Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August, 2014

HTTPS As A Ranking Signal

Security is a top priority for Google. They invest a lot in making sure that their services use industry-leading security, like strongHTTPS encryption by defaul t. That means that people using Search, Gmail and Google Drive, for example, automatically have a secure connection to Google. Beyond their own stuff, they are also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of this is, they are making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, they have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites. They want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, They called for “ HTTPS everywhere ” on the web. They have also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS , or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging. For these reasons, over the past few months they have been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, en

Optimize Your Content For Google News With Google News Publisher Center

Yesterday, Google announced something new for content publishers that will allow them to have more control over how content shows up in Google News. The newly launched Google News Publisher Center will let you make changes to Google’s record of your news site. With the Publisher Center, your potential readers can be more informed about the articles they’re clicking on and you benefit from better discovery and classification of your news content. To use the new Publisher Center, first you have to verify ownership of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. Then you can use the Publisher Center to directly make the following changes: Update your news site details , including changing your site name and labeling your publication with any relevant source labels (e.g., “Blog”, “Satire” or “Opinion”) Update your section URLs when you change your site structure (e.g., when you add a new section such as http://example.com/2014commonwealthgames or http://example.com/elections201

Google "Pigeon" Updates Local Search Algorithm With Stronger Ties To Web Search Signal

Google has released a new algorithm to provide a more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals. The changes will be visible within the Google Maps search results and Google Web search results. Note: We’ve named this update the  Pigeon update . The core changes are behind the scenes, but it does impact local search results rankings and some local businesses may notice an increase or decrease in web site referrals, leads and business from the change. Google told us that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more. In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters. The new algorithm is currently rolling out for US English results and aims to provide a mo