December, normally a pretty slow month in the Google organic SEO world, at least in 2017 was super busy, again, this was unusual. The big things that happened over the past month was of course the confirmed Google updates we named the Maccabees updates that seemed to target keyword permutations as well as Fred like stuff and even hit some celebrity sites. We also saw a PBN penalty roll out and maybe a featured snippets/knowledge graph algorithm update. No, we are not done.
Google added a year plus of data to Search Console, after years and years of promising it. Google published voice search quality raters guidelines, updated their SEO starter guide after several years and posted official advice on the mobile first index. Google also extended their snippets and said you can make your meta descriptions longer and released a new rich results testing tool.
John Mueller said nofollow all links in guest posts, he started a new awesome SEO snippets video series, and was super busy helping webmasters on Christmas. Danny Sullivan promised more communication and he will not keep quiet. And Google's former CEO and current Executive Chairman is stepping down.
So yea, it was a pretty busy December for Google.
Currently, the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is pretty slow, which is a nice thing. But to see the last webmaster report click here.
Here is the recap of the past month:
Google Algorithm Updates & Shifts:
- Google Confirms Search Ranking Updates But Calls Them Minor & Many
- Google Maccabees Update Analysis: Sites Targeting Many Keyword Permutations
- Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update: The Maccabees Update
- Google Maccabee Updates Hurt Many Celebrity Web Sites
- New Google Update Targets Link Spam & Other Unnatural Links?
- Did Google's Knowledge Graph Panels Algorithm Change Yesterday?
- Google Assistant & Voice Search Guidelines
- Hallelujah! Google Search Console Adds A Years Worth Of Data On Beta
- Google Plans To Roll Out New Search Console Early Next Year
- Google Search Console Notifying Webmasters Of TLS Upgrade Requirements
- Google Finally Updates The SEO Starter Guide After Several Years
- Google Finally Posts Webmaster Tips On Mobile-First Index
- Google Now Recommends Longer Meta Descriptions For New Longer Snippets
- Google "Rich Results" Testing Tool
- Google: Mobile Internal Link Structure Doesn't Have To Be The Same
- Google: Watch Your Log Files To See If You Moved To The Mobile-First Index
- Google: Read More AMP Links Can Go To Read More HTML Pages
- Google: We Didn't Find Crawling From Outside Of The United States Useful
- Google Search Analytics Bug With AMP Non-Rich Results
- Google: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Have No Advantage In Search
- Google: Fetching Content From Other Web Sites Does Not Add Value
- Google: GoogleBot Doesn't Make Up URLs To Crawl & Index
- Google: Avoid Using Google Tag Manager For SEO Experiments
- Google: Long Term Noindex Will Lead To Nofollow On Links
- Google: Showing Structured Data Markup Just To GoogleBot Is Cloaking
- Google: IPv6 & HTTP/2 Works But You Should Also Support IPv4 & HTTP/1.x
- Google On Trailing Slashes & How It Impacts SEO & Search Rankings
- Google Defines Doorway Pages: Pages For Ranking For Keyword Permutations
- Google Responds To Blog Bribes: It Can Lead To Search Penalties
- Google's John Mueller: Nofollow All Guest Posts Links
- Google: SEOs Don't Know If Unnatural Links Work Or Not
- Google: We Don't Recommend Generic Disavow Files
- Tracking Down A Google Penalty Over PBNs
- Google Adds To Featured Snippets: Images, Related Search & Content & People Relations
- Google Tests Mobile Search Interface With Few Organic Results
- Google Tests Related Searches Box In Image Search
- Google Moves AMP Icon To Top Right In Top Stories Carousel
- Google Tests Favicons In Search Results Snippets Again
- Google Tests Live Blog Progress Bar Divider
- Google Rolls Out Travel, Flight & Flight Search Features
- Google Search Results By Celebrities Over Selfie Videos
- Google Maps Doesn't Allow Negative Reviews From Current Or Former Employees
- Google's New Map Pin Design
- SEO Snippets: Google Starts Up The Short Webmaster Videos Again
- Google's 2017 Inspirational Year In Search Review: It's All About How
- Google Hopes To Communicate Larger Algorithm Changes In Future
- Danny Sullivan: I Was Not Hired By Google To Keep Quiet
- John Mueller Helping Webmasters On Christmas Eve Year After Year
- Eric Schmidt To Step Down As Executive Chairman At Google & Alphabet
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
