Era Webtech Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Fetch as Google Adds Page Rendering

Google has announced an addition to the Fetch as Google tool in Webmaster Tools, allowing webmasters to render their webpage as Googlebot sees it and address any issues.

When selecting the Fetch and Render option, you have the option to have Googlebot fetch as Desktop, Mobile: Smartphone, Mobile: XHTML/WML or Mobile: cHTML. This option will help webmasters determine if there are any issues with the mobile version versus the desktop version of the site, as well as identify rendering issues.

The new Fetch and Render option takes longer than the usual Fetch option, which checks the crawlability of your site and then lets you submit pages to Google's index.

Google May Be Pushing Out A New Update: Possibly Penguin?

I am seeing very early signs of another possible Google update both based on chatter at the Webmaster World and in other forums and social media spaces. I am also getting private data shared with me by those who are tracking this closely.

Update: Google tells me this is not Penguin or any spam quality control change.

The feeling is that Google is testing a new Penguin refresh and that it may be rolling out slowly. Or that it might be something else. So you know, we had a Panda 4.0 update last week, and then last weekend (before Panda 4) we had a Spam algorithm update. Prior to that we reported on tons of ranking shifts which Google denied despite all the signs of an update.

And now, we are seeing something rolling out yesterday, that had big impacts on some sites.
Here are two graphs of sites impacted by a few things, including Penguin and notice the spikes in both over the past couple days:

Google’s Matt Cutts: One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link

Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts posted a video today answering how does Google handle one page that has two links pointing to the same page. Does it pass PageRank the same way? How does Google handle the anchor text, if the anchor text differs.

In short, Mat Cutts said:

(1) PageRank flows to each link individually as it would any other link on the page, at least according to the original PageRank document.

(2) Anchor text may vary depending on time. Matt said, last time he looked, which was in 2009, they only counted the anchor text from the first link. But he said that may change that over time; in fact, he said it may not work that way now. This means, if you have two links to the same page from a specific page, but the anchor text in the first is different than the last, Google in 2009 would have used the first link’s anchor text.

YOUR PRESS RELEASE AND GOOGLE: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF SEO

For years the press release has served us well as an effective way to share content, inform stakeholders, drive traffic to websites and improve search engine visibility. Nothing has changed here.

What has changed is Google’s updated Webmaster Guidelines about optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites such as a newswire. In its Link Schemes document, Google says that unnatural “low-value” links – those that are strictly intended to drive traffic to a website or get PageRank from a paid medium such as a press release– are self-serving advertising and will not pass PageRank. A “nofollow” link (rel=”nofollow”) is recommended in all optimized anchor text links in press releases.

Google Updates “Panda” Filter, Impacts 7.5% Of Search Results

Yesterday, Google has made a significant change to their Panda filter, named Panda 4.0. This is the biggest update to the Panda algorithm in ages and may be the cause of some ranking changes you may be noticing in Google today and throughout the week.

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that the update Panda filter began rolling out yesterday. Here is Matt’s tweet: