Ever since the new real time Penguin algorithm was released by Google, there has been speculation that Penguin was either a machine learning algorithm or had a machine learning component to it.  And if it was machine learning, would it be a supervised one or an unsupervised one. I asked Gary Illyes from Google, whether […]

In today’s Webmaster Office Hours, John Mueller was answering a question related to the frequency of Google updating ranking signals for pages in the search results.  But one thing that was interesting was he confirmed that the history of a page or site plays a role in how some search algos rank it, something that […]

Do you have structured data for products on your category or pages with lists of items?  You might not be aware that it isn’t permitted by Google. The question came up in the last Webmaster Office Hours, specifically about adding the markup to category and lists. So in general the structured data markup should be […]

There has been plenty of debate over the past couple of weeks over the disavow tool and whether site owners should be using it still, now that Penguin devalues spammy links. John Mueller tackled this question in the latest Webmaster Office Hours.  And the verdict is if you (or someone hired/connected to the site) has […]

Many SEOs have often speculated that there is an increase in crawling on sites due to algorithmic reasons specific to a site.  But did Penguin specifically cause an increase in crawling due to the new real time aspect of it, and the fact it had to refresh a ton of pages? Google has repeatedly confirmed […]

How quickly will Google take a brand new link into account once it is crawled by Google?  According to Google, it is almost immediately…. or as immediate as it takes for Google to crawl and discover that new link. The question came up in the last Google Webmaster Office Hours with John Mueller, specifically how […]

When people are assessing their sites for whether Google sees it as quality or not, crawl frequency is one that many SEOs look for.  If Googlebot visits internal pages very seldom or doesn’t go very deep into a site when crawling, these are signs that Google probably sees the site as low quality. John Mueller […]

Waiting for a Penguin recovery?  Check your analytics, as those recoveries from previous Penguin launches should have all rolled out by now. Last week, Gary Illyes from Google reported that the Penguin recoveries were rolling out, and would take a few more days to finish – a timeline which has now passed. @atmoore81 it's happening […]