Why does reputation-damaging content seem to appear so quickly in Google’s search results? Columnist Chris Silver Smith outlines his theory on why Google's algorithm can give negative content greater ranking ability than it deserves.
Have an issue with your listings in Google? Getting an official answer might be tough. And when that happens to a Google competitor, as it did with ProtonMail, it could come back to harm Google's defense from antitrust charges.
Gary Illyes from Google loves Penguin, Panda and localization algorithms.
Currently, Google has a single index of documents for search. Google's Gary Illyes announced they plan on releasing a separate mobile search index, which will become the primary one.
Apple places URLs appear to be for the purpose of sharing with non-Apple users.
Is this the real time Google indexing API? Google is now piloting the search live coverage carousel which is powered by AMP and Atom.
During this SMX Advanced session, panelists discussed what SEOs need to know about Google's Search Quality Rating Guidelines, created for the human beings who double-check that the Google algorithm is performing as designed. Columnist Joy Hawkins recaps.
Google's using a machine learning technology called RankBrain to help deliver its search results. Here's what's we know about it.
What are the differences between branded and non-branded local packs in Google, and how might ranking factors be weighted differently for each? Columnist Joy Hawkins shares her observations.
AMP is growing and expanding. Here's some of the latest information from Google's Richard Gingras at Google I/O.
Can Google find content even faster than it does now? Google thinks so, and they are beta testing a real-time indexing API for that reason.
Many publishers and webmasters are seeing huge drops in the reported index count in the Google Search Console sitemaps report. It seems like a widespread bug.
The new Google mobile-friendly algorithm is supposed to give an additional ranking boost for mobile-friendly websites in the mobile search results.
Below is a summary of some of the questions, answers and additional confusion around the Google core algorithm update this weekend and the Panda news.
For the first time, Google has released the full version of its Search Quality Raters guidelines and handbook. It is 160 pages of wonderful SEO knowledge.
Yandex warns webmasters to not block their JavaScript and CSS files because they are starting to crawl those resources for indexing.
After several months of hinting, Google has finally confirmed they have discontinued their AJAX crawling scheme. Don't worry, Google will still index your AJAX site.
After Bing launched Link Explorer to replace Yahoo Site Explorer, they have now decided to shut it down in 15 days.
Bad timing: Google's Index Status report had a bug that showed a drop in index counts around the same time Google updated their index estimation formula.
The European “hide me, find me” SEO game that is the Right to Be Forgotten (RTBF) continues to twist and turn. The latest twist is that Google has been ordered by a UK regulator to remove links that were indexed after subsequent news articles appeared about the subject of the original RTBF de-indexing. The Guardian […]
Did you notice a drop in your index count within the Sitemap reports in the Google Search Console? No need to worry, it may be a Google bug.
Google seems to have temporarily removed all of the Web pages from the popular and controversial Ripoff Report website. Within 30 minutes, the site was back in Google.
It's not just you, many webmasters are reporting seeing index counts fall in the Sitemaps report within the Google Search Console. Google is working on a fix.
Google is now indexing nearly 5x the Tweets as four months ago, yet more than 96% of Tweets still go unindexed.
Can't find that video that Google listed in your results? It's not you. It's Google.
Apple introduces Deep Linking in iOS 9 for improved app discovery. Time for standardization amongst Google, Bing, Facebook and now Apple?
Twitter CEO doesn't offer a specific date or details. He also says that Twitter is working with Apple to add Twitter content to Spotlight search on iOS and OS X.
Want to understand how Bing ranks and shows data on images within Bing Image search?
The agreement, reported by Bloomberg Business, comes 3 1/2 years after a similar arrangement ended. It will make tweets easier to find on the search giant.
Google adds support for web pages that dynamically change their content based on IP origin or language settings.
Google News updated their image crawl process to include images hosted off the publishers domain.
The irony here is almost too obvious to mention: an entity dedicated to monitoring the potential “chilling effects” of DMCA takedown notices is censoring itself. Chillingeffects.org has now removed itself from search results, making those notices harder to find. Chillingeffects.org was created in roughly 2001 as an academic and public resource to monitor and record potentially improper DMCA requests. […]
Europe and the U.S. continue to drift further apart on Google. Even as European parliamentarians and regulators seek ways to restrain Google’s discretion over search results, U.S. courts continue to affirm Google’s right to do whatever it wants with search results — paid and organic. A California state court in San Francisco recently granted Google’s […]
Google is notifying publishers when it de-indexes their links under the controversial “Right to Be Forgotten” (RTBF). What this does is often trigger republication of a version of the story by the media outlet or a page that indicates what URLs are being removed from the search index. Among others, that’s what the BBC has […]
Google is now sharing details about Right To Be Forgotten removals in a new section of its pre-existing Google Transparency Report area. The latest numbers show that Facebook, ProfileEngine.com and Google’s own YouTube are the top three sites to have content taken down through the new European system. In the new section, Google breaks out the requests […]
Reputation VIP operates the Forget.me website intended to handle Google and Bing “Right to Be Forgotten” (RTBF) requests. Using three months of data, the company has released a study on RTBF’s impact in France, the UK and Germany. There was a smaller, separate study on Spain. It found that overall 60 percent of requests are […]
For some, it may seem like there has always been Google, and it’s always been the main way people have found things on the web. But before Google, there was the Yahoo Directory and its hand-compiled list of websites, organized into topics. Now, the venerable Yahoo Directory is closing. Yahoo shared the news today, a […]
Here’s one from the “shaking my head” department: If you assumed that all of the “Right To Be Forgotten” (RTBF) requests that people in the European Union are sending to Google are for unflattering or inaccurate web pages written by third parties, you’d be wrong. It turns out that Google is rejecting a lot of […]
Over the week, there were various reports of Google going against its own webmaster guidelines, by indexing its own search results. Last night, Google updated its robot.txt file to ensure it blocks its own search results from being in the Google search results. The guidelines read: Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that […]
If you search in Google for [offers] Google will return the shuttered Google Offers page as the first search listing. But if you look carefully, you will see that Google has blocked the page from spiders within their robots.txt file and the page itself says “This site is no longer being supported.” Here is a […]