If I were to run a poll asking, “What’s more important, branding or keywords?” how would you vote? Keywords get people to the site, but building brand recognition helps sell your products or services. It’s not quite a pure traffic vs. sales scenario, but it’s pretty close. No traffic equals no sales. But traffic without […]
Google Showing Comparisons in Answer Boxes
Google appears to be ramping up their usage of comparison answer boxes in the last week or so, with more and more people reporting seeing them in action in the Google Search results. They seem to only appear for non-commercial queries. But more importantly, they don’t seem to have a source cited like many answer […]
Google Asking Searchers What Needs Most Improvement
Google is testing a new survey in the search results. This one, rather than rating the search results, is instead asking “What aspect of Google Search needs the most improvement?” They ask webmasters to select an area they feel needs improvement and also offer a space for searchers to include another reason they feel needs […]
Google Plans to Update Mobile Friendly Test Tool
Maile Ohye at SMX today announced that they will be updating their Mobile Friendly Test to be more granular and provide insight into other on-page elements. It is very likely these elements will be rolled into the mobile friendly algo as Google begins to add signals to the algo that will reflect issues beyond simply […]
Google Continuing to Work on Separate Mobile Search Index
Earlier this year, Gary Illyes from Google mentioned that Google has been working on a completely separate mobile index. This would see both desktop and mobile have its own set of search results which would be served depending on what the searcher was searcher with. Google is reportedly still testing two indexes as Maile Ohye […]
Google Webmaster Tools Renamed Google Search Console
Google Webmaster Tools is being renamed Google Search Console according to a post made on the Google Webmaster Central blog. It turns out that the traditional idea of the “webmaster” reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, […]
Want to Test Search Analytics API from Google Webmaster Tools?
If you are interested in testing out the new API for Search Analytics in Google Webmaster Tools, you are in luck. Google is working on the API and John Mueller from Google is looking for those who are interested in testing it out. We are also working on an API for the Search Analytics feature, […]
Bing Putting Entire Wikipedia Pages in Search Results Answer Box Test
Google tends to get flack from webmasters about the usage of snippets in their answer boxes. Bing is definitely taking this a step further by putting the contents of entire Wikipedia sections and pages right on their Bing search result pages. Here is a Bing search for SEO, and the resulting answer box in animated […]
Video Games Latest Vertical to Get Carousel in Google Search Results
Google has now added video games into the list of verticals that will result in a carousel at the top of the Google search results. Clicking on one of the links then results in the carousel still being displayed, but then it changes the search results to be related to the game title clicked on […]
Google Displaying More Reviews in Book & Movie Review Answer Box
Google is testing a new answer box for book reviews that displays multiple review sites rather than the usual single ratings via Goodreads. This seems to be a limited roll out, as I am seeing the expanded reviews while other users are still seeing the traditional single review format, which tends to link to Goodreads. […]