Confirmed: A Panda Refresh, Version #23

Update: Google has confirmed that this is a Panda refresh. This would make it version 23 and it impacted about 1.3% of English based queries. I should note, I am shocked they pushed out a refresh before the holiday seasons. Last year they promised they would not do a Panda update before the holidays. What a difference a year makes. A week ago, we reported on some very strong signs of a Google...

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Matt Cutts Finally Announces Link Disavow Tool For Google Webmaster Tools

After months of anticipation, Google’s Matt Cutts, at PubCon in Las Vegas today, finally announced a new tool in Webmaster Tools to disavow links. Cutts made comments at SMX Advanced back in July, indicating that a tool would be on the way, and it is now here. In text on the tool itself, Google says, “If you believe your site’s ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control,...

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Google Launches New Page Layout Update (Yes, ANOTHER Update)

Google is on a roll with these updates. I think webmasters are starting to understand what Google’s Matt Cutts meant when he said a while back that updates would start getting “jarring and jolting”. It seems, that rather than one major update, we’re getting a bunch of updates in a short amount of time. This past Friday, Google launched its latest Penguin refresh. A week before that, it was the...

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Google Penguin Update Gets A New Data Refresh

Oh that Google and their late Saturday 6th Oct announcements. Sometimes it’s the big monthly (at least they used to be) “search quality highlights” lists, but they were kind enough to release that on Thursday this past week. Still, Google’s Matt Cutts managed to sneak in a Penguin announcement on Friday. He tweeted: div.twitterditto254335294063656960 { background: #000000 url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sjLPZqiKQlFjsD6fEhDv0Jf3fnf_6pTo6th5vjVsuU8V0CnsVDGs2OCIrtyRw8W9ZlvhZlsMeVrQLDMqfaeWY---O8jjtqyDz0NdURPEBHQiwXdg=s0-d)...

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Google: By The Way, A Panda Update Is Rolling Out Alongside The EMD Update

Last Friday, Google announced the EMD update. It was billed as a small and minor update, but the effects seemed to be fairly large, with many webmasters claiming to have been hit. Google’s Matt Cutts made it a point to say that the algorithm change was unrelated to both Panda and Penguin. He then said it was not the only update that was rolling out during that timeframe, noting that Google...

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Matt Cutts Just Announced A Google Algorithm Change

says it will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results. It sounds like an extension of the last change he tweeted about, which was aimed at improving domain diversity. Here’s the new tweet: div.twitterditto251784203597910016 { background: #000000 url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sjLPZqiKQlFjsD6fEhDv0Jf3fnf_6pTo6th5vjVsuU8V0CnsVDGs2OCIrtyRw8W9ZlvhZlsMeVrQLDMqfaeWY---O8jjtqyDz0NdURPEBHQiwXdg=s0-d)...

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Google News Gets A New Ranking Signal, And It’s A Keywords Meta Tag

Google announced the news_keywords metatag for publishers in Google News to help Google better identify and understand content that is related to things that are in the news. Do you think this is a good direction for Google News? Let us know what you think. Here’s what it looks like: <meta name=”news_keywords” content=”World Cup, Brazil 2014, Spain vs Netherlands, soccer, football”> If...

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Google Launched An Update This Week To Improve Domain Diversity

Google launched an algorithm update that affects the diversity of search results. Google’s head of webspam and Distinguished Engineer, tweeted: Matt Cutts @mattcutts Just fyi, we rolled out a small algo change this week that improves the diversity of search results in terms of different domains returned. Reply · Retweet · Favorite 20 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto There...

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Fear Of Google Ironically Has People Considering Making Natural Links Unnatural

We recently published an article called “Links Are The Web’s Building Blocks, And Fear Of Google Has Them Crumbling“. This was about the panic Google has caused among webmasters with its messages about links. It’s a panic that has led to many webmasters requesting to have links removed from sites that they would otherwise find valuable, if not for fear that Google will not like them and hurt their...

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Removal Requests Actually Down, Following Google Algorithm Change

On August 10, Google announced that it would be updating its algorithm the following week to include a new ranking signal for the number of “valid copyright removal notices” it receives for a given site. “Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results,” said Google SVP, Engineering, Amit Singhal, at the time. “This ranking change should help users find legitimate,...

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