For certain search queries, Google is suggesting HTTP URLs over the preferred HTTPs URLs in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Certain search queries, such as when an HTTPs URL is put in the search box, will prompt Google to ask if the searcher meant the HTTP URL instead. With all of Google’s emphasis on […]

I don’t take negative SEO lightly–it’s something that is certainly something that can be difficult to deal with and identify if your website is the victim of a negative SEO attack. In the past week, I’ve had several different people I know tell me about the same issue they’re having. They all have had the […]

According to Google, this Tweet above is a video. According to Google, tweets that contain animated GIFs (very short videos, usually a few seconds long) are considered to be videos. In the search results, Google is showing a Tweet from someone. That Tweet, along some of the replies to it, contain animated GIFs. Google is […]

Google has had enough when it comes to the Google My Business scammers. They’re taking legal action against Kydia Inc. d/b/a BeyondMenu, Point Break Media, LLC (and affiliated entities), and Supreme Marketing Group, Inc. d/b/a Small Business Solutions. There have a been a lot of complaints that businesses get calls from these scammers, claiming to […]

Occasionally we all have something go awry with our websites. It could be something related to not closing a tag properly on your site, something wrong with the website’s .CSS file, or even a WordPress plugin that’s causing something else not to load properly or render properly on your website. On my own website(s), I […]

Google is shutting down the goo.gl short URL service called the Google URL Shortener, and replacing it with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL). Here’s what you need to know about this change:

Google’s John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Developer Advocate, is responsible for connecting the internal search engineering teams with the real world outside of Google. That means that he responds to questions on Twitter that SEOs and others have. Today, though, he was kind enough to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. The […]

Google has just announced that the Mobile First indexing is officially rolling out. What is Mobile First and why should you care? Well, traditionally Google has based their crawling, indexing, and ranking on the desktop or laptop version of your web site. But now, that’s changing. And it’s going to have an effect on your […]

The past few days, I’ve been seeing what I can only describe as a glitch in Google’s site search operator. When you search for all of the pages in a web site using the site: search operator, Google normally shows you the pages that they have indexed. They have an estimate of the number of […]

As an experiment of sorts, I decided to delete and completely removed the disavow file that I had uploaded to Google’s Disavow Tool. For the past several years, on an off (about every 3 months or so), I have been reviewing the backlinks to this website, BillHartzer.com, and disavowing links to the site. When disavowing […]

Google, LLC lost their appeal of two final written decisions of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board involving the way banner ads are cached. One of the arguments was that one of the patents did not reference blockable versus un-blockable URL requests.

Google has officially rolled out AI (Artificial Intelligence) auto ads for publishers in their Google AdSense program. The AdSense auto ads look at the web page, figure out where AdSense ads can be placed, and automatically insert the ads on the page. Google AdSense Auto ads use machine learning and artificial intelligence to make smart […]

How did the Google Chrome web browser get a name like Chrome? Well, according to Glen Murphy, a Design Lead for Google Chrome, one of the leads on the Google Chrome project decided on the name.

Google has announced that they have removed the view image button from the Google image search results. That means that in order to view the images in Google’s image search results, searchers need to click through to the website in order to view a larger version of the image.

Google may have made a change recently that is causing some local businesses to show up less often, even when searching for the company name. In the past, Google has typically shown a knowledge panel on the right side of the search results for a business name. However, recently, some local businesses are noticing that […]

Photo courtesy @kr4ydnb on Twitter. Google has a big issue with the timestamps on articles, posts, and news items, and it absolutely needs to be fixed. This week, the timestamp issue has been more visible to the public in light of recent news events. People have pointed out to Google that their timestamps were horribly […]

Google, in a blog post, has announced that they will stop showing ads that they deem to be too disruptive. Beginning on February 15, 2018, Google’s Chrome web browser will stop showing all ads on websites that repeatedly display disruptive ads after they’ve been flagged. If the ads don’t comply with Better Ads Standards from […]

Google is reportedly buying the Chelsea Market Building in Manhattan, New York for $2 Billion US Dollars. However, the Google Maps listing remains unclaimed and not verified at Google’s own service, Google My Business.

If you are like me and have a LOT of websites in Google Search Console, you probably are getting a lot of emails lately. Google is emailing every single website owner, every verified website in Google Search Console, and telling them about the New Google Search Console that they’ve now launched. You’re getting an email […]

We all are familiar by now with Alexa and Google Home. You can ask them questions and most of the time they will provide you with the right answer. Sometimes it’s right, and sometimes it’s wrong. Sometimes you get some odd answers, as well. But this one is pretty intriguing. You would think that Google […]

Back in May 2016, Google made some changes to the search results where they started showing longer title tags and longer meta description tags. This, overall, was a significant change from the search results where they were generally only showing up to about 60-70 characters of a web page’s title tag and about 160 characters […]

We keep hearing about negative SEO, and negative SEO attacks against websites. If you have ever had a negative SEO attack leveraged against your website or your client’s website, then you probably know what a negative SEO attack looks like. It’s a lot of links pointed to a page or several pages on your website. […]

Blockchain certainly has been on everyone’s mind lately, especially since Bitcoin’s value continues to go up. A lot more companies are accepting Bitcoin, even myself. In fact, I’ve been accepting Bitcoin for SEO services since 2013. I took a look at Google’s search results, and it’s interesting to note that Google is indexing over 8.7 […]

A while back, Google My Business launched a few new features, including the ability to make posts and the ability to create a website. I’ve written about these before. Just recently, though, I started looking into how successful these new Google My Business websites are. In effort to see more data about them, I’ve used […]

I haven’t noticed this before, but Google customizes their home page for you on your birthday. Perhaps this is new this year, as I didn’t notice it last year on my birthday. Yep, it’s my birthday today, November 27th.

With customization of the search results being so prominent these days, it’s difficult to really know where your website is ranking. Based on the actual location of the searcher, the search results will be different. Sometimes you’ll see a map in the search results, and for some search queries you won’t see a map. This […]

A while back, Google My Business launched a feature that allows verified local businesses to create their own website. Once logged in to Google My Business, you can use their interface to upload a header image, a title and headline, and text about your business. You can link out to other web pages, and a […]

I’m honestly scratching my head on this one. Even though Google has made several different versions of a page on their website (i.e., one for each country), and they use the hreflang tag, Google’s own search engine doesn’t display the right page. Let me explain.

FoxNews.com is not currently HTTPs. As a result, the media outlet is losing out on what I suspect is a lot of ad revenue because ads are not being shown. Google AdSense ads, for example, are currently showing with an error, and ads are not loading. This is one major reason why, if you’re a […]