Survey: Most SEOs Opt To Canonicals To Manage Faceted Navigation
Joe Hall posted a poll on Twitter asking what do SEOs use most to manage faceted navigation. The vast majority of SEOs responded that they use “proper canonicals tags.” Others responded they use robots.txt and then some said meta robots tag. But mos…
Google Favicon Crawler Now Uses Googlebot & Googlebot-Image Token
Google has updated its Google crawler help documentation to specific that the Google Favicon crawler now respects the Googlebot and Googlebot-Image robots rules. Previously, it seemed to just respect its own Google Favicon rules but that was changed o…
Google: The Google URL Parameters Tool Is Scary
Google’s John Mueller said (again) that the Google URL Parameters tool is scary. He said this on Reddit, and then suggested the person try to use noindex or robots.txt methods as an alternative because the Google Search Console reports will show you is…
Google’s Danielle Marshak On How Google Understands Videos
In the latests Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman from the Google Search Central team had Danielle Marshak, a Google Search Product Manager for Videos, as a guest on the podcast. Danielle Marshak, who created a couple new SEO video he…
Google Web Stories Test URL In Footer & Tips
Google seems to be testing displaying the domain the web story is from, while on the web story, in the footer of the story. Also, Google also shows tips on how to interact with web stories when you first load a web story from Google Search.
John Mueller Gives A Hard Lesson To An SEO On Google Ranking & Spam
John Mueller of Google responded to a complaint on Reddit where the SEO or site owner was upset his one month old site was not performing on Google Search. The SEO said despite him “created backlinks on top websites with good DA and low spam score” hi…
When Google Search Console Verify Fix Works Without Fixing Anything
Did you ever get an email from Google Search Console that asks you to take an action to fix an issue and then click the “verify fix” button? Well, did you ever just click that you fixed the issue, without actually implementing any fixes or changes?
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Google: We Mostly Just Ignore Widget Links And Not Penalize For Them
As you know, Google has a webmaster guideline against widget links, despite what some SEOs want to tell themselves. But the good news, and we knew this, that Google will likely just ignore those links and not penalize your site for those links today.
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SEO Claims Higher Rankings Without Content Hidden In Tabs Again
A few years ago, we reported that Google said despite some of the SEO case studies, content collapsed and hidden within expandable tabs (accordions) will be indexed and ranked fully. Well, Dan Shure tested it again and he said no, it is not.
Can You Gain More Intended Google Search Results With Subdomains?
When it comes to “dominating” the search results, most SEOs define that as taking up as much of the search results on page one as possible. Sometimes that means on one domain, sometimes subdomains and sometimes different domains completely. Jonas Sick…
Google SafeSearch Filter Can Now Update Faster
Historically, the Google SafeSearch filter, i.e. the filter that weeds out adult content from the search results, was very slow in removing the SafeSearch label for a site or specific portion of the site. John Mueller of Google said this Friday that G…
Google Cloud Translated Pages Not Indexed By Google Search
Google Cloud’s web site is having issues being indexed in Google Search, specifically the translated pages. Last week, I reported about a webmaster asking about issues with translated content not being indexed by Google. It turned out that this was som…
Google: Indexing Issues Can Be Old Spam Related But Likely Not Adult Content Related
Having issues with Google indexing your web pages? Google’s John Mueller said while Google may not index pages that are spammy, it will index pages that are adult oriented. John said if your domain had old spammy content on it and you took it over and …
Google: Googlebot May One Day Crawl From Outside The U.S.
The other day I reported again how blocking US based users would require you to also block Googlebot, Google’s crawler. And that would be devastating to a site’s search rankings in Google. But John Mueller of Google said it is not out of the question …
Google: We Mechanisms To Verify Merchant Experience Scorecard Metrics
A couple of weeks ago we reported that Google has a new set of ranking factors specific to the Google Shopping tab named the Shopping experience scorecard program. The concern was that merchants are asked to feed these metrics to Google and that the me…
Google Ranking Quotas Do Not Exist
Google’s John Mueller said again that websites do not have some form of quota where they can only rank for a limited number of keywords. He said on Twitter “there’s no hard limit for how many pages we show from a site, subdomain or not.”
PSA: Blocking USA Users But Allowing Googlebot Is Against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Google sends its crew of crawlers, Googlebot, from the United States. That is where 99% of the crawling originates from. If you are not allowed to show your website to users based in the United States, then you also cannot show that website to Googleb…
Google: Translated Content & Garbage Parameters In URLs
You may end up confusing Google when you have “garbage” parameters trailing in your URLs, espesially when it comes to translated content parameters. There is this interesting conversation when a large multilingual site found its translated content exc…
Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool Errors
Yesterday, Google confirmed that some folks trying to use the URL Inspection tool via the console or even the API may be seeing errors. Google said it is working on a fix but almost a day later, some are still having issues and Google has yet to confir…
March 2022 Google Webmaster Report
It is time for the March 2022 Google webmaster report, where I look back at the past 30-days of SEO news related to Google and highlight the most important changes over that time period. This month we had a confirmed rollout begin of the page experienc…