It seems that Facebook is jumping on the bandwagon of showing review stars in ads. Facebook is starting a small test where they will show review stars in a small percentage of selected ads. Facebook is running it as a two month test but advertisers are able to opt-out of the test if they choose. […]
Archives for 2017
Reminder: Google Manual Actions Transfer to New Search Console Account
If you add a new domain to Google Search Console when the ownership of the domain is transferred, any manual actions attached to the domain will show up in Google Search Console. @CyrusShepard @methode yes – they're visible in the new accounts (but old messages generally not) — John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) April 24, 2017 Many site […]
Google Testing Popover Banner for Hotel Rates in Search Results
Google is testing a new banner style call to action within their hotel knowledge panel on the mobile search results. When searching a hotel that has sponsored room rate listings, Google is showing a new floating banner on the bottom of the page with a link to view rates. Sergey Alakov made a GIF showing […]
Google, Microsoft, Facebook & More Targeting “Worst Offender” Ad Types
There are some ads that annoy users more than others. These include things like autoplay videos ads with sound enabled by default and pop up ads. And for some users, flashing ads can induce medical events such as seizures. And some big players in the ad industry are looking to tackle these types of ads […]
Man Arrested for Sending Google Forged Court Orders to Remove Search Results
A business owner has been arrested and charged after creating multiple forged court orders which were sent to Google in order to get negative reviews about their company removed from the search results. The business owner, Michael Arnstein of The Natural Sapphire Company in New York, was arrested and charged with two counts of forging a […]
Errors When Submitting URL to Google Search Console; Workaround Available
Many SEOs are reporting error messages when attempting to submit URLs to Google Search Console for indexing. When attempting to submit a URL using the fetch and submit tool, it shows “An error has occurred. Please try again later.” This does not seem to be affecting all accounts, as some are reporting that some sites […]
Google AdWords Adds Company Based Product Listing Ads to Search Results
Google has added a new style of PLAs to the search results. It is a carousel that divides products by the company selling them, rather than the usual unsorted PLAs. Here is what it looks like in the mobile search results: As you scroll through the companies, it only lists companies and not individual products, […]
Google Does Not Devalue Pages With Internal Nofollow Links
Many site owners will nofollow internal links for a number of reasons, such as for siloing for PageRank or crawl budget reasons, or in a misinformed attempt to get an outbound link manual action lifted. While nofollowing internal links won’t cause an issue with Google, such as a penalty, what about the value of the page with […]
When Google Rankings Drop After Submitting a Disavow File
When submitting a disavow file, oftentimes people also disavow great links that help rankings, and not just the bad links. For some site owners, identifying the links that should be disavowed (spammy links or links that were paid for in some way) versus the great natural links. And sometimes those great links are really helping […]
Using Nofollow for Siloing Will Not Cause Google Penalty
Using nofollow on internal links has been a technique to silo pages within a site for crawl budget reasons. A site owner will nofollow all links to lesser important pages while using followed links on those pages considered more important. The hopeful end result is that Google crawls those more important pages more frequently, while […]