Google Notifying Publishers For Right To Be Forgotten Removals

Now that Google has been removing results from the European versions of Google in response to the EU’s Right To Be Forgotten requirements, many webmasters are now receiving notifications of these removals.
Last night, around 10 p.m. EST, I received a notification for a site I have verified Webmaster Tools access from. The notice read:

Notice of removal from Google Search We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google:
[example URL(s) go here]
For more information, see https://www.google.com/policies/faq/?hl=en

Here is a picture:

I am not the only one who received this notice. 

Other webmasters have shown examples of notices they received

Screen Shot Of Google’s New Rejection Notices For Reconsideration Requests

At SMX Advanced last week, Google’s head of search quality, Matt Cutts, announced that they will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection notices with more detailed responses in some cases.
We’ve now located an example of the new rejection notices, as shared with me on Twitter.
The new notice has a new section at the bottom titled “A note from your reviewer.” Then the Google reviewer was able to give specific advice that, at least in this case, would be extremely helpful to the webmaster with the manual action.

June 2014 Google Webmaster Report

May was an incredibly busy month for Google SEO related topics, specifically seeing Panda 4.0 roll out, the Google Spam algo being updated, press release sites taking a dive and several unconfirmed updates that Google wouldn't talk about.
We also saw eBay get slapped, a popular site named MetaFilter talk about their Google penalty and a Nest competitor call out Google.
So it was a busy month!

Press Release Sites See Huge Drop In Google Ranking After Panda 4.0

Couple Of days Ago I reported at Search Engine Land that Panda 4.0 may have hurt press release sites and showed SearchMetrics data for PRWeb, PR Newswire, BusinessWire and PRLog all losing between 60% to 85% of their SEO visibility.
This drop seems to have come right after the Google Panda 4.0 update. The controversy around press release sites were mostly about links flowing from those releases, not necessarily the issue with the duplicative nature of that content. But let's be honest, many many press releases issued are content thin and spammy on the content end, not just on the link end. So maybe, just maybe, Panda 4.0 adjusted for it and the big sites felt it?
Sean from SEER also documented the drop via SEM Rush data and screen shots of before and after rankings for some press releases.

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Fetch & Render By Device Type

Google has announced they have added a new feature to the Fetch as Googlebot tool in Google Webmaster Tools. Now, you can see how Googlebot renders the page.
Instead of using the Fetch as Googlebot to just see an output of code and HTML, Google will show a visual representation of what Googlebot sees. It will also show you errors on what resources Googlebot was unable to access, preventing them from fetching and rendering everything on the page.
Here is the new “fetch and render” button on the Fetch as Google feature:

How to Avoid Getting Slaughtered by Penguin 3.0

According to Google, Penguin 2.0 only affected 2.3% of English-US queries. That sounds like a low number, but in the scheme of algorithm rollouts, it was the third largest to date. It wasn’t just queries that received a jolt. The unleashing of Penguin 2.0 impacted web traffic of thousands of sites. Webmasters reported reductions in traffic of up to 90%, which basically crippled businesses and halted online revenues.
Today, we may be on the verge of another major algorithm upset: Penguin 3.0.
But don’t worry; I’m here to share some news about what’s going on with Penguin and to show you how you can prepare yourself.

What number Penguin is this?

 

Google’s Matt Cutts: Over Time Backlinks Will Become Less Important

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a video that backlinks, over time, will become a little less important. Matt did say that backlinks in the Google ranking algorithm still have many years left in them.
Matt explained that Google is focusing a lot now on working on ways to determine if a web page is meets the expectations of an expert user. They do this currently by looking at the links to the page, the reputation of the site and pages and the quality of the content on that particular page.

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 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 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.

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.

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'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.

SEO TIPS

Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.