Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google announced early this morning that they are now using SSL/HTTPS as a ranking signal in their Google search algorithm.

The signal is incredibly weak and webmasters should not go crazy about it…

The University of California, Berkeley is having some issues with Google crawling, indexing…

Google Webmaster Tools already has special features for Google News publishers, like a separate view of the news indexing and processing details, as well as news specific errors…

When you submit a reconsideration request, Google notifies you they received it with a blanket message in Google Webmaster Tools. Now, supposedly, Google will also show you a copy of your submission via the reconsideration request form…

On Friday we reported on a refresh of the local search results, after the major Google Pigeon update a week or so before. Google basically told us they have nothing to say on this and likely will not provide future details on local search algorithm ch…

In December 2011, Google launched author stats, a way to see how your content, across sites, based on your Google Authorship profile, fared. That is now gone…

EGOL, a long time SEO and webmaster, posted in the Cre8asite Forums thread saying long tail traffic from Google “ain’t what it use to be.”

He said back in the day he would write an article and get more than twice the traffic he does now from a simila…

Around November 17, 2012, MetaFilter got nailed by a Google update that back then Google denied.

As we explained in March, Google was working on a way to fix the algorithm that hit them back in November 2012…

Google noted on their Google+ page that they are going to announce some “big news” around their Google Webmaster Academy.

The Google Webmaster Academy is a place you can go to learn the basics around making great web sites that world well with Google’…

About a month ago, I saw some early discussions within the more blackhat SEO communities about a Google Sandbox 2.0, where Google began targeting possibly churn and burn sites from ranking well. That conversation is now creeping into the mainstream SE…

Brian Fitzpatrick, a software engineer manager at Google, posted on Twitter a screen shot of NBCNews.com not being indexed properly by Google.

He wrote…

21 months ago, Google launched the disavow tool and SEOs have been eating it up.

This comes despite Google informing us it can harm your site if used wrong, but not when others disavow your site.

However…

Greg Niland, aka goodroi, posted a thread in WebmasterWorld explaining that money management is vital in your long term SEO success.

Greg said, “having good SEO results in Google actually requires smart money management…

Google has said this before but it is always comforting hearing them say this multiple ways.

Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji said in a Google Webmaster Help thread that if done correctly…

It has been exactly 297 days since the last official Penguin update, Penguin 2.1, which was on October 4th. That means it has almost been 10 months since the last update.
10 months of waiting for those hit hard by the Penguin algorithm. 10 months of ha…

A WebmasterWorld thread asks the question most SEOs and Webmasters have asked themselves but are too afraid to ask out loud…..

Last night, Google pushed out a new and major local search ranking algorithm change. Where Google provided details for me on this update. This is not really a spam change but more of a fundamental change to the local search ranking algorithm.

A discussion forum administrator posted questions about how to improve his forum in the eyes of Google, the question was posted in a Google Webmaster Help forum and Google’s John Mueller responded to it in detail…

A Black Hat World forum thread asks if Google’s algorithms work the same in all the various countries throughout the world.

The quick answer is no…

The co-founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, posted on Twitter and also on the Moz blog that one of the YouMoz, the user generated content portion of Moz, contributors received a Google Manual action for a link violation and it cited an article posted on YouMo…