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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • TommyTan


    Hi fellow SEOmozers, I noticed that a lot of websites have additional characters and words at the end of the URL in addition keyword optimized URL.  Mostly for E-Commerce sites For example: www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=12345&Keyword--Category--cm_jdkfls_dklj  or wwww.yoursite.com/category/keyword#83939=-37292 My question is how does the additional characters or parameters(not necessarily tracking parameters) affect SEO? Does it matter if i have additional keywords in the additional stuff in the URL (1st url example)? If you can provide more information, that would be helpful. Thank you!

    | TommyTan
    0
  • webguru2014


    Hello Can anyone recommend the best rankings/tracking software - something that will track upto position 500 in the serps. Thanks

    | webguru2014
    0
  • smulto


    This is a new one for me.  I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site.  Even on pages that don't need it. For example on http://www.client.com/examplex they had code: Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this?  Does this hurt the ranking of the page?

    | smulto
    0
  • CSawatzky


    Hi All, We installed Schema.org structured markup on our pages nearly 1.5 months ago at this point and we have yet to see the markup show in the search results. It also checks out in Webmaster tools and Google's structured markup language testing tool. So, I'm just confused why it's not even showing up site a "site" search in Google either. Here's an example of two such pages on our site: http://www.learningtree.com/htfu/usdc01/washington/java-perl-and-python-programming-training and http://www.learningtree.com/htfu/usat40/alpharetta/it-and-management-training Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you 🙂

    | CSawatzky
    0
  • gavinr


    Hi All I have experienced quite a significant rankings drop since week commencing 19 May. I have heard there has been a Panda roll out recently was it around that time? Thanks Gavin

    | gavinr
    0
  • danatanseo


    This question came to mind as I was pursuing an unrelated issue and reviewing a site's robots/txt file. Currently this is a line item in the file: Disallow: https://* According to a recent post in the Google Webmasters Central Blog: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html "Understanding Web Pages Better") Googlebot is getting much closer to being able to properly render javascript. Pardon some ignorance on my part because I am not a developer, but wouldn't this require Googlebot be able to execute javascript? If so, I am concerned that disallowing Googlebot from the https:// versions of our pages could interfere with crawling and indexation because as soon as an end-user clicks the "checkout" button on our view cart page, everything on the site flips to https:// - If this were disallowed then would Googlebot stop crawling at that point and simply leave because all pages were now https:// ??? Or am I just waaayyyy over thinking it?...wouldn't be the first time! Thanks all! [](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html "Understanding Web Pages Better")

    | danatanseo
    0
  • Gordian


    My site was hit pretty negatively by Panda 4.0 and I am at a loss for the best way to address it. I have read like every article that I can and I know there is some duplicate manufacturer product descriptions but I don't hear many other ecoms complaining about Panda so I figure it must be something else. Also, the pages that seem most negatively affected are category and product list pages. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks! http://bit.ly/1plgOzM

    | Gordian
    0
  • theLotter


    I have 2 RU websites. One is my main site www.xxx.com saw big increases in rankings + visits last week. My geo-specific subsite, www.xxx.ru generally ranks better but did not change last week. Any insights about why this occurred?

    | theLotter
    0
  • CalicoKitty2000


    I went back and looked through webmaster tools.  I had around 3000 impressions per day leading up to 3/10/2014. Then on 3/11/2014, I dropped to 1000 impressions per day.  Is there a good way to figure out what happened? Anyone know if there was a google update that day.

    | CalicoKitty2000
    0
  • classifiedtech


    Are there any negative or positive effects of using https over http when it comes to rankings?

    | classifiedtech
    0
  • seoessentials


    I haven't looked into this in a while, it used to be that you didn't want to bury pages beyond three clicks from the main page. What is the rule now in order to have deep pages indexed?

    | seoessentials
    0
  • GPainter


    Hiya Moz, So the new TLD domains have been out for a little while now but I've yet to see them ranking or even seen them in Google etc. I was wondering if anyone else has or has had any luck with them? I would also welcome thoughts on the new TLDs. if you have no idea what I'm on about please take a look here - http://uk.godaddy.com/tlds/gtld.aspx or http://moz.com/blog/next-domain-gold-rush Thanks Moz

    | GPainter
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  • NECAnGeL


    When Google Penguin update will run again. The last time was in October 2013 and I'm still really curious now. Or have they stopped this and this is now continuously just like the panda?

    | NECAnGeL
    0
  • webguru2014


    I have updated some pages on a website, is there a way to get Google to index the page quicker?

    | webguru2014
    0
  • T-J-I


    Hi Just got a question looking at the general timing of events and wanting to know what is the norm. I've seen on here recently talk of eBay losing ranking in the last few days, and here in the UK news, we have had info today of security issues at the company stemming from being hacked late Feb - early March. Are those two events linked?  If so, what is the mechanism by which google would affect the ranking of an established company like this, for an issue like that? And more generally, what are the typical timings of cause and effect with regards to google responding with demoting rank for more general issues? Thanks in advance...... tom

    | T-J-I
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  • GPainter


    Hi Moz fans! If you've not had the chance to check out moz cast go check it out it seems Google has been busy and so much so it broke Moz cast. There has been some discussion on seo round table about the changes and something seems to be going on. I wanted to find out how you guys are all finding it have you had a change in rankings? Any theories on what you think Google is up to? Personally I've seen rather a few of my sites go up in the rankings last week or so. As always look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings on it Moz.

    | GPainter
    3
  • ColeLusby


    Hey all, I do SEO. I'm currently working with another SEO firm on a project. The lady mentioned to me that Google recently updated (couple months ago) and changed their font causing them to lower the meta description to 55 characters. Is this true? I have not heard of this. Could she be confusing the meta description with the title tag? I didn't know Google could have even update the Title tag too.

    | ColeLusby
    0
  • theLotter


    My website operates in 14 languages, and overall we have not seen a decrease in traffic (hard to measure because we are very vulnerable to external factors) I started using AWR about a month ago and in that time have seen the following changes in my visibility for some of my major markets:  Nothing major in either direction, but any advice of how to delve deeper to find an explanation for the markets that are decreasing? UK: 15% ->13% RU: 25 -> 26% AU: 25% -> 21% DE: 18% - 19% ES: 11% -> 10% SE: 42% -> 44%

    | theLotter
    0
  • RyanShahed


    I realise that there has probably been a lot said about Exact Match Domains, however, I want to know 2 things: Is this two exact match domains or one EMD: "londonfootball.com" and "footballlondon.com" so is "London Football" one EMD, and "Football London" another? Does having an EMD add a big advantage in getting ranked? Is it worth paying 2 months SEO expense to buy an EMD? To me if it still has an advantage then it probably is. However, I would like to hear the opinion of the experts. I would specially like to hear from anyone who owns or bought an EMD to rank. Thank you.

    | RyanShahed
    0
  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    Hello, I have a website and my sitemap (generated by the Yoast plugin) is set up into three different sections. One thing I noticed was that my homepage isn't in my sitemap. Is this an issue? The homepage is indexed, but does it need to be added to the sitemap in order for it to be crawled? How would I go about adding the homepage to the sitemap?

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • Berner


    Hello, So while I sit and wait for Penguin to hopefully ease up on my site, would it be smart to create a new site and then forward the old penguin hit site to it after the dust clears and any issues are better? I have heard some people say you never recover from an algo penalty? While others say to wait it out. So just curious what you think? Would you ditch a site that is not super followed or popular? in the attempt to create a site with no bad backlinks and start fresh? Thank you for your thoughts

    | Berner
    0
  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    Hello, I am curious to know everyones thoughts on speed optimization for wordpress. I currently use the w3 total cache plugin and was considering adding a CDN like cloudflare. Does anyone have any experiences with utilizing both of these two together? What works best for you?

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • theLotter


    On March 6 my Yandex TIC score went from 80 to 0.  I assume this had something to do with their algorithim update. Any advice on how to get it back up or why this would occur? Thanks!

    | theLotter
    0
  • AdamWormann


    A client website dropped drastically on April 12.  Outside of some branded keywords, search results dropped off of the first page and are buried on page 3+ at best.  Nothing has changed on the site, and there were no problems with the link profile.  GWT has no manual actions.  Kind of at a loss. Does anyone know if there was an algorithm update or anything external that may be causing some problems here?  Site is www.averybiomedical.com if you want to take a look, but I'm just curious if there was anything I should be aware of.  Thanks for the help!

    | AdamWormann
    0
  • Gordon_Hall


    I'm thinking of a little project website, but wonder whether I should use subdomains, or just simply categorize the site. For example, (I haven't chosen my domain yet) If I had www.flowers.com, and wanted to produce pages for each type of flower, should i use rose.flower.com
    or
    flower.com/rose For SEO purposes, or usability, does it matter? Thanks in advance.

    | Gordon_Hall
    0
  • gohawks7790


    I'm fairly new to SEO and can't pinpoint what's wrong with my site...I feel so lost. I am working on revamping www.RiverValleyGroup.com and can't figure out why it's not ranking for keywords. These keywords include 'Louisville homes', 'Homes for sale in Louisville KY', etc. Any suggestions? I write new blog posts everyday so I feel there's no shortage of fresh content. I'm signed up with Moz Analytics and Google analytics

    | gohawks7790
    0
  • theLotter


    The traffic from my website significantly decreased from Yandex last month. Was their a major update?

    | theLotter
    0
  • imrubbish


    Hi there, We run 3 websites in a similar niche (bins) but tend to have a different area of focus on each site, wheelie, recycling and general litter. They all have unique descriptions, images etc (as much as possible) One of our sites has been a long standing penalty sufferer and we still dont want to give up on it. They are all located on unique IP's but on the same server with the same owner in whois. My question is could our site that has struggled with a penalty in the past be effecting our other sites which havent had problems? I know google likes to see brands and we do regular content, social media etc on all the sites, The drop came today and appears across all our sites. The main site that had the penalty usually gets around 50 visits a day from search, so far today it has had 10 and that is most of the working day now gone. I hope someone can shed a little light on the issues we are facing Thank you Jon

    | imrubbish
    0
  • Webrevolve


    Hey there, I was wondering whether you could help me out on the following; One of our clients has a Google places listing that we created for their business but it appears to be being blocked - or at least conflicting - with an old listing. As such, Google appears to be showing the old listing with an outdated URL and company name - rather than the new one. Does anyone know how I can go about removing this listing or showing that the newer one is now more relevant? Unfortunately, I don't have the logins for the old places listing. Old listing; https://plus.google.com/105224923085379238289 New listing; https://plus.google.com/b/114641937407677713536/114641937407677713536

    | Webrevolve
    0
  • mattmainpath


    Hello, We're helping a client remove/minimize some negative information about their brand in Google's search results. Just curious about your take on if the related searches that appear at the bottom of Google search results can in any way be influenced or if it is more a combination of so many factors that any one person or organization wouldn't be able to change very easily? I've heard the related results could be influenced if enough queries generated overtake the "negative" queries done initially but I feel like that is venturing into black hat land a bit. thanks -Mike

    | mattmainpath
    0
  • Cloudguru99


    Hi, I am using the search term of my website domain i.e. "Series Digital" on both Bing and Google. Bing shows my website as the top most link. But on Google, my website appears on page 14!! Why is this happening when I am using the string within the " "?

    | Cloudguru99
    0
  • Pureshore


    Hello everyone, My website used to have about 500k indexed pages in Google. After publishing fresh sitemaps and a little local "buzz", it now has about 6 millions indexed pages and the numbers are skyrocketing (GWT says 7 millions and it will probably keep going). My website has a total number of pages of 10 millions. I used to have about 5k organic visite each day, but since the big indexation has started, I now have half less. I read many things about that kind of trafic drop, and it seems to be a normal step when indexing a huge site. I just wanted to know if you guys had any similar experiences and if yes, if there are specific tasks to do in order to recover/develop the organic trafic or if it's just a matter of time. Thanks for your help and share of experiences 😉

    | Pureshore
    0
  • groovecommerce


    Google is showing a manufacturers product description below the ads and before the organic listings that I have not seen before, see the attached image. The bad part is instead of attributing it to the manufacturer it is attributing to one of our competitiors and placing thier link with the text. 1. Why is this happening? I can't find any schema or other mark-up on the page explaining where this content is coming from. 2. How do I combat this? I have not seen this type of SERP before. Any help is appreciated. HfYLGd0.jpg

    | groovecommerce
    0
  • WSIDW


    For a long time my website has appeared in both desktop and mobile search in Google. Yet recently it has stopped appearing in mobile yet still on desktop. Any ideas why this is happening and how to rectify it please? Many Thanks.

    | WSIDW
    0
  • jimmyzig


    We searched two words for a client so see how/where their site returned results. Depending on both the browser we used and the search engine, the results were so vastly different we were shocked. The site returned #2 or 3 on Bing and YahooSearch and not until the 3rd page for Google! And it also returned much worse on Chrome than any other browser, a Google product. I know this topic must be covered somewhere, or perhaps someone would be kind enough to chime in and shed some light? We have been working hard to optimize for Google and failing, but doing very well everywhere else. What gives?

    | jimmyzig
    1
  • esiow2013


    My site is currently disallowing search engine bots with the help of robots.txt. These dynamic pages can be crawled using Screamingfrog since they are linked to a static category page which is also linked to the homepage. Thanks in advance!

    | esiow2013
    0
  • Adam_SEO_Learning


    It seems that the new Google SERPs have a shorter page title character length? From what I can gather they are 60 characters in length. Does this mean we all need to now optimise our page titles to 60 characters? Has anyone else noticed this and made any changes to page title lengths?

    | Adam_SEO_Learning
    0
  • colbygedak


    Hello all, I'm a newbie to SEO, so you'll have to bear with me. I just started a website LangleyHomeSaerch.com a few months ago and am having trouble ranking with google. When I search "Langley Home Search" with Yahoo or Bing, it comes up on the first page. However when I search it with google it doesn't seem to rank even in the first few hundred pages. The only way I can get a match from google is if I search "Langley HomeSearch" or "LangleyHomeSearch". I know due to google's newer algorithms that there is less importance put on domain name matches, but is this normal, or is there anything I can do to improve it? Thx, Colby Langley, BC

    | colbygedak
    0
  • Avid_Demand


    Hi All, Are companies buying .company domains? And does anyone have any thoughts on the future rank-ability of these domains? Kind regards! 🙂

    | Avid_Demand
    0
  • Webrevolve


    Hey guys, I'm working on a relatively new client and have noticed that all the initial rankings that we have point towards a sub page rather than the home page. Only a branded search appears to bring up the home page which seems really strange. Any ideas? Home page; www.geraldmiller.com Sub page (ranking); www.geraldmiller.com/dwi-dui-defense

    | Webrevolve
    0
  • AaronHenry


    While I was doing research on UK Flower companies I noticed that one particular domain had great rankings (top 3), but has slid quite a bit down to page two. After investigating further I noticed that they had a drastic loss of referring pages, but an increase in total referring domains. See this screenshot from ahrefs. I took a look at their historical rankings (got them from the original SEO provider's portfolio) and compared it to the Wayback Machine. There did not seem to be any drastic changes in the site structure. My question is what would cause such a dramatic loss in total referring pages while showing a dramatic increase in referring domains? It appears that the SEO company was trying rebound from the loss of links though. Any thoughts on why this might happen? 56VD5jD

    | AaronHenry
    0
  • rasmusbang


    Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus

    | rasmusbang
    0
  • vernonmack


    Currently our blog has been used to add content to our site targeting desired keywords (fairly top-level). For example, if we wanted organic traffic for "Some City Contractors" (by no means a longtail), we would write a blog using this key term in the Title, url, a sub heading perhaps and a couple variations of the term throughout any subheadings or body copy. I think the idea was that since there was so much work to be done to get the static site pages optimized (rewriting that copy), we just decided to crank out fresh content                  targeting these high level KWs, assuming a search engine result is a result and as long as we got real estate there, a click and there was a link to the relevant site page in that article, we were golden (well, maybe not golden, but good). We are now building a new, responsive site and taking care to make sure that the site's relevant pages are nicely optimized. Higher level page are optimized for high-level KWs and sub pages target longer tail KWs identified in KW research. Along the way an SEO said it was bad that so many of our blogs were better optimized for key terms than the actual site pages (i.e. service pages, things you would find in the main nav.) This does make some sense to me so... So what is the new purpose for our blogs in this new age of Google and ever-increasing social influence? Should we forget about focusing on KWs already addressed within the site's core? Focus more on interesting, super long-tails that maybe don't have a ton of traffic, but are relevant (and oh by they way, something like 3 million terms are searched for the first time each day, right?)? Or forget the keywords, as long as the topic is relevant and interesting the real pay-off is in social interactions. I'm really interested to see if this results in clear-cut answer or more of a lengthy discussion...

    | vernonmack
    1
  • predatornutrition


    Over the last couple of years Google seems to be showing more and more irrelevant search results in the field I am based in (dietary supplements) with searches for products coming back with results which highlight US vendors. Given I am in google.co.uk and actually logged in as well, why is Google so far off with their results lately?

    | predatornutrition
    0
  • Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants


    I'm looking over a friends website, which used to have great natural ranking for some big keywords. Those ranking & CTR's have dropped a lot, so the next thing I checked into was top selling Brand & Category pages. Its seems like every year or so a New Page was constructed for each brand... Many of which have high quality and natural inbound links.  However, the pages no longer have products and simply look outdated.  I'm trying to figure out if they should place redirects on all the old pages to a new URL which is more seo friendly. Example Links : http://www.xyz.com/nike2004.html , http://www.xyz.com/nike-spring2006.html , http://www.xyz.com/2011-nike-shoes.html  - (have quality inbound links, bad content) .... Basically would it be advantageous to place redirects on all of these example pages to a new one that will be more permanent... http://www.xyz.com/nike-shoes.html  I'm also looking at about 15 brands and maybe 100+ old/outdated urls, so I wasn't sure if I should do this & to what extent.  Considering many of the brand pages do rank, but not as well as they should... Any input would help, thanks

    | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants
    0
  • godreamvacations


    Last year we fell off google rankings fairly quickly (mid-2013), out of the blue. We thought it was Penguin; but after looking at Analytic data of organic google visits; there seems to be no drastic loss of traffic at any time. Our site's loss of traffic is a gradual decline, not immediately noticeable, as in this video (~33:00 minutes in ). If there is no drop in organic google traffic that's noticeable, can I safely assume our drop in rankings wasn't due to an algorithm update?

    | godreamvacations
    0
  • vmialik


    http://www.wpkube.com/wordpress-seo-plugin/ this article just came out as a one of the many guides to Yoast's Wordpress SEO.  I am surprised it mentioned: Use meta keywords tag: Google reportedly doesn’t use the keywords that your enter for your posts but as Google isn’t the only show in town, you might want to check this box.Recommendation: check I stopped using meta keywords tag because Google doesn't use it any more, plus if you are in a competitive field by using keywords you are giving free keyword research to your competitors? Does any one still use meta keywords here? If so why? Google doesn't use keyword tags, has anyone experienced a dis-benefit to meta-keywords tag from Google ie. dropped rankings etc.?

    | vmialik
    2
  • kimmiedawn


    Who thinks the lack of media queries will have an impact on whether the page layout update affects a site?

    | kimmiedawn
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    I have a bunch of links on my site from sexualproblems.net (not a porn site, it's a legit doctor's site who I've talked to on the phone in America). The problem is his site got hacked and has tons of links on his homepage to other pages, and mine is one of them. I have asked him multiple times to take the link down, but his webmaster is his teenage son, who doesn't basically just doesn't feel like it. My question is, since I don't think they will take the link down, should I proactively remove it or just wait till I get a message from google? I'd rather not tell google I have spam links on my site, even if I am trying to get them removed. However, I have no idea if that's a legitimate fear or not. I could see the link being removed and everything continuing fine or I could see reporting the removal request as signaling a giant red flag for my site to be audited. Any advice? Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    I'm starting to see interactive snippets (I guess they're called islands) like the attached image in our SERPs, so I figured I would look into experimenting with them, but I'm not entirely clear how to proceed. I have only seen them in adwords, so is that the only way you can use them? Is there some way to set them up or some service you need to set them up organically? Lost, but intrigued, Ruben SW7ak4d.jpg

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0

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