Is Google Search Updating? January 8th & 9th
I am seeing early signs of a possible Google update underway today. The WebmasterWorld thread started to get some chatter yesterday of people noticing shifts in the search results.
One WebmasterWorld senior member said, “Jez…
Why Didn’t The Simone de Beauvoir Google Logo Make It To Google.com?
If you visit many Google properties today…
Google’s Matt Cutts: Yea, Google Changes Search On Average Twice A Day
The other day, Matt Cutts of Google released a 10 minute video on YouTube explaining the how search works page Google launched in March 2013.
Matt said a few relevant things that you may have not noticed before…
Google AdWords Invalid Activity Refunds Increasing?
WebmasterWorld’s administrator, engine, aka Neil Marshall, created a thread at WebmasterWorld saying he is noticing a large increase in the refunds…
Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Improved For Separate Mobile Sites
Google’s Maile Ohye announced yesterday improvements to how Google reports on search queries for web sites that run their mobile sites on a separate URL. Such as on m.example.com or example.mobil or so forth…
Google Search Queries Report Now Showing Exact Numbers
If you visit your Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report, you will see an “update” line across the graph. When you place your cursor over the update, it reads…
Issues With Google Webmaster Tools Verification
A Google Webmaster Help thread has dozens of webmasters complaining about not being able to verify their web sites.
The first report came in yesterday afternoon. The webmaster said…
Google Doodle For Zora Neale Hurston
Today on Google.com is a special Doodle, aka logo, for Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of 20th African-American literature.
Here is the Doodle:
She was born today on January 7, 1891…
Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Shows Top Pages By Keyword Clicks
You know the search queries report in Google Webmaster Tools? Of course you do…
Google: Your Rankings Dropped Because Of Links, Not Hummingbird
A Google Webmaster Help thread has an office furniture site complaining that his Google rankings dropped after the Hummingbird update was pushed out.
Of course…
January 2014 Google Webmaster Report
Despite it being the month of December, which normally means it is slow, it was a pretty busy month. The past week or so has been dead, so not much to report in the first week of January…
Zemanta Links & Google’s Guidelines
Zemanta is a content discovery platform, they have a popular WordPress plugin that helps bloggers find related posts and related images while you write your post.
It does mention a bit on links on the plugin page:
Link Love by linking to other blogge…
Social Optimization: Your Content Or Yourself?
There is an interesting conversation going on at Cre8asite Forums about your clients participating in social networks and the importance of that.
The given is that social is growing in importance, as it related to search rankings either indirectly an…
Google On What To Do If You Can’t Have 100% Unique Content
Google has said time to time that having some unique content, even if it is a few sentences of unique content may be enough.
So when Gary Illyes from Google responded to a thread at Google Webmaster Help – his response stood out…
Rap Genius Back After 10-Day Penalty
Over Christmas, Rap Genius was penalized by Google for unnatural links. In short, they offered an exchange of traffic for keyword rich links to their site. It was outed, Google’s Matt Cutts saw it, it lead to a manual action that had a serious impact o…
UserInteraction Schema For SEO & Social?
A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who asked if Google will give him a boost because one piece of his content on his site hit over 1,000 Facebook likes.
It is one of those weird questions that makes you nod your head sideways. Why?
Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: January 3, 2014
It was a slow week in search, being New Years and all but we still covered some fun topics. Do you need to use structure data to survive in search…
Spammers Cold Calling Local Businesses – Claiming They Need To Update Their Business Listings
Baruch Labunski from Rank Secure in Canada pinged me the other day asking me why I can’t stop the phone calls he is getting from spammers claiming implying they are from Google…
Google: Can’t Crawl Your Robots.txt Then We Stop Crawling Your Site
Did you know that if Google cannot crawl your robots.txt file, that it will stop crawling your whole site…
Google Kills Location History Summary Dashboard
Google has dropped support for the location history dashboard. Alex Chitu first covered this explaining that the location history dashboard, that provides summaries of where you’ve been, has been discontinued…