Google has been moving lots of goal posts for us all recently and the “Hreflang” tag is a case in point. A succession of Google speakers has presented the latest “Hreflang” thinking at International Search Summits @SMX throughout 2012. On each occasion, the presentation and explanation was different from the one before. The bad news […]
Today at SMX Advanced during the iSEO panel, Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced clear guidelines and recommendations on mobile SEO. In short, Google recommends you go with a responsive design when possible, otherwise you can use device-specific HTML but Google asks you to take certain steps to communicate when you are using device-specific […]
In previous posts in this column, I’ve covered the intricacies of multinational search from a technical SEO’s standpoint. Leveraging multinational markup while clearing up in-site duplicate content and avoiding multinational homepage calamities is no easy matter to coordinate for big site SEO. Bringing all of those strategies to bear, and then also attempting to integrate […]
Google’s latest blog post provides details and a video from Maile Ohye about how they handle the pagination attributes within a page’s source code. You can use these attributes to indicate pages in a series (such as a multi-page article or set of product listings), which enables Google to cluster the pages into a single entity […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo’s Co-founder Jerry Yang Resigns Yahoo announced its co-founder Jerry Yang has formally resigned after 17 years on the job. Yang co-founded the company in March 1995, and has been on […]
Last Monday, Google announced that they had released “new markup for multilingual content”, see the webmaster tools blog post here. Even for those of us that work in the field of looking after global websites, this produced relatively unexciting headlines along the lines of “Google Launches New Multilingual Markup — Wow”. Big yawn. In fact, digging […]
Google announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders. The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area. Here are examples of how you may use it respectively: https://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish https://es-es.example.com/ – is the […]
Pagination & SEO Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 What’s the best way to implement complex, paginated sites for effective indexing and ranking? It may not be using conventional wisdom, despite what Google has said to the contrary. Come hear our panelists discuss controversial, but undeniably effective ways to use the rel=canonical […]
In what’s now to be a monthly update on search changes, a new Google “Inside Search” blog post today tells us that life is getting tougher for those with parked domains, life may get better for those plagued by scraper sites and those hoping to “push down” negative listings may have a tougher challenge. New […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Can Now Execute AJAX & JavaScript For Indexing This morning we reported that the comments on Facebook are being indexed by Google. Google’s Matt Cutts just confirmed on Twitter that […]
Today, Google webmaster tools has launched a new message alert to let site owners know when a particular URL doesn’t appear because Google sees it as duplicate of a URL on a different domain. In the blog post announcing the feature and in an in-depth help topic, they provide details on how they identify duplicate […]
At SMX Advanced earlier this year, a hot topic was the use of the rel=”canonical” attribute in conjunction with pagination. Maile Ohye of Google noted that the rel=”canonical” attribute was not intended to cluster multiple pages (articles, product lists, etc.) to page one of that series (although it can be used to cluster multiple pages […]
In 2009, Google launched the parameter handling feature of Google webmaster tools, which enabled site owners to specify the parameters on their site that were optional vs. required. A year later, they improved this feature by providing an option for a default value. Google says that they’ve seen a positive impact from the usage of those […]
In the last few days, several noticed that the Google Toolbar PageRank value for www.twitter.com had plummeted to 0 (it’s now back to its previous 9). Was Google punishing Twitter for how things went down with the feed expiration that temporarily derailed Google’s Realtime search efforts? Nah, Twitter’s website has just been suffering from technical […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Up Close With Google’s Search By Image: Hits, Misses & More Earlier this week at its Inside Search event, Google announced a new way to search the web called Search By […]
Google announced they are now supporting the rel=”canonical” attribute within HTTP headers. This enables webmasters to set up a canonical for linking to or from PDF files or other non-HTML based files. One of the examples given by Google is that a “webmaster can signal to Google that the canonical URL for the PDF download […]
As expected, Google is now offering +1 buttons that can be placed on any web page via a short code snippet. The code/button is supported in 44 languages, but +1 activity continues to show only on English-language search results on Google.com. (Google says it’s working to expand +1 worldwide.) Webmasters can use Google’s self-serve code […]
Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed this morning that Google has lifted J.C. Penney’s SEO penalty, that the Panda update will continue to rollout internationally and offered numerous SEO- and search-related tips in a live webchat on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. More than a thousand viewers tuned in but, for those who weren’t able to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Boasts Of $64 Billion In Economic Impact In conjunction with National Small Business Week, Google is trying to burnish its image by touting the economic impact that its programs, including […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Impacted By Google’s Panda Update? Google Asks You To Consider This… Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on […]
Your Toughest Technical SEO Questions Answered Presentations from SMX West, March 2011 No powerpoint here! This session is all about Q&A to solve the specific technical issues you’re having. Bring your toughest questions! Topics will likely include URL canonicalization (pagination, faceted navigation, breadcrumbs, parameters, analytics tracking, IIS URL issues, redirects, localized URLs…), aggregation and duplication […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Q&A: Google’s Sengupta On The Chrome OS Cr-48 Laptop Yesterday, after writing my review of the Google Chrome OS Cr-48 notebook, I had a chance to catch up with Google product […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: First Day Review: The Google Chrome OS Cr-48 Notebook My Google Chrome CR-48 Notebook has just arrived. For my first day with it, I decided a good torture test would be […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Adds New Filtering & Refinement Options To Keyword Tool The Google AdWords Blog announced a few new features recently added to the new keyword tool released in September 2009. The […]
With the amount of content published online seeming to expand dramatically every year, Google says it’s experimenting with two new meta tags that it hopes will help it identify the original sources of online content. They’re called syndication-source and original-source and here’s a look at what they do and how publishers can use them. What […]
Solving the Big URL Issues Presentations from SMX East, October 2010 URLs continue to be a key technical obstacle to search engine optimization. Internal and external linking structure, URL formats, parameters, faceted navigation, breadcrumbs, tracking codes, pagination, canonicalization options, hyphens and underscores. What really matters? What should you rewrite and what should you leave alone? […]
Last night, Matt Cutts of Google gave a talk to the attendees at the PubCon. I was in the audience and I wanted to share my personal key takeaways from the talk. Specifically items Matt mentioned that I found to be new or interesting. Spam reports get 4 times priority in the spam queue at […]
E-commerce stores in the U.S. can now hop on the rich snippet bandwagon with Google’s announcement today that it’s supporting enhanced search results for shopping sites. The rich snippet display can make a fairly compelling case for click-throughs with the inclusion of pricing and availability right below the page link. If you already give Google […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Microsoft Records Their Q1 2010 Earnings, Bing Takes Loss Again Microsoft announced their Q1 2010 fiscal earnings with a 25% increase in revenue, $16.20 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, […]
Google TV is here! It includes a full web browser, so if you have a lot of video content, you might want to optimize for larger screens and audiences who are sitting on their couches. Fortunately, Google has published some optimization tips. In a blog post, they suggest optimizing for the “10-foot user interface” and […]
At SMX East earlier this week, Maile Ohye of Google showed new parameter handling features in Google Webmaster Tools. Today, those features are available to everyone. Google first introduced parameter handling about a year ago. When I wrote about the launch, I described how optional parameters in URLs could cause canonicalization problems and gave a […]
Google introduced new SEO specific attributes for handling multi-lingual pages and content. The new attributes are rel=”alternate” and hreflang=”x”. It looks something like this when used in the source code of your files: <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”a-different-language” href=”https://url-of-the-different-language-page” /> Google says it should be used when (1) template (i.e. side navigation, footer) is machine-translated into various […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: De-Mystifying Cost Per Action and Its Impact On Search Marketing: Webcast next Tuesday Next Tuesday at Search Marketing Now, Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager at Logitech will discuss Cost Per […]
In mid-November, Google Analytics and Feedburner announced a very interesting integration. While this is excellent news for Google Analytics and Feedburner users, it must be dealt properly when it comes to SEO, especially on websites that are heavily based on RSS feeds. Google Analytics users rejoice! This integration is very interesting in that it allows […]
Duplicate Content Issues What’s the best way to deal with duplicate content issues? In this session, search engine representatives offer direct advice including tips on the new canonical tag. [flv:https://searchengineland.com/video_assets/east09/duplicate_content_issues.flv 364 200] Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land Speakers: Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager, Bing Joachim Kupke, Senior Software Engineer, indexing team Google Inc. Cris […]
Last week, SMX London graduated to SMX Advanced status. We in the UK eagerly anticipated the fresh new tips and tricks which are usually left until several beers later in the networking bars! And we certainly weren’t disappointed. I thought it would be useful to share with Search Engine Land readers the top ten advanced […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Speak At SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 Want to speak at our SMX Advanced Seattle search marketing conference this coming June 8 & 9? Our show that sells out every […]
More than a year since the three major search engines united to announce the canonical tag, neither Bing nor Yahoo formally support it. But that could be changing soon. Speaking during the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Building Instant Translator Companion Google leaps language barrier with translator phone from The Times Online reports Google is working on a new tool that would bring instant translation to people. […]