Unconfirmed Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update November 8th
Friday morning, November 8th, I saw a sprinkle of chatter across the industry about a Google search algorithm update. Some were claiming massive changes in traffic and rankings. But to be honest, the chatter was incredibly limited, that is until sever…
Vlog #24: Danny Sullivan – Father Of Search Marketing & His Transition To Google
Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) is currently the Google Public Liaison of Search, which means he helps with communication between the Google Search team and Google users and others (like us)…
Google Ads Editor v1.2 Adds New Campaign Types & Cross-Account Features
Google released Google Ads Editor version 1.2 yesterday. This release has a lot of new features including support for new campaign types and updates to multi-account management. Version 1.1 was released in July, so it has been a while since Google ca…
Google: Do Not Use Robots.txt To Block Indexing Of URLs With Parameters
Google’s John Mueller said you should absolutely not “use robots.txt to block indexing of URLs with parameters.” He said if you do that then Google “cannot canonicalize the URLs, and you lose all of the value from links to those pages.” Instead use r…
Google: It Is A Bad Sign If Your Robots.txt Or Sitemap File Is Ranking For Normal Queries
We had a slew of tweets triggered by Gary Illyes of Google and then followed up by John Mueller of Google around robots.txt and XML sitemap files ranking in Google. In short, if they rank for normal queries, John Mueller said “that’s usually a sign th…
Google: SEOs Use “No” As A Way To Confirm Their Theories
Earlier this week, I wrote how yet another Googler once again said Google does not use user behavior signals for rankings. But what happens is people don’t believe Google and they come up with theories on how Google does use user behavior as a ranking…
Search Buzz Video Recap: Bing Spam Penalties, Google Local Ranking Update, Speed Reports & More
This week in search I posted the big monthly Google Webmaster report, so catch up there quickly. Bing announced a boat load of new search spam penalties that is rolling out. Google may have done a local search algorithm update this week. Google….
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Google My Business Local Listing Update This Week
For the past couple of days I have been noticing changes to the local pack rankings in Google. The Google My Business local results are changing but the forums are pretty quiet about it. But Austin Holdsworth posted on Twitter about it and the Local…
Google Merchant Center Gets Multi-Country Feed Support & Redesign
Google has added some new features to the Google Merchant Center. First Google added multi-country feeds, which allow you to target multiple countries that share the same language by using a single feed in that language. Google also redesigned the in…
Google My Business Limits Businesses To 20 Service Areas
Google announced it is now limiting the number of service areas a business can list to no more than 20. Google wrote in the Google Ads Help page “service area businesses are now limited to having a maximum of 20 service areas per business.”
Google State Specific Knowledge Panel For Holidays
Valentin Pletzer spotted Google doing what I think might be a new knowledge panel, one that replaced a featured snippet. This is for a search on holidays. If you search for [holiday 2019] Google doesn’t show you a featured snippet anymore, it shows y…
Google Featured Snippets Are Impacted By Algorithmic Updates
Dr. Pete, Pete Meyers, from Moz, posted on Twitter “Any algo update that impacts query interpretation or relevance will impact Featured Snippets.” This was retweeted by Google’s John Mueller, so I guess that is a vote of confidence without passing DA …
Another Google Says We Don’t Use User Behavior As A Ranking Factor
I knew this Martin Splitt laptop head-bang GIF would come in handy the day he would answer this question. Many Googlers have said over the years that user actions, such as dwell time, time on a page, and so forth at not used by Google as a search rank…
Google & WordPress Robots.txt Handling Is Being Looked Into
One of the takeaways from the Google Webmaster Conference was that if Google tries to access your robots.txt file is unreachable but it does exist then Google won’t crawl your site. Google said about 26% of the time GoogleBot cannot reach a robots.txt…
Google: Our Production Parser Is Different; The Search Console Parser Uses A Java Port
Gary Illyes from Google clarified on Twitter that the production parser, which Google recently opened sourced for all to see, it different from the parser Google uses in Search Console. So the results might come out differently. What is different, Gary…
No ETA On Google Search Console Speed Reports API
Google recently released the Google Search Console Speed Reports, which is still in the “experimental” stage. But SEOs want to know when there will be an API for this data. John Mueller from Google said there is currently no ETA for an API for these …
Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right With Google And Breaking Guidelines
Google’s John Mueller every now and then has to respond to someone with the old saying, two wrongs don’t make a right. Often enough people ask him, my competitor is doing X, which is against Google’s guidelines. My competitor is ranking well, can I d…
Vlog #23: Aja Frost from HubSpot On Topic Clusters, Featured Snippets, Image SEO & Suggested Clips
Aja Frost (@ajavuu) is the senior SEO strategies at Hubspot, she joined the SEO team there 1.5 years ago but has been with HubSpot for over three years. Aja comes from a freelance writing background before she did SEO.
Takeaways: Google Webmaster Conference Product Summit
Google held its first Google Webmaster Conference Product Summit at Mountain View, California – the GooglePlex. It was a full day event, unlike most of the previous Google Webmaster Conferences and it was filled with awesomeness. I posted some of my …
Google Extends JavaScript SEO Docs For Web Components
Martin Splitt from Google said that his co-worker, Lizzi Harvey, has updated the JavaScript SEO basics guide and the JavaScript troubleshooting guide for web components. The JS guide now shows the best practices for web components and troubleshooter h…