Will The Number Of Reconsideration Requests Drop With Google's Manual Actions Viewer?

Will The Number Of Reconsideration Requests Drop With Google's Manual Actions Viewer? In a video by Google's Matt Cutts yesterday, Matt shared that Google receives about 5,000 reconsideration requests per week. Google has told us they review each and every request submitted individually. So as you can imagine, that can take a lot of man hours. That being said, as you know, Google launched the manual actions viewer earlier this month and with...

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Google's Matt Cutts Wants To Know Which Small Sites Should Rank Better

Google's Matt Cutts Wants To Know Which Small Sites Should Rank Better The question of big sites vs small sites and how they rank in Google has always been one of those questions SEOs have asked. In fact, it seems that only 30% of SEOs believe web site size does not matter in terms of rankings. That being said, Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a survey on Google Docs asking you to tell them which small web sites are getting...

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Google: Short & Basic Reconsideration Requests Won't Do It.

Google: Short & Basic Reconsideration Requests Won't Do It. If you didn't get the memo yet, and we've covered what Google expects from reconsideration requests before - Google wants details in the request. If you have a manual action and it shows up in the manual action viewer, you can submit the review request over there. But don't go short and basic. John Mueller, Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst, said in a Google Webmaster Help thread in...

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6 Months Later, No Google Toolbar PageRank Update...

6 Months Later, No Google Toolbar PageRank Update... It has now been over six months since the last widespread Google PageRank update. The last update was in early February, where users spotted changes to the Google Toolbar PageRank data. Since then, I have not seen a major Toolbar PageRank update from Google. Which honestly, is not the norm. Every 3-4 months or so, Google typically updates their toolbar PageRank data. Here are some of the...

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Google: We Know You're Confused About Manual & Algorithmic Penalties

Google: We Know You're Confused About Manual & Algorithmic Penalties There has always been a lot of confusion amongst none experienced SEOs about the difference between a manual and algorithmic action by Google. And Google is aware of that and promises to make changes to help clarify the difference between the two. John Mueller, Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst, said in multiple Google Webmaster Help threads in the past twenty-four hours...

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Google's FAQ On Rel Author Says Not For Product Pages

Google's FAQ On Rel Author Says Not For Product Pages Yesterday on the Google Webmaster Blog, Maile posted and FAQ on using Google authorship, rel=author, on your site. The one that I am glad was brought up was not to use authorship on product pages. I see it all too often and it just doesn't make sense. Authorship should be used for stories and content that is specifically tied to an author as something he is adding his own opinion to or something very unique. Product pages are not that. Here are some of the questions answered by the...

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Google's Matt Cutts: +1s Don't Improve Rankings

Google's Matt Cutts: +1s Don't Improve Rankings Moz published a story yesterday showing a high correlation between Google +1s and Google's search rankings. Shortly after, Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, went over to Hacker News and debunked it. He said, +1s do not have any impact on search rankings at Google. Truth is, Google is to blame for the confusion. In August 2011, Wired published a story suggesting Google+ was tied to ranking....

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Google On Why Links Within Webmaster Tools May Or May Not Be Enough

Google On Why Links Within Webmaster Tools May Or May Not Be Enough Back in early June I reported how Google told us that the only links you need are the links in Webmaster Tools for reconsideration request purposes. Then about a week ago, we showed a clear example of Google showing us the opposite, where links in Webmaster Tools did not show up even though Google themselves called out a bad link. Honestly, I am not 100% clear what to make from...

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Webmasters Fear Linking Out After Google's Warnings

Webmasters Fear Linking Out After Google's Warnings A WebmasterWorld thread has some fears that I see are beginning to worry some publishers and webmasters - the fear of linking to external sources. With Matt Cutts and the Google spam team pretty much saying you need to nofollow everything out there, well, with the exception of real editorial links (who is to decide what is editorial), webmasters are simply scared. I see questions popping up...

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Google Analytics Alerts Of Increase In 404 Pages

Google Analytics Alerts Of Increase In 404 Pages Daniel Waisberg, a Google Analytics expert and now a new Googler, posted on the Google Analytics Google+ profile a tip on how to set up custom alerts for increases in 404 page requests. There is nothing worse for the user experience than to land on a 404, page not found, error page. And if a page is 404ing and you want that page to be in the search results, that will be a very very bad bug. So...

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All Of Google's Manual Actions For Search Spam

All Of Google's Manual Actions For Search Spam As I mentioned a few minutes ago in my story about Google's new manual spam action viewer - Google has documented all of the manual actions a site may receive for spamming their search results. Here are the eleven documents from Google on these manual spam actions: Manual Actions Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects Hacked site Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing Pure spam Spammy freehosts Thin content...

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2013 Local SEO Ranking Factors Released

2013 Local SEO Ranking Factors Released  David Mihm and the folks at Moz released their 2013 local search ranking factors last night. They polled dozens of local SEO experts on 104 different ranking factors and asked hundreds of questions to come up with this report. You can read the details at moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors but here is just an overview chart: Author: Barry Schwartz...

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Google's Matt Cutts: Don't Worry About Bad Links, Just Disavow Them

Google's Matt Cutts: Don't Worry About Bad Links, Just Disavow Them In one of his shortest video responses, Matt Cutts, the head of search spam at Google, answered the question: Should I be worried if a couple of sites that I don't want to be associated with are linking to me?He said as long as you disavow the links or the domain that has the links pointing to your site that you do not want to be associated with, then it will all be fine. He...

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Google In-Depth Articles Goes Live, Here Is How To Be Included

Google In-Depth Articles Goes Live, Here Is How To Be Included A month ago, we reported tests of in-depth search snippets from Google - well that test is now a reality. Google announced last night that they will show these in-depth articles in the search results when the query is about understanding a broader topic. Google said this will help 10% of the queries that are seeking more than just a quick answer, really dive deeper into broader...

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Google: We Fight Spam All Around The World But English Spam Gets More Attention

Google: We Fight Spam All Around The World But English Spam Gets More Attention Google's Matt Cutts said Google does indeed fight spam at a global level both algorithmically and manually. In a recent video, Matt said they have Googlers who fight spam manually in over 40 different languages and regions. He added that with most of their algorithms, they do their best to make sure they work in all languages and not just English. If you remember,...

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Google's Page Speed Insights Tool Updated

Google's Page Speed Insights Tool Updated Ilya Grigorik, Google's Developer Advocate for Google Chrome and all things speed on the web, has announced on Google+ that Google has updated the PageInsights Tool. The major change you may notice is that you can now see a visual representation of the web site. I.e. how it looks in mobile versus desktop. You still get the useful tips on how to improve your page speed for both mobile and desktop....

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Google Tests Sitelinks That Expand Out

Google Tests Sitelinks That Expand Out Two SEOs spotted Google testing a new design for Google Sitelinks. The new design has sitelinks that expand and show sub-sitelinks in a gray background area. Google tested something similar on mobile sitelinks a few months ago. Author: Barry Schwartz...

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Google's Matt Cutts On Using ccTLDs

Google's Matt Cutts On Using ccTLDs Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, in another video answer, responds to the question about using ccTLDs (country code top level domain names). The question was "Should I use ccTLDs for sites not targeted to those countries?" The answer is pretty straight forward. If it is part of the list of generic ccTLDs that Google has specifically said there is enough use to warrant them to be generic, then...

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