Google is testing a massive Product Ads listing at the top of their search results. The PLA test features an expandable arrow that expands the usual 5 PLA ad unit at the top of the search results into a massive 16 ad unit, pushing down the search results. ChannelAdvisor spotted the test in the search […]
Archives for 2016
10 Tools for Curated Collaboration
Curating and collaborating, the two are a necessary combination when you are doing a group project. Research is more easily completed, and the information you gather more diversified, if you have multiple people looking at different resources. It would be nice if it didn’t take so much time and energy, though. There is no real […]
Google Testing Gray Stars in Ratings, Local & AdWords
Google is testing yet another color of stars in the search results, but I bet many business and website owners won’t be so happy with this one. Here is how it appears in the search results, this one in a local 3-pack. This is also the last color of the collection of star colors that […]
Why SEOs Shouldn’t Trust All Algo Weather Reports & Winner/Loser Lists
There was a pretty active discussion on Twitter earlier today about the accuracy of the so-called “algo winner and loser” lists that many companies publish based on their data…. and how accurate that is. And with sites normally reporting on only the top handful of sites – 10-20 – it is hard to get a […]
Google Algo Changes Aren’t Niche Specific
There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter recently about the latest core update we saw this weekend, and whether it could possibly be niche specific. While some were reporting that it appeared several niche markets were hit, I wondered if the data was skewed since it was limited to top ten results and […]
Notable Alumni Shown in Google Knowledge Panel & Carousel
Ever wondered who attended a specific university that was noteworthy in some way? Google is now showing a section for “Notable alumni” in the Google search results, which clicks through to an additional carousel. As you can see from the Stanford example, they are including not only famous business people, but actors/actresses, athletes and musicians. […]
Not Penguin: Weekend Saw More Core Google Algo Changes
Once again, the SEO community was abuzz over some major fluctuations that the “weather report” tools that monitor Google’s search result fluctuations. High temperatures were seen over the weekend, but we know two things. First, it was not Penguin related, and second, it was a core algo update. This is the second significant core algo […]
Google PageRank Will Probably Never Update Again
Someone asked a question about PageRank in today’s Webmaster Hangout. While we had a surprise PageRank update in 2013, which was a surprise update when Google fixed something else, there hasn’t been any change since then. But people still ask about it. A couple things to note. Google does use and update PageRank internally for […]
Google: No Limits on Word Count on a Page for Search Results
How does Google view word count? The question came up in today’s Webmaster Hangout with John Mueller about whether there is a minimum word count on a page or not. The answer is no, there’s not. This is something I said in my Google Panda article, with an example of a page with a featured […]
Searchers See 30+ Different Experiments in Google Search Results
We all know Google loves experiments in the search results, and some are more noticeable than others, and I tend to notice a ton of them. Different colored stars are pretty noticeable, while I am sure there are many other subtle experiments we never notice, especially if they influence ranking in some way. John Mueller […]