Penguin update is “weeks away” according to Gary Illyes, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst. Illyes was speaking on the “Meet the SEOs and Search Engines” at SMX East today. Illyes said he talked to the search quality group about this a couple weeks ago, and was told it was “weeks away”, which means we could […]
Archives for October 2014
Revealing Mobile’s True Impact With Google Analytics
When seeking insights for your mobile traffic, we can often settle into the good old option of segmenting by device in the Google AdWords or BingAds interface. Sure, that can be very useful and a quick-fix, but what about a more in-depth review of the mobile impact you’re seeing in your accounts? Google Analytics offers […]
Google Removes German News Snippets & Thumbnails from Google News
In a move to minimize their legal risk, Google has removed snippets and thumbnails from German news sites in their Google News results. Google made the announcement on their German Google Product Blog. At issue is German News requirements that Google and other search engines pay a fee associated with showing snippets from news sources, […]
Changing to HTTPS will not fix other Google penalty issues on the site
John Mueller recently commented that switching to HTTPS would not increase your rankings noticeably in Google, despite many webmasters scrambling to make their site’s secure following Google’s announcement that it was a lightweight ranking factor. Mueller has also made some additional comments about HTTPS as rankings, particularly that some webmasters were considering that it would […]
Private Blog Networks Were Probably Victims of Latest Panda Update
Now that the latest round of Panda updates has rolled out, it is obvious that the Private Blog Networks (PBN’s) downfall was baked into the latest Panda algorithm. When the PBN’s were first hit, they were the recipients of penalties in Google Webmaster Tools for having “thin content with little or no added value.” This […]
Huge Jump in Google Answer Boxes Means Less Traffic for Websites
Google Answer Boxes has jumped up significantly in the Google search results, starting with a 60% jump on September 26th. Answer boxes now appear for 3.5% of all search queries. Unfortunately for marketers though, more answer boxes means that it is more likely that searchers will find their information directly on the search results page, […]
7 Things Your Didn’t Know You Could Do with Google Plus Settings
Google Plus seems to be hiding their options well enough (Or is that just me?). Whether it’s their lack of usability concerns or the way they prefer to control which settings you ever get to use is an open-ended question.. Let’s see if that’s just me or not: Have you ever tried tweaking the below […]