New Google My Business Feature: Own This Business? Claim It Now.
Seems Google is testing or launched a new feature to help business owners reclaim and login to their Google My Business listing. Elizabeth Linder posted a screen shot of this feature that has the option for you to click on a button to “Own this busine…
Google Search Tests New Open Design? Maybe It’s A Bug?
I had two different people share with me screen shots and video grabs of Google possibly testing a new more open styled search results page design. The design seems so off to me that it seems like a bug, but now that two different people have seen it r…
Google: GoogleBot User Agent New Name Is Fully Live
Martin Splitt from Google said on Twitter that the new name for the user agent for GoogleBot should now be 100% live. The new user agent name is dynamic, meaning, it will show the latest version of Chrome that GoogleBot is using to crawl and render yo…
Google Pairing Knowledge Panels & People Also Search For
Yesterday we covered a feature that shows “see the connection” between two entities and/or people in Google’s knowledge panel. Google has been doing this for the past few weeks according to Mordy Oberstein and he shared more examples of this in action…
Live: Google Top Stories With Descriptions In Snippets
Back in December, Google announced an update to the top stories section and some of those screen shots showed descriptions, not just an image and title and site name, in the snippet section of the top stories. Well, now I see descriptions in some top …
Google: Use rel=sponsored For Affiliate Links If Possible
Google’s John Mueller said that if you can, it is best to use the rel=sponsored link attribute on your affiliate links. You can still use nofollow or combine them if you want, but it would make things clearer for Google if you uses rel=sponsored.
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Google: URL Length Is Not A Ranking Factor
Google’s John Mueller had to say on Twitter that “URL length is not a ranking fraction.” He was told that a CMS autogenerates URLs that are often longer than what is recommended for SEO. Now, what is recommended for SEO in terms of length?
Vlog #43: Jim Boykin – The Ultimate Link Building Guru Shares Sage Advice
Jim Boykin from Internet Marketing Ninjas invited me to his office to sit down and chat about links. The funny thing is, he came to my office like 15 years ago to build links, no joke…
Google Fixes Search Console Verification Via Tag Manager Bug
Google had a bug with the method of verifying your web site or property within Google Search Console through Google Tag Manager. This has now been fixed according to Google and those who had issues might need to now reverify their properties now.
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Google Knowledge Panel “See The Connection”
Google is showing “see the connection” on some knowledge panels for famous people. This reminds me of the Google bacon number feature from years ago but different. Here you can see Google showing a box to see the connection between the person you sea…
Google: If You Need To Manually Submit Pages To Index Then You Need To Improve Site Quality
With the Google Search Console manual submission issues with getting pages into the index, John Mueller from Google said on Twitter “If your site relies on manual index submission for normal content, you need to significantly improve your site.”
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Google My Business Warning: Unpublished Business Profile Will Be Deleted
Google has been sending out email notices to Google My Business users that their unpublished business profiles will be deleted within 30 days. Most of the time this is fine, but if you do not want your unpublished listing to be deleted, then you must …
February 2020 Google Webmaster Report
The past 30-days or so in the Google webmaster universe was pretty intense. The bigger items were the confirmed and super big January 2020 core update, the favicon and black ad label release on desktop and then a step back on that, and Google deduplic…
Complaints Of Indexing Issues Via Google Search Console
Over the weekend there has been numerous complaints about using Google Search Console to get content indexed faster – in short, SEOs are saying it doesn’t work. I guess this is through the “request indexing” feature in Google Search Console. To be cl…
Google My Business Local Listings Showing Massive Photos
Mordy Oberstein posted on Twitter a GIF of a Google local panel for a business showing a new interface for displaying photos of the business. The photos are really large and show in a grid-like format. This is not the normal interface, so it seems Go…
Google: Most Sites Do Not Have Toxic Links
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter “Most sites don’t have “toxic” links, or at least, created them on their own.” He then added his line that there are “more important things to focus on, by our engineers, and definitely by site owners.”
Google Analytics Conversion Data Now Exporting To Google Ads By Default
If you have conversion data for your web site or app in your Google Analytics profiles and you are running Google Ads, Google by default will export the data from Google Analytics and bring it into Google Ads. Google announced this in Google Ads and o…
Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update Signals In Early February 2020
I am seeing renewed signs from mid-last week of yet another Google search ranking algorithm update from over the weekend. There is significant chatter from over the weekend with many of the tools spiking over the past couple of days.
Vlog #42: Jennifer Van Iderstyne On Better Content & Multimedia For SEO
When I was scheming to give Lisa Barone a hard time before our interview, Lisa recommended I sit down with Jennifer Van Iderstyne (@vanetcetera) to discuss SEO with her…
Google: No Need To Preemptively Disavow Links Before Sites Link To You
Google’s John Mueller said there is “no need to spend your time” on preemptively disavowing links. That means spending time on disavowing links before that site links to you. He said there is no need to do that and I doubt he recommends doing so.
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