Moz: Google’s New Quick Answer Box Now Showing 98% More Often
According to a Moz tracking study the new formatted quick answers box you find in Google for queries like [what is seo] is showing up 98% more often than a week ago. Overall, general answer boxes, including stock quotes, weather forecasts, box scores a…
A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results
Advanced Web Ranking has released a study showing fresh data on the click-through-rate from Google’s organic search results. The data was taken from Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries reports from large accounts back in July 2014. On average, 71.33% of searches resulted in a page one…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google On How They Know When To Slow Or Stop Crawling Your Web Site
Today at SMX East, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, Gary Illyes shared with the audience two technical ways Google determines when GoogleBot, their crawlers, should slow down or stop crawling your web site. One of the more important factors with SEO is to ensure the search engine crawlers…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Testing Smartphone Friendly Icon In Search Results, Again
Google is once again showing mobile smartphone icons on smartphone friendly search results, while searching on your smartphone. Many searchers are noticing it and Brent Payne sent us a screen shot. Here is what the smartphone icon looks like on an iPho…
Are Games & Lyrics Sites Google Panda 4.1′s Biggest Losers?
Google began rolling out Panda 4.1 last week into this week but we already have the winners and losers report from SearchMetrics. The biggest winners for Panda 4.1 based on this early report are sites in the news, content and download portal realm. Whi…
Panda 4.1 — Google’s 27th Panda Update — Is Rolling Out
Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released. Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
The Underlying B2B Marketing Value Of 4 (Previously Successful) SEO Tactics
Though SEO tactics may come and go, the underlying principles behind them often remain true.
The post The Underlying B2B Marketing Value Of 4 (Previously Successful) SEO Tactics appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land fo…
Google Targets Sites Using Private Blog Networks With Manual Action Ranking Penalties
Google has reportedly taken action on sites participating in private blog networks, also known as PBNs. On September 18th, Google sent out widespread manual action notices via Google Webmaster Tools to these sites for “thin content” spam. Google considers thin content to be search spam…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Where You’ll Find Google Structured Snippets: From Superheroes To Product Specifications
The other day, Google officially announced structured snippets, basically knowledge graph snippets directly embedded in the search results snippets. But what type of queries trigger the structured snippets from showing up in the search results? Based o…
Google Structured Snippets Officially Live In Search Results
Earlier this month we caught Google testing a form of knowledge graph data within the search results snippet. This feature is now officially being confirmed by Google on the Google Research Blog. Google calls these “structured snippets,” where Google will show snippets of data, relevant…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Makes Penalty Mistakes: The Buffer Story
Buffer’s Courtney Seiter posted on the Buffer blog that they had a bit of unusual Google Penalty that resulted in a 90% drop in organic Google traffic to the site. The issue had nothing to do with the Buffer web site, but rather a bug with Google, according to Courtney. Courtney said they…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
TV Rank: Google Gets Patent On Using TV Viewing Habits To Influence Search Results
Google uses a variety of signals to determine how to rank search results, such as how people link to content on the web, geographic location, search history and more. Now, perhaps what you’re watching on TV might become a new factor. Bill Slawski, an SEO patent guru, posted on his blog that…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Nearly A Year Later, Are We Finally Going To Get A Penguin Update Refresh?
In 22 days from now, it will be the year anniversary of the release of the fifth update to Google’s Penguin algorithm, code-named Penguin 2.1. As you can imagine, waiting 11 months and 8 days can be excruciating for those who were negatively impacted by the punitive algorithm. They’ve…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Despite Google’s Need To Go Deeper When Indexing, Google Fixes Self Indexing Glitch
Over the week, there were various reports of Google going against their own webmaster guidelines, by indexing their own search results. Last night, Google updated their robot.txt file to ensure they block their own search results from being in the Goog…
Google Revamps Webmaster Tools API
Google announced on the Webmaster blog that they’ve updated the Google Webmaster Tools API to bring it up to par with other Google APIs. Google has revamped how you authenticate for apps or web-services and it also gives you access to some of the main features of Webmaster Tools. Specific…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
The Confusion Over Google’s Algorithm Updates & Refreshes
I personally spend a lot of time within the SEO space investigating claims of Google algorithm updates, it is a fascinating topic because there are so many variables involved and a lot of secrecy on Google’s end around their search algorithms. Often, Google will not confirm updates or…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
SearchMetrics Released SEO Ranking Factors For 2014: Content Now Really King?
SearchMetrics announced their 2014 SEO ranking factors study is now ready for download. Every year, SearchMetrics releases the study but this is the largest study they’ve done, with almost 100 pages and by adding dozens of new factors like time of site, bounce rate, fresh links and others….
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Now Showing Knowledge Snippets In Search Results
Google is now showing snippets of knowledge, facts or answers, directly in the snippet portion of the search results. Alex Chitu noticed this saying “Google now shows a list of facts next to some Wikipedia results.” These are “Knowledge Graph data extracted from Wikipedia is now…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Allows Developers Integrate With Search Within Site Feature
Google announced a few changes to the search box you find within the Google search results. Often, when you search for a brand name, Google will add a search box within the search snippet result for that site. That box allows you to search within that …
Report: HTTPS URLs Have No Discernible Ranking Benefit In Google Currently
In August 2014, Google announced that they would give a small ranking boost to HTTPS with the new HTTPS ranking factor. Now that it is a few weeks later, many are wondering how much of an impact does HTTPS URLs actually have on rankings. The answer acc…