Category: SEO News Articles

PageRank Update 2015 The question at hand is when will be the next Google Toolbar PageRank update in 2015? a subject close to the heart of many an SEO. Google doesn’t seem to have any immediate plans for updating the Google PageRank Toolbar. A Webmaster tweeted the following on Twitter (5 Nov 2014) with regards to the next PageRank update. Stoian Ciprian @StoianCiprian @googlewmc When will be the next page rank update? 🙂 Google Webmasters replied: Google Webmasters @googlewmc @StoianCiprian No current plans to update it in the Google Toolbar, but we do continuously calculate it for rankings. 4:45 pm – 5 Nov 2014 There were already signs of dropping… Read More

Link Exchange And Illicit Linking Yes, link exchange and reciprocal linking (you link to me and I link to you, the same thing) are allowed in Google, but only to a certain degree of not been excessive. Google first said to avoid reciprocal links. Then they added the word “excessive”. Which by itself doesn’t say very much. Each Webmaster treating the word excessive differently. So then what are excessive reciprocal links? Matt Cutts spoke about the fundamental long term, solid growth of your links, saying you need to avoid getting links if a large fraction of them are coming from you sending automated emails saying: “Did you know that exchanging… Read More

Algorithm Filter Recovery Help Let’s take a look at website recovery from an algorithmic point of view. Algorithm updates are applied automatically by programs rather than humans, your website gets demoted, so a reconsideration request via Webmaster Tools won’t help. Website recovery from an algorithm filter would only occur once the crawler re-indexes the web, the spam classifiers will then re-evaluate the site’s changes. If the issues surrounding the algorithm update have been cleaned up the crawler will reprocess the website and it would no longer be classified as spam, resulting in rankings been restored (Depending on what changes you made) A time-consuming process that could take weeks, if not… Read More

Identifying PHPBB Forum Spambots Let’s talk about UGG-Boots-Jersey-Captcha-Spambot. I think I’m more than qualified in this category. Reason has been, I once opened and dedicated an entire PHPBB forum to the UGG Boots Jersey Captcha Spambot (The forum was blocked from Googlebot) the PHPBB forum has since been removed. The first thing you notice about the UGG Boots Jersey Captcha Spambot is all links navigate to shopping sites and the links are not part of the conversation. Meaning, the spambot randomly scrapes content from the web, spinning it, then spamming it in forums to appear in the Google search to come up under as many queries as possible. You need… Read More

SpamBot Countermeasure Help The default Spambot plug-in for PHPBB Forums is the CD Image SpamBot plug-in. Change it, it’s a crap plugin that doesn’t work on all Captcha SpamBots. The ReCaptcha SpamBots do and can create accounts, each account with a unique user-name, email addresses and IP. PHPBB Forum Spambot Countermeasures That Don’t Work Some say “reCaptcha” is a good spambot countermeasure, but not on all Spambots. A good example has been the UGG Boots and Jersey SpamBot. That specific irritating Chinese piece of crap has been around for many years. Ugg Boots themselves don’t give a damn. It amazes me people still buy those crap over spammed products from… Read More

Googlebot Indexing And Crawling No, the Googlebot does not index pages for the Google search results. Googlebot is a fetch feature in Google Search Console. The Indexer indexes pages for the Google search, not Googlebot. Googlebot is Googles web crawling robot which retrieves pages found on the world wide web and pages submitted via Webmaster Tools. Googlebot is basically a thief, downloading and copying web pages. At times with the Webmasters permission (Webmaster Tools verification and sitemap submission) and other times without the Webmasters permission. Googlebot is not a little spider or monkey running around Cyberspace as we all imagine. In reality, Googlebot does not move anywhere, it works like… Read More

Outdated Footer Copyright Year And SEO Yes, to a certain degree outdated footer copyrights can at times be bad for SEO. Always remembering you don’t really have to display copyright. Content, logos, images, etc, you upload are already considered “copyrighted.” That said and done outdated copyrights stand an extremely small chance of affecting Google’s perception of a website. They could, however, affect your site if Google can’t find other signals of freshness aside from the arbitrary copyright date (which I explain at the bottom of the article) Outdated copyrights usually work against the website more from a user standpoint. Websites that don’t reflect accurate and current information can result in… Read More

How To Update The Disavow File Disavow file questions and answers by Cyber SEO and John Mueller, discussing disavow file updates, including, removed pages, duplicate URL`s, 301 redirects and disavowing HTTPS links. Links that have been removed or nofollowed should not be added to the disavow file but will cause no harm if they still in the file and neither will duplicate links matter. HTTPS can be uploaded with the same disavow file or two separate disavow files if you have bad links on both HTTP as well as HTTPS. Furthermore, a new URL needs to be disavowed when implementing a 301 redirect from a bad URL. Duplicate links in… Read More

Manual Actions Verses Algorithm Filters Google has different manual actions they take, depending on the over-aggressive means used by the Webmaster that’s trying to manipulating the search results. Google tend to handle “good websites” with one bad factor differently from over-aggressive, unethical websites. A site that practices SEO malpractice or unethical over aggressive search engine techniques commonly used by “black hat” SEO’s might be totally removed from the Google index, while a website with fewer violations may be demoted. When the Webspam Team steps in and takes manual Webspam action a different scenario plays out in comparison to an algorithm filter, this would result in a manual penalty whereby a… Read More