Bing is testing an additional visual element to their “related searches” box, where Bing suggests additional searches if a searcher scrolls near the end of the search results page. Now there is a thumbnail next to each suggested search, along with the notation it is from bing.com Here is what it looks like: And here […]
Archives for October 2015
Google Adds Song Covers to Music Related Searches
Google has added a new feature to music related search results. Now when you search for a song, in addition to the “main” or best known version of a song, Google is now also listing other cover versions of the song. Here is an example for the song “Sweet Caroline” with the best known version […]
Google Link Value Loss When Switching to HTTPS from HTTP
Someone raised an interesting question in today’s Google Webmaster Office Hours today. The question was about how links lose a bit of their value when they go through a redirect. When switching a site from HTTP to HTTPS, it means an entire site will have to go through a redirect, so will the link loss […]
How Many 301 Redirect Hops Will Googlebot Follow?
John Mueller had a bit of an update on how Googlebot handles 301 redirects when they are in a redirect chain – where you might get redirected multiple times through 301s until you land on the end destination page. In today’s Google Webmaster Office Hours, he said that the maximum number of hops Googlebot will […]
Sites Can Be Impacted by Both Penguin and Manual Action Link Penalties
If you are dealing with a manual action link penalty, that doesn’t mean that you are not impacted by the Google Penguin algo. A website can be impacted by both Penguin and a manual action for links at the same time. The question was brought up on Twitter: can a site be affected by Manual […]
Bing Adds New Recipe Icons to Bing Image Search
If you prefer to search for new recipes by how good it looks, you will be happy to learn of Bing’s latest change to their image search. Now, when you search for food or recipes using Bing Image Search, images that have a recipe on the destination page will show a new chef’s hat badge […]
Duplicate Content Issues Not Directly Related to Panda
If you are concerned that having duplicate content could be a factor in the Panda algo, John Mueller from Google has confirmed that duplicate content and Panda are two separate and independent things. Marie Haynes raised the question with John Mueller, and whether duplicate content could have an impact on Panda. @Marie_Haynes Those are 2 […]
Google Deprecating AJAX Crawling Scheme
In a long expected move, Google is now deprecating AJAX crawling scheme. Googlebot is able to understand AJAX pages better than they could previously, so the support of the AJAX crawling scheme is no longer needed. When Google initially announced the plan, it was because their crawlers were not executing javascript to be able to […]
Google Adds Expandable Featured Snippets With Knowledge Panel Features
Google is testing a brand new style of featured snippets, this time showing the regular featured snippet at the top of the search results, while also including an additional expandable section that pulls the type of data we normally see in the regular knowledge panels in the right sidebar. This includes things like facts, related […]
Why Google Devaluing Spammy Queries is Great for Website Owners
When a site gets hacked, you can almost always count on it being used to promote one of several market areas. Google recently announced their hacked site algo, which would see hacked results removed from the search results. But Gary Illyes from Google revealed another interesting fact about it… that it impacts spammy queries only. […]