In the last Google webmaster office hours, John Mueller talked about the best practices for site moves and the length of time to keep a 301 redirect in place for. But he also addressed cases where site moves have to be done where redirects cannot be done for whatever reason. For many reasons, when you […]
Exit Page Interstitials Not Impacted by Google’s Mobile Interstitial Change
If you have an exit interstitial – an interstitial that only displays once a user tries to leave a site – they won’t be impacted by Google’s upcoming mobile interstitial change which would see pages with interstitials lose their mobile friendly ranking boost. The question came up in the Google Webmaster Office Hours this week […]
Google: Leave 301 Redirects in Place at Least a Year, Preferably Longer
When you undergo a site move, it is standard to set up 301 redirects from the old domains to the new ones. While many recommend leaving those redirects in place permanently, in practice this isn’t always an option or even if it is needed. The question came up about redirects and John Mueller from Google […]
Site Wide & Blogroll Links Are Not Automatically Bad Links for Google
With the release of real time Penguin, there have been a lot of questions about link quality and link value. In the last Webmaster Office Hours, John Mueller was asked specifically about site wide links, such as those found on blogrolls. Now, blogroll links used to be pretty common many years ago, but as reciprocal […]
Google Adds New AMP Testing Tool
If you are still working on getting your pages AMP ready, the AMP related reporting in Google Search Console can be a bit frustrating since the error reporting is quite delayed. And while the structured data testing tool can help show errors, it isn’t as intuitive for AMP, especially for those with little experience with […]
Google: Machine Learning Will Never Take Over the Whole Search Algorithm
Ever since Google announced RankBrain, a machine learning algo, there has been much speculation about what other parts of the search algo Google might use machine learning in. While they have said Penguin is not a machine learning algorithm, there is speculation that other parts of the search algo could incorporate machine learning, especially with […]
Google: Still Use the Disavow Tool for Bad Links
During the breakfast keynote at Pubcon last week with Gary Illyes and Eric Enge, one of the questions came up about about real time Penguin, since Penguin now discounts bad links – he asked specifically how the new Penguin affects the disavow tool. First, the question: My question is about the Penguin update, where you’re […]
Google Penguin Does Not Discount All Links But Manual Actions Can
Does Penguin really discount all links, when it sees too many low quality links detected for a site? This was reported via tweets from Pubcon last week, but Google has clarified this and confirms Penguin does not discount all links. At Pubcon last week, Gary Illyes made a statement about links, implying that Penguin could […]
Google Search Switching to Mobile First Index from Desktop Index
Gary Illyes at Pubcon announced today that Google is switching to a mobile first index. This means that Google will be indexing the mobile versions of pages and not the desktop as its primary index. This is a huge change. Google has always used the desktop version of a page for ranking, even when serving […]
Google Has Completed Rolling Out Recoveries From All Versions of Penguin
Google has lifted the previous demotions from all versions of Penguin in the search results. So if you are waiting to see rankings improve from any of the previous iterations of Penguin, those have now gone out in the search results for all impacted sites. In the early morning Pubcon breakfast session with Gary Illyes from […]