Google Dorking: It’s All Fun & Games Until The Hackers Show Up

For anyone not in the know, Google Dorking is the practice of using advanced search techniques – more specifically, specialized search parameters – to locate hard-to-find web pages and information. As innocent as it sounds, Google Dorking has a dark side – so dark, federal…

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It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results

Anyone who follows Google knows that nothing it creates is immune from elimination. Like so many efforts before it, Authorship is fading into the sunset.

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Google “Knowledge Vault” To Power Future Of Search

Google’s Knowledge Graph is being used to supply increasing amounts of structured content in PC and mobile search results. It’s part of an evolution that began with “universal search” and accelerated with the requirement for “answers not links” in mobile. Now…

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Fun Google Search Easter Eggs Work With Query Refinements

Google is a big fan of doing easter eggs and we’ve covered many of them in the past, including ones that mess around with the display of the search results listing page. They include the do a barrel roll and blink HTML examples. But did you know they work with query refinements as well, and…

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Google Made 890 Improvements To Search Over The Past Year

In a Google+ post from Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal, Google shares they have made “more than 890 improvements to Google Search last year alone.” In 2009, Google told us they made between 350 to 400 changes to search and in 2010, they said they made 550 improvements to…

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Using Autocomplete To Hijack Local Search Results & Improve Online Reputation

Google is constantly refining its search engine algorithm in an effort to root out spam and improve the search experience for users. Over the years, this refinement process has largely rewarded those employing ethical search engine optimization (SEO) p…

SEO Industry Tweets Its Reactions To Google’s SSL Ranking Boost

The SEO industry is abuzz today with the news of Google’s latest ranking signal: Using SSL certificates will provide a boost in Google’s search rankings. (The web hosting industry is all abuzz, too, if you’re curious.) Google says it’s a “very lightweight signal”…

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Google Starts Giving A Ranking Boost To Secure HTTPS/SSL Sites

Google To Give Secure Sites A Ranking Boost Google has announced (the blog post hasn’t gone live yet, actually) that going HTTPS — adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site — will give you a minor ranking boost. Google says this gives websites a small ranking benefit,…

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Google Mobile Testing Search Results Snippet Descriptions

Google is testing showing site and search results description snippets in the mobile search results interface. Google launched site description overlays in the desktop results earlier this year and now it appears to be coming to mobile results. I perso…

Google Quick Answers For Jewish Food Blessings

Google is now offering the answers for what blessings observant Jewish people should make prior to consuming food or drinks in their quick answers. The term for blessing in Hebrew is ‘Bracha‘ and if you search for [bracha for yogurt], Google will return a quick answer telling you what…

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What’s Tops For “Offers” On Google? Google Offers – Which No Longer Exists

If you search in Google for [offers] Google will return the shuttered Google Offers page as the first search listing. But if you look carefully, you will see that Google has blocked the page from spiders within their robots.txt file and the page itself says “This site is no longer being…

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Google Search Designer Explains Why Some Features & Tools Get Axed

Google often removes features from their search results and other services. Jon Wiley, Google’s Principal Designer of Google Search in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) thread answered the question on why Google removes features people love. Most recently, Google completely disabled the Google…

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Google’s Pigeon Update Solves Yelp Problem, Boosts Local Directories

As the analysis continues on yesterday’s Google local search algorithm changes — that we’re calling the Pigeon update — one thing appears to be clear: Local directory sites are getting better visibility in Google’s search results. More specifically, it looks like…

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Google Quick Answers Adds Images

Google’s quick answer results have recently added images to some of the answers. Alex Chitu spotted this and I was able to replicate it for many queries. Such as for [how old is barack obama] to [how many children does michael jordan have?] Here are both desktop views and mobile views of the…

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Some Of The Weird Issues When Google’s Quick Answers Comes From Random Sources

As Google’s Hummingbird algorithm continues to shape the answers within Google’s search results, webmasters, SEOs and searchers ask themselves, why is Google showing this knowledge graph or that quick answer. Often webmasters find themselves at a loss because Google takes their content…

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