We knew it was coming this week, but Google seems to be rolling it out a day earlier than expected.
We’ve known since early December that Google would start sending search traffic to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) beginning sometime in February. Ad Age recently reported the launch would be on February 24, but people are already starting to see AMP pages being delivered by Google.
You’ll know if you see an AMP icon as in the image below.
Google is also now sending out emails telling people that Google Analytics now supports AMP analytics.
In a recent post on the Google Analytics blog, Google wrote:
Google says you should use a separate Google Analytics property to measure your AMP pages, which could be a bit of an inconvenience (my words, not theirs), but as they note, AMP is still a new technology, so give it time.
You can read more about AMP and analytics in a recent post on the AMP blog.
The company said its goals for AMP, as the project pertains to advertising, are to ensure that it works well with the business models of today and that it leaves plenty of space for innovation in the future.
“In the near term, our top priority is making sure that ad formats, features and measurement that publishers rely on work within the AMP environment,” said another post on the AMP blog. “When AMP launches on Google Search in February, it will include important, basic functionalities. These include the ability to traffic ads with ad servers of your choice, support for multiple demand sources and formats (including native ads), full control over ads placements, and viewability measurement. It also includes integration with 20+ ad tech vendors, all of whom are excited to participate in the AMP initiative.”
Google has been hosting a series of Hangouts around different aspects of AMP to help you get prepared the launch (and you can always implement after the launch). I’d also recommend perusing the AMP blog for more details on everything from how it handles ads and analytics to paywalls.
Google also has a new section in its Webmaster Help forums (via Search Engine Roundtable) where webmasters can ask questions about and discuss AMP. As Google’s John Mueller notes, they’re looking for feedback as well.
AMP is of course about letting websites build light-weight pages for their content, and is similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles that way. Facebook also announced a date last week for when it will let all publishers to take advantage of that.
We’ve known since early December that Google would start sending search traffic to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) beginning sometime in February. Until now, we didn’t know exactly when that would be.
The days of the month are quickly evaporating, however, and now there’s a date. According to Ad Age, it’s February 24, which is this coming Wednesday.
Google has been hosting a series of Hangouts around different aspects of AMP to help publishers get prepared the launch (and you can always implement after the launch). I’d also recommend perusing the AMP blog for more details on everything from how it handles ads and analytics to paywalls.
Google also has a new section in its Webmaster Help forums (via Search Engine Roundtable) where webmasters can ask questions about and discuss AMP. As Google’s John Mueller notes, they’re looking for feedback as well.
AMP is of course about enabling websites to build light-weight pages for their content, and is similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles that way. Facebook also announced a date this week for when it will enable all publishers to take advantage of that.
What once seemed so close now seems so far. In other words, for some SEOs and webmasters who have been patiently (or impatiently in some cases) waiting, that glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel has just faded from view. It’s possible that its visibility is just being clouded and that the light is still close, but things just got a lot darker.
We’re talking of course about Penguin. Perhaps this is a little dramatic, but it’s clear from reactions around the web that people are growing more and more frustrated the longer Google takes to push out the update it has been promising for so long.
Are you anxiously awaiting Google’s next Penguin, or have you simply moved on with your life? Discuss.
Penguin will turn 4 years old this April. The update has been the bane of many SEOs’ and webmasters’ existence for all this time, and things really haven’t gotten a whole lot better for some of them, despite promises from Google.
The reason the update exists – to fight webspam – is important, and it’s certainly a problem that needed to be addressed in Google’s search results, but there’s hardly been a consensus on how well it’s been executed, and a great deal of frustration has lingered, largely due to how hard it can be to recover from getting hit by the update, even when the necessary changes have been made to a site.
The reason it is so hard to recover is that Google refreshes Penguin so infrequently. Affected sites must wait until Google releases Penguin again before they can recover, and that could take months. If you’re trying to run a business and rely on Google for traffic, it can feel like an eternity, and that’s exactly how it’s currently feeling for some.
Google said back in June that it was working on a new version of Penguin that will run continuously (meaning webmasters and SEOs won’t have to wait for long periods of time for a chance to recover). At the time, they indicated this would be months off. The last Penguin update had been launched the previous Q4.
In November, Google confirmed the update will be a “huge” change, but in December, they said “With the holidays upon us, it looks like the penguins won’t march until next year.”
It was interesting that they cited the holidays as having something to do with it because after that it was expected to come in January (following the holidays), but that didn’t happen either. Google did, however, say last month that the updated timeframe on Penguin was now “this quarter”.
Now, even that’s questionable. We’re not halfway through February, and Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a tweet from Google’s Gary Illyes indicating that he has no idea if the Penguin update is still likely to come this quarter.
@mrjamiedodd I haven't talked to the engineers for some time, I don't know.
It’s worth noting that Illyes isn’t actually on the team that works on Penguin even if he generally serves as one of the main messengers to webmasters.
If this uncertainty wasn’t enough, Schwartz points to another tweet from Google’s Zineb Ait, who now says they’re aiming the roll-out at “as soon as it is ready,” and who knows when that will be?
@alekseo It is still work in progress at the moment. I can't tell when it will be rolled out. We are aiming at: "as soon as it is ready"
For much of last year, Google suggested that a new Penguin update would likely hit before the end of 2015. That never happened, and it became apparent that it was pretty much ready, but they wanted to put it off until after the holidays.
It has since become apparent that it was probably not ready after all. After they said they weren’t going to release the update in 2015, they hinted at a January launch. In mid-January, the message became that they were aiming for a launch this quarter.
Now, midway through February, it sounds like it’s possible that that isn’t even the case. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable highlights a tweet from Gary Illyes indicating that he has no idea if the Penguin update is still likely to come this quarter.
@mrjamiedodd I haven't talked to the engineers for some time, I don't know.
It’s worth noting that Illyes isn’t actually on the team that works on Penguin even if he generally serves as one of the main messengers to webmasters.
As you probably know by now, this Penguin update is supposed to go real-time, so it will continuously update without webmasters having to wait forever for a refresh if they happen to be impacted by it and need to make changes to their site to recover visibility in search results.
On Friday, Google announced Android Studio 2.0 (Beta), the latest release of its official Android IDE.
Among the new features are some helpful additions for app indexing, which became a ranking signal in search results last year.
“Adding App Indexing into your app helps you re-engage your users,” says product manager Jamal Eason in a blog post (via Search Engine Roundtable). “In the first preview of Android Studio 2.0 you could add indexing code stubs into your code. With the beta release you can now test and validate your URL links in your app all within the IDE.”
“Supporting app indexing is now even easier with Android Studio 2.0. App Indexing puts your app in front of users who use Google Search,” he says. “It works by indexing the URL patterns you provide in your app manifest and using API calls from your app to make content within your app available to both existing and new users. Specifically, when you support URLs for your app content, your users can go directly to those links from Google Search results on their device.”
Google announced JSON-LD support for Reviews and Products structured data markup.
Webmaster trends analyst John Mueller wrote in a Google+ post (via Search Engine Roundtable) that along with the launch of support for JSON-LD for Reviews and Products structured data markup, they’ve also “cleaned up” some of their application logic.
Mueller notes that more info about how to format Reviews and Products markup to comply with Google’s validation rules is available here.
“We hope these changes make it easier to use structured data on your side!” he says.
Google released the structured data tool to help webmasters author and publish markup on their sites. It provides validation for all Google features powered by structured data, support for markup in JSON-LD (including dynamic HTML pages).
Matt Cutts, who to many webmasters and online marketers, was basically the face of Google Search for many years, stepped away in 2014. Now, Amit Singhal, who has led the company’s search efforts, is moving on.
Singhal announced the news in a letter on Google+ today, saying that after fifteen years with the company, he wants to spend more time with his family and get more involved with philanthropy.
According to him, Google Search remains in good hands – those of “an outstanding set of senior leaders who are already running the show day-to-day.”
Things are certainly changing a lot with the company’s management these days. As you know, last year, Google got a new CEO and became part of Alphabet (which posted impressive earnings earlier this week).
Singhal is reportedly being replaced by research and machine learning exec John Giannandrea, who worked on Knowledge Graph.
Singhal’s full letter, titled “The Journey Continues…” is below:
Dear Friends,
My life has been a dream journey. From a little boy growing up in the Himalayas dreaming of the Star Trek computer, to an immigrant who came to the United States with two suitcases and not much else, to the person responsible for Search at Google, every turn has enriched me and made me a better person.
As I entered the fifteenth year of working at Google, I’ve been asking myself the question, “what would you want to do for the next fifteen?” The answer has overwhelmingly been: give back to others. It has always been a priority for me to give back to people who are less fortunate, and make time for my family amidst competing work constraints–but on both fronts, I simply want to give and do more.
Now is a good time to make this important life change. Things are in amazing shape. Search is stronger than ever, and will only get better in the hands of an outstanding set of senior leaders who are already running the show day-to-day.
It fills me with pride to see what we have built in the last fifteen years. Search has transformed people’s lives; over a billion people rely on us. Our mission of empowering people with information and the impact it has had on this world cannot be overstated. When I started, who would have imagined that in a short period of fifteen years, we would tap a button, ask Google anything and get the answer. Today, it has become second nature to us. My dream Star Trek computer is becoming a reality, and it is far better than what I ever imagined.
I love Google. It is a company that believes in doing the right thing, a company that believes in doing good in the world, a company… that cares. I look back at my time here with a profound sense of gratitude that I was a part of building this. Now, with pride, gratitude, and joy in my heart, I need to define my next fifteen years. I am eager to see what kind of impact I can make philanthropically, and of course, to spend more time with my family–especially with my wife who I miss spending time with given our incredibly busy lives, and our son who will go to college soon, leaving an empty nest behind.
Feb 26 will be my last day at Google. My relationships are the most important thing I’ve accumulated in life and I’d love for that to continue. Please do drop me a line occasionally and we can have a cup of tea.
As Chief Si’ahl said “Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” I am taking so many fond memories with me, and hopefully I’ve left a small footprint here.
Later this month, Google will begin sending search traffic to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and to get webmasters and publishers ready, they’ll be hosting a series of hangouts around various elements.
“Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a global, industry-wide initiative, with publishers large and small all focused on the same goal: a better, faster mobile web,” Google says on the AMP blog. “The project launched just five months ago, but from the level of interest, we know that many people have questions to help get them up to speed.”
“That’s why we’ve planned a series of Hangouts on Air that invites everyone all over the world to learn about AMP. Product Managers and Engineers from Google will answer your questions every Friday until AMP launches in Search in late February.”
This Friday (February 5), there will be one about analytics, hosted by product manager Rudy Galfi. See what Google had to say about analytics in a blog post last week here.
The following Friday (February 12), will have a hangout on paywalls with product manager Ashwin Limaye.
On February 19th, Director of Ads Craig DiNatali will host one about ads. See what Google said about ads and AMP last week here.
Finally, one on February 26 will tackle format innovation with Galfi.
You can see of list of hangouts they’ve already hosted on AMP here:
The much anticipated Google Penguin update has been expected this month, but from the sound of it, that’s unlikely at this point. Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned on Twitter (via Search Engine Roundtable) that it is probably “weeks” off and that Google is aiming for this quarter.
@mrjamiedodd I'll go with weeks. We're aiming for launching penguin this quarter, but we don't have a more precise timeframe.
For a significant part of last year, Google suggested that the update could hit before the end of 2015. That was until the end of 2015 actually approached, and they hinted at a January launch.
Eight days into January, Illyes said he hadn’t seen the experiment results.
It’s worth noting that Illyes isn’t actually on the team that works on Penguin even if he generally serves as one of the main messengers to webmasters.
As you probably know by now, this Penguin update is supposed to go real-time, so it will continuously update without webmasters having to wait forever for a refresh if they happen to be impacted by it and need to make changes to their site to recover visibility in search results.
Google announced the launch of a new website for webmasters. There, you’ll find access (and an introduction) to Search Console, Webmaster support/help center, learning resources like Webmaster Academy and guidelines, community links, the webmaster blog, an event calendar, etc.
“We spent a lot of time making this site right for you,” says Google Senior Webmaster Relations Specialist Mary Chen. “We took our own advice by analyzing visitor behavior and conducting user studies to organize the site into categories you’ll find most useful. Thanks to our awesome community and Top Contributors for the valuable feedback during the process!”
“The site contains support resources to help you fix issues with your website, SEO learning materials to create a high-quality site and improve search rankings, and connection opportunities to stay up-to-date with our team and webmaster community,” Chen adds.
Don’t forget to check out the Accelerated Mobile Pages project site as well. Google will begin sending search traffic to AMP pages next month. They’ve made some improvements to the documentation. More on that here.
Last week, a big update to Google’s core search algorithm dominated the SEO headlines (along with the fact that Google said that Panda is now baked into the core algorithm). The update rolled out the weekend prior, and it looks as though history has repeated itself.
Now there are reports of another big core update from this past weekend with Google confirming it.
SEOs and the webmaster community have been anxiously awaiting Google’s forthcoming Penguin update (which the company has been teasing for what seems like an eternity). When the previous core update launched there was Penguin speculation among some of the community, but that was shot down. Once again, with this more recent update, the speculation once again occurred.
Google is still expected to push the new Penguin within the month. That may or may not happen, but last we heard about the timing, it was looking likely. It was even supposed to happen before the end of last year, but Google ultimately delayed it because of the holidays. Still, there’s likely more to it than that or it would probably have begun rolling out by now. Stay tuned.
This week saw a couple of major pieces of SEO news. One was the aftermath of a Google Core algorithm update, which rolled out about a week ago. The other is that the infamous Panda algorithm is now baked into that core algorithm.
There has been a whole lot of chatter about both of these pieces of news, and while they’re both very much related, the consensus is that while Panda is now part of the core algorithm, the core algorithm update was not Panda-related.
While that may be the case, much like Panda, the update did seem to take content quality and “thickness” (as opposed to “thin,” which Panda was always designed to combat) into consideration as well as freshness. Searchmetrics, which often releases lists of winners and losers from major Google updates, released some analysis about this core update.
The firm found gains for sites with “current” or “holistic”content, referring to those covering a topic comprehensively.
“One of the top winners from this update according to Searchmetrics’ analysis is gq.com,” a spokesperson for Searchmetrics tells us. “On gq.com the biggest winning URL is a comprehensive article about NFL star Tom Brady. The article contains photos and a video and a lot of text (more than 3000 words including an interview).”
Other winners included time.com, qz.com, howstuffworks.com, politico.com, and inquisitr.com. Educational game sites like brainpop.com and mathplayground.com also gained.
“According to Searchmetrics, whether a publisher or brands won or lost for a specific keyword is dependent on the individual QDF (query deserves freshness) score that Google calculates – this is linked to whether the topic/search relates to current news and events and user behavior, particularly search volume,” the spokesperson says. “For topics that are current, publishers with current content witnessed visibility gains.”
The biggest loser, according to the report, was TheAtlantic.com, which it says has primarily lost with old URLs that ranked for brand keywords and entities.
This is rather interesting as The Atlantic does publish a lot of in-depth and “thick” content.
Searchmetrics notes that the trend is not noticeable in international markets yet, suggesting the update hasn’t rolled out on a global level so far.
On the Panda front, Rusty Brick’s Barry Schwartz has been all over Google spokespeople about the news that it’s part of the core algorithm. He recaps a response to one of his questions by John Mueller in a Webmaster video, which you can watch below (start at the 28 minute mark), “The Panda scores assigned to a site (yes, it is a site wide score) is still not done in real time and not done as part of the core algorithm run. So even with Panda being part of the core algorithm, it doesn’t mean Panda sites will see recovery when a core algorithm is confirmed to have been run by Google.”
He also points to this comment on Google+ from Google’s Garry Illyes, who responded to a question about if the Panda change means it will be updated automatically as opposed to manually (even if not in real time): “We do continue to update the data which is used to recognize high quality sites, and we roll that data out over time. Sometimes we have to make manual updates, sometimes it’s automatic, but that generally doesn’t play a role in how the data is rolled out.”
Schwartz culled the following words from Mueller in another hangout (below – start at 31 minutes):
As part of the core algorithm, you probably wouldn’t see those kind of updates happening. That’s something that’s just kind of rolling, rolling right along, so it’s not so much like in the past where you’d see on this date, this actually changed, and we, we updated that. So that’s something kind of something as a more rolling algorithm you wouldn’t really see the individual cut dates of specific parts of the data.
…
It’s not real time, in the sense that, we don’t crawl URLs and have that data immediately. So it’s something we kind of have to bundle together, understand the data, and have that updated. And we do that on more a rolling basis now so that when one is finished, the next one kind of starts. So it’s real time if you look at a really big scale in that things are happening all the time, but it’s not real time in the sense that every second there is a new value that’s being produced based on new a new data point that we have.
…
I think what you would usually see is that this is just kind of a subtle move from one to the other thing, as things kind of roll out. So it’s not that you would even notice this cycle.
Finally, he points to another Google+ comment from Illyes:
…Imagine an engine of a car. It used to be that there was no starter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starter_(engine)), the driver had to go in front of the car, and use some tool to start the engine. Today we have starters in any petrol engine, it’s integrated. It became more convenient, but essentially nothing changed.
For a user or even a webmaster it should not matter at all which components live where, it’s really irrelevant, and that’s why I think people should focus on these “interesting” things less.
Just remember, if you’re worried about Panda and want a good idea about some things to focus on, Google endorsed this guide from Jennifer Slegg.
Meanwhile, Google is expected to roll out the new and much anticipated Penguin, which it has been teasing for many months. It’s still expected to launch this month, but that’s not set in stone.
Are you most concerned with Panda, this most recent update, or the Pending penguin update? Let us know in the comments.
About a week ago, Google launched a big update to its core algorithm, catching the attention of many webmasters and SEOs. It was also revealed that Panda is now part of Google’s core algorithm, but consensus is that this particular update wasn’t Panda related.
Searchmetrics, which often compiles lists of “winners” and “losers” from significant Google updates based on their search visibility, has released some findings on this one.
The biggest loser, according to the report was TheAtlantic.com, which it says has primarily lost with old URLs that ranked for brand keywords and entities.
Searchmetrics founder and CTO Marcus Tober said in a blog post, “It is apparent that many loser domains are classic print publishers and their losses in rankings mainly stem from older content pieces. Additional publishers who lost rankings are newyorker.com, vanityfair.com, arstechnica.com, fastcompany.com and economist.com.”
The firm found gains for sites with “current” or “holistic”content, referring to those covering a topic comprehensively.
“One of the top winners from this update according to Searchmetrics’ analysis is gq.com,” a spokesperson for Searchmetrics tells us. “On gq.com the biggest winning URL is a comprehensive article about NFL star Tom Brady. The article contains photos and a video and a lot of text (more than 3000 words including an interview).”
Other winners included time.com, qz.com, howstuffworks.com, politico.com, and inquisitr.com. Educational game sites like brainpop.com and mathplayground.com also gained.
“According to Searchmetrics, whether a publisher or brands won or lost for a specific keyword is dependent on the individual QDF (query deserves freshness) score that Google calculates – this is linked to whether the topic/search relates to current news and events and user behavior, particularly search volume,” the spokesperson says. “For topics that are current, publishers with current content witnessed visibility gains.”
Searchmetrics notes that the trend is not noticeable in international markets yet, suggesting the update hasn’t rolled out on a global level so far.
Google made HTTPS a ranking signal in its algorithm about a year and a half ago. According to Moz, HTTPS URLs make up about 25% of page-1 results in the MozCast 10K. The 10K refers to a set of 10,000 queries across 20 industry categories.
Last month, Google announced its latest step in its “HTTPS Everywhere” initiative in that it now serves HTTPS versions of URLs by default in search results.
Google now crawls HTTPS equivalents of HTTP pages, even when the HTTPS version isn’t linked to from any page. When both versions are available and have the same content, Google will choose the HTTPS URL in most cases.
That is if it doesn’t contain insecure dependencies, isn’t blocked from crawling by robots.txt, doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page, doesn’t have a rel=”canonial” link to the HTTP page, doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag, and doesn’t have on-host outlinks to HTTP URLs.
Google says it will also choose to index the HTTPS URL if the sitemap lists the HTTPS URL or doesn’t list the HTTP version and/or the server has a valid TSL certificate.
The Google Panda Update has been around for five years and has dominated more headlines than probably any other Google algorithm change over that time. It was so big that it transcended industry press, making headlines from more mainstream media outlets. An important change has been made with Panda, and it affects how Google utilizes it from here on out.
Has Panda improved Google’s search results over the past five years in your opinion? Let us know what you think.
Webmasters and SEOs saw some big changes in Google rankings late last week. Some speculated that it was Google finally unleashing the “huge” Penguin update it has been promising (but delaying) for months. It was not. Google confirmedto inquiring minds on Twitter that it was a core update and not Penguin-related.
@jenstar yes, the changes you saw are part of a core algo update. @Missiz_Z is right almost always, you shan't need my confirmation
As of this writing, we’re still waiting on Penguin. For a significant part of 2015, we heard it would likely happen before the end of the year, but it never came. Last month, Google admitted it wasn’t going to happen, hinting that it would likely come in January, but even that was not set in stone.
Last week, Google Google’s Gary Illyes, who often responds to webmaster questions, including those about Penguin (even though he’s not on the actual team that works on it), said he hadn’t seen any experiment results from the upcoming update yet:
@rustybrick i haven't seen the experiment results yet, i could only speculate. which i won't @DonnieStrompf
As you probably know by now, this Penguin update is supposed to go real-time, so it will continuously update without webmasters having to wait forever for a refresh if they happen to be impacted by it and need to make changes to their site to recover visibility in search results.
So this most recent update wasn’t Penguin. It was a core update. On a related note, it has come out (and been confirmed by Google) that Panda is actually now part of the core update. This means that there will no longer be specifically Panda updates.
“Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.”
Also noteworthy is that Slegg’s guide was endorsed by Illyes, practically (for all intents and purposes) equating it to the official go-to document on the subject. No, Google didn’t quite say that, but with this kind of endorsement, it seems just about as good:
Wanna know more about Panda? Of course you do. We answered @jenstar 's questions, and the result is brilliant! https://t.co/lKiFcYqajX
“When Panda first launched (and initially known as Farmer, for those who want to go digging through the archives) was a separate spam filter,” writes Slegg. “This meant that it was a filter that was applied to the search results after the core ranking algo as a completely separate piece. But now, Panda is rolled into the core ranking algo.”
“This also means that core ranking algo changes, such as the one we have been seeing over the last few days that Google confirmed is NOT Penguin, could technically be Panda, although we have no confirmation of whether it is or isn’t,” she adds. “But now there is a possibility of any core ranking changes could be connected to Panda.”
It’s interesting that Panda has made it to this stage after roughly five years of existence. From the early days, it’s been a controversial update. It’s affected many businesses for better or for worse (and let’s be honest, we mostly just hear about the worse), but now Google feels confident enough in Panda’s effectiveness to “bake” it right into the secret sauce.
Panda has always been about rewarding high quality content. Don’t forget, you always have this guidance Google provided after the initial Panda roll-out to help you assess your site and how Google might view it in terms of quality.
Do you think Google baking Panda into the core algorithm is a smart move? Has Panda done its job better as time has progressed? Share your thoughts.
Some businesses can now edit their Google business listings directly from the Knowledge Panel, without having to go to the Google My Business dashboard.
Back in November from the State of Search conference, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google had indicated this feature was on the horizon.
Now local search guy Mike Blumenthal points to a Google+ post from Prya Chandra showing the feature in action. Chandra writes:
Looks like Google is trialling a new way of getting feedback on incorrect business details.
This new screen is available from the Knowledge Panel as well as the Local Finder, but when doing a regular Maps search the old screen pops up still.
The following screenshots are from Chandra’s post:
As reported last month, Google has documentation for local business info structured markup. When utilized, this enables users who search for a business to see a Knowledge Panel with details about the business.
For a significant part of last year, we heard that Google’s next Penguin update would likely happen before the end of the year. That didn’t happen. Last month, Google finally admitted it wasn’t going to.
At the time, it sounded like it wasn’t quite ready yet, but was very close. It also sounded like it would likely happen THIS month. Google’s John Mueller said he was confident it would come in January. Here’s what he said (as transcribed by Search Engine Roundtable):
Um, I don’t want to make any date promises but I am hopeful that things are lined up. Since it was kind of on the edge for this year, I’m pretty confident that that’s good enough for January. But I really don’t want to make any announcements on that.
We’re now eight days into the month, and so far, there’s no sign. Google’s Gary Illyes, who often responds to webmaster questions, including those about Penguin (even though he’s not on the actual team that works on it), said he hasn’t seen any experiment results from the upcoming update yet:
@rustybrick i haven't seen the experiment results yet, i could only speculate. which i won't @DonnieStrompf
As you probably know by now, this Penguin update is supposed to go real-time, so it will continuously update without webmasters having to wait forever for a refresh if they happen to be impacted by it and need to make changes to their site to recover visibility in search results.
Early last year, Google and Twitter formed a partnership giving Google full access to the Twitter firehose, meaning that it could once again provide real-time tweets in search results as it once had.
The two companies shared a deal years ago that led to the creation of an actual real-time search feature in Google results. This provided scrolling results from Twitter and a variety of other sources for timely searches. In 2011, however, the companies failed to renew their deal, and the feature went away as a result. It was clear that while Twitter wasn’t the only source of real-time content, it was the most important (by far).
As a result of the real-time search feature going away, Google’s search results suffered.
It was interesting then that in 2015, the companies were once again reuniting as Twitter needed more traffic to grow its user base as a public company – something it continues to struggle with.
Google’s new implementation of Twitter is significantly different than its previous real-time search feature. Now, Google shows tweets for people and organizations and/or topics as it deems necessary.
Stone Temple Consulting has been keeping an eye on how much indexing of tweets Google really does, even since before the partnership went into effect.
Back in the summer, they saw a 466% increase of indexation of tweets less than 7 days old between February and June. This was based on the over 900 accounts they track. While the increase was “massive,” the percentage of tweets was still pretty low at 3.4%. It showed that Google was continuing to index more and more tweets, but still a relatively small slice of the available Twitter pie.
This week, Stone Temple is talking about its findings again as Google has made a small, but potentially significant change to its Twitter integration.
Stone Temple’s Mark Traphagen on the takeaways of the firm’s findings.
The aforementioned new tweak to Google’s Twitter feature, as spotted by Dan Barker and reported by Search Engine Roundtable, adds a “View on Twitter” link to the individual tweets in the search results. This is a clear call-to-action to view this content on Twitter, which is precisely what Twitter gets (and needs) out of this deal.
Google have amended their Twitter integration a bit – they've added a "View on Twitter" call to action on Tweets. pic.twitter.com/F85wPgJEjm
If Google expands the presence of Twitter search results it could also lead to increased traffic and followers to individual Twitter accounts. For those it’s already indexing, this will almost certainly be the case.
This of course feeds right into that concept described by Traphagen as the more visibility that Google gives to an account, the more that Twitter account itself is likely to benefit. The more that Twitter account benefits, the better shot it has at gaining additional visibility in Google.
Accelerated Mobile Pages will start sending search traffic from Google search results sometime in late February. This is likely to be one of the biggest changes to Google search in 2016, if not the biggest.
Google is already showing AMP-related errors in Search Console for some users.
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a tweet in which one webmaster shares a screenshot (in French):
SEO is an ever-changing industry as search engines (Google in particular) evolve to some extent every single day. Google makes algorithm changes on a daily basis, and every now and then it makes major changes that cause massive shake-ups in search results as well as SEO strategies.
Mobile has been a major focal point of Google for much longer, but in 2015 it was as big a focus as ever. Early in the year, Google announced two significant ranking factors – app indexing and mobile-friendliness – both aimed at improving the mobile experience for users and getting them the content they want/need in the best way possible.
This will (unsurprisingly) continue to be a major focus on Google’s heading into 2016.
In a recent webmaster hangout on Google+, Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller spoke a little about what to expect for SEO in the coming year (via Barry Schwartz).
The relevant portion of the video begins at about 26 minutes in, but you’re probably only going to get more by watching the entire video.
Mueller answers a question about general SEO tips for 2016 (as transcribed by Schwartz):
Oh man… I don’t have any magical SEO tips for next year. I can’t tell you about that high ranking meta tag that we’ve been working on [sarcasm].
But in general, I think, next year you’ll probably hear a lot about from us about AMP, mobile friendly, we’ve been doing over the years. It is still a very big topic and we still see a lot of sites not doing that properly. Those are probably the bigger changes, but other things will definitely happen as well. More information about JavaScript in sites so that we can really figure out how to handle these better in search and make a better recommendation on what you should do or shouldn’t do.
But past that, of course, high quality content is something I’d focus on. I see lots and lots of SEO blogs talk about user experience, which I think is a great thing to focus on as well. Because that essentially kind of focuses on what we are trying to look at as well. We want to rank content that is useful for them and if your content is really useful for them, then we want to rank it.
We’ve covered mobile-friendliness a great deal throughout the year, so if this is something you’re still struggling with as Mueller implies, I’d encourage you to read back through the content found here.
AMP of course refers to Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is a new open source project and basically Google’s answer to Facebook’s Instant Articles, which is being supported by a number of other internet players including Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WordPress.com, ChartBeat, Parse.ly, and Adobe Analytics.
You can read more about this here, but Google recently said it will begin sending search traffic to AMP pages beginning in late February. So that’s one major change you can expect in 2016 (and early 2016 at that).
Another big SEO change coming in early 2016 is Google’s next Penguin update which is supposed to update in real time moving forward.
Regarding the javascript stuff Mueller mentioned, Google recently changed some recommendations related to that, which you can read more about here.
