A question came up on a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours asking about the fetch and submit feature. The person had been told by his SEO agency that he needed to resubmit 10 pages every month to Google, and this despite also having a sitemap in place for the site. So for the most part, […]
Google’s Mobile Interstitial & Popup Change Now Live: What to Know
Google’s change that would see pages devalued for using popups and interstitials for mobile users coming the Google search results is now live. This means if you are showing either popups or interstitials to Google traffic, that your pages will be downranked in the Google search results. Here are the changes and what you need […]
Google Adds “Trending in the News” Autosuggest on Mobile
Google is testing a new autosuggest in the mobile search results, this time highlighting specific news that Google sees as trending when the search is done. Here is what it looks like, when you start searching for something trending: When you click on the trending in the news link, it takes you to a regular […]
Google Still Sending Unnatural Links Manual Actions After Penguin Update
If you have been wondering about whether or not Google is still sending out unnatural inbound link manual actions now that Penguin has changed over to the new real time Penguin, the question came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours. The new real time Penguin, which launched in September 2016, was a significantly […]
Google: Normal for Not All Pages to Be Indexed on a Website
Getting all pages indexed in Google can be a challenge for some site owners. But if Google isn’t indexing every page from your sitemap, is that a problem or is that just how Google handles it normally? The question came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours, from a site owner who was wondering […]
Google: How to Handle Near Identical Product Pages for Search
It is always one of those challenging decisions for site owners – what to do about products that are so similar that when you try and index them individually, they are often flagged as duplicate content because there are only minor differences, such as the size or the color. The question came up in a […]
Google Doesn’t Throttle or Restrict Traffic to Sites in Search Results
It comes up periodically where webmasters will question whether Google has any kind of throttle in place to restrict traffic to sites, particularly new ones, and if it will stop sending traffic to the site in question once a specific quota has been met. The question came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours. […]
Differences in Google Search Console Link Report for Small & Large Sites
Google has often said that there is only a selection of URLs that will show as links when viewing the report in Google Search Console. But John Mueller made an interesting comment about the differences in links between small and large sites, and in the links they show. We don’t have any strict guidelines on […]
Personalization Affects Search Analytics Positioning in Google Search Console
Does personalization impact the search positions shown in Search Analytics within Google Search Console? It does, but it is definitely something that confuses many site owners when they cannot match up what Search Analytics reports for positioning info with what they see in the live search results. Google takes into account the search results for […]
Most 404 Errors in Google Search Console Not Site Owner’s Fault
Many people hate when 404 errors pop up in their Google Search Console account. While this is something we most often see when a site is hacked, the 404 error report can also be a treasure trove of information when doing a site redesign, URL structure change or when going from http to https, to […]