Category Archives: News

To make search engines more helpful and user friendly, Google has launched Google’s spam fighting update 4 known as Penguin 2.0. This update will be more demanding than Penguin version 1 and in particular will target black hat SEO and spamming. Basically this version is an algorithm update which concentrates on links pointing to websites. According to Matt Cutts – head of anti spam, Google; Penguin 2.0 has been designed to better the scenario of spamming game affecting only 2% of overall search enquiries. He is also of the view that this edition of update can go way beyond as compared to the previous one, affecting low profile SEO companies.

The update has been out for US – English as well as other major language queries. This is the fourth Penguin associated launch made by Google but since it is updated with significant changes, it has been termed as Penguin 2.0 internally. It is also said to be affecting the US – English queries by 2.3 % followed by non – English enquiries. It will serve as a great weapon for Google, against those sites that does not pay hint to Google’s guidelines.

In addition Penguin 2.0 will create advancements in authority indicators by emphasizing on the significance of social signals as a part of it. So the best way to avoid Google penalties is to clean up the backlinks along with producing high quality contents and articles.  

Google is giving another opportunity to all the webmasters to keep their sites’ content out of Google search results. This feature allows to opt the internet based advertising and selecting all the advertisements that you don’t want to see any more in your web page which are completely based on your browsing behavior, geographic locations and other selected or seen ads. Opting out of the ZEDO interest-based advertising means that you may see ads multiple times, and that are targeted to users located anywhere in the world.

The behavioral ad sector’s self-regulatory group in who has Google as its member has taken an initiative quiets concerns about cookie-based tools that allow consumers to opt-out from ad targeting. The new downloadable software from the Network Advertising Initiative acts as a browser-based hub for managing ad network opt-outs.

This action from Google is to pacify consumer privacy watchdogs through a dashboard showing information the firm has gathered on individual users. Some of the ads you receive on Web pages are customized based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different Web sites. This type of ad customization — sometimes called “online behavioral” or “interest-based” advertising — is enabled through your computer browser and browser cookies. Such online advertising helps support the free content, products and services you get online.

Now the webmasters can opt out internet based advertising from all the participating companies.

• Find out which participating companies have currently enabled customized ads for your browser;
• See all NAI members and learn more about their advertising and privacy practices;
• Check whether you’ve already opted out from member companies;
• Opt out of browser-enabled interest-based advertising by some or all members, using opt-out cookies to store your preferences in your browser; or
• Use the “Choose All Companies” feature to opt out from all currently participating companies in one step.

Another Google Panda Update on 15^th March, 2013 to wake up all the SEO specialist and webmasters. Officially there is no confirmation about the Update till today but Matt Cutt distinguished engineer at Google, has announced about this update on 15^th march. It is going to be the 25^th update from Google officials since February 2011. It is accumulated that soon Google will launch its penguin update too in this year and it might bring lot changes in SEO strategies of all webmasters. Matt also confirmed that Google targeted another link network a couple weeks ago, and says they will release another one within the next week or two.

Google has suggested all to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. It is suggested to have best links that most links in your site. It seems like the Panda update started actually yesterday afternoon and is continuing to propagate throughout now. The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of SEOs and Webmasters claiming rank changes for better or worse.

The last Panda update we had confirmation on was Panda #24, so this one would be coined Panda version 25.

Here are all the releases so far for Panda:

1. Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Google announced his first page rank update of 2013 on February 4^th  .  This is great news for all bloggers and webmasters who have good ranks by Google and get profited by their quality of backlinks. Google Page Rank Update has come after 3 months, last one was in November and now in February. With Panda, Penguin and EMD updates Google has slammed down many sites in 2012 with its new algorithms and methods of checking all the inbound as well as outbound links. This has helped a lot in framing the accurate and appropriate sites at a good place in SERP and eliminated low authority pages and links from its search engine. Google Page rank is really important factor to upgrade or degrade the site in internet world.

Google page rank Update of February was very much expected by all the SEO experts and bloggers as Google has a tradition now to launch updates in every two or three months. Every time Page Rank Update comes to the myth that Page Rank only depends on the backlinks but that’s not true, page Rank is a factor which depends on many things like quality of a content, High Quality Guest Posting, Directory Submission, Unique Blog Comments, Forum Posting (Avoid Spam), Submit RSS Feed To RSS Directories, Social Bookmarking, Search Engine Optimization.

If your Page Rank is PR2 than it denotes that Google consider your site and if it is lower than that it is very low profile site which is not even commendable in Google’s eye. PR 3,4 ,5 are actually great PRs for a site to earn really good reputation and prove itself a quality site in search engines. Congratulations for the blogs and site which have got good PRs from Google and best of luck for other sites for further Page Rank Update from Google. It is expected that next Page Rank Update will come around in May and further on.

Google is determined to weed out low quality websites from its search results and for this it is well active and rolls out Google Panda Updates in every four weeks as per the last three updates now. In year 2013, this is Google’s first update which has given Goosebumps to bloggers and SEO experts. Though it has a very minor effect and it has hardly affected 1.2% of English search queries worldwide. 24^th Google panda Algorithm update changes will soon be realized by you.  It may possible that your site will face dramatic decrease in ranking and traffic due to the effects of this update, or it may get bumped up as well because of the effects on your competitors.

A week ago, Google declined about any Algorithm update and it calmed the webmasters but without delaying much Google officially announced its update on Twitter. Google panda 24 update on January 22^nd, 2013 has refreshed the data and many webmasters are getting low traffic to their websites. On the other hand, many Bloggers have witnessed decent increase in their traffic as well as SERP Ranking.

Latest Google Panda Algorithm Updates:

1. Panda#23 on December 21st. 1.3% of English queries.
2. Panda #22 on November 21st. 0.8% of English queries were affected
3. Panda Update #21 on November 5th, less than 1.1% queries
4. Panda Update #20 on September 27th, 2.4% English queries.
5. Panda 3.9.2 on September 18th, affected less than 0.8% queries.
6. Panda 3.9.1 on August 20th, about 1% queries affected.

Google Confirms Panda Refresh Version 23, impacting ~1.3% of Queries

Impacting about 1.3% of English queries on the worldwide web, the tech giant Google has confirmed a new update to its Search result ranking algorithm, Google Panda. Since its first release in February 2011, the Google Panda has now reached to it 23^rd version. All the changes and 22 updates till now had happened both to the algorithm and index or data refreshes.

Confirming their 23^rd Google Panda update on its twitter account, Google took the major step adhering to the latest impact of 1.3% on English queries which had counted only 0.8% by version 22.

A week ago, Google did see signs of update to their Search Result algorithm but there wasn’t any update or confirmation. But due to early signs of update at Search Engine Roundtable, Google had to make the required update and later confirmed it on social media website, Twitter.

The 23rd Google Panda update came as a shock to many before Christmas. It was only last year, Google had promised they would not go for updating Panda Algorithm or data refreshes before holidays. But it seems they couldn’t wait. To many of the Webmasters, Google still seems clueless or lying.

Google Panda Update Till Date

We’ve had a string of updates since then, as follows, along with the percentage of queries Google said would be impacted:

1. Panda Update 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 2.1, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 2.2, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 2.3, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 2.4, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 2.5, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 3.1, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 3.2, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 3.3, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 3.4, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 3.5, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 3.6, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 3.7, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 3.8, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 3.9, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 3.91, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 3.92, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Google Panda Update 20 Released, 2.4% Of English Queries Impacted
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

Make your .htaccess file more powerful with the useful SEO tips which can bring drastic changes in your SEO strategies. If there is anyone who are not aware about .htaccess file, the htaccess file is a type of config file for the Apache server which allows you to manipulate and redirect URLs amongst other things. All the tips are quite useful but specifically number 4 which is about the redirection which will be loved by SEO specialist and serve them in good manner.  The small changes can bring big results. Apply the tips in your .htaccess file and see the results.

1.      Make URLs SEO-friendly and future-proof
A SEO friendly URL which allows you to better understand the structure of the file and allow you signifies the products with the help of slashes. Apache identifies files and how to handle them by their extensions, which we can override on a file by file basis:
<Files magic>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php5
</Files>
This will allow the ‘magic’ file, which is a PHP file without an extension, to then look like a folder and handle the ‘inner’ folders as parameters. You can test it out here (try changing the folder names inside the magic ‘folder’

2.      Apply rel=”canonical” to PDFs and images
One of the new ways to attach images to the content is by applying rel=”canonical” to PDF’s. It is one of the easiest tags of HTML which comes under head section. However, many people still don’t know that you can apply rel=”canonical” in an alternative way, using HTTP, for cases where there is no HTML to insert a tag into. An often cited example that can be used for applying rel=”canonical” to PDFs is to point to an HTML version or to the download page for a PDF document. An alternative use would be for applying rel=”canonical” to image files. It is much useful as rel=”canonical” links to images to the product page are able to connect user to the product page and proved much reasonable.
Here is an example of applying HTTP rel=”canonical” to a PDF and a JPG file:
<Files download.pdf>
Header add Link ‘<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/pdf-download.html>; rel=”canonical”‘
</Files>
<Files product.jpg>
Header add Link ‘<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/product-page.html>; rel=”canonical”‘
</Files>
We could also use some variables magic (you didn’t know .htaccess could do variables!?) to apply this to all PDFs in a folder, linking back the HTML page with the same name (be careful with this if you are unsure):
RewriteRule ([^/]+).pdf$ – [E=FILENAME:$1]
<FilesMatch “.pdf$”>
Header add Link ‘<http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/httest/%{FILENAME}e.html>; rel=”canonical”‘
</FilesMatch>

3.      Robots directives
Search engines will index a page unless you stop them to access the page. Even if you have blocked your page with robot.txt, Google might still index it if it has lot of links pointing to it. Here also, you can save yourself with the .htaccess snippet. You can apply directives to all files in a directory by creating an .htaccess file in that directory and adding this command:
Header set X-Robots-Tag “noindex, noarchive, nosnippet”

4.      Various types of redirect
The common SEO redirect is ensuring that a canonical domain is used, normally www vs. non-www. There are also a couple of other redirects you might find useful. I have kept them simple here, but often times you will want to combine these to ensure you avoid chaining redirects:
# Ensure www on all URLs.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

# Ensure we are using HTTPS version of the site.
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# Ensure all URLs have a trailing slash.
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

5.      Custom 404 error page
A custom 404 error page will entertain your visitor even after the broken URL. This page will even redirect the user to get back on track instead of a white error page with black techno babble. You can also end up getting lots of links and traffic if you but your time and effort into a cool 404 page, like Distilled’s:
This is very easy to setup with .htaccess:
ErrorDocument 404 /cool404.html
# Can also do the same for other errors…
ErrorDocument 500 /cool500.html

6.      Send the Vary header to help crawl mobile content
As mobile is another important source of Goggling and you are having a single URL to serve on main as well as on mobile. Then using responsive design you are altering the HTML, then you should be using the ‘Vary’ header to let Google know that the HTML changes for mobile users. It will help your Google to crawl and index your pages appropriately.

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Again, this is pretty simple to achieve with your .htaccess file, independent of your CMS or however you are implementing the HTML variations:  Header append Vary User-Agent

7.      Improve caching for better site speed
For better speed in main and specifically in mobiles as much visitors are coming from mobile networks. Before implementing this code to your snippet be sure about the caching system or caching length in your system to make sure about the speed. However, if you want a quick and easy solution to set the number of seconds, you can use the below. Here I set static files to cache for 24 hours:
<FilesMatch “.(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf|js|css|pdf)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “max-age=28800″
</FilesMatch>

8.      An Apple-style ‘Back Soon’ maintenance page
Like an Apple famous shows “Back Soon” when they are planning for some new products and not in the market for stint. The message when you are doing the significant changes to redirect users to such pages is the best and useful at that time.
With this bit of .htaccess goodness, you can redirect people based on their IP address, so you can redirect everyone but your IP address and 127.0.0.1 (this is a special ‘home’ IP address):
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}  !your_ip_address
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}  !127.0.0.1
RewriteRule !offline.php$ http://www.example.com/back_soon.html [L,R=307]

9.      Smarten up your URLs even when your CMS says “No!”
One of the biggest complaints I hear amongst SEOs is about how much this or that CMS “sucks.” It can be intensely frustrating for an SEO when they are hampered by the restraints of a certain CMS, and one of those constraints is often that you are stuck with appaling URLs.
You can overcome this, turning product.php?id=3123 into /ray-guns/ in no time at all:
# Rewrite a specific product…
RewriteRule ray-guns/ product.php?id=3123

# … or groups of them
RewriteRule product/([0-9]+)/ product.php?id=$1
This won’t prevent people from visiting the crappy versions of the URLs, but combined with other redirects (based on IP) or with judicious use of rel=”canonical,” you improve the situation tremendously. Don’t forget to update your internal links to the new ones.

10.  Recruit via your HTTP headers
A HTTP header which can be very useful to send your message to the viewer with just a simple statement like “Email us for solution” or Get connected.  A custom header which is appropriate for your site and dose not even takes much space from you.

At the PubCon conference in Las Vegas, Google has released “Disavow Links” tools, to allow webmaster dump the spam links of the sites which are hurting their ranking in search engines. Matt Cutts, head of Web spam at Google has said “We build our algorithms such that in most cases we handle things just fine. It’s also an advanced tool, so be careful”.

Basically, this Disavow Links tool is all about “unnatural links” on your sites which are affecting your sites ranking on search engines.  Google has invented this tool to select the reputable, important and relevant links to your sites. If you’ve ever been caught up in link spam, you may have seen a message in Webmaster Tools about “unnatural links” pointing to your site. Whenever Google sees evidence of paid links, link exchanges, or other link schemes that violate the quality of Google searching algorithm, Google send you the message of unnatural links. This is one of the best approaches to eliminate the problems from root and secure actions in future from all the search engines.

Google has released this disavow links tool and asked to site owners that “If you believe your site’s ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site. And if you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links, and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a good time to visit our new Disavow links page. When you arrive, you’ll first select your site.”

Official Warning by Google

“This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool.“

The new Disavow link tool is for the websites which have already been warned by Google for unnatural links. It can have any reason like bad SEO gamers and all who just run their firm only on typical SEO techniques. But the head of web spam in Google, Cutts has recommended to contact these websites to get the links removed manually. But with the new tool, a simple text file can be used to ask Google to ignore the link to a specific site, and any related domains as well. This Disavow link of Google is not for free and if you get it even after paying the amount and later on realized that you have done a mistake. Then it’s really hard for you to get reinstated Google will be doing extensive checks on the validity of the claim, so it may be a number of weeks before the link returns, if it ever does.

With the 2.4% impacts on English search engine queries and more. Google has come up with his new Panda Update which has named as Google Panda Update 20. Google has confirmed that this update is not just a data update but an algorithm update which has already affected about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice.  It seems that there is more about this update which can roll out in 3-4 days as per the comments Google’s Matt Cutts.

He has confirmed that Google Panda update which has been released on 9/27 has lot more to come as it is more than a data update. Not only English search queries have affected but French, Spanish and other also has seen the impact of 0.5% in search queries. It will continue for 3, 4 days more but the sad part is that there are other sites also which has been affected by Panda update but it is elusive which Update has affected it.

Google panda Update Till Date

We’ve had a string of updates since then, as follows, along with the percentage of queries Google said would be impacted:

1. Panda Update 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 2.1, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 2.2, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 2.3, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 2.4, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 2.5, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 3.1, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 3.2, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 3.3, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 3.4, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 3.5, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 3.6, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 3.7, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 3.8, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 3.9, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 3.91, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 3.92, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Google Panda Update 20 Released, 2.4% Of English Queries Impacted

Google has come up with his new invention to solve the most significant issue of websites. It’s hard to analysis one site 24*7 as it is quite time consuming and not practical thing to analysis the problems.  Google has found the remedy for it and that is incorporating alerts in webmaster tools.  The web master tools of Google will process the data and will detect the most important issues of your site.

There are many errors like Crawl Error and etc. but today Google has come up with alerts for search queries.  The webmaster tool will let you know search queries features among other things like impression and clicks for top pages.  It is always disturbing to see the sudden changes in the site and Google webmaster tool alert will give you reasons for the change. A change can occur due to any reason like technical or demand for new content on the page which can be resolved after acknowledging the issue. Search queries alerts in webmaster tool will give you detail about broken redirects or any other technical issue which must be investigated before it cause a big problem for the site.

Image of Alert in search engine alert webmaster tool