “Search is much more simple than people think.”
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Right now, if you try to access Google Search Console you will get a 404 page not found error.

This is not intentional, something is wrong and Google is working on the fix…

Google announced pretty big news for most of the readers here related to the performance report in Google Search Console. Starting the end of next month, the data in the performance report will be based on the canonical URL, which means the AMP, mobile…

Google has one again made updates to the QA page content guidelines, this time providing dos and don’ts with more detail. Previously Google added these guidelines in December of last year for the new QA page schema.

Joost de Valk announced at YoastCon that the popular WordPress plugin, Yoast SEO, will provide live indexing with both Google and Bing starting next month. I’ll be honest, I am a bit confused on how this will work with Google but I assume with Bing – t…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google’s algorithm can associate negative factors with people or organizations that would lead the unrelated site to be downgraded in their search results. John said he doesn’t believe Google has such an algorithm bu…

Google’s John Mueller issued a “PSA” this morning clarifying that the old Google Search Console is not closing in March. What is closing are some of the old features noted that are going away in March. But the old Search Console will remain active for …

Google’s John Mueller said on yesterday’s Google hangout at around the 8:17 mark that Google is pretty good at ignoring link cruft. Basically old, spammy and irrelevant links accrued by the site over the years. This is similar messaging from before b…

Google’s John Mueller said it is okay to add your test or development site to Google Search Console, even if it is noindexed and disallowed by search engines. There are still some useful tools you can run on your site before you launch it that may hel…

Over the past couple of weeks some local SEOs are reporting weird drops in their Google Search Console Search Analytics reports for Google My Business profiles that use UTM code tracking. Joy Hawkins said for some of her clients, they are noticing “huge drops in impressions & clicks for the URL we use in GMB that uses UTM codes.”

Some folks are seeing a new useragent in their log files named google-speakr. The for that useragent, at least during accessing the sites is 66.249.81.186 which resolves to Google. SEOs and webmasters are asking if this is some sort of Google Assista…

It was a busy January with a few unconfirmed Google algorithm updates around the 15th, 9th and 6th of January. Google also said the next 50% of mobile-first indexing will be the hardest.

Ari Nahmani posted on Facebook (public URL) a message he got for one of his clients in Google Search Console that is unique. It is directly from John Mueller, the same John Mueller we cover here, about a critical and urgent issue with their web site.
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Over the past couple of days, some SEOs have been sharing some unusually looking charts from Google Search Console’s Search Analytics report. It shows negative numbers, charts that don’t connect, numbers that are off, etc. John Mueller from Google ev…