Latest SEO & Digital Marketing Articles
Changes to Nofollow, Rel=”Bull”
Google today (September 10th, 2019) announced some changes to their handling of nofollow. You can read all about it here. In a nutshell, we used to have the nofollow directive. Google are now moving towards a hint format. That’s important, because a directive is considered a firm command, whereas a…
More Zero Results SERPs Spotted in the Wild
Here we are, less than a week after being reassured that no further queries would end up having their organic search results removed, and twitter user Geoffrey Weg has spotted another, but this time its a product – NOT an information search: Query: “Lagavulin 16” (coincidentally, my absolute favorite whisky…
A brief history of all the times Nofollow didn’t change
Another day, another flip-flop from Google on the functionality and specification of nofollow… Lets look back at all the times it hasn’t changed in the last decade: Timeline January 2005: Google, Yahoo & MSN Announce NoFollow As reported in detail by Danny Sullivan (yes, now Google Search Liaison) NoFollow was…
Here’s a(nother) Scary Thing about Zero Results Serps
A full 48 hours after my post on zero results serps, and how they could be a fundamental issue to online marketers, we see a great example of how they could be weaponized in the not too distant future. Case in point (and no, this isn’t a Zero Result Serp,…
RIP Google, a ‘Search Engine’ from 1998-2018
History Back in the late 90’s, we had a choice of search engines: Altavista, Infoseek, Lycos, Dogpile and probably others I have long since forgotten. Then, with little warning or fanfare, a new competitor, “Google” showed up, offering far better search results, that initially baffled SEOs (an industry that was…
Is Direct Traffic a Ranking Factor?
Yesterday, SEMrush released an updated version of their June 2017 ranking factors report, again placing Direct Traffic right at the top of the list – stating that its the most important ranking factor for Google. You can (and should) download it here. Src: SEMrush.com For…