Tag Archive for: Barry Schwartz

Google Spokesperson Says To “Buckle Up” For Major Changes Coming To Search Results

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Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, raised some eyebrows over the weekend by saying that “major changes” are coming to Google’s search results. 

The statement came during a live talk, where Sullivan reportedly told the crowd to “buckle up” because major changes were on the way.

As the public voice for Google’s Search team, Sullivan is uniquely positioned to speak on what the search engine’s developers are working on behind the scenes. For businesses, this means that he is one of the only people who can give advance notice about upcoming shifts to search results that could impact your online visibility and sales. 

What Did Sullivan Say?

Since it wasn’t livestreamed or recorded, there’s been some discussion about exactly what Sullivan told the crowd. Posts on X agree on a few details though. 

While attendees agree Sullivan specifically used the phrase “buckle up”, a few users provided longer versions of the quote that paint a slightly different picture. 

One person, Andy Simpson, says the entire quote was “There’s so much coming that I don’t want to say to buckle up because that makes you freak out because if you’re doing good stuff, it’s not going to be an issue for you.”

This is likely the case, as Sullivan has since clarified:

“I was talking about various things people have raised where they want to see our results improve, or where they think ‘sure, you fixed this but what about….’ And that these things all correspond to improvements we have in the works. That there’s so much coming that I don’t want to say buckle up, because those who are making good, people-first content should be fine. But that said, there’s a lot of improvements on the way.”

Either way, it is important for businesses to take note of these statements and watch their site’s search results performance for any signs of major shifts in the near future. 

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Google Explains Recent Penalties Targeted ‘Links For Products’ Schemes

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Yesterday, we reported that a significant number of websites had been hit with Google penalties over the weekend for “unnatural outbound links.” Since then, Google has clarified that the manual penalties issued this weekend were specifically related to bloggers giving links to websites in exchange for free products or services.

Google had issued a warning a few weeks ago urging bloggers to disclose free product reviews and nofollow links in their blog posts related to these products. Now, they’ve taken action against sites who ignored the warning.

In the warning, Google told bloggers to “nofollow the link, if you decide to link to the company’s site, the company’s social media accounts, an online merchant’s page that sells the product, a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product or the company’s mobile app in an app store.”

As Barry Schwartz reports, John Mueller from Google explained the penalties in several threads on the Google support forums, telling people to look at the warning Google published recently named Best practices for bloggers reviewing free products they receive from companies. In one comment, Mueller went on to say:

In particular, if a post was made because of a free product (or free service, or just paid, etc.), then any links placed there because of that need to have a rel=nofollow attached to them. This includes links to the product itself, any sales pages (such as on Amazon), affiliate links, social media profiles, etc. that are associated with that post. Additionally, I imagine your readers would also appreciate it if those posts were labeled appropriately. It’s fine to keep these kinds of posts up, sometimes there’s a lot of useful information in them! However, the links in those posts specifically need to be modified so that they don’t pass PageRank (by using the rel=nofollow).

Once these links are cleaned up appropriately, feel free to submit a reconsideration request, so that the webspam team can double-check and remove the manual action.

If you are a blogger or company who has participated in an agreement to give free products to reviews, be sure to check your Google Search Console messages to see if you’ve been hit by the latest round of manual penalties.

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Google Issues Outbound Link Penalties To Websites

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Over the weekend, Google sent out a new wave of penalties, this time smacking down sites for “unnatural outbound links.” The majority of websites are safe from the latest round of manual penalties, but you may be in trouble if you’ve been attempting to manipulate the Google search results.

As Barry Schwartz has noted, this specific penalty appears to be taking the shape of Google deciding not to trust any links on the entire site.

Webmasters who received these penalties were sent emails which read:

If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to the affected portions of your site. Actions that affect your whole site are listed under Site-wide matches. Actions that affect only part of your site and/or some incoming links to your site are listed under Partial matches.

Below, you can also see a copy of the message webmasters are receiving in Google Search Console about these penalties:

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To make sure your site is safe, be sure to log into your Google Search Console account and check your all messages box. If you see this notification about an outbound link penalty, you can find out how to fix it and submit a reconsideration request here.

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Google Panda 4.2 Began It’s Long Roll Out Over The Weekend

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 Panda

Google has confirmed it has released a Google Panda refresh over the weekend, over 10 months after the last update to the algorithm.

The latest refresh is unique from past updates as it went virtually unnoticed by webmasters until it was announced by Barry Schwartz. This is because it is being rolled out far slower than in the past. Previous updates were rolled out usually over a period of a few days or at most a couple weeks, but Google says this latest update could potentially take months to fully roll out, even on a site-by-site basis. However, as it is a site-wide algorithm, it will not be on a page-by-page basis.

Google was not willing to provide any information about why the rollout is being done so slowly.

Unfortunately, the slow rollout does not mean you can expect to make any last minute changes to save your site. It is too late to change your fate with Panda 4.2, although it’s always good to make any improvements you know are needed.

Schwartz also noted his personal SEO news site, which was penalized by Panda 4.1, does show an increase in organic traffic since the update. That means others who were hit by the last update may see small improvements as well.

The Panda refresh is expected to impact approximately 2-3% of queries, meaning it is a relatively small update.

While the refresh may be good news to webmasters who were impacted by 4.1, most people are less pleased – particularly by the slow rollout.

It may be months before we know the impact of the refresh thanks to the slow implementation, but, considering there hasn’t been an update since October of last year, it was past time for it to happen.

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Google’s Mobile Friendly Algorithm Is Completely Rolled Out

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Google Mobile

Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm is completely rolled out, but webpages may still see some small changes in the coming days as the search engine continues to index more pages according to Gary Illyes.

Illyes, a prominent Web Trends Analyst at Google, confirmed the news on Twitter this morning by saying “the algo is rolled out” when Barry Schwartz, News Editor for Search Engine Land, asked him on Twitter “is the Google Mobile algorithm fully rolled out?”

The algorithm is the most talked about shake-up from Google since the implementation of the Penguin and Panda algorithms, but the lion’s share of panic appears to be unwarranted as the majority of webmasters saw little to no changes in the wake of the latest rollout.

While Gary Illyes did confirm the algorithm is fully rolled out, he added one concession:

Not all pages were reindexed yet so they don’t have the new scores. Yet.

Also, there were a load of sites that became MF recently, so the actual number of sites affected decreased considerably.

Even with that caveat, the likelihood of significant changes coming in the next few days is unlikely.

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Google Responds To Claims They Would De-list Non-Mobile Friendly Sites

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Google’s upcoming mobile-friendly algorithm has webmasters panicking as the deadline fast approaches. As always, when there is fear there is also plenty of misinformation.

In particular, there is one myth going around which is stirring up quite a bit of trouble.

Google has attempted to be clear that their new mobile algorithm will demote pages that don’t pass a mobile-friendliness test when they might appear in mobile search results pages. Unfortunately, that is being misconstrued.

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As Barry Schwartz shared, emails are going around proclaiming Google will be completely removing sites from search results if they don’t live up to the mobile standard. Not demoted, but completely de-listed and removed from Google.

The rumor was noticed when Ashley Berman Hale, an active personality in the Google Webmaster Help Channels, posted an email she recently received with the title “Google Removing Your Site From Search Results This Month!”

The copy of the email then goes on to say, “Did you know Google will demote or delist you from their search results if you don’t have a mobile friendly site by April 21st?”

Now, the mobile algorithm on the horizon is certainly controversial among webmasters, but there is no need to be spreading outright lies. Google’s initial announcement of the algorithm was relatively vague, but they have been working hard to make sure webmasters’ questions were getting answered. It also didn’t take long for many of the experts from Google to chime in and clear the air.

Google’s Gary Illyes posted a response on Twitter:

Google’s John Mueller also posted a short statement on Google+ to make matters perfectly clear:

It’s great to get people motivated to make their website mobile-friendly, but we’re not going to be removing sites from search just because they’re not mobile-friendly. You can test your pages & reach our documentation (including some simple tweaks that might work for your CMS too) at http://g.co/mobilefriendly

Hopefully this settles the matter once and for all. Google’s algorithm WILL demote your site on mobile search results, but it WILL NOT affect you on desktop search results or completely remove you from the listings.

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The Latest Ranking Factors Study Confirms Content is King

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Seeing as Google isn’t giving away their search engine ranking factors playbook anytime soon, many people working in the search industry work constantly to discern as much as possible about how the biggest search engine ranks websites. One group of those people are SearchMetrics, who release a yearly ranking factors study.

As of yesterday, SearchMetrics 2014 ranking factors study is available to study, and they claim this year’s is the largest study they have ever done, with almost 100 pages and dozens of new ranking factors to review such as time of site, bounce rate, fresh links, and others.

Most importantly the study may answer one of the biggest SEO questions of the year; is content really the new king of search marketing? According to this report, the mantra of the SEO industry over the past few months is in fact true, as Marcus Tober comments that content is “no longer an addition to, but is the main focus of, SEO.”

Barry Schwartz broke down the most prominent ranking factors for Search Engine Land if you want the quick version, or you can get the full report directly from the source here.

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Negative SEO is Getting Easier

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Negative SEONone of the big search engines like to talk about it, but negative SEO has been a problem for years. By Google’s admission, negative SEO has been occurring since 2007 – though they claim it is rare.

As “rare” as negative SEO may be, it has managed to cause serious problems for sits as large as Expedia, and it has been enough of an issue for Google to have to reword their own documentation on the subject.

If you’ve yet to run into any cases of negative SEO, it is a practice of using purposefully bad SEO against a competitor. For example, it is possible to point huge numbers of low-quality links towards a competitor’s site and potentially cause the competitor to be punished by Google’s Penguin algorithm. Penguin is designed to take down sites who build backlink profiles filled with low-quality links in order to cheat the search engine for high rankings.

You would think search engines would be actively trying to fight the possibility of SEO companies using their skills against competitors or former clients, but according to Search Engine Roundtable, it is only getting easier.

Barry Schwartz reported on a conversation occurring over at WebmasterWorld, where a site administrator going by Engine said “negative SEO is now much easier to do than it was prior to google’s latest updates.”

It turns out, the majority of webmasters and SEOs seem to agree. The overwhelming response to the question on WebmaserWorld agreed with Engine’s statement, and over 70% of the respondents to a poll on Search Engine Roundtable sided with those who believe negative SEO is getting easier.

Considering the latest algorithm updates from Google are receiving the majority of the blame for this trend, it isn’t particularly surprising they remain relatively mum on the issue. But, business owners have every right to be concerned. Hopefully, Google’s next big algorithm they unveil will be aimed at protecting innocent webmasters from the “black hat SEOs” who use such destructive practices.

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Quick News of the Week – April 18, 2014

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With the constant stream of news coming out of the SEO industry, it can be hard to keep up with all the latest updates without missing some important information. Below, we will go through all of the news from the week that we missed the first time.

Yahoo’s Market Share Dips Even Lower

Yahoo’s Q1 2014 earnings gave some optimism that the company had some life in it, but don’t get too hopeful. The latest market share analysis of the search market shows that Yahoo is still falling, while Microsoft benefits and Google stays comfortable with their two-thirds of the market.

Older Generations Embrace Mobile as Local Shopping Companion

The idea of senior citizens being out of touch with technology is becoming increasingly questionable, as a new survey conducted by Thrive Analytics and the Local Search Association shows that older generations (including Boomers an Seniors) are embracing mobile to inform their local shopping process.

Google is Testing Showing Ads in The Knowledge Graph and Carousel

Google’s Carousel interface is less than a year old, but new screenshots suggest Google is already looking at the possibility of showing ads from the paid Google Shopping results within the content bar across the top of some search result pages. Pete Myers shared a screenshot of the test on the Moz Google+ page, and notes “almost everything above the fold is a paid result.”

Facebook Introduces New ‘Nearby Friends’ Feature

Facebook announced the roll out of a new optional feature that will make it easier to find friends that are close-by. The new feature will notify you when friends get within a certain distance so that you can get in touch with them. The feature is completely optional and can be turned off at anytime, but both users must have the feature turned on to receive notification when they come within close proximity.

Why Yahoo’s Not Going To Steal The Search Default For iPhone

Rumors have been swirling that Yahoo is hoping to leverage Apple’s dislike for Google in order to become the default search provider for iPhones. Media outlets everywhere jumped at the chance to report on these rumors, but as Danny Sullivan shows, it would take something close to a miracle for Yahoo to have any chance of becoming the big search option for Apple’s mobile users.

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Does Google’s Disavow Tool Really Work?

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Since Google unveiled the Disavow Tool in October of 2012, webmasters and SEOs have treated it almost like a magic cure-all for bad linking decisions, black hat SEO, and any sort of penalty they receive from Google.

Despite the obsession with the Disavow Tool, every online poll of the effectiveness of the tool suggests it isn’t as smooth of a solution as some make it out to be. For example, a poll from Search Engine Roundtable claims that only 13% of webmasters had success using the Disavow Tool.

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Source: Search Engine Roundtable

Of course, Search Engine Roundtable openly admits their polls are far from scientific (you can read their disclaimer here). But, while many are taking these results as proof that the Disavow Tool doesn’t work, it could very well indicate something very different. People seem to just be using the tool wrong a huge amount of the time.

As Barry Schwartz points out, there is no doubt that the Disavow Tool can help remove penalties, but it doesn’t always lead to better rankings. With Google’s constantly changing algorithms, it is impossible to expect to return to the exact positions in the results you were already at.

Not only that, but Google has given very specific instructions for how the Disavow Tool is intended to be used, and experts have been regularly updating their own guides for the tool. But, a lot of webmasters see that they received a penalty of some form and immediately go into panic mode. They mass disavow links, without doing the work to ensure the links were ever the problem.

What do you think? Is the Disavow Tool not reliable, or is the tool being misused?

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