Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: 2013 Boston Marathon Explosion: Official Information Sources Following today’s explosions at the Boston Marathon, social media channels were immediately swamped with reports and graphic images, videos from the scene. Race officials […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Ads Says Product Ads Are Coming This Summer (U.S. Only) Today Bing Ads announced on its Developer blog that they plan to roll out Product Ads in the U.S. sometime […]
Can using Google’s link disavow tool help remove penalties? Yes, the company says. But when it comes to manual penalties, disavowing links alone isn’t enough. With algorithmic penalties, there may be a time delay involved. Below, more about how both methods work. Over the past few days, I’ve encountered a couple of cases where people […]
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 Explains Why Your New Page’s Number One Ranking May Drop Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why it is not uncommon to see a new […]
One of the highlights from the SMX West show a week ago was the session named “The Search Police: Matt & Duane’s Excellent Search Engine Adventure.” The panel featured Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester as Bill & Ted with Danny Sullivan playing Rufus. Matt (Bill) and Duane (Ted) both give presentations and then […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Latest Google Shopper App Offers New Refinement Options & More Product Details Google Commerce has released Google Shopper 3.2, an updated version of its app that includes category-specific refinements for improved […]
A study by Portent, an Internet marketing company, shows that Google’s tolerance of spammy links to trigger a Penguin algorithm ranking drop has declined by 30% since the Penguin algorithm launched. The study shows that of the 500,000 links found, Google has been steadily reducing its tolerance for webspam. Now, Google is likely to penalize […]
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’s Matt Cutts On Upcoming Penguin, Panda & Link Networks Updates Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced new updates with Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms and new link network […]
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced new updates with Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms and new link network targets in 2013. Matt announced this during the SMX West panel, The Search Police. Significant Penguin Update Matt said that there will be a large Penguin update in 2013 that he thinks will be one […]
Interflora got penalized only 2 weeks ago, right after Valentine’s day with a huge coverage in the media and also a some-what indirect statement from Google’s Matt Cutts himself about Advertorials also counting as paid links if they pass Page Rank (i.e. do not have NOFOLLOW tags on them). Now, just this past Sunday, a […]
How often does Google take “manual action” against websites for spam, where a human being reviews a site and decides it deserves some type of penalty? For the first time, Google’s released a chart showing this, going back nearly 10 years. The chart is part of Google’s new “How Search Works” area, and it stretches […]
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 Stop The Panic Before Asking “Have I Been Panda Slapped?” You may see a drop in rankings or traffic and immediately panic. Have I been Panda-slapped? Even now, as […]
A day after warning publishers against advertorials, will Google’s search team now have to penalize parts of its own company for running advertorials? Perhaps, and if so, it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s also another absurd chapter in Google’s war on paid links. Google Says: Advertorials, Beware! After news came out yesterday that 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: No, Google Hasn’t Released Unannounced Penguin UpdatesThe last time Google has confirmed a refresh or update to the Penguin algorithm was back in October 2012 with the 3rd Penguin update. The […]
Is Google pushing Penguin Updates without announcing them? A recent Google video might give that suggestion, but the Google tells us this is not the case. Confusion Over Penguin Refreshes The last time Google has confirmed a refresh or update to the Penguin anti-spam filter was back in October 2012, with Penguin Update 3. That was […]
Many enterprise websites, particularly those associated with good brands, obtain lots of links to their home page without any focused link building effort. In some sense, you could say that they get these links “for free.” Since this is the case, do these sites really need to have a dedicated link building effort in place? […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: New Tumblr Blog Raises Privacy Concerns Over Facebook Graph Search That didn’t take long, did it? Tom Scott, one of the current users of Facebook Graph Search, has started a Tumblr […]
Turns out, StumbleUpon is getting regular requests each week from people asking for it to remove links to their sites, people who are worried that being linked to from a popular and long-standing social media sharing site is somehow hurting them with Google. The linksanity sadly continues. Every since Google stepped up its attack on […]
Link building certainly was a hot topic in 2012 – maybe it’s because Penguins are so gosh darn cute that we just can’t help ourselves, right? Outside of the penalties dished out by cute black and white animals and search engine algorithms alike, our team of veteran link builders kept doling out solid advice for […]
The Enterprise SEO column made its debut on Search Engine Land midway through 2011, as large companies and big brands were faced with new challenges and massive opportunities in the search world. In 2012, we saw mega-sized content sites lose visibility in search results due to Panda, while the Penguin updates squashed those who gambled […]
Last Thursday, there were many webmasters and SEOs who felt Google had a major algorithm or index update. The update was thought to be the size of a major algorithm update such as when Google pushed out Panda, Penguin or any of those other major updates. A Google spokesperson told us there was no update […]
The end of the year in any industry marks a good opportunity to look back on the year and reflect on changes. This is particularly true in the SEO industry, given the volume and intensity of changes that have occurred in 2012 — from algorithmic changes to how SEO is perceived in the organization to […]
We’ve been hearing reports from within the SEO community that a significant Google update happened starting this past Friday throughout the weekend. Google tells us there was no Panda update over the weekend but is not confirming or denying if there was another type of update over the weekend. Google did however tell us they […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Priceline To Buy Travel Search Engine Kayak For $1.8 Billion Priceline is a public company that owns several other travel brands, including Booking.com, Agoda.com, Cheaptickets.com, Rentalcars.com and a few other travel […]
Did you feel it yesterday? Some did, a slight shaking in the Google results. Yes, it was real. Google’s confirmed to us that a Panda Update happened yesterday. Google said that worldwide, the update will impact about 0.4% of queries that a regular user might notice. For those searching in the United States in English, […]
Many SEOs cheered that Google’s new disavow links tool would make it easier to recover from a bad backlink profile. No more worrying about directories charging to remove links or trying to get out of bad link networks. But Google says it does want to see a good faith effort to go along with any disavow […]
It’s been almost two weeks since Google launched its link disavowal tool. Some have been busy diving in and using it, but others have had more detailed questions about it. We’ve got some answers, from the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts. Question: How do people know what links they should remove? Answer: When […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Verisign Blames Google For Drop In Domain Registration & Renewal Rates The number of new domains being registered, and existing domains being renewed, is slowing down and Verisign — the company […]
Wondering if some human at Google has reviewed your web site and decided it deserves to be penalized in Google’s search results? Google’s now reporting such cases nearly 100% of the time. “We’ve actually started to send messages for pretty much every manual action that we do that will directly impact the ranking of your site,” […]
Google has launched a new and widely anticipated “disavow links” tool. The tool was announced by the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts, when speaking during a keynote at the Pubcon conference today. The tool is live and can be found here. It has been beta tested by some selected SEOs already for […]
It’s not everyday you get to hear from someone that’s worked on Google’s Search Quality/Webspam team and isn’t named Matt Cutts. But Andre Weyher, whose LinkedIn profile lists a two-year stint as a member of the search quality team, recently spoke with James Norquay, a search/digital marketer based in Australia, and shared some interesting comments […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: VP Debate Spurs Searches Like “Shirtless” (Ryan), “Laughing” (Biden) & Other “Malarkey” There’s a kind of Pavlovian response that happens with major national events in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere): internet […]
Another week, another update to part of Google’s search algorithm. This time, Google announced a refresh of its Page Layout filter that it first announced back in January, or what’s often called the “Top Heavy” update. Updates, Updates It’s the fourth Google update in the past two weeks. The rundown so far: Panda Update 20: Sept. 27, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Study: Malicious Search Results More Common In Bing & Image Search Almost two of every three malicious redirects in major search engines are found on Bing, according to a new report […]
Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages. Including the original Penguin algorithm launch in late April, this is the third update, so we’re calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding the […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Now Handpicks News Writers For Its Social Sidebar Bing is dipping its toes into a form of what Google calls “authorship” with today’s announcement that news writers are now being […]
Last week, Google announced the EMD Update, a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. Similar to other filters like Panda, Google says EMD will be updated on a periodic basis. Those hit by it may […]
Google has announced details on the search algorithm and quality changes made over the past two months – August and September. In total, Google lists 65 changes over the past two months. The previous announcement covered two months as well, and was for June and July. This time the key changes include Panda updates, improved […]
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 Tweaks Rotation Options (Again) And Impression Share In AdWords Remember all that uproar over Google’s removing “Rotate indefinitely” as an option in AdWords? Well, after Google opened a form allowing […]
Google has confirmed with us that on Thursday, September 27th, they released a Panda algorithm update – this would be the 20th Panda update and thus we are naming it Panda 20. This is a fairly major Panda update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries and is still rolling out. Late Friday afternoon, Google […]