Did Google Update On Thanksgiving Or Traffic Down Due To Holiday?

A WebmasterWorld thread plus dozens of threads at the Google Webmaster Help forums have webmasters complaining about both ranking changes and traffic drops from Google's search engine.The traffic drop would make sense being that it is a holiday and on US holidays traffic normally drops. But ranking changes cannot really be explained by an algorithm change.

Maybe all the black friday deals and all those new pages trying to compete on top selling product categories are popping up and Google needs to rank them properly? I am not sure.

One webmaster said, "I'm seeing what looks like a rollback today. Many verticals have returned to their former positions."
Another said, "We've been hit again, main keywords dropping even further."
Some can't figure it out if it is ranking or traffic.
Google has said they won't update major algorithms again during the Christmas holiday shopping season but who knows.

It is not unusual for webmasters to spark up during Thanksgiving about ranking issues. We've seen it a couple of times in the past, at least.

The Google tracking tools are not yet updated, with the exception of Algoroo but I'll keep checking Mozcast, SERPs.com and SERP Metrics to see if they agree. Update, it seems as if the tools do not agree.

by Barry Schwartz

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Google Tells Webmaster: You'll Have To Earn Our Trust Again

A Google Webmaster Help thread has a story of a site that is trying to disavow and remove all the bad links pointing to his site.The interesting part is that even when he does, will it help with his site's rankings?
The goal of this webmaster is simply to remove the manual action, but Google's John Mueller tells him he also has algorithmic trust issues.
John said:

looking at your site's history, it looks like you've done quite a bit for quite some time, and it looks like our algorithms have picked up on that too. So while resolving the manual action is a good way to start, you need to keep in mind that it can possibly take quite some time for our algorithms to regain trust in your site even after that.

I see this happening a lot, webmasters aim to remove the manual action and do but then the rankings don't improve. The reason is likely do to algorithmic actions taken on the site.
That being said, it is interesting to see how Google words it.
The algorithms seem to have lost trust over time. The manual action is a "good way to start" but the algorithms need to "regain trust" in the site for there to be an improvement - which may take some time.

by Barry Schwartz

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Google's Matt Cutts: Why Google Use To Only Crawl 100 Links Per Page

Google's Matt Cutts posted a video answering the old question, can Google crawl more than a 100 links on a  specific page?

Of course they can. They said so in 2008 and there are plenty of sites with hundreds of links on a page that are not penalized by Google.

Google said they have no specific rule, but if the number of links you have on your page looks spammy, then Google reserves the right to take action.

Of course, many SEOs are scratching their heads and asking - really? Did Matt Cutts really need to go on record about this? Is this the state of our SEO industry?

by Barry Schwartz

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M-Dot Domains Need To Be Verified Separately In Google Webmaster Tools

In Google Webmaster Help there is a straight forward question and answer about how to handle M-dot (i.e. m.domain.com sites in Google Webmaster Tools.In short, an M-dot is a separate site and should be verified separately in Google Webmaster Tools.
Zineb, a Google Webmaster support representative answered each question:

(Q) Having verified domain ie.http://www.domain.com in GWT do I need to separately verify it's mobile version ie. m.domain.com? If so which method is the best for mobile? 

(A) Yes. You need to verify both URLs in Webmaster Tools. Regarding verification methods, it depends on what you prefer :)

Furthermore, she answered the question on a separate mobile domain.

(Q) Also if the mobile website will have different URL ie. m.domainmobile.com how will that affect the verification (obviously having verified http://www.domain.com wouldn't help). 

(A) I don't see why it would affect the verification. Make sure to add the bidirectional annotation to both your sites (mobile and desktop) to help our algorithms understand the relationship between your desktop and mobile pages.

by Barry Schwartz 

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Matt Cutts Asking For Google Webmaster Tools Feedback

This is your opportunity to give Google your two-cents on the features and issues you have with Google  Webmaster Tools.

I blew up about it the other day where I asked in a nice way for Google to add a feature named automated actions to Google Webmaster Tools. Will it happen? I think it is more complex that I am making it out, so I doubt it. But if you agree, make sure Google and Matt Cutts know you want this feature.

If you don't want it, fine. Just make sure you tell Matt Cutts and his team what features you want.
Matt posted the request on his personal blog asking you to leave comments with the features or changes you want made to Webmaster Tools. He said they will use it for brainstorming and possibly build some of those features in 2014 - but not guaranteed.

Matt's blog only has 125 comments or so, so go flood it with ideas.

by Barry Schwartz

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Google's Search Results Rocky This Week...

This week has been a mess for Google's search results, despite Google denying anything is going on to me.
There were some tools that sparked up on November 14th that I didn't see from the webmaster chatter.

This whole week, I've been seeing a lot of sporadic complaints in both WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help forums. Typically, these sporadic reports, at least I think, mean Google targeted a link network and some sites were majorly impacted by it. It also may be a weird Google bug. But not necessarily a Google update. Of course, it could be that Panda was updated, which Google stopped confirming.

It is hard to tell.

The tools are all lighting up over the past few days. Moz has warmer than normal temperature the past couple days, SERPs.com has higher volatility numbers than normal, SERP Metrics shows higher flux than normal and Algoroo is in the red the past couple days. Something seems to be up.

Is it a major algorithm update - I don't think so. If I had to guess, maybe Panda was rerun or maybe Google squashed some sort of link network.

I am honestly not sure but Google is indeed a bit rocky the past few days.

by Barry Schwartz

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8 Reasons To Use The Google Disavow Tool By Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts posted a video answering the question "Should I use the disavow tool even if there's not a manual action on my site?"

The short answer is yes. But when?

Matt Cutts offers 8 times when to use the disavow tool. They include:

(1) When you get a manual action, of course.
(2) Webmasters won't remove the bad links to your site or want to charge you to remove them.
(3) You are worried about negative SEO.
(4) You see links pointing to your site you do not want to be associated with.
(5) You saw a link bomb attack and are afraid it might hurt your site.
(6) You are afraid someone will submit a spam report about you.
(7) You see your rankings dropped and you think it has to do with an algorithm Google ran, i.e. Penguin algorithm.
(8) You can’t sleep at night because of some of the links you have.

by Barry Schwartz 

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Here Is Why Google Forced Me To Take Down My Site...

An old WebmasterWorld member posted in the WebmasterWorld forums that he had enough, he closed  down his site that did well in the search results because it was getting too much.

What was getting too much? The requests for links to be taken off his site and removed because of all the link removal requests.

He said, most of the links were nofollowed but despite telling these people who asked for the links to be removed, they simply didn't understand and demanded the links be completely removed.

Here is what the webmaster said:

We created an article website 8-9 years ago. It was allowed the author could post a link to their website or related page to the article. All the links from day 1 were nofollow. Since the recent updates from G we have been swamped with link removal request. I had a prepared email letting these newbees know the links were nofollow and had no effect on their problem. Well some of the (most of them) don't seem to understand this, so I took a look at the website and determined it was of no value to our company and our future. The website did very well in the serps but with the content I had taken off adsense to protect our interest, so really there was no viable income.
Best option kill it. Shame but I just don't have the time to worry with all the emails and the website making the company 0.

A shame indeed.
He didn't have the heart to charge for link removals and decided to just kill the site.
I don't know if I would have done that. Heck, even this site gets link removal requests and I am sure you guys do also.

by Barry Schwartz

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