Author: Alan

Google have secured a new patent this week. Their patent states as follows:

A computer implemented method for using search queries related to television programs. A server receives a user’s search query from an electronic device.

The server then determines, in accordance with the search query and television program related information for television programs available at a location associated with the electronic device during a specific time window, a television program currently being displayed in proximity to the electronic device, wherein the television program related information includes program descriptions for a plurality of television programs being broadcast for the associated location.

How do you think this will impact search results?

Google has long been committed to increasing the quality of search for its users. None more so than the “Quick Answer” boxes that sometimes show at the top of Google Search Results. Although this is great news for users, getting what they want much quicker, it is not the best news for publishers.

For example if you run an SEO Blog and write up a very detailed explanation of what SEO is, you can miss out on traffic as Google very succinctly sums things up on their knowledge graph box at the top of the page. See below:

As you can see in this box, the above is used to show a generic definition of SEO and a link to Wikipedia for those looking to secure more information on the subject. Now this is great if your blog used as the source and will no doubt add a fair amount of traffic to your blog.

But what about other queries? Such as “How old is Boris Johnson?”. Take a look below:

As you can see, the Google Knowledge Graph box is used again and his age is displayed. What you’ll also notice is that no source is given? Why?

Well according to Google, Boris Johnson’s age is “Basic Factual Information” so doesn’t really warrant a source. But SEO is deemed as “not widely known information” so requires a source. This also occurs when “relevant snippets are shown from a website”.

There are very few exempt cases, but with Apple launching their new iPhone 6 this week, Google credited the Apple website directly after receiving certain information about the phones from their rival.

Have you seen any cases like this before?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google is constantly telling webmasters that quality of content is one of the best things to help you rank. They stop short of telling you exactly what the quality is that they’re after though. Blog posts can be powerful things and a great place to add quality content.

Neil Patel over at Quicksprout has put together the following infographic which helps detail out just what make a powerful blog post:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

If you’re an SEO then you’ll be acutely aware of what Penguin is. There have been several versions of the penguin algorithm but the most controversial were 2.0 and 2.1.

The penguin algorithm is designed to review links to a website and then take the appropriate measures based on the links it finds. The problem was with Penguin was that it was too evolutionary.

For example. Back in 2008, it was often the case of whoever has the most links ranks the best. These days we’re much more aware of what we need to do to a website to get it to rank which include multitudes of on site factors as well as the quality of links. NOT the quantity.

Due to how it used to be, there are/were a lot of websites that used perfectly valid techniques in their day, which were then deemed spammy by the Penguin algorithm. As such, the fallout from the update was massive with a lot of Webmasters bleating about how unfair it was for Google to judge current websites on their past behaviour.

It has it’s merits of course. But you can understand Webmasters’ frustrations at the algorithm. And now we’re set to go through it all again. John Mueller, of Google, said today in a Google Hangout that there will definitely be a Penguin update before the end of the year and it could be in the “reasonable” future.

Ambiguous ay? What might be reasonable to Google might not be reasonable to you and me. One of the major things to notice about this update is that it is termed Penguin 3.0. And not Penguin 2.2 or something similar.

That is because the update is meant to be a big one. Not only will it refresh all the data it has, but it will also update the actual algorithm, enabling it to run refreshes more frequently in the future.

Why wait though? Are they getting close to releasing it? My theory is that they’re pretty much done, they’re just waiting for Matt Cutts to get back to let the big dog announce the new release.

So, if you’ve been engaging in some slightly less than white hat link building practices, it’s time to grab a cloth and clean up.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google’s algorithms are often the subject of much discussion, chagrin, angst and other more colourful words. This is because Google themselves rarely announce when they release or are about to release an algorithm update.

Sure, once the fallout from algorithms reaches fever pitch they can sometimes say “Oh yeah, we did redefine everything is SEO over the weekend, thanks for noticing”.

They also give vague and nondescript warnings of “We’ll be releasing a new algorithm called [Insert_Animal_Name_Here] at some point in the future”.

There have been several rumours about Google launching a new refresh of Penguin or a large update of Panda recently. First off there were some suggestions of Google experimenting with a refresh of Penguin. Which got a lot of people very excited as they believe their sites are still “trapped” by Penguin and can’t get out until the algorithm updates.

Also last week there was a large scale suggestion of Google updating their Panda algorithm. But with Google already stating that they’ve stopped confirming Panda updates, we’re like not to know.

Now these algorithms are COMPLEX. Seriously complex, but thankfully Google’s John Mueller has taken time to write a helpful post in a Google Webmaster forum:

In theory: If a site is affected by any specific algorithm or its data, and it fixes the issue that led to that situation, then the algorithm and/or its data must be refreshed in order to see those changes. Sometimes those changes aren’t immediately visible even after a refresh, that’s normal too.

In practice, a site is never in a void alone with just a single algorithm. We use over 200 factors in crawling, indexing, and ranking. While there are some cases where a site is strongly affected by a single algorithm, that doesn’t mean that it won’t see any changes until that algorithm or its data is refreshed. For example, if a site is strongly affected by a web-spam algorithm, and you resolve all of those web-spam issues and work to make your site fantastic, you’re likely to see changes in search even before that algorithm or its data is refreshed. Some of those effects might be directly related to the changes you made (other algorithms finding that your site is really much better), some of them might be more indirect (users loving your updated site and recommending it to others).

So yes, in a theoretical void of just your site and a single algorithm (and of course such a void doesn’t really exist!), you’d need to wait for the algorithm and/or its data to refresh to see any changes based on the new situation. In practice, however, things are much more involved, and improvements that you make (especially significant ones) are likely to have visible effects even outside of that single algorithm. One part that helps to keep in mind here is that you shouldn’t be focusing on individual factors of individual algorithms, it makes much more sense to focus on your site overall — cleaning up individual issues, but not assuming that these are the only aspects worth working on.

All that said, we do realize that it would be great if we could speed the refresh-cycle of some of these algorithms up a bit, and I know the team is working on that. I know it can be frustrating to not see changes after spending a lot of time to improve things. In the meantime, I’d really recommend – as above – not focusing on any specific aspect of an algorithm, and instead making sure that your site is (or becomes) the absolute best of its kind by far.

Blog post by: Greg McVey

Today a new Google Easter Egg has been discovered. This little treat is aimed at SEO geeks and server geeks alike. It’s based on an April Fools Joke from way back in 1998.

Google released it as a 418 Error code for websites and isn’t supported or meant to used at all. However if you visit this page then you can see the error code in action.

What’s more, if you’re on your phone and you tilt it, the teapot will actually start pouring. And if you’re on a destop, clicking the teapot will make it pour.

Check it out below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google have made some pretty groundbreaking changes to their algorithms and even introduced who new algorithms to combat change in the rankings.

In the infographic below we highlight the top 10 changes to the Google Search tool.

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<a href=”https://netsixtysix.co.uk/net66-top-10-changes-google-search-infographic/”><img alt=”Net66 – Google 10 Milestones Updated” src=”https://netsixtysix.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Net66-Google-10-Milestones-Updated.png” title=”Net66 – Google 10 Milestones Updated” /></a> <br /> <p style=”font-size: 8px;”>Infographic Courtesy of <a href=”https://netsixtysix.co.uk/”>Net66</a></p>

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Twitter have launched a somewhat controversial feature to their timeline today. The idea of the Twitter timeline originally was to display the users only tweets from people they follow, along with retweets. Now however this looks set to change.

Users will now start seeing Tweets from people that they don’t follow. What’s the purpose in this? Surely if you’re not following them you don’t want to see their tweets. But Twitter’s idea behind this is that if your certain tweets become popular or even go viral, then you’re likely to see them.

This isn’t based solely on virility. Twitter will look to see what percentage of the people you are following to determine whether it is relevant enough to display to you. If a high percentage of people you follow are interacting with the Tweet, then it’s more likely to crop up on your timeline.

Twitter have explained this on their Frequently asked questions page by adding the following text:

Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline. This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting.

It has rubbed some users up the wrong way. You can see why, people don’t want content displaying to them from sources they’ve not subscribed to. But at the same time, Twitter could be helping enhance the user experience by introducing new and fresh content to users out of the blue.

What do you think of this new move by Twitter?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey