google

Google’s Mobile Popup Algorithm Launches – First Examples of Negative Impact (Updated)

Update 2/8/17: We are now a full month into the rollout of the mobile popup algorithm and I am still not seeing widespread impact. I did surface a few examples of urls being impact during the first week of the rollout, but there are still many sites employing mobile popups or interstitials that have not been … Read more

How Breaking News Impacts Google Featured Snippets – The Algorithm Is Getting Faster, More Dynamic, and Personalized

{Update: It happened again. I just surfaced a featured snippet for “eagles uniforms” that was based on the color rush uniforms they wore in last night’s game (12/22). So it seems this was not an anomaly, but something that can happen based on breaking news. I’ve provided a screenshot below in my post.} I’ve been … Read more

The Updates Continue – The November 30, 2016 Google Algorithm Update (And The Algo Tremor on December 6)

Summary: Yes, it’s happening again. There was a significant Google algorithm update on 11/30/16, following an update on 11/10/16 that was partially reversed on 11/18/16. And the 11/30 update is showing a connection to previous quality updates (AKA Phantom). Let’s explore what’s going on in Google Land. When writing about the November 10, 2016 Google … Read more

November 10, 2016 Google Algorithm Update – Was It A Core Ranking Update, The Mobile-first Index Being Tested, or Both? (Updated)

{Update: Saturday, November 19, 2016 – I saw reversals starting yesterday, November 18 (both recoveries and drops), which supports my theory that this was the mobile-first index being tested. I have provided more information below at the end of this post about what I’m seeing — including screenshots.} The fall of 2016 has been one of the … Read more

How To Set Up Adjusted Bounce Rate on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Using Google Tag Manager

Understanding if people engage with your content is important on several levels (including SEO-wise). For example, if someone searches Google, visits your page, spends 2 seconds on the page, and then returns to the search results, that can send horrible signals to Google. That’s called low dwell time and I’ve mentioned that many times before … Read more

How To 301 Redirect Images During a Website Redesign or CMS Migration – The Most Forgotten Step When Changing URLs

Website redesigns and CMS migrations can be challenging from an SEO standpoint. And that’s especially the case on large and complex websites, where there are a lot of moving parts. In those cases, business owners and webmasters need to be methodical and meticulous to avoid negative impact. I’ve written a number of posts about migrations … Read more

UTF-8 BOM and SEO: How to find, clean, and fix an invisible character in your robots.txt file

I’ve written in the past about how a robots.txt file could look fine, but actually not be fine. For example, maybe you add your directives, a sitemap file or sitemap index file, and then upload it to your site. You think all is good, but you find that directives are not being adhered to, maybe … Read more

Do Google users outside of SEO understand what AMP means in the mobile search results? [Survey Results]

On Tuesday, Google announced a demo of accelerated mobile pages (AMP) in the standard search results. That was huge news and should have every website that’s publishing content take notice. Until the demo was announced, amplified pages would only show in very specific areas of the mobile search results, like the “Top stories” section (via a … Read more

Proof That 301 Redirects To Less-Relevant Pages Are Seen As Soft 404s To Google [Case Study]

Over the past few years, Google’s John Mueller has been asked many questions about where to best redirect pages during a redesign or website migration. It’s a hot topic, but that makes sense. When you are changing urls, it’s extremely important to redirect older pages to the newer urls using a one to one mapping, … Read more

June 2016 Google Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings (But Was It Panda or Another Quality Update?)

{Updated on 7/4/16 with additional information and screenshots based on the impact from the June algorithm update.} {Updated on 7/6/16 with  information about the gain or loss of rich snippets based on the June update.} {Updated on 7/11/16 with information about Penguin 4.0 from Google’s John Mueller.} Summer is here, and it could be a … Read more

How To Create A Property Set In Google Search Console (GSC) Before A Domain Name Change or HTTPS Migration

Update: March 2019: Google has released a new type of property in Google Search Console called a domain property. A domain property will include all variations for the domain, including by protocol and subdomain. It’s a great move forward by Google and I highly recommend you set them up as soon as possible. In order … Read more