Since Google finally released the real time Penguin update last year, there hasn’t been any word about changes they have made since then. But what about changes in the future? Gary Illyes has confirmed that Google plans to be transparent about “big substantial changes” to the Google Penguin algo. @akuchaaaan007 I'd work hard to make […]
Country & Language Selector Popups Impacted by Google’s Mobile Interstitial Change
Earlier this month, Google made a change which sees the use of popups and interstitials on mobile sites receive a slight demotion in the search result rankings. Google has made some types of popups exempt from the change, but of course SEOs are looking for other use cases where Google might turn a blind […]
Google Testing Price Trends for Local Hotel Listings
Google is testing a new feature that shows up in the local panel for a hotel listing. Below the sponsored hotel rates, it now also shows an additional price trends section. Here is what it looks like: You can see that it is in a carousel style, and you can select individual dates for more […]
Google Crawl Budget: What SEOs Need to Know About Googlebot Crawling
Gary Illyes from Google has posted a blog entry on the Google Webmaster blog, touching on Googlebot and crawl budget issues that site owners might have. First, it is important to note that not all site owners will be impacted by crawl budget issues. For the most part, sites with 4,000 or fewer URLs generally […]
Google Local 4-Packs Showing 1 Ad & 3 Organic Local Listings
We have seen local 4-packs from Google where Google will show 4 paid local listings in a local 4-pack. But it seems Google is now testing a single map pack with a combination of both paid and organic listings. Sergey Alakov spotted this in action this morning, with one paid local listing followed by three […]
Google AdWords Testing Local Inventory Ads in Local Pack
Google appears to be testing a hybrid of a local pack listing with shopping ads, where it is highlighting products available locally, but within a local pack style, including map. Mike Blumenthal shared a screenshot showing it in action: It shows a thumbnail of the product, along with details such as price and ratings, but […]
How Google Ranks “Top Stories” News in Search Results
We don’t often hear about how Google ranks their news related results nor how the “Top Stories” are chosen for desktop and mobile users. Usually when someone from the search team comments on the news results, it is to say they use their own algorithm for news. But John Mueller in the Google Webmaster Office […]
Mobile First Index: Google to Notify Sites of Possible Issues via Search Console
In today’s Google Webmaster Office Hours, John Mueller said that they plan to send notices to webmasters via Google Search Console, alerting them that they would be likely to suffer issues when the mobile first index takes affect. While those who use responsive design likely won’t have many or any issues, those with other mobile […]
SEO Weather Reporting Tools & Google Ranking Experiments
SEO weather reports – the trackers that track a number of keywords in the search results, and report on the volatility in those searches – have become a pretty popular way for webmasters and SEOs to kind of gauge what is happening in the search results on a daily basis. The topic came up about […]
No Need to Change Canonicals from Desktop for Mobile First Indexing
Just a reminder, if you are updating any canonicals, you do not need to update all desktop/mobile canonicals on your site to make the mobile version be the primary URL. We included this information in our Google Mobile First Indexing Guide, but some people are still asking whether they need to switch or not. @shaunmaharaj […]