Google has one again encouraged webmasters to use Instant Pages so that their load time is lessened and users have a better experience with their site. Google had rolled out Instant Pages last year as a “new feature to help users get to their desired search results even faster–in some cases even instantly! The Instant Pages feature is enabled by pretendering technology that we are building into Chrome and then is intelligently triggered by web search when we're very confident about which result is the best answer for the user's search.”

Better site load time is appreciated by Google and sites which offer a better user experience are ranked better. Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video about this and said that approximately 1 out of 100 searches are impacted by the site speed ranking factor. He said “that it would actually change the ranking to a noticeable degree.”

Coming back to Instant Pages, Google says, it is no big effort to make a site work correctly with prerendering. The traffic will be measured in Webmaster Tools as before and only results the user visits will be counted. Google has also recommended the Page Visibility API for webmasters with sites that keep track of pageviews. The API allows webmasters to know when prerendering is happening and they can keep those out of their statistics.

For more insights into lessening your site’s load time, learn about Google Page Speed Online Tool.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Advises Webmasters to Use Instant Pages to Increase Site Load Speed!

Google has formally introduced its “Knowledge Graph” with the tagline- “things not strings”. This means get ready to get real answers and not just links. Google will share its knowledge with users on many things including: places, people, things, technology, entertainment, fine arts, sports, geography, weather and much more.  All these things will be revealed by the ‘knowledge graph’ apart from usual search results. This is a step forward in the direction of people getting answers about concepts/meaning of the search term; and not just getting to see pages with the search query in them. As Google says, “This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.”

Using a link graph, Google will see how pages link to each other and then choose the popular and relevant links for the search query. Whether it is ‘landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art’, people will get knowledgeable links of information that’s relevant to the query.

As Google explains, “Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects.”

The ‘Knowledge Graph’ works in three steps:

1. Relevant Results

Users will now find more relevant information. For instance, Google knows that a query for Dallas can be for the City in Texas or for the hugely popular TV series. And it will now allow you to narrow your search results for the Dallas you were searching for, by clicking on one of the links to see that particular slice of results. This image shows how it is done for a query for – ‘Taj Mahal’.

2. Topical Summary

Google will use its data to know what facts people need for a certain query, and then it will summarize relevant content around that topic. For instance, a search for Marie Curie will bring in her birth and death details, biggest discovery as well as her education.

Quoting Google, “The Knowledge Graph also helps us understand the relationships between things. Marie Curie is a person in the Knowledge Graph, and she had two children, one of whom also won a Nobel Prize, as well as a husband, Pierre Curie, who claimed a third Nobel Prize for the family. All of these are linked in our graph. It’s not just a catalog of objects; it also models all these inter-relationships. It’s the intelligence between these different entities that’s the key.”

3. Deeper Discoveries

Users can also experience unexpected discoveries. This means learning something entirely new and heading off to research in that direction.

Here Google is attempting to “help answer your next question before you’ve asked it”. All this is again based on how users have searched for before.

As Google says, “We’ve begun to gradually roll out this view of the Knowledge Graph to U.S. English users. It’s also going to be available on smartphones and tablets – read more about how we’ve tailored this to mobile devices.’

What do you think of the ‘Knowledge Graph’? Is this a revolutionary move in search? 

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Unveils the ‘Knowledge Graph’ with Real Answers and Not Just Links!

The search forums are ablaze with discussions of Google possible dropping a hundred directories from its search results. It was first brought to light by Barry Schwartz when he found a WebmasterWorld thread where search engine optimization professionals had noted that a number of free directory submission sites were a no show on Google.

Terry Van Horne then tested 500 directories and the results showed that 16% of them had been delisted from Google. As of now, there has been no comment from Google on the issue. But the de-indexing of over 100 directories has been noted.

The questions that arise now are:

1. Were these directories were ever listed in Google?
2. Have they been de-indexed following the Penguin update or the Panda Refresh or is it a spam-blog update or a step against unnatural links?

If you have seen any directories being de-indexed, please share your experience here. 

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google De-indexing Free Directories?

Google Places has introduced an upgraded bulk listing management tool. These improvements are aimed at helping the business owners and search marketing professionals with multiple locations.  The new features allow for more convenient upload and management processes.

As Google explains the changes made:

• “Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once
• Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors
• Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface
• Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link”

Here is a video tutorial explaining the new features for new users not allowed to do bulk upload yet.

Here is another short video highlighting the features for already-verified users for bulk upload.

What do you think of these new features? Do you find them helpful in managing multiple locations? Please share your views in comments below.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

New Bulk Listing Management Tool Introduced by Google Places!

Webmaster Tools is riding on a wave of change. They started off with spring cleaning in April and now have made changes to the navigation, dashboard, and the home page.

The new and ‘improved’ navigation structure has the following groups:

• Configuration (Things configured and not changed very often)
• Health (to check on the general functionality)          
• Traffic (to understand your site’s performance in search, study links and other data about your site)
• Optimization Configuration (to find ideas for bettering your site’s search placements)

Some features have been renamed and the new Dashboard has messages listed as recent, important and prioritized. The Dashboard is home to three widgets: Crawl Errors, Search Queries and Sitemaps. These in turn represent a different navigation group: Health, Traffic and Optimization (respectively).

Webmasters monitoring a large number of sites can opt for seeing their site-list in a 'Compact' layout.

What do you think of these revamping efforts? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Webmaster Tools Revamps Navigation-Dashboard and Homepage!

Google’s Matt Cutts has come up with a new video addressing the query: How does Google view font replacement?  

Whether webmasters use Cufon, SIFR, FLIR, how do they fare in front of Google, this query was answered by Matt Cutts.

Did you find the video helpful? Do share your views. 

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google’s View of Font Replacement – Video!

The Search Quality team at Google India has launched a site clinic where they will analyze the websites submitted to their ‘clinic’.

The clinic will check the websites and then advice on the changes and improvements needed for the site to fare better in Google's organic search results.

This initiative follows the Hangout on Google+ organized by Matt Cutts in January during his India visit. During the Hangout, Matt answered the webmasters’ queries about Google’s practices and this site clinic is a follow up by the Search quality team at Google India.

Webmasters can register for a check up at the clinic here latest by 14th May 2012. The requirements for registering with the program are- that their site needs to be registered on Google Webmaster Tools; and thier the website must meet Google’s quality guidelines.

If Google chooses your site, it reserves the right to use it as ‘example’ cases in its future blog posts.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google India Launches ‘Site Clinic’ – Search Quality Team to Check Sites!

Google has released a list search updates that came in to effect in the month of April. This is apart from the Penguin update, Panda 3.5 Refresh and the Panda 3.6 Rollout that has happened in the last couple of weeks. 53 changes that affect search results.

So, here are the most important changes that Google has made:

New, Bigger Index Tier

• Google has increased the size of its base index by 15 percent. Quoting Google,
• “Increase base index size by 15%. [project codename "Indexing"] The base search index is our main index for serving search results and every query that comes into Google is matched against this index. This change increases the number of documents served by that index by 15%. *Note: We’re constantly tuning the size of our different indexes and changes may not always appear in these blog posts.
• New index tier. [launch codename "cantina", project codename "Indexing"] We keep our index in “tiers” where different documents are indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to be to users. This month we introduced an additional indexing tier to support continued comprehensiveness in search results.”

Sitelinks Updates

• There have been changes made in sitelinks and megasitelinks as well, and now sub-sitelinks will be shown instead of the normal snippet. The ranking of the megasitelinks will also be improved. Quoting Google,
•  “Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet.
• Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.
• Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users. We’ve recently updated the data through our offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks).
• Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks.”

Ranking Updates

• A number of ranking updates have been brought in like authoritative results and more domain diversity. Quoting Google,
• "Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.
• Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better."

Other changes include that Google can now identify the correct local result for certain navigational searches whether the page has been well optimized for local search or not.

What do you think of all these changes? Do you find any that catch your eye? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Does 53 Updates to its Search Algorithm in April!

New Google PageRank update is here. Twitter is buzzing with the  updates.

This  update has  come after 3 months after the last one happened in February 2012. Google updates its PageRank every few months, though it doesn’t directly affect the organic search rankings. However most of us give importance to our PageRanks. Forum discussions are on at DigitalPoint Forums. Have you seen any changes happen to your PR? Do share your views

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Updates PageRank!

Google has brought in its new public style guide – the Google HTML and CSS Style Guide.

This Style Guide helps to sort through a number of formatting-related issues. Developers can refer to it for best practices ideas too. As Google says, "Many style guide authors know the underlying motivation from the question whether to describe the code they write – or to prescribe what code they want to write. Not surprisingly then, in our HTML and CSS style guide you’ll find both."

The guide has been made available to developers to be used as per their requirements. Google will provide further insights into the style guide’s design decisions and future updates soon. Meanwhile, do explore the guide and do share your views with us.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Introduces New Coding guidelines for HTML and CSS!

Now you can easily remove an undesirable image from Google Images search results. You have the option to report an image that you want to have taken off, as explained in this video by Jeff LaFlam, Google Consumer Experience Specialist.

Did you find the video helpful? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Removing an Image from Google Image Search – Video!

Google’s Matt Cutts has put a video explaining how Google uses 'human raters' as part of their algorithm. This video is in response to a query about the same, sent to Google. 

Did you find the video helpful? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

How does Google use human raters in web search – Video!

Google Webmaster Tools will now provide the historical search query data to 90 days. Also, the number of keywords reported has also increased to the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range. Earlier, the data was available for a period of 35 days, and the number of top keywords was 1000. Webmasters have welcomed this news as this data cannot be accessed from anywhere else and now they can analyze trends better with detailed information.

These changes made by Webmaster Tools will now give you a Summary Data of the total number of queries driving traffic to the site, the number of clicks the site received, and the number of impressions and clicks the site got for the reported top queries.

Webmasters can also access keyword specific data, where they will know the number of impressions the site showed up for that search query; the numbers of searchers who clicked on the search result for that query. The CTR for that keyword and the average position of the highest ranked URL for the keyword, in search results.

You can find the see the data with changes for a limited period- 30 days only. The change details have to be accessed by clicking on the ‘ With Change’ button. You can also get and analyze country specific data. Also, the top search queries data is normally available within 2or 3 days for webmasters to gather and analyze.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Now Get 90 Days Search Query Data with Google Webmaster Tools!

Webmasters and search experts looking for further insights into the workings of Google search can now learn from this video about the same posted by Google's Matt Cutts. Watch to know all about crawling, indexing and ranking.

Did you find the video helpful? Please share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

How Google Search Works – Video!

Google has explained in a blog post how it indexes images. The search engine’s bots look at the textual content on the page, the page's title and its body to judge the nature of the image. Google also refers to the image’s filename, anchor text pointing to it, the alt text and also the captions of the Image Sitemap.

Google has advised webmasters to ensure that the image filename must be related to the image’s content. If you have any other questions, then see them answered here by Google:

Q: Why do I sometimes see Googlebot crawling my images, rather than Googlebot-Image?

A: Generally this happens when it’s not clear that a URL will lead to an image, so we crawl the URL with Googlebot first. If we find the URL leads to an image, we’ll usually revisit with Googlebot-Image. Because of this, it’s generally a good idea to allow crawling of your images and pages by both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image.

Q: Is it true that there’s a maximum file size for the images?

A: We’re happy to index images of any size; there’s no file size restriction.

Q: What happens to the EXIF, XMP and other metadata my images contain?

A: We may use any information we find to help our users find what they’re looking for more easily. Additionally, information like EXIF data may be displayed in the right-hand sidebar of the interstitial page that appears when you click on an image.

Q: Should I really submit an Image Sitemap? What are the benefits?

A: Yes! Image Sitemaps help us learn about your new images and may also help us learn what the images are about.

Q: I’m using a CDN to host my images; how can I still use an Image Sitemap?

A: Cross-domain restrictions apply only to the Sitemaps’ tag. In Image Sitemaps, the tag is allowed to point to a URL on another domain, so using a CDN for your images is fine. We also encourage you to verify the CDN’s domain name in Webmaster Tools so that we can inform you of any crawl errors that we might find.

Q: Is it a problem if my images can be found on multiple domains or subdomains I own — for example, CDNs or related sites?

A: Generally, the best practice is to have only one copy of any type of content. If you’re duplicating your images across multiple hostnames, our algorithms may pick one copy as the canonical copy of the image, which may not be your preferred version. This can also lead to slower crawling and indexing of your images.

Q: We sometimes see the original source of an image ranked lower than other sources; why is this?

A: Keep in mind that we use the textual content of a page when determining the context of an image. For example, if the original source is a page from an image gallery that has very little text, it can happen that a page with more textual context is chosen to be shown in search. If you feel you've identified very bad search results for a particular query, feel free to use the feedback link below the search results or to share your example in our Webmaster Help Forum.”

Were these insights from Google helpful for you? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Essential Insights on How Google Indexes Images!

Google wants to give users a better surfing experience with relevant and high quality sites displayed on search results. With the Panda Algorithm changes, Google went on a cleaning spree to weed out low quality sites with poor content and of no use to the users. Then the search engine came up with a page layout algorithm earlier this year that pulls down the sites where there is not much content available “above the fold.”

Now Google is planning to launch an important algorithm change that will target webspam. So sites with poor quality/keyword stuffed content/link schemes, and generally not living up to Google’s existing quality guidelines will be hit. As Google says, “We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

Google’s Target-Webspam

Google has defined Webspam as the ‘black hat’ tactics used to get higher rankings with activities like: keyword stuffing, link schemes, “doorway” pages, cloaking and duplicate content (knowingly copied). So, if you have a site with keyword stuffed content you are most likely to be taken down by Google. Google’s new algorithm change will also weed out sites with unusual linking patterns, and unrelated content.

Google has said that this algorithm tweak will go live for all languages at the same time. And the sites Google believes that are “engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings” will be hit.

Impact of the algorithm change

Google has said that this algorithm will impact:

• 3.1% of English queries
• 3% of German, Chinese and Arabic
• 5% of Polish queries

White Hat SEO encouraged by Google

Google has again cautioned webmasters to stay away from spamming and indulge in white hat search engine optimization, to create high quality web sites. As Google has said, “Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive – and we're not the only ones. Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find.“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines.”

How do you plan to deal with this new algorithmic change? Do you think you are safe? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google’s New Penguin Update to Target Webspam!

Google Webmaster Tools is running a spring cleaning drive and after a check of all the features and functionalities, the Subscriber stats feature, the Create robots.txt tool, and the Site performance features are being removed from the interface. These are being removed as Google feels they have low usage as compared to their maintenance and support requirements.

Subscriber stats (used for reporting the number of subscribers to a site’s RSS or Atom feeds) feature has been made redundant by Feedburner.

The Create robots.txt tool (used to generate robots.txt files) has been used very less by the webmasters. The robots.txt files served the purpose of blocking specific parts of a site from being crawled by Googlebot. With the tool being removed, webmasters can create the files in a text editor.

Site performance feature that told the average load time of a site's pages is also being removed by Google due to low usage. Webmaster can use analyze their site's performance using the Site Speed feature in Google Analytics or using Google's PageSpeed online.

Recently Google Webmaster Tools has seen many new features and functionalities being added like Crawl errors and new User Administration feature. What do you think of these features being made to retire? Did you use them often? Do share your views. 

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Subscriber stats, Create robots.txt and Site performance Features to be removed from Google Webmaster Tools!

Negative SEO- when others (read-competitors) can affect your rankings with bad links. Is this thought just SEO paranoia or does this actually happen?

The search industry turns to Google for answers and since long Google has been saying that bad links others used against you can't hurt your sites rankings. But the search industry saw it happening and now the discussion is out in the open. Google itself has changed its replies overtime.

Earlier, the search giant was quoted as- “There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."

But now, it has been altered to (on March 14, 2012) – "Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question."

This change in tone from Google has webmasters confronting their worst fears- their site is at risk from competitors. If you are using Google Webmaster Tools, then you can get an inkling of sabotage from the infamous “unnatural linking” messages from Google. But if your site is out of the Webmaster Tools, then you would be wiped clean of the search results and there is pretty much nothing that you can do than simply shut shop. The entire appeal to Google will have a long time sorting itself and till you are proven innocent your site will be in the pits.

Webmaster's were pretty shaken up after Google came down upon BuildMyRank and the negative SEO trend dominated the forums again. Issues like ‘will the influx of unnatural links damage the strong domains too’ have cropped up and are a part of the multiple case studies that have been going on about the issue.

What Can You Do About It In Google Webmaster Tools, find the links to your site and if you find links from a shady domain inform Google to completely discount those. You can also go through the domain and block certain pages if you see fit. This way you can arrest the mal-intent links and identify the paid links and scrapers too.

Be on your watch and walk the tight rope of smart SEO. Be aware so that you are not shut down even when you never lifted a finger. Do you have any more ideas on how SEOs can work with Google to stop this? Please share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Negative SEO- What Google Says and What You Can Do?

There was a huge hue and cry all across the internet recently as websites lost their rankings in Google search. Their disappearance from the Google’s index was due to an error in the functioning of Google’s parked domain classifier, as revealed by Matt Cutts on Google+.

This explanation by Matt has laid to rest the rumors flying about over optimization being responsible for the sites losing their search rankings. The entire episode of ‘Google algorithm strikes again’ began earlier this week as webmasters thronged the forums with complaints of their sites being de-indexed from Google.
Google has described its classifier, the new algorithm that automatically detects parked domains (sites just filled with ads with no valuable content for our users). Did your site get affected from the error too? Do share your experiences.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Sites Lost Rankings Due to Google Parked Domain Classifier Error!

Google has made two updates to rich snippets. The first one being that product rich snippets, are now available on a global scale (earlier they were only supported in a limited set of locales). This means that users from across the globe can now see the information snippet about your product and services available on your website.

The search engine giant has also given a facelift to the rich snippets testing tool and it now supports HTML input. This has been done by repeated requests from webmasters that they desired to test their HTML source without the need of publishing it to a web page. But with the new rich snippets testing tool, this has been made possible.

Google pays huge importance to snippets in search results. Rich snippets can influence local search listings this fact has been highlighted upon by Google many times. Recently, the search giant came up with application rich snippets to evaluate search result relevance so that users searching for various applications can judge the search result relevance in a better way. Another recent addition was concert snippets in search results so that users now searching for bands or artists can see a snippet about upcoming concert tour dates below the search results.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Gives a Fresh Update to Rich Snippets!