Google: Rankings Drop After Disavowing Links? Remove Some Of Those Less Shady Links.
Do you often do disavow link pruning? Well, maybe you should? Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that if you see that your…
Google: Why We Don’t Disclose Most Google Updates & Algorithm Changes
Google’s John Mueller addressed the question of why they don’t disclose most Google algorithm updates and changes in this mornings Google hangout not just once…
Google Fact Check Feature Now In Search Results & News Worldwide
In October, during the US elections, Google released fact check schema for Google News in the US. Now…
Google: Bounce Rate Is Not A Good Ranking Signal
Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that bounce rate is simply not a good ranking signal for Google to use in their ranking algorithms. He said “bounce rate is not a good signal…
Google: No Need To Add Alt Text To Position Or Placeholder Images
John Mueller from Google said on Twitter that you don’t need to add alt text to all your images. Specifically, adding alt text to small images used for positioning stuff on your pages or placeholder images are not necessary…
The Google Mobile First Index Likely Won’t Launch In 2017
So Gary Illyes from Google was at this event, which I was not at :), and he said at the event that the mobile first index might not launch in 2017.
Was Ashley Madison Penalized By Google? Not Ranking For It’s Own Name.
Was Ashley Madison’s web site penalized by Google months ago? Maybe. Marie Haynes posted in the Google Webmasters Help forum examples showing
Google: Why We Won’t Label Disavowed Links In The Search Console Report
One of the more common requests I see from webmasters and SEOs in regards to the Google Search Console link report is for Google to label which links are disavowed or nofollowed and which are passing all types of link juice…
See How Google’s John Mueller & Gary Illyes Answer The Same Question Differently
An SEO named Brock Ellison asked Google’s John Mueller and Gary Illyes (he also asked others) the same question and he got different answers from John and Gary…
Google: If You Care About Your Page, You Should Link To It
So we’ve covered Google saying you can rank without links which is why Google’s Gary Illyes was asked about it again on Twitter. Gary’s response was refreshing, saying that “if you care about that page at all, you should probably link it from the site…
Google: We Need More Content For Many Non-English Head Queries
Gary Illyes from Google posted on Twitter one of those DYK saying that there is opportunity for webmasters and SEOs to create content in non-English languages because for many non-English languages, there isn’t “enough content even for head queries…
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Google: Good Rule Of Thumb On Quality Content…
Google’s John Mueller was asked about what makes quality content, um, quality. In which, John responded that a good rule of thumb is content that your users will want to come back to even without a search engine…
Google: Bulk Quality = Low Quality In Search Rankings
Some of the questions SEOs send to Google seem to always amaze me. Basically people asking Google how can they safely spam Google. The last question was about how to do “bulk submission of quality articles” in a safe way. It was addressed to Google’s…
Google: Sitemap Priority Field Is “A Bag Of Noise”
Google has always downplayed the importance of priority and chance frequency in the XML sitemap files. They have told webmasters to not worry about it and even said they ignore other fields like the lastmod date.
That being said…
Google: Our Duplicate Detection & Clustering Is Stable
Paul Haahr, a lead search ranking engineer at Google, said on Twitter that there haven’t been many changes to Google’s algorithms around duplicate detection and clustering in the search results. He said “we make improvements to our code over time…
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Some Chat Boxes Can Be Hit By The Google Intrusive Mobile Interstitials Penalty
Following up on questions around Google’s newish mobile intrusive interstitials penalty. Yesterday we said that store locators that take up the whole screen can be an issue…
Google: Some Store Locator Popups Are Intrusive Mobile Interstitials
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter yesterday that some store locator implementations on mobile may be be considered an intrusive mobile interstitial and thus be at risk for the mobile interstitial Google penalty – if there is any risk…
Google: Search Quality & AdSense Teams Don’t Talk, Ever
Google has said time and time again that the search team, the organic side, does not talk to the paid side, the AdWords teams. There is a pretty big divide, intentionally, between paid and organic. This is also true with the AdSense team…
Google: Again, We Don’t Use Facebook Likes In Rankings
Back, just about six years ago, Google told us Facebook likes don’t influence Google rankings and that statement remains true in 2017, just like it did in 2011. Gary Illyes from Google said the same thing yesterday on Twitter…
Google Rich Cards Now Available Globally
May 2016, Google first introduced the new rich cards and yesterday, Google quietly updated the original announcement saying Rich Cards are now available globally…