Google will block access to its autocomplete API to unauthorised users starting from 10 August 2015.

When asked about the move, Google explained: "We built autocomplete as a complement to Search, and never intended that it would exist disconnected from the purpose of anticipating user search queries.

"Over time we’ve realized that, while we can conceive uses for an autocomplete data feed outside search results that may be valuable, overall the content of our automatic completions are optimized and intended to be used in conjunction with web search results and, outside the context of a web search, don’t provide a meaningful user benefit."

There have been several games and other sites created using the API with the idea of guessing exactly what Google would come up with for certain combinations of words.

The complete picture for the service is that it was originally designed for use only within the context of the Google Search itself. The API has remained unofficially available, but hasn't really been part of the official Google offering.

Google goes on to say: "In the interest of maintaining the integrity of autocomplete as part of Search, we will be restricting unauthorized access to the unpublished autocomplete API as of 10 August 2015.

"We want to ensure that users experience autocomplete as it was designed to be used - as a service closely tied to Search. We believe this provides the best user experience for both services."

Anyone who wants to make use of the autocomplete feature in the way they see fit can still do so using the Google Custom Search feature for their own site.

The API came about as a result of reverse engineering by the community and this hasn't always been a bad thing. The Google Maps API also began unofficially before eventually being adopted (and licensed for a charge) by Google.

Earlier this year, Google killed off the YouTube v2 API pulling down support for a number of smart devices which relied on it.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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Last-Minute SEO - Here Come the Holidays!
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As we noted earlier this year, today’s the day we begin globally rolling out our mobile-friendly update. We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.

This update:

• Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
• Affects search results in all languages globally 
• Applies to individual pages, not entire websites

While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query. 

To check if your site is mobile-friendly, you can examine individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or check the status of your entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search. But have no fear, once your site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process (i.e., crawl and index) your pages.  You can also expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index, and then your pages can be treated as mobile-friendly in ranking.

Questions? See our FAQ or ask on the Mobile Websites section of the Webmaster Forum. 

Google seems to have made an update to their local search ranking factors, where many local SEO experts and reporters are noticing major shifts in the local results.

Days after Google apologized for the Google Maps Googlebomb racist results, it seems the local search results have drastically shifted. It is unclear if it is related to the Google Maps Googlebomb algorithm update or something else.

We have tons of local SEOs reporting major shifts in the local results including Mike Blumenthal who said the location results are screwy, showing examples of how Google is having issues with showing your current location when searching. But it goes beyond that, it seems that even when the location is set properly, the local results displayed in the web search results are off.

Linda Buquet in the Local Search Forums said there are now more national organic and less localized organic results showing up in the Google search results. She is noticing so many different changes recently that it is to the point of scary.

Jennifer Slegg asks if this is related to the Google Quality Update or something else? She analyzed the Mozcast features chart showing even that report shows major changes.

But Mozcast shows changes from the 15th and it seems, based on what I am seeing, the changed didn’t start until the 23rd or 24th of May, which was well after the 15th and shortly after Google’s apology.

Google said then:

We’ve started to update our ranking system to address the majority of these searches—this will gradually roll out globally and we’ll continue to refine our systems over time.

I suspect whatever we are seeing in Google’s local results now, is directly related to this Google Maps bomb.

We have asked Google for a comment on these changes and will report back when we hear something on the record.

Postscript: See our later story named Google Won’t Say If Google Local Changes Due To Googlebomb Fix.

Read More: Click Here

Like many other areas of marketing, SEO incorporates elements of science. It becomes problematic for everyone, though, when theories that haven't been the subject of real scientific rigor are passed off as proven facts. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Stone Temple Consulting's Mark Traphagen is here to teach us a thing or two about the scientific method and how it can be applied to our day-to-day work.

Becoming Better SEO Scientists Whiteboard

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard.

Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Video transcription

Howdy, Mozzers. Mark Traphagen from Stone Temple Consulting here today to share with you how to become a better SEO scientist. We know that SEO is a science in a lot of ways, and everything I'm going to say today applies not only to SEO, but testing things like your AdWords, how does that work, quality scores. There's a lot of different applications you can make in marketing, but we'll focus on the SEO world because that's where we do a lot of testing. What I want to talk to you about today is how that really is a science and how we need to bring better science in it to get better results.

The reason is in astrophysics, things like that we know there's something that they're talking about these days called dark matter, and dark matter is something that we know it's there. It's pretty much accepted that it's there. We can't see it. We can't measure it directly. We don't even know what it is. We can't even imagine what it is yet, and yet we know it's there because we see its effect on things like gravity and mass. Its effects are everywhere. And that's a lot like search engines, isn't it? It's like Google or Bing. We see the effects, but we don't see inside the machine. We don't know exactly what's happening in there.

An artist's depiction of how search engines work.

So what do we do? We do experiments. We do tests to try to figure that out, to see the effects, and from the effects outside we can make better guesses about what's going on inside and do a better job of giving those search engines what they need to connect us with our customers and prospects. That's the goal in the end.

Now, the problem is there's a lot of testing going on out there, a lot of experiments that maybe aren't being run very well. They're not being run according to scientific principles that have been proven over centuries to get the best possible results.

Basic data science in 10 steps

So today I want to give you just very quickly 10 basic things that a real scientist goes through on their way to trying to give you better data. Let's see what we can do with those in our SEO testing in the future.

So let's start with number one. You've got to start with a hypothesis. Your hypothesis is the question that you want to solve. You always start with that, a good question in mind, and it's got to be relatively narrow. You've got to narrow it down to something very specific. Something like how does time on page effect rankings, that's pretty narrow. That's very specific. That's a good question. Might be able to test that. But something like how do social signals effect rankings, that's too broad. You've got to narrow it down. Get it down to one simple question.

Then you choose a variable that you're going to test. Out of all the things that you could do, that you could play with or you could tweak, you should choose one thing or at least a very few things that you're going to tweak and say, "When we tweak this, when we change this, when we do this one thing, what happens? Does it change anything out there in the world that we are looking at?" That's the variable.

The next step is to set a sample group. Where are you going to gather the data from? Where is it going to come from? That's the world that you're working in here. Out of all the possible data that's out there, where are you going to gather your data and how much? That's the small circle within the big circle. Now even though it's smaller, you're probably not going to get all the data in the world. You're not going to scrape every search ranking that's possible or visit every URL.

You've got to ask yourself, "Is it large enough that we're at least going to get some validity?" If I wanted to find out what is the typical person in Seattle and I might walk through just one part of the Moz offices here, I'd get some kind of view. But is that a typical, average person from Seattle? I've been around here at Moz. Probably not. But this was large enough.

Also, it should be randomized as much as possible. Again, going back to that example, if I just stayed here within the walls of Moz and do research about Mozzers, I'd learn a lot about what Mozzers do, what Mozzers think, how they behave. But that may or may not be applicable to the larger world outside, so you randomized.

We want to control. So we've got our sample group. If possible, it's always good to have another sample group that you don't do anything to. You do not manipulate the variable in that group. Now, why do you have that? You have that so that you can say, to some extent, if we saw a change when we manipulated our variable and we did not see it in the control group, the same thing didn't happen, more likely it's not just part of the natural things that happen in the world or in the search engine.

If possible, even better you want to make that what scientists call double blind, which means that even you the experimenter don't know who that control group is out of all the SERPs that you're looking at or whatever it is. As careful as you might be and honest as you might be, you can end up manipulating the results if you know who is who within the test group? It's not going to apply to every test that we do in SEO, but a good thing to have in mind as you work on that.

Next, very quickly, duration. How long does it have to be? Is there sufficient time? If you're just testing like if I share a URL to Google +, how quickly does it get indexed in the SERPs, you might only need a day on that because typically it takes less than a day in that case. But if you're looking at seasonality effects, you might need to go over several years to get a good test on that.

Let's move to the second group here. The sixth thing keep a clean lab. Now what that means is try as much as possible to keep anything that might be dirtying your results, any kind of variables creeping in that you didn't want to have in the test. Hard to do, especially in what we're testing, but do the best you can to keep out the dirt.

Manipulate only one variable. Out of all the things that you could tweak or change choose one thing or a very small set of things. That will give more accuracy to your test. The more variables that you change, the more other effects and inner effects that are going to happen that you may not be accounting for and are going to muddy your results.

Make sure you have statistical validity when you go to analyze those results. Now that's beyond the scope of this little talk, but you can read up on that. Or even better, if you are able to, hire somebody or work with somebody who is a trained data scientist or has training in statistics so they can look at your evaluation and say the correlations or whatever you're seeing, "Does it have a statistical significance?" Very important.

Transparency. As much as possible, share with the world your data set, your full results, your methodology. What did you do? How did you set up the study? That's going to be important to our last step here, which is replication and falsification, one of the most important parts of any scientific process.

So what you want to invite is, hey we did this study. We did this test. Here's what we found. Here's how we did it. Here's the data. If other people ask the same question again and run the same kind of test, do they get the same results? Somebody runs it again, do they get the same results? Even better, if you have some people out there who say, "I don't think you're right about that because I think you missed this, and I'm going to throw this in and see what happens," aha they falsify. That might make you feel like you failed, but it's success because in the end what are we after? We're after the truth about what really works.

Think about your next test, your next experiment that you do. How can you apply these 10 principles to do better testing, get better results, and have better marketing? 

Read More Click Here

For those who deal with SEO and blogging, Google panda and Google penguin should not be something new to them. Ever since these updates were introduced, there has been strong buzz on how to develop the perfect search engine optimization plan, so that websites have their dues in rankings. Moving forward, here is a close take Panda and penguin, the two most discussed Google updates, and the difference between the two.

What is Google Panda

Google launched Panda in February 2011, mainly as a change in its search results ranking algorithm. The main purpose of the update was just to keep those low quality and low content sites away from the top ranking results and give the actual quality sites their due.

As an obvious result, many websites with huge amount of advertising, or those with low quality content, saw a huge decline in the rankings. Ever since Panda was launched, there have been many updates to it ranging to over 22 in total.

What is Google Penguin

Another algorithm update from Google that gave SEO experts another blow was Penguin that was launched in April 2012. The idea underlying the update was simple enough- penalize and decrease the rankings of sites that breach Google’s Webmaster Guidelines set the by the search engine.

This included lowering the search engine rankings of all those sites that practice black-hat SEO techniques like duplicate content, keyword stuffing and cloaking to name a few.

Attributes	Google Panda	Google Penguin
The Idea	Penalize websites of low quality and those with low quality content.It is first introduced in 24thFebruary, 2011 with the name of Farmer Update in USA.	Bring down websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and use  black-hat SEO techniques
Date of First update	February 2011	April 2012
Also Known as	Farmer Update	Over Optimization Penalty.
Number of updates	Panda had over 24updates till March 2013, last being on Jan 22, 2013.	Penguin had just three updates since its launch in April last year.
Purpose	Bring the high quality and content sites on the top of search engine rankings	Bring the high quality and content sites on the top of search engine rankings
Surviving the algorithm change	There are no two ways about surviving Panda than to make an update in the website and get rid of all those low quality pages, content and keywords. Over-optimized pages need to be checked. Websites that have been hit by Panda need to work on brand awareness and social media networks in a new campaign. The webpage(s) that have been affected need to be isolated from those that weren’t harmed.	Black hat SEO techniques need to be abolished because Penguin is smart enough to deal with all websites indulging in these practices. Avoid excessive link building, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, and meaningless and irrelevant content. Creating content for other blogs and websites and socializing content. Relevant use of keywords and absolute refrain from all kinds of stuffing.
Google released any tool to recover ?	NO	Google introduced A new tool called “disavow links tool” – see the Google webmaster central blogpost
Recovery choices for websites	Panda is basically an on-page problem, so the main changes need to be on the website. Check for pages with no or little content, as well as, for plagiarism. Creating elaborative pages with FAQs and more for a website should help.	Check for the links to find if there are from the same domain name or IP address, so that links don’t look like purchased. The links should not just be direct links to the website, because websites that have followed such polices have seen dip in the rankings. Disavow tool can be helpful in getting rid of too many links that are just associated with the keywords. Penguin genuinely focuses on penalizing unnatural links that are causing changes in the search results intentionally.
How do The algorithms affect a site?	It is possible that an entire site is affected through panda. Usually single pages of a website are not targeted in the algorithm. Panda doesn’t look for think contents but the overall content, so in websites where little original content and more duplicate or thin contents are present, those are likely to be fully penalized.	Penguin generally affects one part of the website on a page and keyword level. Unless spammed for too much keyword usage on the entire, Penguin doesn’t damage the entire site.
Does a recovery request help?	No, because the changes are overall.	No, unless a manual warning is issued, and even in such warnings, recovering is next to impossible.
Does manual removal of links needed?	No, because content is more important here.	If time permits and one wants to avoid relying totally on Disavow tool, then definitely manual link removal is helpful.
By when sites can recover?	If the duplicate and thin content has been done away with, then probably by the next refresh.	Should take time in recovering as refreshing is not frequent. Google has announced an update but with no date specified.
Detailed tips and tricks to recover	Tips to recover from Google panda	Tips to recover from Google penguin
When is the next update ?	No idea	4th penguin update going to happen soon in the month of May, 2013. source : Matt Cutts Twitter

Even though the magnitude of the updates seems to be low in comparison to the results they generated, there is no denying that SEO experts and webmasters have a lot to cope with. With content getting the topmost priority, there is no possibility of any kind of trick in the current scenario!

Still if you are confused about these Google search updates and wanted some personal tips and tricks then contact us and we will try to help and guide you :)

The Google update from yesterday was a core ranking change, something Google does throughout the year. This was not Panda-, Penguin- or HTTPS-related.

Yesterday, I reported on some SEO chatter around a possible Google update. Google has confirmed with us that this was an update to the core search algorithm and nothing related to the Panda algorithm that we are expecting to see updated shortly. In addition, Google told us to expect core search algorithm updates in the future as they continue to work on making search quality better.

Google sent us this statement:


This is not a Panda update. As you know, we’re always making improvements to our search algorithms and the web is constantly evolving. We’re going to continue to work on improvements across the board.
This echoes a similar statement Google sent us back with what we coined the Google Quality Update, so I wouldn’t be surprised if what some of the SEO community noticed was around changes to that core search algorithm from May 1st.

The interesting part is that many of the automated tracking tools such as Mozcast showed huge spikes in terms of changes happening in the Google search results. Initially Dr. Pete Meyers thought that maybe the HTTPS algorithm was updated and given more weight, but Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that this was not the case. I suspect the reason so many tools showed a spike this week was related to the number one Google search result, Wikipedia, changing all its URLs to go HTTPS this week, which ultimately changed so many 1-5 Google search results, causing the tools to spike.

So from what we know, this was not Panda, not HTTPS and also not Penguin. It was simply a normal Google core search update where Google won’t give us any details on.

Online business marketing depends on the implementation of proper tools in search engine optimization. One of the greatest ways to check your site’s progress is by knowing your page authority.

Page authority is an SEO term used to describe the probability that a specific page from your site will be found on a search engine. Page authority is based on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100 and deals with the relevance of information and links within site pages to one another. Higher page authority means greater chances of your page showing up on search engines, and that your page will be placed closer to the top of the search results. Note that page authority is related to the pages within sites, not the site itself.

How Can I Improve My Page Authority?

With search engine algorithms constantly changing, everyone wants to know the secret to getting their page ranked the highest! However, the truth is that there is no secret. Google has released thousands of patents on the algorithm that help tell us how the ranking works. SEO experts have searched for a pattern in how sites can gain more page authority and become ranked higher, and have dug into the depths of Google’s process to determine the keys to successfully increase your page authority. A few of the factors which are thought to influence the ranking include:

Fresh, usable content

Search engine optimization was at one point thought to be all about the keywords. Websites would flood their pages with relevant keywords to increase their ranking on search engines. The downside was that the content became less user-friendly, and more of a nuisance than anything. Over the years, Google has striven to weed-out these sites and increase the ranking of sites with fresh content that would be applicable for browsers.

As SEO experts previously said, content is king. Search engines now tend to rank sites higher with content that is:

new and interestingupdated frequentlydetailed, relevant and usefulqualifiedeasy and fun to read

Links to your pages

Having great information on your pages not only attracts new browsers to your site and assures returning browsers, but it can also be beneficial in building your reputation as others link to your page. Creating links to your page from other sites is a great way to ramp up your page authority. These links raise awareness for your site, and when used properly can increase traffic to your page. Having websites owned by others link to your page isn’t always the easiest; however, remembering to create useful information can improve your chances of someone referencing your page.

Images

Text isn’t the only important factor in SEO! With search engine capabilities to browse for images, these graphics are more important than ever. But how can people find your site through images? Incorporate related images into your pages and include descriptive ALT text so that these images can be found on search engines. More traffic to the image will generate more traffic to your site.

While other factors continue to play a role in page authority, including these few simple ideas will help get you started in the right direction.

Google has updated Hangouts for iOS today with a handful of new features and what it says is an overall improved user experience.

You’ll notice some UI tweaks throughout, like a new menu button in the contact list and a button for quickly starting new conversations. In addition, chat bubbles get a refreshed look, as does the UI for video chat (pictured above). Also new is the ability to attach and send multiple photos at the same time.

Google notes that it’s given the app a brand new attachments UI, which provides users quick access to buttons for photo attachments, location sharing, and emotions. The dialler has also been refreshed to create a better experience.

The updated Google Hangouts app, version 4.0.0, is available for iPhone and iPad now.

This weeks news has some drastic changes to the search landscape that could mean… Well, anything really. There’s also some smaller news about Google which is worth mentioning, so let’s dive in:
Microsoft Bing to power AOL Search

AOL Search, while relatively small, is still a thing. Microsoft just signed a deal to power it for the next 10 years, while giving a big part of their ads business to AOL. What’s more surprising to me is this news that came out on the side: Bing is now sustainable in itself. Microsoft has been pouring money into it for quite a while, as far as “we” knew, but now apparently “It’s a multibillion dollar business, and it does pay for itself”. Good news as that means they’ll keep on competing with Google!
Yahoo! testing Google

Yahoo! is testing Google as a provider for it’s search results, instead of Bing. First noticed by Aaron Wall at SEOBook, this could have quite some impact. SEOs should really watch what happens here mostly because it impacts how much traffic a good ranking in Google will give you. The reasoning is probably simple: Google ads are worth much more than Bing ads, so this would increase Google’s revenue. The fact that Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is an ex-Googler probably doesn’t hurt in this deal either.
DuckDuckGo expanding

To show that search is alive and vibrant even outside these three historical enemies, DuckDuckGo is expanding their “suggest” feature to 34 new regions. They’re not exactly a big traffic driver yet, but I’m very happy to see other options grow slowly too.
Google becoming smart about Search Console

Google has put out some questions that are interesting as they show what they’re thinking about. This post has details, but this sentence specifically made me happy “To view a combined Search Analytics report that includes different URL versions of your site (http and https).” Yes. Please. www and non-www too and we’re about done if we can also verify them all at once.
The Panda is a “couple of weeks” away, we think

Nothing more fun than guessing when a new update is going to hit. People at Google estimating when it might happen are usually wrong, but the latest is “a couple of weeks“. We’ll see. Just know that it’s coming. Just like Winter.
Google in other languages

If you think about how Google’s algorithm works a lot, you’re bound to think “but how does that work in language X”. Welcome to the world of a polyglot. This post has some interesting insights.
SEO at Pinterest

I’ve been meaning to share this article (which was written in January) for a while, and keep forgetting. It details how Pinterest experiments with SEO. Fun read, might give you some ideas for testing.

By now you’ve probably heard the news. Google has ended its Authorship program. For those of us who have been paying close attention to Google Authorship over the last year or so, this shouldn’t have come out nowhere.

During Pubcon 2013, Google’s Distinguished EngineerMatt Cutts delivered a keynote speech where he claimed that Google would be “looking for a 15% reduction to ensure that the quality of the authorship is still high and relevant.” By December Google made good on the promise as author photo snippets began to decrease.

By June, Google removed all author photos in global search. In a Google+ post, Google’s John Mueller stated that the decision to remove author photos was to simplify “the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results.”

More : www.recoveryclasses.com

Google has a long history of famous algorithm updates, search index changes and refreshes.

Below are links to some of the most important resources for search marketers:

• Google Hummingbird
• Google Panda Update
• Google Penguin Update
• Google Pigeon Update
• Google Payday Update
• Google Pirate Update
• Google EMD (Exact Match Domain) Update
• Google Top Heavy Update

Adding a dynamic countdown — to show the days until a deadline like a sale starting or registration period ending, for example — has gone through several iterations. There’s the countdown script, then Google debuted ad customizers with a countdown variable. Now Google is building on the ad customizer functionality with a new widget.

As soon as you type “{=” into a line of ad copy in the AdWords web interface, the widget will appear. Now just pug in the date and time the countdown ends and the days ahead of the countdown end date that you want your ads to start running.

The time zone defaults to the “Ad viewer’s time zone”, or you can change that to the time zone that the account is located in.

I happily stumbled on this update while setting up countdown ads, and it’s a big improvement over having to type the entire sequence in manually.
Know more:

As we know the Panda update is aimed to bring the judgment to the content farm and those sites which steal and duplicate, that means in order to prevent Panda from blacklisting you, you have to stop stealing other’s articles, and really focus on creating unique content.

Try to look at your place in your industry and say to yourself:

• “What is the topic that my readers will be interested about?”
• “What do I offer to my readers that are unique? What about my content is just here and nowhere else?”

Don’t copy or retype out the article from other site, but craft your article out with your own topic and opinion. Details? Check out our post on how to run blogs that inspire.
That sounds pretty much like old school SEO practice, you might ask? The answer is yes, but now it’s the most important SEO practice!

Google has recently updated their search engine algorithm with the latest Panda update. They have applied the changes in the US and it has created controversies and havoc in the internet industry. Now the question is, how will this change affect your site’s SEO once it is released all over the world?

Question mark on This
I for one am excited and at the same time a bit anxious on how it will affect some of my blogs. There have been some civilian casualties in the US such as Cult of Mac (which is a blog that discusses about Mac) and other seemingly innocent websites that do not practice content farming at all.
The question we need to ask ourselves is ‘if there have indeed been any civilian casualties, what are the chances that I might be one of them when the change is implemented in my country?’ The bigger question you need to ask yourself is, ‘how does this change affect my site’s SEO?’
The purpose of the Panda
The change is implemented in order to eliminate ‘low quality’ content, or in other words, spammy content trying to rank in the search engines. You have to understand that Google is only trying its best in eliminating results that are not relevant or not useful because its users have requested it.
The Panda update has affected sites like Mahalo, Ezine articles, Wisegeek and a lot of other websites. I was personally surprised that Ezine articles was affected because they do look over and edit their articles (they even reject some) – although perhaps quite loosely. Now they said that they’ll be more strict with the articles they are accepting.

More Details

I am seeing early but significant chatter this morning around Google algorithm and search results changes. Some are saying it is Penguin related and some are saying it is Panda related. It is too early to tell.
Panda does tend to refresh every few weeks or so but Penguin may still be rolling out and updating. So it is unclear.
Folks at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World are are speculating either Penguin or Panda. Here are some quotes from the threads:

Yes, something happened in the UK late last night or this morning. I think it may have been Panda related but it's getting very difficult to tell.

This may be normal flux or it may be a sign that Panda is refreshing, once again or that Penguin 3.0 is settling down?
Know more: 

The last Google Toolbar PageRank update was 11 months and 18 days ago, almost a year ago, on December 6, 2013. Google's John Mueller has told in a video hangout that there probably won't be PageRank updates in the future.
But now, John Mueller wrote it out in a Google Webmaster Help thread saying Google "have no plans to do further updates," around PageRank. He even said webmasters and SEOs should stop using "PageRank or links as a metric" around their web sites.
Here is the full quote:

I wouldn't use PageRank or links as a metric. We've last updated PageRank more than a year ago (as far as I recall) and have no plans to do further updates. Think about what you want users to do on your site, and consider an appropriate metric for that. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch/2011/06/beyond-pagerank-graduating-to.html

MORE DETAILS :--->

Contributor Jim Yu shares proprietary data that will help you determine how the latest Panda update might affect your site -- and how you should adjust.

When Panda “4.1″ – another iteration of Google’s algorithm aimed at low-quality web content hit on September 25, some brands saw upward of a 90 percent loss in their organic search footprint, according to initial research conducted at BrightEdge.

What it could mean for your website’s content strategy?

Although Google closely guards its algorithmic secrets, here’s what we know about Panda historically, based on what Google representatives have said about it and on other data analyses shared amongst the web marketing community:

• Panda targets “thin” content on sites, which often equates to a general lack of content
• Panda targets duplicate content, usually when a site has a large volume of it
• Panda targets machine-generated content (what marketers often refer to as “spun content”)

Google hasn’t opened up on the specifics of this latest iteration on the algorithm, but based on initial findings from others around the web and at BrightEdge, we can share data on what types of sites have been impacted positively and negatively. From that, you can make some inferences about how it might affect your site and how you should adjust.

Know MORE:---

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Over the weekend, there was a tremendous amount of chatter within the SEO community, including discussion forums, social media and other channels. There were rumors that Google was pushing out a new algorithm, maybe the eagerly anticipatedPenguin refresh which is expected really soon or maybe something else?

Google told us just now that the Panda 4.1 release is still rolling out and that may be what SEOs and Webmasters are noticing.

Google launched Panda 4.1 on September 25, 2014 and told us it would be a “slow rollout” that would go into the following week. No one really expected the rollout to continue into this week but it has and the fluctuations and ranking changes you are seeing are likely related to that.

If you saw a huge drop in Google traffic, it may or may not be related to Panda 4.1. Google is constantly making changes and although you may notice a drop on the Panda 4.1 release date, you may have been impacted by other algorithms, user interface changes or manual actions. In addition, you might not notice a change on September 25th but notice one over this past weekend, which could also be related to Panda 4.1.

Google has confirmed with us that Panda 4.1 is still rolling out.

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Google’s Panda Update is a search filter introduced in February 2011 meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. When this happens, sites previously hit may escape, if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before. A refresh also means “false positives” might get released.

Our Guide To Google Panda:

• Google Panda Update: Must Read Articles
• Google Panda Update News
• Google Panda Recovery Tips & Tactics
• Google Panda Update: Winners & Losers

“Hummingbird” is the name of the new search platform that Google is using as of September 2013, the name comes from being “precise and fast” and is designed to better focus on the meaning behind the words. Read our Google Hummingbird FAQ here.

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

Google Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

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