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...
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...
Every month we give you a Google specific update on what webmasters are talking about at WebmasterWorld, complied with the past month of changes we reported, specifically at Google. To see last month's report, see the October 2009 Google Webmaster...
A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who noticed his site was spammed and he is anticipating his site to be penalized by Google, and the other search engines. He asked if he should start early and submit a reconsideration request...
Five months ago, I wrote a piece named Want Your Google News To Show Up in Google Finance? NASDAQ:GOOG which basically said, put the stock ticker in the title of your article and you're golden for showing up in Google...
Historically, Google treated the 404 (page not found) and 410 (gone) server header page status codes as the same. Both meant, the page no longer exists. Well, that has all changed now. Google is now treating the 410 as "more...
On Sunday, if you searched in Google for [Green Party] you would not find the official Green Party of United States web site, which is at gp.com. Even if you searched for gp.org, Google would not show you the site....
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...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who was trying to figure out why his site was not coming up for a search on its own name. After some review, Googler, JohnMu, said the site has recently shown a...
There is a really long thread at Google Webmaster Help on the topic of the .GB.COM TLD. Some are of the belief that Google is penalizing or banning these domains. Of course, to you and me, that sounds ridiculous. There...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who noticed Google indexed his site with the server port in the URL structure. So instead of Google ranking the http://www.domain.com/ it ranks the site, and every page within the site as...
More and more people are noticing Google's new more results user interface, where it shows a plus box, instead of taking the user to a site command like search result. You can likely reproduce the plus box yourself for a...
One of the key topics I have heard being discussed in the speaker room last week at the SMX East conference was that the Google results were not good. It rarely came up in the sessions, except for Greg Boser...
During the CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO at SMX East yesterday, Bruce Johnson and Kathrin Probst from Google announced a new proposal for search engines to index AJAX. Let me explain the proposal in a very simplistic way, that...
Yesterday, I reported at Search Engine Land that Google is going to allow cross domain canonical tag. This means, if you have two sites (probably verified under the same webmaster tools account), you will be able to tell Google, all...
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...
A Google Webmaster Help thread once again confirms that Google ignores the geo-meta tags. Those tags somewhat look like this and use to serve the purpose of telling search engines where the site is based: <meta name="geo.placename" content="United States" /><meta...
A Google Webmaster Help thread asked if he should include fragments (i.e. the # signs found in some URLs) in the new parameter handling feature in Google Webmaster Tools. Again, parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools gives you a way...
Back in the old days, referrer spam was a way to get quick rankings by spamming other site's referrer logs. Wikipedia explains it pretty well: Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves...
Google made historic news yesterday by declaring they do not use the meta keywords tag. Okay, I am being incredibly sarcastic. Google hasn't used the meta keywords tag for an incredibly long time and any "SEO" should know that. So...
The question of having valid HTML and would it help your rankings in Google or other search engines is not new. Most SEOs believed that it made no impact on your rankings, unless Googlebot has serious issues crawling your site....
There is a featured WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how Google treats affiliate links and if there are ways to hide your affiliate links from Google. There is discussion that Google will lower your rank of a web page,...
It seems that Google has finally gone on the record that longer domain name registration has no impact on your search engine rankings, at least not at Google. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a post from Googler, JohnMu, who...
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...
Often, when you want to create a localized version of your site, you can create a duplicate site on a ccTLD (country level top level domain). For example, if I wanted to geotarget this site to UK users, I would...
It has been a somewhat slow start to our typically monthly report based on a WebmasterWorld thread that tracks day-to-day changes with Google's web results. Overall, it seems like people are discussing two main things. (1) The Caffeine preview, Google's...
The topic of cloaking or IP deliver or useragent delivery is always a very touchy topic in the SEO industry. I am not going to get into the history, but in short, webmasters can use various methods to show GoogleBot...
JohnMu from Google posted in a Google Webmaster Help thread that Google typically crawls a site's robots.txt file on a daily basis. This is the first time (at least that I can remember) I have seen a Googler make a...
On occasion I share SEO tips on optimizing for Google News search results. Yesterday, Google's Maile Ohye posted a blog entry at the Google Webmaster Central blog on how to optimize for Google News results in both Google News and...
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...
Two days ago, I ran a poll asking our readers how accurate do they find the SEOMoz ranking factors survey. We have over a 160 responses in less than two days, so I thought I would post the results now....
Two threads at Google Webmaster Help report that .ME ccTLDs (domain names) can now be geo targeted in Google Webmaster Tools. Typically, Google doesn't allow you to geo-target a ccTLD (country specific top level domain). Google assumes that if you...
A WebmasterWorld thread has new discussion around how important it is to have keywords in the URL. This is a very old SEO topic, but new chatter in the industry is saying how keywords in the URLs actually make more...
A thread at WebmasterWorld has a webmaster who is getting a bit nervous that the 301 redirects he set up for a site won't be the best bet in the long run for his end goals. In summary, his original...
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,...
A couple weeks ago, I asked our readers how feasible it was to rank in the number one spot in Google.com and at the same time rank #1 in a regional flavored Google search space. We have just about a...
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...
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...
A HighRankings Forum thread asks if it is possible to rank number one in Google.ca and Google.com, if the site is using a .ca ccTLD and is hosted in Canada. As you can see, the question has a lot of...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has a new topic that I never covered before in my (almost) 6 years of covering SEO forum threads. A Webmaster was using a server response code of 300, which is a response of "Multiple...
It is that time of the month again and we have your Google webmaster update, brought to you by a WebmasterWorld thread. The July '09 report complaints and issues linger on. Including those issues found in the small Google July...
There is some discussion in the forums about a potential Google update underway. Keep in mind, the Google results are always in a state of fluctuation, so updates have to be more about how many people are noticing a major...
One person posted a rant in the Google Webmaster Help forums about the "Top Contributors / Bionic Posters" in that forum. In short, Top Contributors / Bionic Posters are given the title by Googlers, who believe that these people are...
About a month ago, we reported that Google slapped the porn industry with a Google penalty of some sort. Soon after we reported the issue, Google seemed to have reversed the penalty on that industry. But we all thought it...
I have been tracking the WebmasterWorld thread on the July Google changes and a lot of people are now discussing how Google is treating location specific queries differently. By that I mean, the consensus in the thread is that there...
Title tags in the search results are very important, they drive clicks, which drives sales. It now appears that Google is pulling the title for some listings from Google Maps and not from the title tag in the page's source...
There is only so much CSS can accomplish with making headlines pretty. If you want to give your headlines a pretty font that not all computers support, then you need to go with graphics. But as an SEO, you don't...
The site command (site:www.domain.com) is often used to determine the health of a web site in a search engine. The thing is, Google's site command is far from accurate and too many SEOs look at it too closely. We discussed...
We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks. The overall theme is that there is a lot...
On Monday we reported that Google spanked the adult porn industry by penalizing many of the sites. There were many theories as to why those sites were penalized. It wasn't all the adult sites that were penalized but a nice...
I rarely cover how Google is treating the adult online industry. But I have noticed a thread at Google Webmaster Help forums that is pretty heated on the topic of Google penalizing hundreds of adult and pornographic web sites over...
There is an interesting conversation taking place at WebmasterWorld on the topic of page one results versus page two results. Senior member, Whitey, asks the question, should webmasters begin preparing their sites to rank well on page two over page...
A couple weeks ago, Google made me and many SEOs very happy by adding a verified change of address feature that allows you to tell Google you are moving domains. Today, I learned from a Google Webmaster Help thread that...
Richard at SEO Gadget showed how Google seemed to have penalized specific pages of his site from ranking in the Google index. The penalty seemed to be fair, in that there were nasty comments that slipped through his comment spam...
An interesting Google Webmaster Help thread discusses the old and new way of handling duplicate content. In the old days, you either 301 redirected page A to page B, when there was duplicate content. But if that wasn't possible, you...
It is that time of the month again and we got your Google Webmaster report based on a new WebmasterWorld thread. The main thing I see repeated throughout the thread is that Google seems to be bouncing some results around...
An interesting WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that for some sites, Google may give that site higher ranking based on what day of the week it is. The SEO has been tracking the traffic from Google to the site for...
A couple weeks ago, we reported on Google's new rich snippet markups and asked our audience if they will use it on their web sites. With 90 responses in, I wanted to share the results of the poll. 53% of...
I often see threads at the Google Webmasters Help discussion forum of people who have sites that were penalized for having issues with their site in the Google Webmaster guidelines. But it is not often where you see a thread...
You wake up one morning, check out your site statistics and learn your traffic has plummeted. You then dig deeper to see the source of the traffic drop is from Google sending less traffic for your main keywords. Most SEO...
Gab Goldenberg from SEO ROI posted a thread at Google Webmasters Help discussion forums when he noticed Google began to drop his rankings for all his pages. I have been tracking the thread for about three weeks, but held off...
Part of the Google Searchology event announcements from yesterday, Google announced a new way to enhance the search results. This way is called rich snippets and it gives webmasters a way to communicate richer data to Google, so they can...
The Google Wonder Wheel and search options we have seen being tested is now the real deal in Google.com. Google announced it yesterday at the Searchology event, which Danny live blogged. In fact, Matt posted a nice recap of all...
We have written about Wikipedia's dominance of the Google search results plenty of times. A new thread at WebmasterWorld asks if it is possible to beat a number one Wikipedia ranking at Google. I wanted to poll our audience to...
In August 2005, Matt Cutts, the head of search quality at Google, launched his blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/. Notice, if you click on that URL, you are redirected to http://www.dullest.com/blog/. Why? Well, Matt explained that he was to switch things around,...
Like every month, we try to provide you with a Google webmaster report on what is going on with Google over the past month, in terms of the SEO perspective. You can read the April 2009 report, in case you...
A WebmasterWorld thread has a documented case of one webmaster forgetting to renew his domain name after a day or so. Then after the domain name expired, he renewed the domain and got things back up after maybe two days....
Over the past day or two, I have been hearing reports from webmasters and SEOs that Google's geo targeting technology has changed in a big way over in their international or localized search engines. I have one, possibly, two threads...
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....
A detailed Google Webmasters Help thread has discussion around how Google perceives affiliates and how they need to go above and beyond to warrant ranking well in the Google search results. Googler, JohnMu, answers one affiliate, as to why he...
Every month we report on a monthly WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the current state of the Google web search index. This month, the WebmasterWorld thread has very little to report. If you want to see last month's report click here....
Google continues to say that Google searches are "always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ]." But since February 2008, we have been reporting cases where Google...
Google typically cuts down the display of the title tag in the search results to no more than 65 characters. A WebmasterWorld thread asks does that mean Google won't look beyond the 65th character to determine what that page is...
There is a big misconception out there that to make a site rank well in search engines, you need to make your site look ugly. SEO (search engine optimization) does not have to look ugly. Yes, having a lot of...
A week ago, we polled our audience asking How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google? With over two-hundred responses, I thought it would be a good time to share the results with you all. How Long Does...
Reverse search engine optimization - unranking for keyword or keyword phrases you work well for. Why in the world would you want to rank less in the search engines? Well, people have their reasons. We actually covered this topic twice...
Throughout my many years (makes me sound old) in the search industry, I have heard about many filters and penalties, including a filter or penalty to prevent a site from ranking well for a specific keyword phrase. For example, if...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long does it take to rank well in Google? A good question, but typically, a new site might rank well in the short term and then drop off the radar until it begins ranking again....
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...
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...
In a Google Webmaster Help thread, Googler, JohnMu, might be stating the obvious, but it is always good hearing it from someone who is in the know. JohnMu, answered a question about links, but in his answer, he confirmed that...
Googlers know they have to be very careful what they say in public forums when I am watching. In a recent Google Webmasters Help thread, Googler, JohnMu replied to a thread, and I am going to beat him up for...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks an interesting question. If you have a space in the nofollow link attribute, does Google consider it the same as having no space? Let me explain. A standard syntax for the nofollow attribute looks like this:...
A WebmasterWorld thread has several different webmasters reporting seeing huge spikes in Google referrals recently and then those spikes dropping down. The first post was on February 28th, but the spikes continue to happen on random days for several webmasters....
About a week and a half ago, there was the start of discussion around Google's brand push in the algorithm. Some people started noticing that for some queries (mostly generic queries), more "big brands" were showing up in the search...
In our monthly tradition, we are reporting on the March 2009 Google Search changes as seen via the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread. You can see the February report that we posted last month to catch up. This month, one member feels...
In August 2005 was the first time I saw "According To" Google results show up in the search results. Since then, they show up for very specific queries. I spotted an interesting thread, where a webmaster asked why is his...
There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld that Google may be biased towards showing more and more "big brands" in the top Google web search results. Yea, yea - big brands have more links, more trust, more pages and bigger...
Are you one of those webmasters that simply cannot get out of the Google penalty box? Are you convinced you have a penalty that is keeping you from the first page of Google? Have you tried everything and still cannot...
A common but difficult question was asked at HighRanking Forums about the issue of targeting different countries. My advice for when it comes to targeting different countries is almost always to have two different sites on TLDs (top level domains)...
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...
Here is the February 2009 webmaster report on Google's search result changes based on the WebmasterWorld thread. I will summarize what people are noticing in the Google search results, as per the thread. Google accidently labeled the internet as malwareSome...
A HighRankings Forum thread has a very interesting topic just getting started. The thread creator asks, "What Has Changed In Seo In Last 2 Years?" This is a great question. People think that SEO tactics are always changing. You need...
Google Operating System wrote about a new personalization feature Google is testing, named Preferred Sites. How does it works? You go to your search preferences and enter in a list of domains or sub domains that you prefer. If Google...
I figured I take a different look at Matt's Give Google feedback on "noresults" pages. In short, Matt Cutts of Google wants you to submit feedback to Google on search results that lead to reviews, but those reviews don't actually...
An interesting WebmasterWorld thread discusses the phenomenon of redesigning a site, with brand new URL structure, 301 redirecting the old URLs to the new, and seeing an almost immediate boost in rankings at Google.com. In fact, WebmasterWorld moderator, minnapple, has...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks for tips on how he can get his site indexed and crawled faster by Google. The thing is, most, if not all, of these tips apply not to just Google, but any search engine, such as...
Ever since Universal Search hit Google, we have been noticing flavors of video thumbnails and static images left aligned on the Google search results. A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around this latest format and some are happy with it, while...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a webmaster who noticed Google is treating his mobile site as a duplicate site to his main site. This user has his mobile site on a subdomain of m.domain.com, where his main...
An updated WebmasterWorld thread has new reports of changes at Google.co.uk and Google.com.au. Senior member internetheaven, who keeps an eye on the Google UK results said: Google.co.uk is all over the place. The results for one of the more competitive...
We recently covered a comment from Googler JohnMu on if click data is used in Google for ranking purposes. Of course, John gave the typical Google response. But now we have a comment from Matt Cutts of Google at a...
In response to an upset webmaster's post in the Google Webmaster Help forums, Googler JohnMu wrote down four things that some people suspect Google of doing, which he says he has never seen since working at Google. These include: Googlers...
I found a fun but serious SEO mistake in a Google Webmaster Help thread that I wanted to share with you all. But I felt it would be fun, if you had the time, to share at least one of...
Last night I was noticing Twitters and some blog posts, as well as a DigitalPoint Forums thread that asked why did Google ban themselves. In short, a search for [google], [analytics], [adwords], [adsense], [google adwords], and so on, did not...
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...
In our continued coverage of the a WebmasterWorld thread started by senior member CainIV, we learn two more things. These two items are likely obvious to most, but have been confirmed (at least to CainIV) that they are true based...
The question over Google using click data, such as how many people click on your site from a Google result, how many people click click the back button and so on, as it relates to ranking web pages in Google...
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...
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...
I have seen two smallish thread, relative to a normal Google update thread, that discusses changes in the Google search results. A WebmasterWorld thread and DigitalPoint Forums thread has discussion around some changes being noticed in Google. Now, typically these...
Over the course of the past few months, I have hearing buzz from the forums and from people in the SEO industry that Google is dropping pages out of their index. How do these people know? Well, when they do...
Over the weekend, Webmasters started to notice major changes with the Google search results. Most of those changes are documented in an incredibly long but only three-day long thread at WebmasterWorld. I decided to wait on reporting on this thread...
US law requires an age verification page for when someone visits a web page about pornography, alcohol or other adult oriented pages. But this comes with a challenge for webmasters who want to make sure those pages are accessible to...
Google's JohnMu from the Webmaster Central team has done a blog post named First Click Free for Web Search where he clarifies that the First Click Free program is allowed to be used for web search as well. In short,...
The topic of Google Still Showing Different Results Base on Case Sensitivity seems to still be an issue every now and then. Again, Google says they do not differentiate results base on case sensitivity: Google searches are NOT case sensitive....
Last night, Google update their Webmaster Guidelines to remove a single line that reads: Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites. In fact, I was...
Andy Beard started a Google Groups thread asking why Google seems to be handling tagged pages (tag cloud results) in a "fairly random fashion." Andy goes through examples of how Google sometimes indexes these pages, sometimes shows a cache page,...
The Google blog has officially said that they prefer that in most cases, you should not use rewrites to change your dynamic URLs to static looking URLs. In my opinion, this is a major 180° on basic SEO practices. SEO...
So, you have been penalized by Google. You think you cleaned up your site and you submitted a reinclusion (reconsideration) request. But you have not heard back from Google. Do you submit another reconsideration request? If so, how soon? That...
David Naylor asked if Google is starting to hate blogs, based on his blog having indexing issues. He gave several forms of evidence to support the issues Google is having when indexing his blog. Well, blog owners and writers, do...
Friday, Google posted a blog post named Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty". The blog post basically describes what many of us have been saying for a long time. Google does not typically penalize for duplicate content, but duplicate content can...
A Google Groups thread asks if Google can crawl and index UTF-8 encoded URLs. The quick answer is yes, Google can crawl and index these URLs. Google's JohnMu provided a link to the Google search results as proof, showing Google...
Over the past couple weeks, we reported about two issues: (1) Did Google Stop Crawling Blogger Blogs on Personalized Domains? (2) Google Bloggers Having Sitemap File & Continued Crawling Issues? Google seems to have resolved both issues. The Google Groups...
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...
The historically popular search engine ranking software, WebPosition, has reportedly been blocked by Google from checking rankings automatically. A WebmasterWorld thread reports that WebPosition is no longer able to process one's search rankings as of August 5, 2008. Old time...
There is a world of SEOs who continually search Google to track how their keyword phrases are ranking. But they do not just search the main Google.com page, they search each and every Google data center by IP address. A...
Google Webmaster Tools is now reporting "too many redirects" within Sitemaps files. A WebmasterWorld thread has reported the warnings back last week. I have finally hunted down a screen shot of such an error: The only way to see this...
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...
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...
I have a client with a very large database driven site. The site is extremely crawlable, which makes for a really nice amount of pages for very specific search terms. I cannot share the site I am talking about, because...
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...
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...
Recently I have been reading and hearing a lot of webmasters complain about a huge drop in their Google traffic. There are just too many threads to reference, so I thought I reference one valuable post by JohnMu of Google....
Google's sitelinks, which we have covered extensively are the little links you see under a search result in Google, typically between 4 and 8 sub-links. Here is a picture of our Sitelinks: A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about the importance...
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,...
I really enjoy threads that get into the details of such small details, which in reality, can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts. The topic is which anchor text counts, the first found on the page, all found...
Tamar covered the Google UK July report yesterday but I noticed a new observation from Gabs at Search Engine Roundtable Forums. Gabs pointed out that Google's UK search algorithm seems to be returning an unusual number of sites related to...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks how much of an impact will a site see if it is moved from a Dubai host to a USA based host? The answer is not really all that known. This webmaster's main concern is that...
If you had to pick between using an Alt attribute in your images versus a Title attribute in your images, I would go with an Alt attribute. The alt attribute is basically "alternate text" for your image, it is used...
We have talked about URL length issues and SEO and if long URLs are spammy in the past. But now we have a Google Groups thread with a Googler, JounMu, actually commented on a specific URL as being a bit...
A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google "hates" .info or .tv domains? The answer is simply no. This question was brought up at least three times last night in the Google Webmaster Live Chat event, which I documented and not...
There are many SEOs spilt on the topic of the value in submitting a Sitemap to Google. In my opinion, it is clear that if a site has very poor navigation and on-page SEO, submitting a Sitemap might be your...
Chris Boggs featured a WebmasterWorld thread when I was away. Chris focused on sharing some of the theories behind Google's trust factors. I wanted to possibly highlight this thread one more time and ask for you to chime in. We...
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...
A weekend WebmasterWorld thread is reporting dozens and dozens of webmasters noticing a major traffic drop due to Google. Some of these webmasters reported traffic declines in the 90% range. Many of the issues seem to be that Google has...
A couple months ago we reported on an SEOMoz post that was debated at Sphinn on the topic of which anchor text counts? Is it only the first anchor text on the page linking to a specific URL or is...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
It looks that Google might be conducting some sort of major update. Yes, I know - Google is constantly updating, constantly adding content and "improving" the algorithm. But some changes make a bigger impression in the forums then others. I...
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...
Before beginning, I know a few of you will be upset I wrote this at all. But I want to show you the history here. A WebmasterWorld thread asks what is the story with the noarchive META tag and the...
About a week ago I ran a poll that asked Can Someone Hurt A Competitors Google Rankings With Links? I ran the poll because there is a lot of debate around this topic. So I figured, why not ask you...
search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017091.htmlBack in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site,...
A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting observations, which I thought would be fun to name the "Floating Four" symptom. In short, it seems like there are some pages that happen to float into the fourth position at Google's search results...
Remember when I reported that we saw Google Sitelinks in position 60? I said then that it seems Google is admitting to the minus 60 penalty: What I do find very interesting is that Googler, JohnMu, tells the webmaster to...
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...
WebmasterWorld moderator posted a detailed thread at WebmasterWorld claiming that he feels the proxy hijacks that Google has suffered from in 2007, and was getting better towards the end of 2007 seems to be 100% cleaned up now. IncrediBill concluded:...
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...
I'll be honest, I keep watching the WebmasterWorld thread discussing the April 2008 Google update, code named Update Dewey. The latest thing that I noticed were recent reports from very senior members saying that Google is shuffling around the results,...
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...
There are reports from several sources including WebmasterWorld that Google is having a tough time mapping the proper URLs with the associated page titles for those URLs. One report says that Google is treating searches for portal A on a...
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...
Juicy title, isn't it? Well, that is the topic of discussion at a WebmasterWorld. A senior member decided to post some generic, not specific examples, ways to hurt a website's Google rankings. Here are some of the methods you can...
Google has changed how they handle displaying search results for when you use quotes in the search box and when there are not many or any matches. For example, a search on "super running for life" at Google would normally...
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...
One of the oldest questions in the search engine optimization practice is on the META description. The META description is this little tag you include in the header file, that provides a machine readable short summary of your page. Many...
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...
Taking you back to the -60 thread I blogged about earlier. The thread is at Google Groups and it shows us a little of something that may be obvious but should be spoken about. Once you are penalized in Google...
A Google Groups thread on the -60 penalty at Google (there are so many of these now, -6, -10, -250, etc) now has several responses from Matt Cutts of Google. Matt replies specifically to the nature of the posters site...
I am very confused by a search result at Google Netherlands. Stay with me now, and search for internet publishing at Google.nl. What comes up in the second result for me is www.publiceren.net, which looks to be a video result....
A Google Groups thread asks about hiding content using AJAX and CSS. Google Webmaster Central rep, Wysz, said: If your text is temporarily "hidden" as part of your site's UI but is still intended for the user to see at...
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...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long should he or she wait for after making a change to see if that change worked in Google. In this specific case, the SEO has a web site that seems to be penalized. He/she...
Over the weekend, in a WebmasterWorld thread that is tracking the Google February 2008 SERP changes, the recent discussion is around a new Google update. This Google update is reportedly impacting the search results in the position two, three, four...
A couple weeks ago we reported seeing that Google.com's Country Specific Weights Getting Stronger. But some are seriously complaining about how much it has impacted them in the US search results at Google.com. The original WebmasterWorld thread is now 54...
Eric Lander wrote a piece at Search Engine Journal named NoFollow: An SEO Red Flag? which sparked some interesting debate over in a Sphinn thread. The question at hand is, does using a nofollow attribute on many of your links...
A Sphinn thread has interesting discussion that asks if there is such a thing as a "fresh content penalty." Is there such a thing as Google preventing some sites from being indexed quickly and showing up in the Google results...
A WebmasterWorld has several reports from non-US based site owners saying their rankings in the main USA based Google.com has dropped from the first page to page five or beyond. This is not just one report from people complaining, there...
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...
Sadly, it is not uncommon to hear of a site that has recently been hacked. Google frequently has to deal with sites that get hacked and code gets injected into the site. If that happens, Google sometimes has to delist...
In late December, we reported about a possible Position 6 Google Penalty. What that meant was that many people noticed their number one or two rankings all of a sudden dropped to position number 6. Google's Matt Cutts denied such...
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...
Permanent redirects, also known as 301 redirects, are the life blood for webmasters when they make changes to their URL structures. It is common practice and knowledge, that when you change a URL from one location to a new location,...
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...
WebmasterWorld administrator tedster has informed us that Google will be treating subdomains like they treat folders on a site. In short, he said, Matt Cutts said Google will roll out in a few weeks a new filter to make sure...
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 -...
What SEO doesn't like talking about spam? Now add a newly granted Google patent that talks about spam and an SEO is in heaven! Bill at created a Cre8asite Forums thread about a new granted patent named Methods and systems...