In a move to minimize their legal risk, Google has removed snippets and thumbnails from German news sites in their Google News results. Google made the announcement on their German Google Product Blog. At issue is German News requirements that Google and other search engines pay a fee associated with showing snippets from news sources, […]
Changing to HTTPS will not fix other Google penalty issues on the site
John Mueller recently commented that switching to HTTPS would not increase your rankings noticeably in Google, despite many webmasters scrambling to make their site’s secure following Google’s announcement that it was a lightweight ranking factor. Mueller has also made some additional comments about HTTPS as rankings, particularly that some webmasters were considering that it would […]
Private Blog Networks Were Probably Victims of Latest Panda Update
Now that the latest round of Panda updates has rolled out, it is obvious that the Private Blog Networks (PBN’s) downfall was baked into the latest Panda algorithm. When the PBN’s were first hit, they were the recipients of penalties in Google Webmaster Tools for having “thin content with little or no added value.” This […]
Huge Jump in Google Answer Boxes Means Less Traffic for Websites
Google Answer Boxes has jumped up significantly in the Google search results, starting with a 60% jump on September 26th. Answer boxes now appear for 3.5% of all search queries. Unfortunately for marketers though, more answer boxes means that it is more likely that searchers will find their information directly on the search results page, […]
Switching to HTTPS Will Not Increase Your Search Rankings
After webmasters were scrambling to make their sites secure with Google’s announcement that using https would give those sites a ranking boost, John Mueller states that using https will not visibly increase your rankings. In a Google Webmaster Help Office Hours, the question about https as a ranking boost came up. I wouldn’t expect any […]
End of an Era: Yahoo Closing the Yahoo Directory
Any old school SEO will remember the days when a Yahoo Directory listing was really important. And while not many still submitted sites regularly to the directory, it still has a place in many SEO’s hearts. But Yahoo has announced that they will be closing the Yahoo Directory later this year. Yahoo announced on their […]
Large Popups on Websites Could Trigger Page Layout Algorithm Penalty
This will be good news for surfers but bad news for marketers employing this tactic – sites that display large popups as soon as a visitor loads a site could trigger the above the fold layout algorithm penalty. “When we look at the page layout, we look at what we crawl with Googlebot,” says John […]
New Google Panda Algorithm Rolling Out, Ranks Small & Medium Sites Higher
Google has confirmed that they are slowly rolling out a new Panda algorithm update, the first one since the 4.0 update that happened back on May 20, 2014. The latest Panda algo began slowly rolling out this week with plans for it to continue rolling out until sometime next week. Pierre Far from Google states […]
In-Depth Articles Significantly Increased in Google Search Results
Mozcast has noticed a pretty significant jump in the number of in-depth articles being displayed in the Google Search results. Looking at Mozcast data, there was a dip on September 9th before it increased to 12.7% the following day. However, the September 25, 2014 jump went up by 30%, with in-depth articles now being shown […]
Google Tracking Number of Phone Calls Made via Google My Business
A great addition to Google My Business is a feature that shows the number of times a business is phoned from a Google My Business (GMB) listing. Owen Kane was the first to spot the addition. Google is getting the data by tracking clicks made on the phone number, so businesses that tend to be […]