Google’s Developer Advocate, Martin Splitt, warns website owners to be cautious of traffic that appears to come from Googlebot. Many requests pretending to be Googlebot are actually from third-party scrapers. He shared this in the latest episode of Google’s SEO Made Easy series, emphasizing that “not everyone who claims to be Googlebot actually is Googlebot.” … Read more
Google’s “Search Off the Record” podcast recently highlighted an SEO issue that can make web pages disappear from search results. In the latest episode, Google Search team member Allan Scott discussed “marauding black holes” formed by grouping similar-looking error pages. Google’s system can accidentally cluster error pages that look alike, causing regular pages to get … Read more
In a recent discussion on Reddit’s r/SEO forum, Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, cautioned against relying too heavily on third-party SEO metrics. His comments came in response to a person’s concerns about dramatic changes in tool measurements and their perceived impact on search performance. The conversation was sparked by a website owner who reported the … Read more
Gary Illyes, Analyst at Google, has highlighted a major issue for crawlers: URL parameters. During a recent episode of Google’s Search Off The Record podcast, Illyes explained how parameters can create endless URLs for a single page, causing crawl inefficiencies. Illyes covered the technical aspects, SEO impact, and potential solutions. He also discussed Google’s past … Read more
Google updated their documentation for the Google Labs Google Notes experiment to remind users that Notes will go away at the end of July 2024 and showed how to download notes content, with a final deadline beyond which it will be impossible to retrieve it. Google Notes Notes is an experimental feature in Google Labs … Read more
In a recent LinkedIn post, Google Analyst Gary Illyes raised awareness about two issues plaguing web crawlers: soft 404 and other “crypto” errors. These seemingly innocuous mistakes can negatively affect SEO efforts. Understanding Soft 404s Soft 404 errors occur when a web server returns a standard “200 OK” HTTP status code for pages that don’t … Read more
Google updated their hreflang documentation to note a quirk in how some websites are using it which (presumably) can lead to unintended consequences with how Google processes it. hreflang Link Tag Attributes is an HTML attribute that can be used to communicate data to the browser and search engines about linked resources relevant to the … Read more
Are the days of organic SEO numbered? That’s the idea raised by a search scientist’s assessment of Google’s AI-powered disruptions. At MozCon’s 20th annual conference, Tom Capper, Moz’s Senior Search Scientist, provided a data-driven reality check. Capper warned attendees “At the end of this talk, I’m going to tell you that full-funnel organic marketing is … Read more
When dealing with outdated website content, Google has warned against using certain redirects that could be perceived as misleading to users. The advice came up during a recent episode of Google’s Search Off The Record podcast. In the episode, Search Relations team members John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman discussed strategies for managing “content decay” – … Read more
Google’s SVP overseeing Search, Prabhakar Raghavan, recently warned employees in an internal memo that the company’s search division faces a “new operating reality” with fewer resources, according to a CNBC report. The memo comes amid concerns over softening revenue and user engagement metrics for Google’s core search product. Recent quarters have seen weaker-than-expected growth in … Read more
Recently, there was a discussion on Twitter about the validity of using custom elements in the section of web pages. Custom elements are part of the Web Components specifications, allowing developers to create HTML elements tailored to their needs. Using custom tags, developers can build reusable and self-contained HTML elements that function independently from the … Read more
During Google’s April 2023 SEO Office Hours, a website owner asked Gary Illyes, Analyst at Google, whether giving Googlebot a different HTTP status code from the one served to human visitors would be acceptable. Specifically, they wanted to serve an HTTP status code of 410 (Gone) to Googlebot while giving users a 200 (OK) status … Read more
Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, issued a warning March 3, 2022 stating that there are two possible scenarios that could threaten continued operations. Yandex stated that it could operate for many months should either of those scenarios be avoided. Yandex indicated that current data center and technology capacity will allow it to continue operating for … Read more
Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, issued a warning March 3, 2022 stating that there are two possible scenarios that could threaten continued operations. Yandex stated that it could operate for many months should either of those scenarios be avoided. Yandex indicated that current data center and technology capacity will allow it to continue operating for … Read more
