By now, you probably heard about the April Fool’s prank that I came up with this year–and with the help of Jeff and Amanda on our Globe Runner team, I think we pulled it off. So much so that we had trouble keeping the website up and running that weekend. And on April 1st, we followed up with another post, welcoming the other team members who recently joined Globe Runner, Darth Vader and Elvis Presley. By the way, if you haven’t seen the post, it’s titled “Globe Runner Welcomes Matt Cutts as Director of Search“.

On the April 8, 2015 “This Week at Google” Twit.tv show with Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis, Matt Cutts commented my our April Fool’s prank. I’ve edited the video to pull out Matt Cutts’ comments so you don’t to have to listen to the whole entire hour-long show. [Read more…]

I am not sure if anyone has noticed, but today I was looking through the search results and am seeing a new tag in the search results called “April Fool’s Prank”. This appears to be similar to the “Mobile Friendly” tag, whereas Google is flagging certain sites that are “mobile friendly.” Here is a screen capture of the search results, where a recent post of mine about Matt Cutts shows up (look for it around the 2nd page of the SERPS for “Matt Cutts”:

If you look closely at the search results, you will see that my post that appeared recently on the Globe Runner site is tagged with “April Fool’s Prank”. [Read more…]

The Not Provided keywords are NOT being expanded to Google Webmaster Tools. In only what I can call an “April Fools prank posted days before April Fools”, Search Engine Watch posted this article that says that Google is expanding the Not Provided keywords to Google Webmaster Tools, taking away even more keyword data from site owners.

This is absolutely a prank article, and you should not believe it. [Read more…]

Well, um, this is embarrassing. Especially at a time when Google is pushing the mobile version of websites, wanting all of us to make sure that our websites are mobile friendly by April 21st. A recent search this morning revealed that the mobile version of Google.com is ranking well in Google’s own search results. I searched for the title of a blog post I wrote on Saturday night about a lawsuit. And, low and behold, Google’s mobile version (of Google Plus) is ranking #3 for that search query. Take a look:

[Read more…]

I was just granted access to the new Google Webmaster Tools Search Impact report, which is going to be available in Google Webmaster Tools. The Search Impact report is currently in Alpha (not even in Beta yet), but it offers a lot more insight into what’s going on with your website. If you’ve been granted access it should show up at the URL above. It will eventually show up for everyone who has a Google Webmaster Tools account, and you’ll be able to analyze more search data about your site. Here is a sneak peak of what the Search Impact report looks like and what you’ll be able to do and see with this report. [Read more…]

If you are using structured data on your website, or marking up your website’s code using schema.org code, it could ultimately cost you page views and visits from Google. By allowing marking using structured data on your website, you are allowing Google to use the data in any way they see fit–and Google is taking full advantage of that. [Read more…]