Historically, the word “penalty” has been thrown around pretty loosely for sites who suffer in Google rankings. However, just because you got hit by an algorithm update, it doesn’t mean you’ve been penalized, as far as Google is concerned. Google …

Some people have been talking about seeing major rankings changes, wondering if Google has released another Penguin update. According to Matt Cutts ,who spoke at SMX Advanced last night, Googe has not released a new one (or a new Panda …

Google’s Matt Cutts has been making light of paid links all week, but in reality, Google isn’t joking when it comes to enforcing this part of its quality guidelines. According to Google, it’s cracking down on this more than ever, …

Google launched the +1 button, even before people knew about Google+, the social network. It was a way to tell Google that you felt a particular piece of content or search result was one of quality, and deserved to rank …

Googe’s Matt Cutts participated in a keynote discussion at SMX Advanced, and as you might have guess, the topics of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates came up more than once. Matt McGee liveblogged the event for the SMX-affiliated Search Engine …

SMX Advanced is officially underway in Seattle, and the first session was: The Periodic Table Of SEO: 2012 Edition. SMX’s official description for the session is as follows: We introduced the Periodic Table Of SEO last year at SMX Advanced. …

Matt Cutts has quite a following for a search engine engineer, and with good reason. He’s in a pretty powerful position, leading the webspam team at Google, and being a “Distinguished Engineer” at the company and all. When webmasters want …

Google announced the launch of the Browser Size analysis tool in Google Analytics, under the In-Page Analytics report. The tool shades the portions of a page that are “below the fold,” and shows you what percentage of users are seeing …

SMX Advanced gets started on Tuesday in Seattle. In what many, I’m sure, will consider the highlight, Google’s Matt Cutts will keynote. Here’s what the SMX site says about it: Google software engineer Matt Cutts will be returning to SMX …

This week, Google posted a new Webmaster Help video featuring Matt Cutts talking about a potential duplicate content issue. This time, he even broke out the whiteboard to illustrate his points. Specifically, Cutts addressed the user-submitted question: Many sites have …

Infographic spam may soon take its rightful place in the grand lineage of splogs, duplicate-content articles and mass directory submissions. Spinfographics. Get ready, because they about to flood the Internet. You never heard of “spinfographics” before? It means, well, if …

As reported, webmasters have been speculating that there may have been another Panda update based on some significant changes in referrals. We asked Google to confirm one way or the other. A Google spokesperson simply tells us, “There hasn’t been.” …

As usual, webmasters are speculating that there may have been a Panda update refresh. Once again, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable is pointing to a WebmasterWorld thread where such discussion is taking place. Various people are reporting that they’re …

One site that got hit by Google’s Penguin update has managed to make a comeback, thanks to Google’s most recent data refresh of the algorithm update. WPMU’s story has been in the spotlight as an example of where a legitimate …

Earlier this month, there was some discussion about Google having de-indexed free web directories. Most of the ones we looked at had not actually been de-indexed, but were not ranking well, but there were clearly some that had been de-indexed. …

Blogger Josh Davis recently put out an investigative report exposing the marketing firm iAcquire for engaging in paid links for clients. Once Google caught wind of it, iAcquire was de-indexed from Google’s search results. Now, the company has openly admitted …

As previously reported, Google announced its first Penguin update since the original over Memorial Day weekend. Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, tweeted about it, saying, “Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects

As you may recall, last year, Google put out a list of 23 questions that one should consider when assessing the quality of their content. This was largely considered to be the types of things Google is considering when it …

Last week, Google introduced Webmaster Academy, billed as a tool to “help you create great sites that perform well in Google search results.” Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted about it again today: Follow @mattcutts Matt Cutts @mattcutts Webmaster Academy is a …

Google has a page in its Webmaster Tools help center addressing the question: Can competitors harm ranking? This has been a topic getting a lot of discussion since the Penguin update. It was getting a pretty good amount before then …

Google’s Matt Cutts put out a Webmaster Help video discussing how to alert Google when your competitors are engaging in webspam and black hat SEO techniques. The video was in response to the following user-submitted question: White hat search marketers …