For the last recap of this month, we have for you the December Google webmaster report where I summarize the most important Google SEO/webmaster related topics for the month.
There seemed to have been a Google update but Google wouldn't confirm it, while we wait on Penguin. Google finally released their full search quality raters guidelines this past month. Google said clicks matter for local search, then retracted it. They also removed the location filter in the search results and added a bunch of features to the Search Console.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has slow but typical chatter - nothing new to report today there.
There is a lot more, so see our summary below:
Google Algorithms:
- Google: Despite Chatter, There Is No Update To Announce
- Google: The Next Penguin Update Will Be A Huge Change, Real-Time
- Google's Gary Illyes: Penguin Won't Be Released Unfinished
- Matt Cutts: Google Released Their "Secret Sauce" With TensorFlow, Machine Learning System
- Google: Only A Very Small Group Has Access To The Google Search Algorithms
- Google Publishes The Full Version Of The Search Quality Rating Guidelines
- Google Admits Clicks Impact Your Google My Business Listing Rankings
- Google Changes Statement On Clicks Impact Google My Business Rankings
- Google To Target Deceptive Mobile Affiliate Traffic Networks
- Google Location Filter Option Changed In The Search Results
- Google's Near Parameter Still Lets You See Results By Specific Location
- Official Details From Google On New Google+ Local Pages
- New Google Search Console Notifications For SSL/TLS Mismatch Errors
- Google Site Command May Return Featured Snippets
- Google's John Mueller: Expert Product Descriptions Not Critical For Rankings?
- Google: Structured Data Not Currently Used For Featured Snippets
- Google John Mueller: Top SEO Advice "Be Consistent"
- Google: Don't Follow Big Sites SEO, They Often Get It Wrong
- Google Search Console Fetch & Render Shows Severity Of Blocked Resources
- Google: Disavow File Has A 2MB File Size Limit
- Overstock's Stock Drops After Earnings Drop Due To Google Ranking Change
- Google On When 301 Redirects Are Not Enough: The Moz Example
- Google: Crawl Frequency & Ranking Higher Are Not Directly Related
- Google: HTTP2 Support For GoogleBot Coming Soon, Maybe By End Of Year
- Google No No: Linking Their Search Results To Twitter Search Results
- Google Now Rank Apps Without Web Content & Can Stream Apps Without Installing Them
- Google Does Use User Metrics For App Rankings But Not Web Rankings
- Woes For Google Search Console Crawl Errors For Apps Continues
- Accelerated Mobile Pages For Google Search Coming Soon
- Google Search Smarter At Superlatives, Times & Complicated Queries
- Google Launches Red Live Label & Live Blogs Schema Markup
- Google's Universal Assistant & Ambient Computing To Change Search As We Know It
For last month's recap, click here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
