We had some actual news last week folks. Wow. We also have some stuff that I found interesting as well, and of course it’s all Google-centric, much like SEO itself, right? 😉 We also have notes from the State of Search conference as well!

Google News

• Search Console May Send Mobile-First Indexing Issue Messages In Wake Of Rollout – In a Hangout with John Mueller, he said that part of the rollout of the mobile-first index – whenever that may happen – might include messages in Search Console to warn webmasters of indexing issues relating to the algorithm. While not 100% confirmed, it’s good to know these might be coming for the sake of expectations. We’ll update you if we learn more.
• Google Not Done Announcing Algorithm Updates – Now that much of Google’s core algorithms seem to be in real-time or machine-based, they’ve not really been announcing algorithm updates with catchy names and such. Apparently this isn’t the end of these announcements, however, which is good because these help us explain to clients just what the heck is going on and make it appear like we know what we’re talking about.
• Penguin Pretty Much Runs On Autopilot – At the State of Search the other day, Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that, after some initial tweaking back in 2016, Penguin is now on autopilot, and they’re really happy with it. They apparently add to it every now and again, but don’t really tweak it much anymore. So this is how Skynet starts…

• Google To Help Publishers By Focusing On Subscriptions – Google’s relationship with publishers hasn’t been easy of late. Revenues aren’t doing great, and their first click thingy is not loved by either group. This is why some high-level Google folks met with publishers the other day to try and find common ground going forward. Now, Google says it’ll use machine learning to help present subscription offers to users rather than ads, for example. They also want to help make subscribing on a variety of devices easier. This should definitely help publishers who are trying to rely less on ad revenue (which is dwindling anyway) and more on subscriptions.
• Google Looking For Webmaster Videos For Q&A Series – Google is looking to revive its SEO Q&A video series, and needs submissions to make it happen, so follow the info in the linked article to find out how to submit your video!
• Danny Sullivan Joins Alphabet, Google’s Parent Company – Longtime SEO journalist Danny Sullivan has apparently joined Google as some sort of public liaison, according to his statement. Not sure exactly what that entails, but I’m sure we’ll find out.

And now some notes from State of Search from our own Bart Peters!

More Notes from Gary Illyes’ interview by Jennifer Slegg at State of Search

• Fred Update was a sarcastic name given by Gary to Barry Schwartz. Gary emphasized Google has about two updates a day and most aren’t actionable by site owners. If the updates are actionable they will update the Search Guidelines.
• In a question concerning the order of value for content, links, and RankBrain, Gary did say they are valuable but the order is determined by the query as well as the other 100 ranking factors.
• RankBrain mainly affects long tail queries where Google doesn’t have enough information on their ranking factors.
• 301 or 302? Gary said whatever, because both pass equal PageRank (emphasized the PageRank); this is a way to protect webmasters from themselves.
• Rewritten title tags: you can’t opt out and are query dependent. Google rewrites them because the original wasn’t answering the query. Again, this is to protect webmasters from themselves.

• Does not see value in pruning content because it could lead to decreased traffic and history; if it’s bad or spammy content, it would not be ranking. Wants people to improve the content on the page.
• Gary sees value in keeping comments on your site and not moving to social media. Google can use comments as part of the sentiment analysis of the site.
• Date Spam – if you keep changing the publish date, people will learn not to trust your date, so Google could always remove dates from your site’s search result. Best practice is just to publish the update date on the content.
• Feature Snippets – there is no update to guidelines because the extraction methods are still changing.
  • Google can extract answers even if question is just implied on the page.
  • Eric Enge and Dr. Pete’s reports on Featured Snippets have mostly figured out when Google implements this.

Google Search Console

• Beta not rolling out on mass scale because of scalability issues.
• Search Analytics 90 days of Data will get updated to a year when the new Search Analytics is implemented. Team was spurred by frustration of Greg Gifford’s rant at Google’s Dance.
• Voice Queries – currently live in Search Analytics; however, there is no filter for it in current UI, not a priority as getting everyone switched to new platform.

Mobile-First Index

• Currently testing sites and putting them into the index when they pass an internal test.
  • Built an internal Mobile First Readiness Detector. If site passes, it gets moved into mobile-first index.
  • You can see this in the search results if you have a m.site. Snippets are now coming from mobile versions.
  • Not going to launch in week, or month – want sites to pass the readiness, so that means there is not going to be a final launch date.
  • Biggest problems in moving to mobile-first is with mobile sites’ structure data, content, images, and hreflang that are missing or different from desktop sites.
• Hreflang canonical to desktop or mobile? Gary didn’t understand John Mueller’s diagram, so they are trying to dumb it down and once they agree let webmasters know.

Disavow Links/Linking

• With disavows, do what makes you feel better; however, Gary doesn’t disavow anything to his own personal site. If ranks are stable, you don’t need to worry about links.
• Purchasing links from top sites from emails like “get your story in Huffpost,” etc could cause problems. Most of those sites may not pass PageRank. But if you are buying, Google could give you a manual action for the purchasing.
• If you No Followed internal links, Gary sees this as being “batshit stupid.”
• Gary is not happy about No Following external links because it goes against what the internet is. Only No Follow links for sites you do not trust.
• Answering questions on forums with a brief answer and then linking to a deep dive article is what Gary actual does.

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