Google Confirms It’s Okay To Ignore Spam Scores

Google's John Mueller advises that website owners and SEOs prioritize more impactful factors over worrying about spam scores, which he views as relatively insignificant.

Google’s John Mueller answered a Reddit question about how to lower a website’s spam score. His answer reflected an important insight about third-party spam scores and their relation to how Google ranks websites. What’s A Spam Score? A spam score is the opinion of a third-party tool that reviews data like inbound links and on … Read more

Google Confirms AI Overviews Affected By Core Updates

Google Confirms AI Overviews Affected By Core Updates

In a recent LinkedIn exchange, Google’s Senior Search Analyst John Mueller confirmed that core algorithm updates impact the search engine’s AI-powered overviews. This info gives us a clearer picture of how AI is being woven into Google’s search results. Responding to a question on LinkedIn, Mueller stated: “These are a part of search, and core … Read more

Data Confirms Disruptive Potential Of SearchGPT

SearchGPT

Researchers analyzed SearchGPT’s responses to queries and identified how it may impact publishers, B2B websites, and e-commerce, discovering key differences between SearchGPT, AI Overviews, and Perplexity. What is SearchGPT? SearchGPT is a prototype natural language search engine created by OpenAI that combines a generative AI model with the most current web data to provide contextually … Read more

Google Confirms 3 Ways To Make Googlebot Crawl More

Google shares three ways to make Googlebot crawl a website

Google’s Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman discussed three factors that trigger increased Googlebot crawling. While they downplayed the need for constant crawling, they acknowledged there a ways to encourage Googlebot to revisit a website. 1. Impact of High-Quality Content on Crawling Frequency One of the things they talked about was the quality of a website. … Read more

Google Confirms Robots.txt Can’t Prevent Unauthorized Access

Google Confirms Robots.txt Can't Prevent Unauthorized Access

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed a common observation that robots.txt has limited control over unauthorized access by crawlers. Gary then offered an overview of access controls that all SEOs and website owners should know. Common Argument About Robots.txt Seems like any time the topic of Robots.txt comes up there’s always that one person who has to … Read more

Google Confirms Ranking Boost For Country Code Domains

Google Confirms Ranking Boost

Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about a ranking preference given to sites that use country level domain names and explained how that compares to non-country domain names. The question occurred in the SEO Office Hours podcast. ccTLD Aka Country Code Domain Names Domain names that are specific to countries are called ccTLDs (Country Code … Read more

Research Confirms Google AIO Keyword Trends

Google AI Overviews

New research by enterprise search marketing company BrightEdge reveals dramatic changes to sites surfaced through Google’s AI Overviews search feature and though it maintains search market share, the data shows that AI search engine Perplexity is gaining ground at a remarkable pace. Rapid & Dramatic Changes In AIO Triggers The words that trigger AI Overviews … Read more

Google Confirms: No Algorithmic Actions For Site Reputation Abuse Yet

Looking up at an angle at the Google sign on the Head Office for Canada

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, has confirmed that the search engine hasn’t launched algorithmic actions targeting site reputation abuse. This clarification addresses speculation within the SEO community that recent traffic drops are related to Google’s previously announced policy update. Sullivan Says No Update Rolled Out Lily Ray, an SEO professional, shared a screenshot on Twitter … Read more

Google Confirms Site Reputation Abuse Update

Google Confirms Site Reputation Abuse Update

Google’s SearchLiaison confirmed that Google’s site reputation abuse update started on Monday May 6th. Many sites from across the web took down webpages that could be perceived as hosting third-party content for the purpose of ranking in search engines. Site Reputation Abuse An old strategy that’s made a recent comeback is one in which a … Read more

Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important

Google confirms that links are not that important anymore

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words. Background Of Links For Ranking Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a … Read more

Data Confirms A Surge In WordPress Vulnerabilities

Data Confirms A Surge In WordPress Vulnerabilities

WordPress security researchers at Patchstack published their annual State of WordPress Security whitepaper that showed an increase of high and critical severity vulnerabilities, highlighting the importance of security for all websites on the WordPress platform. XSS Is Top WordPress Vulnerability Of 2023 There are many kinds of vulnerabilities but the most common by far was … Read more

Google Confirms: High-Quality Content Is Crawled More Often

Google Confirms: High-Quality Content Is Crawled More Often

SEO professionals have long discussed the concept of a “crawl budget,” which refers to the limited number of pages search engines can crawl daily. The assumption is that sites must stay within this allotted budget to get pages indexed. In a recent podcast, Google search engineers debunked some misconceptions about crawl budget and shed light … Read more

Google Confirms That Filetype Search Operator’s Missing

Google Confirms That Filetype Search Operator's Missing

Google’s filetype search operator went missing early Wednesday morning. Other search operators continue to function. SearchLiaison responds that it must be a bug. Filetype Search Operator The filetype: search operator is a way to search for results that are constrained to specific kinds of files like text, pdf, .doc files and many other kinds of … Read more

Google Confirms Business ‘Openness’ As Local Ranking Factor

Google Confirms Business 'Openness' As Local Ranking Factor

Recent findings by SEO professionals suggest that Google has recalibrated its local search algorithm, placing more emphasis on a business’s listed hours of operation as a key ranking signal. According to Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, the trend became noticeable after the November 2023 core update, leading to businesses that appear as closed being significantly … Read more

Mullenweg Confirms Tumblr Failed But Not Closing

Mullenweg Confirms Tumblr Failed But Not Closing

A leaked internal memo from Matt Mullenweg to the staff at Tumblr outlined plans to shift employees out of Tumblr to other teams in Automattic and run Tumblr on with significantly reduced  staffing. Matt Mullenweg subsequently confirmed that the leak was genuine and offered an explanation of what’s going on with Tumblr. Tumblr Not Earning … Read more

Google Confirms Indexing Bug – New Content Delayed In Search

Google Confirms Indexing Bug - New Content Delayed In Search

Google has confirmed reports of an ongoing technical issue causing delays in indexing newly published web content. In a post published to X on Thursday evening, Google’s Search Liaison announced that the company is actively working to identify the root cause of the problem. However, Google didn’t provide an estimated timeline for resolving the issue. … Read more

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