Googles Recent SEO Guide

Google posted their own brand new mini SEO  guide, these were more a few guidelines than an actual SEO guide however, but every little helps when it comes to the Search Engine Optimization world.

Google Have Strongly Said No Cloaking

 Google have spoken and said that you shouldn't cloak, show Google's crawlers something that humans wouldn't see, so you can understand fully what this means here are the exact words from the post below:

“Make sure that you're not deciding whether to serve the test, or which content variant to serve, based on user-agent. An example of this would be always serving the original content when you see the user-agent “Googlebot.” Remember that infringing our Guidelines can get your site demoted or removed from Google search results—probably not the desired outcome of your test.”

Ensure To Use Rel=“canonical”

Google have also said that publishers should make use of “rel=canonical” method to make certain that any alternative pages reference what should be the main page, so you can see for yourself just what they have said about this method, here is a statement from the post:

“We recommend using rel=“canonical” rather than a noindex meta tag because it more closely matches your intent in this situation. Let’s say you were testing variations of your homepage; you don’t want search engines to not index your homepage, you just want them to understand that all the test URLs are close duplicates or variations on the original URL and should be grouped as such, with the original URL as the canonical. Using noindex rather than rel=“canonical” in such a situation can sometimes have unexpected effects.”

Use 302′s And Not 301′s

Google have highly recommended using the temporary direct method of 302′s over the permanent 301 redirect method, again so you can exactly what was said, below we have posted a statement from the post:

“This tells search engines that this redirect is temporary—it will only be in place as long as you’re running the experiment—and that they should keep the original URL in their index rather than replacing it with the target of the redirect (the test page). JavaScript-based redirects are also fine.”

If You Are Running An Experiment, Don't Run It For Too Long

Google have also said that if you are running an experiment ensure that you do not run it for too long, they have warned that you could receive a penalty for doing so. Although Google have said this, they have not actually said how long is too long. They just simply say the following:

“Once you've concluded the test, you should update your site with the desired content variation(s) and remove all elements of the test as soon as possible, such as alternate URLs or testing scripts and markup. If we discover a site running an experiment for an unnecessarily long time, we may interpret this as an attempt to deceive search engines and take action accordingly. This is especially true if you’re serving one content variant to a large percentage of your users.”

Google have said that if you follow these guidelines they cannot promise there will be no impact the search results for your phrases, but they have said there will be “little or no impact on your site within the search results.