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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • EthanThompson


    I've been noticing a lot of 404's popping up in my Google Webmaster accounts coming from utililab.mysearchguardian.com. Utililab itself seems to be some sort of malware, but why is Google indexing it and sending 404's?

    | EthanThompson
    0
  • Webpresence


    This is more of a ‘gripe’ than a question, but I would love to hear people’s views. Typically, when you search for a product using the singular and plural versions of the keyword Google delivers different SERPs. As an example, ‘leather handbag’ and ‘leather handbags’ return different results, but surely the search intent is exactly the same? You’d have thought Google was now clever enough to work this out. We tend to optimise our webpages for both the plural and singular variations of the KW’s, but see a mixed bag of results when analysing rankings. Is Google trying to force us to create a unique webpage for the singular version, and another unique webpage for the plural version? This would confuse the visitor, and make no sense.. the search intent is the same! How do you combat this problem? Many thanks in advance. Lee.

    | Webpresence
    0
  • rwat


    For example, say your keyword was 'funny hats' - ideally you'd make your url 'website.com/funny-hats/' But what if 'hats' is already a larger category in your site that you want to rank for as its own keyword? Could you then try to rank for 'funny hats' using the url 'website.com/hats/funny/' ? Basically what I'm asking is, would it be harmful to the chances of ranking for your primary keyword if it's split across the url like this, and not necessarily in the correct order?

    | rwat
    0
  • infinitemlm


    It is showing error as below Spammy structured markup Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google's Spammy Structured Markup guidelines. While I see in Structured Data Testing Tool, it doesn't show any error.

    | infinitemlm
    0
  • rwat


    E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?

    | rwat
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We always avoid internal redirects. Just wonder what if many of the out going links are redirecting to new links. I presume there is nothing wrong to host such links. Any ideas? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, While searching for our primary keyword, I can see 2 websites on second page results which are non-related to the keyword or industry but their company name is this keyword. Like if I want to rank and searching for "SEO",  there are 2 websites which called "seo trucks" and "seo paints". I wonder how Google is ranking these websites for high competition keyword with 1 million searches per month. So the keyword in URL and this keyword mentioned across the website being their brand name taking over the other potential ranking factors like backlinks, relevant content, user clicks, etc..... Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi, We have a forum where users create different threads like any other community...ex..Moz. Thousands of pages are getting created. New threads and comments are Okay as they have relevant content. We are planning to "Disallow" all profile pages as they do not help with content relevancy and may dilute the link juice with thousands of such profile pages. Is this right way to proceed? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • geodigitalmarketing


    Question for you guys: After analyzing some crawl data in Search Console in the sitemap section, I noticed that Google consistently isn't indexing about 3/4 of the client sites I work on that all use the same content management system. I began to wonder if maybe Google (and others) have a hard time crawling certain parts of the sites consistently, as finding a pattern here could lead me to investigate whether there's a CMS problem. To research this, I started using a log file analyzer (Screaming Frog's version) for some of those clients. After loading the files, I noticed that none of the crawl activity logged by the servers is considered verified. I input one month's worth of log files, but when I switch the program to show only verified bots, all data disappears. Is it possible for a site not to have any search engines crawling it for a whole month? Given my experience, that seems unlikely, particularly since we've been submitting crawl requests. I know that doesn't guarantee a crawl, but it seems odd that it's never happening for any search engines across the board. Context that might be helpful: I did check technical settings, and the sites are crawlable. The sites do appear in search but seem to be losing organic search traffic. Thanks for any help you can provide!

    | geodigitalmarketing
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, So we have a sub-domain which has user generated content like forums. Mostly the content is all about our product. Few times some spammy threads get posted and we delete them regularly. I have noticed that a non-relevant thread has been posted which about a movie. But this page got hundreds of clicks. I just wonder will this hurts being off topic and movie torrent thread or helps being receiving hundreds of visitors? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi, As per Google analytics, we are loosing around 15% of new sessions every year comparing to the previous. But the sessions are increasing. Good that sessions increased; but new sessions are getting reduced. What exactly we can understand from this scenario? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, Usually websites rank for their branded keywords. Some times third party websites takeover the websites for branded keywords. If there are more number of such queries where website is not ranking (top) for branded keywords, Google push down website in overall rankings? Any correlation? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We know many factors contribute to make a page rank at (top) position like somewhere in top 5 results. I have seen some of our pages suddenly spike to that positions and locked there. They been receiving clicks too. Will they be dropped if they don't get estimated clicks? I think many factors contribute to make a page rank higher but clicks are the one factor which makes the page consistently rank at its best position. What do you say? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We have almost 1000 pages or posts from our blog which are indexed in Google. Few of them are years old, but they have some relevant and credible content which appears in search results. I am just worried about other hundreds of non-relevant posts which are years old. Being hosting hundreds of them, our website is holding lots of these useless indexing pages which might be giving us little negative impact of keeping non-ranking pages. What's the best way to handle them? Are these pages Okay? Or must be non-indexed or deleted? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, Let's say there is a website with 100 pages ad 95 pages are not ranking for any keywords; but the other 5 pages including homepage are ranking for some keywords. In this scenario, the 95% non-ranking pages does impact the other 5% pages rankings? Or every page holds their credibility in ranking irrespective of other pages in website? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi Moz community, I am curious to know this. Let's say there is a brand value for a company. It has it's own popularity that it's been mentioned across the internet and social media directly with brand name without their service or industry keyword. Now if the company started promoting themselves like keyword along with their brand name, will it help them to rank for that keyword. For example, Moz is already famous, now they want to rank for "SEO" and related keywords, so they started calling themselves on internet "Moz SEO"; will this fetch them in ranking for keyword SEO? My ultimate question is, using primary keyword along with brand name will work out in ranking for that primary keyword or not? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, So the default and ultimate suggestion about how to rank a page high is to get favoured by users, so by the Google. But if write content in favour of users, it may miss out the keywords or will not have much keyword density and variety of keywords to get in to Google's eyes. Then we may appear around 3rd page; then how do we get into top slots? I can see some top results without even a single mention of the keyword they are ranking for. How that would be possible? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • kwilgus


    I am seeing information regarding a possible Google algorithm that may have taken place on June 25th...and seeing total number of pages indexed in GSC increase (cool!)...BUT, then on July 16, I'm seeing a consistent drop (BIG DROP) of pages indexed - not only on our site, but several. Does anyone have any insight into this or experiencing the same issue?

    | kwilgus
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, I have gone through some posts and comments where it's been mentioned that header tags will be considered as any other content on page. Is that really true? Writing up more relevant header tags as per the page topics doesn't have any impact? I would like to know the updated importance of header tags in today's SEO. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, I can see some "No Response" pages which gives a error message "Site cannot be reached" or keeps on loading but don't. I have got this list from Screaming from spider tool. Do we need to fix these or ignore? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • AliMac26


    Hi, We're a discussion about how to structure a clients ecommerce site product page URLs where 12345 represent the product SKU/number: https://domain.com/Item--i-12345 https://domain.com/product-name/p/12345 https://domain.com/p/12345 It's a toss up between the second and the third URL, but the SEO company is saying the third is best because of the placement with the /p/ and creating a silo for "products" that help search engines recognize it is a product. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Thanks!

    | AliMac26
    0
  • DGAU


    Hi,
    My website really consists of 2 separate sites. Product site:
    • Website with product pages.
    • These product pages have SEO optimised content. Booking engine & checkout site:
    • When a user clicks 'Book' on one of the product pages on the aforementioned product site they go to a seaparate website which is a booking engine and checkout.
    • These pages are not quality, SEO optimised content, they only perform the function of booking and buying. Q1) Should I set 'noindex follow' via the meta tag on all pages of the  'Booking engine and checkout' site?
    ie. Q2) should i add anything to the book buttons on the product site? I am hoping all this will somehow help concentrate the SEO juice onto the Product Site's pages by declaring the Booking engine and Checkout sites pages to be 'not of any content value'.

    | DGAU
    0
  • brandon_solutions


    Q1. I have two domains I am interested and the are available, however, they are "premium" at $1,000!  According to GoDaddy, another domain site, just said available through action. 
    Any recommendations? If I have to pay, is there an auction site or broker you would recommend or another approach to try to get it at a lower price? Q2. The hyphenated domains are available and affordable. However some of the information I gathered on MOZ mentions Google flags it as spam.  I believe that article was dated 2014.  Is that still a risk or has Google through AI or something else determine spam another way now?

    | brandon_solutions
    0
  • Esnipper

    This question is deleted!

    | Esnipper
    1
  • matt.nails


    Mozzers, I have a client who's brand style guide dictates that they write in all lowercase letters. Do you think this will hurt rankings? Nails

    | matt.nails
    1
  • vtmoz


    Hi, It's a known fact about quality of back-links than quantity. Still domains are heavily different from links. Multiple domains are huge comparing to multiple links. Taking an average, how much does 'number of referring domains" boost website authority? I am not speaking about low quality domains, just number of domains including which are irrelevant to the topic or industry. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • Brand_Psychic


    I'm not talking about conjectures or guesses -- but SEO studies that is actually backed up by hardcore data. Which SEO firm produces excellent data-driven studies you always trust?

    | Brand_Psychic
    0
  • KaylaV


    I am trying to do research on the SEO impact of having an off-site transactional website. For example, Pepsi.com lists all product information on their site but guides visitors to transact on Amazon or Walmart. What impact, if any, does guiding the customer to a separate transactional site have on SEO? In short, if we have all products on-site for indexing, do we get dinged by Google for not transacting on-site?

    | KaylaV
    0
  • pejman50


    Hi, I know sitemap is important to have as it tells google the pages to crawl. I have an xml sitemap for google to crawl. However, Do I need a sitemap link in footer. Any thoughts?? Does it have any harm if I dont include a sitemap link in footer

    | pejman50
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi, We have help guide pages for every feature we provide. They been hosted on different sub directory and we linked them from our website pages. Do we need to make these sub directory pages to open in a new tab when clicked from our website pages? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • Chris-241753


    We are currently writing some "rank brain-friendly" content and were wondering if anyone had seen or conducted research on best URL structure practices. Any insights would be appreciated! Thanks, Zach

    | Chris-241753
    0
  • dianedragan


    Why is the AMP tool saying there's missing or invalid structured data on http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/flavorful-chicken-fajitas/amp when the structured data tool shows no errors? In addition, I'm not able to see a preview of the rich card in the AMP tool like I can for other recipes like https://allrecipes.com/recipe/19621/eggs-on-the-grill/amp/. If you check https://allrecipes.com/recipe/19621/eggs-on-the-grill/amp in the AMP tool, we get this message: "Page has valid structured data. This page is eligible for extended AMP features." Google has instructions on how to get rich cards for recipes (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/recipes), but i'm not sure if we're violating anything other than image aspect ratio. Thanks!

    | dianedragan
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, I have been investigating on why our log-in page is ranking for primary keyword, but not our homepage. I can see now homepage is ranking from our second important country. I wonder why and what causes to rank different pages in different countries for same keyword. Again the statistics does not vary much between these countries. Thnaks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • iQuanti


    We have implemented interstitials (pop-ups) on a website (Business Articles Website). The popups are basically used for getting leads from the website (using Signup popups). Before Popup implementation the traffic was steady, After the implementation, the traffic started to decay after a couple of weeks and due to the drop we disabled the popup from the website and initiated a force crawl and within next few weeks, we observed traffic gaining back to its normal trend. Within these timelines drop in desktop traffic was more and mobile traffic remain steady. As per Google guidelines, interstitials are more likely to be affected on mobile than desktop. But in our case, desktop traffic was hit more than mobile. So we carried out this experiment for 3 months. And we observed traffic decay and regain. Is interstitials the only culprit here (as the drop is only in desktop) or Can there be some other reasons as well for the traffic drop? bF7hc

    | iQuanti
    1
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, So, I have removed the "primary keyword" from login page, which is most visited page on our website to avoid keywords in non related pages. I noticed our homepage ranking dropped for same "primary keyword". Visitors of this login page directly land without searching with "primary keyword". Then how removing it from such page drops our ranking? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • ElsaT


    Does anyone have suggestions on which date tag(s) are most important to use and how to use them on the frontend? (i.e. dateModified, dateCreated, and datePublished). The Structured Data Testing Tool is coming up with errors for my article pages, but I'm a bit confused which ones should be in the code vs. showing on the frontend.

    | ElsaT
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We have help pages as sub-directory which have been linked from our website pages (3 clicks depth). But these pages are not well optimised with minor issues like header tags, image alts, etc...Moreover some of these pages are dead-end pages. Will these things hurt us? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi, If some noindexed links on our website or sub-domain got some backlinks, will that backlinks pass Pagerank / linkjuice to website? Will they be considered as backlinks to website by Google? Here is a statement from Matt cutts for the question. My question is same as below with answer? Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank? Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • JMSCC


    Hi Everyone, Should product names have an H2 header tag on a gallery page? (H1 already optimized) Why or why not?

    | JMSCC
    0
  • vtmoz


    We see many times...page titles starts with "brand name: page for etc" where actually "brand name" has been given at the end and keywords at beginning. Why does Google make this change? I noticed this happens when similar title tags are used by multiple websites for high difficulty keywords. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi Moz community, With the concept of preserving link juice, many websites stopped linking too many pages from homepage. We even removed our 3rd hierarchy level pages removed from our homepage. We didn't notice much change in rankings. Recently I have gone through some SEO articles where some experts suggested to link low level pages from homepage which indicates to Google the way we respect and prioritise those pages but not just homepage and very next level pages. This also works in internal linking it seems. Is this true? Can we add such low level pages from homepage? Which actually works Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • head_dunce


    I have an ecommerce site. One keyword, which I use to rank #1 for on Google years ago, I'm now completely gone from the SERP's as of a couple weeks ago. I'm scratching my head here, my other keywords don't seem to have changed much recently. Around mid-March of this year, which seems to line up with the Fred update, I noticed I went from page 3 to middle of page 1 for a few days with this keyword. It was a very happy few days. Then it slipped down and down and hovered around page 6. But as of a couple weeks ago, it's now gone. Before the Fred update, I changed a bunch of product pages within the keyword category that had duplicate content because they were kits of items arranged different ways. So instead of repeating the individual item descriptions over and over in the different kits, I changed the descriptions on the kits to links to the individual items within the kits. After the Fred update, at the end of March, I set all these kit item pages that I reduced to very thin content with just links to noindex. My theory is that the Fred update reset algorithmic penalties for a couple days as it was being introduced. So the penalty of duplicate content that I may have had was lifted since I took out the duplicate content, and I made it back to page one. Then as Fred saw I now had a new penalty of thin content, I got hit and slid back down the rankings. Now that I updated the pages that had very thin content to be noindex, do you think I'll see a return of the keyword to a higher position? Or any other theories or suggestions? I remember seeing keywords disappear and come back stronger years ago, but haven't seen anything like this in a long time.

    | head_dunce
    0
  • nhhernandez


    Hi everyone, we noticed while doing last month's reports that even the best performing campaigns have a few keywords that slipped - some up to 10 positions down. We know keywords fluctuate every month, but May was just a weird month for rankings. While looking at possible issues that caused this, we noticed that these campaigns' clicks have gone up. So while keywords have gone down, their visitors seemed to be on the rise. Is there a correlation? Maybe Google saw an increase in visitors and decided something's up and lowered the rankings (this sounds ridiculous - sorry! May just be pure luck, but thought I'd ask anyway). Has anyone seen a drop in their rankings for May also? I checked everywhere, and I don't think there has been a major update going on. Thanks!

    | nhhernandez
    2
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We decided to give importance to one of our top pages as it has "keyword" in it's slug like website.com/keyword. So we internally linked even from different sub-domain pages more than homepage to rank for that "keyword". But this page didn't show up in Google results for that "keyword"; neither homepage, but our login page is ranking. We wonder why login page is ranking. Has our internal linking plan confused Google to ignore homepage to rank for that primary keyword? And generally do we need to internally link homepage more than anyother page? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We have replica of our website with exact pages and content. That website got indexed by mistake and allowed for bots for more than 10 days. Our ranking dropped now and we moved from 2nd page to 5th page. But previously we had this happened and didn't hurt much. We got punished now? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • terry_tradeshowstuff


    I own (2) different websites, one an HTML site that has been live for 20 years and a ecommerce site that has been live for 7 years. We sell custom printed (branded) tents for use at trade shows and other indoor and outdoor events. While our ecomm site targets "trade show" tents our HTML site targets "event" tents. I believe that the keyword phrases are dissimilar enough that targeting "trade show tents" on one site and "event tents" on the other should not cause Google to penalize one or the other or both sites for having similar content. The content is different on both sites. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with, or opinions on, my thoughts... either way. Thanks,
    Terry Hepola

    | terry_tradeshowstuff
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We keep on listening and going through the articles that "Google is all about user" and people suggesting to just think about users but not search engine bots. I have gone through the title tags of all our competitors websites. Almost everybody directly targeted primary and secondary keywords and few more even. We have written a very good phrase as definite title tag for users beginning with keyword. But we are not getting ranked well comparing to the less optimised or backlinked websites. Two things here to mention is our title tag is almost 2 years old. Title tag begins with secondary keyword with primary keyword like "seo google" is secondary keyword and "seo" is primary keyword". Do I need to completely focus on only primary keyword to rank for it? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0
  • SwanseaMedicine


    Hey all, I'm looking to use some schema to publicise an upcoming event. I can't make any sense of the Schema website for this section (http://schema.org/event). Can anyone help with drafting some schema? Or point me to an illustration of an example? Cheers, Rhys

    | SwanseaMedicine
    0
  • guidetoiceland


    Hi, We amplified our site the other day and Google was quick to find our AMP pages. Today, we can´t seem to find any AMP pages on Chrome and it looks like we can´t find any other pages from sites like Wapo and so forth. They´re still visible on Safari. We are searching from Iceland. Is anyone experiencing this and if so, could you please share a link to the news? Thanks and have a nice day!

    | guidetoiceland
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, Recently I got an answer from this community about "why our login page is ranking but not my homepage for primary keyword"? Possibilities are keyword cannibalization or linking structure. In our case, our homepage is not ranking for "primary keyword" but ranking for other keywords. If it is linking structure, what might be wrong? Like do we need to unlink login page from many internal links? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

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