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Google's John Mueller confirmed that Google crawls pages more often if they are more important and popular. So if a page is not crawled so often, that can be a sign that the page is not that important to Google. John said this on Twitter, "If we don't crawl then that often, usually that's a sign that we didn't think they were that important, which might help confirm that they were ok to remove."He explained that this was covered in the Google blog post about crawl budget that reads:Even if the crawl rate limit isn't reached, if there's no demand from indexing, there will be low activity from Googlebot. The two factors that play a significant role in determining crawl demand are:Popularity: URLs that are more popular on the Internet tend to be crawled more often to keep them fresher in our index. Staleness: our systems attempt to prevent URLs from becoming stale in the index.It also reads:An increased crawl rate will not necessarily lead to better positions in Search results. Google … [Read more...] about Google Crawls Pages More Often If They Are More Important & Popular

Google announced they have launched a new form of featured snippets that offer expandable snippets to help a searcher dive deeper into the aspects of a specific query. We actually saw Google testing this this past April and now it is officially live.Google wrote "we’re introducing a new way to get you to relevant information fast and help you get a glimpse of multiple aspects of a topic with a single search." Google has not given them an official name - such as "expandable featured snippets" but I think that name works for them.Here are some screen shots:It is not clear if this is rolled out globally, I'd assume this is an English only roll out but Danny Sullivan thinks otherwise. How do you get your site to show up in these? Well, just like normal featured snippets, there is nothing specific you can do to guarantee it. Google wrote "these new panels are automatically generated based on our understanding of these topics from content on the web."Forum discussion at Twitter. … [Read more...] about Google Launches Expandable Featured Snippets

Google is now sending useful notifications about issues when you migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. In the example Alan Bleiweiss showed below, Google told him that 80% of the HTTP pages are not showing up on the HTTPS version. That is a useful notification!Alan shared this on Twitter where the notification reads:Google systems identified that you recently migrated your site from HTTP to HTTPS. Approximately 80% of your HTTP pages that were indexed before migration can no longer be found in either your HTTP or HTTPS site. Therefore, these pages are no longer accessible from Google search. If these pages were moved to your HTTPS site, we encourage you to help us find them and include them in Google Search.He share this screen shot:Google's John Mueller confirmed this and said "A lot of https migration problems come from bad or incomplete migrations, we're trying to help folks when we spot these issues. Hope this kind of heads up is useful!"Forum discussion at Twitter. … [Read more...] about Google Search Console Sends Useful HTTPS Gone Wrong Notifications

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Search Engine Roundtable Stories: Google Medic Update: Many Are Looking Back To Google's Panda Advice From 2011 With the Google Medic Update from August 1st, the core broad Google algorithm update. Many are not just looking at the quality raters guidelines but also looking back at the advice former head of search Amit Singhal gave around the Google Panda update from May 2011. Google: Taking Old Content & Relabeling It As New Is A Bad SEO Hack Google's John Mueller said on Twitter, with the disclaimer of him putting his user hat on (not Google hat), that relabeling old content as new, without any additional changes is a bad SEO hack. He said it is bad for the user, causes frustration when they find out and doesn't give your users the respect they deserve, he said. Google Adds Troubleshooting Section For Job Posting Structured Data … [Read more...] about Daily Search Forum Recap: August 16, 2018

Google has added to the developer documents around job posting structured data a whole new troubleshooting section. This section gives developers access to more tips on how to properly implement this type of schema. Aaron Bradly first noticed this and posted it on Google+, he said:As per the call-out image, Google has added a section on specifications for job posting (http://bit.ly/2DPO144) to help publishers resolve issues "[if] your job posting isn't appearing in the jobs enriched search results or if you've received a manual action for Spammy Structured Markup in Search Console" - all the highlighted menu items are new.What Google has provided is obviously very useful for those experiencing problems implementing schema.org/JobPosting. A welcome addition, as a frequent complaint against Google with regard to structured data is that information on errors is absent or too vague - let's hope they bring this level of support to other data types.The troubleshooting section is broken … [Read more...] about Google Adds Troubleshooting Section For Job Posting Structured Data

For years and years, Google has been telling people to not change URLs unless they have to. Google's John Mueller said it again in a Reddit thread, strongly encouraging the webmaster to avoid changing the URLs on his site.In this example, the webmaster is looking to change his international URL structure to /en-gb from /uk and to /de-de from /de, and so on. Google's John Mueller the biggest concern he sees with how Google will react is the URL change and the time it takes Google to reprocess it all. He wrote:The bigger effect will be from changing a lot of URLs (all pages in those folders) - that always takes time to be reprocessed. I'd avoid changing URLs unless you have a really good reason to do so, and you're sure that they'll remain like that in the long run.This does not apply with HTTP to HTTPS, because Google has a special process for this.But for most other URL changes, espesially not at the root level, it can take Google some time to rediscover all those URLs.Forum … [Read more...] about Google: Avoid Change URLs Unless You Really Have To

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Search Engine Roundtable Stories: Other Great Search Forum Threads: Take a look at the title tag, it's so long..., Jovan Bojovic on Twitter "Things not strings" I wrote another small tool for the curious SEO-community https://t.co/nt40AttsII cc @dr_pete @seobythesea @rustybrick @badams and everyone else who loves deep dives into Googles technologies, Valentin Pletzer on Twitter As someone who wrote about SEO from the beginning, like before it even was called SEO, this article kind of makes smile. It's a positive, rather than the often negative. And SEO was never gone. Ask any SEO. https://t.co/49rgOu, Danny Sullivan on Twitter Attention our Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese or Chinese publishers. We recently worked with some of the team to create local language videos for you around some top issues & we hope you'll find them helpful! Let us … [Read more...] about Daily Search Forum Recap: August 15, 2018

Typically, the thought belief is to have the content that is most useful and relevant to the user and thus the query at the highest point on your web pages (obviously below the navigation). But Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that the position of that content doesn't really matter. He said "If it's useful content, we'll treat it as such regardless where on a page it is."So as long as the content is useful, if you have it lower down on the page, Google will still consider that content useful. Will Google consider the content more useful if it is higher up on the page? I am not sure - but I believe most SEOs believe so.Why hide useful content deep down in the footer of your pages? Well, I suspect this is around e-commerce category pages, where you want content on the page so Google ranks the category page well in search but yet you want the shoppers to see the images and names of each category and not be distracted by a lot of heavy content?Here are the tweets: I see many … [Read more...] about Google: Useful Content Position On A Page Doesn’t Matter

I was testing some searches on Google's mobile search results this morning and for some queries I was able to bring back the "next" button at the bottom of the search results. Google replaced the "next" button on mobile search with a "more results" button back in April. But I can still consistently get the next button for specific types of queries.When you get a set of search results for someone or some thing that triggers a knowledge panel with tabs, Google will keep the tabs to the top of the page as you scroll. In that case where the knowledge card/panel tabs are stuck to the top of the search results page on mobile, Google will show the "next" button at the bottom instead of the "more results" button.One example is when you search for [neil young] - it shows tabs in the knowledge panel and thus at the footer will show a "next" button. But if you search for [sergey brin] you do not get the sticky tabs in the knowledge panel and thus see the "more results" button.Here are screen … [Read more...] about Google Doesn’t Always Show “More Results” Button, May Show “Next” Button

The new beta version of the Google Search Console keeps porting over features from the old version. In this mornings announcement Google said you can now manage users and permissions, add sites and validate ownership and view the mobile usability report.Google announced this on Twitter this morning and all of these are features you can find in the old version of the Google Search Console. Now, or at least really soon, they should be available in the new beta version of the Google Search Console. Google said they added:Manage users and permissions Add sites and validate ownership Mobile Usability reportHere is a GIF of it in action:I personally do not see any of these features live in my version of the new Google Search Console, you can try it yourself over here.Forum discussion at Twitter. … [Read more...] about Beta Google Search Console Adds Verify Sites, Manage Users & Mobile Usability Report