Since Google finally released the real time Penguin update last year, there hasn’t been any word about changes they have made since then. But what about changes in the future? Gary Illyes has confirmed that Google plans to be transparent about “big substantial changes” to the Google Penguin algo. @akuchaaaan007 I'd work hard to make […]
Country & Language Selector Popups Impacted by Google’s Mobile Interstitial Change
Earlier this month, Google made a change which sees the use of popups and interstitials on mobile sites receive a slight demotion in the search result rankings. Google has made some types of popups exempt from the change, but of course SEOs are looking for other use cases where Google might turn a blind […]
Google Crawl Budget: What SEOs Need to Know About Googlebot Crawling
Gary Illyes from Google has posted a blog entry on the Google Webmaster blog, touching on Googlebot and crawl budget issues that site owners might have. First, it is important to note that not all site owners will be impacted by crawl budget issues. For the most part, sites with 4,000 or fewer URLs generally […]
Google Local 4-Packs Showing 1 Ad & 3 Organic Local Listings
We have seen local 4-packs from Google where Google will show 4 paid local listings in a local 4-pack. But it seems Google is now testing a single map pack with a combination of both paid and organic listings. Sergey Alakov spotted this in action this morning, with one paid local listing followed by three […]
How Google Ranks “Top Stories” News in Search Results
We don’t often hear about how Google ranks their news related results nor how the “Top Stories” are chosen for desktop and mobile users. Usually when someone from the search team comments on the news results, it is to say they use their own algorithm for news. But John Mueller in the Google Webmaster Office […]
Mobile First Index: Google to Notify Sites of Possible Issues via Search Console
In today’s Google Webmaster Office Hours, John Mueller said that they plan to send notices to webmasters via Google Search Console, alerting them that they would be likely to suffer issues when the mobile first index takes affect. While those who use responsive design likely won’t have many or any issues, those with other mobile […]
SEO Weather Reporting Tools & Google Ranking Experiments
SEO weather reports – the trackers that track a number of keywords in the search results, and report on the volatility in those searches – have become a pretty popular way for webmasters and SEOs to kind of gauge what is happening in the search results on a daily basis. The topic came up about […]
No Need to Change Canonicals from Desktop for Mobile First Indexing
Just a reminder, if you are updating any canonicals, you do not need to update all desktop/mobile canonicals on your site to make the mobile version be the primary URL. We included this information in our Google Mobile First Indexing Guide, but some people are still asking whether they need to switch or not. @shaunmaharaj […]
No Need to Resubmit Pages to Google Search Monthly
A question came up on a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours asking about the fetch and submit feature. The person had been told by his SEO agency that he needed to resubmit 10 pages every month to Google, and this despite also having a sitemap in place for the site. So for the most part, […]
Google’s Mobile Interstitial & Popup Change Now Live: What to Know
Google’s change that would see pages devalued for using popups and interstitials for mobile users coming the Google search results is now live. This means if you are showing either popups or interstitials to Google traffic, that your pages will be downranked in the Google search results. Here are the changes and what you need […]