Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Have Different Algorithms For Different Web Position Slots
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video answering another webmaster question. The question was, “Are results in different positions ranked by different algorithms?” The answer is no, Google does not have reserve web search results slots or positions for ranking…
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Google’s Latest Official Stance On Links Within Widgets
Just five-months ago Google’s head of search spam strongly recommended to nofollow links in widgets because the widget space has been abused with link spam. That may have changed with a small but significant update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines link schemes page. Now, the page specifies…
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WMT: Google Gets Personal With SEOs?
Christmas morning, I got something I never expected: a personal email from Google. And it truly felt like a gift! Right out of bed, I had my 3 cans of Red Bull and checked my messages, as usual. Initially, I wasn’t surprised to see that I had an email from Google. I figured it was […]
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Google’s Matt Cutts On Publishers With Duplicate Content: Use The Canonical Tag
In a video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt said publishers who publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs may use the rel=canonical tag to help consolidate the PageRank of the stories and avoid any issues with Google. Matt Cutts did say that duplicate…
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Rap Genius Back In Google After 10 Day Penalty, Ranks For Its Name But What About Lyrics?
Lyrics site Rap Genius says that is is no longer penalized within Google after taking action to correct “unnatural links” that it helped create. The site was hit with a penalty for 10 days, which meant people seeking it by name couldn’t find it. That’s been fixed, though…
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Google’s Rap Genius Penalty Results In Huge Traffic Declines For The Lyrics Site
Before Christmas, Rap Genius was outed for link schemes and then on Christmas, Google penalized the site for those link schemes. The penalty is still on and a couple metrics sites show huge drops in traffic for the site, some as much as losing 90% of t…
How SEO Greed Can Ruin A Perfectly Good Linking Strategy
By now, you are likely aware of the Rap Genius “Tweet In Exchange For Anchor Text” link scheme, hencefore to be known as TieFating. Barry Schwartz reported last week on John Marbach’s exposé of the popular music site, Rap Genius, which had started an “affiliate”…
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Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For Link Schemes
Google has penalized Rap Genius for link schemes this morning. If you go to Google and search for [rap genius], rapgenius.com will not be found on the first page. Instead you will find links to their Twitter account, Facebook page, Wikipedia profile an…
Google Is Looking Into Rap Genius Linking Scheme Masked As Affiliate Program
Yesterday, John Marbach exposed the popular music side, Rap Genuis, for starting an “affiliate” program in order to get unnatural links pointing to their web site. After it was exposed, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, said, “we’re aware and looking into…
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Matt Cutts Implies Google Is Aware Of SEOs Bribing Bloggers
On Friday night, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts tweeted a link to a Gawker story named Shady Marketing Firms Are Still Quietly Bribing Bloggers. Matt said, “we’re taking action on hundreds of buyers, dozens of sites, & dozens of spammy writers,” in reference…
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Google Still Working On Promoting Subject-Specific Authorities In Search Results
Remember the video Google’s Matt Cutts released in May, talking about the ten future Google SEO changes? One of those topics was about authority boost for authors and sites that are an authority on a topic? Well, Google is still working on that. In TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 227,…
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Confirmed: Google Reduces Authorship Rich Snippets In Search Results
The head of search spam at Google, Matt Cutts, has confirmed with us that Google has applied a 15% reduction in the amount of rich snippets displayed in the search results. Matt Cutts announced at PubCon a couple months ago that this would happen, sayi…
Google Denies A Major Update On December 17th
Yesterday, most of the Google search results tracking tools showed major changes in rankings within Google’s search results but during my analysis of webmaster communication within the discussion forums and social space, I saw very little discussion around changes in rankings at Google. Then,…
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Google Launches Improved URL Removal Tool For Third-Party Content
Google has released an improved URL removal tool that the company says was specifically designed to improve the ability to remove third-party content from its search engine. John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced the change on the Google Webmaster Central blog. Google’s…
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Google’s Matt Cutts On Search Spammers: “We Want To Break Their Spirits”
In episode number 227 of This Week in Google on the TWiT network, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts answered some questions from the hosts Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis. In one question, Matt explained that Google aims to “break the spirits” of spammers in order to encourage…
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Breaking The Mobile Speed Barrier For SEO Gold
2014 will offer a new killer SEO technique or two, it’s my bet that leading the charge will be changes to the mobile SEO algorithm in Google. Or, more specifically, changes to the algorithm’s sensitivity to your site render speed on a smartphone device…
Google’s Matt Cutts: 25-30% Of The Web’s Content Is Duplicate Content & That’s Okay
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video today about duplicate content and the repercussions of it within Google’s search results. Matt said that somewhere between 25% to 30% of the content on the web is duplicative. Of all the web pages and content across the internet,…
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Google Squashes Backlinks.com, Another Link Network Outed By Google’s Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced on Twitter that Google has gone after another link network, this one is named Backlinks.com. Like with Anglo Rank, the link network Google outed the week prior, Matt Cutts took a line from their marketing material and then said “Au…
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Google Webmaster Tools Upgrades Structure Data Markup Errors Report
Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, Mariya Moeva, announced on the Google Webmaster blog a new update to Google Webmaster Tools where they now show items with errors in the Structured Data dashboard. This can help webmasters better debug issues they are having with their structured data…
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Google’s Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Abuse & Spam On The Rise
Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video today on the things one should avoid when doing guest blogging. The main point he made was that guest blogging, on a whole, is “growing” in terms of the spam and abuse he sees in the guest blogging space. Now, if you are guest blogging, Matt…
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