May 22, 2012 at 8:18pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Move over JC Penney. Another brand is getting attention over buying links, this time Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation. Today's news is less news and more a reminder of lessons that SEO companies, clients and publishers all need to keep in mind, to avoid trouble. Josh Davis drew attention to the DBCC situation in his post today, documenting how after receiving three link requests from the same person, he finally followed up, only to be pitched on placing a link from one of his articles to the DBCC site in return for $30 per month. What's Dun & Bradstreet -- the nearly 200 [...]

Just Because Someone Works At Google Doesn’t Make Them An SEO Expert

May 22, 2012 at 12:48pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I had an interesting email hit my inbox, someone showing me how a Google employee was "100%" sure there had been no Penguin Update. There was, of course, and it's a reminder that just because someone is a Googler, that doesn't mean they know how Google Search works. Google has nearly 25,000 employees (according to a search I did on Google just now), and they're involved with all types of projects. Many have nothing to do with search. In the email I saw, a Googler (yes, it really was someone who worked for Google) was asked about the Penguin update, if they knew anything. Response? I as [...]

Related Topics: Featured | Google: Employees | Google: SEO | Top News

Google’s Penguin Update Makes The Wall Street Journal

May 17, 2012 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Penguin Update is now mainstream after The Wall Street Journal covered it in a feature story named As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web. The story interviews a few small business owners who were hit hard by the update. One business owner saw his sales drop to $25,000 this month, down from $68,000 the previous month. Another small website owner saw roughly 30% of his traffic disappear over night. And another lost 20% of their traffic. Most of the article goes through small business owners who lives have changed for the worse due to this update. But there are some st [...]

Related Topics: Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

Did Google Drop 100+ Small Directories?

May 16, 2012 at 9:44am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yesterday I covered a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were complaining that Google has been removing tons of free web directories from their index. I conducted some random tests and did notice some of these free web directories not coming up in Google. Later in the day, Terry Van Horne began running larger tests on 500+ web directories and noticed as much as 16% or more are no longer showing up in Google. Based on his initial numbers, there are over a 100 web directories that are not indexed by Google. I do not know if these directories were ever listed in Google or removed recently d [...]

Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

May 10, 2012 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

It's been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google's happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about "negative SEO" as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web spam team, on these and some related questions. Penguin: "A Success" The goal of any algorithm update is to improve search results. So how's Penguin been for Google? "It's been a success from our standpoint," Cutts said. What About Those Weird Results? Of course, soon after [...]

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