Google Webmaster Tools Updates Robots.txt Testing Tool
Google announced they have updated their robots.txt testing tool in Webmaster Tools. The update brings you a few more features including: (1) Highlights which line in your robots.txt file is blocking a specific page. (2) Make test changes to the robots…
Using Adobe Flash For Your Web Site? Google Mobile Results Will Issue Searchers A Warning.
Flash, Adobe’s multimedia based web site technology, is not a friend of mobile devices or search spiders and now Google has decided to step up their campaign against such sites using the technology. Google announced that starting today, they will be issuing warnings to searchers when their…
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Google’s Quality Rating Guide Leaked Again; Here Is Version Five
Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines document has been leaked once again! Version 5.0 was leaked a few days ago, where Google has reportedly completely revamped the guidelines. Jennifer Slegg has documented most of the new guidelines on her blog. You can also read the full new 160 page…
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Google Officially Launches Webmaster Tools International Targeting
Google has officially announced the new feature we reported was in beta named International Targeting. The new International Targeting reports within Google Webmaster Tools helps webmasters debug common issues with their implementation of href-lang. Th…
Head Of Google’s Web Spam Team Matt Cutts Is Going On Leave
Google’s Matt Cutts – who holds the title of “distinguished engineer” — is taking a break from his duties as Google’s chief web spam fighter. Cutts has announced on his personal blog that he’s taking leave through October. It will be the longest break Cutts…
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What Local Business Leaders Must Know About Search Engines And SEO
When I write about SEO and business success, I often realize that I’ve touched upon a point that merits a column of it’s own. This is one such column. It will focus on the fact that online and offline marketing have grown inextricably codependent — especially for local businesses….
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Google Hits Poland Again With Link Network Penalties
Four months after Google’s first link network penalty in Poland, Google has targeted an additional two Polish link networks this morning. Google’s Karolina Kruszynska, a spam fighter, posted on Twitter that the most recent wide spread manual action targeted two link networks in Poland:…
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Former Googler: Links That Change Are Trusted Less By Google’s Algorithms
A former member of the Google search quality and web spam team, Pedro Dias, said publicly on Twitter yesterday that “Google is less likely to trust a link once it has changed from the first time it was seen.” So if you changed the anchor text or URL path of the link, the value and…
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Google Notifying Publishers For Right To Be Forgotten Removals
Now that Google has been removing results from the European versions of Google in response to the EU’s Right To Be Forgotten requirements, many webmasters are now receiving notifications of these removals. Last night, around 10pm EST, I received a notification for a site I have verified…
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Breaking Down Page Speed Events For SEO Gain
It’s important to get clear the value of changes in terms of SEO impact before allocating in-demand tech time to work on fixes. To throw up just one example: if your page returns in less than one second what impact will fixing render-blocking CSS have …
Google Webmaster Tools Beta International Targeting Reports
Google is currently beta testing a new international targeting report within Google Webmaster Tools. The new International Targeting report is designed to help webmasters who have international sites and use href lang markup understand common mistakes …
Google: Redirecting A Penalized Site To Penalty Free Site Likely Won’t Negatively Impact The Site
On Friday, Google’s John Mueller answered a question I proposed in a Webmaster/Search Helpdesk Hangout about the issues around a penalized site being redirected to an unpenalized site. The question was, what if a competitor takes a site that has a severe penalty and 301 redirects it to my…
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PR Newswire’s Answer To Their Google Panda Troubles: Taking Action On Press Release Spammers
When Google released its most recent modification to the Panda algorithm, Panda 4.0, on May 20th, one of the sites reportedly hit hard by the update was the large press release distribution company, PR Newswire. The company’s answer to recover from the algorithmic penalty is to “take…
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Study: Top 5 Search Engines See Search Traffic Drop By As Much As 31% Since December 2013
A newly released report from Shareaholic claims the top five search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL – have all experienced a decline in search traffic since December of 2013. Using data from December 2013 through May 2014, Shareaholic evaluated aggregate organic search…
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Google’s Knowledge Graph Is Showing Step By Step Instructions: Here Are Some Examples
Earlier this year, Google began offering much more detailed answers in the top knowledge graph box. Shortly after that was introduced, Google also began expanding those answers into a bulleted list format. We’ve been seeing these bulleted lists, especially in “how-to” like queries…
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WATCH: Matt Cutts AMA Keynote At SMX Advanced 2014
You already read the live blog and news coverage. Or maybe you were one of the lucky ones who was in attendance last week for the annual Matt Cutts “You&A” AMA-style keynote conversation with Search Engine Land’s Founding Editor, Danny Sullivan, at SMX Advanced. Either way,…
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Will Google & Bing Penalize Microsoft Over Their Sponsored Post Campaign For Internet Explorer?
This morning, news broke that Microsoft Internet Explorer is getting help from SocialChorus to build more awareness for the aging browser by way of sponsored posts. Michael Arrington posted on his site an email from the company, soliciting him into thi…
Screen Shot Of Google’s New Rejection Notices For Reconsideration Requests
At SMX Advanced last week, Google’s head of search quality, Matt Cutts, announced that they will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection noticed with more detailed responses in some cases. We’ve now located an example of the new rejection notices, as shared by…
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Google’s Payday Loan Algorithm 3.0 Rolling Out Now
Google is now rolling out the 3rd version of the PayDay Loan algorithm. Last night we reported that Google is going to be launching PayDay Loan 3.0 and Google’s Matt Cutts posted on Twitter moments ago that it is now rolling out. Cutts, Google’s head of search quality said,…
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Google’s Matt Cutts: MetaFilter Hit By An Algorithm But Not Panda Or Penguin
Last month, MetaFilter, a news and discussion site from back in the old days, told us they got hit by a Google penalty years ago that had a major impact on their business. We posted our theories and details on this penalty in our post named On MetaFilt…