A new negative SEO attack method has been discovered. What makes this exploit especially bad is that it is virtually impossible to detect the attacker. There is no way to recover if the attacking website is unknown. So far, Google is remaining silent on how they intend to proceed to close this exploit in how Google ranks and de-ranks web pages. It is noteworthy that this exploit has been observed but not tested and verified. If this exploit is real, …

Google rolled out another broad core algorithm update this week. It was confirmed on Twitter that this algorithm update was released on Monday, April 16th. On Monday, we released a broad core algorithm update, as we routinely do throughout the year. For background and advice about these, see our tweet from last month: https://t.co/uPlEdSu6xp — Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 20, 2018 You may recall that Google released a similar algorithm update early last month. Shortly afterward it was explained that …

Anchor text is the text used in the links to your site. It used to be that if you acquire enough links with the appropriate keywords in the anchor text that your site will begin to rank for those keywords. But at some point websites experienced penalizations for having statistically unnatural ratios of anchor text links. What is the best practice for the use of anchor text today? Industry Standard Guidance for Anchor Text There is no industry standard on …

Google’s John Mueller offered excellent advice to web publishers on how to recover from a manual penalty. He highlighted two common mistakes that publishers make and offered solutions on how to submit a succesful reconsideration request. Two Reasons Why Reconsideration Requests Fail John Mueller suggested two reasons why reconsideration requests fail. 1. Inability to see the problem 2. Failure to solve all problems Takeaway 1: Inability to Identify Site Problems It is common to be able to see what’s wrong …

Google is reportedly returning more direct answers in search results, with 10% of mobile SERPs now containing a direct answer box. This data comes from RankRanger’s latest report on mobile SERP features in the US. New data: We’re seeing less Featured Snippets on mobile and more Direct Answers! https://t.co/AnJCzoyScV #SEO pic.twitter.com/xpO3BWvrLK — Rank Ranger (@RankRanger) April 16, 2018 This represents an increase of 1.4% more direct answers compared to last month. That’s one of the greatest month-over-month increases of all …

Google has updated its guidelines warning users that failure to remove expired job postings may result in a manual action penalty. Google has changed its requirements for job postings: “Failure to take timely action on expired jobs may result in a manual action” https://t.co/nUUlZkfm14 pic.twitter.com/P8phFR5Lgi — Aaron Bradley (@aaranged) April 12, 2018 These guidelines refer specifically to job positions that have been published to a website using job posting markup. The new guidelines should not affect web pages for job …

Google’s John Mueller has confirmed the March 7th algorithm update did not necessarily target low quality sites. Rather, it had more to do with content relevance. Mueller revealed this information during a Google Webmaster Hangout held on April 6th. He was asked: ”If we have a site that was hit by the March 7th and 9th quality update that’s a legitimate site, it’s generating world-class quality content, getting lots of links — and it gets scraped. Now, after the update, …

Google is testing a new type of carousel in search results featuring top answers from Q&A site Quora. This appears to be the expansion of a feature introduced last December when Google added a similar carousel with answers from Stack Overflow. A few individuals have reported seeing this new feature, although I have not been able to replicate it myself. All signs indicate it’s just a test at this point. New kind of #RichSnippet for #Quora answer. I have seen …

Google has introduced infinite scrolling to mobile search results pages. Where there used to be page numbers at the bottom of SERPs there is now a “more results” button. Tapping on the button will trigger more search results to load within the same page. Google has confirmed this is just a “test.” However, it’s not one of those tests that shows up once in a while. The “more results” UIKEYINPUTLEFTARROWUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowUIKeyInputLeftArrowbutton showed up for every search I conducted today in the …

Google has settled a lawsuit alleging it unfairly kept AdSense earnings belonging to publishers whose accounts were closed due to suspicious activities. The case, at the time of settlement, focused on Google’s practice of withholding 100% of a banned publisher’s unpaid earnings, including earnings that were not a result of suspicious activities. Google denies wrongdoing. History of the Lawsuit Against Google The lawsuit was filed almost four years ago in May 2014 by a company known as Free Range Content. …