Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing "x-default hreflang" for international...

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing "x-default hreflang" for international...: Webmaster Level: All The homepages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors to localized pag...

Google Panda Update 25 Imminent

March 24, 2013 Google Panda Update

As per usual, details on the March 2013 Google Panda Update have been vague at best, but I have it on good authority that the the last major change has either already happened during the past 24 hours or so, or is about to. According to MozCast (a website that tracks "weather" patterns of the Google algorithm), yesterday's "Weather" for Saturday, March 23 was 78 degrees and cloudy.

Per MozCast, "The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google's rankings changed."

MozCast uses a semi-complex formula that involves monitoring a hand-picked set of 1,000 keywords, comparing them against the top 10 Google organic results and then noting the change; the more the change they saw in Google rankings in the previous 24 hours, the "hotter" the temperature. While it wouldn't be intelligent to take this forecast at 100% face value, it provides useful insight into a possible major shift in a set of search results, prompting any "red flags" for a possible rankings impact.

So, how successful has this system been historically? Well, Panda #24 on 1/22 was only assessed at  58.7° (which looks to be about the daily average for "all's well"), however, Panda #23 (12/21) was at a much higher 76.9°. In April 2012, Penguin #1 (4/24) clocked in at a staggering 93.1° (Official Impact: 3.1% of queries).

Again, the weather for Saturday, March 23 was 78 degrees and cloudy. Take that as you will.

Google Panda Update Expected Tomorrow, March 15th

For those of you that don't know, the head of Webspam at Google, Matt Cutts, mentioned that there will be some type of significant algorithmic update unleashed tomorrow or Monday. So, what does this mean kids? Well, as long as you're optimizing, or attempting to optimize, your site with Google best practices in mind, everything should be swell. For those of you that still love the old "Black Hat" approach to SEO, you might want to keep an eye on your organic search traffic and rankings via GA over the next few days.

So, for those of you that are a little nervous about the next few days, here's a friendly piece if advice. Go to your Google Webmaster Tools account, find your site, go to "Health">>"Fetch as Google" and type in the path of any of your pages in the text box that you are unsure about. This tool will render what Google potentially sees when they crawl your site, as well as header responses. You may get an idea of the SEO friendliness of content on your sites pages; is it lacking in plain text? is it using technology that is invisible to the Googlebot?, or is the page so full of poor, keyword stuffed content? If this tool identifies any of these issues, it may be time for an overhaul of your site's content!

SEO News: 6 Cool Features of the "New" Bing Webmaster Tools

1. There is nothing more beneficial than the ability to see the inbound links pointing to your site with their associated anchor text.
2. You have the ability to see data for both Bing AND Yahoo.
3. Bing has useful diagnostic tools, such as a keyword research tool for keyword effectiveness for both Bing and Yahoo.
4. The very robust SEO Reports feature scans your site for known SEO issues and identifies ways to ensure your site is in compliance with Bing best practices.
5. The Canonical Alerts feature will send you an email alert if Bing detects canonical issues on your site.
6. The URL Removal tool allows you to block a URL for 90 days from being crawled and will even alert you eight days prior to renewing the blocking of said URL.

Google Not Listening To Your Title Tag?

For me, this article is old news, but it's a good read if unfamiliar with how Google displays information in their SERPS: Google Not Listening To Your Title Tag?