Google Incorrectly Labels Sites As Hacked In Search Results

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Google is in the process of rolling out a new hacked page classifier which puts a notice below sites in the search listings believed to have malicious code or other hacking issues. The only problem is, many webmasters are reporting getting labeled as hacked incorrectly.

Yesterday, Google’s John Mueller acknowledged that a small number of sites are being mislabeled in the search results, which is obviously discouraging to anyone considering clicking on the link.

You can tell if your site is affected by simply searching for your site on Google and seeing if a small blue text appears below the title tag reading “This site may be hacked.” If you don’t see it, you’re in the clear. On the other hand, if you’re seeing that line it means your site has either been mislabeled or really has been hacked.

Mueller suggests having someone experienced in working with hacked sites to review your site to ensure there are no problems. If they give your site a clean bill of health, you will have to notify Google.

This Site May be Hacked

The search engine says to fill out this form if you believe your site is mislabeled as hacked. Once it is submitted, someone at Google will review it and remove the label if they also find no issues. There is no indication how long it will take Google to review your site and remove the label, especially with the number of sites reporting the problem.

For more information on resolving issues with hacked sites, see Google’s best practices.

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Google Webmaster Tools Is Missing Data and Google Isn’t Saying Why

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Google-Webmaster-Tools-LogoGoogle Webmaster Tools is usually the best friend for any webmaster trying to keep informed, but users have noticed the normally up-to-date service has not been updated in over a week.

The problem was noted by Search Engine Land last week and has been the main topic of conversation on the Webmaster Tools forums all weekend, but so far Google has no response.

The closest thing we have to a response comes from forum user ‘Kai Z’, who wrote “Known issue. […] Give it a few days to update/ return”. Normally forum posts like this wouldn’t carry much weight but it seems notable that Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller marked this response as ‘best answer’. Naturally this has caused quite a bit of speculation but could potentially be meaningless.

The outage seems to line up with a similar issue in Google Analytics. Many users reported data in analytics was missing for Monday February 9, but Google that problem received a prompt response from Google on its product forums: “We’re sorry for our unusually bad case of the Mondays. We’ve fixed the issue and no data was lost. Analytics users should start seeing any missed [data] soon.”

Most likely the problem will be resolved fairly quickly, but the lack of transparency from Google on what is causing the lack of updating has caused some concern within the SEO community.

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What Do Businesses Need To Know About Online Reviews? [Infographic]

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Online reviews can be the deciding factor in the success of small businesses or companies that are just starting out, and yet many businesses ignore the single most powerful free form of marketing. This infographic from Web Republic breaks down the current trends and effects of reviews including:

  • Amazon is the leading review site in America and 42% of all its customers have left at least one review.
  • Other top US review sites include Google+, Yahoo, Yelp, and TripAdvisor
  • Yelp is the review site with the most global traffic
  • 84% of all consumers read online reviews, reading an average of 4-6 reviews before they begin to trust a business
  • 76% of customers are willing to pay more for hotels with better reviews.

How are you encouraging happy customers to leave reviews?

Online Reviews infographic

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Google Falls To Lowest Desktop Search Share in 6 Years

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For years, Google has had a strong hold on the search industry, maintaining over a 75% market share for the desktop search market. If recent months are any indication however, that grip appears to be loosening.

According to the latest data from StatCounter, Google’s desktop search market share dipped below 75% for the first time since July 2008, continuing a downward trend that started in November.

US Search Share Jan

In November, Mozilla replaced Google with Yahoo as the default search engine on its Firefox web browser. Initially Google didn’t seem to be concerned, but a three month drop in search share seems to be finally getting their attention.

In mid-January Firefox users who visited the Google homepage were greeted with a banner encouraging them to set the search engine as their default. At the same time, Google also began tweeting instructions for how to replace the search engine.

US Search Share Jan Firefox

Since the five-year agreement was made between Yahoo and Mozilla, Yahoo has been consistently gaining ground, already replacing Bing as the second most popular desktop search engine. In total, Yahoo has nearly tripled its share of the desktop search market on Firefox, climbing to over 28% from less than 10% in November.

In the long run, it is still unclear whether Yahoo is going to be able to continue its ascent. While the changes are substantial, Firefox is also the least popular major desktop browser available. The change is search share is also limited to desktop, suggesting users aren’t so much choosing a new search engine but accepting what they are being given.

Despite these challenges, Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, says Yahoo is already beating the odds:

“Some analysts expected Yahoo to fall in January as a result of Firefox users switching back to Google. In fact Yahoo has increased US search share by half a percentage point. It will be fascinating to see if these gains continue.”

It will be interesting to see if the trend continues and how Google might try to persuade more users to actively choose their search engine over the default.

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Long Loading Times May Be Costing You

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Do you know the fastest way to lose potential customers on your website? You might think it would be by creating a page with poor usability, illegible text, or you could get creative and put offensive images on your front page. No matter your choice, there is something that can lose visitors before they even get the chance to see any of those options – long loading times.

Consumers simply don’t accept having to wait for what someone else can offer faster, and this is especially true online. The average consumer is willing to wait approximately five seconds before they become annoyed or frustrated with being forced to wait. If your site takes longer than that for the average user, it is practically guaranteed you are hemorrhaging visitors who aren’t willing to wait.

Long loading times also hurt your site and loses you visitors in a few less direct ways, most notably in rankings. While there are many things we don’t understand about Google’s ranking algorithm, we do know loading speed is one of the biggest factors in establishing your site’s perceived value and ranking.

So, how do you actually go about speeding up your website’s loading times and increasing its effectiveness? These five tips will help you get started:

  • Minimize on-page components. There are plenty of processes going on behind the scenes that can slow a site down. If you can combine style sheets or replace images with CSS, your site will be able to better load everything in a fast manner.
  • Compress large pages. Google has shown time and time again that sites with long-form content, videos, and shareable media are some of the best ways to rank higher, but all the extra content also means there is more to load. Try to compress your larger pages so they take up less space and consume less bandwidth when they load.
  • Use browser caching. Browser caching stores important elements from your site on a viewer’s hard drive in order to improve load times on repeat visits. A shocking number of webmasters forget to implement this tool, which can lead to slower load times for even your most loyal visitors.
  • Optimize visual content. The growing emphasis on visual content might have misled some website owners. If customers enjoy images, video, and graphics, why not fill your site with them? Unfortunately, too many improperly formatted graphics can cause a traffic jam and sluggish load speeds. Take the time to optimize visual content by limiting size, reformatting images into JPEG, and eliminating BMPs, GIFs, and TIFFs, and viewers will love you.
  • Eliminate unnecessary plugins. Particularly if you’re using WordPress, running multiple plugins contributes substantially to slower page load speeds. Though their convenience and ease of use make plugins an attractive option, using too many will cause your load speed to plummet and result in poor user experience. Remove any plugins you don’t absolutely need.
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Google Is Sending Mass Warnings To Sites That Aren’t Mobile-Friendly

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Google has been aggressive about encouraging webmasters to make their sites more mobile-friendly, and it appears they will only become more strict in 2015. Google has started sending mass notifications to webmasters whose websites are not appropriately optimized for mobile.

The notifications, titled “fix mobile usability issues found on…” informs webmasters that their sites have mobile usability errors on all pages and thus will be “displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”

The notifications are popping up in Google Webmaster Tools and via email. Perhaps more interesting, Google is also sending the notifications to sites that are blatantly not mobile friendly. Typically these sites already know they are not mobile-friendly, but Google is sending alerts warning these webmasters nonetheless.

This is the latest sign that Google is almost certainly going to be amping up the role mobile optimization plays in search, and many believe there may be an outright “mobile ranking algorithm” in the close future.

The increased importance of mobile to Google is little surprise as mobile gradually overtakes desktop traffic. Google wants to ensure they are directing users to sites that will fit their needs wherever they are, and sites who aren’t mobile-friendly simply don’t deliver.

Here is a copy of the notification being sent out:

google-mobile-seo-errors-1421674683

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8 SEO Trends You Should Know in 2015 [Infographic]

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SEO is an essential part of growing your business online, but it can often seem impossible to keep up with the constantly changing trends and policies. With the never-ending changes coming from Google and the other major search engines, you could drive yourself crazy trying to react to every single update.

Thankfully, a recent infographic from CJG Digital Marketing breaks down the most important trends and changes coming for SEO in 2015. With these tips, you won’t have to fight to keep up to date with the latest changes because you’ll be prepared before they even happen.

 Top-8-SEO-Trends-to-Watch-Out-this-2015

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New Survey Shows The Majority of Small & Medium Businesses Find Online Marketing Effective

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Many small businesses are pretty cautious when it comes to investing the very limited amount of time and money they have into marketing, but a new survey shows the vast majority of small or medium businesses who use online marketing are glad they did.

BrightLocal’s annual SMB Internet Marketing Survey asked 736 businesses with 1-50 employees about their feelings and use of internet marketing, mobile marketing, and marketing services in October-November 2014.

Of those who responded to the survey, 95% were businesses located within North America (92% U.S.; 3% Canada).

how-effective-is-internet-marketing

When asked how effective each respondent felt internet marketing is at attracting new customers to their business, 32% said they found online marketing to be “very effective” (compared to 27% in 2013). Combined, 75% felt internet marketing is “effective” or “very effective” at attracting new customers (compared to 68% in 2013).

marketing-budget

The findings of the survey also show that many small businesses are still reaping significant rewards with internet marketing on a limited budget. The report says 70% of those who responded to the survey are spending less than $500 per month on marketing (compared to 73%), and 83% are spending less than $1,000 per month.

There are several other interesting findings in the study, but the overall message is clear. Online marketing is highly effective, even for businesses who don’t have extensive resources to put towards marketing.

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Less Than a Third of Marketers Properly Prioritize Mobile

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Mobile-Search-Image-MashableDespite numerous  studies showing that mobile is beginning to overtake desktop, a new survey by Marin Software shows only a third of the 300+ digital marketers polled in the U.S. and UK make mobile a priority.

Over half (57 percent) said they optimize for mobile when they can but don’t put great focus on it, while 10 percent said mobile is not a significant part of their strategy at all.

The survey does suggest lack of time and resources could take partial responsibility for the lag. Three-quarters of those polled said their jobs became more complex over the past year as a result of media fragmentation and data overload.

Other portions of the findings suggest hurdles in implementing cross-channel marketing may also play a significant role. Attribution modeling across channels was cited as the biggest road block to implementing effective cross-channel marketing. As Ginny Marvin explains, “If marketers can’t successfully measure the impact of their mobile campaigns, they’ll put their attention elsewhere.”

These problems were reflected in the findings that half of those surveyed also cited a lack of transparency into the necessary data.

While properly prioritizing mobile can be difficult, the latest indications show that mobile will only be more important in the next few years and smartphones improve and society gets more comfortable using phones and tablets in their day-to-day life. Marketers and businesses who stall on prioritizing mobile will eventually have a lot of catching up to do.

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Bing Explains What They Mean When They Say “Quality Content”

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quality contentOver the past few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has endured a drastic shift from focusing on building link profiles filled with as many links of any quality that you could accumulate to emphasizing the value sites offer to users by assessing content quality. Of course, as the shift has occurred many online marketers were left wondering “what exactly is quality content and how do search engines judge my content?”

Google has remained fairly tight-lipped on the subject, only suggesting a few obvious and time-tested strategies for improving content for users. However, Bing’s Senior Program Manager, Michael Basilyan, went into great detail on how Bing evaluates content quality in a recent blog post.

In Bing’s case, the algorithm looks at multiple factors including relevance to specific queries, authority, utility, and even the overall presentation of the content. Basilyan encourages content creators to be ever-aware that every search is made by real people wanting real information to help them, rather than meaningless paragraphs crammed with keywords.

If you want your site to be visible on Bing’s search results and your content to be useful to users, Basilyan recommends focusing on these three areas:

  • Authority: How trustworthy is the content, the author of the content, and the website it is published on? Signals from social networks, cited sources, and name recognition is considered when determining an author’s authority.
  • Utility: How useful and detailed is the content? Content that provides appropriate levels of depth, along with supporting information, is considered to be more useful for searchers.
  • Presentation: Is the content presented in a way that’s easy to read? A well-presented page is one that makes its content easy to find, rather than one that forces the user to sift through unrelated material to find what they really want.

The blog post also highlights that Bing does not discourage the use of advertising, saying “Bing will promote and support websites and webmasters that provide ads relevant to the content of their website.” But, if your content interferes with usability it may also affect your visibility and Bing’s own assessment of your content.

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