AMP Google Webmaster Blog mobile search console Uncategorized

Using AMP? Try our new webpage tester

Google Webmaster Central

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a great way to make content on your website accessible in an extremely fast way. To help ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected , Search Console now has an enhanced AMP testing tool.

This testing tool is mobile-friendly and uses Google’s live web-search infrastructure to analyze the AMP page with the real Googlebot. The tool tests the validity of the AMP markup as well as any structured data on the page. If issues are found, click on them to see details, and to have the line in the source-code highlighted. For valid AMP pages, we may also provide a link to a live preview of how this page may appear in Google’s search results.

With the share button on the bottom right, you can now share a snapshot of the results that you’re currently seeing with others. This makes it easier to discuss issues with your team, whether they’re regular occurrences or one-time quirks that you need to iron out. Just click the share button and pass on the URL for this test snapshot. This share feature is now also available in the mobile-friendly testing tool.

We hope this tool makes it easier to create great AMP’d content while finding and resolving issues that may appear on your AMP pages. For any questions, feel free to drop by our webmaster’s help forum.

Posted by Ofir Roval & Yaniv Loewenstein, Search Console team

AMP Google Webmaster Blog mobile search console Uncategorized

Using AMP? Try our new webpage tester

Google Webmaster Central

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a great way to make content on your website accessible in an extremely fast way. To help ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected , Search Console now has an enhanced AMP testing tool.

This testing tool is mobile-friendly and uses Google’s live web-search infrastructure to analyze the AMP page with the real Googlebot. The tool tests the validity of the AMP markup as well as any structured data on the page. If issues are found, click on them to see details, and to have the line in the source-code highlighted. For valid AMP pages, we may also provide a link to a live preview of how this page may appear in Google’s search results.

With the share button on the bottom right, you can now share a snapshot of the results that you’re currently seeing with others. This makes it easier to discuss issues with your team, whether they’re regular occurrences or one-time quirks that you need to iron out. Just click the share button and pass on the URL for this test snapshot. This share feature is now also available in the mobile-friendly testing tool.

We hope this tool makes it easier to create great AMP’d content while finding and resolving issues that may appear on your AMP pages. For any questions, feel free to drop by our webmaster’s help forum.

Posted by Ofir Roval & Yaniv Loewenstein, Search Console team

Channel: SEO Google: Mobile Google: SEO Search Engine Land Uncategorized

Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content

Barry Schwartz

Currently, Google has a single index of documents for search. Google’s Gary Illyes announced they plan on releasing a second search index, mobile and desktop – with mobile being the primary.

The post Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content appeared first on…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Channel: SEO Google Google: Mobile Google: Web Search Search Engine Land Uncategorized US Presidential Election

Google’s latest voter search tool serves up ballot information & polling places

Amy Gesenhues

Queries for “who’s on my ballot” and “where to vote” delivers an interactive tool that lists candidates and polling locations.

The post Google’s latest voter search tool serves up ballot information & polling places appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Channel: SEM Google Google: AdWords Paid Search Column Search Ads Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting Search Engine Land SEM Industry SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX Uncategorized

What Google’s recent RLSA updates mean for advertisers

Andy Taylor

Columnist Andy Taylor discusses the impact of two recent changes to Remarketing List for Search Ads announced at SMX East 2016 — expanded RLSA membership duration and cross-device retargeting.

The post What Google’s recent RLSA updates mean for advertisers appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

If search marketers can’t predict which pages will outrank each other, is SEO just a crapshoot?

Patricio Robles

In the UK SERPs, respondents’ accuracy in selecting the higher-ranked page was just 46%.

It was higher in the US by about 10%, but for many search terms, accuracy was frequently in the 40% range.

Since the survey included respondents with varying levels of SEO expertise, as well as laypeople, one might expect those with more knowledge to have better predictive capabilities.

But that wasn’t really the case.

For example, for UK SERPs, while SEOs with three or more years of experience did perform better than laypeople and SEOs with under three years of experience, their accuracy was still equal to that of a coin-flip.

What’s more, those who indicated that they were “sure” or “fairly sure” about their predictions were less likely to accurately predict which page outranked another for a particular search phrase by nearly 4%, and only slightly more likely to outpredict those who guessed. 

Blame the Penguin?

While these numbers will provide ammunition to SEO skeptics, and might even give companies some pause about their own SEO efforts, it’s also reasonable to look at these numbers as evidence of just how complex Google’s algorithm is to decipher today.

Google’s core algorithm now consists of over 200 unique signals that can affect rankings.

And with Penguin 4.0, Google has not only integrated one of its most important spam-detection algorithms into its core, it is refreshing Penguin’s data in real-time, “so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page.”

That means SERPs can change very, very quickly, and frequently.

Throw in personalized search and it’s really no surprise that even experienced SEOs can’t accurately predict whether one page will outrank another.

The future of SEO

And that really isn’t what legitimate SEO is. Given the complexity of Google’s algorithm today, an SEO’s worth today comes down to two core capabilities: 

  • Being able to identify and fix problems known to be detrimental to rankings. While it might be nearly impossible to predict exactly what will produce a top ranking for any specific search query, there are numerous well-established mistakes that, when present on a site, can harm rankings.
  • Monitor and analyze data to suggest and implement improvements that might produce ranking improvements. There is no science for achieving top results, but a good SEO is capable of analyzing data and making changes over time designed to produce better results and respond to negative changes.

 In other words, companies should expect SEO to help them avoid the big no-nos and engage in educated, data-driven iterative experimentation to try to boost results.

To learn more, check out these resources:

If search marketers can’t predict which pages will outrank each other, is SEO just a crapshoot?

Patricio Robles

In the UK SERPs, respondents’ accuracy in selecting the higher-ranked page was just 46%.

It was higher in the US by about 10%, but for many search terms, accuracy was frequently in the 40% range.

Since the survey included respondents with varying levels of SEO expertise, as well as laypeople, one might expect those with more knowledge to have better predictive capabilities.

But that wasn’t really the case.

For example, for UK SERPs, while SEOs with three or more years of experience did perform better than laypeople and SEOs with under three years of experience, their accuracy was still equal to that of a coin-flip.

What’s more, those who indicated that they were “sure” or “fairly sure” about their predictions were less likely to accurately predict which page outranked another for a particular search phrase by nearly 4%, and only slightly more likely to outpredict those who guessed. 

Blame the Penguin?

While these numbers will provide ammunition to SEO skeptics, and might even give companies some pause about their own SEO efforts, it’s also reasonable to look at these numbers as evidence of just how complex Google’s algorithm is to decipher today.

Google’s core algorithm now consists of over 200 unique signals that can affect rankings.

And with Penguin 4.0, Google has not only integrated one of its most important spam-detection algorithms into its core, it is refreshing Penguin’s data in real-time, “so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page.”

That means SERPs can change very, very quickly, and frequently.

Throw in personalized search and it’s really no surprise that even experienced SEOs can’t accurately predict whether one page will outrank another.

The future of SEO

And that really isn’t what legitimate SEO is. Given the complexity of Google’s algorithm today, an SEO’s worth today comes down to two core capabilities: 

  • Being able to identify and fix problems known to be detrimental to rankings. While it might be nearly impossible to predict exactly what will produce a top ranking for any specific search query, there are numerous well-established mistakes that, when present on a site, can harm rankings.
  • Monitor and analyze data to suggest and implement improvements that might produce ranking improvements. There is no science for achieving top results, but a good SEO is capable of analyzing data and making changes over time designed to produce better results and respond to negative changes.

 In other words, companies should expect SEO to help them avoid the big no-nos and engage in educated, data-driven iterative experimentation to try to boost results.

To learn more, check out these resources: