Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'google optimization'

Yesterday we reported that the Google Caffeine index is launching right before the holiday season. I wrote my post like that, simply because I was in shock to see this being rolled out, even "slowly" before the holiday season. Honestly,...

Posted on November 11, 2009 8:54 AM

Google's Matt Cutts, the man who is incredibly responsible the idea of webmaster and search engine communication, has gone over a year without posting anything at WebmasterWorld. His last post was on November 2, 2008 in a thread named Google.com...

Posted on November 5, 2009 8:14 AM

Over the past day or so, I have been seeing and watching a small increase in the number of threads discussing either global changes to the Google index or people complaining (at a higher rate) that their site is no...

Posted on October 21, 2009 8:41 AM

Back in February I ran a poll asking if the Google Sandbox still exists and if so, is it US based only? I don't think I ever published those results, so I apologize. A new Search Engine Watch Forums thread...

Posted on September 30, 2009 8:30 AM

About ten days ago, we asked our readers "Right Now, How Much is Google Loving Keywords in URL?" We have about a 185 responses in and I wanted to share the results. Overall, about 75% of the responses said that...

Posted on September 8, 2009 8:50 AM

A continuously updated WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about penalties, new sitelinks and more. WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, summed up what he is seeing in this thread and others. There are two main things going on: (1) Sites that have been ranking...

Posted on August 28, 2009 8:48 AM

There are some early reports of a possible Google web search update currently under way. We have threads on this topic at DigitalPoint Forums and an updated thread at WebmasterWorld. In the WebmasterWorld thread, in post number 3977195, senior member,...

Posted on August 24, 2009 7:33 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread links to Matt's slides from WordCamp. The slides can be found on Google Docs, but I say, skip those and watch the video below of Matt's presentation. The one thing I learned from it was that...

Posted on August 20, 2009 8:39 AM

A couple months back, Google ran an I/O conference. What many people don't know is that Matt Cutts and the search quality team video recorded a session with site reviews and posted it for everyone to see. The video is...

Posted on August 18, 2009 8:49 AM

For over three years now, I and others (including Danny) have been trying to get information from Google on how they handle passing link value from domain names, specifically in cases of expired domains and domain name transfer of ownership....

Posted on April 21, 2009 9:17 AM

We all know that Google ignores the META keywords tag on pages, or at least that is what we believe and what we are told. This does not mean Google ignores other meta tags, such as the meta description, but...

Posted on March 26, 2009 5:22 AM

There is an old WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how many header tags (i.e. H1, H2) you should have on a page and how you should use it. The thread was revived yesterday when Matt Cutts of Google answered...

Posted on March 20, 2009 8:19 AM

It has been a while since we really discussed the "Google Sandbox." The Google Sandbox goes back to April 2004. We first spotted it when I wrote New Sites = Poor Results in Google, then it became known as the...

Posted on February 5, 2009 8:22 AM

A Google Webmaster Help thread discusses a unique issue to a few niche sites that have no choice but to block all users from the United States while also wanting to allow GoogleBot to access the site. Since GoogleBot lives...

Posted on December 11, 2008 8:00 AM

The topic of does domain registration impact your search engine rankings is nothing new. We have covered this topic here at least a handful of times, especially since Google became a registrar. But a new WebmasterWorld thread has several case...

Posted on December 8, 2008 8:14 AM

I so love finding these gems in the deep areas of forum discussion. That being said, let me share with you what I found. A Google Groups thread has a response from Matt Cutts of Google, basically explaining their was...

Posted on December 2, 2008 7:40 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion around how to properly use the alt attribute and title attribute for your web page images. Of course, Google recommends that you make sure to make them as useful for the end users. So...

Posted on November 17, 2008 7:24 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topic of title tags. Now this title tag discussion is not a typical boring thread. In this thread, some webmasters and SEOs have been observing that longer title tags are returning higher rankings...

Posted on August 11, 2008 8:32 AM

About 15 days ago, I reported on the Google Yo-Yo Effect. This yo-yoing is a lot different then the typical ups and downs of Google's rankings. I know many of you are going to say, Google's results always differ. Trust...

Posted on July 29, 2008 8:04 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion around a site that was hacked and because of it, now has many broken (dead) hyper links. The question then came up, would Google penalize a site that had broken links? The simple answer...

Posted on July 24, 2008 8:05 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion on the topic of dynamically creating pages to target localized searches. For example, this particular webmaster wants to be able to target 28 different zip codes for his client's A/C business. He summarizes what...

Posted on July 18, 2008 8:03 AM

Part two of the WebmasterWorld thread on the July 2008 Google update discussion is virtually all about how Google is yo-yoing the results. Meaning, one day a site can have top positions for a keyword phrase in Google, the next...

Posted on July 16, 2008 7:51 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the META description. There is no doubt that most search engines look and use the META description on some level. Google and Yahoo and Live Search may use it for your search results snippet,...

Posted on July 9, 2008 8:09 AM

There is an interesting Google Groups thread discussing how Google handles the <base> HTML tag. The base tag specifies a base URL for all the links in a page. But how does Googlebot or Google handle indexing this tag? Google...

Posted on June 11, 2008 8:36 AM

Just over a week ago, we had reports that Google dropped most .info TLDs from the search results. Today, we are getting more early reports of the same thing happening, after it recovered quickly last time. We have reports from...

Posted on June 5, 2008 10:17 AM

Last night, I had a nice chat with Googler, JohnMu. I joked around with John, asking if he has messed up yet, in terms of Google communication with webmasters. He said not really - which I agree with. But he...

Posted on June 5, 2008 10:05 AM

The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a blog post named How Google defines IP delivery, geolocation, and cloaking. They cover topics such as making sure to treat Googlebot as a California resident with the Geolocation section, they go over IP...

Posted on June 3, 2008 9:52 AM

Beu posted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread after noticing that Google has changed the definition they used for what a doorway page is. On the Google Page, it now reads: Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages...

Posted on June 2, 2008 7:28 AM

Talk about theories! A WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that was posted by senior member, travelin cat, who noticed that his top ranking pages tend to have related YouTube video's embedded on them. The YouTube videos are not his videos,...

Posted on May 29, 2008 7:40 AM

Did you know that there are specific HTML markup tags for abbreviations and acronyms? Did you know that people sometimes use them? A Google Groups thread asks if Google actually uses these tags for indexing purposes? The example given in...

Posted on May 28, 2008 8:22 AM

Over the weekend, I noticed reports from WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums suggesting that Google dropped .info and blogspot results from its index. First reports came in at around 9:50am (EST) on May 23rd at both forums. Massive panic actually started...

Posted on May 26, 2008 8:37 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has some discussion over one member spotting a Google IP address navigating through his site. The IP address originates from the Mountain View location and resolves to Google, so he is convinced a Googler is manually reviewing...

Posted on May 23, 2008 7:00 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion around how this webmaster should handle redirecting its web visitor to a localized version of their site, based on the IP address information. Since I recently wrote a comprehensive article at Search Engine Land...

Posted on May 22, 2008 8:09 AM

Remember the floating four story I wrote a week or so ago? Basically how a search result would be in the fourth position and then go so a lower position, then come back to four and then go back again...

Posted on May 21, 2008 9:07 AM

Back in February, I wrote a story named Upper Case & Lower Case Searches May Return Different Google Search Results. Since then, the discussion on that topic has died off. But in the past month or so, more and more...

Posted on May 21, 2008 8:49 AM

Google updates their search algorithms and indexes fairly often. Results change all the time. The goal for Google is to make this transparent for searchers by providing relevant results. But when a change happens, typically the webmaster will notice and...

Posted on May 16, 2008 8:24 AM

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,...

Posted on April 30, 2008 8:01 AM

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...

Posted on April 24, 2008 8:29 AM

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...

Posted on April 17, 2008 7:33 AM

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,...

Posted on April 14, 2008 7:50 AM

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...

Posted on April 11, 2008 7:01 AM

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...

Posted on April 9, 2008 8:30 AM

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,...

Posted on April 2, 2008 7:36 AM

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...

Posted on March 31, 2008 7:03 AM

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...

Posted on March 26, 2008 7:21 AM

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...

Posted on March 18, 2008 7:42 AM

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...

Posted on March 17, 2008 7:25 AM

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,...

Posted on March 4, 2008 7:33 AM

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...

Posted on March 3, 2008 7:31 AM

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...

Posted on February 19, 2008 7:44 AM

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...

Posted on January 29, 2008 6:50 AM

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...

Posted on January 8, 2008 7:30 AM

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....

Posted on December 31, 2007 7:10 AM

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...

Posted on December 27, 2007 7:04 AM

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...

Posted on December 20, 2007 7:44 AM

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...

Posted on December 19, 2007 7:43 AM

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...

Posted on December 19, 2007 6:52 AM

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...

Posted on December 14, 2007 8:03 AM

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...

Posted on December 12, 2007 7:27 AM

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...

Posted on December 10, 2007 7:01 AM

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...

Posted on December 3, 2007 7:36 AM

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 -...

Posted on November 30, 2007 7:32 AM

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...

Posted on November 23, 2007 7:28 AM

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...

Posted on November 21, 2007 7:54 AM

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...

Posted on November 20, 2007 7:40 AM

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...

Posted on November 15, 2007 7:16 AM

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...

Posted on November 5, 2007 7:13 AM

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...

Posted on October 30, 2007 7:30 AM

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...

Posted on October 19, 2007 6:52 AM

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...

Posted on October 11, 2007 7:35 AM

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...

Posted on October 9, 2007 8:04 AM

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...

Posted on October 3, 2007 7:53 AM

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...

Posted on October 2, 2007 8:08 AM

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...

Posted on September 17, 2007 8:36 AM

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...

Posted on September 14, 2007 7:49 AM

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...

Posted on September 11, 2007 8:12 AM

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...

Posted on September 10, 2007 8:25 AM

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...

Posted on August 29, 2007 7:52 AM

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...

Posted on August 10, 2007 7:44 AM

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...

Posted on August 3, 2007 7:45 AM

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...

Posted on July 31, 2007 7:29 AM

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...

Posted on July 24, 2007 8:22 AM

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...

Posted on July 13, 2007 7:34 AM

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...

Posted on July 9, 2007 7:37 AM

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...

Posted on July 9, 2007 7:29 AM

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...

Posted on July 9, 2007 7:16 AM

In late 2004 and early 2005, page hijacks were a huge concern with Google. Back then, sites used a 302 redirect to take over a susceptible page within the search results. Marcia reports at Search Engine Watch Forums that the...

Posted on June 27, 2007 6:47 AM

Cre8asite Forums is holding a small poll of their members, asking if it is harder to optimize for Google's Universal Search as opposed to OneBox results? Right now, the majority of people feel it is not harder because it "follows...

Posted on June 26, 2007 7:10 AM

This may be considered a continuation of the June 2007 Google Update but it has now been given a name. The Buffy update, as it is now called out of respect for Vanessa Fox leaving Google, is currently underway. Yes,...

Posted on June 18, 2007 6:54 AM

A Google Groups thread asks if it is acceptable in accordance with Google's new webmaster guidelines on Hidden text and links to use CSS as an image replacement technique for graphic links. Image a site that has images for their...

Posted on June 11, 2007 8:37 AM

Everyone is talking about the Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine article from the New York Times. Check out the Techmeme coverage and you can find dozens of summaries of the article. I will summarize the article based on the...

Posted on June 4, 2007 10:00 AM

The Google search results landscape has forever changed. Yes, this is a huge deal. With the launch of Google Universal Search, you will see a totally different approach to search results that you have never seen before. Remember we found...

Posted on May 17, 2007 7:46 AM

There is currently a lot of discussion taking place in two forums about comments left by Matt Cutts of Google in a post here named Google Attacked Over Webmaster Relations. Now, Matt responded to some question left by a comment...

Posted on May 14, 2007 8:15 AM

Google has released four new document patent applications. All four are on the topic of scoring a document. One is based on scoring documents on query analysis, an other on traffic analysis, an other on link criteria and the last...

Posted on April 27, 2007 7:30 AM

WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld documenting a pattern he is seeing recently with Google. He is asking, not telling, if people agree or disagree with his theory. In short, he is noticing that Google is apparently ranking...

Posted on April 25, 2007 7:34 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has someone reporting that he noticed a robots.txt file has been indexed and marked in the supplemental index at Google.com It is clear that Google indexes robots.txt files. The thread creator wants to know what is means...

Posted on April 23, 2007 7:45 AM

Reports began trickling in from DigitalPoint Forums and via WebmasterWorld on April 10th, of recent changes to the Google index. Let me pull out quotes from both threads: Today my site is back at its previous position (2nd) Well I...

Posted on April 12, 2007 8:02 AM

David E. at our forums spotted Google using a "note this" feature next to the cache link in the Google.com search results. I spotted a screen shot of this over here, so I cropped it out to show you here....

Posted on April 8, 2007 5:14 PM

There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld about a site that appears to be losing ground in Google because they used the nofollow attribute for linking to some of their internal pages. For example, they nofollowed links to their privacy...

Posted on March 30, 2007 7:12 AM

A thread at WebmasterWorld speculates about how Google is weighing factors throughout the site rather than on a single page on a domain. Some people are seeing that Google is placing heavier emphasis on so-called "landing pages" that might bring...

Posted on March 26, 2007 10:10 AM

Matt Cutts posted an interesting write up he named Search results in search results. In that post, he located a Google Groups thread started by Philipp Lenssen asking: Is there any official Google statement regarding that search result on one's...

Posted on March 12, 2007 10:45 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does Google send out their crawlers to a page that has been removed (i.e. a 404 error not found status)? The simple answer, as mentioned in the thread is, forever. Google will continue to...

Posted on March 9, 2007 7:54 AM

Bill Slawski, Cre8asite Forum Admin, started a thread at Cre8asite Forums about a patent application Google recently published named mobile sitemaps. The abstract reads: A method of analyzing documents or relationships between documents includes receiving a notification of an available...

Posted on March 2, 2007 7:29 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has several examples of people who say they have submitted re-inclusion requests months ago and still have not heard back from Google. A few things here, we know Google Moves Reinclusion Request Form To Webmaster Central months...

Posted on February 28, 2007 8:20 AM

MSGraph at WebmasterWorld posted a link to a Google Patent filed in August 22, 2005 with authors including Matt Cutts named removing documents. The patent basically describes how you can remove documents using Google personalized search, which I described in...

Posted on February 23, 2007 7:51 AM

I was chatting with a few folks who are convinced of a major Google update. David Ogletree was the first I know to spot this. So I revisited a WebmasterWorld and sure enough, since the 18th of this month, four...

Posted on February 21, 2007 1:25 PM

Barry Welford at Cre8asite Forums noticed Google using tracking URLs in the search results and asked if Google uses this for ranking purposes. It's clearly stated that in its contextual advertising programs, Google will adjust the ordering of Adword ads...

Posted on February 21, 2007 7:43 AM

A Google Groups thread has some details that I have not seen before. If a site is temporarily down, I thought Google would not deindex the site, but give it some more time before they removed the page from the...

Posted on February 19, 2007 8:14 AM

As I reported recently, Google Recommends Using Meta Description Tag but why? This Search Engine Watch Forums thread shows the perfect example of why a unique meta description is slightly important. If you ever do a site: command, i.e. site:www.seroundtable.com...

Posted on February 16, 2007 7:03 AM

I spotted a good Google Groups thread that has Google's official word on how they handle the nofollow attribute in links. When Google began complying with the nofollow attribute, they posted this blog entry but people are still fuzzy today...

Posted on February 15, 2007 8:18 AM

SEOs and Webmasters always wondered how long it took for a typically site to pass along a PageRank value from one URL to another via a 301 redirect. Google's Adam Lasnik answered this question, saying only about a couple weeks....

Posted on February 15, 2007 8:12 AM

It appears as if on this Friday, Google has done an update on their Sitelinks. Google Sitelinks, first thought to be Web Categories, was officially released back in September 2006. Google has their official doc on sitelinks in their Webmaster...

Posted on February 12, 2007 7:20 AM

In a WebmasterWorld thread, there is a question about how can one preserve the PageRank value they have on his pages and not spread it out to others too much. Of course, you know my rant on PageRank, but outside...

Posted on February 9, 2007 7:34 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting many cases of people noticing the pages on their site going into the supplemental index. But even more so, they are noticing that a site:www.domain.com command returns one result and then shows you: In order...

Posted on February 9, 2007 7:13 AM

There has been a lot of recent talk about the Google Minus-950 Penalty. It was named that because people didn't find their pages anywhere before around the 950th result. The question is what happened recently to cause such a change...

Posted on February 8, 2007 7:59 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks a great question, "what if the competitor is Google itself?" Yea, what if you have a product or service you are selling, but you have to go against Google in the search results at...

Posted on February 6, 2007 8:01 AM

Typically, you have threads about, how do I make my site better or what do I need to do to rank higher. Then people may discuss topics such as unique content, link building, etc. There is a thread at WebmasterWorld...

Posted on February 2, 2007 8:04 AM

After writing my piece named Why Do Some SEOs Want Toolbar PageRank To Go Away? I found a thread at DigitalPoint Forums asking members to vote if "PR is Overhyped." Here are the current results: 80% vote yes, PageRank is...

Posted on February 1, 2007 7:16 AM

Vicyankees posted a WebmasterWorld thread that explains that when searching with a site command at Google, using site:www.domain.com, Google now returns results that may be sub domains. For example, when I conduct a site search for site:www.seroundtable.com I see in...

Posted on January 22, 2007 7:48 AM

Back on January 4th, we reported Google Not Showing Localized Pages Within Country For .COM TLDs. We have specific examples showing that Google was not showing proper pages for .com domains, when one conducts a site command search, but restricts...

Posted on January 19, 2007 7:03 AM

We have more evidence of our past coverage that Google sends out notifications to Webmasters when they violate Google's terms of service. For example, Gabs received a notification and posted the details at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, explaining he was...

Posted on January 16, 2007 9:27 AM

Just a quick update on the Google Minus 30 penalty that Barry covered last year. The WebmasterWorld thread has spanned into 2007, with some new and interesting discussion about the penalty that has been largely attributed to linking practices in...

Posted on January 9, 2007 9:56 AM

Here are some takeaways from Adam Lasnik's latest post at WebmasterWorld, see post number 3208854 or post # 70 in that thread. Boilerplate content is "huge swaths of text repeated on every page, such as an obnoxiously long legal footers"...

Posted on January 5, 2007 7:28 AM

The blogs have been discussing a new Google patent application named Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system. The abstract reads; An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified...

Posted on January 2, 2007 7:31 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks "How does Google determine which pages to crawl?" Google didn't always crawl and index pages as they do now. With the Big Daddy update Google adapted their crawl priorities, which was around April 2006. Google now...

Posted on December 28, 2006 7:43 AM

On December 21st, Ben reported a Google Data Refresh - Rankings Fluctuations Before Christmas via a WebmasterWorld thread. Now, I have been tracking that original thread, along with two additional WebmasterWorld threads named part 2 and Is there any point...

Posted on December 27, 2006 7:32 AM

An Adam Lasnik post in Google Groups sprung a post at Cre8asite Forums explaining that if you have bad HTML, Google will be OK with it. Yes, that is the case, your code does not need to be 100% validated...

Posted on December 25, 2006 8:09 AM

A slow but very interesting WebmasterWorld thread asks, "Is Googe Devaluing "Social Content" Links?" Tedster, WebmasterWorld Admin, said; It's not a big secret. Webmasters looking for a ranking boost have been using "web 2.0" tactics for quick link building. Even...

Posted on December 20, 2006 8:04 AM

It seems like we can not get away from the topic of duplicate content. A recent post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Deftly dealing with duplicate content by Adam Lasnik, gives more insight (possibly) to what is duplicate...

Posted on December 19, 2006 7:37 AM

A late Friday post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Building link-based popularity sparked a ton of discussion over the weekend at WebmasterWorld. The WebmasterWorld was named "It's Official: Google Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges" by martinibuster to spark some...

Posted on December 18, 2006 7:23 AM

I often use the site command query operator at Google to find results within a particular site. This morning when writing about Possible Google Update Before Holiday Season? I conducted a search for all matches for the keyword florida on...

Posted on December 8, 2006 8:04 AM

WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums are both reporting significant changes in rankings at Google starting last night. Typically, Google, since December 2003 (aka the Florida update), Google does not want to shake up the search results (did not mention search ads...

Posted on December 8, 2006 7:44 AM

WebProNews is shooting video all week at SES Chicago and they have recently posted an excellent one named SES: Google’s Fox Clarifies Sitemaps, PageRank. Here are my notes, the video is about 18 minutes. Rand asks is the duplicate content...

Posted on December 7, 2006 8:57 AM

There are reports from WebmasterWorld that a new Google data refresh is taking place now. People are noticing both large and small shuffling of the positioning of pages for select search queries. I do not believe this is a huge...

Posted on November 29, 2006 7:22 AM

Like any new tool, there are bugs, and Google's Webmaster Central tools, including their powerful Sitemaps tool, seems to have its share of bugs. Two different reports come from WebmasterWorld with possible bugs in the tool over the weekend. The...

Posted on November 27, 2006 8:04 AM

There has always been confusion on if Google uses the meta tag data. Some say Google uses the meta description tag, some say they don't. Most say, Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag. In any event, Google's Vanessa Fox...

Posted on November 27, 2006 7:49 AM

We have discussed this topic over and over again this past year or so. What happens when you move from an established domain to a new domain name? What can you expect to see in terms of traffic drops from...

Posted on November 22, 2006 7:58 AM

The question at a WebmasterWorld forum is does registering your domain name for 10 years, instead of one year, help you rank better in Google? Reading the thread, it appears that most senior members in the thread, feel that it...

Posted on November 21, 2006 8:12 AM

It seems the more Google talks about the supplemental index, you know the results in Google that are labeled as "supplemental," the more confused SEOs are, including myself. Here is an image of what a result in Google.com from the...

Posted on November 20, 2006 7:13 AM

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has a member not understanding why Google has not indexed his PDF files. To make a long story short, Google did index his PDF files, but I thought it would make a nice quick...

Posted on November 10, 2006 6:51 AM

A typical WebmasterWorld thread has a member who is upset about submitting his (I believe) new site to Google Sitemaps and 3 weeks later, Google has still not fully indexed his site. Well, it is a great way to tell...

Posted on November 9, 2006 7:19 AM

tedster has put together a concise post of current and common questions that people post at the Google WebmasterWorld forums. The post contains links to some of the most recent and active questions Webmasters and SEOs have about Google. Here...

Posted on November 7, 2006 7:44 AM

Does the change of a domain name ownership, i.e. the whois records, by itself, have an effect on the site's rankings? For example, if I sell domainA.com, with the content and everything as is. And if the new owner does...

Posted on November 2, 2006 7:46 AM

Just a quick note that there may be a possible PageRank update taking place right now. It is unsure to if this update is a new one or something called a PageRank rollback. Some even think that the earlier PageRank...

Posted on November 2, 2006 7:19 AM

There are two threads, both the same exact subject, one at Search Engine Watch Forums and the other at WebmasterWorld that asks if it is wise to use one Google Account for all your sites in your Google Webmaster Central...

Posted on November 1, 2006 6:59 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread discusses how long would it take to get back into the Google index after being kicked out. From the day you submit a reinclusion request, how long will it take to get back into the index....

Posted on October 26, 2006 7:56 AM

In the past, having a dynamic site caused issues with most search engines. If your site has weird parameters in the URL, they were known as stop characters, and search engines would stop crawling them - in fear of getting...

Posted on October 26, 2006 7:16 AM

The Google Webmaster Central blog announced the release of several new tools added to the Webmaster Central toolbox. The new features are pretty neat and include; Googlebot activity reports that shows the "number of pages Googlebot's crawled from your site...

Posted on October 19, 2006 7:24 AM

According to Brett Tabke in this "WebmasterWorld thread, links within the NOSCRIPT tag are not counted by Google in terms of passing PageRank. Brett adds that "Google flips on/off support for noscript indexing from time to time," meaning Google may...

Posted on October 17, 2006 7:57 AM

This penalty, that penalty, this filter, that filter - we now have a new one named the "-30 Penalty." But this one I think may have some substance. A WebmasterWorld thread has a lot of discussion on it, 6 pages,...

Posted on October 16, 2006 7:40 AM

It is pretty well known that Google assigns a trust factor or trust rank to sites as a whole. I have personally seen it come and go with sites. What this means is that if you are a pure white...

Posted on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

In a WebmasterWorld thread, Adam Lasnik of Google can be quoted on what types of outbound links can and cannot hurt you. Let me first quote Adam; It's unlikely that your outbound linking is causing your pages to be listed...

Posted on October 2, 2006 7:54 AM

Vanessa Fox of the Google Sitemaps team has posted at the blog that you should be expecting fresher query stats in your Google Webmaster Central area. Specifically, every Monday, you should expect the data in the query stats page to...

Posted on September 29, 2006 7:52 AM

Yes, an other Google PageRank update is underway. For example DigitalPoint.com has some data centers reporting a PageRank of 8, when it is currently at a PageRank on 7. Check the DigitalPoint's pagerank at this tool. The data centers with...

Posted on September 29, 2006 6:58 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread is discussing a PC Advisor article named Google plans upgrade for search engine. Google plans to extend the product search capabilities on its main Google.com search engine in the fourth quarter, in time for the holiday shopping...

Posted on September 26, 2006 7:36 AM

The Google Sandbox - what it was on day one, i.e. New Sites = Poor Results in Google, from when it was coined the Sandbox Effect to when Matt Cutts confirmed the Sandbox after much debate over the Sandbox, if...

Posted on September 25, 2006 12:11 PM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks what happened to the reinclusion request option is on the webmaster feedback form. In the past, if your site was banned and delisted from the index. The way back into the Google search index was to...

Posted on September 22, 2006 7:00 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks the members what is this "GooglePray" META tag he is finding on some Web page's source code? The bottom-line is that this META tag is an inside joke between some search spammers. Spamhuntress has dug into...

Posted on September 21, 2006 7:41 AM

On September 12th, I reported that Google's Site Operator Shows Sites Off Domain. Matt Cutts replied to this post saying, I think I commented on this in a comment over on my blog--I think once the supplemental results folks saw...

Posted on September 21, 2006 7:31 AM

A Cre8asite Forum thread has a discussion on a new tool by oy-oy.eu that allows you to specify the location and data center you want to search in and it will show you a side by side comparison of your...

Posted on September 20, 2006 7:35 AM

The third edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. In this show we covered the Live.com launch, AdWords tests, Yahoo!'s marketing blitz, Google & Intuit's partnership, Google's supplemental command, the Belgian court ruling, OneBox spam, Adam Lasnik on...

Posted on September 20, 2006 1:19 AM

You ever want a way to determine the number of supplemental results a particular site may have? In the past, you did a site command and sifted through the available pages to get an idea on that number. Now, Google...

Posted on September 14, 2006 10:53 AM

WebmasterWorld has discussion of an SEO class being given by Adam Lasnik of Google. The class is named Optimizing Your Websites for Google Search and is to take place at Catholic University, on September 18, 2006 at 1:00 pm –...

Posted on September 5, 2006 7:27 AM

It appears that Matt Cutts of Google has added a tidbit to his already mind-swimming post named Scoble visiting the Plex, Matt added; By the way, it looks like the primary issue with the Windows Live Writer blog was the...

Posted on September 4, 2006 8:59 AM

A thread at DigitalPoint Forums points out that Google has changed how they handle navigational like queries, such as typing into Google, www.seroundtable.com. I am sure other threads have it since that Google update, but I have never seen it....

Posted on September 1, 2006 7:58 AM

We have confirmation over the long debated topic on if the keywords in the URL or file names help with rankings. Some SEOs say it does not help, some SEOs say it may hurt (still true - be smart), some...

Posted on September 1, 2006 7:21 AM

Friday we reported on a Back Link Update, and as suspected, it was not a major change that affected search results. Since then, WebmasterWorld has named the update, Pluto (kinda cute, don't you think?). Which reminds me, doesn't Ask.com have...

Posted on August 28, 2006 7:38 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that back links are being updates at some of Google's data centers. The data centers documented with the updated back links are at 64.233.187.104 and 64.233.187.99. What does this mean for SEOs and your rankings? Um,...

Posted on August 25, 2006 9:42 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has a very interesting questions. Does Google, or any other search engine, associate link popularity to a portion of a page? For example, if I link to a page and anchor down to a specific portion of...

Posted on August 25, 2006 7:40 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses, what they suggest to be, issues unique to UK based sites, within the UK only Google search results. One such example; A site:domainname search lists the pages in the site ok when performed in the default...

Posted on August 23, 2006 7:17 AM

Last Friday, I posted a fun topic at the SEW blog asking, Washington Post Selling Text Links? I followed up that post with a Search Engine Watch Forum thread named Do Washington Post Blogroll Links Pass Link Pop? At first...

Posted on August 21, 2006 7:01 AM

There is a Cre8asite Forums discussion on having two sites on the same niche topic, residing on the same server, with the two domains resolving to the same IP address. Let me quote EGOL on this; This is based upon...

Posted on August 14, 2006 7:46 AM

A featured WebmasterWorld thread has examples of issues with Google possibly disobeying the robots.txt file. GoogleGuy and VanessaFox both come in, to offer some guidance on the perceived issue. GoogleGuy first explains that "a more specific directive takes precedence over...

Posted on August 14, 2006 7:36 AM

Web hosts are typically in a very powerful position. One such example is discussed at a Search Engine Watch Forums thread showing how one Webmaster was finding "strange results" in the Google search results pages. The results contained pornographic terms...

Posted on August 14, 2006 7:09 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses webmaster complaints with Google treating the Wikipedia too well. Meaning, the Wikipedia ranks well for so many different keywords. Often people mock the Wikipedia, because the information sometimes found there is not 100% accurate, since it...

Posted on August 11, 2006 8:16 AM

Detlev Johnson is moderating this new session. Can you rank well in all the search engines? Or do you need to pick and choose. This session will be a SEO session on that topic. Aaron Wall from SEO Book is...

Posted on August 8, 2006 12:48 PM

GoogleGuy is still active in the forums, updating Webmasters on Google's latest changes. He explained earlier this morning that we should be expecting "fresher supplemental results" in the index. Okay, I believe most/all U.S. users should see radically fresher supplemental...

Posted on August 8, 2006 9:50 AM

Every now and then on an off day, I revisit the Big Blue Pineapple Chair page I have on this site. Why? Well, it gives me an idea of how well (1) this site is doing in the various search...

Posted on August 6, 2006 9:54 AM

Some of you may have heard the name Vanessa Fox before. She is the one who posts at the Google Sitemaps blog and Google blog on occasion to give updates about the Google Sitemaps product. WebmasterWorld broke out a thread...

Posted on August 2, 2006 7:53 AM

On July 13th, Google added support for the NOODP tag and Webmasters rejoiced. But there seems to be a number of reports that claim the NOODP tag is hurting their rankings. All claim that the only change they made to...

Posted on August 1, 2006 7:44 AM