Glenn Gabe says, “In part one of this series, I covered a number of important points about Google’s quality updates (aka Phantom). I tried to provide a solid foundation for understanding what Phantom is and how it works, explaining its history, its path since 2015 and how it rolls out. In part two, I’m going to dive deeper by providing examples of “low-quality user engagement” that I’ve seen on sites affected by Phantom. I’ve analyzed and helped many companies that have been impacted by Google’s quality updates since May of 2015, and I’ve seen many types of quality problems... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “In A conversation with Google’s Gary Illyes (part 1) podcast at Marketing Land, our sister site, Gary Illyes told us that Google is looking at ways to measure brand awareness in search. Gary Illyes said this when we asked about how Google sources featured snippets with Google Home voice assistant. Gary explained that measuring brand mentions, without links, is hard, but the user experience team at Google is looking at ways to do this. In context, Danny Sullivan asked Gary what publishers get out of Google Home saying the name of the site. Is there any ranking benefit... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “In the A conversation with Google’s Gary Illyes (part 1) podcast at Marketing Land, our sister site, we learned that Google adds labels to your links. These labels can add classifications or attributes to the link, including whether the link is a footer link, whether it’s impacted by the latest Penguin update, whether it’s disavowed or other categorizations. A link can have multiple labels that make up the value and meaning of that link, which ultimately helps Google determine how to rank the related documents on the web. Google’s manual actions team may look... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Searchmetrics has released a new study today showing the impact of the ever-changing user interface of the Google search results. The study says that now, Google is less likely to show 10 organic blue links. Instead, Google shows only 8.5 blue links on average but supplements those links with featured snippets, app packs, knowledge panels, images, videos and more. You can download the full report over here, but here are some highlights: Organic blue links drop from 10 to 8.5 per search query: Searchmetrics says you are less likely to see 10 links on a Google search results... [...]

John Lincoln says, “So you’re thinking about adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to your website? Stop thinking and start doing! Of course, it is all about how you implement AMP, but we’ll get into that. If you’re unfamiliar with AMP, it’s an open-source technology that enables pages on your site to load quickly for users on a mobile device. This happens with the help of a JavaScript library and some additional HTML markup. Here are five reasons why you should add AMP technology to your website: 1. AMP is essential for good mobile SEO. By now, you already know that if... [...]

Larry Kim says, “Rand Fishkin posted another brilliant Whiteboard Friday last week on the topic of optimizing for RankBrain. In it, he explained how RankBrain helps Google select and prioritize signals it uses for ranking. One of the most important signals Google takes into account is user engagement. As Rand noted, engagement is a “very, very important signal.” Engagement is a huge but often ignored opportunity. That’s why I’ve been a bit obsessed with improving engagement metrics. My theory has been that RankBrain *and/or other machine learning elements within Google’s... [...]

Emma Koehn of SmartCompany has published an article focusing the new range of products launched by Google. Emma says, “Google executives took to a stage in the power station of an old chocolate factory overnight to unveil a suite of new products at its “#madebygoogle” event. There was something very Willy Wonka about the show, an inside look at the company that had technology tragics glued to their screens. Chief executive Sundar Pichai’s opening address drove home how the company has been working towards tech that is intelligent and products that are designed to help users in more... [...]

Jim Yu says, “As mobile usage increases and companies develop mobile-friendly sites to ensure the optimal user experience, developers are working hard to make the mobile web as efficient and useful as possible. Last year, developers at Google created Progressive Web Apps, an interactive experience that has features of both a website and a mobile app. During a session at Google I/O 2016, Alex Russell, a software engineer at Google leading the project, stated that Progressive Web Apps “blur the line between Web content and apps, but they keep the strengths of the Web.” Essentially, Progressive... [...]

Marcus Miller says, “So it happened. Google finally released Penguin 4.0 — the last Penguin update of its kind, as it now processes in real time as a part of Google’s core ranking algorithm. In this post, I want to take a look at what Penguin is, how this update affects the SEO community as a whole and how the brave and the bold can continue to safely improve their organic visibility without fear of repercussions from punitive search engine algorithms. The announcement After a few weeks of turbulence in the SERPs, the announcement that many had predicted was finally made. The Penguin 4.0 announcement had... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google made several announcements around analytics at SMX East in New York City on Wednesday. In a keynote discussion and blog post, Babak Pahlavan, senior director of product management for analytics solutions and measurement at Google, explained a number of new features and product tests available for both the free and paid versions of Google’s analytics suite. Here’s a look at what’s coming. Free version of Optimize 360 Google introduced a set of measurement products with the Analytics 360 Suite in March. Shortly thereafter, the company released a beta version... [...]