Tony Edward says, “Most of us are aware of link penalties that occur if you have low-quality or spam links pointing to your site. But did you know you can also be penalized by Google for how you link to other websites from your site? Yup, you sure can. It’s called an “unnatural outbound links” penalty, and similar to the inbound link penalty, it can be applied partially or sitewide. Recently, we conducted an audit for a new client, and we flagged the spammy linking that was being done in a particular section of their site. The content manager was unknowingly allowing guest bloggers... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service by Google that allows you to check your website’s indexing status and to optimize its visibility for searchers. To adjust your website in Google Search Console, you need to go to the dashboard and select your site’s main property. If it’s www, then select that choice. If you have an SSL certificate, you’ll have to select the property with “https” (with or without www—depending on your main mirror). Let’s start from the Search Appearance. We’ll go... [...]

Chris Silver Smith says, “If you or your company have seen something that harms your reputation abruptly appear in Google’s search results, you may be wondering how and why something negative could appear so fast — and how it gained against longer-established materials. It’s pretty simple, though: Google’s algorithm likes it better. Let me explain. First of all, Google has worked very hard to interpret user intent when searches are conducted. It’s not easy to fathom what people may be seeking when they submit a keyword or a keyword phrase. When someone searches for “pizza,”... [...]

Chris Silver Smith says, “If you or your company have seen something that harms your reputation abruptly appear in Google’s search results, you may be wondering how and why something negative could appear so fast, and how it gained against longer-established materials. It’s pretty simple, though: Google’s algorithm likes it better. Let me explain. First of all, Google has worked very hard to interpret user intent when searches are conducted. It’s not easy to fathom what people may be seeking when they submit a keyword or a keyword phrase. When someone searches for “pizza,”... [...]

Brian Ussery says, “With little fanfare, earlier this year Google rolled out a way to embed 360-degree VR media for headsets in search engine optimizable web pages accessible via desktop and mobile. That’s right, immersive VR videos and images for VR headsets can now be optimized for search, accessed directly from Google and experienced on desktops and mobile devices, with or without the need for a native mobile app or VR headset. (Full disclosure: I own stock in Google.) Considering Google has shipped over five million Cardboard VR headsets, and over 12 million VR headsets are expected... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Google’s search engine is displaying fewer organic results on it first page this year than it was last year, and it’s increasingly presenting different experiences for desktop and smartphone users, according to recent research from Searchmetrics. The report was based on 2016 data from 500,000 general, frequently searched keywords. The researchers examined the first Google search results page for each term and analyzed how 11 features (text results, product listing ads, images, news, maps, etc.) were integrated. Whereas Google used to almost always display 10... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “If you needed any more evidence that mobile has taken over the world, you got it last week when news broke that Google is going to be creating a dedicated mobile index. Here’s what you need to know about it. It’s coming in a few months According to Google’s Gary Illyes, the new mobile index will be launched within “months.” So it’s right around the corner. It will be made the primary index Perhaps the most important aspect of Google’s announcement is that the new mobile index will be made the primary index. The decision isn’t... [...]

Tony Edward says, “Google has been testing a new content platform called “Posts with Google,” and it could have a huge impact on brand searches, for both paid and organic. We all know that Google has had its struggles with trying to develop its own social network; Google Buzz is dead, and Google Plus seems to be on its way out. This new platform seems to have some social elements to it, though it is very different from a social network. On the official site for this platform, Google states the following: Every day millions of people search on Google, many of whom are looking for information... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Every year we like to get a Googler who is close with the ranking and search quality team to give us future thinking points to relay to the search marketing community. In part two of our interview with Gary Illyes of Google, we asked him that question. After a little bit of coercion, Illyes told us three things: (1) Machine learning (2) AMP (3) Structured data He said: Well I guess you can guess that we are going to focus more and more on machine learning. Pretty much everywhere in search. But it will not take over the core algorithm. So that’s one thing. The other... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or “primary” index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index. The news came today during a keynote address from Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, at Pubcon. Illyes didn’t give a timeline in his talk, but in a follow-up with Search Engine Land, he confirmed that it would happen within “months.” Google first announced that it was experimenting... [...]