Jennifer Slegg says, “If you’re a webmaster, you probably received one of those infamous “Googlebot cannot access CSS and JS files on example.com” warning letters that Google sent out to seemingly every SEO and webmaster. This was a brand new alert from Google, although we have been hearing from the search engine about the need to ensure all resources are unblocked—including both JavaScript and CSS. There was definite confusion around these letters, supported by some of the reporting in Google Search Console. Here’s what you need to know about Google’s desire to see these... [...]

Jason Parks says, “Social media are communications channels that many of us think about in whimsical ways. But these channels are also something marketing experts take dead seriously, for the opportunities they present to post content that is sharable, interesting — and potentially crucial for marketing a business. All of that is great to know, of course, as long as you’re not a content writer. The reason is those times in every content writer’s career when coming up with the constant stream of interesting topics social media requires doesn’t happen so easily.... [...]

Bridget Randolph says, “As mobile technology becomes an increasingly common way for users to access the internet, you need to ensure that your mobile content (whether on a mobile website or in a mobile app) is as accessible to users as possible. In the past this process has been relatively siloed, with separate URLs for desktop and mobile content and apps tucked away in app stores. But as app and mobile web usage continues to rise, the ways in which people access this content is beginning to converge, which means it’s becoming more important to keep all of these different content locations... [...]

Mark Traphagen says, “Recently, Google Webmaster Trends analyst Gary Illyes surprised many of us with a remark he made during his keynote Q&A with Danny Sullivan at SMX East in New York City. Illyes said that herecommended webmasters not remove the rel=author tag from their site content. Google had used rel=author as part of its Google Authorship feature that (potentially) displayed a special author rich snippet in search results for content using the tag. Google ended support of this feature in August 2014. The phrase that made everyone sit up and say, “Did he just say that?”... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “The rise of native apps is one of the biggest threats to Google’s dominance, but the search giant isn’t sitting idly by. In fact, slowly and sometimes quietly, it’s increasingly working to extend its influence into the apps Googlebot can’t reach. When Mobilegeddon occurred earlier this year, most of the discussion centered on the impact Google’s mobile-friendliness algorithm update would have on mobile websites. But Google’s mobile-related algorithm updates went beyond the mobile web, with the search giant announcing that apps allowing... [...]

Marie Haynes says, “Thin content! Duplicate content! Everyone knows that these are huge Panda factors. But are they really? In this article, I will explore the possibility that Panda is about so much more than thin and duplicate content. I don’t have a list of ten steps to follow to cure your Panda problems. But, I do hope that this article provokes some good discussion on how to improve our websites in the eyes of Google’s Panda algorithm. The duplicate content monster Recently, Google employee John Mueller ran a webmaster help hangout that focused on duplicate content issues. It was... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “With Mobilegeddon, Google threatened publishers who refused to pay attention to mobile experience. Now, the search giant is trying to help publishers by unveiling the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, which, if successful, could drastically change the way publishers build mobile webpages. Here’s what publishers need to know about AMP… What is it? Google describes AMP as “an architectural framework built for speed” but it’s effectively a subset of the technologies publishers already use to build their websites. Google has identified... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “Wouldn’t you like to have stuff you read on mobile devices seem to load instantly? Facebook and Apple sure think so. Now so does Google. Today, Google, along with Twitter and several publishers, announced the Accelerated Mobile Page Project. That’s AMP, by the way, for short. AMP is a way that publishers can pull from a common library of scripts and other content, and optionally tap into the Google cache, to deliver fast web pages. Publishers like Vox, The Verge, BuzzFeed and the Washington Post are already live with AMP pages. And if they share such pages on Twitter,... [...]

David Nield says, “Both Facebook and Apple believe they’ve built a better home for news content on mobile devices—self-contained apps where load times are fast and ads are discreet—but Google isn’t going to lie down without a fight. The result is the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, a new open-source HTML standard available to all that uses existing web technologies to do exactly what Facebook and Apple are doing: Creating a structure where pages appear instantly and advertising is tastefully added (this being Google, of course, ads stay in the picture). AMP HTML, as the new... [...]

Kim Lachance Shandrow says, “Google Domains just got a major “.upgrade.” The search giant announced today that its domain registration service, initially rolled out last year to help small businesses build or better their web presence, today expands to include custom email addresses, an additional 90-plus new domain name endings and more. Ben Fried, Google’s chief information officer, detailed the the program’s latest growth spurt in a blog post this afternoon. He highlighted that tailored email addresses, like sales@yourdomain, for example, are now available through Google Apps... [...]