In today’s Google Webmaster Hangout, the inevitable question came up about the fluctuations people have been seeing in the search results. John was asked specifically if there was a Panda or Penguin update. We didn’t update anything that I’m aware of. I saw Barry’s blog post about some changes he was seeing on the weekend. […]
Animated GIFs in Google Search Results
This is something I never thought I would see…. Google seems to be testing / allowing animated GIFs to be displayed in the search results after I noticed this eye catching example in the search results today. [Apologies for what I am sure is a horribly large image size due to the animation.] Click through […]
Google Returns “You Recently Searched For…” in the Search Results
Google has returned with the “you recently searched for” addition in the Google search results. It appears underneath a specific search result when it is somehow related to a previous search. There seems to be only one report of anyone ever seeing this before, back in 2013 which was reported on WebmasterWorld and SERoundtable but […]
Google Removes Local Link from Google+
With the launch of Google Collections – which is Google’s answer to Pinterest – it has affected another feature within Google+. Local SEOs noticed today that when the Collections link was added to the Google+ menu, they dropped the Local link from the menu. Linda Buquet from the Local Search Forum asked Google whether this […]
6 Tools for Checking Broken Links on Your Website
Broken links can leave a bad impression on your site’s visitors. Everyone hates when they find exactly what they are looking for, yet when they click through, they discover a 404. While many people are still using Xenu, the old school link checker solution, there are several other options for running broken link reports that […]
Google’s Gary Illyes Confirms Mobile Friendly Algo Finished Rolling Out
Google’s Gary Illyes has confirmed that the Mobile Friendly Algo has finished rolling out to all users. Barry Schwartz asked Gary Illyes on the status of the algo. @rustybrick Also, there were a load of sites that became MF recently, so the actual number of sites affected decreased considerably — Gary Illyes (@methode) May 1, […]
Google Serving Optimized Versions of Webpages to Users with Slower Connections
Google is running a new test in Indonesia that will see users served a “lighter” version of your webpages when users are visiting your site from a slow mobile connection. The “field test” will start running in two weeks and will serve those visiting sites on a connection that is 2G or slower. This test […]
Google Running “Satisfied With These Results?” on Mobile Searches
Google is now running satisfaction surveys for searchers who are searching from a mobile device. Rand Fishkin from Moz spotted the survey in mobile results, remarking it is the first time he has seen it on mobile. It coincides pretty nicely with the Google mobile friendly algo, which should have finished rolling out by now. […]
Your New Advantage on Mobile Search
If you haven’t been hiding in a cave for the past few months you’ll know that April 21st marked the beginning of the rollout of a mobile index by Google. Essentially, instead of creating a mobile algorithm to favor mobile sites they decided to create a whole new index of sites that are mobile-friendly to […]
URL Displayed Returning to Google Webmaster Tools
If you are a webmaster with multiple sites – especially those who tend to have multiple sites in the same or similar industries – it can be easy to forget exactly which site you are looking at when logged into your Google Webmaster Tools account. Google used to display the URL of the site you […]