Google has released a form to help us submit spammy, deceptive, and low quality web pages. You can even bulk submit up to 5 URLs at a time that violate the same Google policies. Google’s post explains that it’s not just about spam. They say that “Now, you can report spam, paid links, malicious behavior, low quality, and other search quality issues, all in one improved form.” [Read more…]

If you used Google’s Search Engine from October 25, 2006 to September 30, 2013, you could get cash from a class action Settlement. A proposed Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit called In re Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigation, Case No. 5:10-cv-4809-EJD, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. [Read more…]

All the talk around the water cooler nowadays, amongst SEOs, is Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). For a simple explanation, I asked Google Bard to explain it to me. And it wasn’t a very simple explanation. It was quite longer than I expected. [Read more…]

Starting May 3, 2023 (today), Google is integrating passkey support for Google Accounts. You will be able to create a passkey to “simplify the way you sign in” according to an email sent to eligible Google users. [Read more…]

Google is finally sunsetting their Google Glass product. They had discontinued support for Google Glass a while back, but they’re finally going to stop supporting Google Glass Enterprise Edition. The Google Glass Enterprise Edition was mostly being used by companies. [Read more…]

Okay, I get a good number of spam emails and occasionally I get some very odd emails. And I’ve come across some people who have a lot to say about Google. There are a lot of rumors out there about Google’s privacy practices, what they monitor, what they track, and soforth. [Read more…]

Sometimes Google is not very family friendly. I mean, we all know that you can turn on and turn off Google’s SafeSearch feature. Their SafeSearch feature might not apply to events, though. I don’t currently have the SafeSearch filter on, since I really do need to see what search engine results are showing up for certain keywords. [Read more…]

I recently got an email directly from Google congratulating me on reaching 100 million views on my Google Maps photos. That’s 100,000,000 views. I was particularly surprised that I reached that many views on photos I’ve uploaded to Google Maps business listings. However, I knew that I was getting close as I had recently seen that I was at about 90 million views, thinking that I needed to go out and take more photos. I thought I would go ahead and tell you how I reached this number of views. I’ll go through my process, and explain some of the benefits from doing what I do. [Read more…]

Google is sending out emails to businesses, using a type of scare tactic, to inform them that upcoming legislation could harm their business. In the email, they state that if legislative bills are passed, the changes could make it harder for customers to find your business, hurt your productivity, and cost your business time and money. In reality, the legislation is designed to ultimately protect businesses from companies like Google. [Read more…]

Add this to the list of Google services that they’ve created and then shut down. Google Cameos (also known as Cameos on Google) is shutting down on February 17, 2022, just less than a month from now. On that date, if you have access to Google Cameos, then you will no longer be able to record and upload videos.

Google is showing, and in many cases, ranking Amazon’s search results in their search results pages. If you search for a keyword in Google, such as ‘smores k cups’, one of the top ranking results in Google’s organic search results is Amazon’s search results page for that same keyword, ‘smores k cups’. This is a big deal for several reasons, but I don’t think it’s acceptable to rank search results pages in the search results pages. It’s just a bad user experience overall. [Read more…]

Google has entered the auto industry so to speak, as they are now showing new car pricing and and trim level options right in their search engine results pages. A friend spotted these results when searching for the 2022 Chevrolet Tahoe LT. Google oftentimes runs tests like this, showing certain data or a certain configuration in the results, before they eventually roll out the feature for all users. Sometimes these search result features end up going live for all users, and in other cases they end up not being made live, as the test for the feature is not successful. [Read more…]

Have you ever searched for an address on Google Maps, checked out the Street View 360 degree photos, and found that an entire location, building, or house is blurred? Google usually uses their technology to automatically blur faces and license plates. But, did you know that upon request you can get your house or building blurred? If you’re interested in getting Google to blur the photo of your house, for example, then there is actually a way to request that they blur your house’s photo on Google Maps. Here is how to do that. [Read more…]

There is a browser add-on that, once installed in your web browser, allows you to opt out of Google Analytics. That essentially means that if you use the add-on when visiting websites that are using Google Analytics, your visit(s) won’t be recorded. This is the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On. [Read more…]

Example of a 3d Snowman on Google Poly. Google Poly is being shut down.

Google Poly, the website created by Google for users to browse, distribute, and download 3D objects, is shutting down on June 30, 2021. [Read more…]

Google has lost an appeal to a patent infringement lawsuit that has been ongoing for several years now. The case, Google, LLC vs. Netlist, Inc., is a case where Google argued that a patent owned by Netlist, Inc. was invalid. Google claimed that part of the patent “involving the specific use of rank-selecting signals for rank multiplication” was invalid. [Read more…]

Google continues it’s attack on the URL so to speak, showing URLs less than they have been in the past. In this latest attack on the URL, Google seems to be “pressing on with new plans to hide all parts of web addresses except the domain name.” [Read more…]

Not long ago, I installed the Google Site Kit WordPress plugin, as it is an official Google WordPress plugin. When you install the plugin, it gives you an easier way to view data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google AdSense, and Google PageSpeed Insights. You can view this data for the entire site or you can view it per page or per post. It doesn’t really do anything special except make it easier for you to view the data. You can see it directly in the WordPress dashboard rather than having to go to each of those sites separately: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google AdSense, and Google PageSpeed Insights. Well, there’s a problem with the plugin: an attacker can gain access to your Google Search Console for the site, and presumably with access they could do some harm. [Read more…]

It appears that Google has removed the www subdomain of LinkedIn from their organic, natural search engine results pages. This is commonly referred to as being banned in Google when pages are removed. Initially we didn’t know who removed the pages. We now know, as I’ll explain in this post, what really happened and what you need to know as a result of this whole incident. This was a very fluid situation, so this post has been heavily changed and updated as we learned more about what really happened.

Over the past few years, LinkedIn profile pages have typically ranked very well for personal names, especially for my personal name. Google, for some reason, has decided to remove the www subdomain of LinkedIn’s pages. There are a few reasons why pages are removed all of a sudden: the site is given a manual action (penalty) from Google. Initially we didn’t know for certain if it was a manual action from Google or if the pages were mistakenly removed by LinkedIn. In either case, all of the www subdomain pages have been removed from Google’s search engine results. [Read more…]

Google Ads Support is not currently accepting any phone calls. When you call the phone number for Google Ads phone support, which is 1-866-246-6453, you get a recorded message that they are not accepting any phone calls. The automated message (which is a computer-type voice and not a human-recorded voice) says that they are not accepting phone calls. They then go on to say that they are not accepting phone calls because they are protecting their employees from the effects of COVID-19 and the Coronavirus. [Read more…]