Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

There has recently been a lot of confusion around the Panda algorithm, specifically if it is running monthly, in real time, or still manual. The answer, at least today, is that not only is the data for Panda manually updated but also Penguin…
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Remember the alpha/beta version of the Search Impact reports in Google Webmaster Tools that only a limited number of alpha/beta users have access to…

Typically you do not want Google News to index and rank sponsored (paid for) content in the news results. But sites like USA Today…

Google is now bolding the answers in the search results when quick answers are displayed at the top of the page, in the knowledge graph box area…

A thread at Local Search Forum asks a question most SEOs will ask themselves over time… Does your local ranking in Google’s local algorithm at all impact the overall core Google search algorithm?

Believe it or not, there is still confusion around the upcoming mobile-friendly algorithm that Google is pushing live on April 21st.
The algorithm will only impact searches done on smartphones – only. This does not impact desktop searches and it does n…

A thread at Google Webmaster Help forums has a webmaster concerned that Google isn’t allowing him to manually use the submit to index in the fetch in render tool in Google Webmaster Tools for all the URLs on his site…

Google News optimization fascinates me because it is a different algorithm and there are weird rules…

There is a short but informative post by Google’s John Mueller in the Google Webmaster Help forum on the topic of blocking Google from seeing content on a specific page…

John Mueller is well known in the SEO space, he is responsible for helping webmasters learn best practices when it comes to building out web sites that work well with Google. So he answers a lot of questions in the help forums, as well as does many vi…

Google News has a pretty relaxed inclusion process relative to the older days of trying to get into Google News. The new process is documented in detail over here.

I key difference now is that you can only request inclusion via the Google News Publis…

Wikipedia has historically dominated Google’s search results – no one would argue with that.
But now with the knowledge graph, does Google have a need to rank Wikipedia at the top, when instead

Almost all SEOs know that a busy server or slow server will result in GoogleBot slowing how they crawl your web site and we also know that extremely slow sites/pages can be negatively impacted in ranking well in the Google search results…

We reported a month or so ago that Google News said the sitemap index count is not accurate for determining how many of your articles are indexed by Google News.

Google, in the case of Google News, recommends you do a site command…

We know Google has an incredibly light weight ranking signal around going HTTPS with your site. Google has been pushing sites to go HTTPS as a matter of principle and “security…

A week or so ago, we asked if Google News will also be impacted by the mobile-friendly algorithm.

The answer is what I expected, that no, not yet.

Stacie Chan, who I have been pestering on this question for over a week…

Before you start reading this, the title is not to imply that Google News will rank HTTPS content better – they may or may not. This title means that Google News will display the HTTPS

Yesterday we asked how do we know if our pages on our web site will benefit from the mobile friendly algorithm. If the mobile usability reports show you have issues but the mobile testing tool give you the all clear, Google says you should be fine…
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A couple weeks ago, John Mueller of Google hinted subdomain support is coming to the Google Webmaster Tools Change of Address tool, well…

There has been a lot of confusion about when the mobile friendly algorithm will actually be noticeably in the mobile search results – by that I mean…