Google: Crawl Budget Goes Across All Googlebot Crawling, Not Just Web Search
When it comes to crawl budget and Google not crawling your site too much or too little, Google takes into account all Googlebot activity across all verticals. So that includes crawling for web search, Merchant Center, ads, and all the various crawling…
Google: We Need Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Forbes Blocks Its Coupon Directory Before Google Enforces The Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Forbes has blocked its coupons section of its web site at forbes.com/coupons using an x-robots-tag: noindex directive prior to Google enforcing the upcoming site reputation abuse policy. As a reminder, Google will enforce that new policy on May 5th bot…
Google: It’s Unlikely Your Rankings Dropped Because You Have Two Websites
Google was asked if having two websites and Google finding out about them would cause the websites to drop in rankings. John Mueller from Google said that is “not likely,” adding that many people have several websites and that is fine.
Google: Indexing API May Work For Unsupported Content But…
Gary Illyes from Google said in the recent Google SEO office hours the Google Indexing API may work for unsupported content formats, but that you shouldn’t be “surprised if suddenly it stopped working for unsupported verticals overnight.”
Google: Are Hyphenated Domains Are Bad For Google Ranking?
The topic of using hyphens in domain names is one of the oldest SEO topics we have in this space. Heck, in 2004, SEOs said there was a specific Google ranking algorithm that filtered out domains with hyphens in them (Google did not by the way).
Google Drops Video Carousel Markup
Google has discontinued its support for video carousel markup and has thus removed it from its video structured data help documentation. Initially, Google tested video carousel on a limited number of sites and is now saying that it “ultimately found th…
Google Search Console Adds Unused Ownership Tokens
Google Search Console has a new security feature under user and permission management to help you manage your unused ownership tokens. Basically, it helps you manage who has permissions to your Search Console profiles and who should not, maybe some leg…
Google: Should We Explain The Crawl Stats Report in Search Console
Martin Splitt from Google posted a one-line question asking, “Should we do something to explain the crawl stats report in GSC?” This was posted on Mastodon, which has a small audience, but the responses were pretty good.
Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms
Google’s new spam algorithm update also introduced new spam policies including the upcoming site reputation abuse policy that won’t go into effect until May 2024. Google has confirmed it will fight site reputation abuse spam using both manual actions …
Clarification: Google Search Supports Images Referenced From src Attribute
Google has clarified in its image search help documentation that images are only extracted from the src attribute of img tags in Google Search. This is not new, but Google decided to update its documentation based on some questions it received about th…
Google Goes On Defensive On Its Search Quality & Forum Results Statements
Recently, we covered some of Google’s rationale for ranking forums like Reddit and Quora so well in the Discussion and Forums box for many queries. Just a few days ago, we covered how I was sad to see Google ranking some dangerous and potentially harmf…
Google Responds To The Verge Mocking Its Search Rankings For Best Printer
Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge posted a new article with the intent to both rank for [best printer] in Google Search, as well as mock Google for how he can game Google’s search rankings using AI-generated content, while throwing in some affi…
Google Crawl Budget Is Allocated By Hostname
Google gives every hostname its own allocated crawl budget. So that means each domain, subdomain, etc has its own unique crawl budget.
Google: Indexing & Algorithm Updates Are Independent
Google once again said that its indexing systems are completely independent of its ranking updates, like the core update. Gary Illyes from Google said indexing, canonicalization, and those types of “systems are independent” of core updates.
Google Structured Data Carousels Beta Docs Clarifies Feature Availability & Markup Location
Google has made some changes to its new Structured data carousels (beta) documentation to list the feature availability of this carousel and also to clarify where to place the markup. Google wrote the “markup must be on the summary page, and you don’t …
Google Responds To Claims Where Search Results Can Be Harmful & Dangerous
Over the past few weeks, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, has been replying to complaints about some examples of search results being not just low-quality but also potentially harmful and dangerous. The sad part to me is that a couple of years …
Google: Differences Between 410 and 404 Is Too Minimal
The SEO topic of using a 404 versus a 410 error status code for pages not found is one of those topics that has been around for the past two decades. And now Google’s John Mueller replied to another question about it saying that the difference between …
Reminder: Google’s Helpful Content Update Is No More – It’s A Core Update
As a reminder, with the release of the Google March 2024 core update, the old Google helpful content update is no longer a thing. As we reported, Google has incorporated helpfulness signals into the overall core update, but that old helpful content upd…
Google: SEO Is Not About Magic
Google’s John Mueller had another one-liner, this one he said, “keep in mind that SEO is not really about magic.” This was in response to trying to SEOs trying to find some magic by using various HTML elements and thus seeing some sort of SEO benefit t…