One of the concerns that people have had over switching to HTTPS is whether there would be any PageRank loss, even a small amount, by redirecting all pages from the HTTP version to the HTTPS version. After all, no one wants to make the switch for the tiny ranking boost (which acts as more of […]
France Wants to Ban Linking to Any Site Without Permission
If you want to link to a website in France, you would need to get explicit permission from the rights holder”, if two Parliament Members in France are successful in their proposal amendment. The idea was proposed but rejected by the Legislative Commission, but it is brought back again. Socialist Karine Berger and Valérie Rabault […]
Google Sending Confirmation Notices for Spam Reports
Google seems to have made a small change for those who submit spam reports via Google Search Console… a new confirmation email WNC-652000 for “Spam report successfully submitted.” Here is the new notice they send out for a submitted spam report. Spam report successfully submitted Google has received a spam report for site http://www.example.com. We […]
Google & Bing Display Stock Prices in AutoSuggest Drop Down
Google has added another new feature to their autocomplete drop down – stock prices. Bing has also added the same, although with lesser success when compared to Google. Here is how it appears when you begin searching for the stock price of Facebook in Google: When you click that autocomplete result, it takes you to […]
Indirect Benefits of CTR in the Google Search Results
Google has long said they don’t use CTR as a ranking factor, although they sometimes use it when doing experiments in the search results to judge quality of the serps. The question came up (again) in today’s webmaster hangout, and John Mueller went into detail about what he sees as indirect benefits from CTR in […]
Why Google Doesn’t Use Google Analytics for Ranking Purposes
Multiple Googlers have said many times that Google doesn’t use Google Analytics data for ranking purposes, but have never really gone into detail about why this is. In today’s hangout, when John Mueller was commenting about CTR not being a ranking factor (again, something they have said multiple times) he got into specifics about why […]
Submit Reconsideration Requests in Same Language as Website
If you work on international sites, Gary Illyes from Google made an interesting comment about filing reconsideration requests – make sure you are filing the request in the same language as your website. TIL: Writing a reconsideration request in English if the site is not English is a brilliant way to shoot yourself in the […]
Links from Forms Don’t Pass PageRank
This was an interesting question in today’s hangout with John Mueller. Someone asked about the potential impact of an affiliate/advertising link that was placed inside of a form tag as a user action, and whether this could be a problem from a link perspective. Now links inside forms cannot have a nofollow attribute attached to […]
Valid HTML Not a Ranking Factor But Invalid Can Cause These Issues
In the changes yesterday that Google made to their webmaster guidelines, Google changed the phrasing of “clear HTML” to “valid HTML.” So as expected, that phrase got a lot of attention, especially from those who advocate for compliant W3C validation, which Google links to. But is valid HTML a ranking factor? In today’s webmaster hangout, […]
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: Breakdown of All Changes Made
As part of Google’s redesign of Google Search Console, they have released a brand new version of their Webmaster Guidelines. Here is a line-by-line of every change, addition and removal from the previous version. So let’s get started! Introduction The first change is the ommission of a single phrase within their opening paragraph. Previously, it […]