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+.