Google: Higher Quality Content Not Necessarily More Useful Content

All this talk about having the best, most authoritative, most professional, most correct and accurate information on your web site - throw it out the window. Okay, maybe I am being a bit sarcastic but stick with me here.

+Ryan Moulton a software engineer at Google since July 2006, who I believe works in search, was defending Google in a Hacker News thread and said:

MDN might be higher quality, better information, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's more useful to everyone.

To bring this into the context. He was defending why Google ranks w3schools results so highly, despite the content not being all that accurate. He said, while MDN might be much more accurate, it is often way too over the top for most newbies to understand and thus not as useful.

Ryan adds, "there's a balance between popularity and quality that we try to be very careful with. Ranking isn't entirely one or the other. It doesn't help to give people a better page if they aren't going to click on it anyways."

He then gives an example:

Suppose you search for something like [pinched nerve ibuprofen]. The top two results currently are mayoclinic.com and answers.yahoo.com.

Almost anyone would agree that the mayoclinic result is higher quality. It's written by professional physicians at a world renowned institution. However, getting the answer to your question requires reading a lot of text. You have to be comfortable with words like "Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs," which a lot of people aren't. Half of people aren't literate enough to read their prescription drug labels: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1831578/

The answer on yahoo answers is provided by "auntcookie84." I have no idea who she is, whether she's qualified to provide this information, or whether the information is correct. However, I have no trouble whatsoever reading what she wrote, regardless of how literate I am.

He ends:

That's the balance we have to strike. You could imagine that the most accurate and up to date information would be in the midst of a recent academic paper, but ranking that at 1 wouldn't actually help many people. This is likely what's going on between w3schools and MDN. MDN might be higher quality, better information, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's more useful to everyone.

But is that what Google has been feeding us with Panda? Shouldn't we strive to be perfect and detailed, not just partially accurate and useful?

Forum discussion at Hacker News.

Poking Google With Fetch Requests Won't Lead To A Penalty

You know that annoying kid who is constantly poking you on your back and asking the same annoying request over and over again? Well, Google said if you do that to them, at least via the Fetch as Google feature within Webmaster Tools, it won't lead to a penalty.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster concerned that if he uses the fetch as Google feature too often, it might annoy GoogleBot too much and lead to Google ignoring his site completely.

Google's John Muller said in response, "there's no penalty for using "Fetch as Google" frequently."

The original question was posed as:

I am wondering if their is a penalty for using "Fetch as Google" too frequently. I have been using it a bunch, trying to tweak a page on my site to get it ranked better. At first it was very useful. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed like the more I used it the worse I was ranked. Can using this tool too much really hurt you?

John said no, but bad links and bad content can.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Not Provided 100% Of All Organic Search Queries

I assume by now, you've all seen the news that Google has secured ALL searches leading to all their organic search query referrer data to go completely 100% not provided.

In fact, I checked this morning, and this site shows 93.4% of all Google organic search queries as being not provided. What about the other 6.6%? Maybe the SSL migration of Google is not 100% complete yet?

I guess Google felt, what the heck, 70% of search queries were not provided anyway, let's go all in! Screw online marketers. Screw webmasters. Screw SEOs. Take away their real search queries. Make them depend on getting that data from Google Webmaster Tools, which is far from a complete picture of your data.

I like how skibum at WebmasterWorld summed it up:

So lets see. Google launches analytics and gets many (most companies) to hand over critical business data for free that would not in a million years have been given out to the largest supplier of traffic/sales for most companies unless it was at gunpoint. They also own one of the biggest ad networks to help fill in where analytics may not provide them with a complete view.

As a result Google knows more about (the online portion) of each individual business than the business owners probably do as well as the entire market in which said business operates.

Then Google takes away one of the best data sources for businesses to determine where their traffic and sales are coming from.

So now Google knows more about your business than you do and your insight into your business (as far as search traffic) is severely limited moving forward, though maybe a little less so if you hookup even more closely with this same company that claims to not be evil.

And now they've got you running around trying to get "bad links" removed that may actually be good in the sense that they send you business and/or leads. They may have other businesses taking up your time to remove links that you have to their sites as well.

Isn't there something seriously wrong with this picture? If nothing else, it should be apparent that there is no such thing as "free" and the more complacent businesses are about all this the more knowledge and control they will continue to lose over their businesses.

It is true.

How can they still give AdWords advertisers keyword data if they won't give it to organic search results. Heck, require us to use Google Analytics, just give us all the data. But no, Google Analytics isn't secure enough, only AdWords is? What?

Someone up there at Google needs to make a stand and either say we go all in, even with advertiser data or step back and don't do this with everything but advertiser data.

Google did send Danny Sullivan a statement:

We want to provide SSL protection to as many users as we can, in as many regions as we can — we added non-signed-in Chrome omnibox searches earlier this year, and more recently other users who aren’t signed in. We’re going to continue expanding our use of SSL in our services because we believe it’s a good thing for users….

The motivation here is not to drive the ads side — it’s for our search users.

This should make every webmaster, marketer and SEO angry.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Threadwatch and Cre8asite.

Google Crushes Ghost Rank 2.0, A Russian Link Network

Remember about three weeks ago, Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, issued a warning to Ghost networks? Well, it seems that the update we reported yesterday had to do with Google squashing one or two underground link networks.

I am pretty confident, 99% confident, based on the data I see in the forums and some sources I have that want to remain anonymous, that Ghost Rank 2.0 was hit hard by Google. It seems that at least one of the underground and under the radar networks was severely hurt by Google and many of the sites using them to rank well in Google are now penalized.

If you follow the ongoing Black Hat World thread, you will see many Ghost Rank 2.0 clients complaining and "Leith" responding to customers with those complaints admitting that they were hit.

Unfortunately, it looks like you were one of the clients affected from the recent update.

Leith added:

Yes, it's unfortunate but Google is getting more strict with these russian links and that's why we're changing things up to better improve the service.

Starting around the 19th or 20th of September, I saw significant increases in complaints about this network. Here are some of them:

My site dropped off the map completely and due to this service...be wary google is targeting these types of links.

This service wasnt good at all.. I was at 10th and now my site also is gone.. Rank only increased to 8 for a few days.. Poor me i fell prey to the reviews . I am at 98th position now.

I also received a screen shot of an email that one of the link networks sent out calling this Google action "more esoteric in nature" than previous updates. I am not sure if this is from the Ghost Rank 2.0 network or another but it does seem Google has stepped up their efforts on attacking these underground and "secret" link networks.

Here is a copy of the email:

Be safe, don't mess with these link networks. We have reported similar things with other link networks, such as SAPE.

Forum discussion at Black Hat World.

Study: Google+ Has No Direct Ranking Benefit, Like Google's Cutts Said

You can now stop clicking the +1 button on my articles, they have no ranking benefit.

Eric Enge published an exhaustive study named Direct Measurement of Google Plus Impact on Search Rankings. In short, Google+ has no direct impact on your Google rankings, outside of personalization and of course, getting visibility out, which has a side impact of possibly getting more links. But standalone, Google+ has no direct impact on your rankings.

Didn't we know this? Yea, Matt Cutts of Google told us time and time again - but we don't believe Matt.

Here is a video interview between Eric Enge and Greg Jarboe on this study:

Forum discussion at Google+ and WebmasterWorld.

Google AdSense Now Supported On HTTPS Web Sites

Google announced that HTTPS sites, SSL secured can now have Google AdSense ads on them without an issue.

For this to work, you simply need to go into your AdSense console, click on your existing ad units and get the revised code. The revised or new code will work on both HTTPS and HTTP web sites without an issue.

Google's Sandor Sas, an AdSense Software Engineer, added:

HTTPS-enabled sites require that all content on the page, including the ads, be SSL-compliant. As a result, our systems will remove all non-SSL compliant ads from competing in the auction on these pages. This means that if you convert your HTTP site to HTTPS, ads on your HTTPS pages might earn less than those on your HTTP pages.

The big question publishers are asking.... What took so long Google?

Forum discussion at Google+.

Using Google Analytics With Internet Explorer 8? You Need To Upgrade.

Google announced on the Google Analytics blog that they are officially dropping support for Internet Explorer 8 users.

It does not mean they won't report on who is accessing your web site using IE8, but it does mean that you won't be able to see who is using your site if you are trying to do so via IE8.

In short, the Google Analytics reporting tool will not run well if you are accessing it via Internet Explorer 8.

Google said:

To focus on supporting modern browsers, we are deprecating official compatibility of Google Analytics with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) at the end of 2013. We decided to do this to both accelerate the pace at which we can innovate new product features, and to facilitate adoption of newer web technologies in the design of the Google Analytics product. Our ultimate goal is to provide a superior user experience for every GA user. As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website.

When? You got at least 3 months. Why so long? Well, many companies still are on Windows XP and use IE8.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bing's New Logo & Search Features Preview

Late last night, Microsoft announced on the search blog the next phase of Bing, Microsoft's search engine. You can "explore" these changes at bing.com/new.

The most obvious change is the new yellow/orange logo, I do like it. But the main changes they want to highlight are the search features they've modified.

The Bing home page is now more "modern" in this new design, making it "faster, cleaner and more visually appealing," said Bing. Here are screen shots of how the new home page and search results page may look when it launches over the next week or so:

Here is a short video from Bing on the changes:

Bing also improved their "Snapshots" to include both place and people knowledge data into one.

"Page Zero" lets you search and see results without actually going to the search results page. Specifically, we covered a preview of this spotted in an alpha beta, which we called deep links in search box but obviously Bing calls it "Page Zero." Here is a picture:

Bing will also show a horizontal "pole" of information when they deem it useful:

Plus, this experience will work flawlessly on any device. From desktop, to tablet, to mobile to TV, it will be a beautiful experience according to Microsoft.

More on this announcement can be found on Techmeme.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Better Backlink Data for Site Owners

In recent years, our free Webmaster Tools product has provided roughly 100,000 backlinks when you click the "Download more sample links" button. Until now, we've selected those links primarily by lexicographical order. That meant that for some sites, you didn't get as complete of a picture of the site's backlinks because the link data skewed toward the beginning of the alphabet.

Based on feedback from the webmaster community, we're improving how we select these backlinks to give sites a fuller picture of their backlink profile. The most significant improvement you'll see is that most of the links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically. You're also more likely to get example links from different top-level domains (TLDs) as well as from different domain names. The new links you see will still be sorted alphabetically.

Starting soon, when you download your data, you'll notice a much broader, more diverse cross-section of links. Site owners looking for insights into who recommends their content will now have a better overview of those links, and those working on cleaning up any bad linking practices will find it easier to see where to spend their time and effort. 

Google AdSense New Formats: Blue Circle Arrows & Cleaner Spaced Ads

Google is testing a new AdSense ad format. The new format has a whiter and cleaner feel, with blue circle enclosed arrows, with hover over animations that expand the ad. The old format had block arrows, with less animation and sometimes the blocks were in blue or gray.

I am not sure if this is a new test or if Google is rolling this out to publishers now. In any event, I was able to create a video of it in action. We've seen Google test animated AdSense ads twice before.

Here it is:

Here is a screen shot of the block ad unit side by side, new versus old:

Do you like this new format?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google's Cutts: Hit By Panda? Then Write Better Content

Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, posted a video on what to do if you think your site may have been impacted in a bad bad way by the Panda algorithm.

In short, write better content!

Matt said your content should be as high quality as you would read in a published book or in a magazine. It should be unique, compelling and give something more to a reader.

He obviously references back to Amit Singhal blog post but doesn't really give any more guidance than what we had before.

So if you are looking for something new and unique from that video or from this post, you aren't going to get it. Well, I did make a nice animated GIF that is unique. Hope you like it.

I am sorry. Discuss...

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google: Unlinked URLs Use For Discovery But Not Ranking

I apologize for missing this a week ago, when I was sitting in the Google hangout where Google's John Mueller went on record that Google uses unlinked URLs or domains in body content as a way of discovering new content and pages.

John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts. said in a video 47 minutes and 32 seconds in (I was distracted with something else), that Google uses these URLS, even though they are unlinked, to discover new pages. It does not influence rankings but it does influence discovery.

Here is the video, skip to 47 minutes and 30 seconds in:

Credit goes to ignitevisibility.com for spotting this first.

Also, Dan Petrovic tested this a year ago and came to the same conclusion.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google Update Reports Again: September 12th

I've received a few emails, a bunch of tweets, plus I noticed new comments on our older posts and some updates in the WebmasterWorld thread that signifies a possible Google update rolling out this month.

The chatter is there, so I have to report it to you.

I am not sure exactly what is going on. We saw what appeared to be a Google search update on August 21st (about 400 comments on that post) and another update on September 4th (about 600 comments on that post) and now I am seeing new chatter about an update today, this morning.

I waiting a bit to see if the monitoring tools show anything and most of them don't. Check Mozcast, SERPs.com, SERP Metrics and Algoroo. Only Moz and Algoroo are updated today and Mozcast doesn't show that high of a "temperature" reading but Algoroo does.

It is unusual to see updates in the cycle of an update, then two weeks later another update and then a week later an other update. But that is what I am seeing.

Maybe Google is working on something, I am not sure.

Here are two new posts from WebmasterWorld as of this morning:

All the signs point to Panda rolling update starting today in the UK. Certainly in a couple of verticals that I watch closely. I expect to see some activity on here over the coming days...

Didn't notice anything since the 4th but something is definitely going down today (UK).

Have you noticed a change in your Google rankings? Should I try to reach out to Google again?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Maps Drops Wikipedia Layer

It seems as if Google dropped the Wikipedia layer from Google Maps a few weeks ago.

A Google Maps Help thread has dozens of complaints from Google Maps users that the Wikipedia layer is gone.

The layer provided additional content from Wikipedia about location specific data on the map. Now, it is no longer available.

In fact, if you look at the help document about the available layers, you will not see Wikipedia listed there. The current options include:

• Traffic
• Photos
• Labels
• Webcams
• Bicycling
• 45º
• Terrain
• Transit

Google has not yet responded to the complaints in the thread. But it does seem the Wikipedia layer is officially gone from Google Maps.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.

Google's Matt Cutts: The Nofollow Can Only Hurt You When...

Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, posted a video yesterday on the question of, "can nofollow links hurt your site?" The answer is no but there is a "corner case."

If you absolutely spam links in a way that is so evasive and so annoying that people know you by name, then Google may take action. Even if the links are nofollowed, Google may take action against very large scale abuse of links.

It is a way for Google to go after spammers who are harming sites and encourage them not to.

Here is the video so you can listen to it yourself.

Forum discussion at Google+.

72% Were Hit By Google's Penguin 1.0 Or 2.0 Algorithm

Google's 2.0 Penguin update went live over 3 months ago and we ran a poll shortly after asking how many of you were impacted by this Penguin update.

We had almost 1,500 responses since launching the poll and the results were pretty significant.

The question was: How Were You Impacted By Google Penguin 2.0?

The results:

• 53% said I Was Hit By Penguin 2.0
• 19% said I Was Hit By Penguin 1.0 & Did Not Recover With Penguin 2.0
• 4% said I Recovered From Penguin 1.0
• 24% said they were not impacted by any Penguin update

Here is the pie chart:

Tomorrow I will share the did you recover from Penguin 2.0 results.

Forum discussion continued at Google+, Cre8asite Forums, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Black Hat World and Google Webmaster Help.

September 2013 Google Webmaster Report

This past month, we did not have any official update but something made the Google results rumble in late August, we have over 250 comments with complaints in the post. I am waiting on official confirmation from Google if there was some sort of update or not.

Google's Matt Cutts also announced links within widgets must be nofollowed. Google moved the reconsideration requests feature into the new manual actions viewer. Plus, webmasters and SEOs are getting impatient with not seeing a PageRank update in over six months.

Otherwise, the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is pretty quiet over the labor day weekend.

For last month's recap, see the August report. Here is the monthly recap as we saw it:

• Some Reports Of An August 21/22 Google Update
• Google: Links Within Widgets Must Be Nofollowed
• Google Webmaster Tools Shows Your Manual Spam Actions
• FYI: Google's Reconsideration Request Now In Manual Actions
• All Of Google's Manual Actions For Search Spam
• 6 Months Later, No Google Toolbar PageRank Update...
• Google's Matt Cutts Issues Subtle Warning To Ghost Networks
• Google In-Depth Articles Goes Live, Here Is How To Be Included
• Google: We Fight Spam All Around The World But English Spam Gets More Attention
• Webmasters Fear Linking Out After Google's Warnings
• Google's Matt Cutts Wants To Know Which Small Sites Should Rank Better
• Google On Why Links Within Webmaster Tools May Or May Not Be Enough
• Google: We Want Your Feedback On Search Policies. Really?
• Google's Matt Cutts: Page Speed Not More Important For Mobile Ranking
• Google's Matt Cutts: +1s Don't Improve Rankings
• Google: Short & Basic Reconsideration Requests Won't Do It.
• Google Wants To See You Really Mean It With Reconsideration Request
• Google's FAQ On Rel Author Says Not For Product Pages
• Google AdWords & Webmaster Tools Team Up With Paid & Organic Reporting
• Google Skip Redirects Adds Support For rel-alternate-media Annotations
• Maybe I'm Not That Ugly, My Face Is Back In Google

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Almost Admits Making A Mistake Regarding Natural Links

Last week, we reported on a situation where Google said a link to a site was unnatural and thus the site still has a penalty but the truth is, the link was indeed natural and as natural as it gets.

Shortly after publishing our story, Google's Eric Kuan, posted in the Google Webmaster Help thread almost admitting Google made a mistake.

Eric is a member of Google's Search Quality Team. He wrote in the thread:

Thanks for your feedback on the example links sent to you in your reconsideration request. We'll use your comments to improve the messaging and example links that we send.

If you believe that your site no longer violates Google Webmaster Guidelines, you can file a new reconsideration request, and we'll re-evaluate your site for reconsideration.

I guess this is as close as Google coming to admitting they made a mistake?

Maybe more will come in and fight their cases and who knows, we will have a whole group of threads on why Google is wrong and horrible.

I am a bit surprised to see Google come in and respond to this but hey, it is really nice to see it.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google AdSense Adds 5 New Font Types

Google AdSense has announced the addition of five new font types to the font family, which brings the total font types or styles to eight.

The new fonts include Open Sans, Open Sans Light, Roboto Light, Ubuntu Light and Lora. The previous font styles were Arial, Times, and Verdana.

You can manage the font types when you create or edit ads. Here is the font selection area:

Here are what each font looks like:

Open Sans:

Open Sans Light:

Roboto Light:

Ubuntu Light:

Lora:

Forum discussion at Google+.

What Are Slow, Gradual Declines In Google Referrals?

I see a lot of different web sites, with a lot of different problems. From manual actions, to huge drops after a major algorithm update, to hacked sites, to sites that block Google by accident. The ones that always make me wonder are the ones that aren't hit hard one night but rather see a slow but consistent decline in organic traffic from Google.

I am sure you have seen them yourself and I see thread in the Google Webmaster Help forums on this topic all the time.

Here is one chart from a site I reviewed recently, showing only Google organic traffic over time:



It makes you wonder, what was the specific thing that hurt this site? It probably was not one algorithm, nor one specific issue. It may have been competitors getting better. It may be that Google trusts this site less and less over time. It may be the specific site has been removing links over time, which is impacting their rankings. Or it may be the site is less relevant to users today than it was before.

Have you seen a lot of cases like this? What would you recommend?

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.