Is Google required to list your business or your website in their search engine results? When I mention the word “list”, I am referring to whether they are indexing your website in their search results or whether they are listing your business in the Google Maps listings, for example. Being listed is different than ranking. […]

Should Google link out to SEO websites from the official Google Webmaster blog? That’s the question that is a hot topic right now: on the official Google blog, should Google link out to a website that offers search engine optimization or digital marketing services, no matter how good the resource is, and how much it […]

If you advertise with Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), does it impact your website’s search engine rankings in Google’s organic search engine results? This question has been one that so many have debated over and over again for years. In fact, I even recall it being discussed back in the early days of Google. Some […]

Google My Business recently rolled out a new feature called Google My Business short names. Each verified Google My Business listing can add a short name, which is essentially a URL link to their Google My Business listing, along with a link to the listing’s reviews. A sample Google My Business is one that I […]

Pamela Lund on Twitter described this scenario perfectly: “this is a nightmare come true. I cannot imagine waking up to find that in an account. That kind of spend in 1 day with only fake conversions could easily put a client out of business and into bankruptcy.”. Despite the fact that a Google Ads customer […]

Google Calendar is down. As in inaccessible using a web browser. This is actually the first time I’ve personally seen Google Calendar down, at least since I’ve been relying on it more and more–over the past few years.

Update: June 12, 2019 – On June 11, 2019, I reported that AMP was having an issue where users could not click thru to the website where the content originated, as described below. This actually turned out to be a “bug”, and it was not intentional by Google to not allow users to click thru […]

A recent major outage of Google Cloud was caused because of a misconfiguration, not only because of network congestion, like Google initially reported. The outage was described by Google as “network congestion issue in eastern USA, affecting Google Cloud, G Suite, and YouTube”. It also caused services such as Shopify, Snapchat, and Discord to go […]

Do you often wonder what Google knows about you? I mean, how much are they tracking, do they know whether or not you visit certain websites, when you visited them, how long you visited them? If you add in Android and you have a smart phone that uses Google Android, do you know how much […]

Google’s organic search engine listings can looks like Ads, but they are not actually Google Ads. Instead, the site owner has updated the favicon on their website to display an Ad logo. That Ad logo image similar to the black and white Ad symbol Google currently displays to designate that a search engine result listing […]

If you weren’t aware, Google tracks all of the purchases that you have made online if the purchase receipts land in your Gmail account. If you’re logged into your Google Account, then you can go to the purchases page and see everything Google knows that you have purchased. But there’s only one problem: the purchases […]

A website’s home page is ranking very well for a competitive keyword despite the fact that the website is blocking the search engine crawlers from indexing the site. A search for the keyword “backpack” in Google shows a website’s home page, GSCBackpack.com, ranking #2 for the keyword. However, Google isn’t allowed to crawl the website […]

A recent Google News audit shows that the top 3 news outlets, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, is favored by Google in their results a lot of the time. According to the audit, the top 20 percent (136 of 678 news sites) accounted for 86 percent of article impressions overall. Furthermore, […]

From time to time, people come across various exploits, holes, or problems with sites or services. Google’s not immune to such occurrences, just like a lot of other sites out there. Certainly Google’s had its issues in the past, and I’ve pointed out a few of them out in the past. I honestly haven’t heard […]

Can links from a social media website, such as Reddit, cause a website to get a manual action penalty from Google? Well, according to the example links provided to a site owner recently, they can. Links from the website Reddit.com were provided as examples of unnatural links to a website by Google, which apparently was […]

There are times when Google’s search results are wrong. Really wrong. So wrong that you start to question whether or not you should even rely on Google’s search results for information. Case in point: When you ask Google how many legs a horse has, it says that a horse has six legs.

Today I learned that Google will index a domain name that has not been registered. Ever. As in no one has ever registered the domain name, the domain name is available for registration by anyone, and someone could register it if they met the requirements by the domain name registrar. This one has me shaking […]

We knew this was coming, and we even were told via popup messages in Google Search Console. I knew the end was coming. March 28, 2019 was the date that Google’s Fetch as Google tool would be removed from Google Search Console. Now I can confirm that Google Fetch and Render has officially been removed […]

Today I learned that it’s possible to use the Google Removal Tool to request removal of pages on someone else’s website. Even if the page is on a website that you don’t own. I may be mistaken, but previously you had to be logged into a Google Account to use the Google Removal Tool and […]

Gary Illyes, Google’s Chief of Sunshine and Happiness and Trends Analyst, recently did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. There were a lot of questions asked, and I’ve narrowed it all down to the key takeaways. I’ve pulled out the most important questions and answers, in my opinion. You can read the whole entire […]

We’ve already heard that Google is closing down their social media site Google Plus, closing it down faster than previously expected. Now, we have yet another Google social community being closed down on January 16th, 2019: the Small Business Community from Google is shutting down rather abruptly.

December 13, 2018: 11:14am CST Google illegally revealed the name of a murder suspect via a mass email sent out to subscribers of their top trends in New Zealand. A temporary suppression order was in place until the suspect went to trial for the murder of Grace Millane, a backpacker from the UK. She was […]

A Google Ads training mistake cost Google about US $1.6 million dollars in one hour, as a single yellow ad was shown across the United States and Australia. Apparently the ad was a “training mistake made by a Google team that helps customers learn how to use the platform” according to reports.

As a Google Local Guide, I typically contribute to Google Maps on a regular basis. I was checking a few things today, several Google Maps listings, as well as Checking the Facts as a part of the Google Local Guide program, and noticed something rather odd. Google Maps loads over HTTP and not HTTPs. With […]

Google has launched some new websites that are essentially shortcuts for starting a new Google doc. Instead of going to Google Drive to create a new spreadsheet, slide, document, or form, you can use a .NEW domain name to immediately create one. For example, if you type sheet.new into your web browser, it will create […]

Based on some photos that my friend Daniel posted today, it appears that Google has quietly opened (expanded?) up a Dallas, Texas area office. As you might recall, Google has had offices in the Dallas area previously, and it has been years since Google had an office in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. With the amount […]

It’s not that often that you see a server error on Google’s search results. For the past hour or so, if you search Google for the keyword phrase “compare the market”, you’ll see a server error.

That’s a really good question. Does Google have a date problem? Well, Garry Illyes (@methode on Twitter) tweeted, kind of admitting that he doesn’t like dates. That was back on September 5th, and looking at that tweet, and knowing what he’s really referring to, yes, it appears that Google still has a date problem.

Note: Don’t always believe everything is posted on Twitter, or any other social media website. In this case, DejanSEO and John Mueller from Google were joking about rogue bots and cloaking. Parts of this post have been edited. There was a recent Tweet from DejanSEO to John Mueller from Google about technical SEO. Apparently DejanSEO […]

Google recently renamed Google AdWords to Google Ads recently. Today, when you go to the former Google AdWords page, which was https://adwords.google.com, it redirects you to the new Google Ads page, which is https://ads.google.com/home/. This makes sense, as Google AdWords is now Google Ads.