Google has finally confirmed what many of us suspected… they have made a change to their core search ranking algorithm, and it is being dubbed as the Quality Update or the Quality Algo, and formerly referred to as the Phantom Update, or Phantom Update 2. Changes were first noticed at the beginning of the month […]
Archives for May 2015
Google AdWords With Matching Sitelinks & Descriptions
I came across this unusual Google AdWords ad, and it definitely caught my eye, since it had two identical lines in a row – the sitelinks in one line, and the duplicated sitelinks, without the links, in the description line. It could be just how the company decided to do their ad copy, rather than […]
Google Plans to Update Mobile Friendly Test Tool
Maile Ohye at SMX today announced that they will be updating their Mobile Friendly Test to be more granular and provide insight into other on-page elements. It is very likely these elements will be rolled into the mobile friendly algo as Google begins to add signals to the algo that will reflect issues beyond simply […]
Google Continuing to Work on Separate Mobile Search Index
Earlier this year, Gary Illyes from Google mentioned that Google has been working on a completely separate mobile index. This would see both desktop and mobile have its own set of search results which would be served depending on what the searcher was searcher with. Google is reportedly still testing two indexes as Maile Ohye […]
Google Webmaster Tools Renamed Google Search Console
Google Webmaster Tools is being renamed Google Search Console according to a post made on the Google Webmaster Central blog. It turns out that the traditional idea of the “webmaster” reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, […]
Want to Test Search Analytics API from Google Webmaster Tools?
If you are interested in testing out the new API for Search Analytics in Google Webmaster Tools, you are in luck. Google is working on the API and John Mueller from Google is looking for those who are interested in testing it out. We are also working on an API for the Search Analytics feature, […]
Bing Putting Entire Wikipedia Pages in Search Results Answer Box Test
Google tends to get flack from webmasters about the usage of snippets in their answer boxes. Bing is definitely taking this a step further by putting the contents of entire Wikipedia sections and pages right on their Bing search result pages. Here is a Bing search for SEO, and the resulting answer box in animated […]
Video Games Latest Vertical to Get Carousel in Google Search Results
Google has now added video games into the list of verticals that will result in a carousel at the top of the Google search results. Clicking on one of the links then results in the carousel still being displayed, but then it changes the search results to be related to the game title clicked on […]
How to Force Google Chrome to Use Google.com Instead of Country Specific Version
As a marketer, I prefer using Google.com as my primary search engine for many reasons. Sometimes I want US based searches but primarily it is because often Google tests or releases features on .com first. And if I ever need to do local-based searches, I can easily head to my country specific Google version instead. […]
Twitter’s “While You Were Away” Favors Visual Content
If you have a lot of followers who might only check into Twitter once every day or two, you might want to consider posting more visual content. The “While You Were Away” feature tends to favor visual-based tweets over purely text tweets when it chooses what to display. Twitter recently made the change to display […]