What a crazy month for webmasters! We had the Penguin update, a Panda refresh, a bug that delisted tons of sites from Google, a huge negative SEO release and some rumors of a possible Google update this past weekend that no one covered.
Update: There was indeed an update on the weekend, Friday night, April 27th. Google confirmed with me there was a Panda refresh.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread continues to discuss all these topics. One thing I did not point out earlier this week, was that this past weekend, many webmasters noticed shuffling in rankings in Google. Even yesterday and today, some SEOs are noticing tests by Google. Senior member, Billy said:
It's almost like Google is testing a new index and the difference between the old and new is quite significant.
In any event, here is a listing of the most important stories in the past month related to Google and SEO by category:
Google Penguin:
- It's Live: Google Over Optimization Algorithm (3% Of Searches Affected)
- Google's Over Optimization Update Named Penguin
- Poll: Were You Impacted By The Google Penguin Update?
- Feeling For Those Hurt By Google's Penguin Update
- Google Penguin Feedback Form
- The Google Penguin Petition
Google Panda:
Google Parked Domain Bug:
Google Random Updates:
Negative SEO:
Link Topics:
Spam Topics:
- Google: Phone Number Spam Is Keyword Stuffing & Against Guidelines
- Next Title Tag Trick: Emoji For Google Mobile Titles
- Google Sends Out 20,000 Weird Redirect Hacked Notifications
Google Webmaster Tools:
- Google Webmaster Tools Query Reports Now Up To 90 Days
- Google Webmaster Tools Drops Features
- Google Fetch As GoogleBot Submission Not Working
- Now Really Test Your Google Rich Snippets
- Google Author Stats Goes Missing From Webmaster Tools
For last month's recap, see the April 2012 Google Webmaster Report.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
