THE TOP 5 USES FOR THE REL=AUTHOR TAG
1. Stick under wobbly table legs 2. Supplement for low carb diets 3. Bitcoin alternative 4. Keep kids occupied at restaurants 5. Wrap dead fish http://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975
Google Local Icons & New Real Estate Snippets Spotted
As Google morphs SERP design from desktop to mobile, it appears that it has decided that reading words is perhaps too much to ask of our educationally-challenged fellow users. And so it is now testing icons in the mobile results as shown below: I guess it’s easier to click on a cute picture than try […]
Paid Local Pack Results?
Our friends over at Moz saw a new SERP feature pop up in their MozCast. Notice the lovely paid ads dressed up as a local pack result? While this is a test, and nothing but a test, is it also a continued acknowledgement from Google that their current methods of dealing with Local search results suck? […]
Is Pigeon An Acknowledgement That Google & SMBs Suck At Local?
Steve Shackford‘s tweet got me thinking: @localseoguide Expedia-like move from Google’s algo today on “Dallas Hotels”. http://t.co/EeM4m7Kl8s jumped to #1. pic.twitter.com/SkzigIRSuH — Steve Shackelford (@HydrophobicDuck) August 7, 2014 We are definitely seeing a lot more national-local directory type sites showing up at the top of local SERPs as a result of Google removing or […]
Google’s Top Heavy Ad Algorithm & The SEO Catch-22
The SEO Catch-22: You’ve done all of the typical technical and content SEO stuff but your organic traffic keeps trending downwards Your SEO guy suspects the culprits are the above-the-fold in-content Adsense units designed to look like content Problem is they are your top performing ad units by a factor of at least 10x […]
“There Is Really No Way To Optimize For This Algorithm Because The Results Are Random And Make No Sense…”
My initial review of Google’s Pigeon results, Picking Through Google’s Pigeon Droppings…, was posted on SEL yesterday, but it was written last week and a lot has changed since I submitted it. I was going to write an update here but Linda Buquet’s massive review of pre and post Pigeon SERPs does the job well, […]
Did Pigeon 2.0 Just Take A Bite Out of Recipe SEO?
Woke up this morning to find what appears to be yet another shuffling of Google’s Pigeon update. In this case I am seeing some food query SERPs display local packs, directories and knowledge graph results – but no recipe results. Taco Click to Enlarge for Analysis Hamburger Granted I am only seeing this for queries […]
The Night Google Took Pity On A Client…
Yesterday a client pushed out a new homepage without telling us. I found out because late last night I got this email in my inbox from an actual living, breathing member of Google’s Search Quality team: Say what you will about Google (and clients who double-noindex their homepage), but this is pretty awesome.
Who Owns Customer Reviews of Your Business?
Mike Blumenthal just posed a question about this on G+ and I thought it was worthy of posting here. The TL;DR answer is: 1. On G+, Yelp and most other review sites, the reviewer typically owns the content of the review (this is to shield the review sites from liability) while the review sites own […]
SMBs Have Got Google Maps’ Number…
Just found a classic thread on one of those “did you get a call from this phone number” sites. Some samples for your local SEO reading pleasure: Calls our business several times per day (not interested in their services). If you hang up, they call right back. They repeat this throughout the day and when […]