It has been about a month since AMP went live and the dedicated AMP section opened at the Google Webmaster Help forums. And the AMP blog is taking the opportunity to highlight the most common questions they have seen at the help forums. In the Q&A, they do talk a bit more about the future […]
RankBrain is For Understanding Queries, Not for Crawling or Replacing Ranking
Ever since RankBrain first launched, there has been a lot of confusion over how exactly it impacts SEOs and site owners. While we know it has a greater impact on search queries that Google has never seen before, Gary Illyes from Google has cleared up some of the more popular misconceptions about RankBrain and how […]
Google Testing Extra White Space in Search Results
Google is running a limited test with extra white space in the search results, adding significantly more space between each individual search result than we normally see. Here is how it looks in the search results, one with the extra white space and the other showing how Google normally displays the results. Justin Aldridge from […]
Google Adds “About This Result” to Featured Snippets
Google has made a slight update to the appearance of featured snippets in the search results. They have added a new “About this result” directly below the featured snippet, next to the link that says “Feedback.” Here is how it appears in the search results. This seems to be a widespread change, as it isn’t […]
Which Manual Action Notice Does Google Send the Most?
Google has been sending out a wide variety of manual actions to webmasters for several years, ranging from invalid links to thin content warnings. But when it comes down to which manual action notice Google sends out to webmasters the most, the answer is somewhat surprising. Because the largest number of manual actions Google sends […]
Google’s Upcoming Mobile Friendly Update Does Not Target Fake App Interstitials
Yesterday, Google announced that they would be increasing the strength of the ranking signal for sites that are mobile friendly. Google confirmed with The SEM Post that nothing else was changing with the mobile friendly update, it was only the strength of the signal that was increasing, but that didn’t stop some from speculating that […]
RankBrain Does Not Impact Site’s Crawl Budget
If you are concerned at all about your site’s crawl budget, you will be happy to learn that RankBrain does not have any impact on crawl budget. John Mueller was asked about whether or not RankBrain could impact a site’s crawl budget. @AntBogarin No, that currently doesn't affect crawling. — John Mueller (@JohnMu) March 16, […]
WordPress Plugin to Easily NoFollow Links
Google’s recent announcement warning bloggers to nofollow any links they are compensated for in any way, including when those links are in reviews in exchange for free products, has once again reminded bloggers and site owners that it isn’t that easy to quickly nofollow some links via WordPress. Many WordPress users are stuck going into […]
Google Manual Actions Do Not Last Forever; But Can Be Reapplied
When a site has a manual action placed upon it by Google, those manual actions don’t last forever. There is an expiry date placed when those manual actions go out, something that not all site owners seem to be aware of. At SMX earlier this month, Juan Felipe Rincón confirmed that “there is no forever […]
Google Increasing Mobile Friendly Ranking Boost in May
If you still haven’t made your site mobile friendly yet, you might want to get busy on that. Google is increasing the mobile friendly ranking boost associated with pages that are mobile friendly. As a next step in our ongoing efforts to help users find more mobile-friendly content, beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out […]