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Google+ Optimization vs. Community Building: Pros & Cons of Google SPYW

Google+ Optimization or Community Building? Initially I looked at Google+ the same as other Google social projects like Wave and Orkut. But the more I use Google+ the more I like it. Maybe it’s the network effect because others are using it more too. I often find content and insights shared on G+ that I don’t find elsewhere. While the addition of Google Search Plus Your World (SPYW) has...

Google Merchant Center "Offer Too Big" Error

Ronald from the Google Merchant Center team posted on a new error some merchants might see. The post is at the Google Merchant Center Help forum.The new error is named "offer too big" and can occur when your feed has an "unusually high number of characters" that are not relevant to the product in the feed. Ronald explained:In the last few days, some of you may have noticed a new error message...

Google Now Doing a Better Job of Indexing Flash (SWF) Files

Google officially began indexing forms of Flash (SWF) files in 2008. But there were signs of Google indexing Flash back in 2004.That being said, Google announced that they are able to index and use "almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site." Google said:Currently almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site can be indexed by...

Careful What SEO Plugins You Install

Joost de Valk posted some scary stuff over on his Yoast blog this weekend.In short, an SEO plugin used on WordPress was not really an SEO plugin. It was pure spam and malware. Bloggers who installed it virtually handed over their sites to this plugin and it resulted in a huge mess for them and the internet.Joost de Valk reviews plugins for WordPress, but when he saw "BlogPress SEO" he was a...

Suggestion: Instant Previews In Google Webmaster Tools

I complain about Google, Bing and other companies a lot here. But it has been a while since I offered some suggestions.This morning I tweeted that I would expect to see a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools to manage the new Page Previews in the Google results. I base these suggestions off of seeing a lot of questions, concerns and complaints in the forums.Suggestions for Instant Previews...

Google Doesn’t Penalize For Slow Sites, Kind Of

Ever since Google announced page speed is a ranking factor, SEOs have been blaming their rankings on their site speed. Google is trying to make webmasters conscious of making fast loading pages but with anything Google does, when they provide a testing tool webmasters and SEOs can get a bit obsessive. Page speed is important but how important? A WebmasterWorld thread has one SEO/webmaster blaming...

Why Google’s Results Number Doesn’t Make Sense To Searchers

One of the most common questions I see from searchers and SEOs is why the total results figure on Google's search results is wrong or off. If you do a search at Google, Google will show you "about x results" at the top. Here is a picture:This figure should not be trusted.Danny Sullivan recently posted a comprehensive article on this named Why Google Can't Count Results Properly. In there,...

Google Mocks How Yahoo Removes Images From Flickr

There is a complaint at the Google Webmaster Help forums from a Flickr user who said he removed an image from Flickr and went through the URL removal process but the image still shows up in the Google search results.Now this is not uncommon but the response from Google's JohnMu was interesting.John from Google said:It does look like Flickr's handling of removed images leaves a bit to be desired...

Will You Use Google’s mod_pagespeed?

A couple days ago, Google announced on several blogs that they released a new module for the Apache HTTP Server called mod_pagespeed.It should do what the name says, speed up your pages. Google said:We're starting with more than 15 on-the-fly optimizations that address various aspects of web performance, including optimizing caching, minimizing client-server round trips and minimizing payload...

Google Adds Rich Snippets Support For E-Commerce Sites

Rich Snippets must be working out for Google, they continue to expand the use of the feature. In short, rich snippets let webmasters markup their HTML and content to give Google a bit more meta data so Google can enhance the snippets to displayed in the Google search results.Google has now enabled rich snippets for shopping sites. Google said:In time for the holiday season, we now support rich...

Google Webmaster Tools Now Showing “Total Links”

About two weeks ago, Google updated the Webmaster Tools link reports to provide some more actionable data and cleaner interfaces. But it left out a key metric for some SEOs, the metric of "total links."Late Friday, Google announced in a Google Webmaster Help thread that they added it back. Jonathan Simon of Google said:I'm happy announce that we've added back the "Total links" count in the...

Google’s Fetch as Googlebot Returning Not Found Errors

Two Google Webmaster Help threads have complaints from webmasters and SEOs that the fetch as Googlebot feature in Webmaster Tools is not working.Specifically, people are running it and are being returned a 404 error that reads:Webmaster Tools - 404Oops!The page you are trying to reach does not exist (404).Google's JohnMu chimed in over the weekend to say he will send it up the chain to be...

Google Creates Chrome Extension To Report Search Spam

Google loves when webmasters and SEOs report search/web spam to them. Although 70% of SEOs won't report spam to Google, there is still a huge number of people who would. To make it easier for those spam reporters, Google has created a Chrome Extension named the Google Webspam Report.I don't know for sure who made the extension at Google, but maybe it was Matt? Maybe?There is a Google presentation...

Google: Different Algorithms Can Apply To Different Sites At Different Times

A Google Webmaster Help thread has a very revealing, at least to me, post from a Googler about how the Google Algorithm works.Many people feel the Google Algorithm is a single, but large algorithm. But those who have been doing this for a while know that Google has many algorithms. When I covered the SEO 101 session, which is kinda funny, but I wanted to listen to Bruce Clay, it can be refreshing....

Google Says “Don’t Be Afraid” Of Duplicate Content

One session we did not cover in our SES Chicago coverage was the duplicate content session and now I am regretting it. Susan Moskwa from Google presented and offered some advice and tips on the issue, from a Google’s perspective. Of course, she said the same thing Google always says about the topic. There is no real penalty for having duplicate content, it is a filter, not a penalty. Okay,...