As you may know, Google has a group of people called quality raters, who evaluate the quality of sets of search results. Here’s a video of Matt Cutts discussing how Google uses these people: And here he is talking about…
Google Updates Guidance On ‘Sneaky’ Redirects
Google announced that it has updated its guidance for webmasters on “sneaky redirects”. It has updated the relevant section in its quality guidelines. It now includes examples that illustrate violations. “Redirects are often used by webmasters to help forward visitors…
Google Discusses Unnatural Links (On Your Site) In New Video
Google has put out seven new Webmaster Help videos about various types of webspam. I’m not sure how long ago they were recorded, but they all just hit the GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube channel, and feature Matt Cutts, and in some cases,…
Google Discusses Its New Official Link Rules
Google has some new rules for the kinds of links it allows (or doesn’t allow, rather). The concepts are actually not exactly new, but Google has updated its official documentation to reflect its views of certain kinds of links. Are…
Google Warns Sites About Browser History Spam
Google took to its Webmaster Central blog on Friday to warn webmasters that if they engage in a particular type of deceptive behavior, it “may” take action on guilty sites. First off, I’m pretty sure that Google absolutely will take…
Google Will Not Hesitate To Take Manual Action On Rich Snippet Abuse
As previously reported, Google has updated its Webmaster Guidelines. Part of the update is some new stuff about rich snippets. Google is highlighting these changes specifically in a post on the Webmaster Central blog today. “Once you’ve correctly added structured…
Google May Soon Update Its Webmaster Guidelines
It looks like Google may soon be changing its Webmaster Guidelines. Patrick Sexton from FeedTheBot claims to have spotted an updated version of the guidelines, and posted about them. However, he says, two Google employees told him that they were…
Google Penguin Update: Don’t Forget About Duplicate Content
There has been a ton of speculation regarding Google’s Penguin update. Few know exactly what the update specifically does, and how it works with Google’s other signals exactly. Google always plays its hand close to its chest. “While we can’t…
Google Penguin Update And Affiliate Programs
In continuing our looks at Google’s quality guidelines, it’s time to talk about affiliate programs. Google, as you probably know, recently released the Penguin update, targeting sites that violate its quality guidelines. With that in mind, it seems wise to…
Can Machines Produce Authoritative Search Results?
If the future of journalism is machine-produced content, it may face one major obstacle – search engine visibility. We’ve written about Narrative Science, a company whose business just happens to be providing such content, several times. In fact, earlier today,…
Google Penguin Update Recovery: Hidden Text And Links
There’s been a lot of discussion about Google’s Penguin update since it was launched. The update, if you haven’t been following, is about decreasing the rankings of sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines. With that in mind, it seems…
Reconsideration Request Tips From Google [Updated]
If you think you’ve been wrongfully hit by Google’s Penguin update, Google has provided a form that you can fill out, in hopes that Google will see the light and get your site back into the mix. The update is…