In this week’s Google Webmaster Hangout, a question was raised about using rel canonical across an entire site, with each page using the rel canonical to point to itself, in order to prevent the possibility of duplicate content being indexed. The question asked was “Is it still okay to put rel canonical on every single […]
Archives for 2015
Google Revamping App Indexing Error Reporting, Adds to Data Anomalies Report
Google is revamping their app indexing error reporting that is shown to webmasters within Google Search Console. This showed up in a brand new section Google has added to their “Data Anomalies in Search Console” page. The new section, Crawl Errors Report, includes the reference to the new app indexing error reporting. Nov 20 (mobile […]
Apple’s Applebot Follows Googlebot’s Instructions in Robots.txt Files
John Mueller from Google pointed out an interesting fact about Apple’s Applebot – if a robots.txt file makes no mention of Applebot, but does mention Googlebot, the Applebot will follow the same instructions as for Googlebot. Apple’s Applebot is used for both Siri and Spotlight Suggestions for iOS users. What if you do not want […]
Disavowed Links Continue to Show in Google’s Search Console Link Report
If you have ever wondered about whether or not disavowed links would continue to show up in Google Search Console’s Link Report, the answer is yes. While most who deal with links all the time are aware of it, those who might only be doing link removals on a smaller scale on a single site […]
Google Manual Actions on a Subdomain Don’t Affect Rest of the Site
In a recent Google webmaster help thread on the forums, an interesting question was raised about whether a manual action received on a subdomain on a site could impact the rest of the site that is not on the subdomain. And the answer is no. John Mueller responded to a help thread where a dev […]
Google Removes & Changes Location Settings in Search Tools
If you use the Google.com domain, or you are in the US and are defaulted to it, you have probably noticed that the location settings feature in the “Search Tools” section of the search results is now gone. And if you are using an international version of Google, they have changed the options for drilling […]
Yahoo Testing Search Results Style PLA Shopping Ads
Yahoo is testing out a new style of shopping ad (PLA), and this one closely mimics a regular search result. Here is their new style. It includes a title along with a traditional description snippet, a line with the price, and then the URL. It looks very similar to an organic search result, as well […]
Manual Action Link Penalties After Penguin Goes Real Time
If you have wondered whether there would still be manual action link penalties once Penguin moves to being real time, we now know the answer. Gary Illyes from Google was asked the question on Twitter, and the answer is yes, there will still be manual actions given for link penalties. @DonnieStrompf no — Gary Illyes […]
Why Wikipedia Went Secure & Why All Websites Should Do The Same
It has been no secret that Google has been pushing hard to see more websites go secure, complete with the HTTPS ranking boost to encourage more sites to do so. Jimmy Wales was recently interviewed and contributed some of his own thoughts on why encryption is so important, and gives insight into why more webmasters […]
Google Adds Holiday Hour Alerts to Local 3-Pack Results
We have seen Google add holiday hours alerts to their local Google My Business individual listings, but they are now also adding it to the top of local 3-pack listings too. Here is how it appears in the 3-pack: This is for a 3-pack listing in India, but it is likely we will see the […]