Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums
The latest large brand to be hit with a user generated content spam penalty notification is Sprint, the large U.S. wireless communications company. Similar to Mozilla’s penalty and BBC’s penalty, Sprint was penalized for user-generated content spam on a portion of their site that was…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google’s Matt Cutts: Domain Clustering To Change Again; Less Results From Same Domain
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a new video about a new change coming to Google’s search results related to the diversity of the results being displayed. Matt said that Google is launching “soon” a new change that will make it less likely to see results from…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
“Organization Markup” Supported As Non-Google+ Way To Put Logos In Knowledge Graph Box
Want to have your company logo appear in Google search results, similar to how authors get to have their pictures displayed? Keep waiting. New “organization markup” support that Google has announced won’t do that, but it might be useful for putting your logo in Google Knowledge…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Authority Boost: Google’s Algorithm To Determine Which Site Is A Subject Authority
Yesterday, we covered and summarized the ten future Google SEO changes coming to Google’s search results by the end of this summer. But today, I wanted to pull out one point where Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said Google is working on an algorithm to give authorities in a…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
The Future Of SEO in a Socially Driven World
If SEO is dead, social media will be, too, in another five years. So, keep calm and tweet on. Hold that thought for a second – I can explain. In today’s search world, there’s a lot of talk about how social is “taking over,” how “content is king,” and how search engine…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
No, Publishership Isn’t Coming Soon To Google Search To Join Authorship
There are expectations in some quarters that publishers will soon be able to have their logos showing up in Google in the way that authors can have their pictures appear. But, Google says there are “no plans” for some type of “publishership” to go live similar to the way it…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
More Proof Google Counts Press Release Links, Using Matt Cutts’s Own Blog
About six months ago, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, made a comment in a Google forum thread that links within press releases won’t “benefit your rankings.” Since then, we showed one case where Google not only discovers the links within typical press releases but…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Expands List of “Generic” Top Level Domains and Makes Them Geotargetable
Typically, the country-code top level domain (ccTLD) is just that — a country code. For instance, example.co.uk has content for the UK, and example.com.au has content for Australia. Usually, registration of these domains is restricted. You have to prove that you are operating the site from…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google’s Matt Cutts: Holding A Patent Doesn’t Mean We Use That Patent In Search Quality
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a YouTube video talking about a recent SEO misconception that he would like the SEO and webmaster world to “put to rest.” Matt said, just because Google has a search quality or ranking patent it does not mean that the patent was or…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
When Google Gets It Wrong By Changing The Titles Of Web Pages
Google doesn’t always use the HTML title tag of a web page, choosing instead to make its own title for a page, if it thinks it can do a better job. Here’s an example of it getting this completely wrong. I was searching for Dana Point Jet Ski, which is a real business in Dana […]
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
The Top Five SEO Mistakes According To Google’s Matt Cutts
In a recently published Webmaster video, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, listed off the top five SEO mistakes webmasters make. Matt said these are not the most devastating mistakes, but rather, the most common mistakes. (1) Having a website or having a website that is not crawlable…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google’s Matt Cutts Says It Is Okay To Link Your Sites Together But In Moderation
In a recent Matt Cutts video, where the head of Google’s search spam team answered the question “Does linking my two sites together violate the quality guidelines?” The short answer is no but, there is always a but, if you link hundreds of unrelated sites together, then it would…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Hits Mozilla With Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content
Have user generated content on your site? Pay attention to what those users are doing. That’s the takeaway from Google hitting Mozilla with a spam penalty this week, along with another takeaway. Despite Google’s saying it’s being more transparent about spam actions, people clearly…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Risk Management for Links – How To Prepare For The Next Penguin Update
After 2012 being dubbed the “Year of the Penguin,” Google’s Matt Cutts has already hinted that the next “Penguin 4” update will be bigger and more devastating than ever. We have seen big brands like Interflora get penalized and bounce back pretty fast. But how did that work? And what’s coming up…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Using the X-Default Hreflang Tag For Multinational SEO: Default Language Opportunities
Google & Yandex announced the new x-default hreflang tag earlier this month, and in doing so closed the final gap in executing ‘perfect’ SEO platforms for multinational brands. There is, however, the question of what language content to use as your default, and how you can bring a little…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google Autocomplete: Your Personal Brand’s First Impression
Pop Quiz: What is the first thing a searcher sees when they type your name into the Google search bar? If your answer was related webpages found in SERPs, you’re wrong — that would be the second thing. The first thing they see are the Autocomplete suggestions that drop down from the…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Google: Adding Too Many Pages Too Quickly May Flag A Site To Be Reviewed Manually
Google’s Matt Cutts answered a question submitted by another Googler, John Mueller, on YouTube asking, “Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages all at once or in stages?” The question is, if you build out a new section of your website with tons of content –…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Study: Top Reason A User Would Block A Site From A Search? Too Many Ads
An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 6…