Gary Illyes from Google was speaking at the Friends of Search conference today and he made some comments about algo changes, including Penguin and possibly Panda. We have seen plenty of algo changes recently, among the many changes Google makes on a daily and weekly basis. But he said today that they are not planning […]
Archives for February 2017
Google’s New Top Entity Carousels Not Ranked by Search Algo
Many searches have been triggering new brand / entity carousels in the search results recently. They are similar to the types of carousels you see for things like “2016 movies”, but they are for “best” or “top” searches, such as best software or best tools. Here is what it looks like: So of course the […]
Google: SEOs Need 4 Months to a Year for SEO Changes & Ranking Improvement
Google released a “How to Hire an SEO” video this week, and one of the things mentioned is how long it takes for a site to see improvements due to SEO changes. Here is what Maile Oyhe said: In most cases, the SEO will need four months to a year to help your business first […]
Bing Adds Image Search Filters for Suggested & Disambiguation Queries
Bing is testing a new image search filter which adds additional images to the image search results for suggested refinements to the query, similar to disambiguation searches where search engines will offer suggestions for things that are named the same but mean two different things – such as we see with Apple the company and […]
Google Doesn’t Expect Full Navigation in Mobile First Pages
When it comes to creating great mobile websites for users, a lot of times things need to be paired down from what might be served on desktop, and one of the top targets for change is the navigation structure. On desktop, many sites have elaborate multi-level navigation menus, but on desktop, the same kind of […]
Google Doesn’t Crawl to See What is On 404 Pages; No SEO Benefit
When you have a 404, regardless of whether it is a default 404 or a custom 404, Google doesn’t crawl the content of the 404 once it sees the response is a server 404. Why is this important? Many have been creating custom 404s for SEO specific reasons. So if we see a 404, then […]
Top 10 Super Bowl Ads for 2017 Depend on Which Metrics You Use
Marketers know that the New England Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl 2017 by a score of 34 to 28 in overtime. But which Super Bowl ads won the Big Game? Well, as I observed in The SEM Post two years ago, it depends on which metrics that marketers use. Now, some […]
Google Sends Outdated WordPress Alerts to Site Owners
WordPress updated to WordPress 4.7.2 a week and a half ago and many site owners have already updated. But WordPress later announced that this update fixed a serious vulnerability that they delayed disclosure of, in order to allow sites to fix the vulnerability before others tried to take advantage of it. Google is also trying […]
Google Testing New Call Only Style Ad
Google is testing a new variation of their call only ads, ads which are meant for searchers to simply phone the business rather than click through to the site. And these ones make it much more obvious that searchers should be calling them. Here is what it looks like: Usually the call icon is on […]
Google Adds Category Filters to Organic Search
Google is testing a new category filtering carousel for some search queries. And while the intent is good, the actual results make Google search results even worse. Here is what it looks like for a search: However, the narrowing down doesn’t quite seem to work. It only narrows it down to product type, without adding […]