We have a brand new version of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines, and there are quite a few updates in several areas, namely news content, YMYL and EAT. This is the first update to the guidelines since the Spring, and Google is definitely focusing on some specific areas in this update – especially news content […]
Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
Ever since Google introduced the nofollow link attribute, as a way to help webmasters disavow links they did not want to pass PageRank to, it has been used for many different things. First, it was used specifically for sites to be able to link to sponsors, but without worrying about receiving any link based manual […]
Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials
There is a brand new version of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines, and here are all the changes Google has made to the guidelines and why these changes are important. The new version is dated May 16, 2019, and replaces the one released back in 2018. One major take away is that Google is moving […]
Google Local Service Ads Display Pricing Estimates for Specific Locations
Google has added a new feature to their local services as, the special local ads that appear for searchers that are looking for a specific business type in their local area, to give estimates for specific jobs in their area. Tom Waddington shared a screenshot on Twitter. This is a great feature for searchers because […]
Google Testing “Relevant History” Section in Mobile Search Results
Google is testing a new feature in the mobile search results – a drop down section labelled as “Relevant History” that appears at the very top of the mobile search results. It shows previously visited pages directly related to the search. Henny Roggy shared the screenshots on Twitter showing the feature. Here is how it […]
Google Converts PDFs, DOCs, XLS etc into HTML for Indexing
A discussion came up on twitter about different content types and how Google determines what type of files they are. The discussion then moved to PDFs in the Google search results and how Google handles them. John Mueller commented that Google automatically converts PDFs and similar document types into HTML format for indexing and ranking […]
Why Google Shows Featured Snippets With Images from Another Site
For a few years now, Google has sometimes shown featured snippets where the text is from one site, but the image shown within the featured snippet itself is actually from a second site. Last year, Google confirmed that it would continue doing this, and it wouldn’t change how it sometimes selects a more optimal image […]
How to Download Links Report in New Google Search Console
Google has released a brand-new link report within the new version of Google Search Console. The important thing to know about this linking report is that it contains different data than what was included in the old link report. To export your links, you need to go to your linking reports within the new Google […]
Google: Avoid Including Redirected URLs in Sitemaps
Google is reminding site owners that they shouldn’t add URLs that are being redirected in the sitemap they submit to Google. The question came up on Twitter about whether it should be avoided or if there was no detrimental effect to having them in a sitemap. John Mueller answered on Twitter and said that sitemaps […]
Google’s Featured Snippet Videos Now Overlay in Search Results
Google has made a major change with how featured snippets with a video are done in the search results. Instead of clicking through to the YouTube video landing page, Google is overlaying the video directly into the search results instead. The overlay does not feature any of the YouTube features and is instead a very […]