Well, have you ever actually thought about it? What technically happens, “behind the scenes” so to speak, when you use your keyboard, type Google.com into your web browser, and hit the enter (return) key? Have you ever thought about it? Well, someone over at GitHub has actually posed that question. And thanks to lots of people’s contributions, we actually are close to having the correct answer: [Read more…]
Bill Hartzer Weekly Update November 24, 2014
Google Cache Date a Month Old Now, Google Rolled Out Mobile Friendly Tag, and State of Search conference Last Week. There are a few significant updates this past week, including the Google Cache Dates, and the new Mobile Friendly Tag.
Google Cache Dates
Last week several people, including myself, noticed that the Google cache date on pages is about a month old. Typically, for most websites, the Google cache date is normally about a day old or maybe a few days old. But I checked several websites and it appears that the cache date is about a month old. This might be an indication that Google is up to something, like another major algorithm update coming soon. Whatever the case, it’s not normal. More info on my blog post. I also show you how to check your cache date, as well. [Read more…]
Bill Hartzer: Weekly Update for October 13, 2014
This past week, I’ve been busy speaking at the PubCon conference in Las Vegas, so there weren’t a lot of posts and updates this week. But, notably the TopSEOs website appears to have been banned in Google. I also posted about speakers I wanted to see at the PubCon conference, which was a great success. In case you’ve missed it, you might want to check out SocialCentiv, a really cool new Twitter marketing software product. [Read more…]
Bill Hartzer – Weekly Update for September 21, 2014
Less than 10 links to your site? You could still get a Manual Penalty in Google Webmaster Tools. Google Knowledge Graph and How to Get In–and a report on the results of my .Com vs. gTLD Domain Name tests.
This past week, there are really two interesting new developments and posts worth noting. One involves Google Webmaster Tools and manual penalties because of bad links to your site. Turns out that I have a client that has a website with less than 10 links. But Google still gave the site a manual penalty for “inorganic links” pointing to the site. Turns out that there are bad links, but I didn’t think that Google would give a site a manual penalty because they had less than 10 links. Read the details in my post: [Read more…]
Update from Bill Hartzer: September 7, 2014
This past week, I really have only two updates: an update on moving to HTTPS from HTTP, and some info on viewing links in Google Webmaster Tools.
This week marks 4 weeks after I moved the site from HTTP to HTTPS. There have been a lot of talk in the search community about this being a total waste of time, that it doesn’t increase or help search engine rankings. There is even one search company who did “a study” and claim that it’s basically a waste to move your site from HTTP to HTTPs. Well, I certainly have had quite the opposite experience, to say the least. [Read more…]
HTTP to HTTPS Update: 3 Weeks after Moving
As you might recall, about three weeks ago I moved this site from HTTP to HTTPS after Google officially came out and said that HTTPS is a search engine ranking factor. Well, I’d like to report how it’s going so far, and from what I can tell, based on Google Analytics data, I’m very happy that I moved the site from HTTP to HTTPS.
I moved the site on August 8th and 9th, and there were some initial issues that me and my web host had to deal with. But we got it all fixed by the night of the 9th. After 3 weeks, it looks like the site is doing a lot better than it did previously: [Read more…]

