Google: Title Tags Longer Than What Is Displayed Has SEO Benefit
Gary Illyes from Google said in last night’s Google Central Live event that there is a benefit, I assume an SEO benefit, to having title tags longer than what is displayed in the search. He later added that you should keep the title tag “precise” to th…
Google: No Search Penalty For Too Many Redirects
Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google Search does not have a penalty for having too many redirects. John said on Twitter “No, Google won’t penalize a site for having 15 redirects (or any other number).”
Google: Total Number Of Links Is Completely Irrelevant For SEO
Google’s John Mueller said that “the total number [of backlinks] essentially is completely irrelevant” to rankings in Google in a video hangout last week. I heard the statement and didn’t cover because it is SEO 101 but then I saw some of the responses…
Google Search Console Association Controls Updated
Google has enhanced the associations controls within Google Search Console. Google now makes it super clear where your Search Console account is associated with, in terms of other Google accounts. The list of associations includes Analytics, YouTube, G…
Google Mobile-First Indexing Deadline Is Around March 2021
Google’s revised mobile-first indexing deadline is coming up in the next several weeks. Google said it is going 100% into mobile-first indexing. Google moved the deadline from September 2020 to March 2021. John Mueller of Google said today the March…
Google Talks About Its Serving Index & Index Shards
In the latests episode of the Search Off The Record podcast with Googlers John Mueller, Gary Illyes, Martin Splitt and this week’s special guest Mariya Moeva – they spoke about Google’s SiteKit and then also about the serving index. Gary gave a summar…
Some Google Search Ranking Algorithm Chatter Past Few Days
I’ve been on the edge about if I should report or not report some of the chatter and signals I am seeing around a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. I was seeing some somewhat small signs since the weekend of an update but those signals …
Google Ads Console Is Down & We’re Back
Google Ads is currently not loading for advertisers now. If you try to login to ads.google.com you will be presented with a 502 server error. Google Ads went down at about 3:10pm ET today.
Google Search Console Changes To Web Story Performance Report
Google has made a change to its performance report around reporting on your Web Stories. This change may lead to seeing more impressions and clicks from Google Discover to your web stories.
Possible Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool Bug With HTTP/2?
Google may have a bug with the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console specific to websites on HTTP/2. The tool shows a malformed response when it is run on the HTTP/2 server.
Google Testing Keyword Tags Or Labels In Snippets Again
Brodie Clark spotted a new Google Search snippet test where Google is showing keywords labels or tags above the description and below the title and URL. This reminds me a bit of the tags Google showed in the snippet in 2017 and 2019.
Google: Focus Less On Individual Pages & More On Category Pages
Google told one site owner, this is specific advice to one specific site owner and not meant to be a generalization for all sites, that he should not focus on his individual pages but focus more on the category level pages. The issue was the individua…
Google Tests Displaying Auto Suggestions On Scroll Up
Google is testing displaying and popping up the auto-suggestions auto complete search terms in the search bar when you scroll back up towards the top of the search results. Here is a GIF of it in action captured from Valentin Pletzer who posted a vide…
Vlog #108: Eli Feldblum On Content SEO Equity & Future SEO Thoughts
In part one, Eli Feldblum and I spoke about the good old days and in part two about the SEO industry maturing. The SEO discipline is all about building up equity and it is all about content. We talked about how things were super easy in the old days bu…
Google Image Search Tests Explore More Compass Icon
Google Image Search seems to be testing a compass icon in the image search results that trigger a search refinement feature. When you click on it, it takes you to a section to “explore more” images by showing you related searches.
Google: WhoisGuard Does Not Impact SEO & Rankings
Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit “no” WhoisGuard, the NameCheap domain privacy setting, does not impact your SEO or rankings on Google. Google does not care if you use domain privacy settings or not when you register your domain name.
Google Search Console Core Web Vitals Boundaries Changed On February 17th
Google made a small change to how it plots the core web vitals data in Google Search Console. The change goes into effect on February 17, 2021 and using less than as a boundary, Google is using less than or equal to.
Google Can Process JavaScript Redirects But Be Concerned About Other Search Engines
Google’s Gary Illyes said that Google Search can process JavaScript redirects but Google still does not recommend using JavaScript redirects because other search engines might not pick up on it.
Google To Facebook: Australian Publishers Choose To Appear In Google Search
Yesterday, Facebook took a bold move and announced it’s banning Australians from sharing and viewing news and all users from sharing from and viewing Australian news pages. But one thing it added was why Google may decide to take a different step.
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Google May Discover URLs In Form Action Attributes & Text Files
Google’s John Mueller said Google may discover and index URLs it finds in form action attributes, just like it does when it finds URLs in simple text files. Again, these are not normal HTML hyperlinks but URLs listed in files.