Webcology

In a case related to the New York Times investigation into American company Devumi, a court has ruled that Devumi can no longer operate in the same way as it had been, essentially outlawing the sale of social media followers and likes. The chief executive of cryptocurrency company Quadriga CX has died, and he's apparently the only one with the ability to unlock all his customers' coins. Without their digital keys, his clients lose access to their funds. The company's board of directors said last week it is seeking creditor protection. Joost de Valk announced at YoastCon that the popular WordPress plugin, Yoast SEO, will provide live indexing with both Google and Bing starting next month. They explained on their blog "For Google the details on this are not entirely determined yet, but a Google Search Console account will probably be required." So it seems they aren't clear and for some reason, I doubt it would be the Indexing API because that is highly restricted to specific types of content.

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Google's John Mueller was asked on Twitter if there is a way in the new Google Search Console to remove old Sitemaps files. He said you can 404 them to remove them. Maybe Google will add a button to delete old Sitemap files there but for now, 404ing them will eventually get them to be removed. A new mic icon. Below are screens from Android on the left and the iPhone on the right, showing Google.com search results. The iPhone doesn’t show the mic, although the keyboard allows voice input. The search phrase is “what percentage of mobile queries are voice searches?” Beyond the microphone icon inside the search box, the major difference — a significant one — is that users will hear a spoken response now with Android mobile web searches rather than simply get a set of “silent” results. This voice response may encourage people to undertake more searches while their eyes are occupied, such as when they are cooking or driving.

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We saw this coming and now Google officially released a new sign up process for service area businesses, businesses that don't operate out of a specific location(s). Google now lets them specify the locations they service, instead of being stuck without any options. Google is testing a video overlay or lightbox feature to play videos in the mobile search results. In the search results captured by Valentin Pletzer on Twitter he showed how instead of being taken to the video landing page, Google shows the video itself in an overlay. Google has asked the National Labor Relations Board to reconsider rules allowing employees to organize over workplace email without fear of punishment, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. The Obama-era precedent restricts companies from disciplining employees who used internal email communication for actions such as circulating petitions, organizing walkouts, or trying to form a union, according to the report.

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In this episode Jim and Dave shared the mic with advertising legend, Terry O'Reilly.  They discussed how brands like Gillette and Nike make the decision to push the envelope in making social commentary in their ads, the risks involved and hot to mitigate then. They went on to discuss how technology is changing the way we live, destroying some sectors and creating new ones.  It was an episode you don't want to miss.Web hosting provider GoDaddy is inserting JavaScript code into websites, which could slow down performance or break sites altogether. A snippet of JavaScript code is being added to sites in order to use a technology called Real User Metrics (RUM). Google has finally fixed the exploit with the knowledge panel in their search results. It only took them about three years to do so, but it is fixed. You can no longer create fraudulent knowledge panels with this hack. YouTube announced it is strengthening enforcement of its community guidelines to protect users from people who abuse the platform. Enforcement refers to actions such as removing a video or issuing a strike for a video that violates YouTube’s policies. The company says it is ramping up its efforts in response to community feedback. YouTube is specifically strengthening enforcement in these three areas.

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Web hosting provider GoDaddy is inserting JavaScript code into websites, which could slow down performance or break sites altogether. A snippet of JavaScript code is being added to sites in order to use a technology called Real User Metrics (RUM). Google has finally fixed the exploit with the knowledge panel in their search results. It only took them about three years to do so, but it is fixed. You can no longer create fraudulent knowledge panels with this hack. YouTube announced it is strengthening enforcement of its community guidelines to protect users from people who abuse the platform. Enforcement refers to actions such as removing a video or issuing a strike for a video that violates YouTube’s policies. The company says it is ramping up its efforts in response to community feedback. YouTube is specifically strengthening enforcement in these three areas.

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A lot of news came out yesterday evening around an old Google knowledge panel exploit that let's you manipulate almost any query to show any knowledge panel. Yes, this is embarrassing for Google but even more so because it is something that was reported back in 2016. Have a lot of pages you want removed from the Google index and don't want to use the page removal tool for each URL? Google's John Mueller said you can try to 404 and noindex all the pages you want removed and then submit a temporary sitemap to Google. It might speed things up he said. With social shares on content down 50 percent since 2015, it’s feeling like a lost cause to even consider social media in your content plan. And we’ve all heard the age-old “social sharing buttons are dead” statements. Just like we’ve heard for SEO, content marketing, PPC, and just about every other marketing tactic that still works. The biggest gripes that tag along with social sharing buttons are often from marketers who use them wrong.

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Google can now link to some content it is showing in their search results in a new way. Instead of just linking to the page, Google can anchor you to the exact spot of the answer you are looking for and highlight the block of text that is most relevant to your query. This only works for some searches on Google mobile, that feature AMP content in the featured snippet block. Google is testing a bigger push for the messaging option within the local panel. Google launched messaging within Google My Business in July 2017. Google is now testing a way to promote messaging more to searchers in the local panel by using a larger message button. A few months ago, Google stopped showing Google Posts in the top location, somewhat above the fold, in the local panel for a business. That seemed to have led to Google Posts performance drastically dropping off. Now, Google may be testing moving the Google Posts back up.

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Today were joined by Michelle Stinson-Ross, the Director of Marketing Operations at Apogee Results to discuss a plethora of topics. Google has released its annual list of top searches around the world, including overall searches and searches in various categories. Top queries reflect everyday questions, as well as the people and events that made headlines in 2018. Certain events led to people searching for how to improve their everyday lives, Google notes.Google's John Mueller said that moving to a new hosting company doesn't cause ranking declines. Of course he means if the new hosting company doesn't prevent GoogleBot from crawling your site. But in general, moving hosts doesn't have a negative impact on your rankings. 

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Aaseesh from Google responded to a complaint about Google not picking up on a web site's canonical tags. He said that "even if you setup the canonical tags properly, other signals like inconsistent redirects can make Google not select your preferred URL". As you know, Search Engine Land was delisted from Google's search results for most of the day on Friday because a bug in Google's hack sites classifier labeled the site as being hacked. Colin McDermott ran a Twitter poll asking if Google should delist the site or just issue a warning. 2/3rds of those who responded said Google should just issue a warning. DuckDuckGo, a Google competitor, came out with a study that claimed Google's search results create what is known as a "filter bubble," this influencing what you click on and see. Google came to Twitter and defended themselves saying their personalization does not do that.

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Content, from an SEO perspective, is the connection of entities by relationships. In the statement, “SEO is dead” there is the entity “SEO”, there is the entity “dead” and there is the relationship that one connects to the other and the direction of the said relationship. Google's John Mueller confirmed yesterday in a video hangout that Google does not use the BBB, Better Business Bureaus score or reviews as well as other third-party trust sites in their ranking algorithm. So all that talk about making sure you have a good BBB score with the core updates is really completely unrelated to core search rankings. The other day, Google launched a new portal named web.dev that pretty much has lighthouse, another Google tool, results for your audit. One of the lighthouse results is an SEO score. Google just wants you to link naturally and not worry about linking out. If you want to link to a site because it is something your readers would find useful, then link away. John Mueller from Google said on Twitter "Just link naturally, no need to do anything fancy when linking to other articles in an organic way like that."

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