Now that Google admitted to crawling JavaScript and forms SEOs and Webmasters need to be aware of how to manage even more duplicate content issues. In the past, a good strategy was to build out filter pages (filter by color,...
Now that Google admitted to crawling JavaScript and forms SEOs and Webmasters need to be aware of how to manage even more duplicate content issues. In the past, a good strategy was to build out filter pages (filter by color,...
A Google Groups thread has discussion about one webmaster that sees Sitelinks for his site in position 60. The search is for vacation realty and in the 60th position. While, I do not see the Sitelinks at that position, the...
Google has finally written a formal post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Best practices when moving your site. It honestly is a nice place to send a client or webmaster when the question comes up. Does it give...
We should have seen this coming, based on the number of reports that Google was submitting GET forms. But often, it is hard to validate those types of reports, due to people spoofing Googlebot and similar tactics. In any event,...
I don't think this is exactly related to Google mixing up titles and URLs from yesterday (if you have examples, please comment, so Matt can address them at Google). But over at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, PPCBlogger showed us an...
On February 20th, I asked our readers if they thought a listing in the Open Directory Project would have a major impact on a site's Google ranking. The response was split down the middle. We only had 58 responses, which...
On the last day of March, I reported on a major Google search index update which seemed to have impacted tons and tons of SEOs, as opposed to just a ton of SEOs (if you know what I mean). Yes,...
The huge WebmasterWorld thread devoted to tracking Google changes over the course of March 2008 has sprung some late March legs. Reseller, well known at WebmasterWorld for tracking the slightest changes at Google, posted two data centers that are very...
Early March we reported that Google Tests Additional Sitewide Searchbox Within SERPs. Yes, for certain queries, Google will show a site search box, likely so they can increase search volume for the engine but say that they can help the...
SEOmoz posted results from a study he did where he concluded that only the first anchor text on a page is counted by Google as the anchor text for that link. For example, let's say you have a two links...
Brent Csutoras reported that when searching for social media consulting on Google, up came an indented result for his site. But the indented result, under the main result was from a different site. He took a screen capture of the...
We now have three different threads in the past week that report Google has the wrong site in its cache for a query. We have seen this before, where we said Google Slow to Update Cache Data? In that case,...
Moving document and file locations on the web is fairly common. So what do you do when you have to communicate the move to your users and the search engines? You set up a redirect. There is no question that...
Bill Slawski's Google Omits Needless Words (On Your Pages?) at SEO By The Sea has Google texts, patents and patent applications that discuss how Google may handle boilerplate content. Boilerplate content on a web page might be content that is...
We now have official confirmation that the Google position 6 penalty is now being reversed. Sebastian commented to let me know that Matt Cutts of Google has confirmed at Sphinn that whatever was causing quality sites to be moved down...
A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting conversation about an increase in long tail traffic people have been noticing from Google. Long tail traffic, if you don't know, are the longer more specific keyword searches, such as big blue pineapple chair...
A Cre8asite Forums thread asks if Google orders the link reports at either a link:www.seroundtable.com command or via Google Webmaster Tools in level of importance. Google's JohnMu confirms the link: command as just being a random sample of your backlinks....
WebmasterWorld administrator, tedster, has compiled the feedback of the December 2007 Google SERP Changes thread, which we covered earlier in a new WebmasterWorld thread. In this thread, he says there is a pattern of reports he has been noticing where...
The Ultimate Fate of Supplemental Results from the Google Webmaster Central blog announces, what Google calls, the "next major milestone" for Google's supplemental results. What is happening exactly? Google is implying that when you conduct a search in Google.com, Google...
We asked the question a while back, Should Google Display RSS Feeds in Web Search Results and we determined, no. Then GoogleGuy confirmed Google does not want to display most RSS feeds in the Google index. The Google Webmaster Central...
A WebmasterWorld thread has a nice amount of Webmasters noticing an increase in the number of supplemental pages being returned by Google. How does one measure the number of supplemental pages in the Google index for their site when Google...
A WebmasterWorld thread is speculating that Google has recently shown more interest in ranking domain names that have keywords that match the searcher's query. One member explained: This could just be a regional thing, but G.ie seems to be giving...
A WebmasterWorld thread has Labnol asking, "Can rankings vanish because a site is not updated?" If you do not update a site's content, can it set off a red flag at Google or another search engine and have the site...
Friday we reported that Google to Begin Treating Subdomains as Folders: Max 2 Results Per Search based on a post from Tedster at WebmasterWorld. Soon after, Matt Cutts of Google commented saying: This isn't a correct characterization of what Google...
A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of reports from SEOs and Webmasters that Google has dropped the number of pages they indexed of their sites. Here is one such report: On all the searchees I look at a regular basis I...
Yesterday I covered the news at Search Engine Land of a new Google experimental search feature that lets you move search results up and remove results from the Google search results page. The changes you make only impact you -...
In the SEO world, the topic of shared versus dedicated IPs has always been a controversial topic. Some SEOs demand a site to be on an IP address all by itself, while others simply do not care. A Google Groups...
Validate your robots.txt - Googlebot becomes smarter from Sebastian reports official confirmation from Google that they are testing out new crawler directives. He explains that adding "Noindex: /" to your robots.txt file will now deindex your complete site. Specifically, Google...
Google has updated Google Webmaster Tools with a link update again this month. Google has been updating their linkage data in Webmaster Tools more frequently, but it appears it has often been happening the first or second week of the...
Server failures happen, they are almost guaranteed. And when they do happen, SEOs hope that Google does not try to visit the site during that timeframe. If Google does and the server issues are database related, then Google may index...
There is an excellent Cre8asite Forums thread brewing on the topic of Google's Supplemental Index. The thread basically asks if the percent of pages on a specific domain can be used to determine the overall site's importance in the eyes...
Ever have to take down your site for an extended period of time? By extended period of time, I am talking about more than 5 hours or so. Those who have, might also worry about how Google or other search...
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks why a URL is showing up twice for the same search. The example search is sheffield jobs. Result number nine is www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=49, but if you go to page two you should see the...
Last week Tamar wrote about How to Stop Googlebot from Crawling Your Site Rapidly, so I thought I write about the opposite. How can you induce GoogleBot into crawling your site. Although there is no magic shot that guarantees inducement...
Pretty much few months or so, we get a new huge debate about paid links, just look for yourself. This one was started by Danny Sullivan's Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google article. There...
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about Google's allintitle, allinanchor and allinurl operators. Basically, these are special operators you can use when search in Google. For example, if you want to find pages that match a keyword phrase but limit it...
A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of reports that Google's page index counts of sites have been bouncing up and down like a rollercoaster. By page index site, I assume they mean the number of pages Google reports when you conduct...
The other day we asked Should Google Display RSS Feeds in Web Search Results? Saturday, GoogleGuy, replied to the WebmasterWorld thread saying: I think that we've been getting better recently about not showing RSS/Atom feeds in the search results. So...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks if Google penalizes or blacklists domains that are parked domains. A parked domain is a domain that has little to no content on it, that is basically a in limbo and is just sitting idle with...
A detailed Google Groups thread is reporting various reports of webmasters claiming GoogleBot is timing out before reaching their pages. First, these webmasters are noticing a drop in GoogleBot activity on their server. So they login to Google Webmaster Tools...
A WebmasterWorld thread was broken out by WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, where he summarizes one isolated change he may have noticed from the latest Google update. The change, he said, has to do with Google grouping more of the same category...
A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting, in heavy numbers, that Google is returning fewer results for sites they have in their index. What I mean is that if you do a site:www.domain.com command in Google, the number of results being returned...
Matt Cutts finally chimed in on the big buzz about Hyphens & Underscores Are Now Treated Equally in Google.com, which was broken by Stephan Spencer at News.com. Matt said, he "didn’t quite say that in the talk." What he did...
A WebmasterWorld thread says that Google has counted links from within Microsoft Word Documents, as links to a page. We all know Google indexes files like Word Documents, PDFs, and many many other types of documents. We also know you...
EGOL started a thread at Cre8asite Forums asking how using the various robots.txt command or META noindex nofollow commands will impact the flow of PageRank and link popularity. Several members go through some detailed examples and what-if scenarios. However, Ammon...
Until today, Google treated dashes and underscores in the URL differently. A dash (hyphen) between two words in the URL (i.e. keyword-phrase) would tell Google that those are two different words (i.e. keyword +phrase). In the past, an underscore between...
Did you know that if you wanted to ensure that zero supplemental results come up for a site command at Google, you can type your query in the syntax of site:www.example.com/* I speculated over at Search Engine Land that Google...
A WebmasterWorld thread has two claims from respected members, giving us a little more insight into Google's search engine. The first thing we learn is that Google has several cache databases. When doing site search "site:exmple.com" when I see the...
A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the implementation of 301 redirects on a newly constructed site. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, adds to the discussion that he has seen that a chain of 301 redirects does not always pass the link popularity along. For...
There has been a lot of buzz recently about how Google has been indexing blog content or fresh content very quickly. Not only is Google indexing and crawling the fresh content, but also showing the content in the search results...