The use of affiliate content and links when it comes to Google ranking is always a hot topic. In the recent Panda Algo Guide, I talked quite a bit about the role affiliate links and related content and the impact of it from Panda, including specifics that Google has previously said about affiliate content and […]
Archives for January 2016
How Important are Keywords in URLs in 2016?
If you have been in the search industry for a long time, you will likely remember the days when having keywords in the URL was extremely important, and seeing page URLs like www.example.com/buy-keyword-keyword-keyword-online-now.html was pretty common. Obviously, much as changed with SEO since that was important 10-15 years ago. In yesterday’s hangout, someone asked how […]
Are Number of Reviews a Ranking Factor in Google?
Does Google view pages or websites with a higher number of reviews as higher quality than those without? John Mueller answered this question in yesterday’s hangout. Do note that when he answers, he does add the caveat that this may be different from how the local search results do their rankings, such as in the […]
Clarification from Google on Title Tags as a Ranking Factor
Last week, there was some drama over whether or not title tags were a ranking factor. While the headline stated that titles were not a critical ranking factor, what John Mueller had actually said was that “it is not the most critical part of the page.” This is true, while it isn’t THE most important […]
Google Search Console Alerts for Outdated WordPress & Joomla Sites
Google Search Console sent out another round of alerts to both WordPress users and Joomla users where they discovered that the site is running an older version of the CMS. Here is what the alert looks like. It gives sample URLs which is helpful if you have multiple installations of a CMS on a single […]
IAB Research Finds ‘Political Influentials’ Much More Reliant on Digital Media than TV
According to a new research study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), digital media has reached parity with TV as a primary information source about presidential candidates. Both digital and TV are used by 61 percent registered U.S. voters, according to “The Race for the White House 2016: Registered Voters and Media and Information During […]
AMP Will Support Ads from 20+ Networks at Launch
One of the big issues with publishers when considering AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages – is how advertising might be affected. After all, with many publishers relying on ad revenue, the potential loss of that revenue because of AMP could be a major issue. In a new blog post from the AMP Project, they announced […]
Major Vulnerability in Magento eCommerce, Update Immediately
There is a major exploit in Magento that is affected nearly all versions of the popular ecommerce platform. The exploit allows a hacker to take control of both admin and the server. Securi was the first to discover the exploit back in early November, but it took until January 22, 2016 for Magento to release […]
Display Emojis in Google Product Listing Ads URLs
Remember all the emojis that were showing up in Google Search results in titles, URLs and descriptions until Google pulled the plug on them two months later? Well, they are back… although not in the organic search results this time. This time, you can get emojis displaying in Google’s Product Listing Ads (aka Google Shopping […]
Google Launches Free Course on Deep Learning
Are you interested in learn more about Google’s deep learning? Google is offering a new course at Udacity “Deep Learning: Taking machine learning to the next level.” They also posted more details on Google’s decision to offer this course here. To help make deep learning even more accessible to engineers and data scientists at large, […]