Today’s Thursday, September 18, 2014, which is another “Throwback Thursday”. I thought today we’d look back at Ask.com and see what Ask looked like on my birthday, November 27, 1999. Back in 1999, we had this guy named “Jeeves” who you could ask a question.
Less Than 10 Links to Site? Google Still Gives Site Manual Penalty
Apparently it doesn’t matter, whatsoever, how many links to your site you have. Even if you have 8 links pointing to your website, if those links are inorganic or violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, the site can still receive a manual penalty from Google. [Read more…]
Google Showing Freebase Results in Knowledge Graph for My Name
Starting yesterday, Google started showing Knowledge Graph results from Freebase in the search results for my name, Bill Hartzer. What’s interesting to note is that this is the first time that I’ve seen a direct example of Google using Freebase data. We’ve known for quite some time that Google owns Freebase, but for the first time I have proof that Google’s pulling data from Freebase. [Read more…]
Google Webmaster Tools Reports More than 100,000 Links
Over the weekend, Jim Hedger noticed that there were huge fluctuations in the numbers of links that were being reported in Google Webmaster Tools. He’s reportedly seen as much as 500,000 links reported, and then at a later time it was less than 1,000 links. Based on my own site’s link data, I’m now seeing over 200,000 links being reported.
From my past experiences, I’ve come to find out that Google Webmaster Tools, in the past, would not show more then 100,000 links, even for websites that I’ve worked on that have over 8 million links. So, doing a link cleanup project on a site with 8 million links: Google Webmaster Tools was pretty much useless. [Read more…]
Why You Should Move from HTTP to HTTPS
I rarely disagree with advice given by authors of articles that appear on Search Engine Land, but in this case, I wholeheartedly, and undeniably, disagree with some recent advice about HTTP and HTTPs sites. In a recent article, Daniel Cristo recommended that “if you’re running a blog, brochure site, news site, or any sort of information site where users don’t provide you with any personal information, I would recommend not using HTTPS.” He provides several reasons, which are completely false and unjustified, and generally gives advice that I disagree with. [Read more…]
Google Analytics: Is Google Plus a Referral or a Social Media Site?
While reviewing Google Analytics for a few websites today, it appears that Google Analytics has a problem with deciding whether or not Google Plus is a website–or if it is a social media website. In Google Analytics, some of the traffic to your site will be reported as a referral, while other traffic, seemingly a random number, will be reported as social traffic.
Let’s take a look at a random site that I have Google Analytics access to, and look at referrals from Google Plus. In this case, I filtered the “All Traffic” down to only plus.google.com: [Read more…]
Move from HTTP to HTTPS: Google Traffic 1 Week After Moving
Exactly one week ago, I moved my site from HTTP to HTTPS, making my whole entire site serve up content securely. As you may recall, Google officially came out and said that HTTPS is a search engine ranking signal now. One week after I moved the site, here is an update. Overall, traffic from Google organic search is up 9.58 percent. And the overall quality of the traffic is much better, as well. [Read more…]
Google Says Jump: We Say, How High?
Having been in the Search Engine Optimization business for well over 10 years, it’s a shame that we are at a point when Google’s organic search team makes a change to their algorithm, decides on a whim that a legitimate marketing technique is unethical, or makes an official announcement that SSL is now a ranking factor. It’s sad that we’re at a point that when Google says, “Jump!” we say “How High?” [Read more…]
Moving to HTTPS for a Better Search Engine Ranking
Due to Google’s recent official announcement that an https site is a search engine ranking factor, I’ve decided to move my site, BillHartzer.com, to https from http. Just to see if I can get a better rankings for the pages on my website. Currently, I do not accept any sort of payment for the content that I write here on my site, so that’s not the reason I’m moving the site from http to https.
Trust is the biggest factor in my decision to change from http to https, and that’s one major way you can get a higher visibility in web search. My web host, HostDime, offers secure certificates at a very reasonable rate, which is $30 per year for a basic certificate. It’s good for www and non-www. [Read more…]
Throwback Thursday: Search Engine Watch Circa 1999
Today is Thursday, and every Thursday I try to feature one search engine or search engine website. Today, because of the official announcement that Danny Goodwin is leaving Search Engine Watch, I thought I would feature Search Engine Watch.
Let’s take a look at what Search Engine Watch looked like back when Danny Sullivan owned and operated it, back in 1999:
SEW was a part of Internet.com, and Danny Sullivan was the editor. [Read more…]
How to Remove Semalt.com in Google Analytics
There’s a website (domain name) that shows up as a referral in your Google Analytics. Semalt.com bills itself as “Semalt is a professional webmaster analytics tool that opens the door to new opportunities for the market monitoring, yours and your competitors’ positions tracking and comprehensible analytics business information.” Okay, fine. But to be honest with you, most likely you do NOT want any traffic from Semalt.com. In fact, it’s not real visitors, it’s just a “bot” that is making it look like there are visitors from their domain name to your website. Real visitors are generally not coming from a website called Semalt.com to your website. So, to accurately see your referral and website visitor traffic in Google Analytics, I recommend removing this or “excluding” semalt.com in your Google Analytics tracking. Here’s how to set up a filter in Google Analytics to filter out this domain name (or any other domain name) in your Google Analytics.
First, you need to log into Google Analytics. Then, click on the “Admin” tab at the top, as shown below.
Throwback Thursday: LookSmart Search Engine Circa 1999
Do you remember LookSmart? Back in 1999, the LookSmart website looked like this:
Back in 1999, you could search the web from the site’s home page, or you could click on one of their categories, and then a few more clicks… and then finally get to their content. For example, there was shopping content: [Read more…]
Google Drops Real Name Policy
Google just dropped their real name policy. So, starting now, this means that there are no restrictions on names you can use when signing up for services such as Google Plus and YouTube. As you might recall, Google+ had revised their real name policy back in 2012, saying that only .1 percent of users have submitted name appeals, and the majority (60%) of these users want to simply add nicknames. But now, they’ve changed all that. You can use any name you want.
Here’s part of the post and statement from Google that was just made regarding real names: [Read more…]
Google Quality Rater Guidelines 2014
I just got ahold of the latest copy of Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, with a date of March 2014. It’s an interesting read, all 160 pages of this document. There are a lot of new phrases and concepts that are included in this latest version, but honestly there’s are really not many new surprises. But, if you’re in the online marketing business, are an SEO, or own a website, then you really should take a look at the latest guidelines, if just to make sure that your website or your client’s website(s) are compliant with Google’s latest Quality Rater guidelines. There may be some things that you can improve, I’ve found a few things that I’m going to pay attention to from now on when I perform complex SEO Audits for clients. [Read more…]
The Real Reason Google Removed Google Authorship Photos From Search Results
Relevant content in organic search results distracts people from clicking on sponsored search advertisements.
— Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) July 11, 2014
I know that’s a really long title for this post, but I wanted to get to the point with the headline. We all want to know the real reason why Google removed Google Authorship Photos from the search results, right? [Read more…]
Throwback Thursday: Altavista Search Engine, Circa 1996
Back in 1996, I was spending my spare time (early mornings and evenings) trying to rank web pages that I built in raw html code. There were no WYSIWYG editors out there, or at least I didn’t have access to any. I created websites using notepad and html code. And it worked really, really well. It wasn’t that difficult to get your web page ranked in most of the search engines, as long as you had a good title tag, meta tags, and the right content on the page.
Throwback Thursday: iWon Search Engine, Circa 2001
Today is Thursday July 3, 2014, and that means that it’s Throwback Thursday. Each Thursday I’m starting a new tradition here on my blog: to feature an old search engine. There were quite a few, so I think I’ll be able to keep the tradition going for quite some time.
Today’s Throwback Thursday search engine is iWon.com, circa 2001. [Read more…]
Google Launches Cookie Choices Website
I just checked the CookieChoices.org website again, and it turns out that the website is really now live. As you might recall, I was the first one to break the news that Google bought the CookieChoices.org domain name, right after the EU ruling. Then, for some reason you could use the website for Google search. Then it went away. But now, it looks like they’ve quietly launched the website with real content.
The goal of Google’s CookieChoices.org is to “Helping publishers with cookie consent.” They go on to explain that “European laws require that digital publishers give visitors to their sites and apps information about their use of cookies and other forms of local storage. In many cases these laws also require that consent be obtained.” The website is produced by Google. [Read more…]
Google to Remove Google Authorship Photos from Search Results
I’ve always been a big fan of the photos that appear in the Google search results when the author of an article or blog posts has claimed their Google Authorship for that content. [Read more…]
Google Web Designer For HTML5 Sites That Work On Any Device
With everyone talking about responsive web design, and creating websites that will work on any device, Google Web Designer seems to be a pretty good option. I have my reservations, though, when it comes to it’s SEO-friendliness. But most of that can be easily fixed.
I took 2 minutes. Really, only 2 minutes, to download and test out Google Web Designer on a recently-acquired domain name, Streaming Video, where I wanted to put up a real basic web page. Since that domain was previously a parked domain, and Google typically doesn’t parked domains, I wanted to put up a real basic web page so that it get re-indexed again. Once the site’s re-indexed again properly and not considered to be a “parked domain” by Google, I’ll work on developing the site. [Read more…]