The search engine called WeLeakInfo.com has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice. WeLeakInfo.com was a website that sold access to hacked personal information and account logins. [Read more…]
Did Google and Bing Predict the Southwest Airlines Emergency Landing?
Did the search engines, Google and Bing, today predict the Southwest Airlines’ emergency landing of Flight 1380 at Philadelphia Airport (PHL)? Absolutely not–but based in the Google and Bing search results, it appears that that they may have actually predicted that news. [Read more…]
Google Thinks I Posted Every Post 7 Hours Prior
I’ve been watching this interesting Google bug for over a year now. Turns out that Google thinks that I posted every single post 7 hours prior to when I post. Whenever I make a new post here on my WordPress blog, and go find the post in Google’s search results, Google ALWAYS shows that I posted it 7 hours prior–even if I made the post 3 minutes ago. [Read more…]
iWon.com and iWon Email Shutting Down
Do you remember the iWon.com website? It was a web portal that included a search engine, but you could “win” rewards and prizes for using their site, up to a certain number of times per day. The more you used the site the more you could win entries into the money that they were giving away each, and every day. A lot of people started using iWon Email years ago and still rely on iWon email to this day, but it’s going away starting on October 2, 2017.
I never really spent a whole lot of time on their site, but I remember having an iwon free account and at least entering something every so often. But I never really did win anything. Or maybe I did? I honestly don’t remember. As I recall, the IAC search (IAC owns iWon.com) was pretty much using another search engine’s results (I believe it’s was Google’s search results). [Read more…]
How Not to Redirect an Old Blog Post: Courtesy Microsoft
Well, here’s one that has got me scratching my head. Actually, I’m trying to decide if I should be scratching my head or doing a face-palm thing. An old post from Microsoft, which was a pretty important announcement, is being redirected to another URL. But wait, it actually doesn’t redirect. And then when you click the link that they tell you to, because it’s been moved to another location, you get another notice that you’ll be redirected to the new location. Oh wait, it doesn’t redirect you. Confused yet? You should be. [Read more…]
With Featured Snippets, Apparently Good Spelling Doesn’t Matter
All the rage nowadays amongst SEOs is about Google’s featured snippets that show up in the search results. It’s that coveted “rank zero” that everyone wants to get. Not only can you rank on the first page, but if your content is good enough, then Google will pull (scrape) your site and feature part of your content at the top of the search results. [Read more…]
Submit URL to Google: New Form Implemented in Search Results
We all know by now that you don’t need to actually submit your URL to Google or “submit URL to Google”. Google’s crawlers typically are so good about crawling the web that you don’t need to tell them about a new URL or a new page. And, it’s been this way for years now. I’ve written about it time and time again. You don’t need to submit your website to the search engines, it’s actually free, and you certainly do NOT need to pay to submit your website. [Read more…]
Ask.com Search Engine Leaked User Search Queries In Its Server Logs
The search engine Ask.com leaked its server log files, displaying all of its users’ aearch queries to the public. For a few hours today, you searched for a keyword on Ask.com, the public could see what you searched for. [Read more…]
How Much Feedback Does It Take Until Google Responds?
Last week, I had the great opportunity visit Google’s headquarters, attend the Google Dance as a part of the SMX West conference, and talk with many in the industry. There were quite a few great tips that I picked up along the way. [Read more…]
Not All Google Featured Snippets are Informational
Ever since Google started introducing Featured Snippets into their search results, I always thought of Google Featured Snippets as being informational and helpful. And, non-commercial. Well, today my opinion of featured snippets quickly changed when I saw the Google showing a featured snippet for this search query: banking equipment. [Read more…]
Google: There is No Duplicate Content Penalty
According to Gary Illyes, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, the Google search engine has no duplicate content penalty. In a Tweet on February 13, 2017, Gary said the following: [Read more…]
Did Chinese Hackers Steal Google’s Organic Search Algorithm?
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 Internet searches conducted on Google’s world-famous search engine. [Read more…]
Google Answer Boxes Can Appear in Results for Site Search Queries
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 Google’s attempt to give you information in their search results about search query (keyword) so you don’t have to click through to a website to get the answer. Google predicts the answer to your question, scrapes the data from a website, and makes it show up at the top of the search results. This is often referred to ranking 0 (zero) position, before the first result. In most cases, Google will show Google AdWords ads before the answer box.
Here is an example: [Read more…]
How to Disavow Links in Bing Using Automation
If you are an SEO (or an SEO Consultant like me), then you should be familiar with Google’s Disavow Tool. Essentially you can upload a text file list of URLs or domain names that are linking to your website, telling them to disavow or ignore those links or all links from a certain domain name. But most of the time, we’ll disavow those links in Google but totally forget about uploading the same disavow file to Bing, as well. You’ve done all the work finding the links to disavow, identifying bad and toxic links, so why not upload the list to Bing as well? [Read more…]
How to Stop Lifehacker.com and Reddit.com Fake Google Analytics Referral Traffic
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 to visit one of those sites, typically trying to get you to copy/paste the URL and visit the website. [Read more…]
Google Bug Causes False Date To Show in Search Results
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. [Read more…]
Should You Implement Google AMP?
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. Initially targeted towards news publishers like Practical Ecommerce, we’re seeing a lot more public adoption of this new web standard. Google AMP is not just for news publishers anymore. [Read more…]
Google Launches Allo App – Tough to Find in The App Store
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. [Read more…]
Google Launches Google Analytics Demo Account, Includes Referral Spam
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 Analytics account) may not have that feature. So this is all good. But there’s only one problem: even Google’s own demo account includes referral spam. [Read more…]
Google’s Request for Rehearing Denied in Case Vs. Mississippi
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. [Read more…]