Google Sending Mobile Usability Warnings To Huge Number Of Webmasters
Google sending notifications to webmasters with sites that are not mobile friendly. Is this a sign of a new mobile algorithm coming soon?
Topic: Webmaster
Google Wants Webmaster Feedback On Web Search & Webmaster Tools
Here is your chance to give feedback to Google in order to improve both Google Web Search and their Google Webmaster Tools product. Don't miss out on sharing your two-cents.
Google Quietly Updates The International Targeting Hreflang Webmaster Tools Reporting
Google has updated the “accuracy” of the reporting within the Google Webmaster Tools International Targeting section. On November 18th, Google said: Google refined the accuracy for reporting hreflang tags. This update might show as a sudden change in the report graph. You now may see an “update” line in the graph that conveys when the […]
SearchCap: Google Poland Penalty, Break Up Google & Black Friday Shopping
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 3 Proven Ways To Write Ads That Deliver More Conversions Now you know you need to change your paid search creative to keep it fresh. Contributor Frederick Vallaeys shares tips from […]
Bing Reveals Some Mobile Ranking Techniques & Relevancy Factors
Mir Rosenberg from the Bing Mobile Relevancy team posted some of the “factors at play” when it comes to how Bing determines mobile relevance and ranking in the mobile results. As you know, a couple weeks ago, Bing announced new mobile crawlers to help them discover and understand different forms of mobile content. Now, Bing […]
SearchCap: Bing Emoji, Google Webmaster Guidelines & Gmail Messages In Search
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 Lets You Search By Emoji Want to search for something using popular emoji characters? Microsoft’s Bing search engine now supports this. Bing announced the news in a post today, […]
Google May Add Mobile User Experience To Its Ranking Algorithm
At Search Marketing Expo East, Google engineer Gary Illyes talked a lot about user experience and how webmasters really need to focus on that. Over the past week or so, I asked Google about this and tried to understand why Google stressed this point so much at the event. Google told us in a statement: […]
Google: Panda 4.1 Still Rolling Out
Over the weekend, there was a tremendous amount of chatter within the SEO community, including discussion forums, social media and other channels. There were rumors that Google was pushing out a new algorithm, maybe the eagerly anticipated Penguin refresh which is expected really soon or maybe something else? Google told us just now that the […]
Google Revamps Webmaster Tools API
Google announced on the Webmaster blog that they’ve updated the Google Webmaster Tools API to bring it up to par with other Google APIs. Google has revamped how you authenticate for apps or web-services and it also gives you access to some of the main features of Webmaster Tools. Specific features within the new API […]
Google Sending Invalid Error Notices Of Redirecting Smartphone Users To Homepage
A couple weeks ago, we reported that Google began sending notices to webmasters over faulty mobile redirects. This notice was to inform webmasters of notices being shown to searchers that the searcher may be redirected to the home page as opposed to the specific page they are clicking on within the Google search results. It […]
Explainer: How Google’s New SSL / HTTPS Ranking Factor Works
Last Thursday, Google launched a new ranking signal to give HTTPS sites a ranking boost, a small ranking boost, to encourage webmasters to migrate their sites from HTTP to HTTPS. In our story from Thursday, we covered why Google is doing this and the concerns some SEOs had with the migration, as well as the […]
Google Webmaster Tools Notifications For Faulty Redirects & New Color-Coded Fetch As Google
Google Webmaster Tools has added two new features today, one for notifying webmasters of faulty redirects and the second to show color-coded- HTML syntax within the fetch as Google feature. Stop Redirecting Smartphone Users To Your Home Page Notification Google is now sending notifications to webmasters who are sending their mobile users to their home […]
Google Now Showing Full Text Of Original Reconsideration Requests In Webmaster Tools
Google is now showing those who submit reconsideration requests, their original reconsideration request when Google documents that they’ve received it. Google shows this within Google Webmaster Tools messages are. Previous, Google would just confirm they received it and then hopefully respond a few days later with their findings. But now, Google is not just confirming […]
Bing Site Safety Page: Explains Why Sites Are Flagged In Bing’s Search Results
On the Bing Webmaster Blog they announced a new feature named the Bing Site Safety Page. The Bing Site Safety Page will show up in the search results when Bing has flagged a specific site as having a safety issue. Bing will then show the searcher what the issue is with the site, hoping the […]
Bing Admits They Need To Do Better With Webmaster Communication
In a blog post today on the Bing Webmaster Blog, Bing’s Igor Rondel, Principal Development Manager of the Index Quality team, said you can expect Bing to do more proactive communication on the Bing Webmaster Blog in the future. Igor said Bing needs “to do a better job of proactively communicating updates” and they realize […]
SearchCap: Google Redirecting Penalties, Robot.txt 20th & Google Wiretapping Case
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Supreme Court Rules Street View “Wiretapping” Class Action Can Proceed Against Google According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Supreme Court will not review a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of […]
Google: Redirecting A Penalized Site To Penalty Free Site Likely Won’t Negatively Impact The Site
On Friday, Google’s John Mueller answered a question I proposed in a Webmaster/Search Helpdesk Hangout about the issues around a penalized site being redirected to an unpenalized site. The question was: What if a competitor takes a site that has a severe penalty and 301 redirects it to my penalty-free site — would it cause […]
Google Reconsideration Request Rejections May Include More Details
Google’s Matt Cutts, the head of search spam, announced at SMX Advanced that they are updating how they handle reconsideration rejection requests with more details from Google Search Quality analysts. That means when a Google search quality representation reviews and responds to a reconsideration request with a rejection notice, that Google representative has a new […]
SearchCap: Mac Spotlight Drops Google, DuckDuckGo Added To Safari & Google Eyes Free
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Big Win For DuckDuckGo: Apple Adding To Safari As Private Search Option DuckDuckGo, the search engine that positions itself as a completely secure and private search engine, is getting a big […]
SearchCap: Ripoff Report Returns In Yahoo, Google Shopping Campaigns, Bing Webmaster Roadshow
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 Webmaster Roadshow 2014 Takes Search Experts On 4-City Tour This Summer Bing announced today it will be hosting the Bing Webmaster Roadshow 2014 starting next month, with stops in four […]
Official Google Advice On Internationalizing Your Home Page
Google has published their official advice on the Google Webmaster Central blog on how to handle your home page when your web site serves multiple languages and countries. Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, wrote the post together trying to break out the possibilities into three categories: (1) Having one home […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 21, 2014
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 Tell Search Engines What “Entities” Are On Your Web Pages Search engines have increasingly been incorporating elements of semantic search to improve some aspect of the search experience — […]
Bing: Don’t Be Held Hostage Over The Perfect Domain Name
Duane Forrester, Bing’s Senior Product Manager, posted on the Bing Webmaster Blog that you should not be too crazed over picking an expensive domain name for your new web site. He said, even when you buy old domain names that are pricy, those domain names may have some bad history. Domain names with bad history […]
Google’s Latest Manual Action Penalty: Spammy Structured Markup
Google recently began sending a new manual action spam notification to webmasters for “spammy structured markup” also known as rich snippet spam. This comes after Google dropped 15% of the rich snippets, setting the bar higher for what sites are able to display rich snippets in the search results. The new manual action message from […]
Google Warns German Webmasters That Paid Links Violate Google’s Guidelines
Google head of search spam Matt Cutts posted on Twitter this morning another stern warning to German webmasters about a link penalty looming for them. Matt Cutts tweeted: A reminder (in German) that paid links that pass PageRank violate our guidelines: https://t.co/u1MpvL7kh4 — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 3, 2014 The blog post is written […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 22, 2014
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: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and […]
Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors Reports Now Showing Errors On Final Redirect URL
Google’s John Mueller announced on the Google Webmaster blog this morning that the Google Webmaster Tools team has updated the crawl errors report to show errors on the final URL of the redirect, as opposed to the origin URL of the redirect. What this means is that Google is now showing the errors on the […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 15, 2014
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: EU Wants More Search Concessions, Google Defies French Authority Round and round she goes. The European Commission is seeking a final round of “concessions” from Google in an 11th hour effort […]
Google Webmaster Tools Upgrades Structure Data Markup Errors Report
Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst Mariya Moeva announced, on the Google Webmaster blog, a new update to Google Webmaster Tools where they now show items with errors in the Structured Data dashboard. This can help webmasters better debug issues they are having with their structured data markup. Google is showing the item-level error, but the top-level […]
Google Seeking Feature Requests For Webmaster Tools
Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts posted on his personal blog a request for webmasters to provide feedback and feature requests for Google Webmaster Tools. Matt and the Google search quality team is looking for new ideas on what would make Google Webmaster Tools more useful to you. Matt talked about how far Webmaster Tools […]
Google Offering Online Site Reviews This Monday, November 18th
Google’s John Mueller announced that on this Monday’s Google office-hours, Google will be offering “short website reviews” for webmasters who are looking for advice. To participate, you must add your website to this Google Moderator page. Then, if Google has time and wants to review your site, Google will review it live, this Monday, November […]
Google Webmaster Tools Adds “Security Issues” Section
Google has announced the addition of a new section within Webmaster Tools named “Security Issues.” This new section is aimed at better communicating to website owners security issues, such as site hacks, malware, and so on and then giving a more detailed and concise method of fixing the problem and submitting a review request. In […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Smart Search Page Preview Tool
Bing announced on their Webmaster Blog that they have introduced a new feature within Bing Webmaster Tools for managing your Smart Search Previews. The Page Preview tool, under the “Configure My Site” section in Webmaster Tools, enables webmasters manage their page previews. It allows you to request a block of a page preview image from […]
Google’s Matt Cutts: Google Does Not Penalize For Broken HTML
In a video published today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts – Google confirmed that they do not penalize sites that have broken or invalid HTML. Matt Cutts said, “so Google does not penalize you if you have invalid HTML, because there would be a huge number of web pages like that.” Cutts […]
Bing Details Four Ways Not To Build Links
Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, wrote a blog post on the Bing Webmaster Blog, detailing four ways you do not want to build links to your site. The four ways not to build links by Bing include: (1) Blind Requests: Don’t simply mass or template email web sites blindly for links. Don’t […]
Your Small Web Site Not Ranking Well In Google? Matt Cutts Wants To Know About It.
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, asked last night via Twitter for webmasters and SEOs to fill out a survey on the topic of small sites and Google rankings. Matt Cutts asked “if there’s a small website that you think should be doing better in Google, tell us more here. The form makes it […]
Google Says “Snag” Has Taken Manual Spam Actions Viewer Offline
If you’re not seeing the “Manual Actions” feature in Google Webmaster Tools, you’re not alone. Many webmasters have taken to Twitter and other social networks to say that the link has been removed from their accounts, and Google has updated its original announcement to say that a “snag” will delay full launch for a couple […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 30, 2013
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: Links In Press Releases Should Use Nofollow Like Paid Links Friday we broke the news that Google updated their link schemes webmaster guidelines. Now that the dust has settled, I […]
Google’s Matt Cutts: Linking 20 Domains Together Likely A “Cross Linking Scheme”
A common question I see from webmasters and SEOs is how many sites in my network can I link together without getting in trouble. Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts answered a question on that topic in a recent video which asked “If I have 20 domains, should I link them all together?” In […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 15, 2013
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 Logo Marks The 407th Birthday Of Rembrandt van Rijn Google has dedicated today’s homepage to Rembrandt van Rijn, marking the Dutch painter and etcher’s 407th birthday. The Google logo includes […]