There’s been plenty of debates about where to buy an SSL certificate ever since Google initially announced their HTTPS ranking signal. Would bargain basement priced secure certificates be viewed as equal to the more expensive options in the eyes of Google? According to Gary Illyes from Google, he said that Google does, in fact, consider […]
Archives for May 2015
HTTPS Acts as Tie Breaker in Google’s Search Results
We have a bit more insight into just how much of a boost HTTPS gives in the Google search results. When Google first announced HTTPS as a ranking signal, many webmasters rushed to get their sites secure. John Mueller later clarified that webmasters shouldn’t expect a visible ranking change in the search results as the […]
Bing Launching Their Own Mobile Friendly Algorithm
Bing has announced that they are launching their own mobile friendly algorithm for Bing searches coming from mobile devices. Last month, Google began giving a boost to mobile friendly web pages in their own search results for searches done from a mobile device. So it’s not surprising that Bing is following the lead to include […]
Mobilegeddon “Inaccurate” to Describe Google’s Mobile Friendly Algo
At SMX Sydney, Gary Illyes addressed the topic of the mobile friendly algo, and more specifically, the term “Mobilegeddon” that has been commonly used as its unofficial name, and said,”The term mobilegeddon is inaccurate”. The term “Mobilegeddon” started because Google didn’t have an internal name for the mobile friendly algo other than, you guessed it, […]
Google Considering Adding Hreflang Issues to Webmaster Tools
Mess up hreflang? Google Webmaster Tools might be adding a feature that would show when they feel there might be an error in a site’s usage of hreflang on their pages. At SMX Sydney Wednesday, Gary Illyes did a session on hreflang and dropped a few tidbits including the possibility of showing potential errors. The […]
Bing Search Testing Reminders When You’ve Visited a Webpage
Bing is adding reminders in their search results when you have previously visited a webpage. This is similar to a feature Google has, which most often appears to users using Google Now. This type of feature always has mixed results, as some people find it useful, while others find it on the creepy side, since […]
Bounce Rate & Analytics Not Used in Google’s Search Ranking
Despite Matt Cutts categorically saying Google does not use bounce rate data in their search rankings at SMX a couple of years ago, many SEOs still believe that Google does bounce rate, and demotes sites and/or pages that have a higher bounce rate. Someone asked the question to Gary Illyes from Google on Twitter, and […]
Next Mobile Friendly Algo Update the Platypus Update?
Those at SMX Sydney were perhaps given a sneak peak of what the mobile friendly algo will be called when it gets its new signals. According to Google’s Gary Illyes, who may or may not have been joking, it sounds as though it will be called the Platypus update. BREAKING: Google's next iteration of the […]
Answer Box Data Coming to Google Webmaster Tools?
At SMX Sydney Wednesday, Gary Illyes from Google said that they are looking into including answer box data into Google Webmaster Tools. This is great news for webmasters who have sites in search results that often show answer boxes above the organic results. Google is looking to provide data on "web answers" (answer box 2.0) […]
Bing Is Testing a New Site Search in Search Results
It looks like Bing is following Google’s lead and adding a site search bar below some listings in the Bing Search Results. When you search using the “search results from _____” search box, it then returns a list of Bing results using site:example.com. Bing did a test of this a couple of years ago, but […]