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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • newsmile


    Hello seomoz.org has tool to find the most searches by country. If not, could you please tell me a good tool I live in Costa Rica and I would like to have this information Thank you Andy

    | newsmile
    0
  • cogbox


    Hello Community, Question on negative impact of many virtually identical calendar pages indexed. We have a site that is a b2b software product. There are about 150 product-related pages, and another 1,200 or so short articles on industry related topics. In addition, we recently (~4 months ago) had Google index a large number of calendar pages used for webinar schedules. This boosted the indexed pages number shown in Webmaster tools to about 54,000. Since then, we "no-followed" the links on the calendar pages that allow you to view future months, and added "no-index" meta tags to all future month pages (beyond 6 months out). Our number of pages indexed value seems to be dropping, and is now down to 26,000. When you look at Google's report showing pages appearing in response to search queries, a more normal 890 pages appear. Very few calendar pages show up in this report. So, the question that has been raised is: Does a large number of pages in a search index with very thin content (basically blank calendar months) hurt the overall site? One person at the company said that because Panda/Penguin targeted thin-content sites that these pages would cause the performance of this site to drop as well. Thanks for your feedback. Chris

    | cogbox
    0
  • KLLC


    Hello, All the pages of my site contained canonical url it shows me in the source, but on seomoz  site it shows error that some the pages not containing canonical urls, anyone will help me ??

    | KLLC
    0
  • ZakD


    Hi Guys - I asked this Q, on the comments of Joost's blog post on this topic - repeating here, in case I don't get an answer. I have a question of the rel=author tag. Will Google attach the authorship, even if the Google+ profile is a Company page, and not a personal profile? The mugshot on the profile, is basically our logo - not a personal photo. What's the best way to make use of authorship markup, in a case like this? Thanks!! Zak

    | ZakD
    1
  • BCutrer


    I'm working in a market where the Google Trusted photographer is rolling out. The question came up if providing this data would boost your rankings in the local map pack. I've been asking a few fellow SEO peeps but I thought I would throw it out here for your opinion.

    | BCutrer
    0
  • ChrisTS


    Not sure why my website traffic is dropping down late Oct 12.  It showed a boost with the last Panda update in early Oct. Anyone know of a current update?

    | ChrisTS
    0
  • MichelMauquoi


    Hi, I'm not an SEO expert! I'm even not a professional Webmaster. I'm a professional "Private Investigator", owner of a PI Agency in Bangkok (Thailand). Our website (thailand-investigation.com) was ranked, 18 months ago, on the 1st page in Google, Bing & Yahoo search engines for our major keywords! We are still good in Bing and Yahoo but we dropped to the 5th page and more in Google! I do not know when it happened? I was busy working managing my business and was not taking care on our website (BIG mistake)!I realized it beginning of august 2012. I redesigned our website, ad content, new pages...Started 2 months ago, but still no result with our home page! The new pages start to show-up!??? But still far away! I need to understand why? What is going on!? Why Google "de-ranked" us? And what to do to recover!!! I'm here to learn, try to understand and take your advises! So, please give me advises and if someone is ready to audit my website and explain me what to do, I'm willing to pay the service [not to much 😉 ]. Thanks, helpButton.jpg

    | MichelMauquoi
    0
  • CodyOelker-AMICreativeStudio


    What I mean is when you search on Google it seems to pull information by your location so would it be helpful including the city name + keyword still for SEO or would it be just as helpful using just the keyword? For example, a client is in Alexandria, VA and has a computer repair shop so would "Alexandria computer repair" be as good or better than "computer repair"? Just a little curious. Thanks!

    | CodyOelker-AMICreativeStudio
    2
  • raph3988


    Hello, In the past month alone, my website www.shiftins.com has had a significant drop, about 50%, in my overall impressions and search queries (info from Google WMT). Now my target keywords have maintained their rankings but it looks like my site has dropped off the map for every other search term. I have not received any unnatural link warnings or anything of that sort so I don't think I have been penalized. Does anyone have an idea of what might have caused the decline and is there a solution to restore my prior status?

    | raph3988
    0
  • SammisBest


    OK so there are already some answers to questions similar to this but mine might be a little more specific. OK website is www.bestlifeint.com Most of our product pages are as such: http://www.bestlifeint.com/products-soy.html for instance. However I was trying to help the SEO for certain pages (namely two) with the URL's and had some success with another page our Soy Meal Replacement I changed the site URL of this page from www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal to www.bestlifeint.com/Soy-Amazing-Meal-Replacement-with-Omega-3s.html (notice I dropped the /product part of url and made it more seo friendly. The old page for this page was something like www.bestlifeint.com/products-meal The issue is that recently this new page and another page I have changed  http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html I have dropped the "/product" on the URL even though they are both products. The new Meal Replacement page used to be ranked like 6th on google at the begining of the month and now is like 48th or something. The new "whey milk" page (http://www.bestlifeint.com/Whey-Milk-Alternative.html) is ranked like 45th or something for "Whey Milk" when the old page...."products/wheyrice.html" was ranked around 18th or so at the begining of the month. Have I hurt these two pages by not following www.bestlifeint.com/product.... site structure? And focusing more on the URL SEO? I have both NEW pages receiving all link juice inside web site so they are the new pages (can not go to old page) and recently seeing that google has pretty much dropped the old pages in search rankings I have deleted these two pages. Do i just need to just wait and see? According to my research we should rank much higher for "Whey Milk" we should be on the first page according to googles own statements of searchers finding good relevant material. Any advice moving forward? Thanks, Brian

    | SammisBest
    0
  • sparagi


    I've noticed that some organic search results are showing ratings just above the meta tag.  How are these sites doing this? Example:  If you search "cash advance", there is a result between #4 and #6 in the organic results.  The site is "goldcashadvance.com".  It's showing a 5-star rating in the result.

    | sparagi
    0
  • sumit60


    Hello Guys, **Doing directory submission these days are worth ? ** What are the best factors of link building ? Please suggest me link building strategies to rank my keywords well in search engines.

    | sumit60
    0
  • righty


    A "product" page that includes "user reviews/ratings" and "comparison prices", which Google snippet do/should you use? Thanks in advance

    | righty
    0
  • StreetwiseReports


    I would like to research popular press releases in my industry. Ones that got picked up by many popular outlets, got a lot of coverage etc. Besides mindlessly searching the web for press releases, is there a better way? Almost looking for a service that ranks press releases in terms of effectiveness.

    | StreetwiseReports
    0
  • activitysuper


    Hi, When launching a new domain, do you think Google holds these back in the rankings for a certain time period? I have noticed with a few, the rankings are held back for a few months (10 page deep results when the site's first indexed and ranked), then almost like a switch rankings start to come through pretty aggressively in some cases. For example: a result could be on page 16 for a month or so, then all of a sudden jump through to page 6 (with no link building or site update), at this point the result would stay steady and would need work to push through. Anyone else get this, or does anyone have any insight about domain history and Google. Cheers

    | activitysuper
    0
  • PropertyPortal


    Hi Mozzes, We're running a property portal that carries around 200.000 listings in two languages. All listings are updated several times per day and when one of our ads expire we report this via the "410 Gone", and place a link to our users: This ad has expired, click here to search for similar properties. Looking at our competition I seems that here are many different ways to deal with this, one popular being a 301 to the corresponding search result. We've tried to get directions from Google on what method they prefere, but as usual dead silence. Advices are mostly welcome.

    | PropertyPortal
    0
  • Quime


    After some research I would say my site have been hit by an EMD penalty, it seems many other people have faced the same. It would be very useful to know how to deal with this, many topics discuss the reasons behind it, but few have a realistic response for fast action. I am in two minds - one would be to try and improve content etc, but this is subjective and could take any amount of time, or never resolve the issue. The other would be to move the content to a new URL, which poses the question, should I do a 301 redirect, or would this just transfer the penalty? If no redirect, then I am proposing starting fresh - as the sites hit by EMD penalties are deemed 'low quality' this might be the fastest way to recovery. If I move the old content to my established main site as a sub folder, would this cause any problems? Many thanks for people responses.

    | Quime
    1
  • RezStream8


    Is it frowned upon to use basic anchor text such as "click here" within a blog article when linking externally? I understand, ideally, you want to provide a descriptive anchor text, especially linking internally, but can it negatively affect your own website if you don't use a descriptive anchor text when linking externally?

    | RezStream8
    0
  • TECHSEO35


    I'm trying to figure out an issue with practitioner listings, and I wanted to ask more about this because in this Q&A thread ( http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-businesses-at-the-same-address-avoiding-google-places-trouble ) it was stated that each listing needs to have a different category. Sorry if this question is redundant, I just wanted to make sure I have a clear understanding before proceeding.... I'm managing local listings for a senior healthcare center that has 4 locations, and multiple practitioners at each location. I'm trying to figure out how to best handle the multiple practitioner listings, most of which appear to be scraped. I was going to claim, verify and begin managing them. However, they all fall under the same category, "practitioner." What I've gathered from the response in the above Q&A thread is that I need to have a different category for each practitioner to please Google Places, despite the fact that "practitioner" is the best/most accurate category available in Google's pre-set categories. Is my interpretation correct? I'm confused because Google's guidelines say you can create a separate listing for each practitioner, which to me implies that it would be ok to use the practitioner category for each one. But then again, I want to make sure before proceeding. Thanks, Kim
    #TECHSEO Account Manager

    | TECHSEO35
    0
  • ThatKwameGuy


    I work for a organic vitamin and supplement company and we are looking to rank for our categories by making more specific categories.  For example we are going to try to add under the category "vitamin d"  some smaller more relevant (longer-tail) categories like "spray vitamin d" and "vegan vitamin d" and try to rank instead for these searches and also searches containing words that we already have more authority from Google like "natural" or "organic". I know that putting the product pages a level deeper will only hurt us so I want to avoid that but I'm wondering if anyone has some advice on how to organize categories for longer tail keywords that we actually have a chance to rank for. Any help to figure this out would be greatly appreciated. Here is our page as it is currently, like I said we want to create sub categories that are effective for SEO, but also make searching and navigating the site easier. http://www.mynaturalmarket.com/Vitamin-D.html Thanks, ThatKwameGuy

    | ThatKwameGuy
    1
  • aalcocer2003


    Hello all, 1. I have a website under WordPress and I would like to know whici is the best permalink structure? I have seen in many post that /%postname%/ would be the best in terms of SEO although performance is not very good (But in WP latest version the speed issue has been solved?). 2. Additionally I would like to know if in terms of SEO it is better to publich the content as a page or as a post. The page publishing allows to have the path: www.example.com/page/subpage/etc... root that I understand is good for SEO? 3. How does affect for SEO a page i.e. www.example.com/page1 with links to different posts that have the permalink structure i.e: /%postname%/ I mean, if I click on the page www.example.com/page1 and then in the link to the POST inside that page and I am redirected to www.example.com/post How does affect the SEO? Thank you very much for the help, Best regards, Antonio

    | aalcocer2003
    0
  • goforgreen


    Hi guys, I have an ecommerce site selling eco-friendly items online. I ran some on-page optimisation reports from SEOMoz PRO and discovered that I have at least 120 internal links per page. 32 of these are in the footer, designed in part to aid user navigation but perhaps also to have a positive impact on SERPs and SEO in general for the ecommerce site. Will removing these links be beneficial to my search engine rankings, as I will have less than 100 internal links per page? Or is it a major change which may be dangerous for my site rankings? Please help as I'm not sure about this! I've attached an image of the footer links below. I won't be removing the Facebook/Twitter links, just the 3 columns on the left. Thank you, Pravin MAvLe.jpg

    | goforgreen
    0
  • sumit60


    Hello, I have few dough regarding Article Creation and Articles Posting**.** As we know  randfish has said there is no use of article marketing, many articles sites are getting penalized. **Few question ** 1) Article creation and Publishing Are Good Now Days ? 2) Does Article Creation Still Have Good Impact On Search Engine Ranking ? 3) Webmaster post one articles in different articles sites, So if we post one content in many sites does search engine doesn't look as duplicate content ? 4) One Unique Articles Has To Posted In How Many Article Directories ? Regards & Thanks,
    Sumit

    | sumit60
    0
  • CPollock


    Is there a way to tell if an image is indexed in Google Images?

    | CPollock
    0
  • sumit60


    Hello, As we know  randfish Rand discusses the egress of old link building practices and the ingress of new (old) link _earning _strategies, Rand has also discussed on  Link Exchanges and Reciprocal Links, I have few questions which r related to  Link Exchanges and Reciprocal Links. Few Question **1) Does Now Days Reciprocal Links Are Important Or Not For Link Building Strategies. ** ** 2) Webmaster Has To Perform Reciprocal Links Or Not.** 3) Can Reciprocal Links Boost Search Engine Ranking. 4) Does Reciprocal Links Has Negative Impact On Search Engine. Regards,
    Sumit

    | sumit60
    0
  • UnderRugSwept


    Something just occurred to me today. I work in-house for an embroidered patch company, but I respond to a lot of HARO queries about Marketing, SEO, SEM, Web Design, ect. So, we have a lot of links from these types of sites. Additionally, I have done guest blogs on these topics because those are what I'm knowledgeable about. We also have links from customers' personal blogs or websites stating they got their patches from us and are happy, blah, blah, blah. On top of that, we hired someone who ended up getting tons of .edu links by spamming blogs. Oy. I'd estimate only about 10% of our links come from embroidery, sewing, screen printing, promotional products, etc types of sites. I guess it's not really known or documented how much weight Google places on niche-specific links--we just assume that it matters, and I'm sure it does. Our rankings are fine now, but I'm looking for some opinions from other SEOs about how much they think this will matter in the future or how much it matters now. Could this hurt us in the future? .

    | UnderRugSwept
    0
  • optimalwebinc


    We do a lot of local SEO, and we're wondering if it's better to target "keyword location" or "location keyword"? Does it affect ranking and keyword difficulty if we're trying to rank for "plumbing appleton" or "appleton plumbing"? Any insight would be great.

    | optimalwebinc
    0
  • Carden


    Has anyone noticed a bump for Directory style websites in SERP after the recent Panda/Penguin updates . I am new to SEO but after monitoring one website in particular I have noticed that the site has dropped around 8 positions for location based queries and directory style sites such as yell.com, freeindex.co.uk, thompsonlocal.com all have seemed to moved up ever so slightly even above competior sites, which from memory were all below competior sites in previous search queries . I wonder what your thoughts are on this, or its possible that my site in question has been affected and I need to carry out more work to improve its positions back to its original. Your thoughts are welcome.

    | Carden
    0
  • etsgroup


    Hi All, I am currently looking to revamp my SEO strategy inline with Google's latest Panda and Penguin updates, and looking to appoint a new agency. With SEO changing so much over the years and so many players in the marketplace quoting all sorts, I simply need to determine the kind of money I need to be spending on my SEO, 2)  what i should be getting for the money, or different budget levels what I need to be focusing on in priority order, a top ten in sorts Should i be looking to increase or decrease my spend over the long term. I am only a small business with a turnover of about 50 - 80k and need to really cement my strategy so it work long term but also shows a steady return. I have one guy quoting $99 a month, one £250 and one £750, you can probably see my problem. Thanks in advance.

    | etsgroup
    0
  • UnderRugSwept


    I know Google has been favoring brands a big names lately, but I'm seeing something a bit more alarming Our company offers custom embroidered patches, and through keyword and search research I have discovered that almost all searches for "embroidered patches" are by people who need embroidered patches and are looking to purchase them, or learn more about the process of purchasing them. The SERPs for this term used to be all embroidered patch companies such as ours. In the past month: We've been outranked by a page on Amazon that's fairly irrelevant. An equally irrelevant ebay page has emerged The Wikipedia page for "embroidered patch" is now number seven. This has pushed three other embroidered patch companies off the first page (not that I'm complaining because it wasn't our company . . . yet). My question is, has anyone else noticed something similar happening, where large sites are gaining ground, in spite of the fact that they have low relevance to the search term?

    | UnderRugSwept
    0
  • EricMoore


    I don't want results based on my geographic location. When I am in India, I don't want local search results. In fact, I want results which are not dependent on my current location. Also, can I change my current location to some other city and will it affect the results ? For eg: While I am in London, can my search results be modified as if I am sitting in New York ?

    | EricMoore
    0
  • EricMoore


    How to ensure that the search I have made is not based on my past search history and the results in my cache ? I don't want to sign out of Google every time and then clear my cache. Does Incognito Mode in Google Chrome work or is there any other way of making my search results unbiased ?

    | EricMoore
    0
  • CurtCarroll


    I launched my website about 6 weeks ago. It was indexed fairly quickly. But it is not showing up in the Google SERP. I did do the on page SEO and followed the best practise's for my website. I have also been checking webmaster tools and it tells me that there is no errors with my site. I also ran it through the seomoz on page seo analyzer  and again no real big issues. According to seomoz I had 1 duplicate content issue with my blog posts, which i corrected. I understand it takes some time, but any ideas of how much time? And f.y.i it's a Canadian website. So it should be a lot easier to rank as well. Could my site be caught in the Google 'sandbox effect' ? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

    | CurtCarroll
    0
  • FVdBeuken


    We are doing really well across the board on Google, but having issues in ranking with Bing and Yahoo.  What is different between the three search engines? I have read a few articles that Bing is happier with Flash, and they are more interested in Top Level Domain links, but what else is different?  In Google we are sitting on page one for most terms, but are page 2-3 in Bing/Yahoo for the exact same terms. Any help would be appreciated!

    | FVdBeuken
    0
  • KyleJB


    Standard good practice for on-page SEO includes keeping page title length below the maximum that Google displays in the SERPs. But words in the title beyond that maximum can be indexed, even if they don't show in the SERPs for end users. For ranking purposes, is there any value in words beyond the character limit in page titles that are truncated in the SERPs?

    | KyleJB
    0
  • FinindDesign


    in the body of index page i want to be able to add text that can be picked up by crawlers but I do not want these text to be visible? How can I code this?

    | FinindDesign
    0
  • investormill


    If I have two similar urls: www.investormill.com/unemployment-rate and www.investormill.com/unemployment-rate-annual Would this confuse search engines or "cannibalize" my content? For clarity: the first page would provide data on the monthly unemployment rate, the second would provide an annual unemployment rate figure.  So, there would be a unique series on each page.  Just trying to figure out how to best approach this when crafting urls. Thanks for your help!

    | investormill
    0
  • conversiontactics


    Hi just would like if anyone could help me in provide some seo analysis on a new website http://www.ppilegalservices.co.uk/ main keyword is mis-sold ppi Its a very competitive keyword but not being able to come on google result in long tail keywords as well, Just got ranked on brand keywords like PPI LEGAL Services. Also running out of ideas as to how to create quality content any tips please? many thanks

    | conversiontactics
    0
  • CommercePundit


    We have 7 websites with the exact match domains. Our Website has been affected by Google recently updated (Panda and EMD Update). we don't want to do any changes in our existing domains. What should we do? So, What is the exact solution for that. Help Us out! Website Names: http://www.hamptoninndenverairport.com http://www.wingatehotelcolumbia.com http://www.fairfieldinnhotelaurora.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcrestwood.com http://www.laquintahoteldavenport.com http://www.redroofinnhotelcedarrapids.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcarolstream.com Thanks in advance.

    | CommercePundit
    1
  • sumit60


    Hello Guys, i thought to do some directory submission for my website, i am little confused. I have list of page rank directory and non pr directory. Can anyone suggest me which one shall i prefer most. **Getting approved by pr directory takes long time, so shall i prefer non pr directory to get  my listing approved fast. ** please suggest me which one i have to prefer, if anyone have fast pr approval directory list please share. Thanks In Advance

    | sumit60
    0
  • CarlLarson


    Does anyone have an idea on how Google ranks or determines the 'Points of Interests' that come up when searching about places/cities?

    | CarlLarson
    0
  • caeevans


    I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business. What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected. Will changes take a long time to take place? Thanks

    | caeevans
    0
  • polarking


    I purchased Piktochart to make what they said were SEO friendly infographs.  Hearing conflicting responses on the SEO value I figure I should ask SEO's. The program is easy and you can download as an XML. Any responses are welcome Thank You

    | polarking
    0
  • Pixeltistic


    Hi, I have two campaigns and neither have any statistics for on-page optimization. Am I doing something wrong or how do I make these stats appear? I would like to improve my website. Thank you in advanced for any pointers or shared experience you may give me!

    | Pixeltistic
    0
  • dfwgolfer


    Because Google is cracking on  spammy keywords should I remove my meta keywords tag altogether? I hear they dont factor it in anyway?

    | dfwgolfer
    0
  • kabledesigns


    Hi everyone, Had my first wonderful experience with an algorithm update. Business was doing great - about 90-100 visitors a day down to about 12-15 from Sept 29th to current. Our domain is www.hamiltonscarservice.com which I don't think exactly qualifies for an exact match but may be close enough (car service is one of our keywords). I am more likely to think its related to the Panda 20 update. I haven't changed the site at all lately so I was wondering what tips you guys may have going forward. The site isn't perfectly optimized (which is where you guys come in) but when I first set it up it worked great so I mainly focused on backlinks from that point on. Now evidently this has caught up with me. Any suggestions are appreciated - thanks! 09cSe.png

    | kabledesigns
    0
  • jdcline


    OK should I use 301 or rel can for a page that has a mox authority of 50 (PR5) and some links into it? Do I do it to the home page or do I do it to the revelant page? If I rel con or 301 using a php script in the header of the page do I leave the content on the page or do I remove everything? This is in response to last friday. Do I 301 all the pages to the top 5 pages that have been getting all the traffic, or do I leave some if most of them are or marketing?

    | jdcline
    0
  • Quime


    Hi all, Another suggestion was given for our fall in SERPS. Recently Matt Cutts announced that EMDs would be hit by new algoritms. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-20-15789.html Only our site with exacts matches... cours-telephone-anglais, curso-ingles-telefono, kurse-englisch-telefon, and corso-inglese-telefono were hit. Does anyone else have experience of this? Would a solution be to create new URLS and redirect? Or would a redirect carry the penalty over? Is there anyway to fix that sort of penalty? Many thanks for your help.

    | Quime
    0
  • Shawn_Huber


    We have a vanity URL that as recommended is using 301 http code, however it has been discovered the destination URL needs to be updated which creates a problem since most browsers and search engines cache 301 redirects. Is there a good way to figure out when a vanity should be a 301 vs 302/307? If all vanity URL's should use 301, what is the proper way of updating the destination URL? Is it a good rule of thumb that if the vanity URL is only going to be temporary and down the road could have a new destination URL to use 302, and all others 301? Cheers,

    | Shawn_Huber
    0
  • simonberenyi


    My content is quite strong within my niche, so I ranked well, but last month my rankings plummeted. On closer examination and scrutiny I discovered my anchor text needed updating.  Has anyone else seen this happening in the last four weeks?

    | simonberenyi
    0

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