Google has announced a new and easier way to share ownership of verified sites in Webmaster Tools. Rather than having to upload multiple verification files or create multiple meta tags, there’s a new “Add a User” tool on the site verification page; it looks like this: There’s no confirmation involved — the new owner has […]
Saying that web site hacking and other forms of abuse is on the rise, Google has announced plans to step up the notifications it sends to webmasters when the company finds these problems. Beginning this month, Google will use the Message Center area in Google Webmaster Tools to notify site owners about Spammy or abused […]
A vocal contingent of search engine optimizers is up in arms today, saying Google is “offering SEO consulting services.” There are posts on Sphinn here and here, not to mention plenty of related tweets. Only thing is, Google isn’t doing anything they haven’t done for years and to say the company is “offering SEO services” […]
In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content. Now, there’s evidence this proposal is either live or is about to be. Read on for more details on the proposal, how it works, and why it might be past the proposal stage. […]
Many webmasters will be happy to know that Google has announced its support for using the rel=”canonical” link element across different domains. This is important news because when the canonical tag (as it’s become known) was introduced by all three search engines during our SMX West Conference this past February, they only supported its use […]
Google announced they have added a new supported user agent that can be used to block Google from indexing stories specifically on Google News. You can now specific the user agent Googlebot-News in your robots.txt file to exclude documents from being crawled and displayed in Google News. Google has several user agents for controlling how […]
Google has written two spam related posts over the Thanksgiving period on the Google Webmaster Central Blog tackling the issue of comment spam. The first post focuses on the futility of comment spam, saying: At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is […]
The Google Webmaster Central blog has two excellent write ups on mobile SEO concerns and techniques. One is named Help Google index your mobile site and the other is named Running desktop and mobile versions of your site. The reason for the two different articles is that often webmasters consider smart phone enabled sites as […]
I visit most of the SEO forums at least once a week to keep up with what’s going on in the link building community. This past week was fairly quiet, but over on the HighRankings Forum, a thread on time management vs. link building efforts caught my eye. A webmaster wanted to know the best […]
A year or two ago, Google hosted a webmaster chat even every few months. They were designed to allow webmasters to see presentations from Googlers on web search and SEO topics and then ask questions to Googlers, who would answer those questions in real time. The Google Webmaster Central blog announced the first new live […]
Love it or hate it, the Open Directory Project (ODP or “DMOZ”) always seems to creep into the conversation when we’re discussing links and/or SEO. Check any forum, social news or answer site and you’ll see a wide variety of opinions on the 11 year old directory and how it’s managed. When talking about the […]
Search conferences are an excellent opportunity to connect personally with representatives from Google, as well as Yahoo and Bing, for advice and assistance with SEO issues. With our SMX East search engine marketing conference starting tomorrow in New York, I thought it was a good time to list my personal thoughts on the right and […]
The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced they have updated the verification tool to make it easier for webmasters to verify their sites. There are three main changes: (1) New look for HTML file verification process: (2) If you use the META Tag verification option and you change your email address tied to that Google account, […]
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 Measure The Value Of A Fan Or Follower In Social Media It’s hard to justify the time spent on social media account management. But there are ways to measure […]
Back in the ‘old days’ of Google and the SEO industry, “Google Dance” was a term used often in the industry. Back then, a “Google Dance” referred to the about monthly updates Google pushed out to their index. Every month or so, SEOs and Webmasters waited for the “Google Dance” to see if their rankings […]
Over at Search Engine Roundtable today, Barry Schwartz writes about the latest comments from Google about domain registration and its impact on SEO/search rankings. In this case, it’s Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration: A bunch of TLDs […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Organizing Your PPC Account For Maximum Success Account organization is the first and most important step in the optimization process – it’s the foundation for success. Google News Gets Search Suggestions […]
On May 12th, Google began supporting rich snippets in the search results. That meant Webmasters could mark up their HTML with richer data using microformats and RDFa and Google could then, if they deemed it to be appropriate, display the richer snippets in their search results. One of the issues on the webmaster front with […]
What should you do, as a polite and plucky link builder, if some of your inbound links just aren’t up to snuff? Do you risk alienating a well-meaning webmaster by pointing out that he’s linked to an old page that no longer exists? That he’s spelled your company’s name incorrectly, or, even worse, your URL? […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Revisionist History: Bartz Claims Yahoo Was Never A Search Engine The New York Times has an interview out with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz where she declares that Yahoo has “never been […]
Michael Wyszomierski announced at the Google Webmaster Central blog that they are looking for the SEO and Webmaster community to create videos that they can share in the Google Webmaster YouTube channel. You have seen many of the videos from Matt Cutts in this channel, and now they want to allow the community to share […]
The next time you login to Google’s Webmaster Tools, you may notice a few minor changes to the interface and functionality. Google announced four changes today — two of which seem worth highlighting here: Blocking non-home page sitelinks: The ability to block certain sitelinks from showing in Google results now applies to all pages on […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 26 People Who Mislead You On Twitter Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently […]
The Google Webmaster Central blog is asking SEOs and Webmasters to submit and vote on feedback at the Product Ideas for Webmaster Central. When you go to the products idea page, you will be asked to sign in to submit or vote on submissions. The more votes a submission receives, the more likely Google will […]
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 Book Search Adds Seven New Features Today, Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Books, announced on the Inside Google Book Search Blog, seven, that’s right seven, new features and tools for […]
Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. This is the second SEO-related offering in as many weeks. During SMX Advanced, Microsoft launched the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. I’m working on a review of that as well, but it requires Vista or Windows 7 and IIS […]
In addition to the new Change of Address feature, Google has also announced that the new Webmaster Tools interface is now live for all users. Content has been re-organized inside Webmaster Tools and the interface has been changed dramatically. The dashboard, for example, now shows Top search queries, Links to your site, Crawl errors, and […]
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 Change of Address To Notify Google Of Domain Change Google announced a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools named change of address. This feature allows webmasters to notify Google […]
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google is now sending email notifications to webmasters after they have reviewed a reconsideration request submitted through Google Webmaster Tools. This is a major change in how Google previous handled reconsideration requests. In the past, a webmaster would submit a reconsideration requests and a webmaster would have […]
Google has announced a major overhaul of Webmaster Tools that’s filled with both major and minor design and functionality changes. The most obvious change is the new dashboard that now shows Top search queries, Crawl errors, Links to your site, and Sitemap information — saving users what used to be several clicks to get this […]
The DiggBar has been out for about a week now. Since then, there continues to be concerns over twin issues of whether it robs sites of link love and frames their contents in a way that’s unfair to publishers. I had a good conversation with Digg cofounder Kevin Rose today about these issues and how […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SEOs and Webmasters are noticing major shifts in the Yahoo Search results over the weekend. I reported the threads discussing the changes at the Search Engine Roundtable and noted that Yahoo has yet to post a “weather report” on this update at the Yahoo Search Blog. Yahoo promised that they would continue to provide “weather […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
About a week ago, SEOs and Webmasters began noticing a significant change in how Google returned results for a certain set of keywords. Many webmasters felt Google was giving “big brands” a push in the search results. However, Matt Cutts of Google created a video that answered many questions about this “brand push.” Let me […]
Yesterday, Google joined Twitter with a company account. We twittered a few search engine-related addresses as part of our post about that, but we wanted to do one that was a little more organized. So welcome to our big search engine Twitter list! The list isn’t complete, nor will it ever be. But that’s how […]
If you run a popular/successful blog, there’s a pretty good chance you’re plenty familiar with hacking and how to deal with it. But hacking comes in many forms and can hit any kind of web site that isn’t secure. In a post today, Google’s Webmaster Central blog talks about ways to prevent hacking, including using […]
Google has a detailed blog post named Open redirect URLs: Is your site being abused? The post goes through the issues with having “open” redirects on your site. Open redirects can lead to spammers abusing your site and ultimately hurting your rankings in Google or other search engines. The post goes through the various methods […]
Google’s Matt Cutts posted a twenty minute video summarizing two presentations he gave last year. The video goes over what he considers to be virtual “blight,” or when a site or community becomes stale with spam. In addition, Matt shows us how to put on a “blackhat” and think like a spammer. The video is […]