Best source to keep abreast of Google Alogorith Changes
-
Good morning from 13 degress C about to chuck it down wetherby UK...
I want to make sure i keep my finger on the pulse regarding Google Algorithmic changes.
What is the best source to make sure your kept up to date with Googles ongoing tweeks to its Algorithm (apart from SEO moz).
Thanks,
David
-
Search Engine Land & SEO Roundtable are probably the 2 best news sources when it comes to keeping abreast of the latest algo updates:
-
Appeciate the straight talking EGOL
-
Hey David,
SEOmoz themselves do a nice job of documenting the major algorithm changes and linking to supporting documentation from sights like SearchEngineLand/Journal, etc.
It's also nice historically if you want to go back and look at past changes
Google Algorithm Change History:
-
Forums that are visited by lots of noobs, people who use SEO as a ranking tool instead of content, and "SEOs" who have shallow understanding of ranking factors usually get really busy right after an algo change.
They explode with lots of reactionary post titles like... "Wah! My rankings disappeared!"........ "Google hates me!".... etc. These begin within an hour of the the algo's roll-out, peak over the next 48 hours and drag on for a few weeks. Many of these visitors are first-time posters in the forum and arrive in a panic because they don't understand what happened to their site.
If you watch these forums and follow a few of the threads where intelligent people describe their problem and knowledgeable people respond, you can frequently get a sense of what and who is getting whacked. If you know the difference between "intelligent" and "knowledgeable" (very different human qualities) you can get the most out of this reading.
The SEOmoz Q&A has a bit of this but not as much as forums such as SEOChat, DigitalPoint and the Google Support forums.
-
Set up iGoogle/Google Reader with a bunch of news feeds, Twitter feeds, etc. probably the best way to stay in touch with the SEO world.
-
I would definitely suggest regular reading of Google Webmaster blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ where they write about current and upcoming changes. Also, read Matt Cutts http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical error from Google
Moz couldn't explain this properly and I don't understand how to fix it. Google emailed this morning saying "Alternate page with proper canonical tag." Moz also kinda complains about the main URL and the main URL/index.html being duplicate. Of course they are. The main URL doesn't work without the index.html page. What am I missing? How can I fix this to eliminate this duplicate problem which to me isn't a problem?
Technical SEO | | RVForce0 -
Recovering from a Google penalty
Hi there, So about 3.5 weeks ago I noticed my website (www.authenticstyle.co.uk) had gone from ranking in second place for our main key phrase "web design dorset" to totally dropping off the SERP's for that particular search phrase - it's literally no where to be seen. It seems that other pages of my website still rank, but the homepage. I then noticed that I had an unread alert in my Google Search Console account to say that a staging site we were hosting on a subdomain (the subdomain was domvs.authenticstyle.co.uk) had hacked content - it was a couple of PDF files with weird file names. The strange thing is we'd taken this staging site down a few weeks earlier, BUT one of my staff had left an A record set up in our Cloudflare account pointing to that staging server - they'd forgotten to remove it when removing the staging site. I then removed the A record, myself and submitted a reconsideration request on Google Search Console (which I still haven't received confirmation of) in the hope of everything sorting itself out. Since then I've also grabbed a Moz Pro account to try and dig a little deeper, but without any success. We have a few warnings for old 404's, some missing meta descs on some pages, and some backlinks that have accumulated over time that have hghish spam rating, but nothing major - nothing that would warrant a penalty as far as I can tell. From what I can make out, we've been issued a penalty on our homepage only, but I don't understand why we would get penalised for hacked content if that site domvs.authenticstyle.co.uk no longer existed (would it just be due to that erroneous A record we forgot to remove?). I contacted a few freelance SEO experts and one came back to me saying I'd done everything correctly and that I should see our site appearing again in a few days after submitting the reconsideration request. Its been 3 weeks and nothing. I'm at a huge loss as to how my site can recover from this. What would you recommend? I even tried getting our homepage to rank for a variation of "web design dorset", but it seems our homepage has been penalised for anything with "dorset" in the keyphrase. Any pointers would be HUGELY appreciated. Thanks in advance! Will
Technical SEO | | wsmith7270 -
When will all of Google Maps be the same again?
As many of you are aware that the pigeon update was only applied to the new Google maps resulting in very different search results for Google local business. When you search for a business on old Google maps then you get totally different results vs the new Google maps. Some businesses totally disappeared completely from the search results. I have done my research and found out that it's because the new Algo was only applied to the new maps. Also new algo does not apply to other countries. Well the reason I posted this topic is because I have noticed that all the new Google Business listings I am verifying for my clients are all being put under the old Google maps and not the new ones. They come up fine when searching from old maps but not the new ones. I understand Google has not rolled out the pigeon on all data centers but why? Will Google eventually roll out the update to old maps? Since Google is adding businesses to old google maps then what's the point of even adding new listings?
Technical SEO | | bajaseo0 -
What is the best way to deal with https?
Currently, the site I am working on is using HTTPS throughout the website. The non-HTTPS pages are redirected through a 301 redirect to the HTTPS- this happens for all pages. Is this the best strategy going forward? if not, what changes would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | adarsh880 -
My Old Domain is Not Changing in Google
I have taken over the following domain www.choice-cottages.co.uk, part of the contract was to re-direct the old site www.choicecottages.info to the new site. Unfortunately I am only a middle man in the arrangement as the website is hosted with another company. The switch was done well over 4 weeks ago, the re-direct itself is working fine. However if you google choice cottages you will see the first listing is www.choicecottages.info, then I have my new site below for a few listings. Google is definitely updating something as before the old domain had lots of site links but this has reduced to a few. Does anyone know anything on this, as in the past it only takes a couple of days to update. Many thanks Andy
Technical SEO | | iprosoftware0 -
Duplicate Homepage In Google
Hi Just found through my SEO dashboard, Google has two versions of the same homepage, the root page, plus the index.html page, causing duplicate content from both the pages. what is the best option to ensure google only have 1 version of the homepage listed?
Technical SEO | | rfksolutionsltd0 -
Will google let me do this
Hi i am working on my site at the moment www.in2town.co.uk and i am adding new sections and was thinking about buying domain names that best describe that section and which people would remember. so for example i am looking at adding a tenerife magazine to my site and would like to know if it would be wise to buy a domain name for example tenerife magazine and then have it directed to the section of my site. would this benefit my site in any way and would google allow this. instead of having in2town.co.uk and then tenerife magazine after it, sorry cannot find the slash as i am on a spanish keyborad at the moment, i would like to have something like tenerifemagazine.co..uk etc If anyone can give me advice on this then that would be great. also can anyone let me know if this is a wise idea or not, to have sub domain names on my main site. i would like to know if i had tenerifemagazine under the in2town domain name would it slow the site down or should i consider building a brand new site just for that and then making people aware that it comes under the in2town umbrella many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Is this against google rules
Hi i am wanting to know if this is against google rules. I am building a website which will have lots of different sections and i wanted to know if you were allowed to have a new domain name pointing to a section of the site. so for example if i had a site with a domain name of manchester and then i wanted a section of the site to be called www.manchester.com/complimentary health I want to know if to help with traffic to the site and to have a better domain name, if it was allowed to have a new domain name pointing to that section of the site which could be called www.complimentaryhealth.com and have that pointing to the section. would love to hear your thoughts on this
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860