SEO News: Tweets In Google Search Result

The new buzz in SEO and SMO industry is an agreement between Google and Twitter. Though any official announcement has not been made yet to confirm the news from any of the official Google or Twitter, but it has been stated by well-known news reporters in the SEO industry that Twitter is going to give the real-time tweet-feed to Google. Google will use this real-time tweets in search result.

Twitter was giving the real-time feed to Google in the past which contract was closed in 2011. After that Google-bots were crawling the twitter pages as any other webpages to get the feed. But now, Google will get the direct and real-time feed from twitter. It will help Google to make the process quick as it doesn't need to crawl the twitter profiles. It will help twitter to gain more users. It has been mentioned that Twitter is losing its users and this move will help them to get returning and new users.

There is no news of any kind of advertisement agreement on the platform from any of the company. So for now, it will be a pure tweet feed contract. The engineers of Google and Twitter has started working on this change and the change might get effective in the first half of 2015.

From SEO and SMO point of view, it's really going to help marketers. How? Well, if you can't get good rankings for some of your competitive keywords, you can leverage tweets to appear in search results. Do not forget to optimize your twitter profile with short bio and company URL to take complete benefit of this change.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
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Posted in: Future google updates,SEO News,SMO News

Ghost Traffic: New Pain In SEO Industry

Nowadays, a new pain in neck for SEO people is Ghost Traffic also known as Spam Referral Traffic. If you are still unaware of this, then you must check your Google Analytics after reading this post. In this article, I am going to share a quick guide on Ghost Traffic.

What is Ghost Traffic?
Ghost traffic is the number of false visits generated in your Google analytics. There are a few websites which create false visit entries in your Google analytics account and get recorded as visits in it.The matter of fact is they have never visited your website. As we can feel them (in GA), but they don't exist in reality, it's called "Ghost Traffic".

How To Identify Ghost or Spam Referral Traffic?
There are a few notorious websites which send such referral traffic to your site. To identify whether you are one of the victims or not visit your traffic sources in GA. If you see any unusual keywords in organic search or any unusual URLs in your referral tab, then you are the victim of these ghosts. The most common keywords used at the moment are:

• google officially -recommends ilovevitaly.com search shell
• resellerclub scam. 

The spam referral websites are:

• buttons-for-website
• ilovevitaly.co
• hulfingtonpost.com
• blackhatworth.com
• darodar.com
• priceg.com
• econom.co 

How Ghost Visits or Spam Referral Traffic Works?
It is happening because there is a loophole in Google Analytics. Here is the methodology these spammers are using.

• They run an automated script which is similar to search-bots which starts crawling random websites and its pages which leads them to other webpages.
• These crawlers run a javascript on the webpages by which they get dynamic web content. The process ends up running Google Analytic tracking code in which the script attaches the referral source, tracking code, user ID and the page viewed details (the fake details), etc.

This creates a false visit entry in Google Analytics.

Why The Heck They Are Doing So?

Well, this must be the question in 99% of people reading this or faced these ghost visits must be having in mind. There can be two reasons.

• Just for fun or just to show how intelligent they are. :P
• They are getting loyal traffic by doing this. How? Well, as a webmaster whenever you will find a new or unknown referral traffic, it's obvious you will visit the referral website and navigate to check how you are getting the traffic from there? Where is your link placed? This will keep you on their site and also make you returning visitors in many cases. So the people who are doing this can be those Black Hat SEO people who guarantee a number of loyal visitors. (We must admire the intelligence of them. I wish they had used it in the right way.)

How To Get Rid of It?
Honestly speaking, it's very difficult to get rid of it. Many webmasters advised me to disavow those links, but the fact is disavowing those links will make no difference because there isn't any backlink or actual visit.

The two possible solutions are as below:

• Create filters for each spam referral.It's very difficult and time consuming process because you have to add separate filters for each spam website and query which is going to be changed in a few days.
• Create a filter for invalid hostsIt means you can create a filter by hostname. The filter should allow only known hostnames to send traffic to your analytics. Again, it is very tricky and asks for extra care because a wrong move might end up in filtering useful data.

Note: Once you filter the data, you will never get it back. So be careful when using filters, try to create mirror account and apply filters in that.

Is Ghost Visit Harmful? Can It Affect SEO Rankings or Any Other Related Factor?
The most important question, right? The straightforward answer is "No". The Google webspam team considers no data or information from Google Analytics. So these ghost visits can only do one thing and that's horrifying you with their existence, nothing else :)

How Will It Affect Your SEO Efforts? 
As I said there is no direct consequence of these visits, but you use the GA data for analysis, it can misguide you. I mean you might often see a fluctuation in traffic and bounce rate in your reports which might misguide your efforts, specifically for startup or novice SEOs.

What Is The Solution?
The simple solution is "Ignore". Just ignore such unusual visits. Whenever you use the information for research, use advance report tools and exclude the ghost traffic. It will help you to analyse the right data. So you can focus in the right direction.

What Is The Permanent Solution?
That's not in our hand at the moment. We need to wait for Google to take action against this and provide some security in GA.

Hope this article added some value to your knowledge-base.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
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Posted in: ghost traffic,SEO News,spam referral visitors

SEO News: Don't Block Javascript and Google IS Looking For Testers

Today, I am going to share two news insights from Google. First news is related to mobile search result. It seems like Google is working quite seriously to improve the mobile search result and enforce the webmasters to pull up their socks and provide the best possible results to end users. Recently, Google has implemented a change in Google mobile search result. As per that, if you have blocked javascript, CSS, etc. then Google won't show your description snippet in the mobile search result. Instead of the snippet, it will show following

"A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt – learn more."

Learn more in the snippet redirect to a link of Google's support page which explains about robots.txt. As a webmaster, you must be knowing that Google had announced, "Not to block CSS, Javascript, images, etc. back in Aug, 2012 for desktop search. Now, again Google has enforced the same for mobile search. So your robots file should not block Googlebot to crawl your css, javascript, images, etc. for your desktop or mobile version. In short, be transparent to Google.

Another news insight from Google is that now you can be a tester at Google for some time. :) No there is no job vacancy available at Google. The fact is Google is releasing the alpha version of its new search query report module in GWT. For that Google webmaster's team is looking for some volunteer webmasters who can use the alpha version of "Search Query result" and test it. Keep in mind that, the version of the search queries can have bugs and interface issues. The feedback collected from the users will be used in the final version of "Search query report" of Google. If you want to be part of this test, here is the sign up form link: http://goo.gl/Iub7Zt

This news is announced by Google webmaster's team on Google+. Here is the snippet of what they said

So another future news is Google Webmaster's search Query report is going to be changed soon. :)

The conclusion of this blog is, Google is working hard to give the best to their users, specific focus is towards the mobile users. So the takeaway here is, work hard to give the best experience to users and enhance your website to make it mobile user friendly in all ways possible.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: Future google updates,Google updates,SEO News

SEO NEWs: Google Started Giving Reminders To Make Website Mobile Friendly

As we all know the world and even the algorithm of Google is moving to support smart devices. As you might know that Google has updated the search algorithms for mobile search and show "mobile friendly" tag to the responsive or a mobile friendly website in the search result. If you don't know then just search anything in Google using your mobile and witness it on your own. To take this further and to encourage webmasters (or to push them) to make their website responsive, Google has taken a new step.

Google has started sending a message to the webmasters around the world in their (GWT) tool message-box as well as to the webmaster's email id to point out the problems with their website. The message usually contains a subject line as "Fix mobile usability issue found on site-URL". It is a lengthy message with some details of the website, but the bottom line of the message is
"displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users".  It means your website will rank as per it's compatibility with smart devices.

Have you received any such message? Check your Google webmaster message box.

The SEO experts are forecasting that the Google might take strict steps in future. The websites which are not compatible with mobile devices can face the drop in rankings. Even there are some clear signs that the mobile ranking algorithm is about to launch and Google is making people ready for that.

So if you don't have a responsive or a mobile friendly website then this is the right time to do the needful before Google push your rankings down and force you to take steps.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: Future google updates,google update,SEO News

Google Updates: Gmail Inbox in Search Result, WebMasters Guideline Changed

Google is in mood of updates or makeover I guess. In the past few weeks, so many small and big updates it has announced, including, Panda, Pirates, Penguin. Last week, Google announced two more updates including Gmail Inbox in web search, webmaster's guideline changed.

Gmail Inbox Result in Web Search
Don't get confused or panic with the heading :) People won't see your private messages, Google takes care of security concerns as before. According to this update, if you are logged in to your account then you can access your all mails without opening gmail mail-client. A user can access all gmail tabs, including, Inbox, social and promotion directly from the Google web search or Google now. As per the TheAndroidSoul, users can search with any of the below queries to access their emails.

• gmail inbox
• my inbox
• show inbox
• get inbox
• inbox by gmail
• inbox from gmail

This update seems to be rolling out as a few users are not getting the results as mentioned. You can try in your Android. ;)

Gmail Inbox in Search Result

Another update is an update in the Google Webmaster Policy. If you are a webmaster, you must understand how serious it is....!! This update was announced by Webmaster Trends Analyst of Google, namely, Pierre Far. An official blog has been published on the same subject on googlewebmaster blog, too. According to this update, now Googlebot is modernized. So it will crawl websites as modern browsers. [People who are not aware of it, Google was crawling websites as text browser like Lynx before]. With the technology, Google has changed its bot as well. So the updated guideline in brief is, DO NOT BLOCK GOOGLEBOT FROM CRWALING IMAGES, CSS & JAVASCRIPT. The reason behind this is, Googlebot needs to crawl and index all images, CSS and JavaScript for optimal rendering and indexing of webpages. Google's webmaster has written the main point in bold as below:

Disallowing crawling of Javascript or CSS files in your site’s robots.txt directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content and can result in suboptimal rankings.

It means, it can harm your search rankings and results directly. You must have understood the seriousness of the update. So take instant action. You can use GWT's Fetch and render tool to check how your website will be viewed by Googlebot. Previously, Google suggested to use the Lynx browser to check the same.

There is one more update deemed to be coming, will write about it in upcoming Blog. So stay tuned.

Hope this Blog added some value to your knowledge-base. :)

*Image credit goes to searchengineland.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
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Posted in: Gmail Inbox in Web Search,Google algo update,Google updates,Google Webmaster Guideline update,SEO News

SEO News: Panda Is Running, Penguin is Coming

On 25th Sep, 2014 Pierre Far, representative of Google announced on his Google+ page that they have launched a slow roll out of the Panda Algorithm- algo to fight low quality content. This algorithm has woven the Webmatsres' feedback which helped to discover a few more signals of low quality content. Though this is the 27th Google Panda update after it launched first time, but Google itself called Panda 4.0 to its last update. So SEO people gave the name "Panda 4.1" to this update.

Though there isn't any official announcement, the algorithm has almost completed its roll out. It has affected 3-5% search queries depending on the region. This update is a boon for them who had a Panda hit in the last update. So if you are one of them and had made the necessary changes, you will get your rankings back. At the same time, sites with thin or duplicate content got penalty. Below is the screenshot of top 10 winners and losers published by searchmetrics.

Google Panda 4.1 Top 10 Winners List

Google Panda 4.1 Top 10 Losers List

If you will check the list closely, you will witness an honesty of Google. Google.co.in is on the 7th rank of the loser's list and have faced significant loss due to Panda. 

There is one more news from the Google's corner for the SEO industry. In Search Marketing Expo East, Gary Illyes, Google Engineer announced launch of "Google Penguin Algorithm Update" in upcoming weeks. As per his announcement, the newly developed penguin algo is going to make both users' and webmasters' life happy. Currently, it's in testing phase and if it get through the quality test, it will be launched in upcoming weeks. It can be delayed if it find any issue(s) through the testing phase. He further added, disavowing links after or before two weeks of new penguin update won't help. Although there will be frequent penguin refresh which might make recovery faster.

So brace yourself as Panda is running and Penguin is coming. Hope this article help.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: google news,Losers of Google panda,Panda 4.1 algorithm,panda algo update,Penguin refresh,SEO News,Winners of Google panda

Bing Algo Update: URL SPAM Keyword Stuffing

People are more likely to keep their eyes and ears open for the algorithm updates of Google. They usually overlook the changes in other search engines. Bing has announced one of the changes which has affected considerable search queries and URLs. Let's explore it in a bit detail

Bing Algorithm Update: URL SPAM

On Bing Blog, Igor Rondel, the Principal Development Manager, Bing Index Quality posted a few days ago regarding the launch of a search engine algorithm update. According to that Bing has changed its algorithm to target the URLs which are stuffed with the keywords. It is somewhat similar to Google's Exact Match Keyword and Payday loan algo updates.

According to Igor, it has been launched before a few months. It has affected 3% of overall search queries. To make the update transparent, Igor also documented the types of URL on the blog which counted as spammy and got hit by this algo. The types of domains are:

• Keyword rich hostname with multiple hosts 
  Example: free.online.moviesticketsforsale.com
  
• Domain name with repeated keywords
  Example: home-decore-homedecoreforsale.com
  
• URL with Keyword Permutation
  Example: homeloan.paydayloan.com
                   houseloan.paydayloan.com
                   cheaploans.paydayloan.com
  
• URL Squatting Here people try to take advantage of human tendency of misspell.
  Example:  calculatar.com [misspelling of calculator.com]

The bing algorithm update has hurt the websites with any of the above kind of keyword spam. Bing is now more committed towards the quality of search result and this algo update is one of the proofs.

To get more such insight and news, stay tuned with me.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing, Branding etc.

Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: algorithm change,bing algorithm update,search engine news,SEO News

SEO News: Google’s Pigeon Algorithm Update to Improve Local Search Results

Google Pigeon Update

As people in SEO industry knows that Matt Cutts is on holiday. Everybody might not expect any algo update or refresh in Google. The paradox is Google has launched a new algo update on Jul 24, 2014. The algo is named as "Pigeon" by Search Engine Land in the absence of any official name announcement from Google. So A pigeon is flying in the Google. :) The algo is rolled out in US only for now. It might roll out in other regions in nearer future. The percentage of impacted queries have not been revealed yet.

As per the Search Engine Land, Google revealed, "Along with the hundreds of ranking signals Google use in web search algorithm, the new local search algorithm ties deeper into the Google's web search capabilities. The local search ranking signals include features like knowledge graph, synonyms, spelling corrections, etc." Google also revealed to SearchEngineLand that "new algorithm will improve their local ranking and distance parameters."

This algorithm update has benefited many local directories like Yelp. Before the algorithm update Yelp listing was facing a problem like even if someone searches with query "Yelp", the yelp was not in the first place in the search result. With the pigeon algo update of Google, this problem has been solved. The big directories like Trip-advisor, Yelp, etc. got the ranking benefits from the update.

How will it affect you?
If you are targeting the local audience and you have a directory then you are having the added advantage from this update. If you are local business, you have to add extra efforts and improve other ranking factors to rank high in local search queries.

Hope this helps. Please share your queries and views in the comment section. Has pigeon come to your door? :)

Image credit goes to pixel8ltd.com

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: Google algo update,Google local search algo update,Google Pigeon algorithm,SEO News

News: Rand Fishkin Continue WBF At Moz, Not As A CEO

In the morning, the first news I read was Rand Fishkin, the famous name of Moz, formerly known as SEOMoz is stepping down from his role of CEO from Moz. Rand is known face of Moz and always been representetive of Moz. Sarah, the COO of Moz, will take over his job.

Rand has been famous because of his series of whiteboard Friday. I love the way he segment data and make promotional strategies with it. After hearing the news, I was quite shocked and sad as well. There is gossip that one of the goals of the company, Moz, is to sell it out. I don't know whether it is truth or just a rumour. Time will reveal more facts.

But one good news is that Rand will continue doing his whiteboard Friday series. He replied in my tweet that he still be doing lots of whiteboard Friday in his new role at Moz. So SEO guys can still gain the knowledge and information from him. Check the tweet conversation I had with Rand below.

Rand Fishkin replied to continue WBF

Rand has also shared his last video as CEO on Moz in which he is talking with Sarah Bird. Both are discussing their journey.

Ash Vyas is working as an internet Marketing manager handling digital marketing activities like SEO, SMO, Linkbuilding & believe to live in the moments.
Likes : Blogging, net surfing, networking, travelling, photography
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Posted in: Moz News,Rank fishkin not a CEO anymore,SEO News,SEOMOZ news,whiteboard Friday