Google Request Indexing & Crawl Direct Links Is Not A Replacement For Sitemaps
In Google Search Console, there is a feature under the Fetch as Google tool to request indexing. When you click that…
SEO Agencies Spamming Google? Google Would Take A “Fair Look”
Did you know that Google is willing to review random SEO agencies to see if their SEO practices are fair and within their guidelines? I didn’t think Google spent the time doing that…
Reminder: Google Patents & Research Not Always Used In The Ranking Algorithm
Back in 2013, Matt Cutts of Google was clear that having a patent does not mean they use the patent material in their live search ranking algorithm. In fact…
Google Updates The How Search Works Site
Google noted in their project Owl announcement that they also updated their How Google Search Works site. The site was first introduced in March 2013 and had some content and feature revisions over the years…
Google Doodle For Cassini Spacecraft As It Photos Saturn & Its Rings
Today on Google’s home page is a special spacecraft Doodle, Google logo, to mark when the Cassini spacecraft begins taking photos and measurements between Saturn and its rings…
Google Hotel Booking Interface Testing Carousel Layout
Google loves carousels, they just really love them. Now they are testing the carousel user interface for the local listing user interface for hotel booking. Sergey Alakov, who else…
Google Adds More Granular Review Filtering In Local Listings
Sergey Alakov was again, the first, if not one of the first, to spot this local reviews change – where when you see a local pack in the Google results, you can now filter those listings by reviews in a more granular manner. So now you can filter by hal…
Google Owl Update Promotes Authoritative Content For Fake News Queries
Yesterday, Google officially announced both an algorithm update and procedure changes for managing search results for fake news like content, which Google calls “offensive or clearly misleading content.” Danny Sullivan, by far…
Was There A Google Algorithm Update On Monday & Tuesday? Unsure.
Most of the automated tracking tools, with the exception of Algoroo, really showed massive spikes and volatility on either Monday or Tuesday, April 24th or 25th, of this week. The issue is, the chatter in the SEO community is not correlating to those …
Google’s John Mueller On Fred: Not Aware Of Any Such Update?
As you know, many were hit by the Google Fred update that touched down around March 7th/8th – we even got Google to confirm the update which is rare…
Google: Links From High Search Traffic Pages Aren’t More Valuable
Google’s John Mueller responded on Twitter that links from a page that gets a lot of traffic via Google is not any more valuable than links from a page that gets not as much traffic from Google. By definition, page traffic isn’t PageRank or other link…
Google: Organic & Paid Search Policies Don’t Always Match
As you know, there are two massive arms at Google – the organic search team and the paid search team. Organic and paid often have strict rules…
GoogleBot Doesn’t Understand The Words In Your Podcast Audio Files
Recently, Google added support for rich results for podcasts but that doesn’t mean Google can understand what you are saying in those audio files…
Google Tells Newspapers, Like NY Times, WSJ & Others, To Noindex News Feeds
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter this morning that those sites republishing news feeds should “consider noindexing them.” The full tweet was specifically in response to what to do with content published on your site from an Associated Press or Re…
Google “View Rates” Call To Action Overlay For Hotel Listings Search Results
Sergey Alakov shared a couple of Google tests over the weekend…
PSA: Don’t Ask Google If A Specific Spam Technique Is Allowed
Over the years I’ve seen many examples of really dumb moves made by SEOs. Some SEOs asked Google for advice while spamming Google, some email Google about buying links, some put all their spammy accounts in one search console account – but the list go…
Google Personalized Search: Ages, No & Previous Searches, Yes
I’ve been very interested in personalized search and Google for some time now. It use to be talked about way more in the past but these days, you barely hear anything about it…
Google Tests Dropping AMP Logo From Search Results
When Google took AMP live in their search results, they were accompanied by the AMP logo in the search results snippets. First that logo was a green color and…
Google: No Plans To Boost HTTPS Ranking Factor
As you know, back in 2014, Google released the HTTPS ranking boost to give a little ranking boost to URLs that went HTTPS. Well…
Google Earth Day Logo – A Day Early
Tomorrow is Earth Day and Google has already started to push out their special Google Doodle, Google logo, for the day in places where tomorrow is today. The logo is animated and interactive…