Have Chinese hackers stolen Google’s search engine secrets? Have they infiltrated the super-secret Google algorithm, allowing them to manipulate Google’s search results? According to a new book by Bill Gertz titled War and Peace in the Information Age, “Chinese cyber-intelligence services had developed technology and network penetration skills allowing them to control the results of […]

Apparently, Google Answer boxes can appear in the search results when performing a site:domain.com type of search in Google. I find this kind of odd, as typically someone isn’t looking for an answer per se when they use the site: search operator at Google. What is a Google Answer Box? A Google Answer box is […]

In the past week, you probably have noticed that there is referral traffic from Lifehacker.com that is showing up in Google Analytics. You could also be seeing traffic from one particular Reddit.com URL. This is, in fact, fake, spam, or “ghost” traffic that you should ignore. The only purpose of it is to get you […]

A bug in the Google’s search engine is causing false, old dates to appear in front of websites listed in their search results. This, in turn, is causing drops in traffic. Some are also reporting ranking drops, as well.

Back in February 2016, I wrote about Google’s new project, called Accelerated Mobile Pages, and how you can install a WordPress Plugin called the Google AMP plugin. The whole idea is to provide a new web format so that mobile users can view content that loads really quickly, even with a slow internet (mobile) connection. […]

Google just launched a new smart messaging app called Allo. This app is certainly interesting–but do we really need yet another messaging app? After all, Apple just introduced a whole lot of new features of their built-in iOS messaging (imessage) when they launched iOS 10 just last week.

I applaud Google for launching a Google Analytics demo account, which anyone (with a Google Account) can access. Now we can use a real, live, Google Analytics account to play around with and look at the data. Quite often, it’s difficult to learn all of the Google Analytics features because some websites (in your Google […]

In a long dispute between Google and the State of Mississippi’s Attorney General Jim Hood, Google’s most recent request for a rehearing has been denied. The Times Standard reported back in April that the appeals court had overturned a ruling against the Stage of Mississippi. Google has appealed that ruling, which has now been denied.

Google Search Console‘s Search Analytics feature, the feature that allows you to see the keywords, impressions, clicks, and average position of your website’s pages, has not been updated since May 3, 2016. Usually, Google allows verified website owners to see their search query data up to the past two days (the data is delayed two […]

Google is showing multiple domain names in its search results when the site: command is used if domains pointing to the main domain include the canonical tag. Let me explain by giving you an example.

In the Google search results, I’m still seeing some alternative characters show up at the beginning of the title tags in some results. Looks like the cases I have come across are all search engine spam results, but the fact that these characters are even being allowed is a mystery to me. Let’s look at […]

Google has added a share button to knowledge graph entries to encourage us to search more at Google. Whenever you search using a desktop (not mobile) device, and you see a knowledge graph entry on the right side of the search results, Google is displaying a share button, like this:

Google’s organic search engine algorithm is made up of a lot of different search engine ranking factors. When it comes to certain search queries, not all of those search engine ranking factors are applied. In other words, Google may apply certain parts of their algorithm to certain keyword queries and might disregard other parts for […]

A while back I wrote about my utter frustration with Google and their Change of Address Tool. I wrote about how their Change of Address Tool is broken. Well, honestly, I’m still frustrated. After 3 months, it’s still broken.

I don’t recall anytime recently when Google showed such a horrible, misguided, completely wrong search result lately. I am stunned that Google would even possibly show a result such as this. Or, perhaps this is a sign of yet another change to Google’s search engine algorithm?

Uh oh, Google just announced that a new mobile-friendly update is coming in May 2016. And, as such, I’m going to personally be the first one to call this Mobilegeddon II. Not because of the fact that the first mobile friendly update back in April 2015 was catastrophic–just because this is the second mobile friendly […]

Adding Google AdSense to your website hurts the mobile user experience on your website and violates Google’s own suggested guidelines. I have been working on my own site, this site, to optimize it for page load speed. Using Google’s own Pagespeed Insights tool, I found that there is one particular section of the results, under […]

About a day after I made my website Google AMP compatible, I am now seeing data in Google Search Console for Accelerated Mobile Pages. Turns out that the official WordPress Plugin, for some reason, is generating errors, though. Let’s take a look at the errors that are generated, and see if there is a way […]

We just got word that Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project is live. That means that if your website can serve up Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) versions of your content then you will probably see more traffic from mobile. Google will be encouraged to show your site more often in the mobile search results. So, […]

Well, this is disappointing. Either that, or the person reviewing the suggested changes I had to a spammy listing on Google Maps isn’t doing their job. I recently made a suggestion to what I consider a VERY spammy listing in Google Maps, which appears to violate a several of their guidelines. And even though I […]

Last week, I wrote about Google allowing those who have knowledge graph entries about themselves or official representatives of a knowledge graph entry to request an update. As you may recall, if you’re logged into Google you’ll typically see something like this:

I have run across some confusion recently about the Google Change of Address Tool, which I wrote about recently. While the Change of Address tool is still broken in my opinion, it’s important to note that the tool is only really meant for moving from one domain name to another.

It looks to me like Google has, just recently, remove the link: search operator on Google. If you search for any website’s links using Google, there aren’t any search results. So, for example, a search for link:google.com shows no results:

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 […]

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, […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]