Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Annually, Google updates the Merchant Center product data specification and Google made some updates to it last night. Some updates went into place on April 27, 2022 and some go into place on June 26, 2022.

As expected, the Google Search Console URL Parameter Tool is no longer available. If you try to access it for a specific property, you get a message that reads “this report is no longer available here.” It links you to the announcement that the tool wa…

Google has published its annual web spam report and in that report, Google has named its machine learning based systems for spam identification with its own name – SpamBrain. SpamBrain is a new name but the technology, the AI, is from 2018, so SpamBrai…

A recent poll on Twitter by Brodie Clark shows that SEOs really do want both a featured snippets filter in the performance reports in Google Search Console and also an index coverage API. The poll also has a number of other requests but those are by f…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google “looks at “CSS .Class” to comprehend the structure of a page; or a section of content that clarifies its SERP Features.” John responded on Twitter saying “not that I’m aware of.”

It looks like Google Site Kit, the Google plugin for WordPress, has bridged in another Google data platform named Google Question Hub. This is in addition to Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google AdSense and PageSpeed Insights.

The AMP cache URL is the URL that looks like https://www.google.com/amp/s/ followed by your site’s details. You do not have fully control over that URL, so there is really no need to worry about having that URL redirect to your site. Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit “It’ll fix itself automatically, you don’t need to do anything special with it & you can’t redirect it.”

Google is sending out notices about intrusive interstitials to sites that are placing these interstitials in a possibly annoying manner on their sites. The email subject lines read “Improve your page experience by removing intrusive interstitials from …

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter he would recommend again changing URLs and then changing them back, and repeating that, for SEO reasons. The individual wanted to do that for SEO testing but generally, with SEO, changing URLs, is not a recommende…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if going from 5 to 10 links in your site’s main navigation menu to about 150 links in that navigation menu would result or possibly impact your Google Discover traffic. John unequivocally said no, any Google Discover tra…

One of the newish lines from the March 2022 Google Product Reviews update announcement is where Google said “including original images from tests you performed with the product can be good ways to do this” But writing that you tested a product in your…

Google’s John Mueller was asked for advice on how can he help his client rank in the featured snippets section of the Google Search results. In which, John responded that there is “no technical method for achieving that.”

Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google Search Console will show links from a redirected domain to the new domain in the links report in Search Console. The answer is yes, if the links are being redirected and you did a site move from domain A to dom…

Alan Kent from Google was asked if if product comparison posts like comparing one product against another “count as reviews in the eyes of Google and, more importantly, the Product Reviews Updates?” Alan sent not necessarily.

Google has updated the webmaster guidelines document to add that automatically generated content is against the guidelines only when it is “intended to manipulate search rankings.” This was added to the main webmaster guidelines here the other day and…

Google does not support WebSocket connections in Googlebot. This was first known, I think, back in May 2019, when Martin Splitt and Zoe Clifford presented at Google I/O. Zoe Clifford said there “Google does not allow WebSocket connections in Googlebot…

Google has once again disavowed that negative SEO is an issue for SEOs, publishers, site owners or Google Search. Google has been telling the world not to worry about negative SEO and that if you are worried, feel free to use the disavow tool – not th…

Lizzi Sassman and Martin Splitt brought on a special Google guest on their Google search off the record podcast to discuss structured data. The guest is named Ryan Levering who has been with Google for over 11 years working on structured data.

Google redid their removal tool in Google Search Console in 2020 but the tool has generally always been quick. John Mueller of Google said in the past that it takes less than a day and that it is very quick. So one person tested it and said it took on…

Google’s John Mueller was asked about thin content issues on the last webmaster hangout and John explained this generally applies to the site as a while and not a page by page basis. So it seems a site in general can be labeled as having thin content …