Now that the latest round of Panda updates has rolled out, it is obvious that the Private Blog Networks (PBN’s) downfall was baked into the latest Panda algorithm. When the PBN’s were first hit, they were the recipients of penalties in Google Webmaster Tools for having “thin content with little or no added value.” This […]
Switching to HTTPS Will Not Increase Your Search Rankings
After webmasters were scrambling to make their sites secure with Google’s announcement that using https would give those sites a ranking boost, John Mueller states that using https will not visibly increase your rankings. In a Google Webmaster Help Office Hours, the question about https as a ranking boost came up. I wouldn’t expect any […]
Large Popups on Websites Could Trigger Page Layout Algorithm Penalty
This will be good news for surfers but bad news for marketers employing this tactic – sites that display large popups as soon as a visitor loads a site could trigger the above the fold layout algorithm penalty. “When we look at the page layout, we look at what we crawl with Googlebot,” says John […]
New Google Panda Algorithm Rolling Out, Ranks Small & Medium Sites Higher
Google has confirmed that they are slowly rolling out a new Panda algorithm update, the first one since the 4.0 update that happened back on May 20, 2014. The latest Panda algo began slowly rolling out this week with plans for it to continue rolling out until sometime next week. Pierre Far from Google states […]
In-Depth Articles Significantly Increased in Google Search Results
Mozcast has noticed a pretty significant jump in the number of in-depth articles being displayed in the Google Search results. Looking at Mozcast data, there was a dip on September 9th before it increased to 12.7% the following day. However, the September 25, 2014 jump went up by 30%, with in-depth articles now being shown […]
Search Engine Marketers Have Become Tools of Their Tools
I live about 10 miles from Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau wrote the bulk of Walden, one of the most famous non-fiction books written by an American author. Thoreau’s book was published in 1854, but it still offers lots of key lessons for search engine marketers today. For example, Thoreau wrote in Chapter 1, […]
How did Google Discover the Private Blog Networks?
Google is in the process of a massive penalty sweep targeting many Private Blog Networks (PBNs) where they have been applying penalties and deindexing sites that are utilizing PBNs. Private blog networks (PBN) get their name because they are generally controlled by a single person or company and are supposedly harder to trace. But with the […]
Google’s Structured Snippets in Search Results Will Reduce CTR
Google searchers have become accustomed to seeing knowledge graph information mixed into their Google search results. Google is now taking this a step further and introducing structured snippets to some results within the Google search results. For some queries, Google will extract specific information from the results page and include it as part of the […]
Google Patent Changes Ranks Based on TV Viewing
How often have you been watching television and you end up searching for something related to the show while you watch it? Google has been issued a new patent that uses television shows as a ranking signal to personalize search to those it believes might be watching a television show at the time. Bill Slawski […]
Penguin Will Launch in the Reasonable Future in 2014 According to John Mueller
Another Google Webmaster Central Office Hours was held today, and yes, John Mueller was asked about Penguin, and more specifically, whether the next Penguin update would happen in 2014. Here was his response… Will the Penguin 3.0 launch in 2014? My guess is yes, but as always there are always things that could happen in […]