John Mueller from Google talked about the issues that can arise when splitting one site into two or multiple sites. This is something that many site owners do, but depending on the reasons for doing it – whether SEO or for the user – you can end up doing more harm to your overall search […]
Archives for May 2018
Bing Local Pack Testing New Card Style in Search Results
Bing is testing a distinct new style of their local pack in the search results. Instead of the usual list of results together, this new layout has individual card-style results for each business within the local pack. However, some versions of this test drop the results in the local pack to only three results instead […]
Why Googlebot Shows Fluctuations on Time Spent Downloading Page Report
When viewing the Google Search Console stats for the amount of time Googlebot spends downloading a page, it is common to see wide fluctuations in that time. But while it is sometimes easy to guess the reasons, sometimes it isn’t always clear. John Mueller from Google answered a question about the report, specifically why there […]
Google: When to Choose Subdirectories vs Subdomains
The debate over subdomains versus subdirectories has been a hot one for SEOs for years. For SEO reasons, most prefer subdirectories, primarily for link equity purposes. But Google’s official stand is either works in the eyes of Google – even if they won’t necessarily rank equivalently. During the most recent Google Office Hours, the question […]
Google Sending New Wave of Mobile-First Indexing Enabled Notifications
If you have a large number of sites in your Google Search Console, chances are good you have received one (or twenty) emails from Google alerting that sites have been switched over to mobile first indexing in the search results. The new notices are identical (aside from a non-relevant footer change) to the ones Google […]
Google Testing Disambiguation Box for Local Packs
Google is testing a disambiguation box which shows up on the mobile search results for a local pack. Disambiguation features in the search results show up when Google isn’t entirely sure which meaning of a word someone is trying to search for. Here is what it looks like: Google is asking whether someone is searching […]
Google & Optimizing for Local “Near Me” Searches in Search Results
Ever since searchers started doing more Google voice searches with the additional keywords “near me”, many site owners began incorporating “near me” into their titles and content, because in theory, if someone searches for “near me”, then those pages should rank when someone does a search that includes “near me.” John Mueller addressed this and […]
Removing Sitemap Files From Google Search Console
In Google Search Console, you can add and remove sitemaps from your site, and Google will include information related to the sitemap files such as any warnings or errors, as well as pages indexed from the crawl. While Google can discover and crawl sitemaps on its own, submitting makes it faster and easier, and it […]
Why Google Won’t Give Specific Meta Description Lengths
Ever since Google dropped the length of the descriptions in the search results last week, many SEOs have been freaking out about the fact they rewrote meta description tags to 300+ characters and now, Google has dropped that back down to about 160 characters in length. The important thing to note is that Google has […]
Google Reduces Description Length in Desktop & Mobile Search Results
Two years after Google initially increased the length of descriptions in the search results, and six months after increasing it for most results, Google is reverting back to the old shorter length. For some SEOs, this means a lot of work is required to change over description meta tags from the longer version to the […]