GSQi Blog

Measuring Infinity – How to identify, analyze, and fix an infinite spaces problem using a powerful SEO software stack

If you are working on a large-scale site, you need to be very careful that you don’t create infinite spaces. That’s when a site generates a near-endless list of urls that Google can end up crawling. Google does not want to churn through endless urls and it can cause problems on several levels SEO-wise. That’s … Read more

M-Dot Versus D-Top: How To Hack DeepCrawl’s Test Site Feature To Compare Your Mobile And Desktop Sites SEO-wise

Last month I wrote a post covering a number of real-world mobile problems I surfaced on sites using separate mobile urls (like m-dot subdomains). With Google moving to a mobile-first index, it’s extremely important to make sure your mobile urls contain the equivalent content, structured data, canonical tags, hreflang tags, etc. as your desktop urls. … Read more

A Holiday Hornets’ Nest – Analysis and Findings From The December 2017 Google Algorithm Updates

Summary: From Maccabees to celebrities to doorways to affiliates, Google took it all on in December of 2017. There were several dates leading up to the holidays with significant movement from an algorithm update standpoint, including December 5, December 12, December 15, December 18, and December 26 (with possible connections between some of those updates). … Read more

It’s In The Stars – A Google Algorithm Update On 12/15/17 Is Impacting Some Official Celebrity Websites (Updated)

This is NOT a normal post for me to publish, but I wanted to quickly document what I’m seeing. I’m in the middle of heavily analyzing some larger algorithm updates that occurred in December (there were several), and I came across a very interesting situation. I noticed that some celebrities aren’t ranking anymore for their … Read more

From m-dot to m-not. Real-world examples of mobile SEO problems with Google’s mobile-first index looming

In October of 2016, Google announced its plan to move to a mobile-first index. Gary Illyes first explained this at Pubcon and then Google officially published a blog post covering the subject. It’s an important move and a 180 for search. Until now, Google has used the desktop URLs and content for ranking purposes, even for mobile rankings. … Read more

How To Quickly Remove A Rogue Subdomain From Google Using The Remove URLs Tool In GSC – And Then Make Sure It Stays Out (Case Study)

I’ve written about Murphy’s Law for SEO before, and it’s scary as heck. And that’s especially the case for large-scale websites with many moving parts. Murphy’s law is an old adage that says, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” For example, no matter how much you plan and prep for large-scale SEO changes, … Read more

Should You Remove Low-Quality Or Thin Content Versus Improving It? Seeing The Forest Through The Trees

Google’s quality algorithms are always at work. And Google’s John Mueller has explained a number of times that if you are seeing a decrease in rankings during algorithm updates, and over the long-term, then it could mean that Google’s quality algorithms might not be convinced that your site is the best possible result for users. … Read more

Enter The Hornets’ Nest – Exploring The Wild Google Algorithm Updates and Volatility In The Fall of 2017

Google has been busy, that’s for sure. Since the August 19 update, we’ve seen a number of significant updates causing serious volatility in the SERPs. Sure, Google pushes many updates per year, typically between 1,000 and 1,500 annually, but some are small updates that many don’t even notice. But then there are larger changes that … Read more

From Inbound Links To The Rater Guidelines To AdSense, 7 Important Facts About Google Algorithm Updates As Told By Googlers

While helping companies deal with major algorithm updates, I tend to field a lot of questions. For example, marketing teams, developers, designers, and even c-level executives tend to pepper me with questions about quality updates, Panda, and other disturbances in the Google force. When answering questions about topics like these, it’s great to respond with … Read more

The August 19, 2017 Google Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings From A Summer-Ending Quality Update

Nothing says “end of summer” like fading tans, empty propane tanks, sunscreen aversion, and… a fresh quality update. Yes, here we go again… As I mentioned in my post about the May 17, 2017 update, Google seems to be pushing quality updates almost monthly now (refreshing its quality algorithms). That’s great if you are looking to … Read more