Google Penalizing HARO Links? Not Really.

Bill Hartzer wrote that Google has targeted HARO, Help A Reporter, links in the latest manual action of unnatural links.

HARO links? Really? Would Google do that?

Well, not exactly. The links were because of HARO but the links that caused the penalty were not on helpareporter.com.

 Bill told me it was due to an interview received through HARO, which was then syndicated on other sites.
The other sites were called out as bad and unnatural links.

Google+ Dying? Would That Impact Google's Search Results?

There are many rumors around if Google+ is dying based around Vic leaving and some other stories.

Now, if Google+ did get dropped, which seems hard to believe based on all the integration it has across all of Google's properties, but if it is, how would that impact SEO and the search results?

Organically, we know Google+ has no impact on rankings outside of personalization, if any. We do also know that Google+ is a large part of powering authorship these days.

Google Adds Examples For Deceptive Sneaky Redirects

Google announced they have updated two of their webmaster guidelines documents to better describe ways you should not use redirects to trick or manipulate Google's search results.
The Sneaky redirects added examples, including an example of mobile redirects. Here they are:

• Search engines shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different.
• Desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain.

Google Holds Webmaster Meetup At Google Taipei May 15th

Google posted on the Google+ webmaster channel, in Chinese, that they are holding a webmaster meetup in Goolge's Taipei office on May 15th.
Those webmasters in the region are welcome to fill out this form and request to be invited to join the meeting.
The translation of the Google+ post from Chinese to English reads:

We will hold a webmaster in the May 15 meeting Google's Taipei office, webmasters and sincerely invite interested stakeholders to participate.

Google's Matt Cutts: Anticipate The Query To Better Control Titles In Google

Google's Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why and when Google may use something other than your title tag for the search results title snippet.
Matt Cutts suggested that it is best for your to try to anticipate what the user will search for when crafting your title tags. When you do that and then when it matches the query, then Google will likely show your title tag.
Google uses three criteria when determining if they should use your title tag:
(1) Something that is "relatively" short
(2) Have a good description of the page and "ideally": the site that the page is on.
(3) And that it is re
levant to the query.
If you fail on these criteria, then Google may use (1) content on your page, (2) anchor text links pointing to the page and/or (3) may also use the Open Directory Project.

Google Index Status Count Drop After Update Line

Google's John Mueller posted an excellent example of a case of where a webmaster is nervous about a report in Google Webmaster Tools, when in reality, all is good.

He posted this on Google+ and shared a screen shot by Jodi Bennett. The screen shot, as you will see below, shows a complete drop off of indexed pages after the update line.

Google Analytics Administer Goals Interface Updated

Scott Hendison posted on Google+ that he noticed a new goals interface to add goals within Google Analytics.
I personally do not see the new administrative interface for setting up goals, but some are. Scott said:

Google has a brand new interface for adding goals.

Google: Nothing Is Changing With Google+

Google's Moritz Tolxdorff, the Google+ Community Manager said on Google+ in response to the rumors of Google+ being cut down, saying that is not true. He said:

Yes, no one is moving anywhere. Everything will stay as it is.

You can Moritz's response in this Google+ thread on April 25th.
Chris Lang asked the question that got the response from the Google+ community manager.
Forum discussion at Google+.

Google: No Limit To The Number Of Links You Can Have On A Page

Since 2008 we've known Google stopped their 100 links per page limit. Last year, Matt Cutts posted a video answer on that topic as well.

While Google has said they don't have a 100 link limit anymore, they never really said if there was a limit or not.

Google Test Lab For Experimenting With Google's Rankings

Rand Fishkin, the co-founder of Moz, announced on his personal blog a new thing he is playing with he named IMEC, aka Internet Marketing Experimental Collective.

The goal is to increase the number of people experimenting with Google's search results, so they can give more validity to the experiments they run. Rand said, "The goal is to assemble a group of marketers who care about producing high-quality, consistent, repeatable experiments in search engines and on social media to learn more about how these platforms work."

Here is an example of an experiment one would run:

How to Reverse a Google Manual Spam Action in 3 days

I spontaneously decided to write this article due to getting some interesting Feedback on my Google+ Post (German). The subject, Reconsideration Request, once again creates a stir, and that is why I now present you an interesting case. At the end of March 2014, an entrepreneur asked me to create a SEO Analysis for his Online Shop, because in the past couple of months he was not happy with its development on Google.de. Something had to happen. So, I thankfully accepted his request.

I immediately asked my client for further information. Quickly, I found out that the organic traffic is already heavily declining for months, which of course affected the profitability of the Online Shop.

Penguin 3.0 is Coming Soon. Will Your Site Survive?

Clean up your site’s backlink profile with Link Detox before it’s too late

SEOs around the world still shudder when they think of when Penguin 2.0 launched. Google’s algorithm change penalized countless sites. Rankings plummeted, traffic dropped, it was the apocalypse. We all knew it wasn’t the end, and Penguin 3.0 is almost here. Save your site by running Link Detox on it today!

Have you done your Link Risk Management?

Proper SEO strategy requires ongoing link audits of your backlink profile to find your toxic links. Cleanup those bad links or proactively disavow them, just like Google recommends.

DailyMotion Says Google Is Cheating, Serves Up Its Own Video Content Over DailyMotion Videos

The president of French video platform DailyMotion Giuseppe de Martino told UK newspaper The Independent he believes Google is leveraging unfair search practices, serving up YouTube videos in place of DailyMotion content.

Independent reporter Ian Burrell writes:

    [De Martino] claims that sometimes when internet users search Google for DailyMotion videos they mysteriously don’t appear – yet YouTube-hosted alternatives appear among results.

Google Adds New Features To The Keyword Planner Tool

Google has added nine new features to the Google Keyword Planner Tool today.

Here are the new features in the Keyword Planner tool that you should be able to play with yourself today. The images and descriptions are from Kim Clinkunbroomer’s blog.

(1) Nice graphical visualizations and estimates for geographics that breaks out locations with volumes. You can change your time views as well.

 

A Google Update Brewing?

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has been pretty active with webmaster chatter since Sunday, when I went offline for two days.

It also appears that the automated tracking tools are seeing nice spikes over the past couple of days including Mozcast, SERPs.com and SERP Metrics. Although algoroo doesn't seem to agree.

Google's Matt Cutts On How To Buy Domain Names

Google's Matt Cutts posted a video on the question How can I research a domain that I may want to purchase?

Matt Cutts gave a few tips on what to do, what steps to take, when researching a domain name buy.

Google's Knowledge Graph Seeks Answers From Parked Domains?

Andrew Steel searched Google for the definition of [what is guest blogging] and the answer Google's Knowledge Graph returned was from a parked domain site . I kid you not. I tested this myself and the result came up when in incognito mode:

When you click through, you are taken to a parked domain page with ads and the option to buy the domain name.

How to Predict Google’s Algorithm Changes

One of the ways you can become an SEO expert is to learn all about Google’s secret algorithm. Its algorithm dictates everything that happens in Google’s search result. The algorithm is the key that can unlock insane amounts of wealth, but it can also be the penalty that can ruin your online business.
It sounds like a crazy task to try to understand the algorithm, but there are ways. After years of learning, teaching, and watching SEO in action on thousands of different websites, I have developed a process for predicting Google’s algorithm changes.
And no, I don’t have all the answers. I’m not pretending to have some prophetic insight into Google’s next move, and this isn’t some scammy tell-all about the latest algorithmic loophole.
This is a practical how-to guide that equips you with knowledge that will help you make a good guess at how the algorithm is going to change over time.

Discover the known facts about the algorithm

In order to understand how the algorithm will change in the future, you first need to understand what it looks like right now.

SEOs Mixed On Fearing Google's Knowledge Graph

Last month, we created a poll asking if you fear Google's knowledge graph.

The reason was surrounded around the news of Google's Singhal around the swiss army knife analogy and if that is Google's true intent. Go read up about that if you do not know what I am talking about.

In short, the SEO space is kind of mixed on their feelings of fearing or being scared of Google's end goal with the Knowledge Graph.

Most said, 45%, that they do not fear Google's Knowledge graph but 17% said they sometimes do and 37% said they do fear it. So 55% do fear the knowledge graph on some level and 45% said they do not.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

62% Say Attacking Google's Matt Cutts Is Wrong

I am happy to say that the majority of our industry thinks that attacking Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, as wrong. I ran a poll asking Should SEOs/Webmasters Attack Google's Matt Cutts? This was an anonymous poll, so I expected the response to be much more negative but only 34% said they think it is appropriate to attack Matt Cutts. 62% said it is not appropriate and 4% said they do not know. To learn more about this topic, see our post from couple weeks ago. We had almost 500 responses to this poll, but... Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results. Forum discussion continued at Cre8asite Forums.

How SEOs Would React To Google Dropping Links As A Ranking Factor

As you know, Yandex, the popular Russian search engine, officially dropped link factors from their ranking algorithm within specific sectors. Google's Matt Cutts said dropping links in Google's ranking algorithm would make for worse search results - so they likely won't be doing that any time soon. But what if they did? That is the questioned we asked you and with 330+ responses, I wanted to share the results. If Google dropped links from their ranking algorithm you would be: 35% said, very excited 32% said, curious 18% said, very concerned 8% said, just be... 6% said, they would be over and done with
Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results. Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Google Slaps Another Guest Blog Network: PostJoint

Google Slaps Another Guest Blog Network: PostJoint

Google’s Matt Cutts somewhat confirmed on Twitter that Google has taken action on another guest blogging network. This network is named PostJoint and claims “there’s no footprints.”

Someone tweeted to Matt that PostJoint was penalized.

In fact, if you check out Google for a search on their name, their web site no longer ranks on the first page.

Matt Cutts this morning confirmed it on Twitter saying “any link or guest blog network that claims to have “zero footprints” is waving a giant red flag.”

Google's Cutts On Big SEO Myths Are....

Google's Matt Cutts released a video on the topic of some of the largest SEO myths out today.

He broke it down into two categories:

(1) Ads and their influence on organic results.

(2) Quick fixes to break Google's algorithm.

On the ads from, Matt Cutts said there are two myths. (1) If you buy ads, your organic rankings will go higher. (2) If you don't buy ads, your rankings will go higher. He also added that people think that Google makes changes to their organic results to drive more people to buy ads. All of this is untrue and a myth according to Matt Cutts.

On the quick fix end, Matt said there is too much "group think" in the forums and black hat forums. He said he sees this all the time where for a couple months one person will say tactic X works awesome, then a few months later, tactic Y and so on. For example, someone might say article directories work, then later guest blogging, then later link wheels and this process goes on and on. Also, someone might say a specific tool works very well. Matt said, the truth is, if someone found a loop hole, they wouldn't sell it as an ebook or software product, they'd use it themselves for as long as possible before others catch on.

70% Said Google's Penguin 2.1 Update Hurt them

About six-months ago, Google unleashed a major update to Penguin, the Penguin 2.1 update.

The earlier feedback from that update was that is was a big impact to webmasters and mostly SEOs who used links in an aggressive manner.

So I posted a poll asking you how you did with the update. Being that six-months later there has been no reports of a new Penguin refresh or update, I figured I post the poll results today.

We had over 2,800 responses to the poll, and 70% said they saw a drop in Google referrer traffic after the update. So 70% seemed to have been negatively impacted by it. While only 7%, or just about 200 people, reported their sites recovered from a previous Penguin update with Penguin 2.1. 6% said they saw an increase in traffic, where one site goes down, another benefits. And 17% said they saw no change at all before or after.

Here is the pie chart:

Again, we are still waiting for a Penguin refresh for over six-months. I think we are due one soon.

Only 13% Claim Google's Disavow Tool Worked For Them

We ran a poll late last year asking did Google's disavow link tool work for you or not?

As you know, the Google Disavow Tool launched in October of 2012. Since then webmasters and SEOs have been obsessed with it and using it all the time.

But does it work? Does it help you improve your rankings and remove penalties? Well, I know for a fact it does help remove penalties, but does that lead to better rankings always? Not always.

We polled our audience and with 670+ responses and only 13% of those said using this tool worked for them. 37% said they are not sure if it worked or not and 50% said they are confident it had no impact.

Here is the pie chart:

Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results.

Forum discussion continued at Black Hat World.