If you don’t want Google to include a site search box within the listing for your website in the Google search results, Google has added a new tag to disable the functionality. Spotted by Menashe Avramov, you simply add <meta name=”google” content=”nositelinkssearchbox” /> They have also added information about the new tag to their “Meta […]
Archives for October 2014
Blocking Googlebot from CSS & JavaScript Can Hurt Google Rankings
Many webmasters block Googlebot from crawling both CSS and JavaScript for ranking purposes to try and combat things such as the page layout algorithm. But Google has been advising webmasters not block Googlebot from crawling either, and it has now officially been added to Google’s technical guidelines that blocking CSS and JavaScript so can hurt a website’s […]
Google’s Pirate Update Increases Visibility of Smaller Torrent Sites
Google recently made a change to their algorithm designed to demote major sites hosting pirated content, but the algorithm has a secondary side effect – bringing more visibility to smaller torrent sites that had been previously buried in the search results due to the more popular sites ranking so well. The new algo takes the […]
Facebook Wants to Host Linked Articles Rather Than Redirect to Mobile Websites
In a move sure to offend many website publishers, Facebook wants to host articles that users link to, and serve their own Facebook ads on those articles. The change, which would affect users viewing Facebook on mobile, means that website publishers lose not only the traffic to their own site, missing out on the potential […]
Larry Page Transfers Leadership of Search, Google+ & Ad Products to Sundar Pichai
In a surprising move, Larry Page has transferred leadership of multiple core products from himself to Sundar Pichai, a Senior Vice President at Google. Pichai was previously in charge of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, and will now see research, search, maps, Google+, commerce and ad products and infrastructure added to his responsibilities. Page will […]
Twitpic Handing Over Domain Name & Archive to Twitter
In what seems to be the final chapter of Twitpic, the original photo sharing service for Twitter users, the company has agreed to hand over the twitpic.com domain name and photo archive to Twitter. We weren’t able to find a way to keep Twitpic independent. However, I’m happy to announce that we have reached an […]
YouTube’s Gaming Division Hires eSports Commentator Ryan Wyatt
YouTube is continuing their push of their YouTube gaming division by hiring eSports commentator Ryan Wyatt. Wyatt, who is also known as his gaming handle Fwiz, made the announcement on Twitter from an Major League Gaming (MLG) event in Ohio this weekend. Update: I’m now the Head of Gaming @YouTube! I’m excited to be working […]
New Top Level Domains Have No Ranking Advantage in Google, Not Geotargeted
John Mueller from Google reminds webmasters that the newly added TLDs do not come with any ranking benefit in Google. It’s been a while since Matt posted https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts/posts/4VaWg4TMM5F , but this is still the case. There’s no inherent advantage in search that comes from using any of the new top-level domains (TLDs). They’re also not […]
Bing Ads Adding Third Party Publishers in AdSense-like Program
Bing Ads is planning to add quality third party publishers to their network to display ads from Bing Ads advertisers. David Pann made the announcement at Bing Ads Connect in Redmond Thursday. The program would be similar to Google AdSense, with ads being displayed on publisher sites that are triggered both through search and contextual. […]
German Publishers Ask Google News to Display Snippets & Thumbnails Again
German publishers of multiple news sites have asked Google to start displaying snippets and thumbnails once again, 3 weeks after Google removed them from Google News. In a highly publicized case, 200+ German news publishers were fighting Google in court over the use of snippets and thumbnails in Google News, and Google made the decision […]