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Google ranking factors are increasingly more complex and less universal. Google is emphasizing different ranking factors for different scenarios.

What tools are available that can help identify which ranking factors Google may be weighting for a given query or industry?

For example, are there any tools that provide correlative analysis of Google's rankings for a given keyword?

Agreed, I also see their point to some extent. I think Google's ranking factors are much more dynamic than they used to be. Google's rankings are also becoming for more intuitive and less metrics-driven (eg keyword density). SEO studies are increasingly having trouble explaining Google's algorithm. For example, we all know that social shares and engagement metrics correlate strongly with Google rankings, but nobody is quite sure what the mechanism for that is.

"Likewise, if you're a local plumber and the top results have 1 or 2 referring domains but great content, ranking is going to take more focus on quality onsite than the car hire example."

Or, maybe they are ranking in spite of not having links, and if you get great content + 5 links you'll be #1...hard to say!

"what it takes to rank in each one will require different strengths and weaknesses"

Agreed, because Google is getting close to actually measuring what the searcher wants. i.e. Google has some way of knowing (through user interaction data, maybe?) that a person searching for "hair styles 2016" wants a photo-heavy article, but a person searching for "barack obama policies" wants a long form text article. Yet, IMO, keyword in text and backlinks will be important factors in both cases.

I agree that Google's machine learning/AI means that Google is using a more dynamic set of factors to match searcher intent to content, but this claim feels like an overstatement:

Let’s be quite clear: Except for important technical standards, there are no longer any specifc factors
or benchmark values that are universally valid for all online marketers and SEOs. Instead, there
are different ranking factors for every single industry, or even every single search query. And these
now change continuously.

Keyword-relevant content, backlinks, etc. still seem to be ranking factors across pretty much all queries/industries. For example, I can't think of a single industry where it would be a good idea to try to rank for [keyword] without including [keyword] in the visible text of the page. Also, websites that rank without any backlinks are incredibly rare (unheard of for competitive terms).

Doubtless some factors change (eg Google may favor webpages with images for a query like "best hairstyle for men" but not for another query), but other factors still seem to apply to all queries (or at least 95%+).

Thoughts?

Correct, Bing powers AOL and Yahoo.

I don't think DuckDuckGo has a Sitemap submission feature. If you list your sitemap in the robots.txt file, though, maybe they will still crawl it.

Also Googlers a) have to fight pretty much only with algorithms and b) have to minimize collateral damage. That gives black hatters an advantage, and makes it impossible for Google to completely win. What annoys me is the fact that almost every single SEO company claims to be 100% white hat and Google-approved, while many are buying links, doing link networks, etc. I can't figure out if they are really that ignorant of the rules or if they are just lying.

Good info, thanks!

I think you over-estimate how smart Googlers are and how dumb shady SEOs are. I've seen blatant tricks that have been working for years. I don't use such tricks because they are very risky, but I don't think we should dismiss them as useless - I think it's worth understanding which work and which don't, especially if our competitors are using them. We have competitors who are using very shady SEO tactics and winning with them. Understanding what they are doing and what is working helps us determine which white hat tactics to deploy against them. That's why I'm asking for data on CTR manipulation.

Yeh, I think this is a good topic to be aware of, even if we wouldn't use it. That way we can respond correctly if our competitors use it, figure out white-hat ways to combat it, have a better understanding of Google's algorithms, etc. All else failing, it wouldn't be expensive to test them out.

I generally agree with you that Google is getting better at detecting tricks, but Google is far from perfect and there are a lot of tricks that still work. I'm looking for specific results/data specifically on the CTR manipulation services...

Have you done any tests with CTR manipulation services work?

This is not a tactic white hat SEOs would use, but it's still good for us to know whether it works, so we can respond correctly if our competitors use it, to figure out white hat ways to combat it, to answer client questions, to have a better understanding of Google's algorithms, etc.

I've seen a variety of services on the fringe of the SEO world that send a flow of (fake) traffic to your website via Google, to drive up your SERP CTR and site engagement. Seems gray hat, but I'm curious as to whether it actually works.

The latest data I've seen from trustworthy sources (example and example 2) seems mixed on whether CTR has a direct impact on search rankings. Google claims it doesn't. I think it's possible it directly impacts rankings, or its possible Google is using some other metric to reward high engagement pages and CTR correlates with that.

Any insight on whether CTR manipulation services actually work?

Thank you for the input, everyone. In case anyone else has a similar problem, the tool I ended up finding most useful is SpyFu's ranking history tool. We were able to establish what the client couldn't remember – the dates this site did and did not rank for his main keywords.

The only thing I would add to what Russ says is to check the length of your page titles. Google seems more likely to modify overly long or short page titles. We've had some success getting Google to stop modifying the page title by writing our own page title that was the ideal length.

Another thought: do you have schema.org or other reviews markup on the page? I wonder if Google is pulling the "0 reviews" from that.

At the end of the day, Google gets to decide how to display your page title, which can be frustrating!

A client of mine has a large website with multiple sections (shop, forums, articles, etc.) that apparently had a significant reduction in rankings, traffic, and sales in the past. However, historic Google Analytics data is not available for the site, and I'm having troubles identifying anything concrete about the traffic drop, such as when it happened, what pages/sections it happened to, etc. The shop traffic drives most of the revenue, but it's a small number compared to the forums traffic, so it's hard to pick anything out of top-line trends like SEMrush offers.

What tools or strategies might help in this situation?

Thanks, I'll send you a PM.

OK, that's very good to know. I missed that.

Here is the Google source I found that implied that hreflang tags do not combine/consolidate link metrics:

"Generally speaking, the rel-alternate-hreflang construct does not change the ranking of your pages. However, when a page where you use this markup shows up in the search results, we may use this markup to find alternate, equivalent pages of yours. If one of those alternates is a better match for the user, their query language, and the location, then we may swap out the URL. So in practice, it won't change the ranking of your pages, but it will attempt to make sure that the best-suited URL (out of the list of alternates) is shown there." ~John Mueller

This seems to be describing a "swap out" effect rather than a consolidation of metrics. In my mind, that sounds different. It sounds like what John is saying is that "if your main site ranks for the keyword "barcelona" in English search results, if someone searches in Spanish we'll give you the same ranking, we'll just display your Spanish URL instead". That seems different from a consolidation to me (the Spanish URL isn't being given the link authority from the main URL to help it rank for other Spanish keywords, it's just being swapped out in SERPs where the English URL already ranks). Of course Google hasn't released the details so I'm guessing a bit here.

"Gianaluca was speaking of multiple "sites" but this is translation."

My issues is where multiple sites and translations are the same thing, i.e. when you have different language versions of your site on different subdomains. Gianaluca seems to be saying that hreflang will not consolidate link authority across your sites that are in different languages. Here's another source saying the same thing: https://www.semrush.com/blog/7-common-hreflang-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them/

I've got a situation now where it appears that Google is not consolidating/sharing link signals efficiently between the language versions that are hosted on separate subdomains. My concern is that part of the issue may be the fact that the different lanaguage versions are on different subdomains. That's why I'm keen to know why Moz excepts language-specific websites from their "no subdomains" advice.

Any thoughts?

"use hreflang and that acts like a canonical"

Google and other sources don't indicate that hreflang will pass/consolidate link authority. So I think hreflang and canonical tags are different in that regard. Based on that and what I've seen, I don't see that hreflang tag would negate the disadvantages of a subdomain. If you have evidence it does, though, I am very interested!

"But you can't change server location with subdirectories. With subdomain you can make de.example.com and place this in German server and es.example.com and place this in Spanish server."

What you're talking about is geographic targeting, but Moz was specifically referring to language-targeting. Those are similar, but they are subtly different things.

Language-specific sites are not necessarily targeted to a specific country. They can target multiple countries (eg Spanish speakers in US, Spain, Mexico, etc.) or you might have two Language-specific sites targeting the same country (eg an English and a Spanish site both for the US).

So if a language-specific site isn't a geographic-targeted site, I still don't understand why Moz would recommend a subdomain in that case.

In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites:

Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website).

Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.

Providing a different address isn't an option Google allows.

After I fill out the basic details on the first screen, it takes me to the screen to send the verification postcard. Then I get the error message.

"Are you able to submit a fuller profile of data information for the business?"

No, that's how Google's interface for adding a new listing works. You just add the basics at first, then you can go back and add in the additional details. We're not even able to get to the point where we can add the additional details.

I just tried to create a Google+ listing for a client. It's a brand new company. As soon as I submit the listing, I get an error message: "Google has suspended your page due to quality issues." There is no content on the listing, no website, etc. Just their NAP. All I can guess is their business address or phone number is on a blacklist due to some previous tenant/owner. Does Google keep a blacklist of addresses and/or phone numbers? Any other ideas?

If you want to target users from US, Japan, Mexico, etc. do not set your country as Spain in GWT. Instead, don't set a country at all.

We've done some testing around Magento hosting, and our conclusion was that you'll see significant performance increases by hosting on a powerful VPS instead of shared hosting. In the testing we did, we used a KnownHost SSD VPS, and saw 50-100% increases in page load speeds compared to shared hosting. That's what I would suggest - a KnownHost SSD VPS.

I've seen a quote from Matt Cutts suggesting absolute (full) URLs, but that quote is from 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure that no longer applies.

Absolute or relative URLs are 100% fine for SEO. Full URLs may offer a small benefit in that content scrapers may end up linking to your site if they steal your content.

Google is getting much better at recognizing location, but I would still work to include it on the page in a few places. That's what I've seen the best results doing. My recommendation:

• Include the location in the title tag.
• Include the location in the H1 or at the top of the page - this is for the user as much as for search engines, to reaffirm to the user that they are on the website of a local company.
• You don't have to use the exact keyword + location phrase - mix it up and be natural. For example, "We're a roofing company serving Portland and the surrounding area of Maine."
• Include the location (eg city name) and state at least 2x on the page.
• Use schema.org markup on your physical address in the footer, sidebar, or elsewhere on the page.
• Don't include the location in anchor texts in your navigation - that looks rather spammy.

I've never seen any evidence that .org links are inherently more valuable than .com or other links. (I've not seen any evidence that .edu links are inherently better, either.)

This post from and this video Matt Cutts seem to imply that the TLD is not a significant factor in ranking.

I think this whole idea that links from certain TLDs (eg .edu) started because people took a true statement (eg "most .edu websites are high authority websites with strong editorial control) and extrapolated that into ".edu links are inherently more authoritative". Mediocre SEO's then latched onto this idea, because they found they could easily get .edu links through blog comments and sell them for a premium by claiming they are more powerful. What you actually had is people building outright spam links and claiming they are great just because they are on an .edu domain.

I analyze .edu and.org links just like I would any other link - relevance, authority of domain, authority of page, editorial strength, etc.

Wow, that Google solution was staring me right in the face, wasn't it!? Thanks!

I have been finding some good stuff in Fresh web explorer.

Let's say I want to find blog posts posted in the past week or so about "key west". These posts could be on a personal blog, travel blog, etc.

Google News is mostly news sites (not blogs) and Google blog search doesn't work any more. What other good options are there?

So far Open site Explorer Just Discovered is the best option I've found, but there is a lot of other stuff mixed in with a few blog posts.

Thanks for the reply. Why do you say "You'll be fighting a steep uphill battle if you try to optimize one URL for all three."?

That's what I tend to think also, but to my knowledge Google hasn't ever discouraged this, and I've seen this approach work pretty well for two different websites.

What good/bad experiences have people had trying to optimize a single URL for multiple locations in different states? eg optimizing a page of the site for "dentist atlanta", "dentist orlando", and "dentist miami" (the client has offices in all these locations).

Has anyone found that Google has an algorithm that get's suspicious if you try to optimize a given URL for either too many locations and/or for locations that are too far apart?

We have a client site (a dentist) that has 10 locations and 20+ services (braces, teeth whitening, cosmetic dentistry, etc, etc.). We're trying to figure out the ideal approach to optimally cover all their locations and services, but each option we consider has drawbacks:

1. Optimize service pages for service name + each location name (or at least the biggest location names), with service name and location names in the title tag. That results in a too long title tag, plus possible user confusion, since they are searching for "braces richmond" but the title tag lists other cities, some of which are in a different state.
2. Optimize service pages for service name + each location name, but don't include the locations in the page title. This is the current option being used, but it appears to be hurting the rankings at least a bit not having the location name in the page title.
3. Create a page for each service + location combo. That will be 200+ pages, which will mean the pages will be deeper in the site, with less link juice.
4. Create new domains for each location/state covered. But then we have to start over building link juice.

How have other sites dealt with this? What has worked best and what hasn't worked?

Got this issue fixed. The issue was that robots.txt was blocking the Javascript file that does the redirect, so Google couldn't see the redirect.

To handle the redirect to the mobile site. Sounds like the JavaScript this client had in place isn't working correctly.

You would get a 200 response...the redirect is JavaScript, not server side. Maybe we should change that? Do you have a WP plugin you recommend?

The redirect was setup by a previous vendor, but I've not noticed any issues with them.

Thanks. The Google doc is what we were using as our guide to set up the code on the homepage. So you're saying that the main site homepage should pass the mobile friendly test tool if we have it set up right? URL is arcticair4me.com

NM the URL is arcticair4me.com

Yeh, that's the doc we followed in setting up the code on the homepage. I'll PM you the URL.

One of our clients has a separate mobile site, and we've setup the rel="alternate" on the main site homepage, but https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ still fails the site (it checks the main site, instead of the mobile site) when we put in the main site URL. Is there any way to check that we've got everything setup correctly? (We have a lot of experience with mobile responsive sites, but not so much with separate URLs.)

Thanks, but your answer gives basic local SEO tactics, and doesn't answer my question. My question is what to do when a competitor is shown in the Knowledge Graph for a generic search (they should only be showing in the knowledge graph if they are searched for by name). For some reason Google is confusing the generic keyword with this company's name, it seems.

Search for keywords like criminal defense lawyer detroit or criminal defense lawyer detroit mi and Google knowledge graph is highlighting one competitor. No maps results are shown. How have others dealt with this situation? I know others have noticed this too: http://www.webpronews.com/sometimes-googles-knowledge-graph-highlights-brands-for-generic-queries-2013-10

Actually, I agree with you. What you're describing are sites that look like the link has been deleted, but where the link actually still exists. My answer was regarding sites where the link actually has been deleted and doesn't exist.

Yes, I would be very surprised if Google wanted you to do anything with links that no longer exist.

No, I would not spend time on links/domains that no longer exist. (I've never heard of that being necessary.)

If you search for locksmith Phoenix, this Google+ page is ranked #3 in the local results: https://plus.google.com/117543374216451236579/about?hl=en

The phone number is a VOIP number, they don't appear to have many/any citations, no reviews, etc. They've listed the Yelp search results page as their website. Strange.

How are they ranking so well? Is Google ranking them well because it's associating them with Yelp.com?

Any thoughts?

I don't see anything that I would think would trigger that. Let me PM you the URL.

Thanks for the suggestions!

1. The homepage, category, and product pages have all lost traffic.

2. So far, I haven't found any noteworthy changes in content.

3. I've been wondering if this might be part of the issue.

4. I've reviewed Majestic link data, and only see a few deleted backlinks, so I'm thinking it's not a backlink issue.

Thanks for the suggestion. So far the only significant difference in optimization I've found has been that they added Schema.org markup.