Brands that have purchased their own .BRAND TLD (Top Level Domain) shouldn’t worry about moving their websites. I recently asked Gary Illyes, the Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, about the effect on search when you move your website from a .COM domain name to a domain on your own .BRAND TLD. [Read more…]
Google Allows Official Representatives to Suggest Changes to Knowledge Graph Data
The Google search results of a search query for my name shows information from the Knowledge Graph or Knowledge Base of data. I know that this data was originally pulled from Freebase, as I entered it several years ago when I was very active in editing and adding data to Freebase. I regularly monitor the search results for my name. Today, Google started asking me if the data if the info was up-to-date and if I had any suggestions. This is new, at least for me. Take a look at what this looks like: [Read more…]
Is Google Quietly Embracing Paid Inclusion?
Let’s think about Google’s current product offerings, what services they are offer us as business owners, online merchants, and website owners. You can submit your website to get crawled, but you can also pay for inclusion. Over the years, Google says that it’s free to get listed. But really, is it? You can get included, but the options are very limited. It seems as though that Google just won’t send you a lot of traffic to your website unless you pay for it. Is Google quietly embracing paid inclusion? [Read more…]
Google To Give Unsecure Websites a Scarlet Letter
Google will soon publicly use the Google Chrome browser to give unsecure websites a Scarlet Letter. When visitors use Chrome to visit an unsecure website, it will be very clear that the site is unsecure. The site will be marked with a red X mark whereas a secure website will show a lock symbol. [Read more…]
Google’s Link: Search Operator Is Not Useful
As you probably know, I’m a Brand Ambassador for Majestic.com, and as such I deal with a lot of link issues on a daily basis. I recently had a conversation with someone who consistently uses Google’s link: search operator to look at the links to their website. They honestly thought that they had lost a lot of links lately. But, that’s not the case. [Read more…]
Google’s Change of Address Tool is Broken
Google’s Change of Address tool, accessed by website owners in the Google Search Console, is broken. It generally works for most website owners as it should. However, in my professional opinion it’s broken because it’s missing certain functionality that should be included. This missing functionality causes certain websites to not be able to use the tool. Therefore, in certain circumstances, Google’s Change of Address tool doesn’t work. It’s completely useless in it’s present state. [Read more…]